When it comes to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it is easy to get into the popular narrative of the Cold War. Three decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, this narrative still lives subconsciously, if not consciously, in people’s minds. It puts things in easy perspectives: a binary black and white, the US against Russia, us versus them. To quote George W. Bush (Bush Junior), this narrative is simple: “If you are not with us, you are against us.”

While the Cold War mindset might be obvious, other modes of thinking are less so. A key one is imperialism. In my naive youth, I had never believed that Americans would think of their role in the world from a great-power imperialistic perspective. When the Iraq War broke out in 2003, my impression was rudely shattered. I met a doctor in Connecticut and told him that I had just come from Kuwait. The good medic had never been outside his native state of Connecticut. Yet he expansively waved his hands and  asked me: “So how are we managing the region?” I realized then that this attitude was as imperial as the British one of “managing” India or the French one of “managing” Algeria or that of any colonial power “managing” a colony.

Our good doctor was well aware that the US Army had a base in Kuwait and the gateway to Iraq was directly through Kuwait. He assumed that the US was responsible for the whole region as some form of a world’s policeman and sovereign states in the region had little say in the matter. Given the fact that the US is the top dog as the sole superpower, it is easy to blame it for neo imperialism and more. Yet imperialism is not an American monopoly and it is important not to view the world through a monochromatic lens.

US Provocation or Russian Imperialism?

Some of the popular narrative in many countries is that the US is responsible for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, at least in part. John Mearsheimer, professor at the University of Chicago, has popularized this line of thought. He argues that NATO’s eastward expansion provoked Russian President Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine. The problem with this argument is that it is curiously imperial.

As per Mearsheimer’s worldview, NATO in general and the US in particular were at fault for welcoming countries that were in the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact. Admitting the three former Soviet republics in the Baltics was rubbing salt into wounded Russian pride. This view forgets that the Russian Empire and its successor, the Soviet Union, expanded in western Europe as well as in the east all the way to the Pacific. In 1979, the Soviet troops even marched into Afghanistan to protect the communist government.

None of the countries that suffered under Moscow’s yoke wants to go back to those. That is what so many of them lined up to join NATO when the Soviet Union fell. Eastern European nations also turned to the EU because of economic opportunities on offer. Poles, Lithuanians and even Hungarians prefer to work in France, Germany and the UK instead of in Russia. In a nutshell, NATO guaranteed security against an imperial Moscow while the EU boosted the economy for Eastern Europe. 

An imperial view would see the expansion of NATO as a win for the US and a loss to Russia. However, it might be a good idea not to think of NATO or even the EU expanding east but Eastern Europe moving westward. “Go West, young man” had a new meaning for Poles suffering from nightmares of the 1943 Katyn Forest Massacre when the Soviets slaughtered the flower of Polish society.

Obviously, Russia did not like the eastward expansion of NATO or the EU. For a historically imperial power, this was deeply humiliating. In particular, the Soviet collapse scarred Vladimir Putin. This former KGB officer ended up driving a taxi for a bit. As Atul Singh and Glenn Carle write, the 1990s deeply traumatized Russians “who interpret almost every US action and statement as pieces of a long term, coherent plan to undermine Russia.” Russia claims that NATO threatens its sovereignty by encroaching on its near abroad.

What Is the Conflict Really About?

The reality is that NATO armies have no designs on Russian territory. It is Russia that annexed Crimea with impunity and in contravention of international law. Now, it has attacked Ukraine without provocation. It is razing entire cities, killing civilians and committing atrocities in a classically brutal Russian way. The history and the current reality of Russia puts fear into the hearts of its neighbors.  That is why Finland and Sweden have applied to join NATO. Their action is defensive, not offensive.

US President Joe Biden may have been at fault in Afghanistan but he is not at fault for Ukraine. Putin is the man responsible for this conflict. Running a kleptocratic regime, this authoritarian leader needs to squash a democratic Ukraine. This removes the risk of calls for democracy in Russia. If Russian forces had taken Kyiv, a Moscow-friendly government would be in place. That was a key objective for Putin’s reckless assault on Kyiv. Unfortunately for the new tsar of Russia, Ukrainians beat back Russian forces.

Now Russian troops are taking over the Donbas region and much of Ukraine’s Black Sea coast so that Russia has a land route to Crimea. Putin’s constant references to history are self-serving justifications and too clever by half obfuscations. Putin recently compared himself to Peter the Great who fought the Great Northern Wars from 1700 to 1721. Addressing young scientists and entrepreneurs, Putin “talked politics and power.” He spoke about the new battle for geopolitical dominance and proclaimed Peter the Great to be a role model who in Putin’s eyes reclaimed Russian land. For Putin, it is all about land. Russia wants the Donbas, period. And maybe some more.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Russian Imperialism, Not NATO Expansion, Caused the Ukraine War appeared first on Fair Observer.

Over the last few months, even perhaps the last couple of years, a quiet, unobtrusive and perhaps unnoticed transformation has been taking place in the Pakistan Army. There was a time when the Pakistan Army would unabashedly interfere in the politics of the country and play favorites to a point. Apparently, it has now changed track and adopted a hands-off approach, allowing politics to play itself out. This shift in approach surprisingly signifies a more accommodating stance towards democracy and politics. 

In recent years, the Pakistan Army has been trying to stabilize civilian governments instead of destabilizing them. Cynics will of course disagree. They might claim that the military had no option but to cut its losses that prompted its current “neutral” stance. However, this is at best a half-truth and overlooks the fact the military could have intervened decisively as it did in the past. Instead, the military now allows Pakistan’s political, constitutional and judicial processes to run.

Does this mean that the military will stay out of the political domain forever? The answer is that we do not know for sure. A lot will depend on both civilian and military leaders as well as political and economic conditions in the country.

An Unusual General in Pakistan

As of now the Pakistan Army led by General Qamar Javed Bajwa is letting civilian politicians run the country. Imran Khan has been voted out by the parliament and Shehbaz Sharif is the new prime minister in a coalition government. This government is running the country with little interference from the military, which is largely trying to stabilize the situation.

Bajwa was not always so benign to democracy. He interfered with the Nawaz Sharif (elder brother of the current prime minister) government who was eventually pushed into exile in 2017. Next year, Bajwa favored Khan and helped him become prime minister. Reports reveal that some candidates were pressured to change loyalties, others were persuaded against running for office, elections were manipulated and other dirty tricks employed. After the 2018 elections, independent members were corralled into Khan’s party. The military backed Khan both at the national and the state level. His party won a majority in the state legislature of Punjab, Pakistan’s dominant state. 

From 2018, Bajwa has changed course. The military has not been interfering in politics. Bajwa served Khan loyally and tried to make his government a success. The military fixed many of Khan’s blunders vis-à-vis close allies like China, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Even when Khan went against the military’s advice, Bajwa did not act against the elected government. Eventually, Khan lost the confidence of his parliament because he was incompetent and grew delusional over time.

A Step to Normalization and Democracy

Most importantly, the military top brass accepted cuts to the defense budget in 2019 as Pakistan faced economic woes and rushed with a begging bowl yet again to the International Monetary Fund. The military supported the Khan government when it passed legislation to steer Pakistan out of the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) grey list. The FATF is an organization that focuses on combating money laundering, a common practice in Pakistan where some of the proceeds are used to finance terrorism.

Bajwa’s biggest achievement has been pushing better ties with India despite Khan’s incendiary anti-India rhetoric. He has called for talks with India, begun back channel initiatives to kick off trade and negotiated a ceasefire on the Line of Control that forms the de facto border with India. Most recently, 50,000 tons of Indian wheat has been rolling through Pakistan for Afghanistan, saving millions of lives. For the first time, there is hope that the military is finally supporting the normalization of ties with India.

Unlike many of his predecessors, Bajwa did not step in when the Khan government suffered a meltdown. He has scrupulously avoided displaying any Bonapartist tendencies in the land of Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq and Pervez Musharraf. Now, a coalition is in charge and the Bajwa-led military is abiding by the constitution. If the military withdraws from politics and democracy strengthens in Pakistan, Bajwa would have left an enduring legacy for his country.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post General Bajwa Has Reformed the Pakistani Military and Strengthened Democracy appeared first on Fair Observer.

Dear Maanas,

Reading your fascinating article, Confessions of a Modern Indian, I was intrigued by a distinction you made, which people outside India may not be aware of. You wrote, “The difference between Westernism and Liberalism used to be a fine line for me until I realized that there was indeed a large gap.”

I myself wrote an article on the word “liberalism” as it has been used by The Economist throughout its history dating back to 1843. I described the term as “one of the most confusing labels used to describe today’s civilization.” I pointed out how flexible the meaning seems to be, depending on context. Obviously, within the Indian context and concerning your generation, you are not thinking along the same lines as The Economist. Neither are you using it in the same ways it is used in the US, where contrast “liberal” with “conservative” are using it in their own culturally specific way, which has turned out to be another source of confusion.

As for the term Westernism, I’m familiar with the deep cultural divide that once separated Russians who identified with European culture from the Slavophiles who rejected European models and insisted on cleaving to the Slavic soul of their motherland. This rivalry dominated the question of Russian identity for the better part of two centuries. It has sadly re-emerged today in a new iteration focused on Ukraine’s Slavic but not Russian identity. Ukraine has long struggled, culturally and psychologically, with the problems likely to befall a culture sandwiched between the East and the West. Obviously, when you use the term Westernization, it is specific to India, which has had its own complex relationship with Western culture.

I would therefore be grateful if we could take this occasion to give Fair Observer’s readers some insight to the nuanced meaning of the terms. What can you, as a young Indian, tell us about how you and your generation understand these terms?

Maanas Jain

The word ‘liberal’ is an English word of which I always knew the meaning, and I’m sure others know it too. But past a certain age and maturity, I think people need to begin treating the word as the embodiment of certain ideals, especially if they are going to use the term to claim the betterment of peoples’ lives.

If ‘liberalism’ means being open to ideas, opinions and cultures, then all ideas should either be evaluated on the same logical basis, or we should not even bother to compare and judge them and simply assume the attitude that ignorance is bliss.

Peter

That definition stressing openness sounds somewhat similar to the traditional American idea, which implies welcoming social experimentation, refusing to be bound by traditions and inherited rules, while avoiding being disrespectful at the same time. With the culture wars around “wokeness” that seems to have changed radically and is the object of heated debate these days in the US. But coming back to India, who are the Indians that have adopted the liberal outlook you describe?

Maanas

The Indians who care about the term are primarily middle-class and above. This demographic thus consists of wealthy people, people who have time to bother about the value of ideals and who question the morals guiding their life’s choices. But this generalization is an ideal, and from what I’ve seen, most people don’t do this. What they seem to care about more is convincing themselves that their lives are ‘correct’ and well thought out. And the most convenient way one can delude oneself and society into believing this is by labeling themselves as liberal.

Once ‘liberalism’ is thrown in as a factor of one’s identity, it becomes fundamentally and morally unethical to question the nature of any action or opinion. Everything is judged as equally valid. That may mean that society may evolve in ignorance of the underlying logical – or illogical – basis behind many of its decisions. And since, in India, those who have adopted a modern way of life are the ones who call themselves liberal, they thus assume their values are justified.

When I lived in Pune, one of India’s developed cities, I was at an age at which I would be able to remember people and events to ponder about in the future. That experience led to my long-standing unease and even a feeling of inferiority that developed while having lived in such a society.

Many of my friends and acquaintances represented a part of the population that adhered to liberal values. Their ways of attaining happiness were already defined. These were the people who commented on the Indian government behaving like a dictatorship, complained of outdated cultures holding people back and advocated following one’s heart and passion. These were also the people whose happiness lay in Instagram, shopping malls, fancy restaurants and alcohol. While they talked about diversity, there was nothing diverse in their social community. The word freedom, when they uttered it, now seems to me like a hollow concept.

For these Indians, liberalism is a fad. It’s about casting away the chains that our indigenous, ‘retrograde’ culture has forced upon us and ascending to the glorious world of consumerism and capitalism. Leaving aside what the term ‘absolute right’ actually means, if they tried to be logically consistent, these liberals would view Indian culture as equally acceptable. Since that is not the case, the term ‘liberal’ is tainted by the values imported from the West that this community actually embodies. Thus the term I like to use is pseudo-liberal, or just Western, though this term seems to offend the individuals being addressed.

Confessions of a Modern Indian

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Peter

Where do you see these values expressed?

Maanas

Today I feel that much of how people’s inner minds work can be gleaned from their social media feeds. Certain trends are predominant among the majority of the users, limiting the diversity of ideas or discussions. Now this seems paradoxical, if you accept the idea that the platforms are presumably designed for sharing one’s uniqueness. But I guess this is logical, as social media tends to attract people who, in the first place, simply want to fit in.

One could argue that their social media activity represents what they want to show others in their quest to conform, and not what they actually believe deep down inside. But on a larger scale, I don’t think people’s inner thoughts are very significant. The sad reality is that the state of any situation and the expected responses are based on what people say and how they act, not what they believe deep down inside. Regardless of internal beliefs, most people, who have a conformist instinct, will respond according to dominant social trends.

Peter

Can you give some examples of how that conflict plays out?

Maanas

During my limited time on Instagram, the posts about self-love and acceptance, about being unique and having a passion as well as thinking that not being perfect was alright always fascinated me. But trying to imbibe these thoughts would leave me with a sense of inferiority. I began to understand why when I was struggling to conform to conventional education during the preparatory phase for my medical entrance exams.

At that time, I complained about Indian mainstream education being too orthodox, limiting and not about testing individuals’ unique qualities. But with this entire line of thinking, I was merely fooling myself. It was all an elaborate excuse I was using to cover up my inability to work hard. And considering the common trend in India, that most teenagers of upper-class societies are unable to get good rankings on national entrance exams, I believe that the situation is the same for them too. 

When faced with a challenge too difficult to tackle, like a competitive exam, they invoke the power of liberalism. The claim that others need to accept their differences, their uniqueness, that they are passionate about something else, that their inability to stress themselves is okay. Of course, justifying themselves in this manner isn’t an isolated decision that each individual makes. It’s part of their culture and just a component of a plethora of other perspectives that lead to their decision to move away from mainstream education.

Peter

Is this culture common to your generation in India or do you see it as associated with a class in Indian society?

Maanas

My medical college consists of top-ranking students from all around India. And it’s clear from their behavior that during their phase of preparation, they didn’t care about being different. They chose to believe that they were the same as everyone else, that they were the same as those who got better marks, that they too could rise to that level, and all they needed to do was work harder. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that most of the people in my college are middle or lower class, and only very few are much more noticeably wealthy.

Peter

So, the liberal mindset has an impact on attitudes to education. Are there other institutions that it effects?

Maanas

There is one area where liberalism in India  generally witnesses a tremendous surge of popularity – when it comes to finding the faults of religion. Some of the older generations in our modern societies are atheists, but almost all teenagers indefinitely are. They view religion as a bubble inside which people are trapped. According to them, the religious are ignorant of the freedom and the “true” happiness that lies outside their bubble and can be found in the joys of modernism. To me this seems like nothing more than another religion and another bubble. Fundamentally, consumerism is nothing more than a religion. It is a moral system that people believe, if followed, will lead to happiness. But acknowledging that this may be the equivalent of a religion is something no one bothers to consider.

During one of my lectures in medical college, a psychiatrist taught my class the definition of a delusion. It has three components. The first is belief in something that is not a fact. The second is the persistence of the belief even after the falsity of the fact has been proved. The third is belief in an idea that is not widely held by people of the same socioeconomic status. After the class, my friends were awed by the thought that religion was just a potential delusion, which would be the case if no account was taken of the third condition mentioned by the psychiatrist. 

The way religion is selectively targeted for this discussion is interesting and definitely not liberal. A better statement would have been that any widespread belief, be it philosophy, spirituality or materialism could be considered a potential delusion, but is not because a majority of the population believes in its existence. After all, the very power that gives money value is just the baseless belief that it has intrinsic value.

But this won’t stop pseudo-liberals from scoffing at people who pray outside the temples after the gates have been closed and people who listen to religious prayers and devotional songs. However, it’s okay for them to gawk at cars and clothes when window shopping or listening devotedly to pop music.

Many people who are strongly religious tend to be close-minded. They aren’t open to new ideas in general, and they believe that what their culture represents is the “absolute truth”. But right now, it seems as if the liberals are behaving in the same way. They are supporting Westernism without any definitive logical claims as to why it is better. This is where the problem arises. The liberals portray themselves as more intellectual than the others. They believe that their opinions, if implemented, are what will lead to a better future. But this hides a certain hypocrisy and escapism. If they want to tag themselves as torchbearers, they should be willing to think more honestly and in a genuinely liberal manner.

I am not defending all aspects of Indian culture (for example – sati, where the wife ascends the funeral pyre of her husband, a practice that pseudo-liberals commonly bring up). I am merely highlighting the fact that the pros and cons of all cultures must be considered. The Western concepts that pseudo-liberals view as freedom are more often than not the effects of indirect manipulations by large organizations, including corporations. For example, the value of brands that are subliminally embedded in people’s minds, as opposed to the method in India whereby one is made to imbibe certain values through the direct commands of family members. 

In many ways, since Westernism promotes the idea of continuous economic and technological growth, a true liberal must be willing to accept that these are not necessarily the definitive goals of humanity. Maybe a culture without monetary goals as its priority is ideologically acceptable as well. Perhaps each community and every individual should be allowed to choose their own delusion without being looked down upon.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Exploring the Confessions of a Modern Indian appeared first on Fair Observer.

US President Joe Biden has wrapped up his first trip to Asia. He met with new South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol to shore up the US-South Korea alliance. He traveled to Tokyo to reinvigorate the Quad grouping with Japan, Australia, and India. And he peddled the new Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, an attempt by the United States to reinsert itself into the Asian economy after the Trump administration’s pullout from the Trans Pacific Partnership.

The headlines in the United States have all been about Ukraine, inflation, and gun violence. Biden’s trip was designed to prove that the United States is in fact focused on one thing above all: China, China, China.

The strengthened alliance with South Korea is a signal to Beijing that the more accommodating era of the Moon Jae-in administration is over. The Quad meetings are part of a strategy of countering China’s ambitions in the region including its ports and bases along the Asian littoral. And the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework is a deliberate effort to roll back China’s considerable economic ties with its neighbors.

If you believe that China is the most important threat to US interests, all of these moves make perfect sense. Indeed, Biden’s trip to Asia generally received positive marks from the foreign policy elite in Washington, DC. Virtually the entire US expert class believes that it is necessary to confront China.

Push Reset Button with Beijing

This fear of China, however, has created a certain blindness. By going all out to contain this rival superpower, the United States is missing a golden opportunity. The Biden administration should be taking advantage of the war in Ukraine to push the reset button with Beijing. Closer relations with China would serve to isolate Russia, reorient the global economy in a more sustainable direction, and even reduce inflation in the United States.

The easiest and most obvious policy change the Biden administration should make involves the Trump-era tariffs on Chinese products. Indeed, some members of the administration, notably Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, have indicated support for reducing the tariffs. Tariff reductions could bring inflation down within a year by a full percentage point. That would be good news for US consumers and businesses—and for the Democratic Party’s political prospects.

Beijing would obviously welcome this move. It would also provide an opening for US negotiators to try an even bolder gambit, one that recalls an earlier geopolitical venture by the administration of Richard Nixon. In the 1970s, Nixon and his top advisor Henry Kissinger orchestrated an opening with Communist China. It was not a particularly happy time in China. The country was still in the midst of its murderous Cultural Revolution, and the elderly Mao Zedong was an increasingly erratic leader.

But Nixon and Kissinger saw an opportunity to drive a wedge between the two chief communist powers: China and the Soviet Union. It was of utmost importance for the United States to prevent any serious rapprochement between Moscow and Beijing. Moreover, Kissinger wanted to put pressure on the Soviets to be more compromising in arms control negotiations. Also driving the opening was a US business community that was cautiously optimistic about the profits that could be made in the Chinese market.

In many ways, the gamble worked perfectly. The United States was able to negotiate a détente with the Soviet Union that lasted, more or less, until the end of the 1970s. The Nixon-Kissinger policy also helped guide China out of its Cultural Revolution and into a more sensible engagement with the outside world.

Of course, the United States is now angry that China has proven so successful in engaging with its neighbors and the global economy. Beijing is no longer content to play a subordinate role. It is challenging the US position as the world’s top economy. It is also flexing its muscles near its borders—in the South China Sea and perennially with Taiwan—and challenging US claims that it is the preeminent Pacific power.

Go Back to the Future

But, as in the 1970s, there are still some very good reasons why the United States should open the door once again to China. Russia and China have formed an energy partnership based on their mutual fossil fuel needs (Russia to export, China to import). They have a shared distrust of certain liberal tenets concerning, for instance, free elections and freedom of speech. They have both aligned themselves with other authoritarian governments for their own security interests. If push comes to shove, Russia and China could form the basis of an anti-Western alliance.

But such an alliance is not inevitable. The Kremlin has long worried about Chinese designs on the Russian Far East. China is appalled at the way Russia has violated the sovereignty of its neighbors like Ukraine. Most importantly, China wants to preserve its more-or-less good economic relations with the West, while Russia seems to have given up on any potential rapprochement by doubling down with its invasion of Ukraine.

To further isolate Putin, the Biden administration should step in to offer Beijing a wide-ranging set of negotiations to normalize trade, address outstanding questions like intellectual property rights, and come to some shared understanding of the rules of the road in places like the South China Sea.

Perhaps most importantly, the United States has to offer China a different kind of energy partnership than what the Kremlin is promising. Instead of fossil fuels, Washington should expand the clean energy collaboration that the Obama administration began with Beijing. Together, the United States and China can lead the world into a new era of renewables that is far and away more compelling—and urgently needed—than the dirty energy paradigm that Russia is offering.

Is it too hard to imagine Biden turning his back on the foreign policy consensus in Washington in order to push the reset button on relations with China?

Perhaps.

But Biden as a presidential candidate promised to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah.” Now, President Biden is planning a visit this month to Riyadh, despite Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s assassination of a US journalist and the multiple war crimes the Saudi leader has committed in his war in Yemen. The reason for this reconciliation is quite simple and quite narrow: Biden wants to persuade the Saudis to put more oil into global markets to drive down the price of gas in the United States.

Surely if Biden is willing to make friends with the assassin of Riyadh, he can mend fences with Beijing for a much larger set of benefits and the prospect of a much more advantageous peace.

*[This article was originally published by FPIF.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Biden’s Golden Opportunity to Reverse Course on China appeared first on Fair Observer.

Organizations devote large sums to support expatriate assignments. When a candidate is chosen to be sent to the other end of the world, they  have solid reasons for getting it right but quite often they don’t. The chosen one is sent for various strategic and tactical reasons. They might be candidates who have specific technical skills and experience to head up a project being put in place locally or a high performer sent on a learning mission, to learn and grow into a bigger role.

So, what makes the perfect expatriate candidate? The usual answer is the one who is great at their job but also has the characteristics of adventurousness, cultural sensitivity, curiosity, flexibility, and open-mindedness.   

Although having all these characteristics certainly helps, what is often overlooked or underestimated is the challenge expatriation represents for the person’s mental and physical health. Settling in to work in another country may notably involve a number of stressors, such as feelings of isolation due to the unfamiliarity of the environment or the dawning realization that the strategies that worked at home might not work abroad. The expat will need to wake up to a new reality, that in this new context common sense is not common practice! Add to this the pressure to perform and produce positive results in a short amount of time and it is no wonder that numerous studies of US expats estimate that anywhere between 10 to 45% of them cut short their assignments.This has costly repercussions for both the individual and the organization.

Expatriates are mostly highly motivated individuals who want to succeed. Besides basic expatriation and cultural sensitivity training, language also plays an important role. When the candidate does not speak the language of the culture they will be spending time in, everyday exchanges become challenges and the risk of isolation grows as well. 

However, there is a flip side to this. When we do find that great candidate who also speaks the language – as in the case of a Brit going to the US, or a French employee being sent to Quebec, the most common assumption, which is also a mistake, is that since they speak the same language, there is no need for further cultural training. People often assume that since these cultures are not as vastly different from each other as say the British and the Chinese cultures, cultural awareness training is therefore redundant. These are easy assumptions to make but let us take a closer look at some typical cases to see how this really plays out.

An Englishman in New York 

Apparently, it was George Bernard Shaw who once made the astute observation that,  “The United States and Great Britain are two countries separated by a common language.” People may laugh at the witticism, but it contains a very real truth. Studies have shown that the English tend to have a more subtle, less direct way of communicating than the Americans. An English boss, when speaking to a junior team member, will probably say something along the lines of, “You might want to think about doing it this way.’ His English junior can and will understand the real meaning behind those words. This is clearly an order to do things as the boss has decided.

If a New Yorker on the other hand hears the exact same words, what he understands is that he must literally take into consideration the boss’s advice and think about that possibility. After considering the possibility, he may decide to do things his way and is shocked and surprised when at their next meeting his boss critiques his inability to follow instructions.

A Frenchman in Quebec 

North Americans like to wrap their negative feedback in a cotton ball of positivity. Here is how a boss may frame his evaluation of an employee’s underperformance.“The team loves your energy…Your numbers were a little off in your last presentation, but we have a lot of faith in you and I am sure you can do this better next time!” 

The French have a strong Latin influence in their culture and while their culture has invented a variety of very refined ways of communicating when handing out negative feedback, they tend to be quite direct. This directness, from the North American point of view, is most often perceived as rudeness and will typically be received with a range of emotions that start with annoyance, move on to anger and resistance, and eventually to disengagement leading to team members quitting the company. 

Another point that is important to note is that status and hierarchy are seen very differently in these two cultures. 

If the extent of the candidate’s vast experience is the basis for choosing someone who will be tasked with leading and developing a much younger team, a generational difference may also come into play.

Then there are other factors such as the ever-expanding subtleties of the woke movement, for example in a case where there is a gender difference between a male boss and a largely female team, and we have a layer cake of possibilities as to how things might go wrong. These difficulties, when left undiagnosed and ignored have the makings of a costly expatriation failure.

Preparing and managing a mental shift

Another pertinent point to remember is that when a soon-to-be American expatriate is getting ready to move to China, it is obvious to that person that there is a need to make a mental shift. The expectation of difference will inevitably be at the top of their mind. On the other hand, expatriates have a certain expectancy of similitude or even familiarity when they are going to a culture they think they know a lot about. That, in turn, lowers their readiness to adjust their way of doing things. It is typical of the US-UK or France-Quebec pairings.

The French science fiction writer Bernard Werber described what everyone can easily recognize as the basic problem of all communication. “Between what I think, what I want to say, what I think I said, what I say, what you want to hear, what you hear, what you think you understand, what you want to understand, and what you do understand, there are ten possibilities of not understanding each other.” Werber applied this principle to any human interaction, even when the interlocutors  hail from the same culture. It  should be evident that when the cultures are different and the stakes are high, the already tenfold chances of a misunderstanding become exponential.

How can a company efficiently deal with these expatriations? 

Communicating, interpreting, and understanding differences is crucial to the success of any international expatriation mission. Underestimating the need for support and training is easy to do. The right support and training is not an additional cost but an investment in future success.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post When Expatriation Fails & The One Mistake to Avoid appeared first on Fair Observer.

Six years ago, the world’s news cycle was treated to what in the movie business is called a double feature. It began with a British tragicomedy called Brexit, in the category of a heist drama, starring blonde bombshell Boris Johnson as the brains of a brilliantly designed and executed scam. It was followed by the American triumph of Donald Trump in a superhero movie with a psychological twist. Instead of rescuing the persecuted lady (played by Hillary Clinton), he focused on rescuing a border by building a wall.

Those two events symbolized, prolonged and accelerated a civilizational trend: the polarization of everything. The great advantage of polarization, especially in the consumer society, is that unlike the quandary of selecting a flavor of ice cream or a pair of shoes when the choice appears to be infinite, decision-making is simplified. With polarization you can simply decide what you want to reject, even if you are not convinced by what you choose.

In the culture wars that have been raging in the US, people simply have to decide which side they are on, even in issues of life and death. On the question of abortion, they must be either pro-choice or pro-life. There’s nothing to think about other than which camp one must identify with. The same applies to gun control or choosing one’s pronouns. In all cases, you will be on one side or the other. As Larry Beck has maintained in his columns, you have the simple choice of deciding whether the second amendment is about the rights of individual (originally white) citizens or the responsibility of states to organize militias. Once you have chosen your side, you know who your enemies are.

When simplistically contradictory debate replaces nuanced discussion or even argument, as the Monty Python demonstrated decades ago, the news media themselves are transformed into platforms for propaganda. Now that polarization has become the official political religion, the narrow opening that once existed giving access to information and contributing to decision-making has closed. Why waste time weighing the facts or assessing their consequences when the conclusion is ready-made?

If 2016 got the momentum going, 2022 may be remembered as the year when, thanks to a polarizing war in a faraway land, facts and assessment of their consequences were officially banished from even the West’s supposedly “serious” media. With news itself slinking away into the wings, propaganda could take center stage.

The Guardian is a serious newspaper that covers many non-controversial topics where the play of creative thinking is still allowed. But when it comes to the war in Ukraine, it has aligned with the Washington thesis, that humanity should be neatly divided into those who support Ukraine and those who support the Kremlin. We knew that would be true of The New York Times and The Washington Post, whose geopolitical lifeline is connected directly to the US intelligence community. But The Guardian appears too respectable not to follow suit and support the same narrative.

The Guardian published an article last week that presented as news the opinion of Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, head of the UK’s armed forces, asserting that Russia has ‘strategically lost’ the war in Ukraine. What it asserts is not news. It is the statement of someone who has an obvious interest in promoting a particular official narrative.

At one point the article quotes Radakin’s words: “This is a dreadful mistake by Russia. Russia will never take control of Ukraine.”

Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Take control:

A flexible verb collocation that suggests a spectrum of meanings between mastering (good) and oppressing (bad), making it ideal for tendentious use in political contexts

Contextual note

Summarizing the admiral’s reasoning The Guardian explains that “the Russian president Vladimir Putin, had lost 25% of Russia’s land power for only ‘tiny’ gains and it would emerge a ‘more diminished power’ while strengthening Nato.” Since the beginning of the war, with precious little evidence, Western media have relentlessly developed the thesis that Russia was losing the war and Ukraine was winning. Almost every expert not involved in producing and disseminating propaganda – and never quoted in the corporate media – has been saying, “Not so fast!” Russia may in fact be slowly achieving its objectives.

Propaganda is the art of taking very real facts and citing other imaginary facts or intentions to create an emotionally explosive linguistic cocktail. That is what The Guardian has done here with Radakin’s narrative. The newspaper’s account begins with a simple, though not necessarily verified fact, that “the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, had lost 25% of Russia’s land power.”

A Russian-American Game of Mirrors

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The Guardian draws this seemingly logical conclusion, that Russia “would emerge a ‘more diminished power.’” This correlates precisely with Washington’s narrative about the West’s goal in the conflict, as explained by US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, of wanting “to see Russia weakened.” There is a surreptitious semantic shift in both Radakin’s and The Guardian’s reasoning based precisely on the goal stated by Austin. Describing Russia’s material losses – whether the description is accurate or not – as implying that Russia is “a diminished power” is baseless.

Radakin cites a  figure of 50,000 Russian casualties, which is impressive. It appears to derive from Ukrainian claims repeated by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. On June 3, Le Monde offered a more serious evaluation of the current state of knowledge. “Nobody really knows,” it wrote, “how many combatants or civilians have died, and claims of casualties by government officials — who may sometimes be exaggerating or lowballing their figures for public relations reasons — are all but impossible to verify.”

But Radakin went further, claiming that “Russia has strategically lost already.” He cited Finland and Sweden “looking to join” NATO as proof. The average reader may take away the idea that Russia has already literally “lost” the war, which supposes that Ukraine has won. But Radakin’s assertion can only work if we suppose (i.e. speculate) that Russia was seeking to control Ukraine and neutralize NATO rather than “liberate” the Donbas in what it continues to claim is a “special military operation.”

Radakin avoids acknowledging that a country can strategically lose at various points and ultimately win a war. Assessing strategic success or failure requires knowing the enemy’s actual intentions. But we know that propaganda is always about distorting the intentions on both sides. This includes one’s own intentions, which may be far less noble than announced, and the other’s intentions, which may be less evil than claimed.

Historical note

As far as propaganda goes, the Ukraine war may occupy a unique place in history. War always and inevitably generates propaganda among the warring parties. But this may be the first time an overseas war with a complex historical background has produced such intensively developed propaganda in nations that have no direct stake in the issues behind the war. Unless, of course, they actually do have an unavowed stake in the war.

Propaganda in times of war can be described as the art of writing history before historians have the time or the means to understand its components. It sets in place a frame of reference that serves both a short-term and long-term objective. In the short-term, it fixes a population’s attention on a single and generally simplistic reading of responsibilities (who is to blame). With the liberty of a writer of creative fiction, it also describes the intentions on both sides, noble at home and devious on the enemy’s side. This is designed to prevent the local population from critiquing its government or suspecting any real or imaginary ulterior motives. The public can also be counted on to accept any sacrifice that is demanded.

In so doing, for the long term, it prepares the accounts that will appear in future history books. This is important for the continuity of the kind of emotion we call patriotism. It is essential to the future security of the state. History will thus be prewritten in a way that promotes the idea that the nation has always looked after the interests of its people and defended their shared ideals.

The New York Times’ Anti-Russian Inquisition Cancels History (again)

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One unanswered question for the West will depend on the duration and ultimate outcome of the Ukraine war. Given the tenuousness of the connection with Ukraine, will the populations of the West continue to perceive the war as serving their interests and ideals? That perception is beginning to erode in Europe as well as the US. Whether it accelerates and intensifies or not, we can nevertheless be sure that the propaganda will still be there to “take control” of the people’s emotions.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of Fair Observer Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post How It Took Six Years to Achieve the Victory of Polarization appeared first on Fair Observer.

As practiced in its most prominent democracies, Western politics has in recent years turned into something resembling both a battle and a game. Electoral campaigns now possess the feel of a brutal battle between powerful forces committed to their brand of good on a mission to vanquish their opponent’s brand of evil. Incumbents and challengers alike make solemn promises to set out in a new direction and deal with complex issues that imply resolute action and significant sacrifice.

As soon as the battle is won, the reality of politics in today’s democracies returns to its default status, that of a game. Once elected, politicians deploy their carefully refined skills that allow them to dodge anything that might tend towards implementing long-term solutions. 

Electoral battles leave the dead and wounded on the battlefield to be mourned, cared for or revenged. But like the pieces on a chessboard, in most cases they can be replaced on their initial squares. The political games that follow the battles have the effect of simply changing the order of the teams in the standings. In the game, the only thing that counts is the score when the final whistle blows as well as the corresponding W or L. The score-keeping device of democracies is called an election.

This past Sunday saw two significant elections in two very different settings. France completed its presidential-cum-legislative election cycle that, since 2002, ritually takes place every five years. The second election took place on the American continent, the country whose surreal political metaphysics were summed up by Gabriel García Márquez in 1967 in his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude (Cien años de soledad). 

Both of those elections produced shocking results, signaling the kind of reversal of trends that Olaf Scholz recently evoked when speaking about Germany’s foreign policy. He used the German word, Zeitenwende, a turning point in history. Scholz applied it specifically to the consequences of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: the newfound military resolve of Germany. Scholz thus evoked a top-down decision that foresees other top-down decisions to follow in the future. In contrast, Zeitenwende as reflected in the French and Colombian elections is likely to be more significant and with more long-term effects. They  both represent bottom-up examples of a historical “turning.”

The drama of France’s Cinquième République

The French legislative elections had the radical effect of breaking what until now was felt to be the fundamental logic of France’s Fifth Republic and a sacred tradition. The result of every presidential election in the Republic’s history was confirmed in the immediate aftermath by the same electors’ voting in a solid majority for the president’s party in the National Assembly. Within less than two months, the voters thus not only elect a supreme leader, but promptly empower the president to implement the announced battle plan. 

When, in May, 1981, François Mitterrand with a razor thin majority defeated the incumbent, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, a month later the electorate provided him with a clear legislative majority. He immediately and boldly began implementing his announced plan to nationalize all the major French industries, including the banks. Mitterrand’s actions conformed perfectly to the model of presidential government foreseen by the constitution of the Fifth Republic a little more than two decades earlier.

Now, four decades later, the Fifth Republic has clearly run out of steam. On Sunday, for the first time a newly re-elected president, Emmanuel Macron, found himself deprived of the majority that will allow him to preside over a program of government. Macron will now be faced with the challenge of cobbling together some kind of coalition that will be given the label of a government. Most likely both Macron and his new government will be permanently occupied with managing a chaos of conflicting interests. That situation clearly contradicts the entire logic of the Fifth Republic.

Many are predicting that the Assembly will be dissolved within a year and new elections called to permit the definition of a stable majority. At that point, two things can happen. If the spirit of the Fifth Republic is still alive, the prospect of dissolution will provide Macron with the means of breaking the apparent deadlock by soliciting the population to endow him with a majority committed to his program and his leadership. Depending on how things play out, that will appear either as a clever or desperate gamble.

If, as the turning point seems to reveal, the spirit of the Cinquième République has effectively retired or died, it will mark a return to the most dramatic moment of the Fifth Republic’s history. That was the revolt of May 1968, an event President Charles De Gaulle had the temerity to malign with the word “chienlit” (shitting in bed). The Republic nevertheless managed to clean the sheets after May ‘68 and survive intact. This time feels very different.

The Colombian surprise

Even more astonishingly, the Colombian election marked an inflection if not a reversal of what appeared to be the eternal fate of Colombia: to be governed by a corrupt right-wing establishment permanently closely aligned with the foreign policy goals of the United States. The newly elected left-wing president, Gustavo Petro, alas does not have access to the luxury of newly elected French presidents who historically could count on an immediate legislative election to confirm the voters’ endorsement of the candidate’s program. 

The current bicameral Congress of Colombia is dominated by right-wing, centrist, and neoliberal parties. In other words, Petro will have a major challenge on his hands trying to get anything accomplished. Add to that the fact that the state security services and the armed forces are likely to resist Petro’s authority, and it appears likely that Colombia will be living through its own, but very different kind of chienlit.

Most observers see Colombia’s turnabout as simply part of the new “pink tide” in Latin America, a phenomenon in which more and more American nations are voting in leftwing leaders. It is expected to increase the chances later this year of a victory in Brazil for Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva – better known as “Lula” – over the current right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro. More broadly, Petro’s triumph confirms the increasingly visible sentiment in Latin American countries that it is time to break free from the invisible shackles of the Monroe Doctrine (1823) that have bound them to a state of subservience to the US economy for almost exactly 200 years.

The ambiguous question of NATO

When Chancellor Olaf Scholz evoked his Zeitenwende, he gave no details about its meaning. He appeared to be saying that the Ukraine crisis was a wake-up call forcing Germany to break with its policy of cultivating a long-term friendship with Russia as well as its post-World War II stance of keeping a low military profile. 

The immediate impression this gave, eagerly welcomed in Washington, is that Germany would even more securely adhere to NATO. But in the background, there may be an even more significant turning point, which could have a deeper meaning. The current move may be more like a chess gambit designed to further a goal Germany already shares with France that consists of creating an autonomous European security framework no longer dependent on US leadership imposed through NATO. 

Reinforcing NATO would hardly justify the idea of Zeitenwende. In contrast, Europe breaking free from Anglo-American domination, especially after Brexit and the increasingly obvious revolt of many poorer nations and emerging powers, would truly mark a turning point in European and German history.

Was it all foretold by William Butler Yeats in 1921?

Speaking of Zeitenwende, this may be an appropriate moment to revisit a poem of anguished foreboding by Irish poet William Butler Yeats published just over a century ago. Here are the first ten lines of The Second Coming.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

Yeats’s poem has remained one of the most memorable literary pieces of the 20^th century. These lines have been quoted by political commentators at various times over the past hundred years to sum up the state of Western civilization. Yeats’ message in the immediate aftermath of the First World War was dire. At its core, in the third line, was a somber double assertion: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.”

Oswald Spengler had already reflected a similar sentiment that had been growing for some time in Europe. In 1918, he published the first volume of his Decline of the West, a work he had begun composing much earlier. In 1922, T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land appeared after being strenuously edited and ultimately “crafted” by Ezra Pound. It offered a panorama of the cultural and indeed civilizational confusion that had overcome Europe in the first two decades of the twentieth century.

The Waste Land took over first place and never relinquished it in the race to establish “the 20^th century’s “greatest poem in the English language.” Nevertheless, thanks to a succession of political events that seemed to bear out Yeats’s description of a broken system, the Second Coming has probably earned more references in the media than Eliot’s masterpiece. As the history of the twentieth century advanced, at various critical moments, things really did seem to be falling apart.

Just as Zeitenwende itself can be interpreted in various ways, so can Yeats’s assertion that “the centre cannot hold.” Yeats believed that the core of Western civilization was beginning to unravel like the twine below the leather surface of a baseball that has been torn asunder. His prescience was justified by the events listed above. But the unraveling is still incomplete. Most people are now aware that it could come to absolute fruition with an impending climate crisis, already making its marks, or perhaps even more quickly thanks to a nuclear “accident” provoked in the context of the increasingly nerve-racking standoff in Ukraine.

Defining the center

Sunday’s elections in France and Colombia provide a hint that what people thought of as the stable “center” of their global and local political systems is losing its grip. The center has gone off kilter, leaving the impression that it can no longer hold. As a concept, the center can be defined as a normative idea of how governments, with decent enough efficiency, carry on managing forces that are so complex and powerful they defy the ordinary citizen’s understanding. The center can thus be defined essentially as the inertia at the core of any establishment that keeps things ticking over from day to day.

The idea people have of the center implies belief in notions such as fair competition, free markets, reasonable government regulation, rule of law, free and fair elections. These cultural ideas are trotted to reassure populations that their leaders are doing a decent job. At the same time, the guardians of the center spend much of their energy warning voters to be wary of personalities who deviate from the center. If given a free hand, these deviant personalities might upset the precious applecart. That is why Barack Obama intervened two years ago to prevent Bernie Sanders from winning the Democratic presidential nomination. Joe Biden was chosen, clearly an avatar of “the center,”. Jeremy Corbyn suffered a similar fate to Sanders in the UK. In France, Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon were both labeled extremist. But these deviants have now returned to squeeze the life out of Macron’s vaunted center.

The political center in the West’s democratic countries has long assumed the task of defending and protecting the existing balance of economic and coercive power. It’s a system that has evolved, in an increasingly oligarchic fashion, around the productive forces of a neoliberal system designed specifically for the needs of the consumer economies promoted in the West. Additionally, over time, the question of security and the growing needs of the military-industrial complex have tended to set the tone and influence all the major decisions of the center.

Leaders such as David Cameron in the UK, Angela Merkel in Germany, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden in the US, and Emmanuel Macron in France, epitomized a center that had clearly become oligarchic and increasingly plutocratic at its core, but democratic in its formal constitution. 

And then something happened. Six years ago a series of events set in motion the feeling that the center might no longer hold or no longer deserved to hold. Various political personalities came to prominence whose style and bearing challenged the idea of “centerness.” Boris Johnson, Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, Bernie Sanders, Jean-Luc Mélenchon and others, with contrasting levels of seriousness, dared to deviate from an ideology built around the idea of trusting the “tried and true” to keep things on a relatively even keel. Paradoxically, that turned out to be  the key to Macron’s success in 2017, when the former pillars of the center – that included the traditional parties of the left and right – had fallen into discredit. The young interloper, especially in a runoff with Marine Le Pen, appeared to be an alternative to the existing sclerotic system.

Boris Johnson and Emmanuel Macron, both ambiguously perceived by their own establishments, have adopted policies respectful of the oligarchic power base that defines the center. But in their own way, they have both undermined the credibility of the center, in part by being too close to its oligarchic interests, which people have come to suspect, and in part because they have deviated from the cultural norm associated with the center.

The long and the short of it is that, within the Western block of respectable democracies, the center is rapidly losing its grip. At the same time, the periphery around that Western core is beginning to drift away from the traditional grip of the West, a grip that began with colonial conquest half a millennia ago. 

In its reporting on the Colombian election, The New York Times quotes a television director who lives “in a wealthy part of Bogotá.” “It’s been a long time,” he recounts, “since we had an opportunity like this for change. If things will get better, I don’t know. But if we stick with the same, we already know what we’re going to get.”

That may be the clearest sign that, even those who have benefitted from the status quo the center was designed to protect, are beginning to understand that “the center cannot hold.”

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post France and Colombia: The Center Keeps Trying (but Failing) to Hold appeared first on Fair Observer.

“Look, I own guns, and I’m a hunter.  But all the hunters and gun owners I know are responsible gun owners who favor common sense gun safety measures.”  This is complete bullshit, repeated over and over again to create the illusion that we are in this together to stop the crazies from killing our kids in schools and our friends and families at the mall or in the grocery store.

Too Many Weapons With Too Many People

There are over 400 million firearms in civilian hands in the United States.  I am sure that a whole bunch of them are owned by people who hunt something other than humans.  But I am equally sure that a whole bunch of them are owned by people who hunt, own military style weapons, possess military style magazines and ammunition, leave easy access to their guns to anyone around, and fight tooth and nail to ensure their access to even more weaponry.  And I am sure that a whole bunch of them don’t give a damn about the carnage left behind, especially if the dead and dying are Black or Brown souls.

And how about those gun manufacturers and gun dealers.  I’ll bet a whole bunch of them are hunters too. Probably even the guy who thought it was a good idea to sell two AR-15 semi-automatic rifles to the same kid just days after his 18th birthday, not to mention the extended magazines and ammunition necessary to turn those weapons into active killing machines in Uvalde, Texas.  Let’s find that guy and interview him for his take on hunting and gun safety.

And the cops on the scene, likely hunters and heroes all. Surely they are not afraid to plug a deer, but put them up against a hunter of humans with a “long gun” and they wait around for a key to open the door to an elementary school killing field. Behind that door was a room filled with a killer, one of his AR-15 rifles with loaded magazines at the ready, and the pools of blood around nineteen dead or dying children and two dead teachers. Also, behind that door were those children who somehow survived covered in blood and bullet fragments to relive this nightmare for the rest of their lives. 

I wonder whether any of those cops will change their point of view about guns in civilian hands after what they witnessed that those guns, those magazines, and those exploding bullets can do.  Their silence, and the silence of ten of thousands of other cops, says it all.

So save the pious crap for the thoughts and prayers that litter the landscape of a violent land filled with violent people, and a gun culture that always raises the ante and the death toll.  It was easy to find the first deflection.  All those “responsible” gun owners were at the ready to bemoan the dismal carnage and repeat their pious outrage about guns in the wrong hands.  Yet, nowhere in the mix will there be any self-reflection that they themselves bear any responsibility for the carnage.  For somehow, it is the freedom to create that carnage that is more precious to them than someone else’s precious child with a body destroyed beyond recognition by the firearms that those “responsible” gun owners crave.

Examining the Second Amendment

Just what is this precious freedom that is so worth the carnage to so many.  It is the supposed individual right to keep and bear arms.  Some say that this right is enshrined in the Second Amendment to the US Constitution. Yet that Second Amendment doesn’t say a word about individual gun ownership or who among the people shall enjoy the precious right.  Nor does it mention automatic and semi-automatic weapons or what to do when human ingenuity creates high-capacity magazines and exploding bullets.

In fact, the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution is short and extremely imprecise.  It says in its entirety: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

So, if you are a member of a well-regulated militia, it seems that you have the right to access a gun or two in order to perform the duties associated with a late 18^th century public militia.  Beyond those merry militiamen, the amendment doesn’t even try to suggest who else might be included among the “people” whose right to keep and bear arms is not to be infringed.

If the revered founding fathers wanted to arm everyone, they probably would have said so.  Remember how purposeful they were in leaving women out of most of the Constitution and how famously precise they were in creating the three-fifths Black guy.  Yet now, all of sudden, the word “people” means everybody. And just to add to the definitional confusion, the Second Amendment doesn’t even try to define the word “arms,” leaving that task to the gun manufactures of the future and their paid flacks and corrupted politicians.

There has been much written about the history of today’s quixotic notion of individual gun rights.  But one thing is certain, in order to get there, whether you are a gun nut or a Supreme Court justice, you have to ignore the entire introductory phrase of the Second Amendment.  Only by doing so can you arrive at the conviction that an individual right to bear any and all arms is enshrined in the US Constitution.

To be precise, individual citizens armed to hunt deer or prairie dogs, protect themselves, and indiscriminately kill and maim other humans, is the antithesis of any notion of a well-regulated militia that is “necessary to the security of a free State.”  America seems so insecure today precisely because of the chaotic proliferation of firearms in civilian hands.

Fear Your Armed Neighbors

At this moment, the gunmen that we should fear are our armed neighbors.  We should fear them because they are gunmen.  We should understand that the ones among them who create the chaos do not act alone. They act with our tacit support when we say nothing about the guns they own, and about the people in our communities who arm them for profit.  They act with our overt support when we buy into their fantasies by doing nothing to disarm them.  The lone wolf idea is nothing more than another useful fiction that keeps us quiet and does a disservice to wolves.  The killers never act alone.

So, save it folks, I want you to know that I am coming after your guns, all of them.  Because I know and you know that that is the only way to truly protect ourselves from each other and our baser instincts that so often turn so deadly only in that instant when a trigger is pulled.  Learn to fish.  It is more satisfying and only fatal to humans who are stupid enough to swallow their own hook.

As we watch America’s legislative gun control charade play out in the days and weeks ahead, it is useful to remember that there are times when something can be better than nothing.  However, sometimes, and this is one of those times, “something” sure looks like nothing.

*[This article was first published on the author’s blog, Hard Left Turn.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Dead Souls in America: Taking Away Guns is the Only Way appeared first on Fair Observer.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Francis Fukuyama, the American political scientist, declared the end of history, which marked an ending point to the historical struggles of political ideologies, and the Cold War between the Eastern bloc consisting of centralized communist regimes led by the Soviet Union, and the Western bloc of liberal democracies led by the United States. In the End of History Fukuyama made the case for the superiority of liberal democracy and free-market capitalism over socialism and planned economies, considering it the zenith of human rationality’s evolution.  Liberal democracy became the para-ideology of the post-Cold War world, paving the way for bringing a new world order to humanity in the name of peace, prosperity, pluralism, positive and negative freedom, and the public-private divide. 

The advent of the new order, as the offspring of the modern para-ideology of liberal democracy, by its nature implies cohesion and solidarity on the world stage. The doctrines of liberal democracy are claimed to be universal and nation states are required to implement them to provide equality of opportunities, equity, in a context of freedom, individualism, and pluralism, all of which make up the infrastructural concept of human rights on the global stage. 

Citizens of the states are deemed to have signed the social contract, transferring their right to rule in their mother territory to the central government as the legitimate organ empowered to implement its sovereignty to uphold the nation’s rights and freedom. In this context, democracy is meaningless if plurality is suppressed since the concept of democracy includes at its roots the acceptance of pluralism. Any act that serves to deprive any human beings of their universal rights violates the principle of plurality.. 

For this reason, as well as for the maintenance of the global order, international institutions such as the ICC, United Nations, and IAEA were created. But apparently, no element of the new order has been perceived in the interest of the authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. Authoritarian regimes like Russia, the People’s Republic of China, Iran’s Islamic Republic, and the last totalitarian Stalinist regime in North Korea are calling into question the liberal-democratic order across the globe. Russia’s invasion of  Ukraine lit its flame.

Strategic Goals of Russia in the Ukraine War

The vertical propaganda machine of the Russian Federation justifies the invasion of Ukraine as a anti-Nazi special Operation. Its stated ultimate goal is de-Nazifying and demilitarizing Ukraine, and preventing Ukraine from joining NATO. However, it is not all the aspects of the iceberg. 

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Donbas has been the industrial center of independent Ukraine, due to the fact that the land contains a large reserve of coal. Historically, Donbas has played a crucial role in the industrialization of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union.  On the other hand, the flocking of people of Russia to Donbas during the late 19th century created a strong cultural tie between the people of Russia, and the Ukrainians in the Donbas. Furthermore, throughout the history of the Russian Empire, since 1654, Ukrainians were prone to being systematically assimilated into the Russian Empire. The educational system followed the Russian model and Russian became the official language under the policies known as Russification. 

Hence the concentration of Russians and Russian culture in Donbas is multifaceted, with a historical, socio-cultural and economic dimension. The eventual annexation of the Donbas by Russia promises not only to enrich Russia economically but also to create a strategic dependence of Ukraine with regard to Russia. This is an important factor in the logic that underlies the Russian claims of historical and socio-cultural ties between the Donbas and the motherland of Russia. 

The Cold War began as the Second World War ended. The international arena found itself confronted with the bipolar pitting of the Western block against the Eastern bloc. The Western bloc was formed by the collective defense agreement of NATO. After the integration of West Germany into NATO, the Soviet-backed collective defense agreement known as the Warsaw Pact was signed in Warsaw, Poland. The Warsaw pact disbanded in 1991 as, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the communist structure had lost all legitimacy in Eastern Europe. 

NATO, however, experienced eight periods of enlargement since its establishment in 1949. The Russian Federation considers NATO a threat to its national security. They see it as an anti-Russia treaty. Thus the Kremlin feels it cannot sit idly by and watch the expansion of NATO to Eastern European countries, which they see as being part of their “historical land.” Therefore, one objective behind the invasion of Ukraine is Russia’s desire to forbid the expansion of NATO. 

The 20th century is known as the age of emerging ideologies. The map of the globe experienced revolutions, risings, significant wear and tear and a confusion of political ideologies. The fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 changed the trajectory of history, apparently in the direction of the interests of liberal democracy and free-market capitalism. That year stands as the starting point of a unipolar world. Democracy in line with the rule of law, individualism, freedom, the right to vote, equality of opportunities, equity and pluralism are the stated core values of the new order, which the democracies across the globe aspire to achieve. 

This order, led by the Western block, is now being challenged by authoritarian and totalitarian regimes seeking to establish and feed a multipolar order and a new era in international relations. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine took place in the context of a global movement away from the unipolar world of 1991. Some believe it signifies that Russia is striving for the revival of the Russian Empire’s hegemony over Eurasia, Eastern Europe, and the Central Asia Countries. The People’s Republic of China is vying to become an economic hegemon under the Xi doctrine. It has engaged in a subtle cultural hegemonic war in its challenge to the dominance of Western culture. It is now taken for granted that Western liberal-based countries backed by the United States of America constitute one pillar of the emerging multipolar world order that may form a triangle with the Russian Federation and China in international relations. However, this triangle holds the potential of becoming a square, with the rising influence of political Islam. Nevertheless, the question concerning which among a trio of countries – Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia – may end up leading such an Islamic coalition and whether such a coalition can maintain a viable level of cohesion is far from settled. 

The Atrocities in Ukraine and the Banality of Evil

Hannah Arendt, the German political philosopher who coined the term “the banality of evil” after the trial of Eichmann for his role in the Holocaust, argued that in our age, the age of genocide, extreme evil is done when the perpetrator renounces the power human beings have of discerning between good and evil. For Arendt, the banality of evil is “thought-defying.” The perpetrator is only obeying bureaucratic orders, rather than being driven by ideological motivations or personal resentment.

The atrocities perpetrated by Russian forces in Chernihiv, Kharkiv, and Kyiv Ukraine can be seen as the repetition of the banality of evil in our era. There are no ideological incentives behind this war, and there is no personal resentment of the Russian military forces toward the innocent civilians of Ukraine. 

Plurality is a feature of all human societies. No one can deny the existence of others, and their interests as nations or ethnical groups. Any act that implies ignoring identities, assimilation, war crimes, and genocides violates the principle of pluralism, and can thus be considered an act of dehumanization. Every evidence of war crimes and atrocities in the ongoing catastrophe in Ukraine is yet another act of dehumanization that points to  the reemergence of the banality of evil at this age.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post The Banality of Evil, the Ukraine War and Russia’s Strategic Goals appeared first on Fair Observer.

In the first week of June, the 17^th edition of an event called the GLOBSEC Bratislava Forum took place at a particularly tense moment in European history. Among its programmed events was an interview with India’s Minister for External Affairs, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. In a tweet following the event, the minister modestly summed up the interview in these words: “Animated discussion, reflecting  a perspective from India and the Indo-Pacific.” It was that indeed, but much more.

The GLOBSEC Policy Institute defines itself as a think tank and “a leading authority on security matters in Central and Eastern Europe.” The announced mission of its annual forum is to facilitate “the free exchange of ideas” by providing “a meeting place for stakeholders from all sectors of society.”

Like most institutions that claim the title of think tank, GLOBSEC is less focused on thinking than on implementing an ideology and an explicit activist agenda. This year’s conference, it boldly announces, “will serve as a platform to mobilize the West’s support and action for Ukraine.”

GLOBSEC selected the seasoned journalist Maithreyi Seetharaman to interview Dr. Jaishankar. Chartwell Speakers describes the broadcaster as specialized “in connecting the dots between business, policy, civil society and the economy.” She turned out to be the perfect choice for GLOBSEC. Seetharaman’s personal worldview clearly aligns with the objectives of the conference. Less interested in the “free exchange of ideas” than the think tank’s agenda, she focused on the real purpose of the interview: mobilizing “support and action for Ukraine.”

The West’s Trickle-Down Diplomacy

Seetharaman sets the scene by reminding her interviewee that the issue of the day is the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Perhaps influenced by her own ideology, that of a top-down world embracing trickle-down economics, she prefaces her questioning with the curious remark that the Ukraine war is now “trickling in terms of effect… to the rest of the world, the East, the global South.”

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Seetharaman’s illustrious career over the past 20 years has propelled her through some of the top media outlets specialized in financial and economic news, including Bloomberg, CNBC and more recently Fortune. Her rhetoric even in this seemingly innocent introduction to the interview reveals that she has fully absorbed this fundamental notion of economic ideology used traditionally to justify wealth inequality.

To kick off the conversation, Seetharaman then employs an artistic metaphor. “Paint us a little bit of a picture of India and how India’s being impacted,” she begins. With a few bold brushstrokes Jaishankar quickly passes in review the topics COVID, India’s economy, China and Afghanistan. After evoking India’s tension with China, he cuttingly drops the “useful reminder to Europe that there are other things happening in the rest of the world that perhaps Europe does not pay enough attention to.” How is that – he seems to be suggesting – for a “a little bit of a picture” of “the rest of the world?”

Seetharaman then intervenes with a question she deems important submitted by a member of the online audience: “How interested are the Indian people in the war in Ukraine? Is it a major concern, or a minor one?” The suggestion that it may be a minor one sums up the tone the journalist develops throughout the conversation that minimizes India’s importance with regard to the real issues in the world. It contains an implicit reproach of Indian indifference to what Westerners see as a defining existential drama.

The minister responds with a detailed explanation of the nature of the impact of events in Europe on both the Indian government and Indians themselves. This provides the first opening for what Seetharaman considers the big question, and indeed perhaps the only question: the problem of India’s traditional stance of “non-alignment.” To make her point, she brings up the question of India’s importing of oil from Russia, which she sees as the nation’s defiance of the West’s campaign to cripple Russia’s economy. Assuming the role of a police interrogator, she aggressively frames her question as an accusation of criminal behavior: “Is that profiteering? Is that looking out for your own interests? What does that really mean for the foreign policy of India and how do you tie non-alignment with nine times more oil imports out of Russia?”

Politely and in appropriate detail, Jaishankar explains why the question of imports has nothing to do either with alignment or non-alignment. He points to a double standard, given that Europe, enthralled by American sanctions, is still allowed to consume Russia gas. He adds that Western sanctions on Iran’s oil had already cut off India’s most reliable traditional source.

Undaunted and seeming not to have processed the minister’s remarks, Seetharaman follows up with another accusatory question. “How do you then sit back,” she asks, “and define Indian foreign policy at this point where the West seems to be quite vociferous in trying to curtail funding for the war in Ukraine whereas by purchasing this oil for its national interest, India is being asked, ‘are you funding this war?’”

Her rhetoric is not only insidious and transparent but also insulting. Accusing the government of her own forebears of “sitting back” and presumably playing deceptive games cannot be considered either good journalism or acceptable diplomacy. She is directly challenging India’s and her interviewee’s integrity. And of course, Jaishankar has just answered exactly that question.

Maintaining a polite tone, the minister responds saying, “I don’t want to sound argumentative” to her clearly argumentative question. He then comes back to a point he had already made, this time in the form of a rhetorical question. “Tell me that buying Russian gas is not funding the war? It’s only Indian money and oil coming to India which funds but it’s not gas coming to Europe that funds?”

From Oil to Wheat

Seetharaman then seeks a new angle of attack that she has some difficulty articulating. She asks her guest to explain “the second aspect that India’s foreign policy being questioned [about] at this point.” Instead of “aspect,” she could have said “the second invented accusation.” This one concerns measures Indians have taken to ban wheat exports in a time of need, with Russian and Ukrainian exports blocked and the global South facing possible famine.

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The journalist asks if the minister sees that as “supporting Russia… or is it a completely different element that we don’t understand in the West?” With a wry smile, Jaishankar replies: “I think the answer is B. You don’t understand in the West.” He then helpfully explains to this journalist supposedly specialized in the workings of the economy that it was an element of the West’s ideology that is to blame for this restrictive policy. India was forced to adopt these measures to keep its wheat exports out of the hands of speculators in Singapore and Dubai, who in this time of crisis have been seeking to monopolize the market with the intent of selling at higher prices to high income countries, while neglecting the most needy.

This exchange reveals a reflex that now exists among all the proponents of the Western coalition in the media. Any action taken by a friendly country that fails to conform to the most arbitrary and ill-thought-out dictates of the NATO-allied West can be deemed to be “supporting Russia.” This marks a return to the “global war on terror” reasoning of George W Bush, whose binary logic informed us, “if you are not with us, you are against us.” Bush, however, had the excuse of being physically at war in Afghanistan and Iraq. In contrast, today, even while bullying the world into joining its effort to cripple Russia’s economy and undermine Vladimir Putin’s presidency, neither the US nor Europe wants to be seen as being literally at war with Russia.

Jaishankar uses the occasion not just to clarify that it is mere fantasy to suppose Indian complicity with Russia, but especially to highlight the fact that the West’s approach to management of supply to the needy nations of the world leaves a lot to be desired. He cites the disastrous management of vaccine distribution that was monopolized by the wealthy nations, victimizing the poor and prolonging the pandemic’s global effect.

The Wall Street Journal as the Font of Truth

Seetharaman then reads a question submitted by a member of the online audience, who cites the authority of The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), this time accusing India of the transhipment of Russian oil. The minister mockingly dismisses the very idea of transhipment as a nonsensical fantasy. Seetharaman seems astonished that Jaishankar’s should dare to deny something the WSJ reported and asks him if he deems it “inaccurate.” Though superficially accepting his denial, she immediately tries to reframe the accusation by asking whether India may be playing the role of “conduit to any Russian oil transactions.”

This exchange reveals two important facets of today’s Western propaganda. The first is that unfounded suspicions of practices that deviate from Western norms are routinely presented as facts by the most “respectable” organs of the press. The second is that readers of such supposedly informative journals – whether it’s the WSJ, The New York Times, The Economist or The Washington Post – accept as unvarnished truth reporting that is little more than speculative rumor. Like the adepts of Q-Anon, they have difficulty accepting any denial of such invented accusations, on the grounds that these organs of the press are above reproach. That impression alone facilitates the work of political and economic propagandists.

At this point a Lithuanian journalist stood up with a new accusation, that India was “essentially ignoring war crimes in Ukraine, not condemning Russia, not doing sanctions.” Referring to its “struggle” with China, the journalist asked “how do you think you’ll be trusted by others after that?” Correctly perceiving the question to be a mix between a reproach and a threat by powerful Western nations not to back India in its differences with China, Jaishankar returns the question. He reminds the journalist that since “Europe collectively… has been singularly silent about many things which were happening, for example, in Asia, you could ask why anybody in Asia could trust Europe on anything at all.” Turnabout, as the proverb tells us, is fair play.

The minister clarifies once again that what the journalist claims is “mischaracterizing our position” and explains why. More pertinently, he points to the absurdity of the implied reasoning, characterizing it as “a transaction” following the idea “that I come in one conflict because it will help me in conflict two,” adding this pertinent remark: “That’s not how the world works.”

Once again, instead of processing what the minister has just explained, Seetharaman tries to reformulate the same accusation in very much the same terms. “You have a problem with China on the border,” she begins before continuing with the question, “what position does that leave you in when it comes to seeking support if further incursions are done?” To bring home the seriousness of her claim, she poses another question coming from “one of the foremost geopolitical strategists on Wall Street,” who wants to know to whom, in a moment of crisis, India would look for support, the US or China? The questioner refers to this as “a defining moment that comes out of the defining moment that we face with Russia right now.”

Europe and the West Have a Mindset Problem

Perceiving this challenge to be a frank attempt at psychological bullying by a particularly bellicose group of ideologues, Jaishankar reacts by providing what should be remembered as one of the best political quotes of the 21^st century. “You know,” he intones, “somewhere Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems, but the world’s problems are not Europe’s problems.” India has been living with that mindset for more than two centuries.

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He goes on to characterize the binary logic promoted by that mindset: “Your grand strategy must be about how you will choose.” Once again refusing to acknowledge the minister’s line of reasoning, Seetharaman interrupts him by interjecting what she takes to be a truism: “There will always be two axes. At this point it’s an understood, accepted fact. You have the West, US-led. You have China as the next potential axis. Where does India fit into this?”

The minister correctly identifies this as a “construct you are trying to impose on me.”  In other words, a perfect illustration of the Western Eurocentric mindset.  He asserts that India is entitled to weigh its own interests and make choices that, contrary to the worldview of the West, “are not cynical and transactional.” In other words, the self-interested “buying, selling, trading” logic of Wall Street – quintessentially cynical and purely transactional – is not appropriate to democracies.

Once again, discarding what Jaishankar has just explained, Seetharaman reformulates the same question, this time in even more cynical and transactional terms. With one fifth of the world’s population, she admonishes him, “you cannot sit on the fence with regard to foreign policy matters.” She adds the warning that “non-alignment isn’t plausible if you want to take your position on the world stage.”

Jaishankar responds that the accusation of sitting on the fence “just because I don’t agree with you” makes no sense. Instead, he counters that “I’m sitting on my ground.” Seetharaman’s rhetoric is revealing. For her, the world is a stage, a hyperreal platform on which decisions are made by important people. Those who are incapable of holding forth on the stage, where, as we know, “poor players” are wont to “strut and fret” while those who don’t deserve to join them are condemned to sit on the fence. But, as Shakespeare told us, being on the stage accomplishes little. All that strutting and fretting ultimately signifies nothing.

He goes on to state what should be obvious to all, listing “the big challenges of the world” that transcend the “sound and fury” of a complex war in Eastern Europe. He identifies them as “climate change, terrorism “and the emergence of a world order,” as well as security and sustainable development goals. He implies that cooperating on solving those problems should have priority over what the rest of the world see as a proxy war for military dominance in one corner of Europe.

In this curious rhetorical fencing match, he then attempts a fatal thrust. “A lot of things are happening outside Europe,” he tells this Western journalist of Indian heritage. He informs her that “the world cannot be that Eurocentric as it used to be in the past.”

When journalism imitates Lewis Carroll

After this sally comes the final great moment of the interview. Anyone who remembers Lewis Carroll’s The White Knight’s Song in Through the Looking-Glass, will recognize the resemblance between Seetharaman and the narrator of Carroll’s poem, a poet who interrogates a man he happens upon in the countryside. Repeating the same question over and over again, the poet fails to take any account of the man’s answers, drifting off into his own speculations and fantasies. At least the narrator of the poem (Carroll’s parody of William Wordsworth), unlike Seetharaman, admits his inability to listen and process information. He confesses in the first stanza that “his answer trickled through my head/ Like water through a sieve.”

And so it is that, like Lewis Carroll’s persona, Seetharaman reformulates the same question, this time with these words: “And who will India play with? Will it be Europe and the US or will it be China and Russia?” The minister follows his nuanced answer with a serious recommendation as he attempts to appeal to the journalist’s sense of professionalism: “Don’t use necessarily a caricature version of one situation as a yardstick to pass a sweeping judgment.” Alas, that is all she has been doing for the past half hour.

Concerning the Ukraine conflict itself, he adds a thought that seems curiously absent in all official Western discourse. He reminds Seetharaman and the public that one day a negotiated peace will have to come, meaning that “it is in our collective interest to find some kind of resolution… unless you’re throwing your hands up and saying this is not fixable.”

This time it is Jaishankar who is guilty of mischaracterizing Seetharaman’s position and indeed the position of the entire Western coalition. They are not saying it isn’t fixable. They are saying it is only fixable on our terms, following the unimpeachable wisdom of geopolitical strategists on Wall Street.

These exchanges offer yet another illustration of how Western journalists are locked into an ideological program that requires them to endlessly repeat invented narratives already present in the media. In their interviews, they strive to confirm those points rather than to explore other avenues of understanding. That this happens routinely in newsrooms and editorial meetings should not be surprising. They have copy to deliver in conformity with the editorial line. But this is true even when the valuable resource for their reporting is sitting in front of them in the same room.

Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jainshankar must be congratulated for being one of the rare political voices that dares to challenge Western media to its face and find the appropriate tone for doing so.

Take Away From the Interview

India’s Minister of External Affairs put in a brilliant performance but offered nothing radically new about India’s stance. His impressive pedagogical dexterity permitted him to confirm with appropriate factual detail what is already public knowledge about India’s non-alignment. After all, he is the author of a book, The India Way, that provides the scaffolding for everything he says in this interview.  Surely, Seetharaman herself, with her Indian heritage, already understood that.

What the rest of us can take from this fascinating confrontation has less to do with understanding India than coming to grips with the mindset of the media in the West, particularly its refusal to handle or even admit any diversity of perspective.  For Western journalists, even of Asian origin, it doesn’t matter how much you already know or even what you may be able to learn from a source sitting in front of you.

What matters is your capacity to unfailingly repeat the mindset of your Western corporate and political masters. They have clearly enunciated their own unshakable geopolitical strategy, which is regurgitated in the news cycles on a daily, if not hourly, basis. They are intent on seeing it repeated ad nauseum until the public, hypnotized by the repetition, accepts their narrative as divine truth and deems no other possible truth valid.

Seetharaman may understand more than she lets on. She may well be playing a role that has been scripted for her. That would be perfectly understandable. After all, she is continuing to pursue a shining career. What is regrettable is that she seems to identify with that role.

It is worth noting that this interview has been the object of commentary across the full span of Indian media. Not one Western outlet has even referred to it. But there is a reason for that. In the West, nuanced discourse, curiosity about others and diversified perspectives are simply not considered news. News consists of two things: dramatic events of any kind and what may be called the official or authorized account of the meaning of those events.

In US media, there may be as many as two official accounts of certain events, but no more than two. The implicit rule seems to be that those two narratives correlate either with Democrat vs Republican, liberal vs conservative or even woke vs un-woke or anti-woke positions. Even then, when it comes to US foreign policy, the Democrat and Republican positions tend to align in a single direction of assertive militarism.

The rhetorical advantage of this alignment is that any other perspective than the official one will be systematically denounced as a form of complicity with the enemy. Fox News’s Tucker Carlson was thus ostracized as a Kremlin agent by a near unanimity of the media when, in the runup to the Russian invasion, he claimed that the US had no legitimate reason to engage or even take sides in a possible conflict. That take was verboten. Every visible critic of the US commitment to the war, including Carlson, was branded a Kremlin puppet.

The language of Cold War

The other takeaway is that the mindset Jaishankar refers to is not only solidly established in both official and media circles in the West but it is also clearly a worldview built around the logic of a New Cold War. It will not tolerate the very idea of multipolarity. It expects every nation and every people on earth who are not named Russia and China (or Iran and North Korea) to align with the US and implement all its policies. To call the side aligned with the West “the free world” thus becomes little more than a sick joke. No nation claiming membership in the free world is permitted to think or act freely.

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What is most surprising is that three quarters of a century after the breakout of the first Cold War that ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the effective globalization of the world’s economy, the language of the 1950s is once again on the lips of supposedly serious commentators. When Seetharaman affirms “there will always be two axes” and that “sitting on the fence is not a plausible option,” it becomes apparent that it isn’t Western political philosophy, with its commitment to democracy, but the Western economic system that dictates how the world must work.

Western political philosophy has accordingly been reduced to a litany of empty slogans about democracy, freedom and human rights, as an economic oligarchy has grabbed the reins of power. The capitalist economy has become dependent on its dogma of competition that can now only be envisioned as a binary, Manichean conflict between good and evil. Multipolarity would be too confusing for Western leaders and pundits to seek to come to grips with.

Cold wars are always about ideology. But the easily recognizable ideologies of the past have disappeared or been transformed beyond recognition. US President Joe Biden has replaced the easier-to-understand rivalry between capitalism and communism by an imagined conflict between democracy and authoritarianism. But he has done so at a time when authoritarian practices have become the dominant trend in the culture of the indispensable leader of the free world. They increasingly include censorship, mass surveillance (both public and private), fomenting a climate of suspicion, shaming and jailing of those who think differently, mass incarceration and military bravado.

As a proclaimed think-tank, GLOBSEC might have used its forum to offer an example of thinking and problem-solving when it invited into its field of political research the Minister of External Affairs of a nation that comprises one fifth of the human race. Instead, it conducted an exercise in thought repression and enforcement of global conformity to its controlling mindset.

Few people in the West will have the opportunity to watch this interview, despite its obvious interest for anyone interested in global reality. It’s a pity that Americans and Europeans will continue to be told that “the whole world” is aligned with NATO’s objectives in Europe. It means they cannot even begin to suspect a more fundamental truth: that the vast majority of humanity has a nuanced view of complex political conflict in Eastern Europe.

Included in that majority are both Americans and Europeans, a thinking minority. But their voices are never heard because, as noted above, nuance has no place in the news. Whether it is Noam Chomsky or Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, people with something important to say will be allowed to speak, but their message will never be heard by more than a few. And when they do speak up, even in an interview, their words will trickle through the heads of their listeners and their interviewers, like water through a sieve. That is how effective the New Cold War censorship has become.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post India’s Foreign Minister Schools Western Journalist appeared first on Fair Observer.

The United States was not the first major power to dream up the idea of destroying a country to “save” it. But in the Vietnam War, President Richard Nixon and his tiny brain trust of one — policy henchman Henry Kissinger — elevated this brutally cynical approach to the status of all-encompassing strategy. What began as the destruction of individual hamlets in Vietnam turned into a saturation bombing campaign of neighboring Laos and Cambodia that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians.

In the end, the United States didn’t “save” any of these countries. Vietnam unified under Communist rule as US soldiers withdrew in 1975, the Lao People’s Liberation Army took over Laos the same year, and the Khmer Rouge set about creating its own “killing fields” in Cambodia. Unlike the Korean War, where a stalemate prevailed, the United States decisively lost the Vietnam War.

Kissinger, however, won. All the blood on his hands did not prevent him from accepting a Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 for helping to negotiate a ceasefire in the very war that he’d prolonged and expanded. His reputation as a great statesman didn’t appear to suffer.

Kissinger’s Grand Proposition

Nearly 50 years later, the “great statesman” is again talking about the necessity of a ceasefire in a brutal war, this one in Ukraine. Here, too, an imperialist aggressor is destroying another country in order to “save” it. It’s hard to imagine that Kissinger doesn’t see some parallels with the past, including his own role as “peacemaker.” At Davos last month, the near-centenarian recommended that peace negotiations begin within the next two months with the goal of restoring the status quo prior to Russia’s invasion. Otherwise, Kissinger warned, the battle risks turning into a war “not about the freedom of Ukraine, which has been undertaken with great cohesion by NATO, but…against Russia itself.”

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Kissinger’s plea not to back Russia into a corner — or, worse, “into a permanent alliance with China” — has received some supporting echoes from other world leaders. Both Italy and Hungary have urged an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine. The Pope has praised Turkey’s efforts to find a diplomatic settlement to the war.

Who doesn’t want a ceasefire in the current war? Ukrainians are dying. Russian soldiers are dying. Millions of people around the world who are dependent on Ukrainian grain face starvation. Cut off from Russian gas, countries are turning to coal to produce electricity. From food to fuel, the war in Ukraine is a huge step backward for humanity and the planet.

But not quite everyone wants a ceasefire. Russia has not yet achieved its goal: the conquest of the entire Donbas plus the land that connects it to the Crimean Peninsula. The Russian military is bombing towns into submission in a last-ditch effort to declare victory over smoking ruins.

If this were the extent of Vladimir Putin’s ambitions, perhaps a ceasefire might work. A deal that locked in Russian gains to date would be an ugly capitulation to realpolitik, a trade of land for peace. As I wrote back in 2015, Ukraine could make the same gamble as Aaron Ralston did when a boulder pinned his arm in the Utah wilderness and he had no choice but to cut it off with a utility knife. Sometimes you have to resort to extreme measures to survive. Goodbye, Donbas. Farewell, Crimea.

Today, however, this analogy no longer applies. Russia doesn’t just want one piece of Ukraine. The Russian military continues to direct artillery barrages at the city of Kharkiv. Fighting around the southern city of Kherson, the only major Russian conquest so far in the war, continues, as the occupying forces try to consolidate administrative control of the region in advance of incorporating it into the Russian Federation. Nor can further Russian advances westward — for instance, toward the port of Odessa — be ruled out.

So, Russia does not accept any compromise based on a return to the status quo ante. And Ukraine doesn’t want to draw new borders to legitimate Russia’s ongoing land grab. It’s not even eager to formally cede to Russia what it controlled prior to the invasion, namely the Crimean Peninsula and approximately 30 percent of the Donbas.

So, peace and diplomacy and negotiations all sound like fine things right now. But there’s a big difference between just a ceasefire and a just ceasefire. Peace at any cost is not true peace.

What Italy Proposes

Last month, Italy proposed four stages to end the current conflict in Ukraine.

It called for a ceasefire accompanied by a UN-supervised demilitarization of the front line. Negotiations would then follow on the status of Ukraine with a path toward EU membership but with accession to NATO off the table. Italy then offered a compromise on the disputed territories (Donbas and Crimea) with those areas enjoying full autonomy even as their sovereignty belonged to Ukraine. Finally, negotiations would lead to “a multilateral agreement on peace and security in Europe covering disarmament and arms control, conflict prevention, and confidence-building measures.”

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The first challenge would be the demilitarization of the “front line.” Where would this front line be drawn? The very first step of the Italian plan would prove perhaps the most difficult because both sides are fighting to fix this front line at very different places. Ukrainian forces managed to push the Russian army away from Kyiv and Kharkiv, and the Ukrainian government is importing as many weapons as it can to inflict a decisive defeat upon the invaders. While its forces are bombing their way toward possessing all of the Donbas, Russia doesn’t seem interested at all in negotiating the kind of withdrawal the United States effected in Afghanistan last summer. Indeed, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called the Italian initiative “not serious.”

The second stage would seem a reasonable compromise. Ukraine gets to advance toward the European Union; Russia gets a guarantee that its neighbor won’t join NATO. But this presupposes that Moscow is still fixated on NATO membership. Since the earlier negotiations around neutrality in the first month of the war, Sweden and Finland have formally asked to join the security alliance. And Russia has increasingly stressed that it is fighting not a security alliance per se but the West as a whole. The EU’s additional oil embargo, passed this week, only deepens the divide between the Kremlin and Europe more generally. So, Russia might look at EU membership for Ukraine as equally non-negotiable (closer relations with Europe were, after all, the proximate reason for the Euromaidan protests in 2013-14).

The third stage is perhaps the most controversial. The Donbas would have full autonomy, including over its security policy, and yet somehow remain part of Ukraine. How would that work, exactly? The word “sovereignty” would have to be stretched so thin as to be meaningless.

And who could disagree with the fourth stage? Europe desperately needs a new, comprehensive agreement on security. But that just doesn’t seem feasible with the current leadership in Moscow.

Defeating Putinism

The Saudi war in Yemen is an expression not of overall Saudi foreign policy in the region but the narrower ambitions of Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman. The young leader, pushing through a modernization of Saudi society, saw a war against the Houthis as a perfect opportunity to consolidate his own power within the Saudi elite and advance his country’s regional hegemony vis a vis Iran.

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The Turkish cross-border interventions in Syria, which began in 2019, have likewise been the brainchild of a single leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has been obsessed with suppressing all versions of Kurdish resistance, both within his country and along the borders. At home, Kurds have challenged his authoritarian grip over Turkey. Going after Kurdish movements in Syria, meanwhile, is part of Erdoğan’s bid for regional dominance, a version of neo-Ottomanism that he has resurrected over the last few years.

The US invasion of Iraq had little to do with traditional US foreign policy. It was a power play by neoconservatives who thought that they could spread democracy throughout the Middle East as one autocrat after another fell, first to US military forces and then to popular uprisings. The war was the ultimate expression of a Bushist foreign policy: a weak president manipulated by his more hawkish advisors.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine fits into this pattern as well. It is not some working out of primordial Russian urges to dominate its neighbors. The 2022 invasion, as well as the 2014 war, is all about Vladimir Putin. It is an expression of his worldview that Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine are part of a larger homogenous Russian world that encompasses communities of Russian speakers in other parts of the Russian “near abroad.”

In all these cases, regime change has not been an option. Rather, ending the wars requires the defeat of the prevailing ideology. Neoconservatism, as a robust US foreign policy, effectively died in Iraq. A similar defeat for Putinism will be necessary before any real progress can be made in Ukraine. That doesn’t mean the removal of Putin from office (though ultimately Russia will not advance until that happens). It means that Ukrainian resistance must stop Putinism from creating this imaginary Russian imperium.

Only then will we see something more than a cessation of fighting in Ukraine. Only then will we see a just ceasefire.

*[This article was originally published by FPIF.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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On April 25, a Turkish court sentenced Osman Kavala, prominent Turkish businessman and philanthropist, to life in prison without parole for “attempting to overthrow the government by force.” Kavala has been charged with organizing the 2013 Gezi protests. Seven other activists were sentenced to 18 years in prison for allegedly aiding Kavala. The Gezi protests broke out in 2013 over government plans to construct a shopping mall on the site of a public park. Soon these grew into massive anti-government protests. Since then, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has repeatedly portrayed the protests as an insurrection that aimed to topple the government.

Controversial Verdict Against Osman Kavala

The court case against the Gezi protests counts as one of the most egregious and partisan prosecutions conducted during Erdoğan’s rule. The defendants were initially acquitted of all charges by a penal court in 2020. However, after Erdoğan’s criticism of the 2020 ruling, the court of appeals overturned the verdict, paving the way to a second trial. The harsh sentences handed down on April 25 mark some of the most severe crackdowns on freedom of assembly in Turkey over the past decade. They demonstrate the total capitulation of the judicial system under Erdoğan’s rule after the country transitioned to a presidential regime in 2018.

On numerous occasions, Erdoğan has attacked Kavala personally, accusing him of being “the Soros of Turkey.” Still, the Gezi trial goes beyond a personal vendetta against Kavala and the other seven defendants. Accusing Kavala of masterminding the Gezi protests allows the government to put the blame for the mass uprising on outside actors. The reality, is that the Gezi protests did not have a leader. They arose spontaneously because of the strength of the Turkish civil society at the time. The Gezi trial comes at a time when Erdoğan’s popularity is waning thanks to the economic downturn and the migration crisis. By pronouncing Kavala guilty of a spurious charge and packing him to prison, the Erdoğan government is seeking  to intimidate government opponents and criminalize any protests.

Peace in the World, Autocracy at Home

The Gezi verdict was announced in the wake of Erdoğan’s efforts for reconciliation with the US and the EU after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In recent weeks, Ankara has been praised by western governments for providing Ukraine with arms and closing the Bosphorus or Dardanelles straits to Russian warships. Erdoğan skillfully used the Ukrainian crisis to break his regime’s diplomatic isolation.

The Turkish president has performed a tricky balancing act, supporting Ukraine militarily and diplomatically on the one hand while maintaining cordial relations withRussia. Erdoğan’s attempts at rapprochement in the international arena are in stark contrast to the increasing repression of his critics in Turkey. Last week’s verdict can be seen as an example of Erdoğan’s estimation that the West is too distracted by the Russia-Ukraine War to object to a crackdown on the president’s critics. Faced with increased opposition coordination, Erdoğan faces a tough reelection battle in the upcoming months. As a result, Erdoğan is expected to step up the pressure on his opponents until the next presidential elections due in the summer of 2023.

The Gezi verdict is an ominous warning for others whose political cases are still pending in court. The closure case against the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) is arguably the most consequential among them. Accused by the state prosecutor’s office of having close organizational links with the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the HDP case will soon be decided by the Turkish Constitutional Court. Hundreds of HDP politicians, including the party’s former chairman Selahattin Demirtaş, are already in prison. 

If the constitutional court decides against the HDP, Turkey’s third-largest party will be closed down and hundreds of politicians will face a political ban of five years. Another important case involves İstanbul’s popular mayor, Ekrem İmamoğlu, who is currently facing several investigations that could result in his removal from office, and even criminal conviction. As the judicial system comes under Erdoğan’s control, these cases will be decided on partisan calculations rather than law.

Lastly, the Gezi trial poses a serious political dilemma for the EU. Turkey’s accession talks with the EU have stalled over the past decade. And yet the two sides continue to enjoy an important working relationship on security issues and migration. Turkey’s geostrategic importance has become even more important after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. However, the Gezi sentencing is poised to push Turkey further away from Europe and complicate the EU’s efforts to cooperate with Erdoğan’s government.

On February 2, Human Rights Watch reported that the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers’ voted “to begin infringement proceedings against Turkey is an important step to support human rights protection in Turkey and uphold the international human rights framework.” After Kavala’s guilty verdict, Turkey’s voting rights in the Council of Europe could be suspended and even its membership may be in jeopardy

Germany, France, and the US, along with EU’s chief diplomat Josep Borrell, expressed dismay at the April 25 judgment. Borrell found the “heavy politicization” of the trial “deeply troubling” because it exemplified, “once again, the systematic lack of independence of the Turkish judiciary. The Council has repeatedly stated that the targeting of human rights defenders runs counter to Turkey’s obligation to respect democracy and the rule of law.”

 The German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock took a stand against  the judicial verdict against Kavala. She said it was “in stark contrast to the rule-of-law standards and international obligations to which Turkey is committed as a member of the Council of Europe and an EU accession candidate.”

Erdoğan has become an autocratic strongman who is persecuting his opponents. European policymakers should continue to speak out on human right violations in Turkey and raise the stakes for Erdoğan’s harsh treatment of critics as the country heads into an election year. Turkish democracy is going through a tough time and needs the support of its European friends.

(This text was first published on the SWP website as a “Point of View” piece.)

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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In the weeks following the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, pundits began claiming that, if the campaign lasted more than a few weeks it would constitute a fatal humiliation for Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. Nearly four months later, with no end in sight, most commentators have relabeled the operation a war while acknowledging that whatever humiliation Putin may have suffered, it wasn’t quite fatal.

Everyone nevertheless seems to agree that Putin badly miscalculated. One of the reasons they cite is the unexpected scope and intensity of the Ukrainian resistance. Another is of course the massive and largely unexpected support provided by the West, notably in the form of military equipment.

Various statements from authoritative voices in Washington indicate not only that the war is likely to drag on, but that a forever war is what the American strategists have been hoping to see. On his visit to Poland in March, US President Joe Biden invited his faithful followers “to steel ourselves for a long fight ahead…” Three months later, his prediction that the “battle will not be won in days or months” appears to be accurate. Less accurate, however, was his claim that the Russian ruble would be reduced to rubble and that the back of the Russian economy was about to be broken. In April the ruble bounced back to become “the strongest currency in the world this year.” Despite the massive sanctions imposed on Russia and the constraints of war, its economy is still ticking over.

If the pundits, politicians and military elite in Washington, sitting 5,000 miles away, seem more than comfortable with a war that will keep Russia occupied for many months or even years to come, it may be that the people on whose behalf they are stoking the war, standing on the front line of Russian aggression, will become less euphoric as time goes by. So could most Europeans facing the prospect of a dire winter with rationed heating and exploding gas prices. So indeed could Americans themselves, who are already beginning to complain.

The most pitiable victims are obviously the Ukrainians. Even when conducted with an endless supply of modern weapons, the heroism of resistance offers cold comfort to the heroes themselves when as many as 100 Ukrainians die every  day and cities are leveled in a war announced as never-ending. Still, the Ukrainians seem committed. But they increasingly worry their allies may cave. Al Jazeera reports that “officials in Kyiv have expressed fears that the specter of ‘war fatigue’ could erode the West’s resolve to help the country push back Moscow’s aggression.”

Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

War fatigue:

Not to be confused with the military apparel known as battle fatigues, a psychological state provoked by enduring wars with no defined goals and afflicting individuals and sometimes entire populations, with the exception of politicians, lobbyists and administration officials working in and around the Beltway.

Contextual note

In recent days, Biden himself no longer sounds quite as triumphal as he did during his speech in Warsaw last March. But US policy has not changed, nor is it likely to change. Losing face is too costly to any politician’s historical legacy. Nevertheless, Edward Luce in the Financial Times notes that “tedium is beginning to creep in” even in Washington, where “Joe Biden’s recent utterances show awareness of the problem.”

Military realism may also be slowly creeping in after months of romanticizing the Ukrainian resistance and self-celebrating the financial support provided by the US and its European allies. “Many of the defects in today’s Russian military — low morale, shoddy equipment, lack of initiative and brutality within its ranks — were also true of Stalin’s Red Army, which eventually defeated the German Wehrmacht,” Luce pertinently notes.

Then there’s Europe, a continent of illusion, where an economically powerful union perennially demonstrates the fact that it is still a collection of culturally and linguistically disparate populations. As a formal union, some things do appear to take collective form but there are no solid structures designed to maintain the coherence of the European Union in the face of ever-present centrifugal forces. At the beginning of this war, the political class, followed by the media, succeeded in stirring a spontaneous identification with the Ukrainian resistance. After all, in the past century, Europeans had finally learned that war on one’s own terrain was always a lose-lose proposition. Invaders should be reviled and automatically punished.

Unlike Americans, however, Europeans do not equate condign punishment with endlessly prosecuted war. They know war induces fatigue. They also tend to be less trusting of the wisdom of their politicians. The average European has no reason to feel proud of NATO or identify with the institution. European politicians, on the other hand, appreciate NATO as a symbolic presence, overseen by Washington, that seems to guarantee that peace, at least among European nations, will endure. Europeans may react instinctively against Russian aggression towards a bordering nation, but they are far less convinced that NATO and the US military umbrella is the permanent key to peaceful relations.

The Ukraine war has revealed a newfound taste among European governments for militarization. And though NATO is at the core of the common security framework, the shock of this war has pushed European governments to think more seriously about an autonomous military collaboration that no longer depends on the US for leadership. That will be complicated to achieve and will take time. But, for various reasons, it may be inevitable.

Democracy and France’s Theater of the Absurd

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Few commentators noticed that in the first round of the French presidential election in April, a clear majority voted for candidates that were openly hostile to NATO, on both the left and the extreme right. That may have less to do with war fatigue than NATO fatigue. The monumental damage already being wrought on the European economy as a result of Washington’s insistence on integrating Ukraine into NATO will leave increasingly evident traces in the months and years to come. 

Historical note

Less than a week after the Russian invasion, Hillary Clinton appeared on MSNBC to express what appeared to be the geopolitical reasoning already current in the corridors of power in Washington. She not only forecast a prolonged war, supported by the United States, but she also appeared to relish the idea. She felt it would have an effect similar to that of Russia’s decade-long war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, considered one of the factors that precipitated the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Clinton even described this plan to trap Russia in a quagmire as “the model people are looking toward.” By “people” she was obviously referring to the Washington elite, especially the State Department, which she headed for four years under President Barack Obama. Clinton’s description of this model may have seemed to some observers to be a random thought in her head. But subsequent events indicate that, even on March 1, five days after the launch of Russia’s “special operation,” it was in all likelihood a strategy already fully elaborated, months before Russia’s invasion. This would help to explain the bizarre sequence of events in which the news cycle was dominated by the US announcing the date on which Russia would start its war.

Both Clinton and Biden in their public discourse following the outbreak of the Ukraine war have savored the idea of Russia agonizing on its own without any direct American military presence in the war zone. Washington’s military strategists adhere to the historical model of Russia in Afghanistan that played out in the 1980s. They are now seeking to repeat the pattern in 2022. When Biden’s Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin evokes a “weakened” Russia that no longer has “the capacity to invade its neighbors,” he echoes his president with both seeing a hoped-for parallel between the collapse of the Soviet Union. Biden’s own express wish is that “this man [Putin] cannot remain in power.” US  defense strategy is rarely about defending the nation from aggression and almost always about regime change somewhere else in the world.

In May, Le Monde’s Washington correspondent described “an undeniable euphoria that has gripped part of the ‘blob,’ as Washington’s foreign policy establishment often informally called. This euphoria may even last for a while but not forever. Even the hippie generation, after turning on, tuning in and dropping out, at one point realized that euphoria has its own expiration date. Many of them experienced drug fatigue and communal living fatigue. In the following decades quite a few of them also ended up in the blob, seeking another kind of euphoria.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of Fair Observer Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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With the conflict in Ukraine dragging into its third month, the port city of Mariupol has become not only a symbol for fierce resistance, but also of barbarity and flagrant disregard for international law and the lives of innocent civilians.

With Russian forces, so far, unable to take the city, they have resorted to both indiscriminate and targeted attacks on civilians, including apartment blocks, schools, hospitals and government buildings. This has caused significant civilian casualties, with the city’s mayor claiming last week that almost 5,000 people have so far been killed and that 90 %of the city’s buildings had been damaged, with 40% destroyed. The now famous image of a woman in labor, who has tragically since died, being stretchered out of a now destroyed maternity hospital is testament to the barbarity of these attacks.

The targeting of civilians has caused tens of thousands of people to flee west to Kyiv and Lviv and then into neighboring countries. For those who remain, attacks by Russian forces have made it increasingly difficult to escape, with reports of civilians killed while attempting to leave the city by vehicle or foot. While Russia has recently called for a ceasefire and a humanitarian corridor, previous attempts at negotiating the safe passage of civilians have quickly broken down, with Russia the culprit in continuing to target people taking escape routes.

Making matters worse, damaged civilian infrastructure has meant that crucial services, including water, food, power and heating have become unavailable, creating a rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation that threatens to cost the lives of more innocent people. There are reports that residents have resorted to melting snow for drinking water and that a significant number of the estimated 160,000 who remain are facing acute food shortages and hunger. With a lack of power and hospitals targeted, this has also meant that those unable to escape, such as the elderly and people with a disability, are unable to access vital medical care.

The siege of Mariupol, the denial of humanitarian corridors and the targeting of civilians have been condemned as war crimes by Amnesty International and the international community more broadly. The President of the United States, Joe Biden, has publicly said that Vladimir Putin is a war criminal and the actions of his armed forces in Ukraine, particularly Mariupol, have been called out by the European Union, the United Kingdom and Australia.

Russia’s history of war crimes

Russia has a reputation here, with a history of bombing civilians, hospitals and schools and targeting humanitarian corridors. Tactics of killing, injuring and terrorizing civilians were used to a horrific effect against rebel forces in Syria from 2015 onwards. Russia, in partnership with Syrian government forces, besieged, starved and combed civilian areas, including schools and hospitals, in order to demoralize the population and crush any resistance. This included the use of cluster and ‘barrel’ bombs, and chemical weapons, all of which are outlawed under international law.

Current events in Mariupol have frightening parallels to Aleppo, a once thriving Syrian city, that is now completely destroyed. Russian fighter jets bombed schools, hospitals and markets, particularly those full of people while the city was besieged by Syrian ground forces. Negotiated humanitarian corridors were also bombed, causing further civilian casualties when people attempted to flee. Like Mariupol, Aleppo quickly descended into a humanitarian catastrophe, with the cutting of rebel supply lines preventing vital supplies like food, water and medicine from reaching innocent civilians.

The tactics used by Russia, in Syria and now Ukraine, reflects a brutality that in no way respects the lives of civilians and is a rejection of the principles of human rights and international law.

The international community, to their discredit, largely stood by and watched innocent Syrians being killed in Aleppo, it cannot allow the same to occur in Mariupol.

What is to be done?

While Russia is notorious for not adhering to international law, there are steps the international community can take to make it clear that the wholesale destruction of cities, and the targeting of civilians, will not be tolerated. Put simply, an enforceable red line needs to be drawn.

In a positive step, the International Criminal Court has opened an investigation over war crimes committed by Russian forces. While neither Ukraine nor Russia are parties to the ICC, the court does have authority in this instance as Ukraine granted jurisdiction to the court after Russia’s involvement in the Donbas in 2014. While the likelihood of Putin or his inner circle being successfully prosecuted is unlikely, it is an important precedent nonetheless if they are found guilty.

Outside of the ICC process, the international community needs to make it clear to Russia that international law needs to be followed to avoid a repeat of Aleppo. Implementing harsher economic sanctions and providing vital military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine is a direct way of doing this. Broadly speaking, the international community is already taking these steps, which is welcome. But more needs to be done, and quickly.

With a direct military confrontation unlikely, harsher sanctions on Russian business, particularly in the energy sector, will isolate the regime economically, and sanctions on prominent individuals will pressure the regime from within. 

The international community should also use the power for the United Nations General Assembly to vote Russia off influential bodies. This can be and has been done. Russia’s suspension from the United Nations Human Rights Council is testament to this. 

Through these steps, the international community can show Russia that international law is still a powerful tool, and one that should be respected, in order to partake in world affairs.

It’s time for the international community to make it clear that the inhumanity seen in Aleppo and Mariupol will no longer be tolerated. Only a strong response will ensure that civilian lives are saved.

(Senior Editor Francesca Julia Zucchelli edited this article.)

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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The crypto sphere seems like an elusive topic in Pakistan’s financial debate. Blockchain technology is barely grasped by a layman, and it would seem that the country is not yet ready for  the touted digital revolution. Yet, statistical data points in an absolute perverse direction. An estimated 4.1% of Pakistanis – totaling about nine million people – own some form of cryptocurrencies. A research report by the Policy Advisory Board (PAB) of the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FPCCI) revealed that this cumulative ownership in cryptocurrencies amounts to $20 billion – almost twice the $10.3 billion in foreign reserves currently held by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP). According to a report by Chainalysis, a blockchain data platform, Pakistan is ranked 3^rd in the Global Crypto Adoption Index 2020-21, just behind Vietnam and India. The report also reveals that Pakistan recorded the highest growth in cryptocurrencies – expanding at 711% – over the period 2020-21, overtaking India’s adoption growth of 641% over the same period. These industry dynamics imply that the base of active crypto participants is quite substantial. However, the regulatory structure of Pakistan is still trailing to accept any change in the status quo.

The Purview of State Bank of Pakistan (SBP)

Earlier, the former SBP Governor Dr. Reza Baqir addressed the Annual Investment Forum in Riyadh. While he acknowledged that the blockchain technology would ultimately “Democratize Finance” for the general citizenry of Pakistan, he emphasized that the accompanying risks are far too flagrant to overlook. He stated: “In Pakistan, we as the central bank have reached a conclusion as of now that, for us and in terms of core objectives of the central bank, the potential risks far outweigh the benefits.” Recently, a committee under the directive of Ms. Sima Kamil – the SBP Deputy Governor (Financial inclusion, Digital financial services, and IT) – recommended a complete ban on cryptocurrencies in Pakistan. This insight signified a response to Sindh High Court’s (SHC) inquiry apropos of whether any form of cryptocurrency (or other related activities) should be permissible under Pakistani law. The committee echoed the concerns of Dr. Baqir, warning the court of law regarding the risks associated with the pioneering financial phenomenon of cryptocurrencies. The committee further opined that its risk-benefit analysis suggested that the risks override the benefits. 

The committee report presented to the provincial court stated that cryptocurrencies are highly speculative. Hence, subjects risk  financial fraud, transfer of illicit funds, and a convenient route for extortionists to evade litigation. Dr. Baqir highlighted other downsides of allowing cryptocurrencies into Pakistan’s mainstream financial operation. He stated: “Because of their [cryptocurrencies] speculative nature, acute price fluctuations, and most importantly, their distributed and decentralized nature, they can pose a risk to financial and monetary stability.” He further added: “Because of their anonymous nature, some cryptocurrencies are prone to be used for illegal economic activities.” The statements of Pakistan’s front-running economic policymakers and litigators reveal that they don’t disregard the positive attributes attached to the crypto sphere. However, they are also aware of the prohibitive costs that could dent the economy if the phenomenon eludes the regulatory grip – which is the value proposition of virtually all cryptocurrencies.

Risks of Crypto Legalization in Pakistan

All the reservations are justified – at least to some extent. The ongoing meltdown in the crypto market is a befitting example of the inherent price volatility that could upend traces of stability overnight. More than $300 billion have been wiped from the markets in a span of four days – primarily due to heavy speculation. Decentralized digital currencies are predominantly speculative and thus, have not been formally adopted by any major emerging economies. China, Russia, and India for instance. All three countries are quite literally the living embodiment of ideal developing economies. Each has taken restrictive measures against the crypto industry despite hosting the lion’s share of crypto enthusiasts. China has already banned all crypto mining activities and barred commercial banks from associating with crypto transactions. Russia – hosting a majority of bitcoin miners – is planning to launch its own digital currency while debating a ban on private cryptocurrencies. Albeit not explicitly prohibiting crypto services, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has actively asked its stakeholders to “exercise caution” when dealing in cryptocurrencies until a facilitative framework defines regulatory clarity.  Moreover, even developed economies like the United States are still grappling with regulations to tame the complex crypto markets. Naturally, Pakistan is in no better shape to take on a new challenge when it is already against the wall due to various other financial perils.

Pakistan is already undergoing thorough reforms under the scrupulous International Monetary Fund (IMF) Program. On another front, Pakistan still awaits the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) verdict to make a hopeful exit from the notorious gray list. The focal points of the reforms are the aspects of money laundering and capital flight that have been endemic to Pakistan for decades. Giving a green signal to the cryptocurrencies with anything short of an airtight regulatory framework could pull the rug from under the IMF loan program as tax evasion is quite a real possibility attached to the crypto market. Furthermore, a surge in money laundering in the guise of virtual wallets expanding beyond borders could plunge Pakistan into the black list of the FATF – instead of escaping the gray list. 

The rupee is down to record low levels against the US dollar, and inflation is raging in double figures. The policy rate is hovering at a regional high of 12.25%, while another rate hike of 150-200 basis points is highly expected. Understandably, the industry stakeholders are infuriated by the prospect of a ban when hedging is the natural course of action. However, with unprecedented crypto price swings, modest technological inclusion, and a lack of pervasive financial literacy in Pakistan, a hasty diversion to cryptocurrencies could trip the already weakened economy into a consistent downfall. Thus, the only sensible option at disposal is the long-term plan adopted by the State Bank of Pakistan. Nonetheless, the crypto industry is rapidly expanding while the regulators are trailing.

A Sustainable Solution

Despite the skeptical regulatory outlook, thousands of Pakistani traders actively invest via crypto platforms around the globe. Many renowned crypto exchanges continue to operate in Pakistan through ghost partners – completely bypassing the regulatory framework. The regulators should understand that banning crypto transactions does not quite translate into no crypto activity in Pakistan. Without a comprehensive legislative framework, the crypto exchanges would continue to operate as a shadow of an underground and unregulated sector of the economy. Strict oversight does not reflect thorough regulation. Hence, research on blockchain technology is essential to build the financial muscle necessary to tackle any regulatory loopholes and gradually allow the technology to normalize into orthodox markets. Instead of outright banning local crypto exchanges and levying fines, the State Bank (and government policymakers) should collaborate with the local visionaries and crypto enthusiasts to structure an inclusive environment. 

A structured crypto ecosystem could actually serve as a lifeline for the debilitated economy of Pakistan. Facilitative regulations could exact crypto exchanges to incorporate Anti-Money Laundering (AML) protocols into their blockchains. A digitalized currency exchange system could also assist regulators in the crackdown on terror financing and fraudulent activities. And a system of crypto exchanges integrated with the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) could even help broaden the tax net – gradually shrinking the budget deficit. Thus, regardless of whether the plan is to launch a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) – a digital rupee offered by the SBP – or allow private crypto tokens to operate legally. A collaborative environment would expedite the development of an industry-wide solution and could prepare the industry for the pros and cons that may follow. However, delaying the legislative procedure would only encourage the unregulated design. And soon, the sector would grow beyond the point of redemption.

(Senior Editor Francesca Julia Zucchelli edited this article.)

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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Fair Observer’s new feature FO° Insights makes sense of issues in the news. We pose a series of rapidfire questions to the best of our more than 2,500 contributors from over 90 countries who share their ideas, insights and perspectives on an important issue.

Experts are arguing as to what lies around the corner for Russia after a so-far disastrous war. In western capitals like London and Washington, many believe that the Vladimir Putin regime could fall. They believe that Russia could disintegrate. In places like India and China, many take the view that most of the news about the war is western propaganda that has to be taken with a handful, not a pinch, of salt. They believe that Russia will overcome its initial setbacks, take over the Ukrainian coast and leave Ukraine as a landlocked rump state.

Atul Singh on the Political Consequences of Russia-Ukraine War

In this episode of FO° Insights, Atul Singh makes sense of what is going on. You can watch the video above and/or read what he has to say below. The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Is this the second round of the 1991 Soviet collapse?

Atul Singh: Zhou Enlai once reportedly said of the influence of the French Revolution — he said it for 1968 but it was construed to be 1789 — that it was too early to tell. I think it’s too early to tell.

The Russian Empire was a hastily-built contraption. Russia expanded east to the Pacific just as America went west to reach the same ocean. But the American Empire was built on sturdier grounds, while the Russian one was a helter-skelter, disorganized affair.

The Soviet Union that emerged in 1917 collapsed in 1991. Now you could have places like Dagestan, Chechnya and other regions secede. If and this is the big if if the military defeat is catastrophic. If the casualties are too high, which so far they are, but they are not yet too too high, and if people start losing the shirts off their backs and start suffering for food and basic services, then Russia could fall apart.

Furthermore, Russia is ruled by a kleptocratic regime. It is not one built on ideology. Unlike Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Putin is not delivering economic growth or tremendous industrialization. In fact, Russian factories are reliant on spare parts from around the world. Russians do not make silicon chips, so they can’t do much advanced stuff without help from others. So yes, Russia could collapse, but the jury is still out whether it would. 

Has Vladimir Putin run out of rope?

Atul Singh: My personal feeling is eventually Vladimir Putin is bound to go because most dictators lose touch and dictators who end up in wars that end badly don’t seem to stick to the saddle for too long. This war isn’t going very well for Putin, so he may have run out of rope, and the reason may not necessarily be just the war. The reason really might be the fact that he has presided over a regime that has engaged in massive theft. And there is no real moral or ideological underpinning to his regime. 

Putin’s regime is a fake tsarism, it’s tsarism without the tsar with its private properties, with its fancy castles, with oligarchs and an absolute concentration of power. At the end of the day, Putin’s regime is not like the Soviet regime which had true believers. It is all built around a nostalgia for past grandeur and that might end in defeat in Ukraine, or let’s say a pyrrhic victory, which is often not much better. 

Can Russia still export its military equipment?

Russia has made its name as a mighty military power, exporting its T-90 tanks, S-400 missiles, Sukhoi Su-30s and whatnot to many countries around the world, including China and India. Now, Russian factories will have to work overtime to supply their own military. Also many of the engines for Russian military equipment came from Ukraine. In fact, that is what the Indians are finding out and Russia will find it very difficult to ramp up its production and supply other countries.

Russia’s strength as a defense exporter is going to weaken. The country is certainly going to be on its back, if not its knees, and should things go very badly. Of course, Russian kit now has a bad reputation, given the mauling it has had, but should the war go even more badly, the days of Russia as a top arms exporter might be in doubt. The Chinese might be looking at Russia, or the Russian disaster, a bit more cheerily than the West. They could step in to supply the gap. 

Will Russia fall under China’s thumb?

Well, that is the nightmare for a lot of my friends in the Pentagon. I have heard so many arguments that the real enemy is China and Russia is a distraction. Some of these ladies and gentlemen believe China is supporting Russia through back channels and shady deals are propping up Vladimir Putin. 

Bit by bit, a giant pipeline that is being built to supply Chinese energy needs. This will supply Russia with much of the cash to keep going over a period of time. Russia is increasingly too beholden to China. If Beijing emerges triumphal or triumphant, we could get something like a Germany and Austro-Hungarian Empire alliance before World War I.

This could then take on the West. In fact, this Eurasian alliance could emerge as a challenger to Washington and European capitals. Of course, Russia and China have thorny border issues. They have a long border. They also have geopolitical rivalry in Central Asia.They have had tiffs, even under communism when they were supposedly under the same ideology. But pressure from the West might be pushing them together, certainly right now. The Russians need the Chinese more than the Chinese need the Russians. So Russia is certainly going to be under China’s thumb.

What lies ahead for Russia?

A bleak winter, I suppose, after a tough summer. Russia is not in the best shape. Yes, its ruble is not falling to the same degree anymore — they have backed it with gold. Yes, Russia has a fortress economy. Yes, it can grow wheat. Yes, it has bread and oil. But at the end of the day, Russians have not really invested in their own country and manufactured stuff. The ability of a country to fight a war and win a war depends on its ability to make things, and that was what Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union was good at for all its catastrophic loss of life and the killing of millions. 

Under Vladimir Putin, Russian oligarchs have bought yachts, properties in London and beautiful villas in Monaco and elsewhere. And Russians don’t make stuff anymore. They export commodities. So Russia can certainly cause a giant crash of the global economy. It can send inflation ricocheting around the world. It can cause collapse of regimes such as in Egypt and even countries such as Lebanon.

However, Russia does not make anything advanced anymore and it doesn’t produce silicon chips, which is important for the next generation of manufacturing. So, the future for Russia is bleak, and there is certainly going to be a massive shakeup in the way Russia is run and perhaps even the way Russian borders are drawn when the dust settles.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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In Pakistan, some celebrated the fall of Kabul in August last year as a strategic victory. They had good reason to do so. The US-backed Republic of Afghanistan, which had friendly ties with India, collapsed in less than 10 days, and the Pakistan-backed Taliban triumphantly returned to power. However, the Taliban victory comes against the backdrop of increased terrorist attacks by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), whose leadership has allegedly moved inside the Taliban-occupied Afghanistan. The Islamic State of Khorasan Province threats against the Pakistani targets are also on the rise, not to mention the growing vulnerability of Pakistan against the Balochistan Liberation Army.

Recent developments seem undesirable for the Pakistani establishment, which had high hopes for a negotiated settlement between Islamabad and the TTP. After two rounds of official negotiations, Pakistan seems to be opting for a military solution. In April 2022, the Pakistani military carried out a series of airstrikes against TTP hideouts in the eastern provinces of Afghanistan. As per the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) representative, these killed 20 children and 47 civilians. Tweets by the UNICEF representative caused outrage in western capitals because sleeping children died.

It seems that what appeared a victory last year is turning out to be a strategic blunder. Pakistan has empowered the Afghan Taliban and, in the process, the TTP as well. Now, how can Islamabad protect its security interests threatened by the TTP? Can Pakistan counter the strategic insecurity emanating from its western client state led by its protégé, the Taliban?

Peace Talks Do Not Promise Long Term Peace

As per Atul Singh and Tabish Forugh, “the Taliban provide inspiration, ideology, organization, support, and expertise to Islamic fundamentalists from around the world and especially in South Asia.” The TTP is a more extreme version of the Taliban. Inspired by their cousins in Afghanistan, the TTP wants to establish a similar fundamentalist Islamist form of governance in the tribal areas across the border in Pakistan. Recently, it has unleashed attacks on Pakistani cities and towns.

The Taliban-Occupied Afghanistan Threatens Global Security

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This was to be expected. The TTP has the support of the Taliban. The two organizations share the same extremist ideology and have similar long term goals. The TTP has become very active this year. On April 2, it kicked off Operation al-Badr, an offensive that will include “martyrdom attacks, ambushes, bombings, counter-attacks, targeted attacks, laser and sniper attacks.”

Pakistan has responded both militarily and diplomatically. On May 9, a Pakistani delegation arrived in Kabul to have talks with the TTP leadership. It was the third attempt by Pakistan’s leadership to negotiate with the TTP. The Pakistani side was led by Lieutenant General Faiz Hameed who spoke directly with Noor Wali Mehsood, the TTP chief. These talks were mediated by Sirajuddin Haqqani, the Taliban’s Acting Interior Minister and the leader of the Haqqani Network. Haqqani has long been a close Pakistani ally.

The talks were a protracted affair. The parties took a break and reconvened. On May 18, they announced a ceasefire. The TTP promised to halt its attacks on Pakistani soil while Islamabad released 30 high-level TTP militants from its prisons. 

For all these tangible results, most analysts take the view that these talks are unlikely to lead to long term peace. Both sides have such contradictory long term goals that it is just a matter of time before negotiations dissolve into conflict.

Implications for the US and India

The US is now focused on Ukraine. It has abandoned Afghanistan and taken its eye off the security situation in South Asia. The Taliban is now supporting terror groups with similar extremist Islamist ideology. One of them is its old ally, al-Qaeda. As per the UN Sanction Monitoring Team Report, al-Qaeda operatives have already found safe havens and have started bases in Afghanistan.

The US must recalibrate its Afghanistan policy given the increased terror activity in the region. The TTP and al-Qaeda represent the tip of the iceberg. The Taliban is likely to export terror first to Central and South Asia, and then to Europe and the US itself. 

As a non-Muslim nation, India ranks high as a target for Islamists. A nation of kafirs is always a good target for jihad. For centuries, Pashtun tribesmen swept down from their mountain strongholds to raid the plains for gold and women in wave after wave of jihad. Therefore, India has to form a more robust policy vis-à-vis Afghanistan. Already, there have been talks in Kabul but India needs to have clarity about its long term strategic goals.

Pakistan now has a client regime in Afghanistan. However, it faces a TTP problem. Also, the Taliban itself is divided. Islamabad does not have it all its own way. Furthermore, the Hazaras face violent persecution, if not ethnic cleansing and genocide. The Tajiks are also being hunted down. Both the US and India can play a major role in supporting persecuted groups and containing the Taliban as well as its extremist jihadi allies.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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Over the 18th and 19th centuries electric power fueled industrial revolutions in the UK, US and several European countries. In the last century countries like Japan and the Republic of Korea too leveraged it to develop economically. More recently, it has aided tremendous economic growth in China. Investment in power generation and distribution helped uplift these countries both economically and socially.

In 1971 India’s and China’s gross domestic products (GDP) stood at par at USD 118. India’s per capita power consumption in that year was 98 kilowatt hours (kWh), China’s was 152 kWh. Forty years on, China’s GDP had risen to USD 5618, nearly fifty times the GDP in 1971. In the same year, India’s GDP stood at USD 1458, a modest twelve-fold increase from the GDP in 1971. China’s power consumption in 2011 had risen to 3296 kWh. India’s was a distant 696 kWh.

About a fifth of India’s population was estimated to be living below the poverty line in 2012. Approximately 50% of India’s population is categorised as middle class. India has over 900 million people in the 15-64 age group. Over 360 million are under 14 years of age. This section of the population is also growing at a much faster rate than that of the overall population. Viewed from the perspective of current prosperity levels or population distribution based on age groups, today more than ever before, India needs to ensure sustained employment for its present and emerging workforce. An increasing GDP lifts people above the poverty line and makes more money available to the middle classes for investment in healthcare, security and education. Improved income and education levels also reduce crime.

While China has leveraged lessons of several countries by investing in economic infrastructure, India has failed to do so for much of its independent history.

The weight of socialism on power sector

When India gained independence in 1947, its per capita power consumption was 16 kWh, far short of what the country needed for socioeconomic growth at pace. At that turning point in its history, India adopted the Soviet socialist model. The state stayed heavily invested in industry for several subsequent decades. On one hand, this prevented human resource capability and private enterprise from developing to their potential. On the other hand, key enablers for socioeconomic development –  education, health, highways or power – were starved of sufficient investment.

USSR’s collapse in 1991 served as a trigger for India to embrace economic reforms. Private companies began investing in power generation. But given the huge power shortfall built over decades, along with growing demand subsequently, the investment over 30 years has been far short of what’s needed for sustained economic growth.

Power transmission and distribution continue to be mostly state-controlled. Power distribution companies (discoms) have borne the brunt of this model. Political parties make populist electoral promises – ranging from subsidised electricity to waiver of past dues – and compel discoms to honour those if they form governments. Repeated election after election in many states, this populism leads to discoms charging on average less per unit than they buy electricity for, pushing them to default on payments to generating companies. This situation deters private investment in power generation.

The impact of this deep-rooted problem is not limited to the power sector. When power generators are unwilling to continue supplying power on credit, governments are compelled to bail the discoms out for them to pay generation companies. Bailouts are done at the cost of modernisation and expansion of power infrastructure, as well as investment in key sectors like healthcare and education.

Power loss by theft and technical causes is another systemic problem.

These deep-rooted problems have since long made a compelling case for further reforms in the power sector.

The reforms journey over 30 years

In 1991, India opened power generation to private investment, which led to increased power generation in the country. Despite the sector’s many challenges, consumers in both rural and urban India benefited. By 2018, electricity reached every village.

For several decades after independence, electricity was treated as a scarce commodity. If the post office, health care clinic and key facilities had power supply, then the electrification of the village was deemed done. This narrow definition of electrification was expanded in 1997 and 2004. If 10% of homes in a village have power supply, then it is deemed to be electrified.

Governments have repeatedly attempted further power sector reforms with varying degrees of success.The 1998 Electricity Regulatory Commissions Act of and the 2003 Electricity Act were introduced to establish national and state regulatory bodies for rationalizing tariffs and subsidies as well as streamlining the transmission and the sale of power. These initiatives did not achieve their core objectives. Hence, in 2015 the government launched Ujwal Discom Assurance Yojana, UDAY to revive discoms financially and operationally. Given the depth of discoms’ problems, which were further complicated by COVID lockdowns, UDAY fell short of achieving its objectives after some early successes.

Some successes are noteworthy. Many states have taken steps to control theft. In the prime minister’s constituency, electricity authorities have implemented new technology to detect illegal connections. This has reduced power theft and increased legal power connections. Such initiatives have indeed lowered power losses but these are still over twice the global average.

In 2020, the government announced an economic stimulus package of over $3 billion to revive a pandemic-battered economy. This included an injection of liquidity yet again for discoms. In 2021, the government announced a result-oriented package for discoms, which included introducing smart grids and smart meters across the country. These ambitious initiatives are expected to benefit discoms by reducing operational costs, checking theft and giving consumers detailed data about their electricity usage. India has also set up a national grid, connecting the five regional grids. This will strengthen the transmission network across the country, ensuring more even power distribution. 

These reforms are noteworthy. They are a step in the right direction and will increase per capita power consumption. However, the core problem of the power sector — the government control over discoms — still remains unaddressed.

Lighting up the road to development

India’s power minister aspires to increase per capita power consumption threefold — the same level as the global average. The time has come to broaden the definition of electrification yet again. Only when 20-30% of a village has access to electricity should it be considered electrified. Furthermore, the successes in implementing new technologies must be institutionalized and implemented across the country.

Today, private companies are contributing significantly to India’s power needs. Privatisation of discoms is the long overdue big ticket reform. To this end, the government introduced the Electricity Amendment Bill in 2021. This proposes a rationalization of subsidies and introduces other key reforms such as a push towards  renewable energy. The bill promises to improve the financially parlous state of most discoms and incentivize private investment in the sector.

In 2020 the government proposed transformative agriculture reforms, which led to a year of protests. Ultimately the government withdrew the legislation. This was a huge setback for economic reforms. The 2021 electricity bill has similarly run into rough weather, forcing the government to climb down.

Hardships caused by over two years of the pandemic and yearlong protests have reduced the government’s appetite for reforms. It is unlikely that significant reforms will be rolled out before the next national elections in 2024. The ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) won large majorities in the 2014 and the 2019 elections. In 2024, the NDA faces a tougher challenge. 

If the opposition wins, reform is unlikely. The opposition parties are wedded to left-leaning failed policies of the past. However, if the NDA wins decisively, it will have political capital to spend on reforms. Then, it may address the power sector’s core problem that has cost the country tremendously over many decades. In this term, the NDA government sold off the failed nationalized airlines Air India to the Tatas. In the next term, the NDA could finally privatize dysfunctional, loss-making and tax-guzzling discoms, generating more light in the nation.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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Over the past decade, liberal democratic societies have witnessed an illiberal, undemocratic phenomenon that increasingly has permeated public discourse. This refers to intimidation of those holding contrary opinions on political, ideological, social, academic and other weighty topics. The ferocity of mob outrage vented on social media – so-called ‘trolling’ – is a high-profile example, but there are other examples of intolerant ‘wilding’. This article explores the general phenomenon and those perpetrating such aggressive tactics, as well as considering the current trajectory of academic, political, and public debate in a polarized climate, one increasingly dominated by stridently expressed extreme opinions.

A Descent into the ‘Win At All Costs’ Dark Side

Well before the 21^st century, a steady-state tradition had built up in democracies whereby freedom of speech was often passionate, but nevertheless generally respectful, even when opponents evoked vehement disagreement. Such popular periodicals as Private Eye, Le Canard Enchainé and Charlie Hebdo continue the tradition of satirically speaking truth to power, as do many newspapers, while academics continue to expound their theories and opinions in a variety of academic channels, and sometimes in the popular press. While often controversial, vigorous, and even barbed – and whether impartial or partisan, measured or polemical – the essence of this tradition has been the principle of engaging, debating, analyzing, weighing, informing, and coexisting.  This is all in the public interest, so as to develop and promulgate the most powerful arguments rather than the arguments of the most powerful.

This social contract of normative behavior started to break down noticeably towards the end of the first decade of this century, coinciding with the rise of social media. It has degenerated to such an extent that by now this civil standard is regarded by a significant minority as a contemptible relic that must be abandoned. Increasingly, respect for opposing world-views and opinions has been jettisoned in favor of a shrill determination to crush anyone whose ideas challenge one’s own preconceptions. 

The arguments of the most overbearing and ‘shouty’ now swamp the most powerful arguments with their disproportionate noise and impact. In essence, it is a bullying and bellicose ‘win at all costs’ approach, which might have been taken out of an imaginary ‘Megalomanic Dictator’s Guide to Advancement and Self-Preservation’. According to Ukrainian academic, Anton Shekhovtsov, the claim that Putin is a real – and arguably fascist – dictator is a case in point. Individuals and groups at all levels in society may display remarkably similar characteristics to Putin’s ruthless determination to dominate others with little or no concern about the resulting harm. As Ignazio Silone’s 1930s semi-autobiographies Fontamara and The Seed Beneath the Snow chronicling survival in a fascist society reveal, ‘fascism’ – both in the popular sense of overbearing nastiness and as a political ideology – is characterized in daily life by such mundane personality flaws as envy, greed, vanity, resentment,  inadequacy, entitlement, sociopathy, criminality etc.

The following cases exemplify the new intolerance, including the much abused ‘weaponisation’ of the terms ‘fascist’ and ‘anti-fascist’ by countervailing interests.

Case A: Extreme Commentators and Agitators

The extreme statements by Donald Trump during his 2016-2020 US presidency are infamous. Trump was an avid user of his Twitter social media account and had few qualms about issuing personal rants in undiplomatic – and certainly un-presidential – language against a wide range of individuals and groups that he decried. These included senior US politicians, government officials, judges, war heroes, foreign politicians and heads of state, as well as journalists, film stars, sportspersons, and celebrities, but also Mexicans, Muslims, Iranians, disabled persons, refugees and many other objects of his disdain. 

In Trump’s narcissistic world-view, there is a dichotomy between winners/predators like himself and losers/victims who deserve all their problems and suffering and who, moreover, may be dismissed as unpatriotic, “socialist” (i.e. crypto-communist) agitators. To him, a loser is anyone lacking his personality and world-view or daring to challenge or criticize his ideas or policies, even constructively. Such Trumpian abuses have been widely discussed, for example by Roger Paxman, Kevern Verney, and Alan Waring in The New Authoritarianism Vol 1 and Denis Fischbacher-Smith, Clive Smallman, Antony Vass, and Alan Waring in Vol 3. As Smallman noted, such “toxic leadership is not ‘luck of the draw’”.

Trump’s combative style has helped to polarize political debate in the US and encourage partisan non-cooperation between the Republican (GOP) and Democratic parties. This has continued into the subsequent Biden administration. Moreover, Trump’s attitude and conduct (most notoriously his ‘dog-whistle’ priming of a radical-right mob to attack the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021) gave a further green light to an expanding group of radical-right GOP Congress members. 

A growing caucus of such GOP politicians– including Andy Biggs, Lauren Boebert, Ted Cruz, Matt Gaetz, Paul Gosar, Ron Johnson, Ron Paul, and Marjorie Taylor-Greene –has done so, to the extent that the GOP is no longer seen as a ‘one-nation’ conservative party. Instead, it has become a populist radical-right (and potentially far-right) party in which mainstream Republican politicians are increasingly intimidated and marginalized by their more outspokenly extreme colleagues. The cases of Kinzinger and Cheney are especially instructive here.

Trump (an outspoken fan of Putin and his aggressive nationalism, with a notable ambivalence towards his Ukraine invasion) and his GOP allies have been joined in their intolerant statements by a bandwagon of like-minded fringe political commentators and agitators. They have been adept at using their media spaces to vilify naysayers and stridently promulgate radical-right opinions – even extreme ones – as well as absurd conspiracy theories (such as QAnon). Among these are Ann Coulter, Alex Jones and, at Fox News, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham.

Until recently, the gigantic and belligerent radical-right megaphone system in the US has not been mirrored by anything similar on the radical left.

Case B: Cancel Culture in Higher Education

In recent years, there has been a trend for some university students to demand that their lecturers must not include any content that these students may find objectionable, and that university authorities should ban lecturers or speakers whose intellectual views they may not like . Students taking part in such ‘cancel culture’ have become known derisively as ‘snowflakes’. In some instances, protests have turned violent.

Student cancel culture runs counter to the primary purpose of university education, which traditionally aimed at developing constructively critical analysis rather than prejudicial rejection. Indeed, experiencing intellectual challenge and discomfort is a necessary part of university education as a means of developing understanding and sharpening evaluative skills. 

In considering how to shape academic freedom, especially in the digital age, we have seen undue pressure applied to individual academics who have published opinion pieces causing offense to some readers. Noting that an opinion is typically a subjective and biased view of an issue –even when given by an acknowledged expert, since no one’s world-view is value-free or experience-free– researcher Jaime da Silva warned: “Pressure-induced retractions of opinions not only stifle academic debate, they also send the message that opinions need to be moderated and standardized to meet a publishing market that is being increasingly driven by legal parameters, political correctness, as well as business and commercial values rather than academic ones.” Yangyang Cheng writing for The Atlantic also highlights concomitant business, commercial and, occasionally, political pressures. Da Silva continued, noting that “the way things are said, tone, and the sensitivity of those that might be affected are given greater weight than the message itself. By cherry-picking parts of the message that detractors or critics might disagree with, the original message may be drowned out by the noise of the objectors.” The requirement for universities to show proper integrity and firmness against such pressures has never been more urgent.

Case C: Counter-Extremist ‘Cancelled’ for Not Being Anti-Fascist Enough

A stout rejection of fascism could be assumed to be a sine qua non for any member of a body comprising doctoral and post-doctoral fellows dedicated to the analysis of the radical right and countering any associated extremism. Indeed, one such body that for years had been proud of such credentials was what I shall call the Right-Wing Authoritarianism Research Group (hereafter RWARG), a pseudonym used here to save any possible embarrassment. All members were required to contribute non-peer reviewed opinion pieces regularly to the RWARG’s flagship online blog. One such member, Dr. Smith (another pseudonym), had been doing so for some years without controversy when unexpectedly his latest article received a blitz of vituperative reaction online from some fellow members.

Their ire had been provoked, it seems, by his observation that whereas most attention was deservedly focused on the radical right, and the latter’s propensity for the use of threats and even violence to achieve their aims, some radical-left supporters were also now advocating similar tactics against the far right. Although he referenced some specific US examples of violent actions, and articles implying, if not specifically advocating, violence from so-called ‘Antifa’ groups, the RWARG’s online blog editorial policy did not require opinion-piece authors to meet the standards of a double-blind peer reviewed academic paper in order to justify every statement. After all, as da Silva observed, an expressed opinion is typically “a subjective and biased view of an issue”, and blog articles are intended to provoke thought rather than necessarily to inform impartially or, indeed, comprehensively. Moreover, this example validates da Silva’s observation that “the sensitivity of those that might be affected [is] given greater weight than the message itself.”

The thrust of Dr. Smith’s piece was thus to challenge the notion that it is ever acceptable to use or advocate violence as a political policy, strategy or tactic, and cited the well-worn heuristic that ‘violence begets violence’. He was debunking the sophistry that it is morally acceptable for anti-fascists (of any hue) to resort to violent tactics, whether reactive or pre-emptive, against radical-right extremists simply because the latter may have a violent predisposition.

The hysterical reaction to Dr. Smith’s piece was orchestrated by a cabal of members and like-minded academics who went on the offensive first by circulating a strident denunciation of the author,signed by over twenty individuals and demanding a radical reorganization “to prevent far-right members from joining and subverting the organization”. After each signatory’s name, the designation “anti-fascist” was added, presumably for the avoidance of doubt. 

The cabal then hastily organized an online fellows’ conference in order to discuss Dr. Smith and his article, as well as to present demands for an overhaul of the RWARG’s editorial policy and a radical reform of the Group. Their apparent objective was to (a) prevent any further opinion pieces criticizing anti-fascist aggression, (b) prevent anyone gaining membership whose views did not fully meet the cabal’s concepts of fascism and anti-fascism, and (c) expel any member who transgressed the cabal’s new criteria. Partisan censorship of articles that offended the cabal had now become a high risk.

To this author – an attendee of the online meeting – the exercise resembled a Stalinist show trial. Apparently, Dr. Smith was neither invited to attend nor informed that he was, in effect, ‘on trial’. Not only was his offending article canceled but so too was his membership.

A further circular from the cabal continued the professional and character assassination of Dr. Smith. However, it also vilified Professor Jones (another pseudonym), the co-founding Director of RWARG, accusing him of complicity in Dr. Smith’s ‘crime’ for defending the rights of members to hold different viewpoints, as well as attacking his personality and character. Unsurprisingly, the Director and a number of members resigned. This cabal thus achieved a successful insurgent coup led by self-righteous and self-validating ‘anti-fascist’ zealots. Although continuing to proclaim its ‘broad church’ membership, the new RWARG would only be tolerating those closely allied to the new illiberal orthodoxy. Those with a liberal or centrist abhorrence of fascism would not be welcome since, like Dr. Smith and Prof. Jones, they would no longer be considered anti-fascist enough.

For the new RWARG elite, ‘fascist’ is primarily an all-embracing term for anyone in the radical-right spectrum outside and to the right of mainstream conservatism, whether or not a true, revolutionary, fascist as traditionally defined. However, their use of the term now apparently also encompasses liberals, centrists and mainstream conservatives. To them, a ‘fascist’ is anyone who is not 100% ‘anti-fascist’ by their standards i.e. not as anti-fascist as the RWARG cabal claims to be. Such widespread overuse and misuse of the ‘fascist’ and ‘anti-fascist’ labels has devalued them to near junk status, whether used by academics-turned-frustrated-anti-fascist-warriors or by audacious hegemons such as Putin using fascist tactics against his enemies while accusing them of being the real fascists. 

Conclusion

Politics and the media share with academia an overriding responsibility to identify and promulgate the most powerful arguments, not those of the most overbearing and ruthless. Nor should counter-extremism be hijacked either by zealots or by those more interested in their self-promotion, intellectual vanity, or performative feelings of superiority. Regrettably, this standard is being increasingly ignored by those who should know better.

Politicization and ruthless pursuit of intolerant ideology are replacing civil dialogue, precluding any engagement with or understanding of other world-views. Audiences are subjected to unsolicited rants and intimidating toxic messaging, while individuals singled out as ideological enemies are treated to aggressive ‘wilding’. Subversive ‘freedom of speech’ defenses are thereby exposed as little more than an excuse by zealots to obliterate other people’s freedom of expression.The ugly tactics of some extreme politicians, activists, commentators and ‘snowflake’ students, as well as some self-styled anti-extremists, all reveal an essential illiberalism and a corrupted spirit. The relentless outpouring of vile invective against anyone expressing a contrary opinion is indicative of a deep-seated paranoia and possibly some level of personality disorder. While there is no magic antidote to all this wickedness, sociologist and democracy activist Moshe ben Asher suggests as an essential starting point the radical revitalization of democracy (especially in the US) through popular assemblies. Moreover, there is a desperate need for greater humanity and mindfulness in our dealings with others, friends and adversaries alike.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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On March 10, 2022, US President Joe Biden officially designated Qatar as a major non-NATO ally.  Qatar is the 18^th state to earn this designation and the third Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) state to do so following Kuwait and Bahrain.   

The designation conformed to a statement that Biden made to His Highness Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, the emir of Qatar, during his visit to Washington in late January 2022.  During the visit, Biden had sent a letter to the US Congress indicating his intention to give Qatar the designation of  a major non-NATO ally. In the letter, the president acknowledged “Qatar’s many years of contributions to US-led efforts in the US Central Command area of responsibility” and recognized that the US had a “national interest in deepening bilateral defense and security cooperation with the State of Qatar.” 

BIden’s designation for Qatar has a historical basis. For years, Qatar has supported US foreign policy objectives. The country has hosted and provided substantial financial support for the Al Udeid Air Base and engaged with the US on issues of strategic importance, including its recent assistance in relocating thousands of Afghans and its ability to serve as an effective mediator in critical situations. The designation  promises to deepen US-Qatar ties in the future.

What Does This Designation Really Mean?  

What are the legal foundations for the designation and its implications for Qatar? Under a federal statute, the US president has the unilateral power to designate a country a major non-NATO ally with the requirement that Congress receive notice in writing at least 30 days before this designation. As aptly noted, the designation alone does not make Qatar a NATO member and thus the collective security obligations and mutual defense benefits under NATO are not applicable to this GCC country.  

Yet, in addition to recognizing the close military ties between Qatar and the US, the designation as a major non-NATO ally ensures defense trade and security cooperation benefits. Qatar is now eligible for loans, research, training, and development, as well as gaining priority access to US military equipment and the ability to bid on certain US Department of Defense contracts. 

In the past, other regional players have benefitted from the designation. Their experience highlights the importance of a military and defense relationship for any GCC state with the US, especially given recent events. For example, Kuwait has benefitted from arms sales through the Foreign Military Sales Program. This strengthened the capabilities of the Kuwaiti military and enhanced the country’s security. 

The Biden administration has given $1 billion to the US Army Corps of Engineers and other US companies to build Kuwait’s new defense ministry headquarters. A training initiative, the International Military Education and Training (IMET) program, enables Kuwaiti students to be trained at US military institutions at a discounted rate.

Capacity building is one of the main incentives for US-Qatar cooperation, which is of great importance to this GCC state. Its defense regime is relatively young and capable of playing an influential role due to the country’s proximity to both Saudi Arabia and Iran. Qatar can also play a key role as a mediator in the region. In the light of the above, the designation as a major non-NATO ally has critical long-term benefits to the country.

The new development also certainly signals closer cooperation between the US and Qatar. Historically, these designations tend to be mutually beneficial. In the case of Qatar, increased engagement with the US promises to strengthen its status as a security leader in the Middle East and benefit both the region as well as its superpower friend.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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