The Deep State

Look up Wikipedia and ‘the deep state’ is defined as a term that came into being in relation to Turkish politics: “the deep state (Turkish: derin devlet) is alleged to be a group of influential anti-democratic coalitions within the Turkish political system, composed of high-level elements within the intelligence services (domestic and foreign), Turkish military, security, judiciary, and mafia”,

 Doesn’t this give you the impression that the deep state is a phenomenon that is confined to Turkish society and politics? Of late there have been murmurs about the deep state in Egypt. But the deep state phenomenon cannot possibly exist in open, democratic societies. Or can it?

Two days ago an article was published in a respected US political analysis site that has the blogosphere aflutter and the ripples are likely to spread to the mainstream media. Mike Lofgren’s essay “The Anatomy of the Deep State” is not the result of the fertile mind of one among many conspiracy junkies that inhabit the Internet. Lofgren is a Fullbright scholar who was for 28 years a respected US Republican Congressional aide and whose essay is a balanced, well-argued piece.

Lofgran’s essay is full of well-established facts and illustrative linkages establishing the causality of the Deep State. The seminal paragraph that summarizes his Deep State premise comes almost half-way through the essay: ” Yes, there is another government concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country according to consistent patterns in season and out, connected to, but only intermittently controlled by, the visible state whose leaders we choose. My analysis of this phenomenon is not an exposé of a secret, conspiratorial cabal; the state within a state is hiding mostly in plain sight, and its operators mainly act in the light of day. Nor can this other government be accurately termed an “establishment.”

All complex societies have an establishment, a social network committed to its own enrichment and perpetuation. In terms of its scope, financial resources and sheer global reach, the American hybrid state, the Deep State, is in a class by itself. That said, it is neither omniscient nor invincible. The institution is not so much sinister (although it has highly sinister aspects) as it is relentlessly well entrenched. Far from being invincible, its failures, such as those in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, are routine enough that it is only the Deep State’s protectiveness towards its higher-ranking personnel that allows them to escape the consequences of their frequent ineptitude.”

To the student of history the Deep State is no surprise. Its antecedents can be traced to the military-industrial complex that ranged across the Western hemisphere embracing both sides of World War 2. The machinations of the Deep State in the Western hemisphere can be glimpsed in a couple of high-quality entertainment products: John Le Carre’s latest novel “A Delicate Truth” and the high voltage Netflix series “House of Cards” Does the Deep State exist in India? Does the apex power of the iron frame that holds Indian governance together – the civil and armed services- go well beyond the powers of their apparent but transient masters – the politicians? Is big money interested just in the realtive pettyfoggery of fixing prices?

How about the media barons and mavens? We Indians might be love a good argument in private but when it comes to public discourse the quality, as in many other spheres, abysmally low. Will we have in the foreseeable future an Indian Lafgren analyzing the Deep State in India? Not likely. AAP had a chance of doing so but all it is interested in lowest-common-denominator fumigations about the corrupt. Good election strategy but hardly ground-breaking expose.

Perhaps we Indians lack the intellectual fortitude and courage to address a tricky issue of current import in detail and authoritatively. It is no accident that the erudite and articulate Ramchandra Guha decides to focus on the minutiae of by-gone eras. Time and again it has been an enterprising opportunity-grabbing Western scholar that has undertaken the journey. Perhaps because they do not fear the Indian state and more importantly, if it exists, the Indian Deep State.