India’s Constitution is not static, but a living document (The Sunday Guardian)

 

Given an overall framework that ensures the Rule of Law, the greater individual and personal freedom is under the law and administrative practice, the faster the economy will grow.

The country has to be grateful that the Supreme Court of India has not gone in the backward looking direction of the US Supreme Court. The latter threw out Roe v Wade, the landmark judgment that fifty years ago ensured a woman’s right to choose. Instead, the Court, while dealing a death blow to Roe v Wade, transferred authority to the states of the US. Should such centripetal thinking operate in more such monumental verdicts of the US Supreme Court, the consequences for societal stability in the US could be dire. The Roberts Court has placed emphasis on the US Constitution as it was effectuated in 1789, ignoring the fact that the country then was very different from what it now is. It is this apparently irresistible tendency of the US Supreme Court to look backwards while moving ahead that has brought public faith in that institution to a historic low. In contrast, overall the Supreme Court of India has looked ahead to the future, along the way doing away with more than a few colonial era laws that placed severe limits on individual freedoms. Before August 15, 1947, India was a British colony, its people subject not to the protection of a Constitution but to regulations designed by the colonial authorities that reduced to insignificance the rights of a citizen vis-à-vis those of the state. In 1950, the Constitution of India came into effect. In his wisdom, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru declined to fashion new Criminal and Civil Procedure Codes so as to make the transition from enslavement to freedom complete. As ab consequence, there is a mismatch between the Constitution of India, designed as it is for a free people, and several of the laws and administrative practices of India, which remain for long much the same as what they were under British rule. Only with the coming to power by Narendra Modi in 2014 was such a dichotomy sought to be resolved through the elimination of colonial era laws that had been retained in free India. More than 40% of such laws have been repealed or modified since 2014, and more are slated for the same fate. Arbitrary and unchecked use of executive power is the path towards a totalitarian state, and given the universality and freedoms inherent in the ancient Indian theology of Sanatan Dharma, such a path would be entirely opposed to not just the interests of the people of India but to their culture as well. Given an overall framework that ensures the Rule of Law and the prevention of violence and other societally destructive actions, the greater individual and personal freedom is under the law and administrative practice, the faster the economy will grow.Unfortunately, just as was the case with the British, the giving of freedom to a citizen of India was in effect regarded as unwise by successive governments. An example is the English language, the spread of which has assisted in enabling India and its people to excel in the knowledge economy. A language should not be imposed or outlawed by fiat, but by popular will. Despite his knowledge of the English language and attachment to aspects of English culture, Nehru made it almost impossible for the children of an economically weak citizen of India to study in English, a policy that muffled the growth potential that was (and remains) present in the Indian people. Government schools banished English, thereby giving a monopoly of that language to the middle and upper classes to the exclusion of the poor. Under Modi, this has changed. In UP for example, the teaching of English is being encouraged, because Chief Minister Adityanath understands the value of that language in ensuring that the young in UP get better equipped to move on to successful careers not just across India but across the world.The majority within the US Supreme Court is anchored to the 17th century rather than to present-day effects of such a literal interpretation of Constitutional provisions. The Court has opened the floodgates even to mass killing automatic guns that any police force should be wary of using. As a consequence, being in the US is to exist in an environment where the next minute may see a shooter try and snuff out lives. The US Supreme Court has even tossed out such commonsensical laws as that passed by the New York legislature mandating the evaluation and registration of citizens who carry a concealed gun. How those justices of the US Supreme Court with their flawed verdicts that have caused such a perilous situation in their country can sleep restfully at night remains a mystery. Just as the Constitution of India or the US is not a marble statuette but a living document, it is the duty of the Roberts Court to ensure a safe environment for citizens, rather than making it legally permissible even for misfits and psychos to stock up on enough weapons and rounds of ammunition as could kill hundreds of people during a single rampage. The Second Amendment to the US Constitution granting the right to bear arms was passed during a time of peril, when external forces as well as internal desperadoes were threatening the lives of citizens in an environment where the available police force was rudimentary. The First Amendment to the US Constitution granted freedom of speech, but where was that freedom when Twitter under its previous owners banished even a sitting President of the US from its platform? Where was that freedom in the vicious way in which significant chunks of the public health bureaucracy in the world’s most powerful country decried those who dared to suggest in 2020 that Covid-19 was the consequence of the leak in Wuhan of a lab experiment? Given the self-censorship evident in the narrative within NATO media of the Ukraine-Russia conflict, freedom of speech appears to apply only to those who hold a politically correct view (about Saint Zelenskyy and Satan Putin for example ) and not to those having a contrarian view. As a consequence of the way in which dissent has been stifled in western countries about the origins of Covid-19 or the manner in which NATO is prosecuting the Ukraine war, not just western countries but the entire world is enduring growing tensions in society and weaknesses in the economy. There are countries where the state decrees what the citizen may lawfully do, and outlaws the rest. There are countries where the state describes in some detail what actions are legally forbidden, but are generally permissive about the rest. No prizes for guessing which set of countries will do better in the 21st century.

India’s Constitution is not static, but a living document

Global interests perish at the altar of Ukraine (The Sunday Guardian)

 

The only remaining hope for Zelenskyy is that NATO will enter the war in a full scope manner rather than indirectly through assisting Ukraine even at great cost to the interests of its own members.

It is all somewhat confusing. Duda, Biden, Sunak, Scholz and other unwavering backers of the Zelenskyy Doctrine (of no ceasefire unless Putin surrenders) agree that the missile fragments that killed a couple of Polish farmers were Ukrainian. However, they add, it was all Russia’s fault. Presumably it was Vladimir Putin whose agents in Ukraine arranged for an anti-aircraft missile to land in Polish territory. We must assume that the votaries of Russian surrender that are in control of governments across both sides of the Atlantic are not prone to talking untruths. As for Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the leader of Ukraine, whatever he says gets accepted as fact by the governments to his west. It is only with the approach of winter and the signs of incipient economic depression across Europe that there has been a change in this mistaking of the word of Zelenskyy as divine writ. Technically, the President of Ukraine is correct when he says the crashed missile was Russian, for it was made in that country. But to extrapolate from that the assumption that any Russian-built missile that gets launched by Ukrainian forces should be assumed to be launched by Russia may not be a prudent surmise to make. While technically Biden et al agree that the missile was launched by Ukraine, they reiterate that it was Russia’s fault. At present, the only remaining hope for Zelenskyy is that NATO will enter the war in a fullscope manner rather than indirectly through assisting Ukraine even at great cost to the interests of its own members. It may be said that never before have so many sacrificed their interests (most of them unwillingly) for so few. More than three billion people across the world are in much worse shape than they would have been if the 31 million Ukraine-speaking population of the country had accepted reality and given up on recovering 20% of its territory. Instead, Ukraine began a process of losing even more land in the expectation of NATO-assisted recovery of all land that it had prior to the intervention by Russia in 2014. The intervention began after the paradigm shift that the government of the country underwent in 2014, when the new President, Petro Poroshenko, reduced the 19 million Russian-speaking Ukrainians to second-class status. Given the prospect of a winter sans power and running water, there is logic behind President Zelenskyy’s transparent efforts to ensnare NATO troops into directly intervening in the phase of the conflict that began on 24 February. Despite the politically fatal attraction that making sacrifices for Zelenskyy and his colleagues increasingly have for Biden, Scholz and other Atlanticist leaders, public opinion within NATO has begun turning hostile to the involvement of NATO as a co-belligerent in the war against Russia that is being fought on the territory of Ukraine.
Who was responsible for punching holes in the two Nordstrom pipelines? If Biden, Sunak, Macron and Scholz are aware of the actual culprit, sooner or later, the identity of the perpetrators will get outed despite their silence, smudging the reputation of these leaders for transparency and straightforwardness. What the world deserves are not just repetitive denials of culpability but the facts that have been uncovered in the investigation into the sabotage of a crucial infrastructure project. Just as it expects the Ukrainian government to list the identities of the many whom they claim were killed by Russian forces in Bucha, a revelation that has yet to be made. Why Biden, Sunak and Scholz are not seeking the release of the names of the Bucha killings has given rise to suspicions that the dead were Russian-speaking. If so, the question needs to be asked as to what was Russia’s motive in apparently killing people that were sympathetic to it? If the Russians did kill them, what explains them leaving a Bucha that was shown as strewn with dead bodies? If the boastful claims of the Ukrainian leadership that its forces are steadily squeezing Russian forces out of territory that had been earlier captured by them are true, the risk of Vladimir Putin using some of the more deadly weapons in his arsenal multiplies rather than chances of his accepting surrender. He is unlikely to follow the carefree path that President Biden took when he surrendered to the Taliban in Afghanistan in August 2021. That self-inflicted defeat was the start of Biden’s fall from grace where US voters were concerned. The Democrats are fortunate that the Republican Supreme Court as well as Donald Trump prevented the unpopularity of the White House from dragging Democratic tallies down. Their Senate win means that India may soon get a US ambassador after two years of waiting. An incoming envoy may try and end a situation where citizens of India wait 900 days for a US visa, in contrast to citizens of the PRC, who get such visas in a jiffy. As for the EU, the wait for a visa for Indians is reported to be 500 days, but less than 50 hours for a Chinese national. The constant chants of the US and the EU of “Viva Democracy” are clearly different from making available visas for citizens of democracies. The whole world is the loser as a consequence of both sides not heeding Narendra Modi’s warning that “this is not the era of war”. The effects of winter sans Russian energy to Europe may at last bring to fruition Modi’s wish.

Global interests perish at the altar of Ukraine

DMK must rethink its opposition to EWS quota (The Sunday Guardian)

 

It would be less than an incentive for domestic and international companies to invest in Tamil Nadu if those governing the state give the impression of being trapped in a time warp.

Finance Minister Thiagarajan of Tamil Nadu has received admiring attention from much of the media for his reported depth of knowledge and immense reserves of competence. If such be true, he would certainly be an asset not just to his party the DMK but to Tamil Nadu as well. The state would emerge as a model for other states, should the economic situation in a state that has always done relatively well in several economic parameters improve speedily and vastly. The future will tell. However, judging by his remarks on the recent move to have a 10% quota for the Economically Weaker Sections of the communities that have historically been excluded, it would appear that the TN Finance Minister believes that even during the past thousand-odd years, the so-designated “forward castes” of India have discriminated against the others within the Hindu community. This is indeed a discovery that needs to be applauded in textbooks of Indian history, that during Mughal and British colonial rule, the “forward castes” were so empowered that they wreaked havoc on the others. Till now, the perception was that Hindus in general (including the so-called “forward castes”) were subordinated to first the Mughals and later the British. Let it be added that the present writer has no quarrel with reservation quotas for the SC, ST and Backward groups. There must indeed have been discrimination in the past, even if more than a thousand years ago. As a consequence of such reservations, more and more from the population segments that were given the benefits of reservation improved their lot. Indeed, in Andhra Pradesh, the Kamma community is known for its entrepreneurs and the wealth of many within that group, far more than the Brahmins of the state are, and they are at least the equals in material advancement of the more “forward” Reddy community. In Kerala, it is the Ezhava community that is at parity with the Christian community in the matter of success in business, not the “forward” Nairs. In Maharashtra, not the Brahmins but the Marathas dominate the field of state policy, while in UP and Bihar, the Yadav community has emerged as probably the most influential, as witness the progress to the top of leaders such as Mulayam Singh Yadav and Lalu Prasad Yadav in their time. So what is Minister Thiagarajan upset about? All that he needs to do is to take a stroll around his ministerial bungalow, and he will come across several homes of those from so-called “forward” communities living in poverty. Surely hunger and want are felt equally by individuals who are classified as either “forward” or “backward”, or “most backward”? Or do “forwards” have some quality within themselves that they feel the impact of neither hunger nor the horrors of hardship? Now that the Supreme Court has given its imprimatur to the policy of providing a quota on the basis of economic need, including to sections of the population till now outside the matrix of reservations in state jobs, it is doubtful that the Tamil Nadu state government will succeed in getting the move overturned. All that will happen will be to accumulate the dismay of those who fail to understand the reasoning behind the implicit assumption that poverty is felt differently by individual segments of society.

DMK supremo Stalin became Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu in the third decade of the 21st century. Surely it is time for him to join hands with other regional leaders who have refused to join in moves against a policy that has been overdue for 75 years. If he were to look around, he may notice that Tejashwi Yadav is not a copy of his father, nor is Akhilesh of Mulayam Singh or Aaditya of Uddhav Thackeray, just as the former CM of Maharashtra is not an exact copy of his father Balasaheb, who incidentally had a sense of wry humour that made him a pleasure to meet. Generation after generation has moved on from the 20th to the 21st century. It would be less than an incentive for domestic and international companies to invest in Tamil Nadu if those governing the state give the impression of being trapped in a time warp, unable to come to terms with a society that is very different from what it was a thousand years ago, or even a thousand weeks ago. Since the 1990s, this writer has talked of the “Mercedes Caste”. Whatever the family of an individual owning such a car might have been in the past, most fathers-in-law would welcome such a son-in-law into their homes. Among the many signs of hope for the future of India is the rising and welcome incidence of inter-caste marriages. Those who oppose such a marriage, and in some cases even resort to murder to prevent it, are indistinguishable from animals of the jungle, for they cannot understand that every human being has the right to equality, not only in law but in the treatment given to her or him by the rest of society. Surely the very well-regarded Tamil Nadu Finance Minister Thiagarajan is free of such Jurassic Park traits as refusing to acknowledge that the poor need to be helped to change their circumstances, no matter what classification has been applied to them. In the Karunanidhi clan, there are modern individuals with creative minds, such as the patriarch’s daughter, Kanimozhi. It may be time for those in the DMK who have adapted to the 21st century to show that today’s DMK is as changed as today’s India is.

DMK must rethink its opposition to EWS quota

U.S. midterm elections give Biden a chance to course correct in Eurasia (The Sunday Guardian)

 

The G20 Summit may show whether President Biden has finally read the memo that this is the era of Cold War 2.0, and that the lead adversary is no longer Moscow but Beijing.

BENGALURU: The results of the 2022 midterm elections in the United States came as a surprise to at least three of the four heads of the great powers of the 21st century. The response of Prime Minister Modi is not known, but Presidents Biden, Putin and Xi had expected a Democratic meltdown, given the toxic consequences of the war in Ukraine that NSA Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken ensured that Biden hyperactively led. Xi and Putin must have been disappointed by the close result, for to both Moscow and Beijing, a much weakened Executive and an even more sharply feuding Legislature in the US would have been welcome. Instead, despite the unpopularity of President Biden, the Democrats have surprised themselves by putting up a good showing, making the US President ecstatic and putting within reach the enactment of the $2 trillion Biden Social Justice Plan. The Republican leadership expected to gain a record number of seats in the US Congress as a result of the inflation and supply dislocations caused by the very war in Ukraine that they were vocally backing, including by voting with the Democrats on the huge amounts of money regularly expended on the war by the White House. Unfortunately for the GoP, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had ensured through then President Trump the transformation of large swathes of the US judiciary into crusaders for what may be termed Theological Republicanism. Clearly, McConnell had not factored in the distaste felt by several independent voters, especially young women, at a Supreme Court that appears to be basing many of its judgments less on settled laws and democratic logic than on theological and ideological justifications. In particular, the US Supreme Court’s open sesame to the proliferation of mass killing automatic weapons in the hands of citizens, added to its shock overturning of Roe v Wade took away not just public safety but freedoms that for half a century had been taken for granted by US citizens. The evident ideological and theological bias of the six Republican-leaning Justices in the US Supreme Court helped the Democratic Party to avoid a predicted Republican sweep during the November 2022 midterms.
Apart from the Supreme Court, the other factor that boosted vote tallies of Democratic Party candidates was Donald J. Trump. Several independent voters swallowed their distaste for Biden’s unwillingness to minister to voter priorities in his obsession with Russia and Ukraine, and voted Democratic out of fear that a Republican midterm sweep in 2022 would make another Trump bid for the US Presidency in 2024 inevitable. Even if Trump were to lose that contest, which he would unless Joe Biden were his opponent, his consistent refusal to accept any result other than a victory for himself would continue to poison politics and society in the US even from 2024 onwards, to the delight of Xi and Putin. The strands of Trumpian logic, including denying that losing in a fair election was normal in a democracy, brought down Republican candidates such as Mehmet Oz and Karri Lake, who would have won but for their extravagantly advertised embrace of Trump and his views. In contrast, a future superstar, who has yet to be acknowledged as such in US media, J.D. Vance, in effect, only had a handshake with Trump rather than a full embrace, which was why he was elected as a US Senator from Ohio. Tellingly, Vance thanked more than 30 individuals by name in his victory speech, but left out Trump. He was clearly aware that from the 2022 midterms onwards, Trump’s stock was going to be in decline even amongst the Republican faithful, and so the incoming first term Senator did not want his popularity to get dragged down by adherence to Trump in the manner that several other legislators in his party are experiencing. The combination of public dread of a rerun of Trump’s tantrums, together with a Supreme Court that in some of its judgments do not go by the legal logic that is the foundation of democracy, but the belief systems of particular religious theologies mixed with political ideologies, hurt the Republican candidates. The 6:3 majority in the Roberts Court has exhibited a method of deciding cases that had not been anticipated by those who wrote the US Constitution in 1787.

U.S. RELIABILITY UNDER A CLOUD
As had been predicted much earlier in these columns, the November 2022 US midterms have shown that Donald Trump would be the ideal Republican candidate for a Democratic opponent to defeat, provided that such a candidate not be Joe Biden. Although known to be well-intentioned and straightforward, Biden’s hyperactivity in leading NATO’s proxy war on the Russian Federation in the battlegrounds of Ukraine has crippled the 46th President of the US in the way that the Vietnam War made the continuation in office of Lyndon Baines Johnson beyond the close of his Presidential term in 1969 impossible. So blinded have key Europeanist advisers of the White House been in their fixation on kneecapping “Putin’s Russia” that they neglected to take account of the collateral damage that the US and its allies would suffer, especially in economic terms, because of the Biden-led sanctions that were imposed on Russia that accelerated in wave after wave since the invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces on 24 February 2022. The harm to citizens in the US, EU and the UK (not to mention the rest of the world) that has been caused by worldwide shortages and price rise (including within key NATO member states) in the aftermath of each round of western sanctions on Russia has yet to deter the frenzied effort by that alliance to “teach Putin a lesson”, but it has made a growing number of US-UK-EU voters turn away from those NATO leaders who are responsible for such policies, including Biden and Scholz. In the 1960s, President Johnson was persuaded to expand US involvement in the Vietnam War by Kennedy-era holdovers such as NSA McGeorge Bundy and Defence Secretary Robert Strange McNamara. After Biden’s victory over Trump in 2020, the still thriving Cold War 1.0 (USSR-US) enthusiasts, who had come of age in matters of policy under President Clinton, individuals such as Jake Sullivan and Antony Blinken, convinced President Biden that the very future of western civilisation was at stake in the Ukraine conflict. In the 1960s, Bundy and McNamara had similarly convinced President Johnson that the future of non-communist Asia was at stake in the paddy fields of Vietnam. Despite scuttling the political fortunes of their boss President Johnson, both Bundy and McNamara went on to lucrative careers in prosperous institutions, as no doubt Blinken and Sullivan will after Joe Biden becomes wholly unelectable by the initial months of 2023 as a consequence of the fallout of the intensity of the tactics the US President has signed on to in the Ukraine conflict. The US taxpayer largesse showered on that country stands in contrast to the absence of any armaments given away gratis by the US to India, the Philippines, Vietnam or Taiwan, despite Xi Jinping’s repeated efforts at encroaching on their sovereignty in land, sea and air. Given the contrast between the assistance given free of cost to the Ukrainian military and the pell-mell withdrawal during June-August 2021 of all US support to the Afghan National Army that had been till then been battling the Taliban at great cost in lives, the reliability of the US as a partner in defence and security matters has come to be doubted within the GCC, South Asia, East Asia and ASEAN.

BIDEN’S FAVOURITE COUNTRY
In the gifting of abundant supplies, President Biden’s open heartedness to Ukraine stands in contrast to his relative inattention to countries where human suffering is much worse, such as Somalia or Ethiopia. This has been noted in countries that are not part of what is referred to as the “civilised world” aka “international community” in media outlets of member-states of NATO. For the Cold War 1.0 policymakers within NATO the need is for continuing the war until their hopes are realised of Russia under Putin entering a meltdown. Unfortunately for them, the Ukraine war has resulted in domestic constituencies tiring of the pain to themselves of the rising volume of aftershocks of the war and sanctions, even though President Biden appears focused on expanding US involvement even in 2023, exactly as President Johnson was fixated on increased US involvement in Vietnam in the 1960s. Seeing that candidates embracing Trumpian logic such as Karri Lake could overcome moderate Republican alternatives to get nominated as candidates in the midterms, although many subsequently lost to the Democrats, ex-President Trump’s hopes for the Republican nomination in the 2024 US Presidential elections remain alive. While there remains a chance that Trump may still get his party’s nomination in 2024 and go on to lose to a rival so long as he or she is not Joe Biden, discontent within the Democratic Party base at the Biden White House is likely to ensure that President Biden gets defeated in the 2024 Democratic primaries, should he make the mistake of seeking a second term in the White House. Should Vice-President Kamala Harris detach herself from the White House in a way that Hubert Humphrey was unable to do in 1968, she may yet emerge as the Democratic nominee, but that seems unlikely. In the case of the Republicans, should Trump understand that he would lose in 2024 just as he lost in 2020, he could back son Donald for a Senate seat in 2024 rather than seek a rerun himself. A balanced 2024 Republican ticket that showcases moderation and ethnic diversity may result in a Red Wave in 2024 that has been absent in 2022. In its effort at flipping seats, the Republican Party backing Independent Tulsi Gabbard for the US Senate from Hawaii may be the best way of flipping a Democratic seat in that scenic state. The economic storm intensifying as a consequence of Biden’s expensive and risky prosecution of the Ukraine war, plus the effect on much of Europe of facing winter cold without Russian energy will show that Gabbard was right in warning about the costs to ordinary US citizens of the Ukraine war. Unfortunately for the regional powers focused on ensuring that the Indo-Pacific remain free and open to all, Biden is led by Cold War 1.0 enthusiasts in an administration that seems ignorant of the fact that the US and the rest of the world have decades ago slipped into the era of Cold War 2.0 (between the PRC and the US principally). In Cold War 2.0, Russia is only a secondary threat, in the way then US ally China was to its foe the USSR during most of Cold War 1.0 between the USSR and the US.

TO CHINA, WITH LOVE
Facts speak louder than statements, and if reports emanating from Washington are to be believed, despite the number of applicants from the PRC for a US visa being higher than the number of Indian citizens applying, it takes less than nine days for a citizen of the PRC to get a US visa and 900 days for a citizen of India. What the charm of Xi Jinping is that enables him to so influence the White House in a favourable direction remains unclear, but what is obvious is the growing doubt in the world’s most consequential continent about the sincerity of the protestations of President Biden that he has as much concern for Asia as he so evidently has for Europe minus Russia. Friends of India such as Representative Raja Krishnamurthy and Senator Marco Rubio are still present in the US Congress, but the White House will need to do much more to not just improve its standing among US citizens but in that other huge democracy. And despite several accommodative signals of the Biden administration to Beijing, this is not the People’s Republic of China but the Republic of India.

ASIA WATCHING BIDEN
The G20 Summit may show whether President Biden has finally got the memo that this is the era of Cold War 2.0, and that the lead adversary is no longer Moscow but Beijing. 2023 will show whether Biden can get passed his societally transformative agenda, thereby replicating the feat of Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1960s. The year will show whether Biden shows in action rather than merely in honeyed expressions that the White House understands that India, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam are much in the front line of US security interests as France, Germany and the UK were in the Cold War 1.0 era. Despite Biden, aided by the shadow of the US Supreme Court and Trump, the Democrats have managed to avoid a midterm collapse. As a consequence, the US President has the opportunity to course correct policies and actions concerning Eurasia. Whether Biden has the will to do so will become clear before the winter retreats in early 2023.

U.S. midterm elections give Biden a chance to course correct in Eurasia

Appeasement of dictators results in tragedy, not farce (The Sunday Guardian)

 

The capitulation of Daladier and Chamberlain to all of Hitler’s maximalist negotiating positions made Hitler certain that neither Britain nor France would take up arms against Germany.

There are two contrary views about why Britain’s Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain sought to placate Adolf Hitler rather than attack Nazi Germany at a time when it was militarily weak. The first view is that Chamberlain believed that Hitler had limited ambitions, and made decisions on war and peace based not on mystic faith but sound reasoning. As a consequence, he took the Attila the Hun of the 20th century at his word when Hitler said that getting the Sudetenland was the last conquest that was on his agenda. There were multiple indications, including not just in Hitler’s many speeches but in Mein Kampf, that much more was sought by the despot, but these were considered simply the promises of a politician, intended in the manner of empty pots and pans to make a loud noise, and quickly be forgotten. In such a telling, Chamberlain was a man of peace, who sought to avoid another continental war after the 1914-18 carnage, and in any case, was able to gain a bit of time for England to rearm through the sacrifice of Czechoslovakia for Britain. A movie was made about that period that showed Chamberlain to be clear eyed about Hitler, but dismissive of domestic public support for a Franco-British first strike on Germany. That an individual he loathed, Winston Churchill, had been advocating such a strike for years made Chamberlain all the more anxious to avoid such a portentous move. The other view of Chamberlain is the more common, which is that he misread Hitler, and failed to understand that the appetite of a street bully is whetted by concessions, not satiated. A book, “Travellers in the Third Reich”, written by Julia Boyd, compiles a series of views about Nazi Germany from the inside, from the years just before Hitler was appointed the Reichskanzler in 1933 to the final period marking the end of himself and the regime that he led until his death by suicide in 1945. It is clear from the anecdotes given in the book that Hitler had from the start planned for a great war, even installing iron brackets atop buses in the 1930s so as to affix machine guns on them once the war that he had planned from the start of his political career began.

As part of the training for wartime conditions of the German population, many of whom had blind faith in Hitler despite his hysterical gestures and hate-filled invective. Hitler used to hold mock drills in German cities that even mimicked the sound of bombs and artillery blasts, as well as total blackouts. All this from four years before the war began in 1939 with the invasion of Poland, a country where the leadership to the end of peacetime regarded Germany as a potential ally against the country they loathed, the Soviet Union. Of course, such a stance gave Chamberlain another excuse to ignore the persistent pleading of Soviet Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov (who had a British wife) for France, Britain and the USSR to form a pact designed to attack and defeat Germany and destroy the Nazi regime together with its Fuehrer. In August 1939, Chamberlain and his French counterpart Eduard Daladier finally agreed to send a delegation to Moscow to “study and examine the possibility” of a Soviet-French-British pact designed to protect smaller European states against Germany. The delegation was given no plenary powers, and was headed by Sir Reginald Aylmer Ranfurly Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax, whose most significant distinction was his longish name, which had been gifted to him by adoring parents. The Anglo-French mission set off for Moscow not by air but by ship, as Sir Reginald was a navy man. The Royal Navy vessel in which the delegation made its slow progress to the USSR included an Indian cook who was known throughout the service for the delicious curries that he produced for appreciative naval officers. Curry on the way back must have served as some solace, for when the delegation reached Moscow, Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov pointed out that the members had no powers to take any decisions, merely to talk, and that anyway, German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop had arrived a short while ago by air. Hours before, Ribbentrop had signed the Nazi-Soviet pact with Molotov in the presence of CPSU General Secretary J.V. Stalin. According to some anecdotes of the tragi-comedy that was the Drax delegation, both British and French members of the Franco-British delegation to the Soviet Union were visibly relieved at news of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. For this meant that neither France nor Britain would have to ally with the odious Soviet Union and its brutal dictator Stalin. In their view, Nazi Germany was not odious, nor was its dictator Hitler brutal. In a happy mood, they took sail back to France and Britain, and may have been seaborne enjoying the delights of onboard meat curry lunches when the German Wehrmacht invaded Poland on 1 September 1939.
The capitulation of Daladier and Chamberlain to all of Hitler’s maximalist negotiating positions made Hitler certain that neither Britain nor France would take up arms against Germany, were Hitler to next annex Poland after throwing a few scraps Stalin’s way, as he had intended from the start. Julia Boyd’s book shows the shock of those few who understood the mind of Hitler, knew that he would keep wanting more with each concession, with each perceived show of Allied lack of resolve. Other recollections show the surprise and joy among the Nazi faithful at the unexpected news that Chamberlain and Daladier abandoned Czechoslovakia to the Nazis in August 1939 much the way President Biden abandoned Afghanistan in August 2021. Will a present-day dictator draw from Biden’s surrender to the Taliban the conclusion that there would be little or no substantive blowback from the US (and therefore its Atlanticist allies) to a PRC invasion of Taiwan? Or another PLA attempt at grabbing Ladakh and Arunachal from India? Marx was wrong. A tragedy in history need not repeat itself only as farce, but could return as yet another tragedy. If only the White House had received that memo in time.

Appeasement of dictators results in tragedy, not farce

Ukraine war spreads suffering across the globe (The Sunday Guardian)

 

If UK, EU, US are suffering, so must Asia, Africa, South America through no fault of their own.

That the majority of Conservative Members of Parliament opted for Rishi Sunak as the new Prime Minister of the UK is a sign that the party has changed, much as the Democratic Party in the US changed in the 1960s. During that decade, the baby steps towards ensuring progress in social justice to the African American community that were taken by President John F. Kennedy were accelerated by his successor, Lyndon Baines Johnson. Few had expected the Texan to emerge as a transformative President of the US in his domestic policy. And yet, it was only with the passage of the Great Society legislation by the US Congress under his prodding that brought US society into the 20th century from the 18th. Unfortunately for Johnson, he allowed a group of intellectual zealots led by Defence Secretary Robert Strange McNamara to bully him into expanding the war against Vietnamese insurgents that Washington had inherited from Paris. The Vietnam Papers show how an Ivy League education may build a perception of infallibility and an inability to even examine opposing points of view. McNamara and the other “war hawks” encircling him were convinced that the metric of overwhelming US preponderance in weapons and resources would rapidly and inevitably prevail over Ho Chi Minh’s peasant army. Despite Johnson’s successor Richard Milhous Nixon together with Nobel Peace Prize winner Henry Kissinger converting large areas of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia into a wasteland, the US military had to leave Vietnam a defeated and demoralised force in March 1973. Much later, although the US together with its Afghan allies had not lost the war, President Biden ordered a withdrawal of not just US forces but logistical teams assisting the Afghan military by August 2021. From that time onwards, the credibility of the US as a reliable security partner plummeted where Asia was concerned. The Biden Withdrawal from Afghanistan and the handing over of that country to the Taliban gave a dose of steroids to the Sino-Wahhabi alliance that has not been helpful to global stability nor US security. An even greater blunder committed by Joe Biden is his unlimited support for the regime in Kiev, despite its oft-stated objective (a constant since 2014) of “recovering all the lost territories” has made a peace settlement impossible. UK Prime Minister Sunak has made the first mistake in what he hopes will be a long stay at 10 Downing Street by retaining Ben Wallace as Defence Secretary. Much in the manner of President Biden, Wallace is impervious to accommodating any view other than those expressed by Zelenskyy. Much of Asia, Africa and South America believes that it is because Ukrainians are “white” that Biden and the rest of NATO are ready to sacrifice the welfare of their own people for the sake of the Zelenskyy regime. A more logical reason may be the longstanding effort by strategists of the Atlantic Alliance to seek the break up and descent into chaos in the Russian Federation in the way that took place in what until then was the Soviet Union.
So hypercharged is the media-driven frenzy within the Atlantic Alliance to in effect destroy themselves to “save Ukraine” that even feeble efforts at restoring sanity to policy such as Progressive Caucus Chairperson Pramila Jayapal’s letter asking for a negotiated peace in the conflict was retracted after the White House intervened. President Biden and his UK and EU counterparts seem unaware or uncaring of the travails that their sanctions are causing, toxic measures that in no way have held back Vladimir Putin from continuing with the Ukraine campaign. Rishi Sunak must know how deadly the impact of draining UK resources to feed the insatiable appetite of the Ukrainian militias fighting Russia is, and yet (as shown by the re-appointment of Ben Wallace) he seems unable to prevent the train wreck that Ukraine is proving to be for the Atlantic Alliance. From the start of the conflict in February, this analyst was clear that CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping would seek to prolong it, and this he is doing by keeping the Russian military machine afloat through the cash and goods given in exchange for Russian resources at discounted prices. Compared with China’s, the Indian contribution to the Kremlin’s coffers is tiny, and yet is the cause of much hand wringing by Atlanticist politicians and media. In that estimation, Xi would like the proxy war being fought by NATO with Russia in Ukraine to continue at least until the initial months of 2023. Meanwhile, the trans-Atlantic formation seems motivated by an insistence on the rest of the world (except of course China) enduring an even higher level of privation as a consequence of policies formulated entirely in Whitehall, the White House and Brussels. If the UK, EU and the US are suffering, so must Asia, Africa and South America through no fault of their own. Charming.

Ukraine war spreads suffering across the globe

Xi relying on ‘Chissia’ to power PRC expansion (The Sunday Guardian)

 

Xi is banking on a combination of cheap Russian energy and Chinese manufacturing to turbocharge the PRC’s geopolitical challenge to the democracies, at a time when the West is scoring self-goal after self-goal.

New Delhi: Within policymaking bodies in the Lutyens Zone, fragments of Chindia (the assumed synergistic fusion between India and China) still litter some minds. Deng Xiaoping began his wooing of India with the 1981 opening of a route from India to Kailas Mansarovar. Since then, trade between India and China has ballooned, and is presently witnessing a surplus of trade in that country’s favour that has crossed US$80 billion. Although Deng kept the PLA on a leash, the military was set free under Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao. Salami-sliced expansion further into India of the Line of Actual Control (which remains unrecognized by Beijing) co-existed with honeyed language from PRC diplomats and interlocuters. Until the always visibly assertive, often aggressive Xi Jinping took charge as CCP General Secretary in 2012, the promise of Chindia was kept alive even though Beijing refused to backtrack on border issues, all the while deepening its cooperation with GHQ Rawalpindi, including through providing logistical and other support in operations directed at India. While Aksai Chin has from the 1950s been occupied by China, after Xi’s ascent to the highest office in his country, Pakistan-occupied Kashmir too has entered on a path of becoming a protectorate of the PRC, with the eager consent of the Pakistan Army. Since the second 5-year term of Xi began, hardly any attention has been given to the concept of the Russia-India-China axis, while intense effort has gone into strengthening the bilateral relationship between Beijing and Moscow. It is no secret that the CCP considers large chunks of Siberian land as having been taken from China by Russia in the past. Nor that Xi’s desire is to dominate the European part of Eurasia once he manages to establish not just ascendancy but control over the Asian part. In such a schema, Moscow will need to be content to serve as a junior partner to Beijing, a status that Moscow appears to have silently accepted.

CHINA-RUSSIA CONFLICT UNLIKELY
Despite their historical differences, once the Sino-Russian boundary was officially demarcated by mutual agreement, a kinetic conflict between the two countries comprising “Chissia” has become very unlikely. In contrast, China has refused to enter into a boundary

settlement with India, thereby reserving the right to launch another border conflict in the future. A warning bell was the distribution by the PRC delegation of maps of the SCO countries during the 15-16 September Samarkand summit. These maps show Arunachal and Ladakh as part of China, and Kashmir as part of Pakistan. There was no bilateral between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping in the SCO summit, unlike in the past. Since 2016, India has been moving from chasing the illusion of Chindia into factoring in the reality of Chissia. Unlike his predecessors, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, from the start of his coming to power in 2014, was clear-eyed about the objectives of the CCP leadership core, and has strengthened military defences on the boundary with China in a way not seen earlier. Now that Xi has secured a third term, he needs to deliver on his promise of expanding the territorial boundaries of the PRC before seeking his fourth (and possibly final) 5-year term in 2027. Given that the ASEAN Sea (otherwise known as the South China Sea) has substantially come under Chinese occupation, that leaves Taiwan and lands south of the Himalayas as obvious targets for attempts at takeover through the PLA.

XI WANTS UKRAINE WAR TO CONTINUE
While NATO capitals have from the start of the 24 February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine believed that Xi could be persuaded to reel back Vladimir Putin from his adventure, the reality is that the CCP leadership core prefers that the ongoing proxy conflict between NATO and the Russian Federation continues well into 2023. As a consequence, the bulk of the financial and other resources needed by Moscow to prosecute the war have their origin in China. Since the start of the year, Xi has studied the sanctions imposed on Russia and begun taking preventive steps designed to reduce to a minimum damage done to China in the event of similar sanctions being imposed on the PRC by NATO member states together with Japan, Australia and South Korea. Chinese dollar (as well as euro, Swiss franc and Japanese yen) reserves are in the process of being replaced, including with additions to the official gold stock. If the silent effort at depreciating the RMB yuan to 8 per dollar is judged insufficient to boost exports in a depressed global market, the level of 10 RMB to a dollar would be the next step, followed by the Hong Kong dollar (HKD) snapping its peg to the US dollar. That peg has tied Hong Kong to the policies of the US Federal Reserve, which seems to be set on a course that would make the US a more and more expensive location to invest in, and to produce and sell from. A higher USD would raise the debt burden on countries that have been given Belt & Road Initiative loans, all of which have been dollar denominated. As a consequence, physical assets worth inflated sums of money would come into the ownership of China from countries unable to repay BRI debt on the lines already witnessed in some countries. The risks to China from Taiwan-related sanctions by western countries that have been hyperactive in sanctioning Russia are being sought to be minimised through an increasing volume of commodity trade being settled in currencies other than USD. This would be helpful in the worst case scenario of the US Federal Reserve seeking to confiscate or starve China of access to USD. Under Prime Minister Modi, countermoves in the event of kinetic scenarios involving the PLA are being worked out. Similar is the case in Taiwan, where the central government has been active in dealing with the risks inherent in Xi’s penchant for expansionism. If further proof of Xi’s intentions towards India are needed, unlike in the case with Russia, the PRC has insisted that the surplus secured through Chinese exports to India should be paid in USD and not through a rupee-yuan arrangement, with predictable consequences for the dollar-rupee ratio.

HIGH USD FUELS GLOBAL INFLATION
Given the economic and social carnage wreaked as a consequence of the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic caused by a lab leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the manner in which boomeranging sanctions were imposed by NATO members has created choppy waters for the global economy. In a panic reaction to the pandemic in 2020, unprecedented lockdowns were implemented by numerous governments that had severe effects on the economies of the countries enforcing them. In attempts to mitigate the pain caused by the lockdowns, the US Federal Reserve and some other central banks unleashed Quantitative Easing (QE) directly into fiscal injections of liquidity. Such boosts in money supply led to price rises when conjoined with supply disruptions caused by the pandemic. QE was followed by the US Federal Reserve Board raising interest rates repeatedly since 2021 to “curb inflation”. Such moves are a throwback to monetary policy in the 1930s, that helped cause the Great Depression, and has had little effect on slowing down inflation, given that much of the price rise was caused by the supply and other disruptions caused by western sanctions imposed on Russia since its invasion of Ukraine. While the USD has shot up in value, this has had a devastating effect on the currencies of several US partners and allies, including in Europe. The debt to GDP ratio in the US has crossed World War II levels together with high inflation and the risk of stagflation to a level last seen in the 1970s. That crisis caused the current monetary system to be born. Another may result in a fresh transformational change that, in the expectation of the Sino-Russian alliance, could see the demise of the USD as the global reserve currency of choice.

WESTERN BANKS ENTER DANGER ZONE
Given the buffeting since 2020 of the Covid-19 and the Ukraine shock, major systemic cracks have started to appear in the US Treasury, which till now has been the anchor asset of global financial system. Treasuries should not be equated with the USD, which remains the global reserve currency, but which has steadily lost ground in the 21st century. Among the reasons why Liz Truss had to make way for Rishi Sunak at 10 Downing Street was fear of a UK pension crisis. Should the Ukraine war and western sanctions on Russia continue, most Western countries may face a similar situation. Democracies such as those in Europe as well as Japan and Korea may be pushed into a structural trade deficit. At the same time, Chissia has enabled President Putin to resist sanctions by the West. The ruble is among the few currencies that have strengthened against the USD, despite foreign reserve and individual asset confiscations by western countries, measures that have lowered confidence in the safety associated with parking reserves and property in western financial institutions. Western currencies have in 2022 begun to be perceived as less than a safe reserve, given the shifting geopolitical currents and consequent arbitrary actions taken in countries that prided themselves on the Rule of Law and due process. This may tip several western financial institutions into the danger zone, a point already reached by some such as Credit Suisse. The ban has been harmed as a consequence of Switzerland abandoning its neutrality in the proxy war between the Sino-Russian alliance and NATO. Given that the PRC is the main challenger to the primacy of the West, the dire situation of that grouping has been cause not for alarm but for jubilation in Moscow and Beijing.

COMMUNIST CHINA’S GAME PLAN
Among the scenarios likely to be followed given the context of recent events, the probable game plan of the CCP core appears to be as follows:
Xi depreciates RMB to 8 per US dollar, then subsequently to 10, which may trigger a repeat of the cause of the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, resembling in its effects the 2008 global financial crisis in scale due to excessive system leverage and diminishing firepower by both fiscal and monetary authorities.
This may coincide with (1) Xi repegging the RMB to gold at a much higher gold price, so to create an arbitrage drain of the already low western physical gold stockpile, and (2) nationwide rollout by China of its digital currency to boost the global credibility of RMB, followed by (3) de-pegging of the HKD to USD and re-pegging of the HKD to RMB. The CCP leadership core anticipates that its covert economic war on overly leveraged economies (such as those of the US and its NATO allies) due to the combined effects of Asia Financial Crisis 2.0 plus physical gold drain could elevate RMB’s international status, including via a repurposed HKD. Given the massive increases in the funds made available to the PLA, Xi believes that China is strong enough to seize BRI hard assets and projects into its own control under current contract terms. The snail’s pace of the development of Quad into a full-fledged defence and security alliance is also creating a window for economic and diplomatic power play backed by PLA muscle. When the Quad will be willing and able to offer reassurance to countries at risk of losing control of assets as a consequence of dollar-denominated BRI debt remains an open question.

US MUST AGAIN BE ARSENAL OF DEMOCRACIES
The democracies, though, are not without defences. Rather than lapse into a growth-destructive, inflation-fuelling mode, the US Federal Reserve could be used to promote global growth in democracies, as overall it remains potentially among the most destructive weapon against the enemies of democracy. Despite being infiltrated by the CCP based on recent Congressional reports, the Fed has the capacity to weaponize in defence of US allies. This was evident during the 2020 Covid pandemic via the “FIMA” facility of emergency lending of hard USD to allied countries, but not to China. The US, India and other major democracies have many cards under their sleeve. Their outcomes would of course depend on strategic awareness (including grey zone warfare initiatives) and the speed of recognition of threats and implementation of counter measures to disruptive actions carried out by the Sino-Russian alliance (Chissia). The developing situation is causing a realignment within the global community of the traditional three axes of power. These are (1) energy/commodities such as OPEC, (2) labour/production where China is the present and the future is India, as well as (3) capital, including GCC. The severing of the collaborating links among the three caused by the twin shocks of Covid-19 and the Ukraine war marked the end of structurally low inflation, low interest rates and low geopolitical risks. Xi is banking on a combination of cheap Russian energy and Chinese manufacturing so as to turbocharge the PRC’s geopolitical challenge to the democracies, at a time when the West is scoring self-goal after self-goal. India does not have the luxury of remaining on the sidelines, but needs to position itself in the ongoing contest between the democracies and the countries that regard such a system as anathema. Calculations as to what is the best way of doing this would be going on in the Prime Minister’s Office at South Block on an almost daily basis.

Xi relying on ‘Chissia’ to power PRC expansion

US MUST AGAIN BE ARSENAL OF DEMOCRACIES

‘Fight the enemy’ has become Xi’s motto (The Sunday Guardian)

 

In Xi’s speech to the 20th Party Congress, the word that was prominently used was ‘fight’, of course in its Chinese equivalent.

The General Secretary of the Communist Party of China has from the start of his getting that job portrayed himself in Napoleonic colours. Whether it be the many visuals of Xi Jinping striding in the middle of lines of immobile soldiers, or riding a jeep in the process of inspecting an army unit, the image that has been cultivated is that of Xi the Warlord. Of course, warlords have been plentiful in earlier periods of Chinese history, and seldom in a way that would evoke admiration, which is probably why neither of his two immediate predecessors (Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao) sought to clothe themselves in outfits resembling military fatigues. Xi’s wife, Peng Liyuan, is not just a popular folk singer but had until recently a high rank in the PLA. Indeed, through her contacts, across the decades Xi Jinping cultivated almost as many contacts in the military as he did amongst party officials who were civilians. As a consequence, he began favouring policy options (especially in international issues) through a military lens. As the unfortunate consequences of rule over Japan of General Hideki Tojo and his key senior military commanders, that country embarked on a series of steps beginning with the takeover of Manchuria and the invasion of China. Eventually, it was a civilian, Foreign Minister Shigemitsu, who was the first to sign the surrender document on September 2, 1945, bringing to a close World War II. Given the trajectory of the path taken by the CPC, it was inevitable that there would be Cold War 2.0. What Xi has done is to ensure through his actions and speeches that this fact can no longer be passed off as simply the imagination of a practitioner of geopolitics. Whether it be the largely successful cover-up of the origins of Covid-19 or the unchallenged takeover of more that 80% of the ASEAN Sea ( named in most maps as the South China Sea), Xi has had his successes. The problem facing him and the country he leads is that each success, the scale of which and the method used cause anger in much of the international community, sparks off a reactive process that may ultimately lead to a kinetic conflict involving the PLA and other powers. The takeover of the water spaces of the ASEAN Sea could be reversed, were the Quad to get over the influence of pacifists within it and fashion itself into a full-fledged defense and security alliance. As yet, such a progression in the trajectory of the Quad has yet to take place. Even otherwise, it seems unlikely that an attack by the PLA in Ladakh or Arunachal or both, together with an effort by GHQ Rawalpindi to accomplish what Field Marshal Ayub Khan tried and failed to do in 1965 with his thrust into Chhamb, would succeed in its objective. Which would be to cut off Kashmir from the rest of India in conjunction with a PLA effort to cut off the rest of India from Assam and the Northeast by occupying the Siliguri Corridor, otherwise known as the Chicken’s Neck. Were a security alliance involving the Quad members to be formed, an attack by the PLA would very quickly move to a contestation of the control of the Tibetan plateau, while moves against India by GHQ Rawalpindi would get repulsed with ease. What India would expect from its security partners would not be troops but weapons and intelligence, as well as coordination of the navies and air forces of the four powers to deny the PLA underwater and surface platforms access into the Indian Ocean Rim.
In Xi’s speech to the 20th Party Congress, the word that was prominently used was “fight”, of course in its Chinese equivalent. Since 2015, Xi has spoken of hostile countries seeking to throttle the PRC and once again subject the Chinese people to bondage. Unlike his predecessors Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, Xi was explicit in promising to annex Taiwan during his period in office. Given that he would need to build up support for a fourth term almost as soon as he enters on his third, Xi may regard the conquest of Taiwan as being necessary to make the CCP ignore the economic headwinds caused by his policies, and focus instead on the achievement of what has long been proclaimed as a key objective of Communist Chinese policy. Should the proxy war between Russia and NATO being played out in Ukraine continue in 2023, Xi may gamble that the adverse impact on their own economies of US-UK-EU sanctions on Russia would reduce to almost a nullity any chance of similar sanctions being imposed on China by the countries that have been sanctioning Russia since 2008. And if NATO is unwilling to directly intervene in a conflict involving a European power that has linked itself to the countries forming that alliance since 2014, would it intervene directly in a conflict involving an Asian power, given the legacy of Vietnam and Afghanistan? CCP planners may see that outcome as wholly improbable. Since Xi took charge in 2012, and not entirely by coincidence, the PLA has been building up its capabilities in the East China and South China ( or ASEAN) Sea, and its planners believe that it has the capacity to block any shipment of weapons from NATO to Taiwan in a manner that Russia has been unable to do in Ukraine. And that without such supplies flowing in a plentiful fashion, the Taiwanese military would be unable to hold back the PLA for very long. As of now, those voices opposing a policy of accelerated decoupling of industrial units of the democracies from China still seem ascendant, if trade volumes are any guide. However, public opinion in the democracies is hardening against the PRC, now that it is led by Xi, and this is influencing even politicians who in the past were regarded as pro-PRC into changing their views. An example is the technology ban imposed by President Biden, which is way more destructive of Chinese capabilities than anything done under President Trump. The third term of President Xi may turn out to be the most consequential in terms of outcomes. Xi is riding the tiger of hyper-nationalism, and if he dismounts, he will suffer the same or a worse fate than CPSU General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev when he blinked in the 1962 Cuban standoff with President Kennedy. From that time onwards, Khrushchev was doomed politically, and finally had to leave an otherwise impregnable office in disgrace in 1964. A warning from history that would not be lost on Xi Jinping.

‘Fight the enemy’ has become Xi’s motto

Danger signal from Russia on Xi Jinping (The Sunday Guardian)

 

Russian analysts have begun changing the nomenclature of Ladakh and Arunachal into the Mandarin substitutes now promoted in maps by the PRC. Such cartographic shifts have in the past preceded acts of aggression by the PRC.

Pakistan Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto’s Two Nation Theory-centred views on Kashmir seem to be an Indiaphobic outlook accepted almost wholly by the Foreign Ministers of Germany and its biggest trading partner, China. The ideology of the Green Party is not usually associated with measures that promote conflict, but Minister Annalena Baerbock seems not to be concerned about the past. She is as set on flooding Ukraine with weapons and prolonging the war between that country and the Russian Federation as the most hawkish in NATO are. GHQ Rawalpindi is eager to present the facade of being a partner of NATO even while (since the Musharraf era) serving the interests of the PLA. Which is why Imran Khan, who in the past had (and still has) several admirers in the UK and India in particular, was anointed the Prime Minister of Pakistan by the army. Imran proved ineffective as a cover-up artist, which is why the Pakistan Chief of Army Staff replaced him as PM with Shehbaz Sharif, who in his endearing way seeks to seem all things to all men. As a backstop where charming the Atlantic Alliance is concerned, in an inspired choice, Bilawal Bhutto was made Foreign Minister, just as his executed grandfather had been. Since 1945, Germans have embraced the concept of being not just Germans but Europeans First to Last. Bilawal, in common with some other South Asian politicians, is European in every way except (at least publicly) in citizenship. Hence Annalena Baerbock ought not to be blamed too harshly for so visibly falling for the lie—sorry, line—that he spun to her on the prompting of the very military that for years assisted the Taliban to kill German soldiers. Nor is Baerbock an outlier in her public disdain for the sovereignty of India, admittedly a country that is not European.
In recent weeks, there has been a spurt in actions directed against India by some of the most consequential members of NATO, especially the UK and the US. UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman was candid about her contempt for Indians, however poisoned such an attitude may have made UK-India relations in the Liz Truss era. It is difficult to believe that actions such as the getting of a Canadian, US or indeed many European visas has become close to impossible for citizens of India are unrelated to the refusal by the Government of India to join NATO in once again shifting focus to Russia in the way that counterparts in Canberra, Seoul or Tokyo have. Indeed, NATO as an alliance is clearly suffering from a genetic birth defect, which is that it is inflexibly focused on Russia as the primary threat to humanity. Although mouthing and even committing to the record ritualistic statements about the China threat, its heart is not in anything other than continuing to fixate on Russia. NATO does indeed seek to intrude into the Indo-Pacific, but by its actions on ground, sea and air, it is clear that the predominant motive for this is to try and strangle those trade routes within Asia that are frequented by Russia. Of course, such attention to Russia coexists with China being given a pass on whatever it does, barring verbal protestations and symbolic posturing indicating unease and opposition.

Atlanticist powers claim that among the primary reasons for the sanctions imposed by them on Russia since 2014 and exponentially increased this year was to warn China of what it would face were it to attempt an invasion of Taiwan. Cynics argue that when viewed against the backdrop of zero sanctions being placed on PRC entities and personnel even after serial infringements on sea and air of Taiwanese (and Vietnamese, Filipino or Indian) sovereignty, such words fail to convince. They point to the stark difference in the quantity, quality and financial terms of the armaments showered on Kiev as compared to those sold—repeat, sold—to Taipei. Unlike what has being seen in connection to Ukraine, thus far, the US, France and the UK have yet to convene a UNSC meeting to discuss PRC encroachments on sea and land across its lawful borders. Sanctions against Russia are on course to generate civil unrest across much of Europe within months, although in the US the Democratic Party is hoping to be rescued in the midterm elections from Biden’s unpopularity by the Republican-controlled US Supreme Court and the candidature of Forever Trumpers. Control of the legislative process at the federal level would ensure implementation of the social legislation favoured by Biden’s party until the present Supreme Court overturns them. Beijing’s policymakers believe that there would be scant public support within the Atlanticist alliance for a fresh raft of sanctions, this time against China, when the boomerang effect of the sanctions on Russia has become impossible to explain away as just the “fault of Putin”. Voices within Russia are these days claiming that Strongman Putin is acting like a wimp in not defeating Ukraine this far. This may result in the Kremlin adopting the Shock and Awe tactics that were employed by George W. Bush against Saddam Hussein in 2003. As for President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, he seems less than eager to get “off the ramp” and press for peace, perhaps because he has a comfortable future awaiting him in the Atlanticist world, even if in the process his country gets still more devastated. Given the Kissinger and Obama precedent, Zelenskyy may even get the Nobel Peace Prize.
The 2022 sanctions blitzkrieg against Russia led by President Biden, and encouraged by cheerleaders such as Jens Stoltenberg or Ursula von der Leyen, plus the consequences on the PRC economy of Xi Jinping Thought, are causing waves of pain in the rest of the world. While sanctions that are more than symbolic would be inevitable were Xi to intensify his kinetic moves against Taiwan, it is considered by the CCP leadership to be extremely unlikely that the US, the UK and other NATO member states would impose substantive sanctions on China in the event of another PLA foray into Indian territory. The Russians have flashed a warning sign to the Indian side of the danger posed by such a view in Beijing. This they have indicated by its analysts beginning to change the nomenclature of Ladakh and Arunachal into the Mandarin substitutes given in the latest maps that are now being shown by the CCP. Such cartographic shifts have in the past preceded acts of aggression by the PLA. Maps showing Ladakh and Arunachal as Chinese territory and Kashmir as Pakistani were distributed by some in the Chinese delegation to the September meeting of the SCO at Samarkand. Those in the Lutyens Zone who believe that there is no way that the PLA would initiate a kinetic showdown across the Himalayas at least until the close of the decade may be proved wrong. The tossing of a sweetener to the Atlanticist powers through Indian support of their resolution on Xinjiang against China at the UNHRC may have been a better option than abstaining from voting, rather than in joining countries who backed an investigation into the situation in Xinjiang.

Danger signal from Russia on Xi Jinping