Defeat of Taliban central to free Indo-Pacific (The Sunday Guardian)

 

Afghanistan is a major front in the effort by the Sino-Wahhabi alliance to drain away credibility and morale within institutions such as the Quad.

 

New Delhi: A kilo of action is worth more than a ton of words, and thus far, while words have continued to flow from those in Atlantic Alliance states, who consigned the people of Afghanistan into a medieval hell, efforts at putting such noble intentions into practice have been zero. The only parts of Afghanistan where women and non-radicals remain safe are in locations where the Taliban have failed to establish a foothold. The greater the influence and control of different factions of the Taliban in a given place, the less the values and practices claimed to be championed by the more preachy among NATO member-states. This has not blocked the steady empowerment of the more toxic elements of the Taliban through “humanitarian assistance”, of course channelled through Pakistan. This has once again given GHQ Rawalpindi (and its PLA boosters) the ability to promote those loyal to them and obedient to their wishes, while depriving others of any “humanitarian” succour. Not that this fact is unknown to the countries doling out such “assistance”. Those in charge know that money and materiel funnelled through Pakistan will end up with those elements who have made a living out of violence to their fellow human beings. What is paid is protection money, a bribe that it is hoped will stop radicals from putting at risk the lives of those citizens of NATO member-states who are still in Afghanistan. In reality, the degree of protection is less than strong, for the reason that more and more of the feisty younger elements in the Taliban are no longer responsive to the  commands coming from the older leadership, especially those known to be following the dictates of the Sino-Pakistan alliance. Pashtuns across both sides of the (defunct since 1992) Durand Line are a proud people, who have long chafed under the overbearing approach adopted by either Middle Eastern paymasters or commanders in the Pakistan army, which institution remains firmly in the control of those from the northern and western parts of Pakistan Punjab. This includes the territory from which those belonging to the Hindu and Sikh minorities have been expelled, where they have not been killed or made to change the faith they were born in.

OLD TALIBAN VS YOUNG TALIBAN

There is a widening gap within the collective known as the Taliban between the older leadership and the much young cadre that has been formed ever since the US and its coalition partners openly flaunted the degree of control they had over the governance institutions formed in Afghanistan since the 2001 collapse of the Taliban at the hands of the Northern Alliance assisted by US logistical (but not troop) support. NATO commanders believed that their own troops on the ground were the primary solution to the problem of keeping extremists away from Afghanistan, unwilling to admit (a) that the hyper-emphasis on force protection severely limited the tactical choices essential towards the defeat of enemy combatants, and that (b) ground and air attacks on the wrong targets (a consequence of relying on the Pakistan military for much of the intelligence input) boosted the ranks of those seeking to resist what they saw as just another foreign invasion of their country, and this after they had driven away the Soviet forces by 1989. Frequent contact with the (overwhelmingly non-Pashtun) officers and men of the Pakistan army combined with the overbearing attitude of the latter to creating a mistrust (and often raw hatred) of Pakistan that is present not just in Afghan civil society in general but also in the ranks of the Taliban. This collective is split into six groups, two of which function under the control of the Pakistan army, while another is dominated by those in financial servitude to the PLA, the top ranks of which have a decisive say within the Pakistan military as well. It would be imprecise to even attempt to put numerical values on the strength of the six factions (including the three that are independent of the GHQ-PLA alliance). What can be said is that the ranks of the three factions controlled by the GHQ-PLA alliance are much smaller (and have a much higher average age) than the three factions that are resentful of the manner in which the Taliban are being sought to be controlled by GHQ Rawalpindi and the PLA through the Central Military Commission in Beijing, which has since 2017 come within the control of CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping, who is in many ways as organisationally powerful a leader as Chairman Mao was.

CHINESE YOUTHS ALARMED BY XI

Perhaps inconveniently for Xi, China has changed since the period when Mao was alive, and the Chairman’s efforts at becoming another anti-elitist leader is going against the sentiments of several young citizens of the PRC, who aspire to the “good life” represented by material success. In other words, the lifestyle that was placed as the centrepiece of party policy by Paramount Leader Deng Xiaoping from 1978 onwards, and which remained in place until 2012, when Xi Jinping took over as General Secretary of China’s ruling party. Whether in the state owned or private sector, those in charge have felt the whiplash of the anti-elitist moves of Xi. These may be earning the party supremo cheers from the six hundred million who feel short-changed by the manner in which the PRC has developed since the 1980s, but is being viewed with alarm and resentment by the middle classes and much of the youth. While political activity (except in support of the CCP) was discouraged, a range of actions was freed of state oversight, thereby giving nearly four hundred million citizens of the PRC freedom of choice that had been absent during the period when Chairman Mao was running the country. More than 85% of the prosperity of China is because of this segment of the overall population, and it remains an open question whether the attempted return to the Mao-era lifestyle will affect the PRC economy adversely or not. Orders such as restricting online gaming to three hours during weekends for the young, or the authorities going after popular movie stars and singers may cause tensions in Chinese society that for decades had been largely absent, despite the continuing monopoly of control by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). General Secretary Xi seeks to mould a nation in the image of Sparta, a collective of fighters who obey Victorian rules of morality. From elementary school onwards, the effort is to groom a generation of citizens who will (a) be respectful and obedient to the dictates of the CCP leadership and its subordinates, and (b) embrace in word and deed the goal of Xi Jinping Thought, which is to enshrine China as the centre point of global geopolitical gravity. It is an ambitious task, and to further its progress, Xi has intensified cooperation not only with the Pakistan military but with Wahhabi dispensations and groups across different regions, of course excepting those within his own country. Xi sees in the Wahhabis an ideology and force that is hostile to the Atlantic Alliance, the importance of which in world affairs which Xi Jinping is seeking to reduce to a level such that it would not pose any challenge to the primacy of China (aided by its allies) across the Indo-Pacific and subsequently the Atlantic

TALIBAN VICTORY EMBOLDENS XI

What may be termed the “Creamy Layer” within the Taliban (mostly comprising of the ageing agents of the Sino-Pakistan alliance) is anxious for the opening of the sluice gates of financial assistance from NATO member-states. At present, such handouts are a trickle and are essentially ransom money, paid through the Pakistan army in order to try and ensure safe passage for the hundreds of NATO citizens still stranded within Afghanistan. The problem is that the younger elements in the Taliban collective regard such individuals as human shields who ensure that there will not be any resumption of the bombing raids that the Taliban fear most from the NATO powers. Although US Secretary of State Antony Blinken may not have received information about the manner in which US citizens and Afghan employees of the former US mission are being prevented from leaving airports across Afghanistan, this is what has been taking place. The older “leadership” elements of the Taliban may have had some control over those under them during 1996-2001, but not anymore. In particular, they are regarded with contempt for their obsequious behaviour towards not just Pakistan but China. It was not a surprise that GHQ Rawalpindi involved its forces in the battle over segments of the Panjshir mountain region. Billions of US dollars are at stake, given that elements (most technically retired) of the Pakistan army control the Af-Pak narcotics trade. The military is also looking at securing the role of middleman in ensuring that the PRC gains access to the mineral riches of Afghanistan. They seek to convert Afghanistan into another Balochistan, a colonised country from where riches get drained away, mostly into China. CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping looks upon the Pakistan army as a trustworthy conduit for such exploitation of the mineral wealth of Afghanistan, and has wagered all his cards on this bet. What is helping boost the confidence of Xi is the fearful response of key NATO member-states, who are competing with each other in their attempt to curry favour with GHQ Rawalpindi and the Taliban, including through cash assistance. The sequence of events that has taken place in the Af-Pak region since the surrender to the Taliban by President Trump at Doha in 2020 has emboldened those close to General Secretary Xi, who have therefore intensified PLA-centric harassment of Taiwan and instituted even harsher measures to neutralise dissenting elements in Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Tibet and restive zones across China. The ripple effects of the manner of President Biden’s scampering at speed from the Afghanistan theatre are becoming waves that, unless action countering this is not initiated, have the potential of becoming a tsunami that can severely damage security interests of the US, the EU and those countries active in efforts to ensure that the Indo-Pacific remains free and open to all rather than be monopolised by a single country.

BEIJING PURSUES CREEPING ANNEXATION

Among the measures taken by Beijing to push forward its creeping annexation of land, air and sea space is the declaration that all vessels entering waters that are part of the global commons but which has been claimed by China need prior permission before such transit. Should this command be complied with, rather than ignored as ought to be the case, the countries making such a concession will be identified as soft targets for further active measures designed to lash them firmly to the political and economic interests of the CCP leadership. In the 1990s, the present writer had pointed out that when the era of single male children monopolising the leadership of the CCP comes about, the risk of an aggressive, assertive stance by the PRC would rise substantially. This is what has happened under Xi Jinping’s watch, and thus far, the international fightback has been nowhere close to the degree needed to convince the leadership in Beijing of the dangers to themselves of the high-risk strategy that they have adopted since 2012 in their hunt for global primacy. Given the hyper-centralised mode of governance adopted by Xi Jinping, there appears to be a tendency in Beijing to underplay the fact that the governance system in the US (or in other major democracies) does not hinge on just the apex of the system in the manner that it now does in China. While President Biden has miscalculated substantially in his decisions on Afghanistan, thereby doing severe harm to his own viability as an effective Commander-in-Chief, the presence of multiple nodes of authority in the US (such as industry, civil society, the media, opposition parties and others) results in far less damage being done to the overall societal structure in the US from such Presidential blunders than would be the case in the PRC, were Xi Jinping to make a policy error of similar magnitude. GHQ Rawalpindi has sought to disseminate the impression within its “iron” friends in Beijing that the Afghanistan fiasco has damaged the US sufficiently to give extra headway towards efforts by the Sino-Pakistan alliance to weaken US partners such as India and establish as strong a degree of control over Afghanistan as is the case in Balochistan. The difficulty is that the mechanism of Afghan society is no longer tolerant of groups such as the Taliban, and resistance to that collective and to its outside supporters will grow in the months ahead. The swagger in Afghan cities of officers belonging to GHQ Rawalpindi has caused tensions within Afghan society unhappy at the extent of control that the Sino-Pakistan alliance has over several senior members of the Taliban. Across both sides of the Durand Line, the conviction is growing that if the US military could be sent packing from Afghanistan, would it be an impossible task to do likewise to the Pakistan army in the Pashtun territories across both sides of the Durand Line? Not just the global terrorist network but its antidote, the resistance to efforts by GHQ and its agents in the Taliban, is growing as well.

INDIA MUST LEAD

External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar needs to visit Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in the light of recent events. Both powers understand (although not overtly) that the US-facilitated re-entry of the Taliban into Kabul presents an existential threat to their own security interests. A coordination of effort needs to be made to ensure that the Tajik, Uzbek, Hazara and other communities at risk in a Taliban-ruled Afghanistan are protected. The Resistance Movement concentrated within the Panjshir mountains needs help rather than remain ignored, as has been the case thus far. Those in the US and elsewhere are wrong who believe that the Af-Pak situation is unrelated to the broader effort to keep the Indo-Pacific free and open. Afghanistan is a major front in the effort by the Sino-Wahhabi alliance to drain away credibility and morale within institutions such as the Quad. And yet the situation within that country and the Pashtun areas to the south of the Durand Line are fraught with fissures that have the potential to embroil the GHQ-PLA alliance in a situation similar to that faced by the USSR in Afghanistan in the 1980s. What is required from India is leadership in cobbling together an alliance of countries and interests that seek to prevent extremist influence from spreading, and which are opposed to efforts at making large chunks of the territory of other countries or which form part of the global commons into the exclusive zone of primacy-seeking powers. The time for speaking out may not yet have arrived, but a “Wait and Watch” approach on the part of India has passed its expiry date. Intensive efforts are needed to prevent the waves of extremism linked to attempts at primacy from developing into a tsunami that can endanger the future of populations across continents, and as a consequence of the apparent abdication of responsible leadership by President Biden, the need is for Prime Minister Modi to pick up the baton. Silently but firmly.

9/11 began as just another day in NY Although 9/11 occurred on the watch of President George W. Bush, its seeds were laid during the administration of Bill Clinton. (The Daily Guardian)

 When terrorists converted passenger aircraft into missiles and flew three of them into the Pentagon and the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center (WTC) on 11 September 2001, Lakshmi and the present writer were a short distance away. As usual during visits to New York (NY), our place of stay was the Lexington Hotel, which at the time was owned by the Taj group. Headquarters had sent one of their finest to NY, Sam Bhadha, who was genial while being a very efficient manager of the cavernous hotel he had been put in charge of. The previous evening, Lakshmi had told a friend of ours, Professor Deborah Cordonniere, that she was going to have breakfast the following morning at the View of the World, a restaurant located inside the twin towers. We had spent nearly two hours after dinner searching for Debbie’s car, for she had forgotten where it had been parked. Street after nearby street was combed without any sign of her car. Finally, we made our way to a nearby police station and asked for help, being met with a smile and a shrug. Judging from the reaction, it was apparent that Debbie was not the only New Yorker who had forgotten where her car had been parked towards nightfall, nor was tramping the streets to locate it a priority for the New York Police Department (NYPD). Finally, the car was located, in a street that had been searched and missed by us an hour and a few minutes before, and a relieved Debbie went off to her home some miles away in the city. As mentioned, Lakshmi had told her of her intention to have breakfast at the WTC during the course of the evening. Next morning, a frantic Debbie called our room and asked where Lakshmi was. In our hotel room, obviously. “Not at the World Trade Center?”, was the immediate reply. While Lakshmi had been keen the previous evening to go to a restaurant that was more well known outside NY than in the city, she changed her mind after my suggestion that we instead go to the breakfast buffet at the Lexington itself. When Debbie called, it was barely a few minutes since we had gotten up, and she was inexplicably happy that Lakshmi had not gone to View of the World that morning. When Debbie realised that neither of us had any idea why she had been in turn frantic, she asked us to put on the television set in the room, which we did at the precise moment that the second aircraft slammed into the other WTC tower. In minutes, we raced down to the lobby and out of the hotel onto the street. In the distance, brown smog was rising, and almost in slow motion, could be seen specks that were people there. New Yorkers are similar to Mumbaikars, in that they have a brisk pace while walking on pavements, unlike the more laidback denizens of the Bangalore of those days, who ambled along and refused to believe that speed was as essential a part of walking as was the case with Hew Yorkers or Mumbaikars. We were to fly out the next day, but all flights were cancelled, and the ever-helpful Sam Bhadha agreed to allow us to stay an extra four days at a reduced cost in order to catch the next available flight back to India. That evening, we joined the throng of people who silently moved along the streets, many with lit candles in their hands. There has been much talk of nativist tendencies within the US population, such that many of European ancestry are supposed to look with hate on those who have a deep tan and who sport a beard, such as the present writer. Let it be said that beard and tan notwithstanding, the behaviour of every individual we encountered on the streets around our hotel that night of 9/11 was warm and welcoming of our presence. There was a fellowship of everyday human beings with other everyday human beings, as distinct from those who sought to cause terror and death. We were even given a candle each by a Good Samaritan who had several in her hand, and we were glad to join those who sought through that flickering, that comforting, light to lessen the darkness of what Osama Bin Laden and his backers and followers had done, which was to change the way the world looked at itself, and at the way many looked at each other. What the NYPD or the NY Fire Department or so many First Responders among New Yorkers did that day is testament to the fact that New York can rise to a challenge exactly in the manner Mumbai did during and after the 2008 attack.

Although 9/11 occurred on the watch of President George W. Bush, its seeds were laid during the administration of Bill Clinton. Among his favourites was Robin Raphel, who had an exceptional degree of affinity towards the terror machine that is the Pakistan military. Her tutor is widely rumoured to be Shafqat Kakakhel, a suave diplomat who was as committed to harming India as he was to the good life he led wherever he went. Clinton made her Assistant Secretary of State, and she made it her mission to somehow force India to surrender at least the Kashmir Valley to Pakistan. The other desire of President Clinton was to arm-twist Prime Minister Narasimha Rao into following the path subsequently trodden by Colonel Gaddafi in Libya, of destroying all domestic nuclear and missile capability. Rao weaved through such pressures, stabilising the situation in both the ISI-infested zones, those in Punjab and Kashmir. He was repaid for this by Sonia Gandhi setting up a Congress Tiwari under N.D. Tiwari (whose predilection for certain forms of aerobic exercise subsequently became known across the country). The Congress (T), which also housed Sheila Dikshit and Arjun Singh, could sway enough votes in 1996 to ensure that the BJP secured a much larger number of Lok Sabha seats than expected. To the end of his days, Atal Bihari Vajpayee was grateful to Sonia Gandhi for facilitating his party’s climb to the top of Indian politics, with himself occupying the same office that Sonia’s mother-in-law and husband had been the occupants of. In case President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney had an ounce of knowledge of the situation in South Asia, they would not have brushed aside Vajpayee’s offer to assist in the battle against the terror machine that had taken root in Afghanistan. Instead, Bush and Cheney retreated to the past and as in the 1980s, chose Pakistan as the partner in the War on Terror, something as strange as placing a compulsive arsonist in charge of the fire brigade. Small wonder that the Taliban revived, and the terror machine continued in its deadly fashion, ending in the retaking of Afghanistan by the Taliban and its Sino-Pakistan patrons on 15 August 2021. While India celebrated its independence from colonial oppression that day, the people of Afghanistan were thrown into slavery as a consequence of Biden early into his term repeating what Clinton had done in 1996. Putting the Taliban in control of Afghanistan. President Biden apparently does not see the irony in his going to the locations that had been attacked by terrorists on 9/11 two decades back. Terrorists nurtured and mobilised by the same group of extremists that had been responsible for providing the petri dish in which the 9/11 plot was developed into deadly efficacy. Just as there are biological labs that undertake “Gain of Function” experiments to ensure that viruses become even deadlier than nature has made them, the Taliban is adept at ensuring that an atmosphere get created in the locations they control as would enable terror groups to refine and perfect the instruments and methods by which they go about the task of mass murder of innocents. This is the group that President Biden and several other world leaders have given not only a free pass to, but also laid out a welcome mat for them. Bill Clinton escaped the blame that was rightfully his for 9/11. Will President Joseph Robinette Biden be as lucky when the next mass terror attack carried out by the new Afghan regime takes place, as it inevitably will? That is unless Biden reverses course, serving as a force-multiplier not to bigots and extremists but to the majority of Afghans who seek to prevent their country from once again be used as a dumping ground for international ­terrorists. Unless Biden does so, he will tarnish not only his legacy but the reputation of a country that prides itself as the “shining city on the hill”. 

9/11 began as just another day in NY 

India enters critical stage in the battle against global terror (The Sunday Guardian)

 

Serial betrayals by the Pakistan military (and its PLA boosters) on the battlefields of Asia do not seem to have shaken President Biden’s conviction that the Pakistan military is an essential component in the battle against global terror.

 

Bengaluru: The terrorist knife attack in an Auckland NZ mall was sparked by the increase in confidence of elements of the “Global Terror Archipelago” (GTA), the complex of terror groups and modules intent on acts of mass terror in order to derail the orderly functioning of society, especially within giant democracies such as the United States and India. Across the world, the manner of US President Joe Biden’s bizarre withdrawal of all—repeat, all—US capabilities within Afghanistan has energised the GTA (terror archipelago) such that several elements within this toxic complex have begun planning fresh mass terror attacks, with a concentration of attention on countries across both shores of the Atlantic. Given the successes of the Indian military and police in counter-terror operations since the intensification of such attacks, this country will need to play a keystone role in damping down planning and foiling the implementation of mass terror attacks by the various elements that together comprise the GTA. Just as no country is safe from SARS2 until all countries are secure, no country is safe from a mass terror attack until the entire world has been rescued from such depredations.

Given the lack of effective will and leadership of President Biden that has been shown up clearly to the world in his copying of the disastrous example of President Donald J. Trump in getting signed an instrument of surrender to the benefit of the Taliban at Doha last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will need to intensify moves designed to protect not just India but the world from an intensification of terrorist activities following the Biden kowtow to the Taliban and the kick administered by the 46th US President to the lawful government of Afghanistan and its armed forces. While the PRC and Pakistan have a strategic interest in the strengthening of the GTA (except where it moves against their own narrow interests), the US, India, the EU as well as regional powers such as Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Iran and the moderate majority in Afghanistan and Pakistan need to unite against the challenge to global security and stability caused by Trump-Biden’s effective surrender to the Global Terror Alliance in Afghanistan. While Russia cannot look upon the evolving situation with the glee shown in Beijing and Rawalpindi (the actual capital of Pakistan), errors in diplomacy and strategy by NATO member-states have left no option for President Vladimir Putin but to ally himself with General Secretary Xi Jinping of the PRC, and this needs to be accepted as a fait accompli rather than be papered over in the manner that some policymakers in India are attempting.

Despite thousands of US lives having been lost in the Middle East and South Asia as a consequence of the activities of the Haqqani network, the Taliban and other elements of the Global Terror Archipelago, President Biden remains tethered to his long-time belief that the Pakistan military is an essential part of the solution to eradicating global terror. In reality, GHQ Rawalpindi and its force-multiplier, the Central Military Commission under CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping, are the main drivers of the GTA. In the case of the Auckland attack, the terrorist directly involved had extensive links with the GHQ-linked Wahhabi ecosystem in Sri Lanka, a spillover of the spreading influence of the PRC (and therefore its all-weather partner, Pakistan). The Wahhabi network has struck deep roots in New Zealand, given the permissive approach of the Jacinda Ardern government to elements close to the Wahhabi Brotherhood, a propensity towards appeasement of extremism by another name that is shared by significant elements in the Biden administration. It is understood that such elements were behind the otherwise inexplicable series of disastrous decisions taken by Commander-in-Chief Biden in the matter of Afghanistan, as they have burrowed their way into several key institutions, including the Department of Defense, where the GHQ Rawalpindi lobby has always had considerable influence.

Amazingly, serial betrayals by the Pakistan military (and its PLA boosters) on the battlefields of Asia do not seem to have shaken President Biden’s conviction (shared by George W. Bush during his own presidency) that the Pakistan military is an essential component in the battle against global terror. There are fewer than 40 key individuals serving and retired within the Pakistan and Chinese militaries that are playing essential roles in acting as force-multipliers in the GTA, and were they to be subject to global sanctions, the impact on global terror operations would be immediate. Why Washington, London, Paris. Berlin and indeed New Delhi are hesitating in imposing sanctions, in making a move that several in their own establishments regard as essential, is incomprehensible to those outside the cool shade of the mechanism of government. Although China (especially the Central Military Commission) will oppose any move within the UNSC to brand its collaborator GHQ Rawalpindi as what it is, the endemic focus of global terror, the effort has to be made by those countries with leadership structures that are not in thrall to the Sino-Wahhabi alliance. Before its term ends in 2022, India needs to present before the UNSC comprehensible and credible evidence linking GHQ Rawalpindi and its global force-multipliers to the Global Terror Archipelago. Keeping silent or escaping behind the curtain of perpetual dilly-dallying is not expected from the Government of India, a country whose voters in 2014 and in 2019 gave a comfortable mandate to the BJP in the expectation that national interests would be secured in a manner that was absent in the past.

In the US, whatever the PR exertions of the captive media of the White House, citizens are increasingly understanding the extent to which Biden has let them down by cravenly adopting the same policies towards Afghanistan in 2021 as his predecessor agreed to at Doha. Hopefully, those not serving the interests (wittingly or otherwise) of the Sino-Wahhabi alliance will rouse President Biden from his sleepwalking into disaster not just for his party but for the country. India needs to play not a passive but an active role in moving away from the generalities of officialese and enunciating in clear terms the danger posed by the Global Terror Archipelago that has the support of the Sino-Wahhabi alliance as a consequence of the decisions made by CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping since mid-2013.

President Biden will not be able to succeed in his declared mission of taking on and besting the China challenge by ignoring the fault lines created by the Sino-Wahhabi alliance. Should he shift gears and enter on a constructive rather than the present disastrous course, India will be an essential partner. Appeasement in the Europe of the 1930s led to the catastrophe of genocide and conflict witnessed during 1939-45. Facing up to the challenge posed by the GTA and its backers is called for to ensure that the societal and economic disaster planned for the major democracies by the Sino-Wahhabi alliance is to be averted. The dilution of leadership shown in Washington will hopefully be temporary, but into the vacuum drained of common sense created by Joe Biden, there is need for India to step forward and assist in creating both a global awareness as well as a global coalition to battle efforts by the Sino-Wahhabi alliance to use the terror machine as a means of weakening geopolitical rivals such as India and the US, not to mention Japan, Australia and other countries committed to a free and open Indo-Pacific.

India enters critical stage in the battle against global terror

PRIME MINISTER MODI OUTLINES THE MARITIME FREEDOM CHARTER (The Daily Guardian)

Chairing a meeting of the UN Security Council, Prime Minister Narendra Modi says that maritime disputes should be settled peacefully and on the basis of international law.

The UN Security Council is the most consequential international body in the world, which is why it is a surprise why earlier Prime Ministers of India did not chair any of its meetings, leaving that honour to Prime Minister Modi. On August 9, 2020, Prime Minister Modi became the first Head of Government in India to chair a meeting of the UN Security Council. This was a welcome step, as it indicates that India still has faith in the UN system, despite its being overlooked not just in the matter of the composition of the Permanent Members of the UNSC but subsequently as well has failed to be included. In the UNSC, among the P-5, only China opposes India’s candidacy as a Permanent Member. The other P-5 members support the admission of the world’s most populous democracy to their ranks. Given this attitude of the PRC, as well as then British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s refusal during the discussions on the composition of the UNSC to include India, it was perhaps no surprise that the British and Chinese Heads of Government were conspicuous by their absence from the UNSC discussion on maritime security that was chaired by Prime Minister Modi. While President Putin of the Russian Federation, President Kenyatta of Kenya, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Foreign Minister Le Drian of France attended, not even the Foreign Ministers of the PRC or the UK attended the first meeting chaired by the Prime Minister of the country that has a sixth of the population of the world, and which in purchasing power parity terms has become the third largest economy on the globe. This when it was clear that a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Modi would have at the least hugely consequential discussions, and very possibly, important outcomes.

What was enunciated in the brief but pointed introductory address of the Session Chairperson, Prime Minister Modi, was nothing less than a Maritime Freedom Charter that every country in the world who values peace and prosperity ought to support. This is an era when a certain country that has inter alia laid claim almost to the entirety of the South China Sea solely on the basis of its nomenclature (if we are to set aside the imaginary dashes and maps that have been produced in support of a claim of ownership on what are clearly part of the global commons). While certain countries that are working to impose through threats and bluster Zero Sum solutions to several issues that have already been settled in international law, such as land and sea boundaries, the PM spoke about the need to ensure a Win-Win outcome, rather than the colonial era approach of a single country gaining all the benefits at the expense of the rest. He spoke about how the ancients were wise enough to ensure freedom of navigation (and indeed, an absence of visas for travel), and called for the removal of barriers to maritime trade and traffic. The need to respect the rights of sailors was emphasised, India contributing over 10% of the sailors on the high seas at any particular time, who have been facing problems that have their origins in a contempt for international law by a particular country that became the world’s second largest economy precisely because of the freedoms that it is now seeking to trample upon. Inclusivity was the watchword and the outcome sought, never exclusion (such as that practiced in the UNSC by a country that has long been opposed to the inclusion of India as a Permanent Member). If there is to be tranquillity and prosperity, there must be growth and security for all, said the Prime Minister. The entire global community rather than any cabal of states needed to design and implement a framework for a maritime environment that is sustainable, stable and secure.

It was important, Prime Minister Modi pointed out, that the resources devoted to individual projects should not be such as to result in financial disaster for a country. Or, in other words, become a debt trap, in the manner that several schemes that have been implemented under the supervision of a member of the P-5 have become. The need to respect the rights of all, and to always ensure that disputes were settled peacefully, were reiterated. Some of the suggestions made by the PM in his Maritime Freedom Charter could also be incorporated in an Indo-Pacific Charter that could be signed between the four members of the Quadrilateral Alliance. Just as the Atlantic Charter heralded the flowering of the Atlanticist era, the Indo-Pacific Charter would set the parameters for the Indo-Pacific era. In the meantime, Prime Minister Modi, joined by External Affairs Minister Jaishankar, needs to work on securing the broadest possible Coalition of the Willing on the Maritime Freedom Charter that in outline has been presented by Prime Minister Modi in his address to the UNSC. When some powers act in an irresponsible manner, it is important for those having a sense of commitment and responsibility towards ensuring a secure and prosperous maritime come together to build a permanent framework for the vision presented by the Prime Minister and by the other Heads of State and Government as well as Cabinet members of a diverse array of countries who spoke at the UNSC meeting chaired by PM Modi. The direction has been set, but the work only begins now.

PRIME MINISTER MODI OUTLINES THE MARITIME FREEDOM CHARTER

Atlantic democracies adopt the Chinese Communist path (The Sunday Guardian)

 

The latest Moral Science teacher was Antony Blinken, who met ‘civil society’ in a country of 1.4 billion people that he paid a fleeting visit to, and quoted from the scripture of democracy and freedom.

Abuse of a politician, in the absence of credible evidence linking him to any wrongdoing, usually has the effect of increasing the sympathy factor that forms a latent part of the psyche of voters. Chief Minister Modi and since 2014 Prime Minister Modi has been called by so many unflattering names that count has long been lost of the number. During the run-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the heir apparent to the Congress Party, Rahul Gandhi, converted the repetition of less than complimentary epithets about Narendra Damodardas Modi into an art form. Each such outpouring was accompanied by a satisfied look by him at the retinue that accompanies him everywhere. Without exception, they responded with admiring expressions and smiles of satisfaction at the manner in which the leader from birth of the Congress Party has (in his and in their view) eviscerated the image amongst voters of the Prime Minister. A conclusion that the Lok Sabha polls showed was less than accurate. Self-goals such as denying that the Balakot strike into Pakistan actually happened, or that it was Rahul who was projected by his party (to silence and therefore assumed consent from the rest of the anti-BJP political spectrum) as the opposition alternative to Modi as Prime Minister of India, thereby (once this was achieved) making him become the fourth member of the Nehru family to occupy the South Block chambers of the individual holding the nation’s most consequential post. As had been pointed out by this columnist in 2018 itself, the biggest favour that Rahul Gandhi could have done for the opposition would have been to declare that he was not in the running for the job of PM in 2019 instead of listening to the echo chamber surrounding him and doing the opposite. AICC president Sonia Gandhi (who appears to have an unshakeable faith in Rahul’s ability) may not agree, but even within his echo chamber, the individuals believing that their hero is Prime Ministerial material are either zero or close to that number. Certainly, other important contenders, such as the feisty Mamata Banerjee, the charismatic Akhilesh Yadav or the long-distance runner Arvind Kejriwal, do not believe that the error made in 2019, of projecting Rahul Gandhi as the perceived opposition candidate for the Prime Ministership, should be repeated. They each have a better candidate for that role, although keeping that choice secret for the time being
Countries that bound the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, now the second-most important geopolitical pivot after the Indo-Pacific, delight in giving Moral Science lectures to poorer countries. The latest Moral Science visiting lecturer was US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who met seven members representing “civil society” in a country of 1.4 billion people, a substantial sample, it would appear. The moral science teacher quoted (as expected) from the scripture of “democracy” and “freedom”. At the same time, many in the US seem adamantly opposed to giving a fair chance to the over hundred million underprivileged citizens of the US, so that they may fairly compete with those better off. African-Americans and Latinos have long suffered discrimination, and as a consequence have lagged behind groups such as Indian Americans and Jewish Americans in per capita income and in career success. President Biden and Vice-President Harris have done great service to their country by seeking to rectify this to a considerable extent. The last time this was attempted (to partial success) was during the truncated term of President Lyndon Baines Johnson in the 1960s. The problem facing Biden and Harris is that a majority of legislators in the US Congress may still not be in favour of their ambitious but necessary reform package. Rather than try and assist his boss in convincing legislators in the US Congress not to assist through blind opposition to Biden the Sino-Russian alliance effort societally weaken the US, Secretary Blinken seems to have decided to concentrate on giving lectures to India, a country that from the start ensured universal suffrage and affirmative action, unlike his own. Moscow and Beijing must be delighted at the clumsiness shown by Blinken in some of his public interactions in Delhi. As for House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, she apparently believes that she alone has the right to choose even the Republican members of a committee that has been set up by her to investigate the murderous 6 January riot at the US Capitol. Had Pelosi accepted the Republican choices offered to her, they would have gone on to make fools of themselves by denying the obvious in hearings, and by seeking to discredit the courageous police personnel who saved the lives of legislators at the expense of their own. Instead, Speaker Pelosi has made the Party of Trump appear as victims and her own as dictatorial. Just as President Macron has in Paris, by seeking to prosecute a cartoonist for somewhat tastelessly caricaturing the French head of state as Adolf Hitler reborn. A smile rather than petty and petulant rage would have assisted Macron to win a second term, but such democratic instincts seem to be eluding the present occupant of the Elysee Palace. As for the UK, in common with many other democracies, the SARS2 outbreak has provided a convenient excuse for Boris Johnson to micro-manage the lives of citizens in a manner unprecedented in Britain since the 1939-45 war.
Looking at the way in which democracy is being practised only in words and often not in practice even in long-established Atlantic alliance democracies, the Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party must be delighted at the manner in which the practices they have institutionalised in the PRC since 1949 appear to be catching on across both sides of the Atlantic.

Atlantic democracies adopt the Chinese Communist path

Xi Jinping’s Af-Pak predicament deepens (The Sunday Guardian)

 

The PLA will increasingly have to bear the burden of ensuring the survival of the Durand Line, and of assisting the military in Pakistan and the Taliban in Afghanistan to maintain control and in the latter case, be assisted in controlling the entire country.

Consequences that are unexpected are not rare in situations where decisive action is taken by a state to enforce its own view of interests on others who may be unwilling to go along with such an exclusivist and usually expansionist view. In 1979, the United States under President Carter began the (eventually successful) process of turning its occupation of Afghanistan into quicksand for the Soviet Union. The 39th President of the United States chose a brilliant strategic mind rather than a denizen of the Washington establishment as his National Security Advisor. The NSA, Zbigniew Brzezinski, was focused on weakening the Soviet Union, and in such a task, had the backing of his boss. The only problem was that in his hurry to secure quick results, rather than launch the process using the “frog in hot water” method, whereby the target takes time to understand the deadly impact of the change in circumstances deliberately (if covertly) created by the rival power, the NSA went in for what he believed (together with the Pentagon and the CIA) would be a quick fix. This was to outsource the operational aspects of the process to the Pakistan military, which was in the process of being converted into a Wahhabi force by Chief Martial Law Administrator of Pakistan, Zia-ul-Haq. The army thereafter empowered not the overwhelming majority of Pashtuns, who were fiercely nationalist, but the extremist fringe, which placed the dissemination and practice of the Wahhabi variant of an overall moderate and modernising faith as a higher priority than nationalism per se. This was to the liking of Army Headquarters at Rawalpindi, as there was a constant apprehension in them that any boost to Pashtun nationalism may result in the Pashtuns within Pakistan seeking to unify with their kin across the border to create a separate and independent Pashtunistan. This had been the dream of several Pashtun leaders in the past, including Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, who during much of his long life (1890-1988) was known as the Frontier Gandhi for his long association with Mahatma Gandhi. Perhaps as a panic reaction to the seizure of power by Imam Khomeini in Iran and the storming of the Mecca mosque by radicals in 1979, the Wahhabi variant everywhere was put on steroids by the backing of the US and its European allies. What needed. to be done was to double down on strengthening the mosern and moderate strain that is at the heart of Islam, rather than the reverse. This “historical blunder” has had severe global consequences. Across the Middle East and elsewhere, including in the Indian subcontinent, the Wahabi variant was generously funded and supported, resulting in the aborting of efforts at ensuring that the Muslim Ummah (or global community) be encouraged to evolve in a modern and moderate manner rather than be sought to get plunged into exclusivism and religious intolerance, neither of which was ever part of the message of the Quran. These teachins were ignored, and new and misleading Wahabi-Khomeinist interpretations were popularised, with effects far beyond Afghanistan. In Pakistan, the Wahabi variant found its champion in Zia-ul-Haq, who as a consequence of his intervention in Afghanistan was forgiven for deposing in 1977. Zia subsequently hanged the elected Prime Minister of Pakistan, Z.A. Bhutto, in 1979. to silence from West Europe and North America, the presumed bastions of human freedoms.

BIDEN PIVOTS BACK TO EUROPE
Not that the fast-tracking of the Wahhabi variant was the only policy followed by the US that subsequently proved unwise. The US had (especially since the Atlantic Charter was signed by President Roosevelt and a less enthusiastic Prime Minister Churchill in 1941) been welcomed by freedom fighters in Asia as being different from those countries in Europe that had for centuries oppressed countries across the world to enrich themselves. Roosevelt believed in this process, and saw the Charter as a beacon of freedom across the world, while Churchill (determined to hold onto the British Empire after the war with Germany and Japan) regarded the freedoms listed in the document as being valid only for those of European extraction. On the death of Roosevelt in 1945, his successor Harry S. Truman reverted to the policy of standing by the European colonial powers rather than with those fighting for freedom from their colonial oppressors, who had held on to most of their colonies even after the war had ended in victory for the Allies. The impact of this on US goodwill in the colonised countries was immense, and gave an advantage to the Soviet Union (with its ironical championing of the very freedoms that were being denied to Soviet satellites in East Europe) across Asia, Africa and South America. Among the disasters that ensued from backing a colonial power (in this case, France) against a liberation movement in Vietnam, the US entered the Vietnam war on the wrong side, immeasurably strengthening the communist rather than the ideology of democracy within the Vietnamese people, who saw the US as stepping into the shoes of the French in 1955 and therefore needing to be defeated. This finally happened in 1975 at immense human cost. Old habits die hard, and when US President George H.W. Bush invaded Iraq in 1990 and his son followed suit in 2003, both made sure to ensure that Britain was prominent in the allied coalition. The incongruity of claiming to fight for freedom for the Iraqis while having the armed forces of the former colonial power as the primary partner did not strike either father or son, so deeply was the Atlanticist logic of the primacy of European interests over other comers embedded in the strategic culture of the US, something which began to substantively change only during the “pivot to Asia” from Europe of President Barack Obama, especially during his second term. The Europeanist line is witnessing a revival under President Joe Biden, who seems to have forgotten several of the lessons he ought to have picked up during the latter period of the Obama presidency, including on Cuba and Iran.

XI’S GRANDIOSE AMBITION
Unlike Biden, who remains fixated on Europe (excluding the Russian part) rather than on the entirety of the Eurasian landmass, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping is aware that it is the Indo-Pacific and the corresponding Eurasian landmass that will be crucial in determining the outcome of the battle of systems between the US and the PRC. Following in the path of Mao, who saw the PLA as by far the most important instrument of control by the CCP on China, Xi has placed the military at the heart of his drive to achieve pre-eminence within the Indo-Pacific, and the corollary (together with Putin) of achieving the same result within the entire Eurasian landmass. The hostility of the UK, France and Germany in particular to integrating the Russian Federation into the comity of US allies (because of the severe dilution of their primacy that this would result in) has ensured that repeated efforts, first by Gorbachev and later Yeltsin, for Russia to break into the US-led alliance alongside Europe have failed. After having witnessed the sitting President of the US call him a killer in public, it should come as no surprise that the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir V. Putin, has seen no option other than to accept the status of the junior partner in the Sino-Russian alliance that he has fashioned together with Xi Jinping. The consequences of such a close pairing (including, and especially within) the military and security establishment of both countries on the balance of power in Eurasia seem not have been factored in by Biden, Merkel, Macron and Johnson in their geopolitical strategies to the comprehensive extent that they have been taken into account by the CCP General Secretary. Unlike his three immediate predecessors, who kept from openly displaying their Mao-inspired vision of the PRC as the primary geopolitical force in the world , CCP General Secretary Xi has made no secret of this ambition. It has been out in the open since 2013, with those who deny the reality finding fewer and fewer places to hide.

XI’S OVERREACH
Xi has certainly great confidence in his capability of effecting such a tectonic shift in global geopolitics, although not yet sure of exactly how long this will take. This is a switch that he seeks to incorporate into his legacy, which is among the reasons why he has ensured that the two-term limit followed since Jiang Zemin has been discarded. Another is the belief that the CCP contains within its 93 million members none other than himself with the capability of ensuring that Beijing replace Washington as the centrepoint of global influence and authority. Such a belief may be leading the present CCP General Secretary into actions that may have the same consequences for him as a similar overreach accompanied by imperfect tactics led in many instances for the US and some of its allies. The “Arab Spring” of 2011 led to a Wahhabi Winter within the next few years for several of the countries affected by the popular discontent against oppressive regimes and deteriorating economic circumstances, thanks to the way in which a much smaller but better organised force is often able to take control of a popular movement. This was, for example, the case of the Khomeinist takeover of the discontent in Iran against the excesses of the Pahlavis during 1975 to the toppling of the dynasty in 1979, or to the Bolshevik seizure of power in post-Tsarist Russia in 1917. In the linked destinies of Afghanistan and Pakistan in particular, the confidence in his infallibility and in the power of the PRC to ensure that its targets be quickly neutralised, may have created for Xi the same quagmire that Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) General Secretary Leonid I. Brezhnev entered into when he ordered Soviet forces to occupy Afghanistan in 1979, finally leading to their withdrawal in defeat in 1989. Xi has taken forward in an unprecedented boosting of (a) the CCP’s reliance on not the people or elected government in Pakistan but the Pakistan military to carry out Beijing’s wishes and (b) following that logic by in effect backing the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban. During its own Afghan war, the US outsourced much of it to GHQ Rawalpindi, the headquarters of the Pakistan army, and to its proxies. Xi is doing the same now, the difference being that the people of Afghanistan know from 1996 to 2001 what rule by the Taliban means. Whatever the infirmities of the Ashraf Ghani government in Kabul (and these are more than a few), the people of Afghanistan, especially women and youth, know that it is preferable to rule by the Taliban. Several of the Afghan army commanders chosen by the US (acting on the recommendation of the Pakistan military) to embed within the Afghan National Army (ANA) gave up without a fight, aware that they (as distinct from most of the men under their command) faced no threat from the takeover of control by the Taliban. This was similar to what took place in Iraq during the period 2013-15, when Iraqi commanders inserted into the armed forces of the government in Baghdad (substantially on the advice of nearby powers who wished at the time to see the fall of the Baghdad government by all available means) by NATO deserted without a fight to ISIS, giving that terrorist entity control of large swathes of Iraq. By 2014, the consequences of some of its personnel choices began to get clearer to the Pentagon, and subsequently, a US bombing campaign ensured that ISIS was reduced in size, finally to insignificance at least in terms of territory. Given the far better appreciation of ground reality within the US military and security establishment than was the case in the past, it seems only a matter of time before President Biden will understand the risks to US security involved in removing not just ground troops (which is a necessary decision) but close air support as well in Afghanistan, which would be a disaster. US air support to an Afghan National Army with its weapons stockpile replenished by the US and also countries that have a significant interest in keeping Afghanistan away from extremist control such as India, would ensure the rollback of the Taliban.

CHINA GAMBLES ITS FUTURE
This would be counter to the calculations of General Secretary Xi, who has placed his entire wager on the takeover of Afghanistan to the Taliban so as to further what he regards as the PRC interest there. It would also run counter to the immense majority of the Afghan population, who loathe a return to Taliban rule. Across those parts of Afghanistan where quislings within the Afghan military surrendered to the Taliban, much of the men under their command have begun using their guns together with the local people in order to resist the Taliban. The 3-month ceasefire so generously offered by the Taliban to the Afghan military is for that exclusivist force to be enabled to devote its full attention towards quelling these local rebellions against the proxies and allies of the Peoples Republic of China and its “all-weather” ally, the Pakistan military (as distinct from the country or its people). Should this offer of a temporary ceasefire be accepted by the Ghani government, it would have the same disastrous consequences as the (Trump-ordered) release by President Ghani of 5,000 Taliban fighters from Afghan prisons has had for security in Afghanistan. The 2020 agreement entered into by the Trump administration at Doha was a disaster for not simply Kabul but Washington as well, and it is a matter of speculation as to why Trump’s Afghan policy has been so completely adopted by President Biden. Across not just the military and the security establishment, awareness is increasing that the Trump-era policy of appeasement of the Taliban was an error of substantial magnitude, and which could lead in brief years to another 9/11 type of attack on the US homeland. Xi has dug himself in too deeply to retreat from the strategy favoured by the Pakistan military, for him to move out from the deepening predicament that this policy is causing for the PRC. Unlike President Biden, who while being obsessed with the 2022 midterms and the 2024 presidential elections, nevertheless still has the possibility of walking away from further errors, not by bringing in more US forces but by providing close air support, logistics and intelligence to the Afghan National Army. This could be done through Central Asia and possibly through the road and rail link being developed in Chabahar port by the Iran and India. Unlike Trump, who was stubborn in clinging on to even obvious mistakes, Biden has shown a capacity to look at alternative views and to reconsider policy. Such flexibility is in line with the best practices of a genuine democracy, which the US is and looks set to remain. Given such a policy reset, Xi may find that his gamble on relying on the Taliban and its Pakistan army facilitators for carrying forward the PRC agenda of tapping into the natural resources of Afghanistan is likely to fail. While the Ghani government may be outwardly respectful to Xi, its own intelligence service is documenting the manner in which the Pakistan military (with assistance from the PLA) is boosting the capacities of the Taliban against the government in Kabul. Unlike some “experts” including in India and the US, Ghani will be fully aware that the Taliban entering his government in Kabul will be akin to the National Socialists under Hitler entering a “coalition” government in Berlin in 1933. That very soon went the Nazi way, and to the liquidation of alternative political and other forces, and similar will be the fate of groups not part of the Taliban network, were that entity to ever enter the national government in Kabul.

CIVIL WAR IS A REALITY
Even more worrisome for PRC interests will be the fate of a civil war in Afghanistan, a process that is already ongoing, on the domestic situation in Pakistan. The majority of Pashtuns in Pakistan, especially youth and women, are opposed to the outsize influence of extremist clerics under the umbrella of the Pakistan army. A similar situation prevails in those parts of Afghanistan that are presently under the occupation of the Taliban and the Pakistan and other auxiliaries who support them. The majority of Pashtuns wish to be free of the Taliban and the clerics favoured by them, and weapons are already flowing from the country’s porous borders to ensure that they do not get overpowered by a militia backed by Pakistan and China, and which seems to be continuing to get appeased by the Biden administration, at least for now. Both in Pakistan against the control of the Punjabi-dominated and controlled Pakistan military and in Afghanistan against the Taliban and its Sino-Pakistan friends and auxiliaries, unrest is brewing and increasingly breaking out into violent opposition to the Taliban and its favourite clerics. As with the developing revolt againat rule by the ethno-centric generals in Pakistan. The CCP General Secretary already deep into his commitment to the Pakistan military and its Taliban ally in the Af-Pak region. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor is meeting with rising resistance along the way from the border of Xinjiang to the Indian Ocean through Pakistan, and this will increase. Neither India nor any other country can control the desire for freedom of the Pashtun people, who for too long have been under the thumb of an ethno-centric military and its superpower ally across both sides of the Durand Line, which Pashtuns point out lapsed in 1992. The PLA will increasingly have to bear the burden of ensuring the survival of the Durand Line, and of assisting the military in Pakistan and the Taliban in Afghanistan to maintain control and in the latter case, be assisted in controlling the entire country. Leonid Brezhnev lasted long enough to understand the folly of his occupation of Afghanistan, and Xi Jinping is slowly having to come to terms with the inevitable consequences of militarily and otherwise taking the side of extremists and exclusivists against the majority of the people in both Afghanistan as well as Pakistan. The bog filled with quicksand has been entered still more deeply by China, and increasingly, there seems no way out to leave the quagmire without a severe loss of face that is politically impossible for General Secretary Xi to countenance. Especially given the trajectory of the manner in which he has consolidated internal power in China and sought to expand PRC control over more land, sea, mindspace and space.

Xi Jinping’s Af-Pak predicament deepens

Roberts Supreme Court wrecking US future (The Sunday Guardian)

 

Unwilling to begin the process of expanding the strength of the Supreme Court from nine to fifteen, Biden is increasingly losing control of the narrative.

Under the US Constitution, the three branches of the state (executive, legislature and judiciary) are to be independent of each other. Under Chief Justice John Roberts and five of the eight others, the US Supreme Court is certainly independent of the executive (led by the President) and also the legislature that has a Democratic Party majority in the House of Representatives and a nominal majority in the Senate, if the vote of the Vice-President is added. Judging by some of its recent judgements, including two that place severe restrictions on the right of every citizen of the US to have an equal opportunity to vote, the US SC is on track towards getting the reputation of being the court for the 1% of US citizens who took away almost six trillion dollars as their windfall from the 2020 Trump stimulus that was added on to by President Biden in 2021. Another $4 trillion was taken away by the next 9%. The share of the other 90% was $700 billion. The lower down the income scale statisticians go, the smaller was the gain in absolute terms from a stimulus bill that was proclaimed as being passed to help precisely the 90% and not almost entirely the 10%. $10 trillion is not a trifling amount of disposable wealth, and it is no surprise that at least billions are being spent to ensure that the three branches of government continue with being “Of the 1%, for the 1%, (of course in effect) by the 10%”. The remaining 90% have no say in practice.
When long years are spent at the vortex of power, and if it is a lifetime appointment, individuals such as Supreme Court justices may be forgiven some disconnect from reality. Check with the illustrious Kim dynasty in North Korea or those heads of state and government who have, or are set to have, stints in excess of 15 years at the very apex of power. Those democracies that have a two-term limit on top jobs may usefully expand that to three, as after all the final choice remains with the electorate, but no more. The problem comes when they interpret the Constitution to mean the rubber-stamping of their own views on how society, the polity and the economy should be ordered, even if these are contrary to the needs and preferences of the overwhelming majority of people. The US Supreme Court has not only affirmed the right of states to change voting regulations so as to make it difficult for certain groups and classes to be eligible to vote, but has thrown the cloak of its authority over the amounts of money spent in influencing policymakers and on those making such payments. Together, these two innovations of the John Roberts court make it resemble that presided over by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney during 1836 to 1864. That court affirmed a judgement that those of African descent, even if they have resided in the US for generations, cannot by virtue of skin colour be entitled to citizenship. Some of the judgements of the Roberts Court, especially those relating to transparency in the funding of politicians and special interests, as well as obstacles in the voting process, are approaching the standard set by Taney and his court. Something that John Roberts and the justices who go along with his judicial philosophy, do not appear to have noticed, although history books will. Rather than create a wall protecting the top 1% of US citizens from public scrutiny, had the Roberts court focused on protecting the rights of every citizen (no matter how lacking in income or what her or his skin colour was), it would have protected the future of the US as a democracy rather than weakening that trajectory.
President Biden, Speaker Pelosi and Senate majority leader Schumer should place before the US Congress the fiscal and other reform bills that are needed to ensure that those working for a meltdown of the US system of governance and its replacement with chaos and violence. Should the DINOs (Democrats in Name Only) defeat such measures, the 2022 midterm polls are not far away, and the Democratic Party—after ensuring that DINOs fail to get re-nominated to their seats on the Democratic ticket—can go before voters and explain what they had in mind to help them, and why they failed, and why the Democratic majority in the House and Senate need to be expanded if such policies were to get actualised. This would be a better strategy than the present White House strategy of seeking to dissuade Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema in the US Senate from not voting for measures that are certain to boost the chances of the Democratic Party in 2022. So lacklustre has been the Biden Road Show thus far that several Republican Party lawmakers are claiming credit for the very measures that they unanimously voted against without much efforts by the other side in several constituencies to expose this divergence between talk and action. Given the efforts being made by the Sino-Wahhabi and the Sino-Russian alliance working in tandem to widen already existing faultlines in US society through boosting the fringe (on both sides) and shrinking the space occupied by the moderate middle on both sides. In the Republican Party, as the shabby treatment meted out to Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney indicate, the fringe appears to have taken control of the mainstream. The stalling tactics of Sinema and Manchin and their quixotic search for a consensus with the other side may ensure a similar outcome in the Democratic Party, unless President Biden shrugs off his hesitation in confronting the DINOs rather than pandering to them in the manner that he appears to be doing. Unwilling to begin the process of expanding the strength of the Supreme Court from nine to fifteen, Biden is increasingly losing control of the narrative, and that too so early in his presidential term. Had just being a nice guy won the hearts of voters, Hubert Humphrey and Jerry Ford would have won the US Presidential race. Just being “Not Trump” is no longer enough, now that Biden has been elected to a job that can turn into a nightmare in months if the course of action he seeks to follow fails through the US Congress or the Supreme Court.
The US Supreme Court is not helping but hindering efforts to ensure that the polity and society in the US avoid the meltdown that the Sino-Russian alliance seeks for it. Diluting the right to vote for the underprivileged and giving protection to the numerous billionaires eager to continue spending fortunes so as to make the US government and legislature deliver for them (rather than for the ordinary citizen) is a certain way of making tens of millions of those left out to abandon the ballot box and turn instead to the bullet and to violence in their effort to win for themselves rights that ought to be enforced rather than trifled with. Those who are seeking to avoid a repeat in 2024 of the results of the 2020 Presidential election through changing the electoral system so as to make inclusion difficult for easily identifiable groups of citizens are leading the country and the Republican Party to disaster. Abraham Lincoln would not have been happy at the manner in which his party has developed into the Party of Trump. Chief Justice Earl Warren, who presided over the Supreme Court from 1953 to 1969, would have understood the societal consequences of several of the actions of the John Roberts court in a manner that the present Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court and at least five of his colleagues seem unable to comprehend.

Roberts Supreme Court wrecking US future

Afghanistan Crisis Needs Unified Response from Diverse Powers (Chanakya Forum)

It is a mystery as to why Moscow has so stubbornly remained in the minds of policymakers, as part of any solution to the situation in Afghanistan. From the 1970s in particular, the Kremlin was the most significant factor in the lack of success of Afghan moderates, to fashion a democratic state with perhaps a UK-style monarchy, technically at the apex of an elected government.

Repeated interventions by the USSR resulted in the downfall of the moderates and the temporary takeover of Soviet proxies in Kabul. These quislings soon began to fight each other, and the Soviet army was sent into the country to occupy it. This was a move reminiscent of the Czarist period and was resented and resisted by the Afghan people.

The US saw its chance at damaging the USSR and began under President Carter, a strategy of converting Afghanistan into a quagmire for the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, both the Carter and Reagan administrations handed over the keys of the fire brigade to Chief Martial Law Administrator (CMLA) of Pakistan, General Zia-ul-Haq.

Wary that Pashtun nationalists across both sides of the lapsed Durand Line would seek a unified Pashtun state (thereby fulfilling the wishes of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan), Zia persuaded the US to instead back Pashtun religious zealots. At the same time, both Carter and Reagan saw Wahhabism, as an effective antidote to the Khomeinism that had begun flowering in Iran in 1979, and prodded Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries to empower this variant of a faith, whose fundamental teachings are far removed from fanaticism.

This grievous error by the US followed the playbook of Britain, which had propped up Wahhabism much earlier to create Arab disaffection with the Turkish Caliphate. Rather than curb the impact on the global Shia community of Khomeinist impulses, the sponsored war by Saddam Hussein on Iran made those variant wings, even while the Wahhabi International was empowered by US policy, to become the dominant strand in several locations worldwide.

The roots of 9/11 are in the terms of Carter and Reagan, but the US is not a country that examines its past except through tinted lenses. A substantial section of the polity in the US still believes that slavery was a boon rather than a curse to those enslaved, and blocks teachings that prove the opposite to be true.

Until he abruptly betrayed, first the Kurds to their fate at the hands of neo-Wahhabi Erdogan, and compounded that error by betraying the Afghan people and its government by negotiating a surrender to the Taliban, President Trump had sought to reduce the influence of Wahhabism in the Middle East.

Amazingly, the Biden administration has thus far continued with such disastrous policies, even while it has succumbed to the influence of Wahhabi elements and turned its back on reformist rulers in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere who had shown commitment in the existential battle being waged in that region between the Wahhabis and those fighting to recover the modernity and moderation, that the holy text on which the Muslim faith is based on explicitly states.

From 1979 onwards, efforts were made to re-interpret the holy text in a Wahhabi direction, an effort that for over a century had the backing of first London and subsequently Washington, as has been pointed out by several in the Middle East, including the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia.

As for President Biden, he seems finally to have rid himself of at least some of the influence of the Wahhabi lobby while the conflict between Hamas in Gaza and Israel was ongoing this year, finally bringing himself to call the President of Egypt (who had arranged the cease-fire which ended the conflict, and for which the White House claimed credit). Thus far, he had refused to do so, thanks to the influence of religious supremacists in the US administration, who had looked on Biden as being a gullible tool in their game plan of turning back the counter-Wahhabi tide that is sweeping over so many Muslim-majority countries.

The Wahhabi International holds considerable sway over several leadership elements of both the Republican as well as the Democratic Party, and it is presumably this strand that was responsible for the sell out by President Donald J Trump to first Erdogan and later the Taliban, and the continuation of this disastrous policy by President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.

Unless Biden awakens to the security threat to the US through a takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban, his tacit “Mission Accomplished” claim of 2021, on ensuring that this tortured country will never again be a threat to the US homeland, will be found to be as hollow as the “Mission Accomplished” boast of President George W Bush in 2003, was shown by subsequent events to be.

Unless President Biden resets US policy on Afghanistan and fast, the error he made may come back to bite him even before the 2024 Presidential elections.

Such a reset needs him to work closely not with Pakistan but with India on Afghanistan, and through India with Iran. The Atlantic Alliance has been brilliant, at following the example set by Winston Churchill, after the 1939-45 war with Germany of writing its own history.

An example is Libya. Looking at texts and commentaries in the US or in the UK and France (the three that ensured the destruction of Libya as a functioning state), it would appear that the entire battle was between a tyrant (Muammar Gaddafi) and his people. Even his death, in which the intelligence services of a NATO member state played the keystone role, has been portrayed as entirely driven and guided by popular anger.

Had the US, France and the UK taken the precaution of reading some of the pamphlets written by several of those they backed with weapons, training and cash to finish off the admitted dictator and eccentric Gaddafi, they may have discovered that the reason for their hatred of Gaddafi was that he was not extreme enough for their tastes and that he was a lackey of the very powers that joined hands to finish him off.

That much is correct, as Gaddafi handed over his WMD stockpile to the members of NATO in 2003, just as Saddam Hussein in Iraq had destroyed (or shifted abroad) his own WMD stockpile in 1991, after the disaster in the subsequent war with the US, caused by his reckless and indefensible occupation in 1990 of his principal benefactor, the State of Kuwait.

Bashar Assad was the last individual to begin a process of destroying his WMD stockpile, beginning with chemical weapons, which soon afterwards appeared in several theatres and gave rise to charges that they were his, when in fact they had been handed over thanks to pressure from Moscow. Fortunately for him, unlike in the case of Libya, neither Russia nor Iran allowed the collapse of his regime and the termination of his life. After these examples, if any country (such as North Korea) hands over its WMD stockpile, to the very powers that have shown a propensity to intensify their attacks, on what they believe to be a defenceless entity, it would be because its entire leadership is ignorant of the history of the past three decades.

By its actions, the US, in particular, has brought down to an asymptote of zero, the chances for any country with significant WMD stockpiles, to hand them over to others unless defeated in war.

If the Taliban is securing additional territory in Afghanistan, through engineering the surrender of Afghan National Army troops, in the manner ISIS took over vast swathes of Iraq in 2014, the reason is lack of confidence in ANA elements about the sincerity of President Biden’s commitment to ensure that its 300,000 soldiers are adequately equipped to defeat Taliban forces. Thus far, they have not been given anywhere close to the equipment they need to fight a force that Biden dismissed as hardly a challenge.

Fortunately for the 46th US President, the White House press corps did not ask why if that were the case, 600,000 US troops and $2 trillion of expenditure, could not in 20 years finish them off. The litany of errors is long, and it is unlikely that any replay of what took place in the Pentagon Papers will ever get done, much though such a study is needed.

The US needs India and needs Iran as well, a country that can be left to India to bring on board. Given the animosity of the Wahhabis to the Shia, it is unlikely that the elected government in Tehran will seriously believe in the protestations of the friendship of GHQ Rawalpindi and the Erdogan administration in Ankara. The problem facing them is the Sino-Wahhabi alliance, and the fact that Washington has by its policy of seeking to strangle the Iranian economy, made that country dependent on China.

Unless there is a return to common sense in Washington, and in its European partners who committed to the JCPOA in 2015, such dependence is unlikely to get reduced to a point, where Tehran is free to act in concert with Delhi and through it with Washington, in ensuring that the elected government in Afghanistan is rescued from the Taliban and the territory captured by that entity begins to be rolled back.

Only Afghan troops are needed in Afghanistan, not US or Indian forces. But Washington needs to keep supply lines flowing and India needs to train the ANA. Much of the training is already imparted in India. The combat training given by NATO forces (which have been defeated by the Taliban), is worse than useless, it is counterproductive.

Unless the US and the EU are willing to fund the government in Kabul enough to ensure its salience, many times that amount will need to get spent in the future, once the Taliban take control as they did in 1996 with the backing of the Clinton administration, presumably influenced by Zalmay Khalilzad, who at that time appears to have been a lobbyist for Union Oil Company of California and Unocal Corporation (Unocal).

Securing Afghanistan from the Taliban is key to ensuring that GHQ Rawalpindi ceases to run the government in Pakistan, but comes under civilian control. If this does not take place (and General Secretary Xi is working assiduously to ensure that it does not), the meltdown of Pakistan will be the next problem the Indo-Pacific alliance will need to deal with.

Before that, they need to ensure that the Afghan people be rescued from falling once again into the darkness of fanaticism. India is essential in this, the US and Iran being the other countries needed. The stakes are global.

It may be noted that the Russian Federation has not been included, in the list of countries between which partnership is essential for success against the return of Afghanistan as a base from which international terror organisations launch attacks, the principal targets remaining the major countries in the Atlantic Alliance.

Owing significantly to policy errors that date back to the Clinton administration and which were continued under successive administrations, Russia under Putin, has gone on to form the Sino-Russian alliance together with Xi. To expect Moscow to play a role helpful, not to its PRC ally, but to the democracies is to continue to function as though the past era were still extant.

Delhi has been slow in grasping this reality and the consequences for India, especially when it is confronting the Sino-Pakistan alliance within the country and on its borders. It is not only Washington that needs to adjust from living in the past to the realities of the present. The same goes for Delhi as well.

The evolution of the situation in Afghanistan will in time convince even the romantics among policymakers in Delhi that tectonic shifts have occurred in global geopolitics, beginning in 1990 and continuing to the present. Unless an understanding of the need to adjust policies to meet the exigencies of the present with solutions, relevant to the contemporary situation dawns soon, the situation in Afghanistan may before long be what it became for the Soviet Union in the 1980s and to the US since 2003, a cauldron of chaos that would pose a danger even to those countries that believe they are far away and therefore safe.

The first step to cure is to diagnose the sources of the disease and devise ways of eliminating them. Within the Indo-Pacific, that role in the case of Afghanistan, falls mostly on President Biden and Prime Minister Modi.

Afghanistan Crisis Needs Unified Response from Diverse Powers