War in Ukraine takes a dangerous turn

With Russian President Putin asking his nuclear forces to go on high alert, the war in Ukraine has taken a dangerous turn. Putin's decision is not about threatening the West with nuclear weapons, as the Western media makes out. It is about keeping Russia in a state of readiness for any threat from NATO, given the belligerence shown by the US and NATO since the war erupted.

Various NATO members, including Germany, have made it clear that they will supply weapons to Ukraine. Significant sanctions against Russia have been announced. Turkey, a NATO member, has restricted Russia's access to the Black Sea. Russia sees itself as under serious threat. In putting nuclear forces on alert, Putin wants to prepare the country for the worst case scenario.

It is a pity that Western media propaganda is being bought wholesale by much of the Indian media. There is talk of invasion of Ukraine, Russia wanting to re-create the USSR, stories about death and destruction and the heroic resistance of the people of Ukraine. The suffering of Indian students stranded there has lent a desi dimension to the story. Ukraine is, regrettably, a war zone. War is suffering, it is destruction. It is important to ask: what led up to this situation? 

As I have been trying to highlight in my posts, Putin has made it clear time and again that he is not interested in absorbing Ukraine into Russia. His main demand is that Ukraine should not become a member of NATO and hence a base for nuclear missiles. The West and Ukraine have refused to concede this demand, which several sober politicians and analysts in the West think is eminently reasonable. Ukraine's President went further and declared that Ukraine retained its right to acquire nuclear weapons! 

Putin sees the continued expansion of NATO into its backyard as an existential threat. He will do what it takes to prevent that from happening. That is why Russia's  military operation in Ukraine has happened. The operation will not end until Putin's twin objectives are achieved: de-militarisation and de-Nazification of Ukraine. No sanctions, no UN resolution, no Western media propaganda can stop Putin from doing what he thinks is absolutely essential for the security of his nation.

I cannot do better than quote from an article veteran diplomat M K Bhadrakumar has written in Rediff.com:

Russia is not at war with Ukraine, but is locked in an existential struggle to avoid the fate of Yugoslavia. Period. The spectre that is haunting Putin is NATO membership for Ukraine, which the Americans have been orchestrating.

Following the CIA-sponsored coup in Ukraine in 2014, an anti-Russian power calculus emerged in Ukraine. The US's point man for Ukraine in the Obama administration was none other than Biden himself. He made countless trips to Kyiv during 2014-2016 to fine tune that transition.....

The core issue today is not 'Russian invasion'. Putin has spelt out unambiguously that Russia does not intend to occupy Ukraine and that its objective is two-fold: 'Demilitarisation' and 'denazification' of Ukraine

The first one means dismantling the military infrastructure that NATO and has installed on Ukrainian soil right on Russia's doorstep. Ukraine's defence apparatus, including its command centres, are already hooked to the NATO system.

Putin has repeatedly warned that if the US instals missiles in Ukraine, Moscow would be within 5 minutes's striking distance. It is 'like a knife at our throat', he said on Thursday...

....Under no circumstances will Russia give up until the twin objectives are realised -- dismantling the offensive weapon systems installed by NATO in Ukraine and, secondly, scattering the Neo-Nazi forces that act as the US's cat's paw.

The Modi government has shown courage in abstaining from the Security Council decrying the Russian intervention in Ukraine. But many of our intellectuals and the Indian newspaper reading audience seem sadly disconnected from the tragedy unfolding in Ukraine. 

Ukraine: Putin wrongfoots the West

Putin has announced a military operation in the two breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. The Western media calls this an invasion. As Putin was careful to point out in his last address, the Russian intervention is in keeping with the US charter. Donetsk and Luhansk have announced their independence and Russia has recognised them. Russia has a mutual defence treaty with both. Thus, the Russian intervention is comparable to its intervention in Syria.

The West thought that Putin would respond to Ukraine's provocations in the Donbass region through a direct assault on Ukraine. Putin has not done so. His troops have moved into the two breakaway republics. If Ukraine attacks Russian troops, Putin will retaliate.

The West has responded with sanctions that even the Western media finds trifling. Harsher sanctions may follow. The West must understand that sovereign states will be willing to put up with sanctions of any order where they believe national security is threatened. North Korea has done that. So has Iran. The West has been unable to cripple them militarily whatever the economic price they have paid. With Russia, the West has an even lesser chance.

What we are seeing is a Russian attempt to redefine international relations. No longer is Russia willing to allow the US to lay down the law- at least where Russia's immediate periphery is concerned. The US and NATO will not be allowed to station missiles in Russia's periphery and threaten Russian security. Period. If any nation in the Russian periphery does not accept this position and plays along with the West, it will pay the price. That is what Ukraine is learning the hard way. Putin has made it clear that Russia has no interest in re-absorbing Ukraine or any  the other erstwhile republics into itself as long as Russian security is not threatened.

The West refused to buy this. It has sought to portray Putin as an aggressor who wants to recrate the Soviet empire. Just three days ago, economist Jeffrey Sachs made an impassioned plea for the West not to mis-represent Putin's position and to guarantee that NATO enlargement would not include Ukraine or other states in Russia's periphery:

Many insist that Nato enlargement is not the real issue for Putin and that he wants to recreate the Russian empire, pure and simple. Everything else, including Nato enlargement, they claim, is a mere distraction. 

This is utterly mistaken. Russia has adamantly opposed Nato expansion towards the east for 30 years, first under Boris Yeltsin and now Putin. Before that, the Soviet Union largely opposed Nato expansion, too. 

It is easy to understand why. The US would not be very happy were Mexico to join a China-led military alliance, nor was it content when Fidel Castro’s Cuba aligned with the USSR 60 years ago. 

Neither the US nor Russia wants the other’s military on their doorstep. Pledging no Nato enlargement is not appeasement. It does not cede Ukrainian territory. It does not undermine Ukraine’s sovereignty. It would in fact help to secure it. Ukraine should aspire to resemble the non-Nato members of the EU: Austria, Cyprus, Finland, Ireland, Malta and Sweden.

The West refused to give the necessary guarantees. It was willing for more talks of the sort that have led nowhere for the past eight years. It underestimated Putin's resolve.

Will there be a full-blown conflict? Not if the West concedes Putin's point and lays off. If the West chooses to interfere in Ukraine and provoke further conflict, all bets are off. 

Ukraine: what exactly is going on?

Western governments and the Western media have been screaming for over a week that a Russian attack on Ukraine is imminent. Russia denies any plans to invade Ukraine. The President of Ukraine has asked Western governments to tone down hysteria over a Russian invasion: he doesn't think one is imminent. 

So, what exactly is going on?

Well, it is fair to say that Russia has no interest in absorbing Ukraine. It was interested in maintaining its access to the Black Sea. That objective was achieved when the Crimea was absorbed into Russia. Putin insists that Russia's interest in Ukraine is limited to ensuring it does not become a base for NATO missiles by becoming part of NATO.

Ukraine and some Western governments have indicated that there is little chance of Ukraine becoming a member of NATO. That requires the unanimous approval of all NATO countries. There is no way that such unanimity will be achieved in the foreseeable future. No European country, other than the UK, would like to incur the wrath of Russia in the cause of making Ukraine  a member of NATO- it's just not worth the trouble. What Ukraine and the West are reluctant to do is to concede Putin's demand for iron-clad guarantees that Ukraine will never become a member of NATO. 

If Ukraine becoming a member of NATO is a non-issue for now, why has Russia massed troops on the border with Ukraine? A plausible reason could be that it fears Ukraine will allow itself to be used by the West to launch a major assault on Donbas whose Russian population has been facing attacks from Ukraine for quite some time. Russia cannot be passive spectator to such an assault. It is, therefore, keeping its troops in readiness.

Why would the West want Ukraine to provoke Russia? Well, the speculation is that the US wants an excuse to get the West to impose sanctions that would include a ban on the Nord Stream 2 project that involves the supply of Russian gas to Germany. The US does not want Europe to be depend on Russia for its energy. Germany has been reluctant to buy the US line because it can use Russian gas supplies. Creating a ruckus over any Russian action against Ukraine would provide the basis for sanctions that cover Nord Stream 2. 

Another American objective could be tying down Russia in its immediate vicinity so that it does not attempt far away adventures such as the one in Syria. 

Putin has made it clear that he will not allow the countries in its periphery to be used a base for missiles that threaten Russia. He has declared that he has no interest in re-creating the erstwhile Soviet Union. If the West cannot accept this position, the world is in for serious trouble.

Ukraine crisis: the price of honesty

The Chief of Germany's Navy, Vice Admiral Kay-Achim Schönbach, has resigned after a controversy erupted over remarks he made during a recent visit to India.

The Chief was commenting on the crisis in Ukraine. Russia has made it clear that Ukraine cannot become a part of NATO nor can NATO or the US place nuclear missiles there because these pose a fundamental threat to Russian security. It is not a position that reasonable people can quarrel with. When the former Soviet Union wanted to place missiles in Cuba, President Kennedy was ready to risk a nuclear exchange. The Americans have made it clear that they will not tolerate Russian missiles in Latin America. But the West has a different set of standards when it comes to threatening Russia.

Schönbach said that talk of Russia wanting to invade Ukraine was "nonsense" and that Russia and Putin deserved respect. He also said that Ukraine could never hope to win back Crimea which Russia had annexed. 

These are nothing but statements of fact- you could say that plain truth. Alas, truth is not what authority wants to hear. Within any system- whether it is government or a company- you are expected to toe the official line, not speak the truth.  Schönbach's remarks evoked such fury in Germany and its allies that he had to quit.

Former CIA chief and former defence Secretary Robert Gates lays down the official line in an article:

Since becoming president in 1999, Putin’s objectives have been straightforward: to restore and expand central government authority (not to mention enhancing his personal dominance and wealth), and to return Russia to its historical role as a major power. 

Anything wrong with those objectives? Are the objectives of any other major country, including the US and China, very different?

Gates quotes John Kerry, former US Secretary of State:

 After Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014, then US secretary of state John Kerry complained: “You just don’t in the 21st century behave in the 19th-century fashion by invading another country on a completely trumped-up pretext.”  

That's more than a little rich. Anybody remember the US invasion of Iraq? 

Killings fields of Afghanistan and an assassination

 The New York Times and The Washington Post carry on their front pages global news mostly on the basis of their importance and American news has to compete for attention with news from elsewhere. Indian papers, in contrast, are extremely India-centric in their coverage and most foreign news is relegated to one or two of the inside pages.

So you may not have heard of the scandal in Australia over the killing of Afghan civilians by Australian special forces stationed in the country. It was cold-blooded killing, with junior soldiers often being asked to shoot prisoners to get a taste of killing.

An enquiry has been  held into these war crimes and 25 soldiers found to have been involved in unlawful killings. However, the report of the enquiry has been quick to exonerate the superiors of these soldiers for their conduct. The finding has evoked widespread ridicule and criticism. Australian PM Scott Morrison has been constrained to reject this finding. This has embarassed the chief of Australian Defence Forces, who had echoed the findings of the report.

A complication for Australia is a tweet from a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman on the subject. The tweet carried the photo of an Australian soldier slitting a child's throat. Relations between Australia and China have been strained in recent months and the Chinese are making the most of this episode.

Here's a scorching commentary on this ugly episode in Russia Today. 

Then, there is the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist Fakhrizadeh about a week ago. The scientist, who is said to have headed a covert nuclear weapons program, was killed just outside Tehran  in an encounter that could be straight out of Mission Impossible. The initial reports said he was killed by a commando squad that leapt out of a vehicle as his car, along with an escort of bodyguards, made his way to a town on the outskirts of Tehran.

Now, we are told he was killed by a remote-controlled machine gun that was operated through a satellite! Iranian fingers are pointed towards Israel. How any agency could have pulled off such a feat in the heart of Iran is a mystery. Clearly, there is logistical and other support provided by individuals or groups within Iran at a time when the country is reeling under sanctions. Whatever the methods used, the episode highlights Iran's vulnerability and the ability of its enemies to strike inside Iran at will. Hard questions are being asked of Iran's security establishment.

Iran has vowed revenge. It did likewise when Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani was killed in a US drone attack some months ago. At the time, Iran confined itself to a limited attack on US bases in Iraq. In the present instance, it faces a dilemma. If it retaliates, it will invite a massive response from the Israel and the US. That will put paid to Iran's hopes of a return to the nuclear agreement, signed during the term of President Obama, under the incoming Biden regime. (Trump has scrapped the agreement). If it lies low, it risks emboldening its enemies who will conclude that there are no costs to killing Iranian civilians in Iran.

Quote of the day

US defense secretary James Mattis greets newly appointed National Security Advisor John Bolton with the words, "“I’ve heard that you’re actually the devil incarnate and I wanted to meet you.”

Bolton is a hawk on security matters- he favours a strike on North Korea and regime change in Iran. Mattis (known during his days in the army as "Mad dog Mattis") has been a sober influence in the Trump regime.  How Trump will manage two remains a mystery.

North Korea flashpoint

The Trump administration has ratcheted up tensions with North Korea to a new high. An American armada has been sent to the Korean seas. The US has put in place a sophisticated missile defence system in South Korea. And Trump has issued several warnings to North Korea. The provocation is said to be North Korea's attempt at testing a missile that could hit California.

But there is a history to North Korea's nuclear missile programme that finds little mention in the western media. The western media paints North Korea's ruler Kim Jong Un as a madman bent on self-destruction and his country as a poor, backward nation that could collapse any time.

An article in RT sets the record straight in respect of the above:

As Bruce Cumings, the leading Western academic expert on the DPRK, puts it:
"North Korea is the only country in the world to have been systematically blackmailed by US nuclear weapons going back to the 1950s, when hundreds of nukes were installed in South Korea… Why on earth would Pyongyang not seek a nuclear deterrent? But this crucial background doesn’t enter mainstream American discourse. 

....An internal CIA study almost grudgingly acknowledged various achievements of this regime: compassionate care for children in general and war orphans in particular; “radical change” in the position of women; genuinely free housing, free health care, and preventive medicine; and infant mortality and life expectancy rates comparable to the most advanced countries.
Life expectancy at birth is 70.4 years. Hospital bed density (number of hospital beds per 1,000 of the population) is 13.2 – quadruple that of the United Kingdom. The entire population has access to improved drinking water. The literacy rate is 100 percent. Think these statistics come from the DPRK’s ministry of propaganda? They’re from the CIA World Factbook. Most developing countries would be very happy to achieve such figures.

North Korea has a no first use policy on nuclear weapons. The US will not reciprocate. The US will not offer a non-aggression pact either. It won't withdraw its troops from South Korea in exchange for a nuclear deal with North Korea. What the US will do is intimidate and bully. North Korea refuses to be bullied.

Let me add what Paul Craig Roberts, a respected journalist and former policy maker has to say on the subject:

The Chinese government has said that the moronic Americans could attack North Korea at any moment. A large US fleet is heading to North Korea. North Korea apparently now has nuclear weapons. One North Korean nuclear weapon can wipe out the entirety of the US fleet. Why is Washington inviting this outcome? The only possible answer is moronic stupidity.
North Korea is not bothering anyone. Why is Washington picking on North Korea? Does Washington want war with China? In which case, is Washinton kissing off the West Coast of the US? Why does the West Coast support policies that imply the demise of the West Coast of the US? Do the morons on the West Coast think that the US can initiate war with China, or North Korea, without any consequesnces to the West Coast? Are even Americans this utterly stupid?

Roberts' indictment of successive US presidents is scathing:

It has become embarrassing to be an American. Our country has had four war criminal presidents in succession. Clinton twice launched military attacks on Serbia, ordering NATO to bomb the former Yugoslavia twice, both in 1995 and in 1999, so that gives Bill two war crimes. George W. Bush invaded Afghanistan and Iraq and attacked provinces of Pakistan and Yemen from the air. That comes to four war crimes for Bush. Obama used NATO to destroy Libya and sent mercenaries to destroy Syria, thereby commiting two war crimes. Trump attacked Syria with US forces, thereby becoming a war criminal early in his regime. 

America's 'secret' war in Laos

The Americans bombed the hell out of Iraq and helped Nato bomb the hell out of Libya. Earlier, they showed their firepower in Serbia. Now, we are getting a taste of American intervention in Mosul in Iraq and in the Raqqa province of Syria.

The Americans seem to have learnt one big lesson from Vietnam: by all means get involved in savage wars elsewhere but make sure there are not too many of your own body bags. You do this by using mainly air power and forging alliances with locals  who will do the dirty work on the ground.

The Economist has an interesting review of a book the war in Laos which shows that this is an approach the Americans used way back in the 1960s, although it was not particularly effective there. The bombing was savage alright:

Hitting the Pathet Lao in the north and on the Ho Chi Minh trail in the south, the American air force unleashed an average of one attack every eight minutes for nearly ten years. By 1970 tens of thousands of American-backed fighters were involved, at an annual cost of $3.1bn in today’s dollars. By the time the campaign ended in 1973, a tenth of Laos’s population had been killed. Thousands more accidental deaths would follow from unexploded bombs left in the soil.

This was labelled a 'secret war' not because it was a secret but because US officials had perfected the art of denial. One innovation was the use, not of the US army, but that of the CIA as a paramilitary force. When you use the army, it's hard to keep things wrap; it's much easier to do so with the CIA. That way you can also ensure less media coverage.This, the Economist notes, is continuing today in Somalia, Yemen and elsewhere.

You have to grant it to the Russians: when they stepped into Syria in 2016, it was official and legal.

North Korean flash point

North Korea was flagged among the foreign policy priorities for President Trump. The advice was well-placed. Tensions in the Korean peninsula have been rising, with North Korea testing long-range missiles and the US responding with a sophisticated air defence system for South Korea.

Among the options being considered is all-out war, aimed at taking out North Korea's nuclear armoury. The argument is that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is crazy. As an article in the FT points out, he's a rational leader focused on survival. It's the war option that is crazy:

The North Korean nuclear and missile programmes are widely dispersed, including underground and underwater. It is unlikely that the whole programme could be destroyed in a single wave of strikes, which would immediately raise the prospect of nuclear retaliation by the North. Even if the US was miraculously able to take out the whole nuclear programme in one swoop, the North Koreans still have formidable conventional artillery. They could launch devastating barrages aimed at Seoul, the South Korean capital, a city of 10m people 35 miles from the North Korean border. Japan would also be vulnerable to missile strikes, as would US bases in the region. 

...  the better route, in the long run, would be to search for a deal that freezes the country’s nuclear programme, in return for economic assistance and a guarantee that the US will not seek to overthrow the regime. 

And what if such a 'grand bargain' can't be struck? Well, it would be best for the US to live with a nuclear North Korea, as it has lived with a nuclear Russia. The alternatives are too horrifying to contemplate. 

Did you know? Milosovic has been exonerated!

Would you believe it, the former Serbian President Slobodan Milosovic, widely reviled as a genocidal tyrant, has been exonerated by the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia! I'm sure I'm among the vast numbers of people who had assumed that he had committed ghastly crimes that ended only with the liberation of Serbia through Nato bombing.

I guess we should have known better. This piece of disinformation was put out by the west and its obedient media and lives on long after Milosovic's death while still under trial. The exoneration is contained in the judgement that convicts the Bosnian Serb Radovan Karadzic, according to a terrific report in RT.com (on which I had my last post) by well-known journalist and Guardian contributor Neil Clark:

For the past twenty odd years, neocon commentators and 'liberal interventionist' pundits have been telling us at every possible opportunity, that Milosevic (a democratically elected leader in a country where over 20 political parties freely operated)  was an evil genocidal dictator who was to blame for ALL the deaths in the Balkans in the 1990s......
But the official narrative, just like the one that told us that in 2003, Iraq had WMDs which could be launched within 45 minutes, was a deceitful one, designed to justify a regime change-op which the Western elites had long desired.

The ICTY’s conclusion, that one of the most demonized figures of the modern era was innocent of the most heinous crimes he was accused of, really should have made headlines across the world. But it hasn‘t. Even the ICTY buried it, deep in its 2,590 page verdict in the trial of Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic who was convicted in March of genocide (at Srebrenica), war crimes and crimes against humanity. There was no official announcement or press conference regarding Milosevic‘s exoneration.

Clark  says that Nato put it out that Milosovic had perpetrated horrible crimes in Kosovo. This was proved false by a UN court in 2001. Then, Nato latched on to alleged crimes of his in Bosnia. This claim too has now been thrown out.

The Western propaganda machine has since found other targets: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Assad, Putin:

Since then we’ve also had the NATO destruction of Libya, the country which had the highest living standards in the whole of Africa and the backing of violent 'rebels' to try and achieve ‘regime change’ in Syria.
You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to see a pattern here.Sinc
Before a US-led war or ‘humanitarian intervention’ against a targeted state, a number of lurid claims are made about the country‘s leader and its government. These claims receive maximum media coverage and are repeated ad nauseam on the basis that people will bound to think they’re true.
Later it transpires that the claims were either entirely false (like the Iraq WMD ones), unproven, or greatly exaggerated. But the news cycle has moved on focusing not on the exposure of the fraudulent claims made earlier but on the next aggressive/genocidal ‘New Hitler’ who needs to be dealt with.  In 1999 it was Milosevic; now it’s Assad and Putin.

You won't find such stories in the western mainstream media. That's why you should go to channels such as RT.

Chilcot report: Blair is not the only guilty one

Former British PM Tony Blair has been justifiably skewered by all and sundry following the publication of the Chilcot report on the Iraq war.

To me, the most striking part is not Blair's role- that was plain enough even without the report. It is the role played by the rest of the British establishment- the spineless characters in the cabinet, the acquiescent bureaucrats, the willingness of MI6 to oblige a war-mongering PM and, not least, a jingoistic and baying media (supposedly the 'free press' of Great Britain). Every part of the establishment was party to the American effort to oust Saddam Hussein by force and in defiance of the United Nations.

Leaving aside a few luminous exceptions such as Robin Cook, the foreign secretary who made a terrific speech in the House of Commons and then resigned, the barbarity and manifest injustice of what the British government embarked upon did not evoke outrage or protest. After the horrors of the Third Reich became known and the Nuremberg trials highlighted the enormity of the atrocities perpetrated, the question was asked: how could a whole nation have been complicit in such thing?

Well, after the Chilcot report, it is worth asking: how was the behaviour of the British establishment different from that of the Germans in the time of Hitler? That was a totalitarian regime and dissent would have carried a huge price. But what about democratic Britain? Is the price of dissent so high that nobody is willing to pay it? Or is it simply that even the modest price that dissent involves- such as losing a ministerial job or lack of career progression in the bureaucracy- something that supposedly decent people are not willing to pay?  For all the claims that democracies make, a culture of dissent is noticeably absent in all walks of life- politics, the bureaucracy, the corporate world, the media and even academics. It's so much easier to simply toe the line.

I was thrilled, therefore, to read the story of a whistle-blower from GCHQ, the British equivalent of the National Security Agency in the US. The whistle-blower, a lady, received an email from somebody in NASA asking for information on countries on the UNSC that were holding out against a vote in favour of a war. She leaked the email and ended up getting charged by the government for violation of the Official Secrets Act. The charge was dropped when it became clear that pursuing the case would not be rewarding for the government. The leak of the email should have prompted scrutiny from parliamentarians and others of what the Blair government was up to. It didn't happen:

I believed that on receiving the email, UK parliamentary members might question the urgency and motives of the war hawks, and demand further deliberations and scrutiny. I thought it might delay or perhaps even halt the march towards a war that would devastate Iraqi lives and infrastructure already crushed by a decade of unrelenting sanctions. A war that would send UK and US service men and women into harm’s way, leaving hundreds of them dead, disfigured and traumatised. Unfortunately, that did not happen. It couldn’t, for now we know via Chilcot that Blair promised George W Bush he would be “with him, whatever”.

Amidst the yes-men and sycophants everywhere, there is the odd brave soul that is willing to speak up. There were a few other heroes and heroines-  amongst them, the head of MI5 who warned Blair of the dangers of Muslims everywhere being radicalised.

How do we nurture a society where more people are emboldened to express dissent? Unless we do so, all so-called democracies are seriously flawed. The mindset is essentially totalitarian with only one difference- you get a chance to vote every few years.

There's one other aspect of the Chilcot report that Robert Fisk, the well-known journalist, highlights. We do not hear the voices of the victims, the people of Iraq. The Chilcot enquiry did not seek their testimony:

The Arabs of Iraq – and now Syria – endure human disaster on an unprecedented scale because of the Blair-Bush lies, yet all Chilcot can produce with his seven years of literary endeavour and volumes to break the strength of any library shelf is a puny little domestic report on British politics and the self-righteousness of the midget who got it all wrong.

Resurgence of the left in UK and US

Political pundits are watching with some astonishment the resurgence of the left in the UK and- of all places- the US.

In the UK, Jeremy Corbyn is positioning himself for the leadership of the Labour party on September 12. That doughty champion of market forces, The Economist, does not approve one bit:

For him no policy is too dog-eared, no intellectual dead-end too futile. Public spending? Yes, please. Higher taxes? Soak the capitalists and the landlords. State ownership? Nationalise the railways and utilities, get the private sector out of public services and reopen the coal mines. If that were the secret of prosperity, Britain would never have fallen apart in the 1970s and Tony Blair would not have won three elections at the head of a modernised centre-left Labour Party.

In the US, Bernie Sanders stands a slender chance of emerging as a shock Democratic candidate. He may end up getting pitted against Donald Trump, the Republican's own shock candidate who leads the ratings. An article in the Economist describes Sanders' broad political position:

A typical Sanders speech resembles a 90-minute sermon on modern America’s ills, delivered in the growling tones of his native Brooklyn. Hunched over a lectern, snowy hair aquiver with emotion, the 73-year-old’s usual targets include the “greed, recklessness and dishonesty” of Wall Street bankers, the malign influence of billionaire political donors, and the “abysmally low” wages that blight the lives of working families. Change will be hard, Mr Sanders warns audiences, and will require a “political revolution”. He is not joking (the senator rarely jokes). His proposals include moving towards a Canadian-style health system with publicly funded care for all, free tuition at public universities and a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan intended to create 13m jobs.

...Mr Sanders detects a chance in 2016 to lead a national uprising, drawing strength from the millions of working Americans who loathe mainstream politicians, news outlets and the economic status quo. Paraphrasing Franklin D. Roosevelt, he told the rally in Boone: “If the Koch brothers and the billionaire class hate my guts, I welcome their hatred.”

The Economist doesn't think that either Corbyn or Sanders can actually emerge as leaders of their respective parties.

BJP leader Varun Gandhi has a comment on this in the Hindu. He ascribes the resurgence to rising inequality. Gandhi's prescriptions for inequality would, perhaps, find easier acceptance in the Congress than in the BJP:

To cut inequality, we need to raise the level of minimum wages, strengthen collective bargaining, and improve employment benefits. Women need equal wages, flexible work environments and better childcare facility. We need better regulation of business, especially for rent-seeking sectors. Climate change requires a systemic response, with enhanced environmental protection.. With new demands for reservation based on economic criteria, the old politics of ethnic, racial and caste based reservation or affirmative programmes will soon die. 

Well, I am not sure the issue is just inequality, although it is an important factor. There is widespread discontent about the economy, for one thing. More importantly, perhaps, a profound dissatisfaction with mainstream candidates and parties and a yearning for something very different. Trump's appeal is precisely on the latter count, although I cannot fathom how he appeals to black voters.

Some of this is reflected in Indian politics as well. Aap undoubtedly has won out because of its anti-establishment orientation. The resistance to reforms reflects a growing realisation that a disproportionate chunk of the economic pie has gone in favour of business and corporate interests.  The BJP's retreat from the Land Bill and its reluctance to privatise government banks are acknowledgements of the realities on the ground. It's hard to think of any party moving decisively to the right in the near future. 

China's communist party is not so communist

I am not saying this, it's well known sociologist Daniel Bell who thinks so. I have to say that this is the impression I too have formed over the years.

The CCP no longer subscribes to full-blown communism- it is committed to the market economy to a degree. More importantly, it's not the monolithic entity that most people outside think it is, with people of a particular orientation only being included and those at the top dictating the line. It is highly pluralistic and there is plenty of room for people to express their views:

With 86m members, the CCP is a pluralistic organisation that co-opts leaders of different sectors of society, including keen capitalists, and it aims to represent the whole country..........The CCP does not need a unifying ideology, so long as people agree that the political system does a good job of selecting public officials with superior qualities. The pressing problem of corruption casts doubt on the question of virtue. So the anti-corruption campaign is essential to buttressing the legitimacy of the CCP, though we will not see results for a few years. 

In other words, the CCP is the political equivalent of the bureaucracy. People with a flair or passion for public life are selected and promoted on merit. It's not yet free from dynastic politics (many of today's leading lights are descendants of close associates of Mao or Deng) but there is the promise of getting there.  Moreover, as Bell points out, it's important for the party to gain legitimacy by rooting out extreme corruption.

The differences on most issues within the CCP, I would imagine, are as broad as those between the Congress and the BJP. Instead of having people in two parties sharing the spoils, the CCP does it within one roof. The key divide between the Congress and BJP is not political or economic but cultural. The BJP differentiates itself clearly with its Hindutva orientation. Who knows?- the Congress may go the same way. Rahul Gandhi's decision to head for Kedar soon after he came back from his retreat is an interesting straw in the wind.

Two hundred years after Waterloo

Napoleon born apart. That terrific pun I heard from my school master about sums up the popular perception of one of the greatest conquerors and military leaders in history. On the bicentennial of the battle of Waterloo, which put an end to Napoleon's reign once and for all, there is a spate of books and assessments of this larger-than-life figure.

There are, as is to be expected, diametrically opposite views on Napoleon. The positive view is one that sees him as a creator of modern France. One article sums up his achievements very well (and is worth reading for its analysis of the epic battle of Waterloo alone):

Yet he said he would be remembered not for his military victories, but for his domestic reforms, especially the Code Napoleon, that brilliant distillation of 42 competing and often contradictory legal codes into a single, easily comprehensible body of French law. In fact, Napoleon’s years as first consul, from 1799 to 1804, were extraordinarily peaceful and productive. He also created the educational system based on lycées and grandes écoles and the Sorbonne, which put France at the forefront of European educational achievement. He consolidated the administrative system based on departments and prefects. He initiated the Council of State, which still vets the laws of France, and the Court of Audit, which oversees its public accounts. He organized the Banque de France and the Légion d’Honneur, which thrive today. He also built or renovated much of the Parisian architecture that we still enjoy, both the useful—the quays along the Seine and four bridges over it, the sewers and reservoirs—and the beautiful, such as the Arc de Triomphe, the Rue de Rivoli and the Vendôme column.

Napoleon's big mistake, as is well known, was the invasion of Russia. It turned out to be a disaster- he lost half a million soldiers. And it brought his enemies together in an assault on France. Napoleon abdicated and was exiled to Elba. The French monarchy, represented by the Bourbons, returned to power but were unequal to the task of reconciling the divisions in French society.

Napoleon escaped from Elba and made a spectacular return to power. The Allies did not like that one bit and made plain their intention to oust him. Napoleon had disavowed plans of conquest but the Allies were unwilling to forget or forgive. More importantly, as the article I have cited argues, the aristocracy of Europe was determined to thwart the liberal ideas that Napoleon had once stood for. The Battle of Waterloo was inevitable. 

Now, for the opposite view. There's no getting away from the fact that Napoleon departed from the revolutionary ideals of Voltaire and Rousseau once he came to power. His crowning blunder, to speak, was his decision to call himself Emperor. An article in FT dissects the negatives of Napoleon's reign mercilessly:

That Napoleon, the supposed deliverer of liberty and equality, all wrapped up in the tricolour, was the mortal enemy of freedom there can be no argument. When in 1799, the 30-year-old general came to power through the coup of 18th Brumaire, there were 70 newspapers in Paris. Bonaparte said there was need for but one — the Moniteur, the official tool of his propaganda — and closed down all but a handful of lickspittle flatterers.

His police and spies were everywhere, deadening cultural life in Paris. Theatres were shut the minute they dared to perform anything that could be construed as critical of the regime. Napoleonic Paris was a showplace for grandiose architecture but the cemetery of independently conceived art and ideas. 

Ah, sigh the Napoleonomanes wringing their hands and dabbing their eyes, liberty had to die so that equality might live. Unless, that is you were black or a woman. In 1802 Napoleon reinstated slavery; two years later he liquidated one of the Revolution’s most precious achievements: divorce by mutual consent. The Civil Code made wives more the prisoners of their husbands than in the old regime. They no longer had any right to their property in marriage and had to ask their husbands’ permission to take the stand in legal proceedings.  

The writer also makes the point that, in seeking to unite Europe, Napoleon lost sight of the need for disparate nations to express their identity, one reason why modern Britain is steadfastly opposed to the EU. Perhaps, the Europeans might borrow from the Indian Constitution and give themselves a Finance Commission (although one should not be blind to the problems within the Indian federation, notably the problems in the North-East).

In the ultimately analysis, Napoleon, for all his administrative abilities, failed to recognise the need for individual freedom and cultural identity. Modern rulers must take note. And the present-day leaders of Europe need to be mindful of the seminal lesson from the titanic reverses of Napoleon and Hitler: don't mess with the Russian bear. 

Seymour Hersh and the US-Pak conspiracy on Osama: a sceptical view

Seymour Hersh, the famous investigative reporter who uncovered the My Lai massacre in Viet Nam and the Abu Ghraib torture, has created another sensation with his story on the collaboration between Pakistan and America in the killing of Osama bin Laden. He says that the Pakistani generals sold Osama to the Americans.

One American site has voiced scepticism on this story, pointing to several discrepancies and shortcomings in Hersh' story. This is one story that won't go away in a hurry.

Did UK electorate vote for austerity in polls?

The victory of the Conservative party, which surprised pollsters and shocked pundits, is on account of the significant turnaround in the UK economy brought about by the austerity policies of Chancellor George Osborne, writes Niall Ferguson the historian. He contends that, contrary to the predictions of economists such as Paul Krugman, austerity produced impressive results:

The UK had the best performing of the G7 economies last year, with a real gross domestic product growth rate of 2.6 per cent. In 2009, the last full year of Labour government, the figure was minus 4.3 per cent. Moreover, far from being in depression, the UK economy has generated more than 1.9m jobs since May 2010. UK unemployment is now 5.6 per cent, roughly half the rates in Italy and France. Weekly earnings are up by more than 8 per cent; in the private sector, the figure is above 10 per cent. Inflation is below 2 per cent and falling.....the general government deficit has been nearly halved from 10 per cent in 2009 to 5.7 per cent last year; the structural deficit more than halved from 9.8 per cent to 4.2 per cent. The net public debt has been stabilised at roughly the same level relative to GDP as that of the US.

Showing a growth rate after a decline is not a big achievement, although it's better than accentuating the decline itself. The crucial question is whether the UK is back to its pre-crisis level of GDP and how close it is to the trend rate of growth. Also, we have no means of knowing the answer the question: would Keynesian policies have produced better results?

NRN's son-in-law contesting elections in the UK

Rishi Sunak is a Tory candidate for parliament in the imminent elections in the UK. One report suggests that he's not hitting it off with the locals- and underlying racism amongst voters could be a factor.

Thanks to Siddharth Varadarajan tweet for the pointer.

It doesn't happen only in India...

The nexus between crime and politics, which has been in the open in India in recent years, is by no means confined to India. It is a universal phenomenon. In Italy, a former senator and close business associate of ex-PM Berlusconi faces a seven-year jail term for his connection with the mafia, FT reports. He is now on the run from the law:

Mr Dell’Utri was long considered one of Mr Berlusconi’s closest advisors. Both men have accused the courts of leftwing bias and have consistently denied allegations by prosecutors and  mafia turncoats that Mr Dell’Utri had acted as a go-between for the mafia with Mr Berlusconi.

The Palermo-born businessman was placed under investigation in 1994, the year of the first of Mr Berlusconi’s three election victories, and was credited with mounting a campaign in 2001 when Forza Italia swept all 61 seats in Sicily.

Wherever there is big money, big crime is involved. Politics, business, major sports events all involve big money. So, they draw in criminal elements in a big way. Very often, big crime stays in the background and gets its job done by those in the limelight. However, it also happens that criminal elements decide that they should be running the show in politics themselves. This has happened in many democracies, including India. 

What ails democracy?

The Economist has an interesting essay on the subject. Democracy was widening until the turn of the last century. For the last eight years, it has declined, going by the number of people living in democracies. The declines have taken place outside the West. In the West itself, the effectiveness of democracy as a creator of prosperity is coming under a cloud. Why so? The Economist identifies what it believes are the two primary causes:

THE two main reasons are the financial crisis of 2007-08 and the rise of China. The damage the crisis did was psychological as well as financial. It revealed fundamental weaknesses in the West’s political systems, undermining the self-confidence that had been one of their great assets. Governments had steadily extended entitlements over decades, allowing dangerous levels of debt to develop, and politicians came to believe that they had abolished boom-bust cycles and tamed risk. Many people became disillusioned with the workings of their political systems—particularly when governments bailed out bankers with taxpayers’ money and then stood by impotently as financiers continued to pay themselves huge bonuses. The crisis turned the Washington consensus into a term of reproach across the emerging world.
Meanwhile, the Chinese Communist Party has broken the democratic world’s monopoly on economic progress. Larry Summers, of Harvard University, observes that when America was growing fastest, it doubled living standards roughly every 30 years. China has been doubling living standards roughly every decade for the past 30 years. The Chinese elite argue that their model—tight control by the Communist Party, coupled with a relentless effort to recruit talented people into its upper ranks—is more efficient than democracy and less susceptible to gridlock.

Setbacks to the cause of democracy include Russia under Putin, the Iraq war (which led many to believe that democracy was a fig-leaf for the spread of American imperialism) and the turn of events in Egypt where we are back to army rule. Political gridlock in the US and the stagnation in the Eurozone have done little good for the democratic ideal. Independent economic policy is becoming difficult to implement in a globalised world and this makes voters angry. In the West, voters are reluctant to stomach austerity in the medium-term as an answer to their current problems.

The Economist's solutions are not particularly inspiring. It wants to curb the growth of the state, which may be the right answer in the West but not necessarily the right one in developing countries. In the latter, the problem is not that the state is too large but that it has not got the mix of activities right. A more efficient state, not a smaller one, is what a country like India needs. Another solution is to insulate policies from short-term populist pressures by handing over decisions to technocrats and independent commissions. This assumes that technocrats will work for the larger good and can be held accountable if they fail to do so. In a country like India with weak institutions, it is better to have incompetent politicians who are accountable that very competent technocrats who are not.

The Economist glosses over the subversion of democracy by money power or crony capitalism, which has done a great deal to discredit democracy. To succeed in politics, you need big money and the providers of big money have to be taken care of by successful politicians. No democracy has been able to tackle this scourge. Another big problem is the lack of accountability of politicians in the interregnum between elections. We can kick out the party in power once in five years but how do voters express their ire towards politicians or policies during that period? These issues, to my mind, are most important than the ones the Economist raises- and so is the need to find answers to them.

Wall Street protests

These are not the French student protests of the sixties nor Tiananmen Square nor the Arab Spring. Occupy Wall Street if far too inchoate to make a lasting impact. I visited their website to see if they have an agenda that could capture the imagination of the public. I was disappointed. Another rant against capitalism is unlikely to make much of an impression. Or even talk of growing inequalities in the US and elsewhere. Martin Wolf, writing in the FT, says the protests have a message, that something is wrong with today's capitalist system, but fails to articulate any alternatives or solutions.

Occupy Wall Street needs a focus. It must focus on what it professes to be about, which is the problems posed by today's banks and the enormous influence they wield on public policy. The whole movement could gather momentum and amount to something if it focused on one item: the break-up of large banks in the US.

More in my ET column, Occupy Wall Street lacks focus.