India Should Buy MIG Fighter

Charts: Today’s newsletter goes out before the bell, so let’s dive into geopolitics.

Geopolitics: The experts are convinced that Mullah Omar has moved out of Pakistan’s tribal lands and is now somewhere inside the city of Karachi, hidden among the teeming slums of 16 million people. Other Taliban and Al-Qaeda leaders are probably also hidden in the giant city, including Osama bin Laden. CIA drones have forced bad guy leaders to give up their de facto nation states on the Afpak border. But lower level Taliban leaders and fighters are still in the tribal lands and are still fighting. History shows that without the leavening hand of the top leaders the lower level bad guys will become increasingly brutal to the local populations, alienating local tribal leaders and making it easier to build good bad guy Islamic militias.
Hunting down bad guy leaders in Karachi and building g/b/g Islamic militias will require even greater cooperation between the CIA and the ISI/Pak Army. This means the US needs to step harder on India. Right now Russian leaders are meeting with Indian leaders, trying to sell them the next generation MIG fighter. As perverse as this may sound, it is better that India buy weapons from Russia than the US.
Along these lines, Afghan Pres. Karzai is refusing a Pak Army offer to train Afghan troops. Karzai does not want Pakistan dominating Afghanistan once US troops start withdrawing. Karzai is reaching out to India to prevent this. But the US wants Pakistan to dominate Afghanistan. At the same time, the US cannot step on Karzai. Sift through all this and one point stands out: if Russia and the US were de facto allies and India turned to Russia because of deteriorating Indo-American relations, it would be a good thing.