Xi Jinping examines military options to offset rising disquiet (The Sunday Guardian)

 

Central Military Commission may calculate that if they move in force across the Himalayas, reassurances from Washington to Delhi notwithstanding, India would be on its own in facing a country far bigger in economic size than the Russian Federation.

 

New Delhi: In common with Mao Zedong, PRC supremo Xi Jinping has been more closely involved with military matters than his predecessors Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao. It may be mentioned that Xi Jinping’s father, Xi Zhongxun had extensive connections with the military, as still does the First Lady of China, Peng Liyuan. It was not Xi but his rival Bo Xilai who sought support through the banner of upholding “Mao Zedong Thought”, the very factor that doomed his chances of succeeding Hu Jintao. Given the experience of the top rungs of the CCP leadership during the period in power of Mao, there was no appetite among them for a repeat performance. This smoothed the way for the outwardly emollient and accessible Xi to ascend to the top of the CCP. Unlike his predecessor Hu who allowed Jiang Zemin to remain Central Military Commission (CMC) Chairman for a couple of years after the General Secretaryship of the party had been transferred from him, from the very start of his tenure as General Secretary, Xi Jinping took formal charge of the Central Military Commission as well as taking on the protocol-heavy (while visiting foreign countries) job of President of the PRC. More than the party secretariat or the civilian side of the central government, it is the military that has the most influence in the thinking of the present CCP General Secretary. As a consequence, the three “active” fronts of the PLA have witnessed an acceleration of attention and activity since Xi took charge of the PRC in 2012. These are the South China Sea, the Himalayan massif and Taiwan.

EMULATING MAO
Mao took the decision to intervene in Korea in 1950 as a consequence of his belief that General Douglas MacArthur was planning to cross into the PRC from North Korea to set up a base area for operations by the KMT. In contrast, the PLA invasion across the Himalayan massif into India in 1962 worked as a diversion drawing attention away from the economic woes (including famine) that were sweeping across China at the time. Instead of growth and a rising standard of living for the Chinese people, the opposite was taking place during the years prior to the 1962 war with India. The conflict gave a respite to Mao in the context of efforts by some CCP leaders to whittle down his powers before removing him altogether, an interval that Mao used to strengthen his position (with the help of the Army) sufficient to clear the top and middle rungs of the CCP of all those suspected of being unhappy with the CCP Chairman’s stewardship of the state and party. This was accomplished through the brutal “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” that began in 1966 and lasted almost until Mao’s death a decade later.
In the case of “Mao’s heir” Xi, although almost all such activity remains hidden from the outside world, criticism of the functioning of the Office of the General Secretary (OGS) has been growing inside the higher ranks of the CCP. Since Xi took charge in 2012, the OGS and the CMC have far more influence over policy than the Central Committee or even the Standing Committee of the CCP, not to mention the Prime Minister of the PRC. In the past, the PRC PM used to be in charge of economic policy, but that responsibility was transferred by Xi to him and the Office of the General Secretary (OGS). This secretariat serves as the enforcer of what has been officially proclaimed to be “Xi Jinping Thought”.

A delivery worker rides near a giant screen showing Chinese President Xi Jinping at an event celebrating the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Youth League, in Beijing, China on 10 May 2022. REUTERS

PRC HAPPY WITH BIDEN’S RUSSIA FOCUS
Xi has been fortunate in the Europeanist policy of the Biden White House and its obsession with “teaching Putin a lesson”. This has greatly increased the degrees of freedom available to the PLA in the three “active” theatres mentioned earlier, the South China Sea, the Himalayan massif and Taiwan. An example of the Euro-focus of the Biden administration is the fact that weapons on an almost daily basis are being gifted to Ukraine, a country much less significant for overall US interests than India. Although the sovereignty and territorial integrity of India has come under attack multiple times by the PLA and its satellite GHQ Rawalpindi, neither the US nor the rest of NATO appears overly concerned about this. In contrast to Ukraine, India is asked to pay top dollar for essential defence purchases from the US, thereby sharply limiting its ability to access such platforms in quantities sufficient to ensure a desirable expansion of “offensive defence” capabilities against the PLA. Ensuring such a capability for India ought to have been among the highest priorities of the Biden administration, but this is still not the case. President Biden and the rest of the leaders of NATO are lavishing resources and attention towards an ultimately futile effort at preventing the Russian military from overcoming Ukrainian resistance. Prolonging the bloodletting in that unfortunate country by giving false hopes to its leadership by the US and the rest of NATO through life-support weapons supplies is creating a window of opportunity for the PLA to attack any of the three “active” fronts it has been engaged in. This may happen should Xi calculate (as Mao did in 1962) that the resistance to his policy decisions and over-centralisation of the twin machinery of government and party can best be solved through a military diversion. In the case of Mao, the Cuban missile crisis ensured that Washington’s attention was taken away from the Himalayan front, while for Xi, the prosecution of the Ukraine war by NATO is serving a similar purpose. Given the blowback from domestic constituencies within NATO at the pain being inflicted on them by the sanctions imposed on Russia by their own governments, the CMC planners in Beijing may be forgiven for assuming that after experiencing such a shock, there would be almost no appetite for similar sanctions by NATO against the PRC in view of the severe economic consequences of such a move. Such consequences are inevitable until sufficient decoupling from the Chinese economy takes place, a process that is proceeding at a snail’s pace, in contrast to the lightning speed with which western companies have been exiting the Russian Federation. The good news for India is that the country needs no assistance in the form of troops to tackle fresh assaults by the PLA. Supply of US weapons platforms and other assistance on a Ukrainian scale would ensure that the PLA regret for a long time to come any expansive adventurism against India. However, such stockpiling and resupply by the US of India seems far from assured, given the obsession of President Biden with punishing Russia under Putin in a war on Ukrainian territory that NATO leaders apparently seek to prolong indefinitely. The CMC may calculate that if they move in force across the Himalayas once again, reassurances from Washington to Delhi notwithstanding, India would be on its own in facing a country far bigger in economic size than the Russian Federation. The PLA is known to be working on military options that involve action across both the eastern as well as the western fronts with India. Significant investments in personnel, weaponry and infrastructure have been created by the Chinese side so as to kinetically gain fresh territory in India along the frontier in order to silence Xi’s critics within the CCP. Such a move would fail, for under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India is prepared to tackle such an attempt even on its own. Whether such a capability is known to the CMC or not is unknown. Under Xi, that institution has developed a sense of hubris that may cause it to take actions including against India that would ultimately lead to disaster, but which would also entail damage to other countries.

BIDEN’S CREDIBILITY GAP ON INTENT
The South China Sea is fast becoming a Chinese lake, given the density of PLAAF and PLAN military bases created within its waters. While the US and other Navies routinely sail the seas in a symbolic gesture, leaving PLA structures unmolested, the reality is that the PLAN and PLAAF are building up sufficient strike power to block such access, should that option be chosen by CMC Chairman Xi. This has been the consequence of lack of substantive rather than symbolic efforts at clearing the waters of such obstructions by both Presidents Obama and Trump, a policy continued under Biden. Should Xi decide on setting up a zone within the South China Sea that excludes naval vessels save those given permission by Beijing to enter such waters, it remains to be seen whether the calculation of the CMC is accurate that President Biden (who ordered the 2021 Afghanistan pullout) would do little to challenge the PRC in the South China Sea as a consequence of his wariness about provoking a war with that country. Even in the case of Taiwan, the calculation of CMC planners may be that the US would not act in force and enter into a direct kinetic conflict with China. Neither, so goes this thinking, would Japan, were its partner in the US-Japan alliance to not take an active role in the conflict but confine itself to outside assistance to Taiwan, as is happening in Ukraine. The problem is that the same messages and events are read differently by the two sides. In the case of Ukraine, President Biden believes that his supply of weapons to Ukraine is giving pause to Xi over Taiwan, when in Beijing, what may be counting for more is the lack of NATO boots on the ground in Ukraine, as well as growing public resistance to the domestic impact of sanctions against Russia in the US, UK and France that is causing a cratering of the popularity of the leaders of the three countries.

THE TAIWAN PRIZE
The greatest prize for Xi would be the conquest of Taiwan. Choosing the Taiwan option would necessitate the takeover of the entire country by the PLA rather than just its offshore islands. Just taking control of such limited spaces would not be able to satiate the hunger for the conquest of Taiwan of the Han nationalists, emotions that have been brought to a high pitch since Xi took over as CCP General Secretary. In the South China Sea, a kinetic objective could be an active enforcement of the existing reality on the waters by making passage subject to Beijing’s nod. The objective of military operations across the Himalayan massif would be to gain control of significant slivers of Indian territory in the east and west of the Sino-Indian frontier, a limited objective. In the case of Taiwan, unless the entire country is occupied, there would not be the required political dividend for Xi. Should the Taiwanese people resist the invading army in the manner that the Ukrainian-speaking people of Ukraine have since the start of the February 24 “Special Military Operation” by Russia, the island would become a sea of quicksand for the PLA. The CMC is betting (as the Russians initially appear to have in Ukraine this year) that the Taiwanese people would acquiesce in the occupation of the island by the PLA after seeing the havoc that is being wreaked on Ukraine. However, the securing of a second term by President Tsai Ing-wen indicates that the people of Taiwan are unlikely to surrender their freedom as tamely as the CMC wishes them to do. Even within the KMT, the pro-US wing is gaining at the expense of the pro-PRC wing. Such a division did not matter when the US and the PRC were close to each other, but does now.

INDIA IS ON GUARD
The stakes in Taiwan are the highest for Xi, as failure to succeed in the event of a military conflict would doom his rule. As conditions in China continue to deteriorate and patience within the public as well as those in the ranks of the party diminish, the CMC under Xi is studying a possible military diversion in any of the three “active” fronts. This would be a way of deflecting public anger away from the CCP General Secretary (to whom each soldier has pledged his personal loyalty) to an external entity. Given a situation when Xi may resort to the military option to draw the focus away from the economic woes and reduction in freedoms of PRC citizens, India under Prime Minister Modi is on guard. A similar preparation for the worst is in progress in Taiwan under President Tsai Ing-wen. The problem for democracies in Asia is the Putin obsession of US President Joe Biden, who together with European leaders is eager to continue seeing Russia as Enemy Number One even though that country is not what it was in the Soviet era, and has been replaced as the primary systemic challenger by the PRC. Rather than deter the PRC from military action against any of the three “active” fronts, the rising level of adverse consequences of the war by Russia in Ukraine and the attendant sanctions by NATO countries is boosting the view that exhaustion from the Ukraine conflict makes even such limited intervention by the US and its allies unlikely in the event of the PLA launching a conflict within what the CCP considers Chinese territory (Taiwan and the South China Sea) or its backyard (the Himalayan massif).

 Xi Jinping examines military options to offset rising disquiet

Supreme Court nudges the US back to the 1950s (The Sunday Guardian)

 

Going by the logic of six justices of SCOTUS, women’s right to vote could be revoked as it too went unmentioned in the Constitution.

Many say that when President Biden assured the world last year that “America is back”, what he meant was that the US was back to the 1950s. The use of the reverse gear has been evident in the White House, which has returned to the Cold War 1.0 era. The US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) has been particularly eager to push back the US into what had been a dead past. For 50 years, citizens of the US had the right to decide whether to go ahead with a pregnancy or not. Women undergoing abortions were often underage, black and poor. Those opposed to abortion talk about being in favour of life. The life they are talking about is not that of the mother but that of the embryo during the stage when it has not reached viability, or the stage until which abortions were permitted in the US as a consequence of the Roe v Wade decision handed down in 1973 by SCOTUS. The court held that abortion was a right guaranteed by the US Constitution. A few days ago, SCOTUS, by a six to three majority, held that such a right was in fact in violation of the Constitution, as such a procedure was never mentioned in the document that was ratified in 1788. Millions in the US believe that the fair sex had its origin in the rib of the first man. Small wonder that in some states in the US, teaching Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution is banned. Women and men apparently did not evolve, they sprang up from nowhere. Which means that there could not be any difference between those born a million years ago and those born now, something Darwin would have disputed. These millions, among whom appear to be included six Justices of the US Supreme Court, believe that every human being has her or his origin in the pair that was rescued in the distant past together with other life forms from a boat. However, belief in a common pair of ancestors has not prevented several such individuals from simultaneously believing in racial supremacy, which holds that those of a particular race are far superior to those of other races. These days, now that the hold of those of European descent is diminishing across the world in contrast to 1788 when the US Constitution was ratified, a rising number of individuals of Sinic descent in the new superpower China believe their ethnic group to be superior to all others. Feelings of racial or religious supremacy (assuming other faiths to be lacking in a pathway to the divine) is impossible to justify. Such views have caused wars and societal turmoil that cost the lives of hundreds of millions across much of human history. The SCOTUS Justices who sent Roe v Wade into the wastepaper basket have a right to their personal beliefs, but should not impose that view on the rest of society in the manner that they are seeking to do.
As has been mentioned, not just abortion but women were not mentioned in the US Constitution. This may be among the reasons why the vote was granted to women in the US only in 1920. Going by the logic of six justices of SCOTUS, this right too could be revoked as it went unmentioned in the Constitution. Was the Supreme Court mentioned in that document? Apparently not, although it is unlikely that Justice Alito and the other five Justices who reversed Roe v Wade would decide that the institution which they now control should be abolished. Justice Clarence Thomas is the prime mover behind the reversal of rights that has characterised the Supreme Court of the US, especially since the entry of the three Justices appointed by President Donald J. Trump. Although the court is known as the Roberts Court, a more appropriate title may be the Clarence Court, given the influence that the views of Justice Thomas have on the majority in SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States). In his then role as Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Joe Biden gave short shrift to Anita Hill, who came up with testimony against Thomas in much the same way as another female witness did during the confirmation hearings of Brett Cavanaugh, another Trump appointee. Choosing an African-American who thought in the limiting way that Thomas did about judicial matters, was an inspired move by President George H.W. Bush, who soon afterwards lost the Presidential polls to Bill Clinton. A second George H.W. Bush term may have done more for the US than Bill Clinton did in his two terms, given the understated way in which Bush removed Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in 1991 without going overboard in the manner that his son George W. Bush did in 2003. It was George H.W. Bush’s quality of being understated and emollient that reduced the chances of Mikhail Gorbachev being ousted as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union until he had completed the meltdown of the USSR. Yet this is what cost him a second term, once Clinton supporters began to mock him as “Chicken Kiev” for his outwardly soft approach to a superpower nearing meltdown. Under Clinton, both the Wahhabi International as well as the PRC prospered, while he stymied Yeltsin’s efforts to integrate the Russian Federation into the EU and NATO as a consequence of a nudge from the UK, Germany and France, who did not want that behemoth in the “common European home” that both Gorbachev and Yeltsin thirsted to join. The sorry exit of US forces from Afghanistan in 2021 can be tracked to Clinton’s installation of the Taliban in 1996 as the masters of Afghanistan. The damage being caused to US interests by the SCOTUS rollback of rights long enjoyed by US citizens may not be as stark as the Afghanistan pullout in August 2021, but it is in many ways more severe. Rather than healing divisions, the US Supreme Court is widening them, that too by interpretations of the law that could conceptually at least be used to bring back the burning of witches that was carried out in the US in 1692-93. Omar Khayyam’s warning that the “moving finger having writ, moves on” is clearly unknown to the six Justices who rolled back Roe v Wade, not to mention other retrogressive decisions. In the process, they have lit a fuse that could lead to turmoil in the US greater than any seen thus far in the history of that country since the 20th century.

 Supreme Court nudges the US back to the 1950s

BRICS must back UNSC bid of each member (The Sunday Guardian)

 The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) that was founded in 2001 is centred around the People’s Republic of China (PRC), as indicated by its very name. The SCO has played a prominent role in the efforts of Beijing to replace Moscow as the lead outside player in Central Asia, although the influence of the Russian Federation remains strong within this region. Through the Sino-Wahhabi alliance, the PRC has chipped away at Russia’s primacy, assisted by the fact that after the meltdown of the Soviet Union in 1991, the US under Bill Clinton unwisely facilitated the replacement of the existing Russian-style model of school and university education with the Wahhabi model that was in vogue during that period in much of the GCC. After 9/11, the risk to the national interest of permitting such a model of education became clear, and changes began to be introduced in curricula such that a more moderate culture was promoted in place of the radicalisation that had been taking place in young minds as a consequence of the copious flow of both funds and ideas from parts of West Asia. While Russia has, largely by default, become an ally of the PRC, its leadership has not signed on to the PRC’s policy of cosying up to radicals. The consequence has been that Central Asia has entered a period of competing ideologies, where radicalism and the resultant extremism compete with the moderate ideology of the leaders of the countries in the region. As a consequence of the burgeoning of the Sino-Wahhabi alliance, the SCO has drifted far away from being a forum where radicalism is condemned rather than condoned as it is by Beijing in cases where it affects the targets of its hidden or expressed ire. As a consequence, efforts by India to use the platform as a vehicle against radicalism and its offshoots such as terror have met with little substantive success. Of course, those who define “success” in terms of statements issued and glitzy meetings held would disagree, as both remain plentiful so far as the SCO is concerned. As for BRICS, the intention of Beijing appears to be to expand the group to include Iran and Argentina in the first instance, even before relations between the BRICS countries themselves are far from satisfactory.

In contrast to the SCO, in each of the countries in that small but significant club (BRICS) has the potential to graduate from Big Power to Major Power status (in the way India has progressed under Prime Minister Modi), and from then onwards, at least where India is concerned, to superpower status. The flexible format of BRICS makes it resistant to efforts by any single member to tailor the association into a forum that reflexively backs positions taken by that single country. Given the way in which territory in India has come under threat, and the South China Sea has been almost wholly taken over and militarised by Beijing, it is a surreal experience to listen to CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping talk during the BRICS meeting of leaders against efforts at hegemonism (of the kind being witnessed in the South China Sea) or intimidation (of the type being carried out almost on a daily basis against Taiwan). Despite the infringement of the sovereignty of India on multiple occasions since the 1950s, there remains a way for the PRC to demonstrate in practice the sentiments expressed by the CCP General Secretary at the BRICS meeting. This is to work within the UN to promote the candidacy of the three members of BRICS that are not permanent members of the UNSC. As permanent members, Russia and China could support Brazil, South Africa and India for a permanent seat at the UNSC. It is possible that not all three may succeed in such a quest, but support from the PRC in particular for such a change would show that Beijing is finally being sincere not just in word but in deed. If the PRC declines to do so (in a context where Russia has already supported the inclusion of India in the UNSC), it would show that there remains a wide gap between platitudes and performance where the world’s other superpower is concerned.
MDN

 BRICS must back UNSC bid of each member

EU forgets own sermons, returns to coal (The Sunday Guardian)

 Past governments ensured that India lost the advantage that would have accrued to the country were it to utilise its immense coal reserves to their full potential. Nationalisation of coal and mismanagement resulted in the country having to expend scarce foreign exchange to buy coal from countries such as Australia. Interestingly, those from abroad who were most active in the NGOs advocating that India cut back its domestic coal production came from major coal-extracting countries, including the US, Australia and the UK. The consequence of succumbing to such anti-Atmanirbhar advocacy was, of course, not that India sharply reduced the share of coal in its energy sector, but that the country had to import coal from outside, a practice that continues to this day. Whether it be coal, copper or other such resources abundant in India, by one means or the other, India became dependent on foreign countries for much of its supply. Pharmaceuticals is an example of such excessive dependence, as the Indian pharmaceutical industry has grown steadily more dependent for pharmaceutical intermediates on China. After the disruption in supply chains caused by Covid-19 and geopolitical challenges in 2020, efforts by the Government of India to reduce such a high degree of dependency in a premier sector increased. Nuclear energy is far “greener” than energy that is generated through the use of coal as a feedstock. Given that there is a need to reduce if not eliminate India’s dependence on foreign suppliers for the uranium that its nuclear industry needs, this is another essential feedstock, the domestic supply of which has been sharply reduced by use of the executive as well as the other branches of government to discourage uranium mining within the country. As for coal, until such time as its necessity gets reduced to insignificance, efforts need to be made to increase production within the country rather than remain reliant on foreign coal. In such a context, getting a chipmaking company from the US, South Korea or Taiwan to begin production locally needs to be a priority for Ministers Ashwini Vaishnav and Rajeev Chandrashekhar.

The war between Russia and Ukraine has had an outsize effect on global supply chains, in large part caused by the range of financial and other sanctions that have been slapped on the Russian Federation by NATO together with Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. The three are facing a threat from China, especially Taiwan, while in the case of South Korea, the hawkish (on Pyongyang) newly-installed Yoon administration has generated a sharp rise in North-South tensions. It is apparent that the roster of sanctions was not properly thought through, or else that key members of NATO believed that Russia would soon dissolve into chaos as a consequence of the measures taken against the largest country by far in the world in terms of size. Instead, President Putin has recovered his popularity as a consequence of the war, while the Russian people have a long history of stoically bearing up to adversity in a way that the populations of most of the countries in the European Union would not. The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, seems to have a somewhat simplistic view of situations, as witness her advice to India to go solar on a fast track, no matter what the cost of following such guidance would be, if it were even practical, which it is not. Von der Leyen has suggested that the population of the EU should each adjust the thermostats in their gas-fired heaters to two degrees less than normal. What “normal” is has not been specified by her. In contrast to her advice to India to go solar, the EU Commission President is backing a comeback of coal. Causing further damage to the planet would in this view be a lesser evil than cutting off purchases of oil and gas from Russia. Meanwhile, Asia these days is gulping up all the oil and gas it can absorb from the Russian Federation, while NATO through its sanctions on Russia is ensuring that the cost to the European consumer of oil and gas goes up, owing to greater dependence on higher-priced US supplies. Once Russia completes its logistics chains to major Asian customers of its natural resources, Middle Eastern countries may find that demand from that continent to their gas and oil may come down. Most probably in 2022 itself, there will be a whiplash effect from the public towards the leaders of the Atlantic Alliance who have collectively inflicted so much misery on not just their own people but the rest of the world as well in their effort to prevent a country brimming with natural resources from exporting any of it. The Ukrainian side needs to read the portents correctly and sue for peace with Russia, giving Biden, Johnson and others an excuse to remove the sanctions designed to punish Russia but which are instead causing stagflation in their own countries. Helping kill the planet through going back to the use of coal instead of oil and gas is just one of the many ways in which the Russia-Ukraine war is on track to cause even more economic and societal devastation than Covid-19 and the attendant measures did.
MDN

EU forgets own sermons, returns to coal

We are all Indians together, treat us as that (The Sunday Guardian)

 

From 15 August 1947, Nehru and others in the Congress leadership adopted a policy of ignoring the wound in the Hindu psyche caused by Partition.

The Congress Party took over what was left of the Indian subcontinent (after Partition and the earlier breaking away of Burma) on 15 August 1947. The partition of India into India and Pakistan represented a defeat for the saintly Mahatma Gandhi, who had sworn to agree to Partition “only over my dead body”. After the Quit India movement was launched by the Congress Party in 1942, those in positions of responsibility in London who favoured the handover of a unified subcontinent began to lose ground to the faction led by Winston Churchill, which opposed freedom for the people of India but sought to ensure a truncated India were freedom to come about. While M.A. Jinnah and the Muslim League fully backed the victory of the Allies over the Axis during wartime, the Quit India movement, combined with the journey to Germany and Japan by Subhas Chandra Bose, created an impression in the portals of power in London that the future ruling party of India had tilted towards the Axis. 1942 was not 1944, by which time the war had turned decisively against Adolf Hitler and his Japanese ally Hideki Tojo. When the call for the British colonial authorities to Quit India was made, the German war machine was in control of vast tracts of land across Europe, as was Japan in the South-eastern and Far Eastern territories that had been previously under the control of European powers. There was a strong possibility during that time that the Japanese army may be able to (i) win over more Indian soldiers to its side via the Indian National Army and thereby (ii) take over much of the British empire in India. Mahatma Gandhi had calculated that the reverses suffered during 1940-42 by the British in their colonies in Asia and North Africa would put them in a frame of mind to assure freedom for India once the war ended. As long as Churchill was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, that was an impossible prospect. Deputy Prime Minister Clement Attlee of the Labour Party had little understanding or sympathy for the freedom fighters of India, and he usually went along with Churchill’s views, as did the rest of the War Cabinet. Had the British given a pledge that the “Jewel in the Crown” would be given freedom shortly after World War II ended, the Congress Party would most probably have supported the Allies the same way Jinnah had. There was, after all, little love lost for Subhas Bose in Jawaharlal Nehru and his colleagues, and none whatsoever for the racism and propensity to violence of the Nazi party. After the Quit India agitation by the Congress Party was swiftly extinguished by the jailing of the leaders of that party for the duration of the war, sympathy in London for Jinnah grew. This gave impetus to his call to the British to “Divide before Quitting” India. Historians of the time wrote about the Quit India movement in the most glowing of terms, as they do almost all the Congress Party’s actions from the 1930s onwards. It was rare to find an individual who publicly pointed to some of the unintended consequences of the Quit India call. Not to mention earlier decisions by the Congress Party leadership, such as the resignation (and consequent full transfer into British hands) of the many provincial ministries that at the time were in its control. This was a decision that played completely into the hands of Lord Wavell, the Viceroy. The decisions and events by the principal players within the subcontinent that followed the UK’s declaration of war in 1939 that turbocharged the Muslim League. The party became the favourite of the Raj not just in the eyes of colonial officials in India but their superiors in the UK.
Jawaharlal Nehru adopted the same model as Winston Churchill, who himself wrote the history of his life and of course the 1939-45 war. Not surprisingly, Churchill presented the sequence of events in a manner that ignored his numerous errors and puffed up his achievements. Similarly, the first Prime Minister of India was a prolific writer, and never shied away from writing about events in which he had played a part. In such accounts by him and later his admirers, the problems created by some of his decisions and even stray remarks were either ignored or blamed on others. Historians who did not follow the example of Nehru’s acolytes are unknown, as their works were ignored in favour of those who wrote in admiring tomes about the Congress Party and its participation in the freedom movement. Among the facts ignored was an adequate description of the disaffection in the Indian armed forces once the war got over in 1945 without any promise of freedom. Without the backing of the Indian component in the armed forces, the colonial authorities knew that they could not hold India. Soon afterwards followed a declaration of impending independence that ought to have been given in 1939 but which the then Prime Minister of the UK opposed, probably saying to his intimates that freedom would come to India “only over my dead body”. Just as the Mahatma lived to see a partitioned India, Churchill lived to see a free India.
During the 1930s and into 1947, both Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru sought to wean away the Muslim community from Jinnah, but were less than successful as a consequence of the false narrative of Jinnah and his party that Islam was in danger in India. From 15 August 1947, Prime Minister Nehru and others in the Congress leadership adopted a policy of ignoring the wound in the Hindu psyche caused by Partition. Indeed, anything that they regarded as linked to the religion of the majority community remained almost totally out of school textbooks, including epics such as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, both of which ought to be comprehensively taught in schools together with classics such as the Hitopadesha and the Panchatantra. These are epics that belong to the whole of India, and should not be placed in the narrow box of a single religion, thereby denying through absence of official interest many within the young the knowledge of India’s epics, and absorbing the wisdom contained in them. Where matters of faith are concerned, a uniform civil code is still not in sight, while only a Hindu code bill was passed in the 1950s, not an omnibus reform that ought to have been applicable to all citizens. Such universality is an integral component of secularism. What was needed but not attempted until recently was to assist in the knowledge of a common heritage and respect without exceptions for the Rule of Law. Recently, a decision by a court was reported that for those girls born in a particular faith, the legal age of marriage was two years less than that applicable for girls belonging to other faiths. A girl of 16 should have the same rights in marriage as in other matters as any other girl of 16 who is a citizen of India. We are, after all, Indians, and need to be treated as such by each of the Estates of the governance system.

We are all Indians together, treat us as that  

Biden’s Putin obsession batters global growth (The Sunday Guardian)

 

An early conclusion to the Ukraine war may seem unjust. Yet that sacrifice is needed to prevent global turmoil.

Poll numbers are helping President Joe Biden to slowly comprehend the reality. Which is that it is his transformational $2 trillion Societal Stimulus package getting passed that ought to be the White House priority. Instead, this year he has been acting as Sir Joe, riding forth to avenge the electoral defeat of Lady Hillary in 2016. According to the Clintonistas (including those now masquerading as Bidenistas), the defeat of Hillary Clinton at the hands of Don Trump was due to the machinations of Vladimir Putin. Much of the election-related received wisdom in the ranks of the Democratic Party is clearly the content of nursery tales or morality fables rather than fact. To seriously claim that the current occupant of the Kremlin has the capability to overturn a presidential election in the US implies that today’s Russia (at least under Putin) is way more powerful than the USSR was in its heyday. The Clinton fable that Russia stole the 2016 election created the momentum required for the next nursery tale, which was the Trumpian view that Biden somehow stole the 2020 election although it was Trump who was the President. There were indeed US presidential elections that were unusual in the causes of the final outcome, as for example the victory of George W. Bush over Al Gore in 2000, which was decided not by the voters or the electors but by that faithful associate of the Republican Party, the US Supreme Court. Loser Al Gore accepted the verdict of the court with grace, while President Bush went on to rescue Al Qaeda and their ISI friends through the Kunduz airlift in Afghanistan. Not to mention rewarding Iran by ensuring that Iraq moved into Tehran’s sphere of influence in two years later, whereas the former regime had been virulently against Iran since the Khomeinist takeover in 1979. Joe Biden would have been able to defeat Trump in 2016, but his innate generosity of spirit towards the Clintons made the then Vice-President step aside and allow Hillary to be the Democratic nominee.
From the moment Hillary became her party’s candidate, Donald Trump had the edge, and he retained it by promising change, which was in a way delivered. Tossing aside the Lincoln dictum, the Trump White House was of, for and run by billionaires, no questions asked. As President Biden reminded voters some days ago, billionaires in the US each pay less than 10% of their incomes as federal taxes. What was Biden doing about such a scandalous state of affairs during his tenure as a Senator, or has done since heading the executive branch of the US? Biden soon lost interest in taxing billionaires fairly or in getting passed his Social Stimulus plan, focussing instead on getting bipartisan support for his mission of punishing Putin for what he believed was responsibility for the defeat of Hillary Clinton at the hands of Trump, the (in the restrained and measured language typical of her) “a puppet of Putin”. President Biden was joined by Boris Johnson and other European leaders in what they advertised as a Righteous War against Putin-led Russia. Four months on, even cheerleaders of the war such as CNN and BBC are having difficulties in claiming that Saint Volodymyr and his no-longer-merry men are having the advantage over the Russian military. The US-UK-EU stream of economic sanctions against the Russian Federation have not prevented Ukraine from losing more territory to the Russians. Instead, they have created global supply and logistics difficulties that are pulling the world into a recession that will develop into a depression unless the war in Ukraine is swiftly brought to a close. Biden’s shift of focus from domestic priorities to the Russia-Ukraine war are on track to ensure the wipe-out of the Democratic Party in the November midterms. Such a catastrophe would thereby render President Biden not a lame duck but a legless duck during the balance of his Presidential term.
President Zelenskyy is undergoing the pain of watching his country slowly drown in a morass of blood and treasure as a consequence of his lack of understanding of the imperative of good relations with Moscow in creating stability in Ukraine. Being a maestro in comedy may not always be the best training for a grasp of the realities of realpolitik. Even as Ukraine sinks, Zelenskyy is calling out for and getting more weapons. The effect of this would be to ensure a catastrophic global impact. What is needed is not to continue the war but Ukraine cutting its losses and ending hostilities with its much stronger foe. Across both sides of the Atlantic, disregarding their own and their countries interests, the message is the same: the war must go on, no matter what the price, including to countries that have zero role in the escalating fiasco. Still fixated on vanquishing Putin rather than fending off the Republican challenge to the Democrats in the midterms so as to get passed his $2 trillion stimulus package, President Biden is leading the NATO charge against Russia. The 2020 election was won by Biden on his promise to focus on a domestic agenda designed to rectify several of the injustices that have long plagued US society. Getting passed by the US Congress his $2 trillion social justice stimulus is essential for the US President to achieve this. That priority appears to have been forgotten in the White House obsession with Putin. The USSR-US Cold War 1.0 may have ended in 1991 but its ghosts still haunt much of the thinking in Washington. Wall Streeter and economist Larry Summers ignores the havoc the Ukraine war is causing and repeats that the need is to double down on prolonging the conflict. This despite the fact that the war is causing the very inflation that Summers incessantly warns about. Meanwhile, NSA Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken are busying themselves in trying to win over Beijing. Defense Secretary Llyod Austin in contrast talks about “standing up to China” in a way his own colleagues fail to do. Commander-in-Chief Biden is seeking a personal meeting with Xi Jinping in the belief that the latter will help the White House rein in Putin from prosecuting a war that is boosting the strategic interests of the PRC. What is obvious to those not in thrall to nursery tales and fables is that Biden needs to ensure that the war in Ukraine ends soonest, which is what Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been seeking for over three months and counting. What is lost by Ukraine is lost, and the longer the war carries on, the more will be lost to Russia, the more will be the cost to the globe. An early conclusion to the war, by removal of the life support provided by NATO to Ukraine may seem unjust. Yet that sacrifice is needed to prevent the world from going in for economic and societal turmoil that would be inevitable should the conflict continue. An end to the war and the attendant US-UK-EU sanctions would immediately send oil and gas prices down, damp down inflation and boost economic prospects as well as food security. In a choice between evils, such an option is the lesser evil. If done in time, its effects may even ensure that the US House and Senate after the 2022 midterms is such as to pass the legislation on the $ 2 trillion stimulus that is essential for stability in the US. Getting that passed after his party wins in the midterms ought to be President Biden’s obsession rather than his quixotic quest for securing the defeat of Russia in Ukraine, and the removal from the Kremlin of Vladimir Putin.

Biden’s Putin obsession batters global growth  

Kim Jong Un edges towards a nuclear test in North Korea (The Sunday Guardian)

Given the low probability of high-level negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang soon taking place, those in the first circle of power around Supreme Commander Kim, who favour a nuclear test, appear to be prevailing.

 

NEW DELHI: Speculation is rising in key capitals that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) is on the verge of testing a newly developed thermonuclear device. Authorities there believe that a fresh nuclear test would be advantageous in view of the impasse being faced with an unresponsive Biden administration. There has been an absence of any forward movement by President Biden on talks with the DPRK aimed at reducing tensions in the Korean peninsula. Meanwhile, there is no progress on removal of the US sanctions imposed over the years on the DPRK. Such stasis has confirmed the view of hawks in Pyongyang that what is actually sought by the US-Japan alliance is the downfall of the Kim dynasty that has ruled the country since its founding in 1948. After such a change at the top, the calculation that is believed to have been made in Tokyo and Washington is that a new leader of North Korea would (as a consequence of the aftershocks of the fall of the Kim dynasty) be amenable to the elimination of the nuclear program, unlike the stand taken by the Kim family. Given that North Korea is considered to have built up nuclear weapons and delivery capability sufficient to obliterate US bases in Japan, Guam and Hawaii, it is seen in Pyongyang as axiomatic that the Biden administration would not go to war as a consequence of resumed nuclear testing. As for sanctions, the calculation is that a demonstration of enhanced DPRK nuclear capability would increase rather than reduce prospects of US-DPRK talks to lower the rise in tensions caused by a resumption of testing. A fresh test, in Pyongyang’s view, as conveyed by sources spoken to, would highlight the “wrongness of believing that sanctions can shake the iron resolve of Supreme Commander (Kim Jong Un) to ensure security” for the DPRK through nuclear capability. Another nuclear test (of a more advanced device) would, in the thinking within the first circle of power in Pyongyang, be a reality check to the “daydream

ers and evil schemers who believe that they can scare into submission the Supreme Commander (Kim Jong Un) by threats of war or more sanctions”.

FUNCTIONAL ICBM LAUNCHED
These sources point to the numerous personality traits that Kim Jong Un shares with his grandfather Kim Il Sung, who founded the dynasty that has thus far ruled North Korea. Judging by his invasion of the South, it is evident that Kim Il Sung was a risk taker who had immense confidence in the resilience and capabilities of both himself and the people he led. Interestingly, several in the Korean peninsula believe that a part of the DNA of the Korean people originated in India courtesy a Royal Princess and her retinue, who is said to have moved to Korea millennia ago. The noble ladies who accompanied the princess from India (who was probably from a coastal area) are said to have married into the Korean aristocracy of the time. Having waited more than a year for Washington under the Biden administration to enter into “realistic and equal” negotiations with Pyongyang, nuclear restraint in that capital seems to be on the way out. This is especially so after numerous missile launches have failed to persuade the White House to restart talks, including on the subject of sanctions. Of significance is the claim that the DPRK (according to the sources spoken to) appears to have made a breakthrough in the type of nuclear device that the country is capable of producing and deploying. What appears to be a functional ICBM has been test launched since Joe Biden became the 46th President of the US. Now “all that remains is to show that the rocket can be armed with a nuclear device of sufficient destructive capability to deter even thoughts of attack” in the minds of either Japanese or US leaders. What has generated considerable “anger and doubt” in the first circle of policy in Pyongyang, which includes the “fiercely loyal, patriotic and capable” sister of the Supreme Commander, Kim Yo-jong. Suspicion about US intentions aimed at regime change has been reinforced by the refusal of the White House to have permitted a peace treaty between the DPRK and the RoC, despite the former President of the RoC favouring such a move. His successor Yoon Seok-youl has walked away from his predecessor’s accommodative stance and aligned himself fully with the Washington-Tokyo hard line on North Korea.

KINETIC WINDOW HAS SHUT
Kim Jong Un has been going ahead at accelerating speed despite US-led sanctions with the DPRK’s nuclear and missile development. Evidence of the capability and resilience of the Korean people as a whole is present in the spectacular economic success of the southern part of the peninsula, the Republic of Korea (RoC). Given the nature of the Kim regime, acquiring accurate information about its inner workings is problematic, but sources known in the past to be accurate claim that the only window for ending the DPRK’s nuclear and missile program voluntarily was during the period when Kim Jong Il was in charge of the DPRK after the passing of his father Kim Il Sung in 1994. The problem was, according to the sources communicated with, that the Clinton administration negotiators were insistent on North Korea completing the decommissioning of its nuclear and missile program before the US went ahead with significant sanctions relief. The sanctions relief offered in advance of complete fulfillment of US demands were merely cosmetic, high on symbolism but low on substance. The excuse trotted out by Clinton era negotiators was that it was “politically impossible” for President Clinton to give more upfront relief to the DPRK, as there would be adverse opinion even within the Democratic Party at any such substantive concession. Whatever the reasons, the best (non-kinetic) chance available for the denuclearisation of North Korea was passed up during the period of the Clinton administration. As for seeking denuclearisation through kinetic means, by the time Barack Obama stepped down as President of the US in 2017, advances in nuclear and missile systems by the DPRK made what was an improbable into an impossible option.

SIMILAR POLICY THREAD ACROSS ADMINISTRATIONS
Even during the Trump presidency, sources aver that DPRK Supreme Commander Kim Jong Il knew “from the start” that he was being asked to carry out “irreversible actions in exchange for just promises of relief” by the US. Steps that could swiftly be reversed once the DPRK had carried out its part of such a (in the view of the first circle in Pyongyang) one-sided bargain. According to these sources, some of the comments being made by “influential theoreticians” in Tokyo and Washington during the Trump-era DPRK-US negotiations made it very likely that such a snapback of US concessions would take place once the DPRK trustingly delivered, on some “silly pretext”. The George W. Bush presidency was regarded by the other side as a period of intensified efforts at “forcing rather than persuading” the other side to make irreversible commitments in exchange for cosmetic concessions by the US. Such a zig (of progress in talks being followed by the zag of reversal of gains) continued during the Obama period. It seemed as though the 44th President of the US had left the matter to his staff rather than get personally invested in securing a binding agreement in the manner President Trump later was. The consequence was that the Obama staffers who were engaged in negotiations substantively followed the Clinton-Bush line, offering only “small steps forward in exchange for big steps backward (from the nuclear and missile program)” by the DPRK. During the Trump presidency, the perception on the other side was that the US President was never on the same page as key staff members, “many of whom wore scornful expressions on their faces (even while President Trump was speaking)”. The difference in “mood and tone” between President Trump and his key associates that was tracked by the other side strengthened the impression that President Trump was not politically or administratively truly in charge, and was “not strong enough to carry out any of the promises that he brought to the discussions in the manner of flower petals”.

A CONFIDENT KIM JONG UN
Once Kim Jong Un took charge in 2011, the window of opportunity available during the period in office of his predecessor Kim Jong Il for any voluntary reversal of the DPRK nuclear weapons program effectively closed. The new Supreme Commander of North Korea, from the start, was clear that the DPRK “needed to be treated as an equal of the US”. This included at least tacit acceptance of its nuclear status. In the view of the North Korean leadership, a credible nuclear deterrent was an indispensable component of regime security for the Kim dynasty. The Korean nation, “once unified, must be a nuclear weapons power for the world to show it respect” was the view of the inner ring of the North Korean leadership, according to the sources accessed. In the meantime, what was in effect on offer by Pyongyang was a non-aggression pact between the US plus allies and the DPRK, in which neither side would mobilise (much less use) conventional or non-conventional (as distinct from asymmetric) weapons against the other. The Trump-Kim talks were, therefore, a non-starter ab initio, given the perceived inability of President Trump to ensure compliance from his staff to action any up-front concessions as evidence of US good faith where matters of regime security in the DPRK were concerned.

AUTHORITARIAN MODEL ADOPTED
The founder of the dynasty, Kim Il Sung, is held to have sought to restore his country to what he regarded as its former glory. The cloak of communist doctrine was a means towards that, in that such a system favoured the authoritarian control that the Founder regarded as essential to steer a unified peninsula of the “noble Korean people” towards greatness. In contrast, democracies were seen as “unstable and chaotic”, terms that CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping clearly concurs with. Reports reaching Pyongyang of “political and administrative conflicts, confusion and turmoil” in matters of policy and governance in the US during the Obama and Trump periods reinforced such a view. Such a situation was a contrast to the swift assertion of authority in China by Chairman Mao Zedong once the CCP took over China in 1949. The founder of the Kim dynasty, Kim Il Sung, sought from the start to unify the peninsula by force of arms. According to the sources accessed, Kim Il Sung, believed that the US would keep aloof from the conflict that he launched against South Korea in 1950. Kim believed that US non-involvement would be the consequence of not wanting to tangle militarily with the USSR in Asia at a time when Washington was already facing headwinds from Moscow in Europe. To Kim’s surprise, despite advance warning being given to CPSU General Secretary Marshal Stalin about the impending attack, Soviet forces remained concentrated in Europe. It was thereby made clear to all sides that the USSR would not intervene militarily should there be a war between the DPRK and the US in the Korean peninsula. The North Korean side was convinced that prior knowledge of Soviet forbearance in the matter of entering the Korean war militarily was crucial in President Harry S. Truman’s decision to intervene after DPRK forces overwhelmed the defences of the RoC.
The initial successes of US forces were leading to the unification of Korea, but under the RoC and not the DPRK. This was when General Douglas MacArthur disregarded the warning given by PRC Premier Zhou Enlai through Indian diplomats that the PLA would enter the war, should US troops move to the Yalu (Amarok) river. The entry of the PLA into the conflict was ordered by Mao Zedong, who, according to those in Beijing familiar with the thinking of the “Great Helmsman”, was of the view that General Douglas MacArthur would press on past the Yalu into the PRC in order to create a base from which US and KMT forces would seek to wrest back China from the control of the CCP. Some of the statements made by General MacArthur in the initial process of operations in Korea are seen as not contradicting but reinforcing this view in Zhongnanhai. In contrast to his father, Kim Jong Il was not expansionist, and was therefore more cautious. In contrast, his son Kim Jong Un has, according to the sources accessed, “treasured in his mind” the objective of Kim Il Sung for a unified Korea. The present leader of North Korea has set a far more ambitious goal for himself than simply his father’s focus on regime survival. Following the path of not his father but his grandfather, Kim Jong Un wants to unify the Korean peninsula under his leadership. Kim Jong Un has, according to the sources accessed, less than full confidence that CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping, unlike Chairman Mao, would intervene militarily to assist the DPRK in the event of a kinetic conflict between North Korea and the US-Japan alliance. The 2022 Ukraine war has strengthened Kim Jong Un’s belief that only the acquisition of capability to reach both coasts of the continental US with nuclear weapons is sufficient to deter the White House from sending another MacArthur to Korea to expand what (policymakers in Pyongyang believe) is already a comprehensive thus far non-kinetic war by the US-Japan alliance against the DPRK. The insistence by Washington of “irreversible steps” to DPRK nuclear disarmament even to get “symbolic and cosmetic” concessions is seen in the North Korean capital as proof that the Biden administration is following the same playbook used by Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama against Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi (and later attempted with unsuccessfully against Bashar Assad). This is to “ensure the destruction of the offensive capabilities of the adversary through negotiations before attacking it in a fatal blow” against a now “defenceless foe”.

REGIME CHANGE AS PRIMARY U.S. OBJECTIVE
While President Donald J. Trump was attacked by political adversaries as having conceded much for little simply by agreeing to meet Kim Jong Un, the DPRK side was disappointed that throughout “it was the Bolton line that was being pushed” behind (in their view powerless) “President Trump and his friendly face”. Then National Security Advisor (NSA) John Bolton was clear that a “Libyan solution” was what was needed in North Korea. This revived memories in the first circle of the final moments of Muammar Gaddafi, images of which have been watched over and over again in Pyongyang, including the glee in Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s expression at the savage manner in which the Libyan dictator was executed. There was no desire in Pyongyang to watch similar expressions appear on the faces of US officials once their objective of ensuring a “Libyan solution” was achieved by the US under the cover of President Trump’s show of friendship. Simply put, the conclusion reached after the failure of President Trump’s doomed mission to charm “Rocket Man” into handing over his nuke capabilities to the US was that only the North Korean nuclear deterrent was preventing the “Pentagon and CIA” from attempting regime change through war against the DPRK in the manner carried out in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya and attempted in Syria. And of what use is a deterrent unless its potency is demonstrated in public? The view in the first circle of leadership, according to the sources accessed, is that “the low level” (of US) officials attempting negotiations under President Biden indicates the “lack of seriousness to remove the poison that has been injected (by previous administrations)”.

HAWKS ASCENDANT IN PYONGYANG

Given the low probability of high-level negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang soon taking place, those in the first circle of power around Supreme Commander Kim who favour a nuclear test appear to be prevailing in the ongoing argument over whether the nuclear device newly developed by the DPRK should be tested soon or not. If Kim Jong Un accepts such a view, the test by the DPRK of a thermonuclear device will take place before long. Once that happens, even to the hardline new administration in Seoul, the view on the other side of the 38th parallel is that it would become clear that policies based on going along with US-Japan efforts at regime change in Pyongyang would only lead to “unbearable rise in tensions and a cloud of crisis and uncertainty” that would affect economic prospects in South Korea severely. For those in Washington, Tokyo and perhaps Seoul who are eager to punish the people of North Korea by harsher sanctions for the decisions of their unelected government, it may be pointed out that sanctions have not worked in stopping the nuclear and missile programmes of the DPRK. Neither, halfway across the world, have they succeeded in deterring Russian President Vladimir Putin from taking control of more and more territory in Ukraine, even as the disastrous effects across continents of the escalating Biden-Johnson sanctions on Russia push up global inflation and shortages, and bring Johnson and Biden closer towards a political meltdown. 

Kim Jong Un edges towards a nuclear test in North Korea

After Solomons, Vanuatu is PLA’s next Pacific island base (The Sunday Guardian)

 

The carefully curated list of ten island countries visited by Wang Yi was chosen for having kinetic strike access to actual or potential military bases, especially of the Quad.

 

New Delhi: As has since the 1950s been the case in Pakistan, in the Xi era, the Foreign Minister of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) goes by the agenda set by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Ever since Xi Jinping took over as CCP General Secretary in 2012, the PLA has been placed in the forefront of policy, the reverse of what took place during the era of Deng Xiaoping, when PLA influence over other fields of government was curtailed. Advanced planning for a kinetic conflict on land, sea, space, cyberspace and air with the United States and its allies has been the primary preoccupation of the PLA since 2015. Strategies have been worked out within the Central Military Commission (CMC) to inflict a “politically unacceptable” cost to US forces. In Vietnam, although the US military could have continued the war against the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong for longer, Ho Chi Minh succeeded in making the political cost to the White House of such a continuation unbearable. Ironically, Henry A. Kissinger, who persuaded President Richard M. Nixon to prolong the war for three more bloody years rather than speedily deliver on Nixon’s electoral promise of peace, won the Nobel Peace Prize. Presumably, this was for his success in population control in Southeast Asia. Given the slowdown in the PRC economy and the effect this is having especially on middle income living standards across China, CCP Supremo Xi needs a victory on the battlefield against India or Taiwan to prevent the unease within party cadres at the quality of his leadership. To ensure this, the PLA is planning to build a system of “defensive offense” across the locations where such a contest may most likely take place: the Himalayan ranges, the South China Sea and the Pacific segment of the Indo-Pacific.
Securing bases in the Pacific island countries is an essential part of Xi’s plans. PRC Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s 10-nation trip through the Pacific islands was to ensure that besides the Solomon Islands, other Pacific island countries could be persuaded to sign agreements that would permit PLA berthing, landing, storage and maintenance facilities that would be helpful in the advent of a conflict with the US and its allies.
A comprehensive list of presently disused World War II airports and present and potential naval berthing facilities in the island countries has been drawn up by the CMC for Wang Yi to take up. These are locations that the CMC believes would be desirable for the PLA (including the PLA Navy and PLA Air Force) to secure sole access on a permanent basis. They have been listed in the notes given by the Office of the General Secretary on the advice of the Central Military Commission (CMC) to Wang Yi. The carefully curated list of ten island countries visited by the PRC Foreign Minister were chosen by the CMC on the grounds of (a) having at decision-making levels a sufficient number of individuals who are beholden to the PRC, (b) having kinetic strike access to actual or potential military bases, especially of the Quad, and (c) already having a significant number of resident or long transit PRC citizens located there. Prime Minister Sogavare of the Solomon Islands is as reliable a “dear friend” of the PRC as are former Prime Minister Oli of Nepal, Former President Yameen of the Maldives and former Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa of Sri Lanka. The problem for Sogavare and his patrons in Beijing is that the country’s largest province, Malaita, is under the control of the elected Prime Minister, Daniel Suidani. He is opposed to the Solomon Islands becoming a vassal state of the PRC. Premier Suidani has been campaigning against such a sellout by the ruling group of politicians in Honiara, the national capital. Unfortunately for him, the tentacles of the Sino-Wahabi lobby in Australia and New Zealand have ensured that Suidani has not been given any backing by either Auckland or Canberra in his campaign against the Sogavare doctrine, which is that what is good for the PRC is good for the Solomon Islands. Even Quad partner India appears to be looked upon with caution in Canberra, so much so that influential persons in the Pacific island nations needing to make a transit stop in Australia, en route to destinations in India, get subjected to unexplained visa delays and queries by Australian authorities. Given the power and resources of the Sino-Wahabi lobby, such a situation is likely to continue until a direct flight gets launched between India and Fiji, a country that does not require a visa for citizens of the Pacific island countries. There are India-friendly individuals in many of these island nations who are willing to serve as Honorary Consuls of India, and some have sent requests for such appointments to South Block, but as yet, with no success.

Members of Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), in Beijing, on 30 September 2021. REUTERS

This may change, however. Close relations between India and the Pacific island countries is reported to be a priority of External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, and it is therefore expected that proposals for the appointment of at least a few Honorary Consuls in key Pacific island countries such as the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Tonga will finally be actioned in a context where there has been excessive reliance on Australia where relations with this group of countries in the Indo-Pacific are concerned. In actuality, Canberra and Auckland have made themselves unpopular within the group, as their diplomats are considered overbearing and patronizing, a fault that Beijing has sought to take advantage of. India’s advantage is that in Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the country has a Head of Government who is respectful of all countries, and who demonstrates in his attitude and diplomacy a stance of complete equality, no matter what the disparity in size and population of the country concerned and India may be.
Although as yet the Pacific islands as a group have declined to be drawn into the PLA embrace, Foreign Minister Wang Yi has been successful during his visit in the signing of a protocol between Vanuatu and the PRC. The document provides for assistance, such as an exhaustive survey of the seabed around the island country (and nearby) areas by the PRC Directorate of Hydrology. Such mapping would be helpful for future naval operations, as also in accessing the seabed resources of the zone that is to be comprehensively surveyed. Wang Yi has secured Vanuatu’s agreement for twice weekly flights from the Chinese mainland to and from Vanuatu. Such flights “would be increased once traffic on the route grows” as a consequence of PLA personnel and members of the security agencies, besides PRC citizens looking to establish deep roots in the islands, making regular visits to the newly established PRC facilities in Vanuatu. A naval vessel is to be gifted to the island country, in exchange for which coast guard officers of Vanuatu will be “comprehensively trained” by PLAN officers. In three of the islands that are part of Vanuatu, “humanitarian aid” warehouses and storage complexes are to be set up. Any checking of what “humanitarian assistance” is arriving from the PRC to these facilities would of course be done by Chinese authorities. Such assistance may be of the same type as the humanitarian assistance being sent to Ukraine by the US and its EU partners in NATO, much of which is produced by armaments manufacturers. Under the protocol, the PRC has contracted to set up an intrusion-proof communication system for the “internal security of the friendly nation of Vanuatu”. Such a network would give Chinese agencies access to messaging via communications systems across a wide swathe of territory, possibly including countries other than the Pacific island countries. In order to ensure speedy deployment of PRC police and military forces wherever needed in the nation, a network of roads is being set up. This is entered in the protocol as part of the PRC effort at “promoting development in friendly Vanuatu”. Neither Canberra nor Auckland, much less Washington, seems to be willing to react in the manner necessary to prevent the building of such stepping stones towards a robust PLA kinetic and non-kinetic capacity in the Pacific islands. These would be in preparation for possible US and allied intervention in the event of an attempted takeover by the PRC of Taiwan, or moves by the military and asymmetric forces acting under the direction of the CMC guided by Xi Jinping Thought to create a chokehold for traffic within the South China and East China Seas. Whether President Biden will get over his obsession with punishing Putin in time for him and his partners in the region to ensure that such outcomes be prevented remains an open question. What is certain is that the consequences of President Joe Biden’s Putin obsession will be much greater than the fallout caused by a similar emotion in President George W. Bush towards Saddam Hussein. Interesting times beckon.

After Solomons, Vanuatu is PLA’s next Pacific island base

US, EU and UK follow the Pied Piper of Kiev (The Sunday Guardian)

 Clearly not many adults in that continent remember the story, but European children have heard the tale of the Pied Piper, who by playing his flute was able to lure all of a particular life form within Hamelin to a cliff overlooking the sea. In seconds, they began falling to their doom, even as the piper played on his flute, finally driving all the lot over the precipice. Fast forward to 2022, when NATO is sleepwalking in the direction that the Pied Piper of Kiev leads the alliance in taking. The Ukrainian government from the start seeks from NATO that it ensures that the Russian Federation and its population suffer the torment of complete meltdown. President Zelenskyy regards admission into NATO and the application of Article 5 as the only chance of avoiding the fate that President Putin seems to have in store for Ukraine. Zelenskyy and his ministers and officials appear shocked that the atrocity upon atrocity that the government in Kiev assures was carried out by Russian troops has thus far failed to prod NATO into sending troops and aircraft into the air and land borders of Ukraine. Even the Bucha massacre, which was revealed to the world by Ukrainian forces only three days after Russian forces had left the city on March 30, failed to drag NATO into entering the battlefield directly. Zelenskyy and others from Kiev have predicted that still greater massacres await disclosure. Their expectation is that the discovery of further “proofs of genocide” would bring NATO forces directly onto the battlefield. Kiev wants nothing less than NATO putting hundreds of thousands of boots on the ground. Not to forget hundreds of aircraft and thousands of projectiles to be launched by NATO to ensure that a No Fly Zone for Russians gets created across Ukraine. After all, something done so easily in Iraq or Libya, why not in Ukraine, which is well on track to becoming a European version of 1980s Afghanistan? The warlike words of the Secretary-General of NATO must make Zelenskyy and those who claim to work under him confident that finally the next atrocity, the next tranche of punitive sanctions on the Russian Federation, would generate momentum sufficient to push NATO over the cliff edge of a kinetic war with the Russian Federation. Eager for this outcome to come true, the increasingly impatient and testy flutist in Kiev continues to play the flute with its plaintive tones to parliaments across the western world. The hope is that his calls would drive governments within this openly Russophobic military alliance towards more measures that would escalate already unprecedented tensions with the world’s most advanced nuclear weapons state. Those in authority in Kiev regard as essential that NATO send combat aircraft manned by EU “volunteers” and Ukrainians to take out Russian forces.

NATO has made it clear to the rest of the world that it considers the Russian Federation as the enemy, exactly as the alliance regarded the Soviet Union during the days of the US-USSR Cold War. Efforts are being made to rope in the PRC on the side of the US-EU-UK coalition, recreating the alliance between Beijing and Washington against Moscow that lasted until 2010. The world has entered the era of Cold War 2.0, which is between the US plus and the PRC plus, hence it is confusing to countries in Asia that this memo seems to have been lost in transit while making its way to the White House. NATO is in no way anxious to contest the accelerating efforts of CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping to establish the PRC’s dominance over the Indo-Pacific. The neo-Atlanticist powers, snug in their Cold War 1.0 foxhole, would rather concentrate on Russia rather than on China as their enemy of choice. They are refreshing in their honesty, for they make no secret of NATO’s intention to melt down the Russian Federation. NATO presumably accepts what Russophobic Ukrainian interlocutors have talked about for decades, which is that Russians are not really “European” in the way that Ukrainian-speaking people are. The Kremlin has made it clear that an existential conflict, which is exactly what NATO is now openly waging against the Russian Federation, would be met with overwhelming force from the Russian side. NATO’s march towards the cliff edge continues.
MDN

US, EU and UK follow the Pied Piper of Kiev 

Bucha massacre generates parallel perceptions (The Sunday Guardian)

 

Much of the ‘independent reporting’ of western media outlets comes from videos and briefings provided by the numerous irregular forces within the Kiev establishment.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba seemed shocked during a BBC interview that the grotesque images of corpses at Bucha near Kiev failed to get NATO members to accept the complete shutdown of all ties between the countries in that alliance and Russia. Certainly the narrative presented within NATO (and which is identical to that of the Kiev government) has generated more anger, indeed hatred, directed at Russia and its people. Almost in lockstep, the Kiev narrative has been repeated by almost all media channels within NATO member states. Those refusing to fall in line may lose their promotions if not their jobs at such apostasy. What Russia gained from torturing and killing hundreds of Ukrainians and then ensuring that the evidence was preserved for the Ukrainian army to discover is a matter for reflection. Even the suspicious scrawling of “This is for children” on a Tochka missile (abundantly available in the Ukrainian army) that Kyiv-NATO claims was dropped on a train station by Russia to kill civilians aroused no suspicion in the minds of a visiting EU delegation. All (anti-Russia) Ukrainians are good, while all Russians are bad, is the accepted wisdom within much of NATO. There is in Atlanticist media a Saints versus Sinners narrative on the Ukraine war that has been playing out since the Russian invasion over television screens and in newspaper headlines in member countries of NATO. The wars it has fought in the 21st century have revealed that kinetic battles are clearly not a NATO forte, but the alliance has been adept at spin management within the International Community (aka its own membership). There is rising Russophobia within the Atlantic community, now that it has been subjected for weeks to a barrage of messaging that show Russians as barbarian hordes led by an incarnation of Adolf Hitler. Ironically, the last time the Russian people were characterised as barbarian hordes led by the satanic despot was during 1941-45, when Adolf Hitler made the second biggest mistake of his life by launching a war on the USSR led by J. Stalin, the biggest being the Holocaust that denuded Germany of its best and brightest minds. Then as now, news outlets in Nazi Germany portrayed until well into 1944 the army of that country (in its former avatar, the USSR) as being on the verge of collapse, and Stalin himself as having suffered a series of escalating mental breakdowns. This sounds familiar to the comments on the Russian military and on President Putin since the invasion of Ukraine. Every time Russian forces re-deployed their troops away from a Ukrainian town, their “defeat” at the hands of the Ukrainian forces (who entered such locations after the Russians left) is broadcast in the “international community”, which as always is defined as comprising only the NATO member states. Defeat after claimed defeat by Russian forces are reported, as were items on nervous breakdowns following each other at speed in the Kremlin, and yet this defeated, demoralised, untrained and poorly trained army still continues to dominate the battlefield in Ukraine.
Certainly RT (among the news channels blocked from transmission within NATO countries in order to protect freedom of the press) gives an entirely contrarian view to that of those outlets that generate so much Russophobia within their staple readership, outlets such as CNN, BBC, the Guardian or the New York Times. If RT is to be taken seriously, Russian soldiers are weighed down not with weapons but with candy for the children of Ukraine. The soldiers are indeed busy, not through fighting a war since February 24, but because so much of the day gets spent assisting elderly Ukrainians to escape the evil intentions of some of the troops in their own military. Certainly the numerous Russophobes and Racial Supremacists that have been mainstreamed into the Ukrainian military since 2014 are not those who emulate the example of Mother Teresa or Mahatma Gandhi. This is clear from their record in dealing with Russian-speaking inhabitants of Ukraine after the elected government led by Viktor Yanukovich was toppled by street protests generously funded by NGOs patronised by Hillary Clinton. This was well before the 2017 US Presidential elections, in which Trump bested Clinton, and which was promptly blamed by the latter on Putin.A longstanding ogre, it would appear, to the formidable Empress of the Beltway. If the Kremlin under Putin had been influential enough to decide on who would occupy the White House, the Russian economy and people would not have been in the less than ideal state that they have been in both before and after the toppling of the USSR at the close of 1991. At the same time, although such facts seem to be unknown to “international community” media, the irregulars who now dominate the Ukrainian military and security services have an easily trackable record of cruelty and oppression of the Russian-speaking inhabitants of Ukraine.
The International Criminal Court seems as unconcerned about ascertaining the identity of the corpses that were strewn inside Bucha for media outlets to cover three days after Russian forces left. Much of the “independent reporting” of western media outlets comes from videos and briefings provided by the numerous irregular forces within the Kiev establishment. The working assumption is that if a Ukrainian source within an irregular-controlled zone says something, it is the gospel truth, whereas if a Russian says anything, it must be an untruth. The CNN and BBC-certified “independent” reporters working on this axiom have wholly adopted the narrative that before the Russians left Bucha on March 30, and during the three days when Ukrainian authorities controlled the city (and never talked about such corpses), murder of hundreds of residents had been carried out. An alternative narrative from Ukrainian sources is that most of those killed were Russian-speaking, and were not part of the Russophobe Kiev establishment. And hence that they were punished for such heresy by Ukrainian army irregulars once they took back control of a city that had been abandoned by Russian forces. The Kiev establishment has been spinning cartwheels seeking to generate enough of a frenzy within the “International Community” as to motivate the Biden-Johnson duo masterminding the NATO response in Ukraine to intervene kinetically. Presenting Kiev-declared victims of Russophobia as prey to Russian soldiers is engineered to generate sufficient anger within the public in NATO member states to force timid politicians to further tighten sanctions on Russia and finally meeting Kyev’s demand that NATO enter directly the battlefields of Ukraine. What the Bucha images and narrative have done is to make the public within the NATO bloc less than eager to enter into battle against an enemy as cruelly ruthless as what NATO info-warriors present them as being. It is of course plausible that most of the Bucha dead may have been regarded as Ukrainian spies by Russian forces and despatched to the other world. Only an early and neutral forensic examination of the identities of the victims would determine which of the competing narratives is fact and which is false, but such an investigation seems remote. This is so despite the Ukrainian establishment now controlling this unfortunate suburb of Kyev. A genuinely independent investigation may still be in a position to uncover the identities of almost all the Bucha dead and reveal them and their social media views to the entire world, as distinct from the much more limited NATO-certified “international community”. Only a transparent investigation by observers from neutral countries would be able to find out if those killed were Russian-speaking collaborators of the “Occupiers”, or were Ukrainians who had signed on to the Russophobic agenda of the Azov Battalion. Truth is usually the first casualty of war, it is said, and that seems to have been the case with the tragic destiny that befell so many in Bucha and elsewhere.

Bucha massacre generates parallel perceptions