Shadow Warrior by Rajeev Srinivasan

A version of this essay has been published at https://swarajyamag.com/world/the-rules-based-liberal-world-order-or-whatever-is-coming-apart-at-the-seams

I don’t know about you, but I have long been a fan of the ‘liberal rules-based international order’, although to be quite honest, I have had only a rather vague idea what it meant. It sounded pretty good, though. I mean, how could any reasonable person be against ‘liberal’, ‘order’, and ‘rules-based’? 

It is only lately that I have learned this is strictly a marketing moniker.

It’s a bit like the Moral Majority, which has a nice ring to it, and made waves as a bunch of fiery literalist Bible-thumpers some years ago. It turned out, alas, that they were neither particularly ‘moral’ and certainly not a ‘majority’.  If I recall correctly some of its brightest stars were found in flagrante delicto, including one fire-and-brimstone preacher who was caught twice in cars with street prostitutes.

Just like the ‘Holy Roman Empire’ was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.

Similarly, the ‘liberal rules-based international order’ is neither liberal, nor rules-based, nor an order. It is essentially a post-World-War-II mechanism to perpetuate the rule of the victors in that conflict, giving them a free pass in world affairs for as long as possible. In particular, it was an arrangement that assumed that the US would remain the paramount global power for the foreseeable future. 

That ‘order’ almost immediately fell  apart because the Soviets and the Americans started a rivalry for spheres of influence, including the Soviet evangelization of communism. The Americans embraced the Domino Theory and began counter-evangelization of democracy as the antidote to all the evils of society. 

This ended up in the Cold War, although to be fair, the US did help a number of its allies to prosper. They were mostly white European countries, but also East Asians. Through the power of suggestion (hurrah, New York Times and Hollywood) we have been led to believe that the world is moving steadily towards the triumph of ‘democracy’, which turns out to be a euphemism for a world where Western European/American dominance is written into law.

Note how this means the United Nations Security Council has France and Britain, who really don’t deserve to be there; but not Germany and Japan, who do, along with Brazil, South Africa and India. Similarly there is a (written or unwritten?) rule that the World Bank’s President has to be an American. This was followed scrupulously until a South Korean (presumably a friend of America) was given the job in 2012. It is now back to an American.

Along the same lines, the IMF’s Managing Director has always been a Western European, with the current incumbent being a Bulgarian former World Bank acting President, with a bit of a chequered past: she was found to have inflated Chinese data to make it look better during her term at the World Bank.

Similar stories, I suspect, can be told about all the other major multinational organizations, for instance the WHO which the Chinese have turned into their fiefdom. The Russians, who probably did more to defeat the Germans in WW2 than anybody else, have been denied much of a role. 

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That old caste system has a ‘First World’ consisting of the US and Western Europe, a ‘Second World’ consisting of the Soviet Union/Russia and Eastern Europe, and a ‘Third World’ consisting of everybody else. There have been some minor changes, such as Japan, South Korea, Singapore and the UAE becoming honorary (but not full-fledged) members of the First World. 

The other side of the picture is a certain feudalism that this caste system perpetrated, and that has persisted throughout the last 75 years. Feudal First Worlders dominate the serfs of the Third World. Today, First Worlders decry the neo-feudalism of the techno-billionaires, without irony and without recognizing that they continue to apply it to the Third World, most notably India, which has been kept out of the NPT, MTCR, and so forth.

And have you noticed that the very term ‘Third World’ has fallen out of favor, to be replaced by the anodyne but meaningless ‘Global South’? This is because the creators of narratives didn’t want to attract unwarranted attention to their straightforward caste system. 

In this context, let us recall that ‘caste’ itself is a European construct, derived from the Spanish ‘casta’, and applied most intensely to mixed-race people in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies, classifying them based on skin color and thus race. They obfuscate this by conflating it with the Hindu jati system. That is blood libel along the lines of them deeming the Christian Hakencreuz to be the Dharmic Svastika. 

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Of course, the other side of the picture is that the Chinese have crashed this party, and have pretty much jumped into the First World from the Third World. And they are mounting an intense challenge to the so-called ‘rules-based order’, partly by buying up opinion makers, and quite possibly by interfering in US elections in discreet ways: see recent revelations about the theft of US consumer data by Tiktok. 

This ‘order’ is clearly being challenged by China; but the Ukraine war is also showing how tattered it is, especially as the ‘First World’ struggles to contain nasty inflation and to delink its supply chains from China’s vice-like grip. 

Ominously, there is increasing political turmoil all over the ‘First World’.

In the US, Biden and company are flailing about trying to find a theme that would cover up consumer anger over food and fuel price inflation, shortages (eg baby food and tampons), and rising law and order problems. Paul Krugman even tried to explain that inflation is an (optical) illusion. They have tried, successively, abortion rights, gun control, and now they are falling back on the tried and tested January 6th outrage. None of this is raising Biden’s abysmal ratings going into November’s midterm elections. 

In Britain, Boris Johnson just barely survived a no-confidence motion; the polls forecasting by-election results are not encouraging to the ruling Tories; inflation is a burning issue, and should reach a crescendo in the winter months with sharp rises in fuel costs. And they have a bruising rail strike as well. 

In Australia, Scott Morrison was suddenly replaced by Anthony Albanese. To add insult to injury, they have decided to dump the British Queen as Head of State.

In Canada, Justin Trudeau’s image took a beating when he showed a dictatorial streak and walked all over the Freedom of Expression of truckers who were mostly protesting over extra-strict covid regulations.

In New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern came down from the delirious heights of being the Woke Queen when she was forced to abandon her imperious zero-covid policy; and now she’s boycotting the British Commonwealth, preferring instead to attend a NATO meeting as a guest.

The Pacific states are also concerned about China’s security pact with the Solomon Islands.

So much for the Five Eyes, the US’s closest allies. Things are not so hot with the second tier of allies, either. 

In France, Emmanuel Macron was re-elected as President, but voters have punished his party in elections, sharply curtailing his room for maneuver.

In Israel, Naftali Bennett’s government has just fallen, and they will go for yet another general election, the 4th in 5 years. Binyamin Netanyahu may yet come back.

In the EU in general, and Germany in particular, there is great uneasiness about the US fiat about cutting off Russian energy imports. The EU has bought the vast majority of Russian exports, while the US bullies mostly innocent bystander India which is a minor sinner. And of course Biden is reluctant to chide China over its purchases.

All this leads me to believe that the already-moribund so-called ‘liberal rules-based international order’, a thinly-veiled vehicle for US-Western European neo-feudalism, is on its last legs. Francis Fukuyama spoke memorably of the ‘end of history’; in fact it is the ‘end of Atlanticism’ that we are seeing.

The future, and indeed the present, is the Indo-Pacific century. India is right to not throw in its lot with the declining West, or the rampaging but shaky China. There is good reason to aspire to be a third pole in a multi-polar world. The end of European and American exceptionalism. The beginning of Indian exceptionalism. No more neo-feudalism, tech or otherwise. 

1350 words, June 22, 2022

A version of this essay was published by firstpost.com at Nupur Sharma, neo-feudalism and the geopolitical squeeze on India

The commentariat has rightly focused on the specifics of the Nupur Sharma incident, such as the alleged blasphemy, the apparent provocation, the possibly pro-forma outrage and the street-veto (cheered on by certain politicians who spoke ominously about tinder and spark). 

I couldn’t possibly improve on their perspectives. For instance Utpal Kumar wrote an excellent piece excoriating the cringe-inducing and thunderous ‘liberal’ response https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/nupur-sharma-has-erred-no-doubt-but-why-are-liberals-mutedly-supporting-islamist-challenge-to-her-right-to-life-10767521.html; and I would add that ‘feminists’ were also notable by their absence. 

The blood-curdling death threats being hurled at Nupur, the fact that she has been hanged in effigy, and the related riots that appear to be astroturfed, are all deplorable.  

I would like to look at the whole thing from the point of view of geopolitics. India is in the process of being squeezed badly.

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Soft State

There are a couple of perspectives of interest. One is a throwback to the dark days of 1989-90, when the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban induced the most recent genocide of Kashmiri Hindus, because the terrorists Pakistan had assigned to their Afghan battle were (as they are now) available; and this time, thanks to Biden’s largesse, they have billions worth of weapons. 

A related historical incident is the hijack of Indian Airlines 814 in 1999, and what, in hindsight, was a strategic blunder committed by India, with Jaswant Singh personally escorting the freed terrorists to Kandahar, who then proceeded to wreak general havoc.  

In both cases, the Pakistani takeaways were predicated on triumphalism. They could see the dictum in their Brigadier General SK Malik’s The Qoranic Concept of War being put in place. “Terror struck into the hearts of the enemies is not only a means, it is the end itself.” They could with good reason argue that they were on a trajectory towards a final victory, and urge a final thrust that would bring the house of cards down.

The result was the Parliament attack, 2001. Operation Parakram. Godhra, 2002. And eventually 26/11 Mumbai in 2008.

Pakistan and its friends in India have been nothing if not lucid: they openly declare their intent to wreak havoc on India, balkanize it, massacre people, do gazwa-e-hind. There is every reason to believe that they mean what they say. To pretend otherwise is to repeat the US folly vis-a-vis China: China kept saying what they intended to do, and the US kept pretending not to hear; and we know where that got Obama and Biden. 

The point is that every capitulation, every demand conceded, is viewed as a sign of weakness, and invites the next, ever more outrageous demand. India today may be going down this slippery slope, again. As it did repeatedly in the 20th century. 

The deep freeze on CAA was a capitulation. The withdrawal of the Farm Bills was a capitulation. And now the silencing of Nupur Sharma is a capitulation. If the State blinks on Agnipeeth, that would be another capitulation. There may well be good reasons for all of them, but the fact is that they perpetuate the notion that India is a Soft State.

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Neo-Feudalism and the Serf State

The second perspective of interest is global. Sociologist and demographer Joel Kotkin writes in his latest book The Coming of Neo-Feudalism that we are slipping into a period where there is a stark contrast between the ruling elites, in particular the tech billionaires, and the ruled proletariat. In other words, a return to the European era of feudalism, where a ruling class lorded it over the serfs, who basically had no rights. 

On Singularity Radio, leftist and former finance minister of Greece, Yanis Varoufakis, echoes the same sentiment and argues it is ‘techno-feudalism’. He goes one step further to state that Capitalism is dead, whereas Kotkin only goes so far as to argue that a zaibatsu-ization of the US economy is happening, and the economic systems of the US and China are converging.

In a Hoover Institution podcast based on his Foreign Affairs article, geo-strategist John Mearsheimer suggests a convergence from a political angle too. He argues that the difference between a democracy and an autocracy are limited so far as great-power rivalries go, and that the US made an extraordinarily foolish move to enable China to rise. Says he: 

Engagement may have been the worst strategic blunder any country has made in recent history: there is no comparable example of a great power actively fostering the rise of a peer competitor. And it is now too late to do much about it.

Put these two arguments together, and you get an interesting picture. On the one hand, feudalism requires an upper class and a lower class. It could be argued that feudalism never in fact went away in Europe, or even the supposedly class-less US. Social mobility there is far less than one has been led to believe, according to research by Raj Chetty, then at Stanford. 

There indeed are traditional elites in the US: the East-Coast Wall Street types, for instance. Their kids all go to prep school like Philipps Andover or Exeter, then on to Ivy League colleges, and then on to Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley, and eventually maybe to government. This is, for all intents and purposes, an upper caste, which is also largely endogamous. Just try breaking into it: it is well-nigh impossible. 

Then there are the lower-caste serfs, the plebeian yahoos who are subjected to ‘manufacturing consent’ on a daily basis. They were earlier manipulated via the big newspapers, but now the tech platforms do an even better job. If you don’t believe me, see how the Overton window has shifted sharply in favor of woke tropes over the last few years. Or, for a more tactical shift, note how the topic of heated discussion has gone from Roe v Wade to school shootings to Jan 6 within days. I am reminded of a line from Pink Floyd, Welcome to the Machine: “What did you dream? It’s alright, we told you what to dream”.

In contrast to Kotkin, I would argue that there is no neo-Feudalism, it is the same lovely practice that never went away. Kotkin also said, in passing, “Silicon valley is full of indentured servants from Asia”. He meant India. He is right, and that is the role of India in the game: producing raw materials, including serfs, for the consumption of the upper caste feudal lords.

Feudalism applies also to nations. Whites have for a few centuries been the feudal lords, and their colonies, especially India, have been the untermenschen serfs. That is their pre-ordained role. As Mearsheimer candidly admits, the US blundered in allowing China to escape from serfdom. And it is too late. But of course it is not too late to contain India! They have no intention of blundering again, or allowing India to rise to be a great power as well. 

China has become an honorary upper caste country by bulking up its economy and especially its military. But applications are now firmly closed for membership in this club. Even rich Japan has only a tenuous membership. 

It is in the interests of the feudal lord countries to keep the serf countries as they are.

In this, the US and China are as one: there is no way India can be allowed to gain power. 

This may explain the fury with which US and European commentators (eg Bruno Macaes) greeted India’s stance in the Ukraine war, of keeping aloof from it. That’s not how a serf state is supposed to act: it should do the Gunga Din tango.

This mindset is why the US has continually armed and financed Pakistan, propping up a failed state that should have been dismantled long ago: it is meant to contain India. This is also why you have the likes of Thenmozhi Soundararajan running rampant in the US shouting about caste. This is why a propagandist like Audrey Truschke is not ejected from polite company. This is why USCIRF, an evangelist propaganda body, gets free rein to pontificate about India. 

This is why India is marginalized in the Quad, and the upper caste countries (Anglosphere is by definition upper caste) close ranks to form AUKUS. India must be put in its place, and that’s why a million mutinies are funded by the Ford Foundation and George Soros, and Xinhua and other CCP arms. There are plenty of sleeper cells armed and ready to riot on command. 

Add to this mix the oil states of West Asia. Qatar has its giant natural gas reserves, and India is increasingly addicted to LNG including for its newly-minted rural women consumers of cooking gas. Furthermore, Biden is genuflecting at the feet of Saudi Arabia, as Glenn Greenwald writes in a stinging comment on substack. 

Having successfully prevented India from buying cheap Iranian oil, and pushing hard to prevent it from buying cheap Russian oil, the Americans are forcing India to be ever-more dependent on West Asian states. Never mind that India has buyer power: of course the sellers have to sell the stuff to somebody to keep their economies ticking over.

Also never mind the fallacy of the argument that India must kowtow to these Gulf states, in case they send back the Indians working there. Well, that is not charity, either. If the Indians were ejected (let us recall what happened to Uganda in Idi Amin’s time), the serfs running everything would be gone, and the feudal lords would actually have to get their hands dirty doing something other than being rich and idle. 

The fact that India has not asserted itself forcefully means that the pressure tactics are working: the malign forces have drawn first blood. Chances are that worse is yet to come. 

1600 words, Jun 15, 2022 updated Jun 19, 2022

A version of this essay was published by Swarajya magazine at https://swarajyamag.com/world/the-quad-will-china-dominate-the-indo-pacific-as-the-us-reverts-to-atlanticism-what-can-india-do

A lot has happened in the last week or two: POTUS Biden’s visit to Japan for a Quad summit and related economic moves; China’s outreach to Pacific Islanders for security pacts; and the World Economic Forum pow-wow in Davos. In some sense, the Ukraine war and related disruptions have taken a back seat, even though related inflation and shortages are a long-term story. 

In my opinion, the Biden Administration is pursuing self-defeating policies as far as the Indo-Pacific is concerned. On the one hand, it may be because (as is the norm in India) one political party wants to undo whatever their rival had done when they were in power. On the other hand, there is a curious lack of historical memory about great-power games: the US seems to be either blase about, or reconciled to, Chinese domination of Asia/the Indo-Pacific. 

None of this is good as far as India is concerned. In a harsh analysis of India’s clashes on the Kashmir/Tibet border with China, two anonymous but trenchant critics suggest India has been defeated already: “China-India Border Crisis Has Quietly Resulted in Victory For Beijing’, based on the fact that the Chinese military buildup is well-nigh impossible for India to overcome.

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Meanwhile, there is increasing criticism of American involvement in – indeed responsibility for – prolonging the Ukraine war, surprisingly from the pro-Democrat, pro-war pages of the New York Times: “The War in Ukraine May Be Impossible to Stop. And the US Deserves Most of the Blame.” A slightly dated (April 1) article on “The Military Situation in Ukraine” had already given a cogent explanation of how reality on the ground was vastly different from the narrative.

What I fear is that Ukraine will become a quagmire for not only Russia, but also the US. As the NYT op-ed said, it’s not much of a leap from a proxy war to a secret war. The US is rather good at getting into unfortunate messes like this, and then having to declare victory and run like hell: see Vietnam or Afghanistan. 

Two brutal articles from Tablet magazine, “Three Big Questions That the American Establishment Got Wrong” and “Wingnuts vs. Factions: The two theories of American government—one fantasy, one reality” purport to show how making bad, often really bad, decisions is par for the course for US administrations, in particular Democrats. 

All this presages the possibility that Ukraine will be a tar baby for the US and its NATO allies, and a drain on their national treasuries. It also means that their national attention will be riveted on Russia and Ukraine for the foreseeable future, leaving China free to run rampant in Asia. Democratic Party power brokers are anyway Atlanticists fighting the Cold War all over again. 

Let us, therefore, consider the Indo-Pacific from a perspective where the US is increasingly hors de combat. There is this theory of the “three island chains” in the Pacific as first propounded by American John Foster Dulles, according to CSIS.org, which further states that today we have to add two more island chains in the Indian Ocean. 

John Foster Dulles is attributed with designating the islands stretching from the Kurils, the Japanese home islands, and the Ryukyus to Taiwan, the Philippines, and Indonesia as the “first island chain” in the 1950s. The second chain stretches from Japan through the Marianas and Micronesia, and the third is centered on Hawaii...

The addition of a fourth and fifth chain in the Indian Ocean would better describe emerging Chinese maritime strategy. Chinese naval planners hope to deny adversaries the ability to operate within the first island chain during a conflict, contest control of the second island chain, and operate as a blue water navy within the third island chain. A new fourth island chain through the middle of the Indian Ocean would reflect China’s ability to challenge its geostrategic neighbor India with dual-use facilities in Gwadar, Pakistan, and Hambantota, Sri Lanka. A fifth island Chain, originating from China’s base at Doraleh, Djibouti, would reflect Beijing’s ability to pursue its developing commitments afar, such as harnessing economic resources, conducting anti-piracy operations, and protecting Chinese living abroad. [emphasis added]

This is alarming, as the ‘fourth island chain’ is basically the ‘String of Pearls’ intended to strangle India and tie it down in the so-called ‘South Asia’, by negating its undoubted geographic advantage of straddling the sea lanes in the Indian Ocean. The Chinese submarine pen at Hainan in the South China Sea, with easy access to the Indian Ocean via the Straits of Malacca, is already a threat to Indian interests and blue-water navy aspirations. 

In addition, China is currently in the middle of a furious ship-building frenzy, so they will also have surface ships, including aircraft carriers, capable of projecting force a long way into the Indian Ocean. Just as they have done in the Himalayas, and the South China Sea, China is using ‘below-the-threshold of war’ tactics to build up its capability until one day its foes are forced to submit. Degringolade.

POTUS Biden has made it clear that his administration has very little interest in Asia. He made three trips to Europe before his very first trip to Asia: a quick visit to Japan (and South Korea), where he attended a meeting of the Quad and a coming-out party for the newest American-mooted economic proposal, the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. This seems to be too little, too late, after the US exited the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

The IPEF also seems like a face-saving measure, and it is increasingly evident that Biden’s alleged new enthusiasm for Asia is as empty as earlier POTUS Obama’s botched ‘pivot to Asia’, which was a lot of hot air with no substance. I also remember with fury Obama’s granting of hegemony over ‘South Asia’ to China: like the Pope once divided the world between Portugal and Spain. As though Obama were dispensing papal bulls. 

As Indian geostrategist Brahma Chellaney suggests on Nikkei Asia in “Biden’s empty Taiwan rhetoric reveals Quad’s core weakness”, Biden’s statement about US military support for Taiwan in case of a Chinese invasion may be mere bravado. 

There are two reasons. The first is that, as Biden’s minions clarified after his alleged gaffe, US military involvement is not within the scope of US agreements with Taiwan and/or China, which maintain the fiction of “One China”. The second is that, given its diminished industrial capacity (China has hollowed it out), the US cannot fight two major wars at once: Ukraine and Taiwan. 

To emphasize their disdain for the alleged ‘pivot’, the Chinese sent strategic nuclear bombers towards Japan while Biden was there, accompanied by Russian bombers. As I write this, China has just sent 30 warplanes into Taiwan’s air defense zone. The signals are clear: they threaten to invade Taiwan. 

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In the meantime, China is attempting to expand its footprint in the Indo-Pacific. It scored a coup with the Solomon Islands where it signed a wide-ranging agreement. According to a podcast from The Economist, a leaked draft shows that the agreement allows Chinese police and soldiers to be deployed in the Solomons for a broad range of reasons. It stops short of setting up a military base, but only just.

Beyond this, Chinese FM Wang Yi had a blitzkrieg in the Pacific, visiting 8 island nations over 10 days, and on May 30th, he signed agreements in Fiji with a consortium of 10 of them. A draft talked about trade, tourism, security, training of police, forensic labs, and cyber-security, according to The Economist podcast Base Motives? China in the Pacific.

The entire Belt and Road Initiative was a covert effort to gain access to ports, and turn them into Chinese military bases (although it has stalled a little now because of its predatory debt-trap diplomacy side-effects, as best seen in Sri Lanka). Beyond Djibouti in 2017, Gwadar and Hambantota, there are others like Cambodia’s Ream military base where China has facilities.

China is also quite likely causing the sharp spike in global food prices. Economist Shamika Ravi tweeted as follows, and this is a good reason why India did a U-turn on wheat exports: instead of enabling Chinese proxies to buy it up, India will only do government to government deals. 

Thus the picture is of a diffident America shuffling off into Atlanticist and Anglosphere dead-ends like AUKUS (Britain brings almost nothing to the picture in the Indo-Pacific), while a more confident China is expanding its reach. Its saber rattling threatens Taiwan immediately, and India, Japan and South Korea more indirectly. 

The context of the Quad is also a far cry from what Abe Shinzo first envisaged as a tight military and economic alliance. It is pretty much a mere talking-shop. For instance, it is clear that none of Australia, Japan, or the US will send a single soldier to fight China on India’s behalf on the Kashmir/Tibet border. The creation of AUKUS (there are rumors about JAUKUS with Japan and CAUKUS with Canada as well) basically means India is being left out in the cold. Again. It has to depend on itself. Atmnirbharata. 

There is talk of a Quad-Plus, including South Korea and New Zealand. But not Vietnam and Indonesia, which are more significant? New Zealand, especially under woke Jacinda Ardern, is marginal; in fact Australia is also of little interest in the Indian Ocean. There is also political instability in Australia: Scott Morrison was replaced by Anthony Albanese overnight.

I can remember at least five-six Australian PMs in the recent past, including die-hard Sinophile Kevin Rudd. How can you have continuity in such a situation? How can anybody depend on Australia to deliver on Quad? Similarly, Japanese PM Kishida Fumio is a far cry from the sensibly militaristic and nationalist Abe Shinzo. 

In the US, the switch from Donald Trump to Joe Biden has meant chaos regarding the Indo-Pacific. And after this November’s elections, it is likely that Biden will be a lame duck: his approval numbers keep hitting new lows, and hostile Republicans are likely to take over the Senate, leading to a war of attrition: bad news for foreign policy.

In the middle of all this political turmoil, it is hard to imagine that the Quad is going to get better.

Meanwhile, the developed nations of the West are merrily carrying on with their old agenda as in the Davos shindig, as though there is no end in sight for the party. Rana Foroohar of the Financial Times sounded a warning, as if one were necessary in the wake of the carnage of stock market crashes and soaring inflation. But no, laissez les bon temps rouler! Let the good times roll!

And that’s exactly what India is up against. The rest of the world (with the possible exception of Japan) does not care. India has to assume it can only depend on itself, Quad or no Quad. It has to build up its military and economic muscle, and industrialize while keeping a low profile. The Thucydides Trap is a likely scenario, and presumably it will exhaust both the protagonists, leaving the door open for India to ascend to the G3 and then to the G1.

1850 words, June 1, 2022

A version of this essay was published by chanakya forum at https://chanakyaforum.com/infrastructure-in-the-deep-peninsula-for-national-security-and-self-reliance/

A Swarajya report https://swarajyamag.com/infrastructure/vo-chidambaranar-port-to-expand-with-rs-7200-crore-project-to-compete-with-colombo-and-singapore-as-transhipment-hub  about V O Chidambaram port in Thoothukkudi (Tuticorin), TN, and its plans to expand into a container trans-shipment port was interesting. It reminded me of a plan I have mooted for some time (without success so far) about building up logistics infra, industrial capacity and defense capability in the deep south. 

Briefly, India’s much-desired success as a manufacturing and export power will be compromised unless there is good transportation infrastructure for both bulk cargo and for high-value, low-weight industrial goods. Today, India’s container cargo is highly dependent on Colombo, Singapore and Dubai for trans-shipment (that is, transferring cargo from the giant motherships to smaller ships). If I am not mistaken, 25% of India’s containers transit through Colombo alone.

Colombo, in fact, depends on India for over 70% of its business. Their existing East Terminal is Chinese-controlled; the proposed  West Terminal is apparently taken up by India’s Adani group on a BOT basis. Nevertheless, it is possible to imagine that at a point of geo-political stress, as with Sri Lanka’s troubles today, or if the Chinese decide to embargo Indian containers (as they did without notice for exports of rare-earths to Japan), Indian trade could be badly affected. 

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The under-construction Vizhinjam port in Trivandrum, also controlled by Adani Ports, has a proposed capacity of 1.8 million TEUs in the first phase, and 5.3 million TEUs in the second phase. The proposed VOC container terminal at Thootthukkudi will have a capacity of 4 million TEUs. (A TEU or twenty-foot equivalent can be taken to be a single container for practical purposes).

The right solution would be for these two ports to work in coordinated fashion, one on each side of the Peninsula, and not get into destructive competition. 

Image courtesy Swarajya Magazine.

Road connectivity Image: Courtesy Google Maps

Rail connectivity (upto Tirunelveli), image courtesy Google Maps

My idea has been a railway line and an industrial corridor linking the two, which are roughly 200km apart by road. Both ports have their advantages, and together they can serve a significant hinterland, and the proposed developments between them can provide a measure of maritime security in an area that has been neglected so far, but will become increasingly critical.

There are three aspects to it: connectivity, a focused industrial corridor, and security. 

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Connectivity, shipping routes and trunk national rail and road links

Vizhinjam has a multi-modal advantage: the port is only 15 km from a major international airport, Trivandrum, and both the port and the airport are controlled by Adani Ports, so that they could coordinate multi-modal shipment of goods, including at some point, inland waterway transport via National Waterway Three. Thoothukkudi airport is much smaller. 

But both are linked to the national trunk routes of the Golden Quadrilateral highways and railway lines passing through Tamil Nadu. So container traffic can be moved between the two with relatively little effort; also upcountry containers from/to Bangalore or Hyderabad or further inland can be moved with relative ease down to either of them without much trouble (the connectivity links for both to the trunk routes are either in place or are being built up).

In terms of the shipping lanes in the Arabian Sea, Vizhinjam has the advantage, as it is only 10 nautical miles away from the main sea lanes. VOC is a bit of a diversion, and unless there is some incentive, very large container ships (12000+ TEU for instance) would hesitate to steam the additional nautical miles. Vizhinjam also has the advantage of draft (undredged 16m). However, the TN government is good at getting things done, so that’s Thoothukkudi’s advantage. 

Industrial corridor

There is a surprising industry that could well be the focus of this corridor: aerospace. There are Thumba and Valiyamala in Trivandrum where ISRO has major facilities, including the rocket-R&D facility named Liquid Propulsion Systems Center. There is Mahendragiri in TN’s Tirunelveli district where the rockets are tested at the ISRO Propulsion Complex. Finally the new launch pad is to come up in Kulasekharapattanam in Thoothukkudi dstrict, TN (as a supplement to Sriharikota). All these are within a stone’s throw of each other.

The three could form the end nodes for a dedicated aerospace industry cluster. There is little room for manufacturing in congested Kerala (although the R&D can happen there), but it is possible to acquire large tracts of semi-arid land (this being a rain-shadow region, desalination plants may need to be set up) in Tamil Nadu. India must improve its aerospace industry, both defense and civilian.

There was also talk of Airbus seeking a production facility abroad, but perhaps that opportunity has been lost.  

LPSC, Mahendragiri and Kulasekharapatnam of ISRO: Image courtesy Google Maps

India has fallen behind in aerospace; even a developing country like Brazil has its Embraer, and there is no good reason India cannot have a thriving aircraft industry, perhaps in a niche, especially as civilian air traffic is expected to soar in coming years. 

In addition, Tejas and Dhruv have gained a measure of scale with induction into the armed forces, and Brahmos is even being exported (its production base is in Trivandrum now). This means an ecosystem of component suppliers has sprung up. There is no question that India needs to continue to develop its own defense systems, both aircraft and missile, as the possibility of damaging sanctions and technology denial has gone up. Atmanirbhar is key.

Maritime defense

Most Indian defense installations have been designed with Pakistan in mind. Thus northwest India and the west coast have been the focus. However, the very real threat of Chinese intrusions into the Indian Ocean needs to be given much more focus now. The Chinese are showing every intent of dominating the Indian Ocean with both surface ships and submarines.

China’s crown jewels (apart from its new aircraft carriers) are the contents of its submarine pen on Hainan island, near Vietnam’s Haiphong. There are increasing activities by submarines in India’s vicinity. India has little protection or early warning on its east coast. This is one of the reasons that there are new naval installations and long-range radars in the Andamans, which lie close to the mouth of the Straits of Malacca. 

It would be a good idea to set up an airbase with long-range radar in southern Tamil Nadu too, to keep an eye on what’s happening in the Bay of Bengal/Indian Ocean area. Besides, surveillance with Poseidon P8i type submarine hunter-killer aircraft could be useful. I remember when I worked in Mountain View, California, I could see from my office Orion P3i craft taking off and landing incessantly at Moffett Field. 

India does have important assets on its south-eastern seaboard. One example would be the Koodankulam nuclear plant. I suppose Kulasekharapatnam would also be a potential target for hostile forces. Sterlite would have been if only it hadn’t already been sabotaged. 

The deep south has not gotten its fair mind-share. It is time to change that, and in ways that will benefit the rest of the country through efficient trade networks, manufacturing clusters, and defense. 

1200 words, 30 May 2022

A version of this essay has been published by swarajyamag.com at https://swarajyamag.com/politics/gyanvapi-discoveries-the-places-of-worship-act-and-what-next

There has been a slew of social media posts about the court-ordered survey of the Gyanvapi premises and what was discovered on Monday, May 16th. As I write this, on Tuesday, there is a case being heard in the Supreme Court as to whether the survey should continue at all. 

While all this legal hair-splitting continues, I feel like the kid in the ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’, marveling at the gaslighting and make-believe. How much longer will we continue with this charade?

There is not a shred of doubt about whether the Kashi Visvanatha temple was demolished by Aurangazeb. First of all, there is an order (I believe it is called a firman) signed by Aurangazeb himself that directs the destruction of the temple. Nobody has questioned the authenticity of this document.

Second, there is physical evidence: the structure in question has some of its Hindu temple walls still standing, on top of which the Muslim domes have been erected. If you see the building or photographs of it, there is no question: it is a Muslim structure stuck atop a Hindu temple.

Third, there is the preserved local memory of the repeated destruction and reconstruction of the shrine, and the legend that a priest sacrificed himself by jumping into the well with the Shiva Lingam so that it would escape destruction by the invaders. This story is replicated in any number of other temples when attacked, and ancient idols have indeed been found buried in several (see Meenakshi Jain, Flight of Deities and the Rebirth of Temples).

Fourth, there is the well-documented habit of the Abrahamic faiths from West Asia of demolishing the sacred spaces of the Old Religions they conquered, and erecting their own shrines atop them, as the ultimate triumph of their god over the gods of the vanquished. Here are a few examples out of thousands:

* Chennai Mylapore Shiva temple destroyed and San Thome Basilica built on top

* Ayodhya Ram Mandir destroyed and Babur’s mosque built on top

* Aztec and Inca shrines in Latin America destroyed and churches built on top

* The Hagia Sophia in Turkey, a pre-Abrahamic (or, ‘pagan’ [sic]) shrine captured by Christians first, Muslims next, turned into a secular space, and now turned back into a mosque

* The Wailing Wall in Israel, where the Jews’ Second Temple was destroyed and the Al Aqsa mosque built on top

* When Christians recaptured Spain from Muslims, every single mosque was (re)converted into a church, e.g. the famous mosque at Cordoba

So there’s ample reason to believe this is Standard Operating Procedure, and it is done with the express intent of humiliating the conquered. Abrahamics do it to each other, too, as examples 4, 5 and 6 above show. It is a corollary to the fact that Abrahamic religions believe in world conquest.

In other words, there’s nothing to be shocked at what the survey apparently unearthed. If you spent a little time thinking about it, this is precisely the behavior that would have been expected, as well as the dissimulation: the petitions that are designed to keep the evidence hidden. 

There is the 1991 Places of Worship Act that is quoted by all and sundry as an effort to maintain ‘communal harmony’. So far as I can tell, this Act, hurriedly put together to assuage liberal ‘guilt’ in the wake of the demolition of the Ayodhya structure in 1991, is a parallel to white liberal guilt over atrocities like slavery, apartheid, etc. 

However, the woke sentiment that drove the cut-paste was completely illogical. Whites did do horrendous things to blacks, and therefore should be guilt-ridden. But in India, it was Muslims who did horrendous things to Hindus, and therefore Hindus have no reason to feel guilty. If anything it should be the reverse, but based on past behavior, that is unlikely. 

Nevertheless, that aptly named PoW Act exists (although I hear the BJP walked out of Parliament when it was put to vote, and since they have a majority now, they could well repeal it today). Therefore the courts have to rule based on the Act which is in the statute books.

There is a complication: here is a provision from the Act that says it does not apply to “any place of worship that is… an ancient or historical monument or an archaeological site” etc. So does that apply to the Gyanvapi? Presumably that is what the Justice Chandrachud bench will determine. A priori, of course, Gyanvapi is an “ancient or historical monument” and should be outside the purview of the Act.

Doubtless, the courts will choose an interpretation that is in keeping with their precedents; and it is a fair bet that the SC will strike down the lower court’s order to survey the Gyanvapi. 

The question is: what then? Especially now that it is said (although not officially confirmed) that the original jyotirlinga has been retrieved from the well?

It has long been argued that Hindus, even though they are painfully aware that tens of thousands of temples have been been destroyed, mutilated etc. as part of the above SOP, would be satisfied with the release of three of the their holiest shrines: Ayodhya Ram Mandir, Kashi Visvanatha, and Mathura Krishna Janmabhoomi. 

What is happening, though, is an epic dilemma suited to the Mahabharatha: will the secularist ecosystem allow that to happen, or will they encourage Muslim fundamentalists to dig in their heels? There have already been fiery proclamations by the likes of Asaduddin Owaisi to the effect that “once a mosque, always a mosque till Judgment Day”.

In the Mahabharata, as you doubtless remember, the Pandavas asked first for half the kingdom. Later they were willing to settle for as few as five villages. But the obdurate Kauravas were unwilling to compromise even on that, and this led to the disastrous war. 

We have seen earlier how leftist pseudo-historians created problems. The Muslims were willing to relinquish the disused Babri structure, as it had no religious importance to them, whereas it was of great importance to Hindus. The leftists convinced Muslims that they could win them the case; we know what actually happened: the pulling down of the structure; riots, death and destruction.

Chances are that continued intransigence on the part of the secularists/leftists and their encouragement of the most obscurantist Muslims will lead to a hardening on the part of Hindus: instead of being satisfied with the three major temples, they will start demanding that all other temples also be released from occupation and desecration.

In that case, the BJP has no choice other than to overturn the Places of Worship Act. Whether they want to do that is a good question; what the consequences will be is another good question. But the fact is that the Gyanvapi discoveries will force some hard choices. 

1111 words, 17 May 2022

This essay was published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/world/pyrrhic-victory-even-if-biden-defeats-putin-it-will-be-costly-for-the-us-and-most-of-the-world-10675401.html

Even for someone like me who is very pro-US, the smoke-signals emanating from Washington regarding the Ukraine war are ominous. Even in best-case scenarios, the US may have hurt itself by not focusing on the right foe, which is China, not Russia. More worryingly, the Deep State may have pushed the US into a no-win situation, with the rest of the world suffering collateral damage.

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The announcement of $40 billion approved by the US Congress as aid to Ukraine means the US may get bogged down in what could be a long, grinding war. This adds to earlier leaks that suggest US intelligence and weapons helped sink the Russian flagship Moskva and killed several Russian generals. Does this escalation suggest Vietnam? Afghanistan? And how on earth is Ukraine going to pay back this lend-lease debt? Or will it be forgiven?

Meanwhile, things are beginning to bite the US consumer. The NYTimes tweeted: ”Across the U.S., mothers say they are rationing food for their babies as they search for more formula. Some are driving hours, only to find empty shelves. Online, private sellers are gouging prices, marketing cans for double or triple their normal price.” Remarkable. The US Congress gave Biden $7 billion more than he asked for, while American babies go hungry. 

It is possible that the Biden White House instigated this war for two reasons: one, the Military-Industrial Complex’s insatiable appetite for war, more war, and yet more war; two, the irrational Atlanticist fear of Vladimir Putin; For the moment, we can ignore other, more speculative reasons: eg. Hunter Biden’s business affairs in Ukraine, and Chinese infiltration. 

The Deep State does remarkably well from war. Brahma Chellaney tweeted: “US's Afghan war was an incredible windfall for US defense firms, five of which alone got a staggering $2.1 trillion.” Of all recent US Presidents, Trump is the only one who didn’t go to war. Is it cause and effect that he got booted out?

The Democrats seem irredeemably Atlanticist, probably because their nerve center is at Harvard, and a lot of them, eg. Brzezinski, Albright, Nuland, Blinken, et al have Eastern European roots and an atavistic fear of the Russian bear. Their generals are re-fighting the Cold War, which is no longer relevant. It would make more sense, Huntington-wise, for NATO (white Christians) to make a tactical alliance with the Russians (ditto), against Asia and Islam.

Both Russia and the European Union are becoming less and less relevant in the world at large. The few hundred years in which Europe, and the Atlantic, bestrode the globe, will in hindsight be seen as aberrations, and reversion to the mean suggests that the Asian heartland and the Indo-Pacific littoral states will once again dominate. 

Russia is a walking wounded nation: their demography is collapsing, and eventually they will simply not have the manpower to control their borders. Siberia will be overwhelmed by the Chinese. Russia’s nuclear weapons may be no more of a factor then than they are now in the Ukraine war. It is possible that the US can topple Putin, but it will be a Pyrrhic victory for itself and allies. The only victor will be China. 

The European Union continues to be handicapped by its fragmented nature and inability to act in a coherent manner on any subject. In addition, energy is its Achilles heel. The EU estimates, according to the Financial Times, that it will have to spend 195 billion euros in the next five years to free itself of dependence on Russian oil and gas. 

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Furthermore, they will replace dependence on Russian gas with dependence on American fracked gas. A DW report on the ‘true cost of fracked US “freedom gas”’ points out that hydraulic fracking is banned across most of Europe, so a certain sleight of hand will be needed. The FT also reported that Mario Draghi is now talking about a ‘cartel’ of oil consumers!

Interestingly, US officials have been offering India similar “freedom weapons” with their siren-song of promised independence from Russian weapons. Caveat emptor!

The European relaxation of their once-mighty moral standards regarding global warming are quite risible. The ghost of Greta Thunberg will not be happy. In a sign of what’s to come, FT tweeted: “BlackRock’s decision not to support most shareholder resolutions on climate change represents a big step back. It in effect grants permission to other investors to relax their grip”. 

So much for climate change. The new thing is Roe v. Wade, as the November election looms.

In another sign of the damage the war has wrought, Saudi Aramco has just overtaken Apple as the most valuable company in the world. Incidentally, and humiliatingly, both the Saudis and the UAE refused to take Biden’s call asking for higher oil output. Venezuela, and most recently Brazil, have also said ‘No’ to the US request for more energy supplies. This should show how isolated the US really is: only Western Europe and Canada/AUS/NZ are following its diktats. 

Meanwhile, US inflation is historically high, but the impact of the war is far worse for developing countries. It is similar to 1973, when OPEC suddenly tripled oil prices. It was hard for developed economies too, but they made money selling things (eg. the US sold weapons) to the likes of Saudi Arabia. It was the developing countries like India that were squeezed badly. 

On the strategic front, though, there are other dangers. One is that China may consider this an opportune time to invade Taiwan. Besides, Xi Jinping, damaged by the Covid lockdowns, needs to burnish his leadership credentials for his big coronation later this year (there are also reports that he suffers from a brain aneurysm). If an invasion happens, will the US be able to help defend Taiwan? Even the war-mongering The Economist is skeptical. 

Can the US really fight two wars at once? Do they have the capability? Americans remember how the country rallied around their leadership and turned on a dime to beat plowshares into swords when they entered World War 2. Their immense industrial capacity was realigned. Detroit became the arsenal makers of democracy, as Biden put it. Can this happen today?

As the Ukraine war progresses, can the US supply ever more Javelin and Stinger missiles without dangerously depleting its own armory? Even granting that the munitions are ‘smarter’ these days, it is hard to believe that traditional gear like tanks, artillery, and the like can be dispensed with, or that the US has essentially infinite stockpiles of these. 

In 1940, according to an Economist podcast, there was a lot of spare capacity in the US industrial sector as it was coming out of the Great Depression. “Cadillac produced tanks, Chrysler made Browning machine guns, Ford… B-24 bombers”. Given the rapid de-industrialization of the US by the Chinese, it is hard to believe this sort of industrial miracle can happen in 2022. The US doesn’t even make semiconductors at scale any more. 

Will the US be forced to, out of sheer lack of materiel and will, sit out a potential Chinese capture of Taiwan? What will this do to South Korea and Japan? Will the American-led ‘rules-based international order’ collapse overnight? In addition, will the US dollar-dominated economic system also be damaged?

Thus the dangers of deepening and widening conflict are huge, and the consequences to the US (and innocent bystanders such as India) may be drastic. It would be much better if some ‘jaw-jaw’ were to replace ‘war-war’, and the US were to give up on this quixotic quest to unseat Vladimir Putin. 

1280 words, 12 May 2022 

George Augustine Thundiparambil is a writer and translator dividing his time between India and Germany. He has written a historical novel in English titled Maya and has published many blogs and articles on faith and religion in several Internet forums. He is a partner of Geckolingua Translations International based in Freiburg, Germany.

* Germany is the most important country in the EU. Will its reaction to the war set precedents that the entire EU is likely to follow?

* Germany has made what appears to be a major U-turn. How much of this is because the new Chancellor Sholz wants to get out from under the shadow of Merkel? 

* Is this a strategic pivot or a knee-jerk response? Will all this result in slower growth?

* Nordstream 2 has been put on hold

* Defense spend to go up to the desired NATO level 2% of the budget

* $100b funds for the armed forces

* 2 LNG terminals on the north sea coast to reduce dependence on Russian gas

* Sending weapons to ukraine (not 5000 helmets)

* Buying F-35 US planes

* Will there be re-thinking on clean energy? What about nuclear and coal? 80% to be coming from clean energy by 2030?

* But Germany is STILL buying gas and oil from Russia. As is much of the EU. That doesn’t worry the US, but India buying Russian oil is a problem? Why the double stds?

* Re-arming germany? Is that wise? Does the country become a potential war monger? How will the rest of Europe view this, in particular France?

* A fallout from the war has been the normalization of racism, eg. people said bluntly that blue eyed, blond Europeans mustn’t suffer. (Oh, it’s ok if blacks/browns do?)

* India values its relationships with Germany and France. Will there be any negative fallout from all this war hysteria?

George has recently started a YouTube channel for his video podcasts titled Faith for Adults.

A version of this essay was published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/india-is-standing-up-and-defending-itself-but-is-uncle-sam-taking-note-of-it-10565421.html

On the face of it, Indian Minister of External Affairs S Jaishankar’s blunt responses to US pressure to toe its line regarding Ukraine are appropriate rebuttals to interference in India’s internal affairs. Because India has generally been reticent (for example in the face of aggressive Chinese statements), the general public has been delighted to see these as an example of a maturing of Indian resolve. I am not so sure. 

I have long advocated mutually respectful US-India ties. And I was delighted by the promise of the Quad as a coming together of democratic forces in the Indo-Pacific, especially as an antidote to the rampaging Chinese. However, I was apprehensive about the Biden Administration, because the track record of the Democrats towards India is, well, abysmal.

In previous Democratic Administrations we had the spectacle of Madeleine Albright lecturing India rudely, and the dependably noxious Robin Raphel who was later accused by the FBI of being a Pakistani agent (she was cleared of those charges). The general tendency has been to treat India with disdain, if not contempt, partly as a vestige of Cold War attitudes, the silly Non-Aligned Movement, and inane moralizing by the likes of Nehru and Krishna Menon. 

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Besides, India was seen as a basket-case (with good reason: humiliating PL 480 emergency food aid was a defining moment, because Indians ate only when US ships showed up with grain that they would normally only feed to livestock). A country that cannot manage its basic food security deserves disdain. But those days are long gone, except in the minds of Atlanticist Cold Warriors: India is now one of the biggest exporters of grain, and will profit from the Ukraine war.

In other ways, too, the power equation between the two countries needs to be re-thought. I am reminded of the story of the court poet of a king in India who wrote a poem comparing his king to the Emperor. He called his king the New Moon and the Emperor the Full Moon. Furious, the king wanted to know why he said that.

The poet explained that the New Moon is waxing, and the Full Moon is waning. 

In a nutshell, that is the situation with India and the US. Barring some unforeseen calamities, relative Indian economic and military might is going to increase, and America’s is going to decrease. In the not too distant future, India’s GDP in PPP terms will exceed that of the US, and it is a matter of speculation when the GDP in nominal terms also does the same. This is not jingoistic chest-thumping, but a very real possibility.

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The US is suffering from something like a midlife crisis. That is odd, for a nation with immense endowment – a vast continent with all the natural resources one could possibly want – and blessed with friendly neighbors and vast oceans separating it from possible foes. Its people have long been the most industrious and most innovative on earth, and the country is a magnet for the best and brightest from all over the world. Its soft power, too, is unrivaled. 

Yet, the prevailing concerns that animate Americans seem odd: gender, abortion rights, human rights. They are not exercised over their virtual de-industrialization (and the loss of manufacturing jobs) courtesy China, nor the possible collapse in white collar jobs through automation and robotics. 

They seem blase about their profligate use of energy (NPR reported in “How much energy powers a good life?” a Stanford study that Americans use “nearly four times the energy needed to live a happy life”). This is clearly driving global climate change. 

They may well be living beyond their means, propped up by printing billions of dollars, which they can do because Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard. The dollar remains the global reserve currency. However, the sanctions against Russia may well result in the bifurcation of the global trading system, and the Chinese would love to make the renminbi the currency of choice. 

Yet, Americans are mostly worried about human rights. Granted, these are ethical issues that are the proper concern of rich countries, but there is a whiff of decadence: it feels like the self-absorbed navel-gazing of a civilization in decline, oblivious to the barbarians at the gates, and you know who said barbarians are. The word degringolade seems to sum it up: the possibility of sudden collapse. 

The further problem is that they are lecturing others when their own system is not exactly functioning that well. The US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken injected a sour note into the recent 2+2 meeting with India when he said, gratuitously, that “human rights abuses” in India were being monitored by the US.

It was ironic that Blinken made this statement on a day when somebody shot up 10 people in Brooklyn; the next day two Sikhs were beaten and robbed in New York City. And a Kashmiri Hindu was shot dead in Kashmir. The NY Times, in the wake of a fatal shooting of a black man by a police officer, said: “American police officers, over the previous five years, have killed more than 400 motorists who were not wielding a gun or knife or under pursuit for a violent crime."

One could argue that human rights abuses are a problem for the US, too. The Chinese make the US squirm by listing instances. At a function (at Howard University, a historically black university), MEA Jaishankar said that India is paying attention to human rights issues in the US. He also talked about the threat of CAATSA sanctions on India, and in effect said that if the US were to impose those sanctions, India would find a way around them. 

Indeed, India did get around earlier American denials and sanctions: when it went nuclear, earlier when the US unilaterally repealed the treaty about supplying nuclear fuel to Tarapore, when the Biden Amendment (yes, same Biden) forced Russia to renege on its cryogenic rocket engine deal with India, and when a Cray supercomputer sale was canceled. 

So far, so good. Yes, India is standing up and defending itself. But the question is whether this is registering where it counts. The Indian media is agog with reports. However, the American media, so far as I can tell, didn’t report on this: which means that official America simply did not hear the retort by the Indian MEA. 

Furthermore, there is the Good Cop, Bad Cop story: Deputy National Security Advisor Daleep Singh threatened India with “consequences”. An emollient Daniel Lu, a senior State Department official, made soothing noises. Victoria Nuland, the architect of the ‘Maidan Revolution’ in Ukraine in 2014, visited, and met with mysterious “thought leaders” and with Arvind Kejriwal.

Shortly thereafter, the AAP government in Punjab demanded 50,000 crores a year from the Center to fulfill AAP’s own grandiose election promises of freebies; Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal casually dismissed the rape-murder of a 14-year-old Hindu girl by TMC cadres; the Tamil Nadu government ratcheted up separatist noises; and Ram Navami and Hanuman Jayanti shobhayatras were attacked with stone-pelting by Muslims. Pure coincidence? Or “consequences”? 

Is the Biden Administration now convinced that India will, and should be allowed to, pursue its own interests? I am just not so sure as others are. After all, I hear AUKUS is becoming JAUKUS (pronounced “jackass”), and that leaves India out in the cold clutching the Quad. 

1247 words, April 14, 2022 updated April 17, 2022

This column was published by firstpost.com at World War ‘Z’: The world after Ukrainian crisis, and India’s role in it-World News , Firstpost

The most ironic thing, in fact the blackest of noir humor, is the use of the letter ‘Z’ in the propaganda surrounding the Ukraine war. It is alleged that this letter is the symbol of Russian obduracy, and therefore worth condemnation, as in the German embassy’s tweet and the Economist’s cover story below.

The irony is because there is an earlier instance when the letter ‘Z’ was banned, in Greece, in the aftermath of a coup there. Thus the title of the political thriller, ‘Z’, (1969, Costa-Gavras), one of the most powerful films of all time, a thinly-veiled retelling of the conspiracy behind the assassination of a leading political candidate in 1963. A magistrate unraveled the mystery and sentenced the culprits to lengthy prison terms for the murder. 

The military coup followed, along with the banning of “Euripides, Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Tolstoy, long hair, mini-skirts, the Beatles, Albee, Pinter, Ionesco, Sartre, Mark Twain (partly), Freedom of the Press, Beckett, Sociology, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, learning Russian, learning Bulgarian, modern mathematics, popular music...”, and the letter ‘Z’, because it stands for ‘He lives’ in ancient Greek. These and more are listed in the closing credits of the film.

In an extraordinary example of life imitating art which was imitating life to begin with, the letter ‘Z’ is now associated with Russia, and banned, along with, unbelievably, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Pushkin, Mendeleev, Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky, Russian diamonds, vodka, oil, gas and so on. This is, literally, incredible.

History repeats itself, first as farce, second as tragedy.

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In addition, after POTUS Biden’s assertion about defenestrating Russian President Vladimir Putin (although the spin doctors quickly diverted attention), there is little doubt that the Ukraine war has a not-so-hidden agenda: regime change in Russia. In fact, that makes a warped sort of sense, and I compliment my friend Uday B for telling me this right from the beginning of the war, when I (wrongly) thought a negotiated, face-saving settlement could come within a week. 

The Deep State has specialized in this for long, and usually with disastrous results for the residents of the country thus ‘blessed’ with regime change. I can, off the top of my head, think of Allende in Chile, Mossadegh in Iran, Hussein in Iraq, and Gaddafi in Libya. Then there’s the ongoing effort against Assad in Syria. The only thing in common is misery, penury, war, war crimes, extreme human rights violations, and masses of refugees. Add Ukraine to the list. 

That is why I am alarmed at the sudden attention paid to India by all those ‘experts’ who are shocked, SHOCKED, that India is not unquestioningly getting with the program and toeing the line. The last time a whole queue of snake-oil salesmen descended on India was when the ‘nuclear deal’ was talked up as the best thing since sliced bread. But despite the promises of manna from heaven, the only visible outcome is India buying more US arms.

These good folks are now beginning to show up in India in droves, but the online eagerness has been evident for a while. India is really not all that important to the West, and so the attention is a red flag, and there are only two possible reasons for this Tender Loving Care: a) that they expect to bully India into continuing to be a slave nation, b) that they do not want another powerful manufacturing nation to come up: one China is more than enough. 

Thus, the moral indignation about ‘one nation invading another’ in violation of the ‘international rules-based order’, let us remember, did not extend to Pakistan invading Jammu & Kashmir in 1947. Nor did it extend to China invading Ladakh in 2020. NATO, and the Deep State, kept very quiet. On what basis, then, do they expect India to care about something happening in Europe? Ah, European wars are ‘world wars’, of course. Atlanticism rules. 

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And exactly what has the Biden administration done for India? Not much, but here’s the list of weapons they abandoned in Afghanistan; surely they will be used against India by Pakistan:

Staggering, isn’t it?

Going back to Ukraine, the US once, long ago, did what appears to be exactly the same thing Russia did: based on dubious excuses, it invaded Mexico and took away half that country’s land in 1846 in the US-Mexican war. China, similarly, expanded from their Han heartland, and invaded Tibet, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia. These became fait accompli. In fact, China probably views its 1962 attack on India as similar to the US-Mexican War: grab land and “teach a lesson”.

There is also the worrying historical precedent of dissolution of the Soviet Union. The Biden administration appears keen (and earlier, the Obama folks did, too; ask Ms Nuland) to apply the same formula to India, and to balkanize the country. In other words, break it up into tiny little statelets. Official policy by the Democrats, we’ve been told repeatedly, is ‘sub-national diplomacy’, that is, encouraging fault lines. 

Interestingly enough, this is precisely what Jinnah wanted as well, according to the book Jinnah: His successes, failures and role in history by Professor Ishtiaq Ahmed: dismemberment of India, not just the ‘moth-eaten’ Pakistan he got. So now we have a theoretical understanding as to why the Deep State has consistently attempted exactly the same thing.

For example, there is the laughable fake news about something that only affected a very small number of people, mostly in Kerala. Others claimed 250 million people took part in the strike, just as 250 million farmers rioted against the farm laws. Yes, exactly like Russia has lost 250 million soldiers in the war already, not to mention 7 generals! 

It is as though there is some vendetta by Democrats and the Deep State against India. They have been flying into paroxysms of rage against India lately (yes, even more than the usual bog-standard badgering and abuse by assorted propaganda outlets such as The Economist, New York Times, Financial Times, Guardian, BBC, NPR and so on).

As in the old Panchatantra tale of the old brahmin and the lamb, the rogues are trying to convince Indians that they actually have a dog, not a lamb. They are declaring Modi to be a fascist, and naturally, they’ll explain, a fascist has to be overthrown. Defenestration. Coup. Color Revolution. Endless misery. The end of the Indian Dream of prosperity. 

Naturally, a Chinese war against India would just accelerate this trajectory. Quad or not, it is increasingly apparent that Biden would not lift a finger to help. Whether Trump would have is a moot question (probably not, but at least he was paying attention to the Indo-Pacific). But, for some strange reason, after the Nixon/Kissinger duo, it appears to be US Democrats who are more malign towards India than Republicans. 

This is a strategic mistake. A solid Japan-US-India partnership in the Indo-Pacific could contain China (Australia doesn’t add much to this; in fact Vietnam or Indonesia would be more useful in a revamped Quad or Quintet or something). By retreating to the Atlantic, as with AUKUS, the US is proving to India once again that it has to go it alone in the Indo-Pacific. 

1190 words, 30 Mar 2022

A version of this essay was published on firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/world/the-meta-narrative-about-indias-non-involvement-in-the-ukraine-imbroglio-10403761.html

Disclaimer: Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb 24. This was written just before that happened.

The ongoing shadow-boxing between US President Biden and Russian President Putin over Ukraine has captured a lot of media attention. I was going to say “world attention”, but not really. It is a European problem, and those in the Indo-Pacific really don’t care much about it. Old-guard Atlanticists are bellyaching as though it were the end of the world, but it isn’t. And that is the first thing to note: Euro-centrism has had its day, and Europe matters less and less every day. 

All of the dramatis personae have not-so-hidden agendas that they bring to the party. In the end, as far as the impartial observer is concerned, this is not likely to lead to World War III despite all the blood-curdling rhetoric; the problem for disinterested parties is that oil prices are zooming in anticipation of war, or biting sanctions. Oil at $100 is good for Putin, and probably for Biden’s shale warriors, but developing nations will be hurt. 

Said developing countries are uninterested in the finer points of European nationalism, and would prefer that everybody make nice and go home. They really would prefer no war. This European hissy-fit is not their problem. 

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There is a Malayalam proverb that goes: “whether the thorn lands on the leaf, or the leaf lands on the thorn, it is the leaf that is hurt”. That is the exact situation developing countries, already devastated by the covid pandemic, face. They don’t really care about the wounded pride of Putin or Biden or whoever, but would rather oil prices were back in the $50-$60 range, so they don’t face another extortionate transfer of wealth.

Of course the sentiments of Ukrainians have to be considered. My first exposure to this was in the late 1970s when I was a graduate student in computer science, and my study group partner was a pretty blonde Ukrainian-American. I casually referred to her as Russian, because at that time the Soviet Union was still going strong, and Ukraine was a part of it. She flared up, and gave me an earful about how Ukrainians were not Russians, but oppressed by Russians. 

Clearly, there is a lot of bad blood between the old subjects of the Soviet Empire and the colonial masters, the Russians. In fact Indians can quite relate to this, because our colonial masters, the British, were absolute monsters. So yes, I am sympathetic to the struggles of Ukrainians to assert their cultural and territorial independence. 

But then, I am also sympathetic to the Chagos Islanders, who were evicted by the colonial Brits, so that America’s Diego Garcia naval base could be built. Courts have ruled that the islands belong to Mauritius, not Britain, but none of those bleating about Ukraine’s ‘territorial integrity’ seem to be in a hurry to eject Brits from the Chagos islands. Ah, so that’s different. 

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Obviously morality and rule of law is not the issue here. I was listening to a talk by John Mearsheimer, a respected geo-strategist, and he said candidly that the problem was the fault of the Americans. Just as much as the Monroe Doctrine creates a sphere of influence for the US in its backyard, it is only reasonable that in the post-Soviet era, the succeeding power Russia would like to maintain a sphere of influence in its backyard. 

At least, they would not want NATO to nibble at their periphery and expand itself, thus causing the Russians to feel vulnerable militarily. But the Democratic party appears to be chock-full of Atlanticists – possibly because their leaders are mostly from their East Coast, including Biden – and apparently they and the US Deep State are fighting the Cold War all over again. This is ridiculous because (checks notes) they won that war. But then generals are always fighting the last war again, because, well, that’s what generals do. 

This is also counter-productive, because they are simply driving the Russians into the dhritarashtra alinganam of the Chinese. A Eurasian heartland that is controlled by a Sino-Russian alliance is not in the interests of the Americans or their allies in Europe. In fact, a Huntingtonian view would suggest that Western Europeans and Americans should ally themselves with the Russians to form a united white Christian alliance against the Chinese. 

As Brahma Chellaney keeps saying, Western Europeans and Americans are fighting the wrong enemy. This creeping NATO-ization is a distraction when they should be worrying about China. 

Strangely, this does not seem to occur to them, and there are many possible reasons: Democrats are still fighting Donald Trump, and they think the Russiagate angle is a winning tactic against the resurgent Republicans; there was a lot of hanky-panky done in Ukraine by Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son (you might remember his laptop, whose motley contents were a story buried by the complicit media); and there are untouchable US assets and interests in China (especially those of Wall Street), so China can do no wrong.

And that brings me to the distinctly intriguing reactions of certain strategic analysts with a degree of exposure to India: Bruno Macaes, Derek Grossman, Jeff Smith and the folks over at Foreign Affairs. All of them, it appears, were distressed and/or surprised that India did not throw in its lot with the anti-Russia diplomatic initiative because, well, the US is an important ally to India, see Quad.

That, in fact, is the interesting meta-narrative. Nelson Mandela once told off a hectoring American journalist, who was chiding him for meeting with Colonel Gaddafi and Saddam Hussain, by pointing out that “you’d like us to pretend that your enemies are our enemies”. Precisely. You have a beef with Russia, fine, but that doesn’t mean India must, too. 

India’s and the US’ interests coincide on many things, but not on pissing off Russia, which, among other things, is supplying India with S-400 anti-missile systems, for which Americans have been threatening to impose CAATSA sanctions against India; but these are important deterrents to possible Chinese and Pakistani aggression. Interestingly, India just put on hold an order for 30 US Predator drones. The timing is, well, suggestive. 

Here’s Bruno Macaes’ tweet:

I had email discussions with Macaes some time ago, when he reached out to me, and there were three points where I disagreed with him, although his biases were understandable because he was a Portuguese Foreign Minister, his wife is a Turk, and he and his daughter were living in China for a while. In my opinion, he:

* Overestimates the coherence of the EU, which is full of squabbling neighbors, and therefore punches below its weight in foreign policy

* Overestimates the strategic power of Russia, which has fewer people than Pakistan and is shrinking, and has a GDP lower than India, despite its nukes and gas deposits

* Underestimates India’s ambitions for a G3, where a rapidly growing India will not be seeking to align with the Americans or the Chinese, but be itself a third pole.

I am pretty sure the other analysts suffer from versions of these flaws, although I only know them by what they say on Twitter. Here’s Foreign Affairs’ take:

But did you, Foreign Affairs, consider whether India has skin in this game, whether any of its national interests are at stake? You assume India wants to put pressure on Moscow. Not really. I am reminded of a VP at a company I worked at in Boston, who told a whining operations manager: “But Dave, you must be confusing me with someone who gives a damn (about your problems)”. What if India doesn’t give a damn?

Derek Grossman is a generally sympathetic analyst, but he cannot hide his disappointment with India in the current context. But Derek, the ‘bad look’ was the deafening silence from the West when Chinese killed unarmed Indian soldiers in the Galwan Valley. 

Jeff Smith is another analyst who seems to have grasped the Indian reaction better than others:

Yes, Jeff. India ain’t got no dog in this here fight. India doesn’t see any value in tying itself to either the US or Russia, because it’s perfectly clear that India will be on its own. India is painfully  aware that no white guy is going to die in the Himalayas fighting China for India’s benefit. So make India an offer it can’t refuse, like sanctioning China on India’s behalf. 

This, I am told, is realpolitik. India intends to stick to its interests. No, it’s not that fraud called. non-alignment. This is multi-alignment, and India will seek Chanakya’s wise counsel. 

What is admirable, though, is the consistency with which these strategic analysts approach the problem, which boils down to a few simple axioms:

* India is part of the Quad, therefore it is a US ally ‘by other means’

* Therefore India has no agency and has to toe the US and EU line on all matters

* But the US and the EU are under no reciprocal obligation to worry about India’s own interests, even when 200,000 Chinese troops are massed on the Indo-Tibet border.

There are a few flaws here. First, the Quad is an Indo-Pacific security agreement, not a marriage. Second, I’ve been dying to use the ‘woke’ term ‘agency’, and yes, they view India as a vassal state that has to go by US/EU agendas: some kind of patsy, in the Kissingerian view of India. That was true of Nehruvian India, but this is a New India. As they said in the memorable US car ad, “This isn’t your father’s Oldsmobile”. Deal with it. Cope. 

And third, Indians are asking the US and EU that famous American question: “So what have you done for us lately?”. Not much, actually. Then they should expect the same in return.

1620 words, 23 Feb 2022.