Despite ritual British and Western denials, the starter’s gun for a new Cold War has been fired and a reality check on its likely consequences is very much in order. Standard diplomatic discourse has been jettisoned for unrestrained abuse of Russia and President Putin.
In face of ‘overwhelming evidence’ it is ‘likely’ that Russia, if not President Putin personally, poisoned the Russian double agent and his daughter in Salisbury. “Overwhelming evidence’ attached to a plea of ‘likely’ will make many a Lord Chief Justice and lesser justices and magistrates turn in their graves.
The ‘international community,’ from which Moscow is allegedly ‘isolated,’ excludes India and China, seemingly counting for nothing in the battle order. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was among the first foreign dignitaries to congratulate President Putin with a telephone call on his re-election as President of the Russian Federation; President Xi Jinping of China was also quick to send his warm congratulations to the Russian leader.
The majority of humankind, long accustomed to the cynicism of international politics, will recall the CIA’ repeated attempts to assassinate Cuba’s revolutionary leader Fidel Castro and brazenly boastful about its efforts..
When Mumbai was assaulted by jihadi terrorists twice, in March 1993 and again in November 2008, with massive losses in innocent lives on each occasion, there was much handwringing and condemnation of generic terrorism without specific mention of the source. Why? Because of a misbegotten alliance with the jihadis’ Pakistani handlers. Overwhelming evidence in each case pointed firmly in one direction only.
The unilateral global order is misconstrued fiction; the multilateral vision is the only workable alternative. Fretting and fuming in Washington, London, Paris, Berlin and Brussels will not alter the ground realities. The Trump administration in the United States has unceremoniously dispensed with the services of Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State, followed by the replacement of General McMaster as National Security Advisor. Mike Pompeo is a tested Russophobe as is Tom Bolton, an extreme hawk, who replaces General
McMaster. What next? God only knows. Or does he? Alas, we no longer have Stephen Hawking among us to provide a credible answer.
The two Koreas are taking charge of their foreign relations, from the grasp of Uncle Sam, understanding full well the consequences of any modern war on the Peninsula, having already experienced the devastation of the conflict 68 years ago.
A brilliant edit-page article by its US correspondent Varghese George in the Hindu newspaper (March 17) will reward the reader for his/her time. Referring to the false evidence of Saddam Hussain’s weapons of mass destruction, initiated the George W. Bush administration’s fateful invasion of Iraq and its tragic aftermath of a million lost Iraqi lives. American defence spending including a new generation of nuclear weapons will exceed a trillion US dollars. George sets out context and scene: ‘As the only advanced country …where life expectancy is falling, where 96 people die from gun violence every day, where heroin-related deaths increased six-fold since 2002, where opioid over-dose kills 115 people a day, the signs of distress are unmistakable…the upshot of this neo-McCarthyism is that it has rendered any diplomacy between the nuclear rivals impossible…the US’s political system is weakened and the world becomes a more dangerous place. The Russia prism has not merely bent perspective, but blinded vision in America. Perhaps, deliberately and conveniently.’
This dire reality is now compounded by the reports of collusion between UK company Cambridge Analytica and Facebook CEO Mark Zukerberg in making the latter’s vast storage of personal data on users available to the former and thence to candidates fighting elections in the US and elsewhere. Zukerberg apologized for the oversight and promised never to repeat for ‘Russian meddling’ (an obligatory allusion if he was seek the indulge of his Congressional interrogators back home in Washington). He has promised to keep clear of such malpractice in the next general election in India, its largest market where Facebook has 251 million subscribers. However, such surveillance is the norm. Now a business model for multinational companies, it will be difficult if not impossible to abolish, despite reassuring pieties to the contrary.
Xi Jinping puts down his markers
President Xi Jinping in his acceptance speech as holder of his office for life (if he so wishes) to the National People’s Congress in Beijing outlined an ambitious vision for China in the coming decades. Deng Xiaoping, the country’s paramount leader who had led China’s recovery after the havoc of Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution had placed a two-term time line for China’s presidents, to which Deng himself and his successors for the next 20 years, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao adhered without demur.
Deng Xiaoping, as paramount leader, had advised his younger colleagues to bide their time and hide China’s strength. President Xi, however, decided to dispense with these shackles and stake China’s place at the high table of the world’s foremost Great Powers, the United States and the Russian Federation. He did so in robust language that brooked no denial. ‘All maneuvers and tricks to split the motherland are sure to fail and will be condemned by the people and punished by history. Not one inch of territory of the great motherland can be carved off from China. China will never seek hegemony or engage in expansionism. Only those who are accustomed to threatening others see everyone as a threat’, he said. These last words, clearly an oblique allusion to the United States, is not without truth, but Mr Xi’s earlier lines abjuring expansionism and hegemony require close critical scrutiny.
The splits of the motherland, to which the Chinese President alludes, are references to Taiwan, Xinjiang and Tibet. Taiwan’s population is overwhelmingly Han [ethnic Chinese], but having severed ties with the Communist regime in Beijing during the country’s civil war 70 years ago, the Taiwanese people have no wish to rejoin the mainland as a single, unified polity. Their desire for sovereign self-rule must surely be respected. Otherwise Britain could lay claim to the United States on the pretext that it was once a constituent of the British Empire; France, also, could make a similar claim to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Preposterous!
China’s muscular policy in the South China Sea is based on the premise that its rights must prevail over those of local littoral states by its superior military might. As for Xinjiang and Tibet these territories were subdued through conquest by Mongol and Manchu power from the Central Asian steppe, who became China’s governing monarchy. With the fall of the Manchu monarchy, these non-Han territories asserted their independence from China’s Nationalist KMT and Communist regimes. History cannot be erased on a whim. Sino-Indian relations, stable for now, are adjusting to the unpredictable turbulence of American policy in the Far East and Middle East. New Delhi and Beijing are taking stock of their relationship in a changing international environment.
Services sector propellant of Indian growth Economics
Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, during a lecture in New Delhi pronounced, ‘India’s growth is quite unique. Services [have been] propelling growth to an extent that hasn’t been seen anywhere else in the world and the possibilities of service globalization have only just begun. Globalization of services trade has a huge potential. That’s one reason one is hopeful of India’s progress. It has the first mover’s advantage.’ Three reasons informed Dr Krugman’s thinking.
‘The first one is people: both numbers and qualifications. There is clearly a cultural reservoir of creativity and entrepreneurship nobody could have imagined in the bad old days of slow growth. The widespread fluency in English is the language of global commerce and that’s going to matter.’ Finally, there was the issue of demography, where India scores heavily – ‘it matters a lot how many people of working age you have, ‘ said Dr Krugman. However, India had to deepen its manufacturing base for jobs for its expanding population. This was where the demographic advantage would truly be realized, he said.
