Posted by Shyam Moondra
Swiss Bank Laws:
I think the U.S. government should insist on more comprehensive changes to Swiss banking laws than what has been offered by Switzerland. Switzerland's bank secrecy laws have encouraged drug traffickers, money launderers, wealthy tax cheaters, and corrupt politicians to stash away large sums of money in Swiss bank accounts. In many of the developing countries, for example in Africa, Asia, and South America, politicians are known to have stolen public funds and financial aid money and deposited in secret Swiss bank accounts. Switzerland is thus aiding and conspiring with these corrupt and criminal people around the world to steal public money that should have been used to fight poverty and hunger in many of these impoverished countries. It has been widely reported that former and current Pakistani leaders and military officers and Palestinian leaders have stolen funds from the U.S. aid money and deposited in secret Swiss bank accounts. Even people like Vladimir Putin are rumored to have secret bank accounts in Switzerland. I think the U.S. and other industrialized nations should insist on dismantling the Swiss secrecy laws and put a stop to the breeding corruption worldwide. If Switzerland does not cooperate, the U.S. must threaten to shut down the operations of the Swiss banks in the U.S. and pass laws to make it difficult for Swiss banks to do business anywhere in the world.
Policy towards Pakistan:
The key to defeating Al Quaeda and Taliban lies in our policy towards Pakistan. Pakistan has been a half-hearted partner in this matter. They have used terrorism as a policy tool against India while pretending to be helpful to us in the fight against terror so that they could collect billions of dollars of our aid money. They have been playing a shrewd game of collecting the aid but doing as little as possible. The result is that the terrorists have only become stronger. I think we need a major shift in our policy towards Pakistan. We should announce a complete cessation of all financial and military aid to Pakistan. Then we should lay out measurable benchmarks that they will have to meet before we restart aid in incremental manner. The benchmarks would be: they must dismantle terrorist camps and infrastructure within their territory, they must close-down their religious schools that are a breeding place for terrorists-to-be, they must pass banking laws to trace the money and stop channels (e.g., drug trafficking) that feed money to terrorists, and they must ban terrorist organizations and prosecute the known terrorists as demanded by India. We should also insist that they put their intelligence agency ISI under the firm control of the civilian government and direct their military resources towards fighting terrorism in the Northern provinces rather than position them against India. We should continue to attack potential terrorists on Pakistani soil even without the permission of the Pakistani government; self-defense against cross-border attacks by terrorists on NATO forces in Afghanistan provides a valid legal basis for doing that. Also, we need to have a secret strategic plan to seize their nuclear arsenals and destroy their WMD labs and infrastructure, if Pakistan's domestic situation deteriorates to the point that we face the danger of these WMDs falling in the wrong hands.
Policy towards Russia:
From the day Barack Obama was elected as the president, Russia has been shrewdly playing tough and behaving aggressively as a follow-on to their invasion of the tiny neighbor Georgia. Now they are even talking about placing Russian bombers on Cuban soil. Even in the face of this bluster, the reality is that with the crashing oil prices Russia is actually on the defensive and they are craving for Obama's attention. Therefore, I don't think we should make any unnecessary concessions. We should hang tough on our missile shield plan unless they make concessions on Iran and else where. We should insist on more democracy and freedom of press in Russia before we shoot for close relations with them. The Russian leaders are not trust-worthy - Prime Minister Putin is a typical cold-warrior in the KGB mode. I think President Obama should put Russia on the back-burner for now and not make any hasty decisions simply because they are testing the novice Obama by all this tough talk of placing bombers in Cuba or directing ballistic nuclear missiles towards Europe. We should, however, negotiate a new arms-control treaty with Russia, if it is in our self-interest.
Policy towards Cuba:
We need to reassess our relations with Cuba, which is no longer a Soviet puppet or threat to us. Carrying on a cold war era policy towards one of our smallest and poorest neighbors is laughable. We need to tone down our harsh policy towards Cuba and help them with their economic development. A stable and prosperous Cuba is in our interest. We should encourage people-to-people contacts and allow travel and business deals between the two countries. Over time, they will have more democracy (we started our relations with China on that basis in the 1970's, so why not treat Cuba the same way?).
Policy towards Israel:
Israel's continuing expansion of settlements in occupied territories is illegal and a big obstacle in achieving comprehensive peace in the Middle-East. Just like with Pakistan, we need to set some benchmarks for Israel to meet for us to continue our financial and military aid to them. It's a tough decision but a necessary and fair decision to achieve lasting peace in that region. Israel must go back to pre-1987 war borders and give up all of the territories they seized in that war, with some minor adjustments to provide contiguous borders, and in return, all of Israel's neighbors must recognize Israel and establish diplomatic relations with Israel. I don't think Israel will see a need to make any concessions to achieve real peace unless they have something big to lose and that big thing is the close relations with us and our financial aid to them. In Israel's calculation, if they can maintain status-quo for another fifty years and yet keep getting billions of dollars of the U.S. aid every year, it's the best outcome for them. I don't think there will be lasting peace in the Middle-East unless there is some fundamental change in our policy towards Israel to induce them to long for peace.
