Day: April 24, 2024

In recent days the United States has once again shown itself to be a rogue state and a fake democracy which is firmly under the control of its oligarchic class. Elected representatives are their tools and the people are indoctrinated into thinking that the duopoly partners in crime are actually different from one another, even as they work in concert.

This columnist joined a delegation in China and from that distance observed a $91 billion giveaway by members of Congress, including $61 billion to the military-industrial complex for the Ukraine proxy war which has already been lost to Russia. The apartheid state of Israel was also a recipient of $26 billion in largesse, and $8 billion was allocated to antagonize China over Taiwan, an island that the U.S. officially acknowledges as being part of China.

The cynicism of the U.S. political class was on full display, as the same Democratic Party which regularly excoriates Donald Trump and his supporters as fascist insurrectionists, suddenly began working in earnest with the people they usually vilify. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries was effusive in his praise. “Traditional conservatives led by Mike Johnson have risen to the occasion.”

Speaker Mike Johnson had balked at continuing any aid for Ukraine and for a good reason. His members wanted to stop the endless flow of money. But all that changed when the ruling class, the oligarchs, or the one-percent, call them what you will, began to call the shots. Donald Trump threw Johnson a lifeline by publicly showing support and silencing the more restive Republican members. Senator Lindsey Graham said out loud what astute observers had already figured out. “This would not have passed without President Trump. I want to thank the House Speaker [Mike Johnson] and [Minority Leader] Hakeem Jeffries for working together in a bipartisan fashion to give weapons to Ukraine to fight a fight that matters to us.” If democrats and republicans are thanking each other, the people have gotten the shaft. What is the purpose of having different political parties if they work together against the interests of the people they claim to represent?

After the political sausage had been made, the corporate media joined in the scam. Speaker Johnson had been portrayed as a hapless loser but overnight became a hero because he opposed what his caucus and his voters wanted. “By passing Ukraine aid, the accidental speaker became an unlikely Churchill,” according to CNN anyway. Winston Churchill was a vile man, an imperialist who among other things allowed millions of people in India to starve to death, but when his name is mentioned the implication is usually a positive one. The fix was in from the white house to congress to the media. They were all of one accord and the people be damned.

It was a surreal experience watching the Washington clown show from China. Somehow the distance brought all the ugliness into high relief. While members of congress stupidly referred to the right-wing post-Soviet leader Vladimir Putin as a “Communist KGB thug ” and a “murderous, Marxist, dictator ”, China counseled peace. German Chancellor Olof Scholz met with Chinese President Xi Jinping, who repeated that peace talks are the only reasonable solution to the Ukraine crisis. China has offered its services in an effort to end the bloodshed ever since the proxy war began but it has been rebuffed at every turn. Nations like Germany are firmly under Washington’s grip and dare not act as the independent nations they claim to be.

While Xi expressed common sense, members of the House of Representatives waved Ukrainian flags and patted themselves on the back for ensuring more Ukrainian deaths, an endless windfall for the warmakers, and a theft of public resources. Not one member of the Democratic Party voted against the Ukraine cash flow. Progressives, the Squad, and every single democrat were on the same page with Donald Trump.

The celebration of foolishness was almost always expressed as a sign of American leadership that the entire world wants. Yet neither China or the other global south nations that make up the majority of the world’s population want what Washington is offering. China’s population of 1.4 billion people comprises 18% of the world’s population , yet is dismissed as an irrelevance. If China is mentioned at all it is referred to as a dictatorship where people are oppressed every minute of the day.

Our delegation witnessed a country that continues to plan and to grow its economy. The constant U.S. war propaganda is proof that China is an economic rival and therefore a diplomatic rival too. China feeds its large population, launches satellites, expands a network of high-speed rail, and positions itself as a world leader while the U.S. only knows how to obstruct and steal.

We are told that China is a dystopian, authoritarian hellscape where the people lack all freedoms that Americans allegedly enjoy. But the congressional grand theft also included provisions to end the presence of the TikTok social media platform in the U.S. and to steal its operations because it is said to be controlled by the Chinese government when everyone knows that assertion is simply untrue. Now TikTok may be silenced because Zionists want to end one source of information that can defy their narratives and possibly put funding to Israel at risk.

Joe Biden also reauthorized the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) which allows for warrantless searches of U.S. citizens. Again Mike Johnson changed his own position, opposed his caucus, and did what the deep surveillance state wanted. Apparently China isn’t the only authoritarian state in the world.

We have been told that Trump presents an existential threat and that voting for Biden is of the utmost importance. Yet he agrees with Trump on aid to Ukraine and on the futile effort to end China’s economic prowess. Just like Trump, Biden is proposing increasing tariffs on China’s steel and aluminum, and just like Trump, he will be unable to stop this powerhouse from thriving.

The truth is that fascism is here whether Trump or Biden is in the White House and whether Mike Johnson or Hakeem Jeffries is the House Speaker. Fascism demands acquiescence to corporate interests, to the surveillance state, and to the war makers. All of those interests can be confident of getting what they want. People in the United States can also be confident that getting their needs met will be a rarity. So it is in their “democratic” nation.

South Caucasus News

Nationalism Is A Virus And Needs To Be Contained – OpEd

Post author By Mike Nova
Post date April 24, 2024

By Jonathan Power

Former British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, would never have agreed with her French counterpart, the late President Francois Mitterrand, who said “Nationalism is war”. To her, nationalism was necessary and good and she felt much as Mitterrand’s predecessor, Charles de Gaulle, who said of the French nation, “it comprises a past, a present and a future that are indissoluble.”

But the nationalism that Thatcher fought for was a largely negative force. It antagonized the other members of the European Union. She did not believe her country could learn from them how to carry out economic reform without severe social disruption. She went to war with Argentina without trying to enlist the US as a mediator because it lent towards Argentina’s side.

One can date European nationalism from the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 which effectively put an end to religious identity being the defining reason for both social cohesion and war. This was the start of the great powers of Europe, the foundation for the US and the Latin American nations, the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars across Europe and the “nation-making” of the nineteenth century which led to the carnage of the First World War.

“National self-determination”

At war’s end there was the Treaty of Versailles which reorganised Europe according to the principle of “national self-determination”. It became a major cause of the Second World War since the European map remained mixed up and illogical. Versailles was unable to create coherent nations, as when it reconstituted a Poland containing a population of two million Germans.

The post Second World War decolonisation by the European powers created new nations that were as nationalistic as Europe. Post-colonialist nationalism has led to many serious conflicts—as between India and Pakistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, Rwanda and Congo, Cambodia and Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore and, not least, Israel and the Arab world and Russia and Ukraine.

Religion has played a part with India and Pakistan, and Israel and the Arab countries, but even here nationalism is today the predominant driving force.

David Cannadine writes in his book, “The Undivided Past” that nationalism only thrives when the people are beholden to “selective myths, the sanitized memories, and the carefully edited narratives that galvanize collective resolve and sustain national solidarities over time.”

Nation-state made war and war made the nation state

As the great historian Eric Hobsbawm wrote, getting history wrong is part of being a nation. We can go further and argue that over time the nation-state made war and war made the nation state. This is certainly the lesson of World War 1. Millions
volunteered to fight out of a shared sense of national loyalty and identity. Very few historians argue that the First World War was necessary or justified. Most but not all- the great AJP Taylor is one of the exceptions—argue that, given Hitler’s proclivities, the Second World War was unavoidable. Again, millions volunteered for battle. Dying in battle for one’s country was the highest national calling.

The creation of the European Union was conceived as project to ensure that the madness of European war was never repeated again. Europe over the ages has been the site of more wars than any other comparatively sized or populated region in the world. But one of the two most important European nations in both world wars, Britain, today has a powerful minority within the ruling Conservative party who long fought—successfully—to take Britain out of Europe. These parliamentarians say they are out and out Thatcherites. They seem not to remember the bloody record of nationalism.

“To See Further”

Sylvie Goulard and Mario Monti, the current Italian prime minister, in their book, “To See Further”, write that European nations are modern-—and mostly artificial- constructions, in whose name millions have been murdered. If they had not already been created, they would not have been created today. They are unsuited to our era. Nationalism is a virus and needs to be contained rather than celebrated- and this goes or the rest of the world too.

They argue that the EU’s members have not been ambitious enough. What is needed to salvage the union from today’s Euro-zone crisis is another institutional redesign, a democratic revolution and a bold leap forward into the future. The genius of the union is that its 450 million people can focus on the next generation rather than the next election.

Much of the union’s inspiration is drawn from the Federalist Papers written when the union of the USA was in its early stages. Back in the 18th century its authors argued the case for a federal state. Today, Europe needs to resurrect the task of emulating the USA, and other federal states like India.

More economic and political union is needed in Europe, not less. The European parliament must become more democratic, independent, free of overriding American influence (except on the issue of federalism), and able to initiate legislation and raise taxes to serve its own priorities.

“Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel”, said Samuel Johnson. Thatcherites exist all over the world. They must be defeated.

Note: For 17 years, Jonathan Power was a foreign affairs columnist for the International Herald Tribune.

South Caucasus News

Strategic Dynamics In A Melting Arctic – Analysis

Post author By Mike Nova
Post date April 24, 2024

By Zerin Osho and Eoin Jackson

The Arctic region is rapidly becoming a focal point of global geopolitics, propelled by the melting of sea ice due to climate change, which presents both opportunities and challenges. As the Arctic ice recedes, previously inaccessible resources such as oil, gas, and minerals become available, tempting major powers like the United States (US) and Russia, to exploit them. However, this exploitation comes at a cost—accelerated climate change due to increased greenhouse gas emissions. The long-term consequences of losing the protection offered by the Arctic sea ice would mean that the Earth would experience catastrophic global warming.

Analysing the dynamic of the Arctic from a strategic decision-making perspective underscores the imperative of maintaining the balance between cooperative efforts to safeguard the Arctic from the impacts of climate change and the individual pursuit of new resource opportunities arising from the melting sea ice. Rationality dictates that for the global commons to survive, all states should converge towards collective action for the long-term preservation of the Arctic.

To understand the dynamic, we must identify the key Arctic players. Firstly, there are the members of the Arctic Council—the primary intergovernmental forum on the Arctic, consisting of the US, Russia, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Canada, and Iceland. Then, there are the emerging Arctic states—members of the Global South who have taken an increased interest in Arctic policy. These are China, which is interested in gaining access to the Arctic’s resources and has declared itself to be a “near-Arctic” state, and India, which is concerned about the scientifically-established connection between the loss of the Arctic sea ice and the increasing instability of India’s monsoons.

Currently, much of the Arctic Council’s work has been suspended as a result of the Western boycott of Russia due to its invasion of Ukraine. This divide is further exacerbated by the accession of Sweden and Finland to NATO, creating a “West and the rest” dynamic at the Arctic Council. All Arctic Council members have a rational interest in avoiding a further escalation of Arctic tensions to avoid spillover from the Ukraine conflict.

For Russia, pouring troops and resources into accessing Arctic bases and minerals creates a new flank that needs to be defended against NATO. Militarising an already volatile region, which in turn accelerates the loss of sea ice, will compromise Russia’s ability to conduct the war in Ukraine, given it is already under pressure to break the grinding stalemate. Russia also lacks the capacity to access the Arctic’s resources by itself, having been forced to turn to China and India for assistance in obtaining icebreakers to open shipping lanes in the Northern Sea Route. Creating a scramble for resources in the Arctic will, therefore, place Russia at a competitive disadvantage to its Arctic peers who are not facing extensive trade sanctions and can acquire Arctic equipment without problems. On the other hand, working to protect the Arctic, even in a limited capacity, restores some of Russia’s legitimacy on the world stage. While it cannot offset continued aggression in Ukraine, it would provide a rational foundation for Russia to be seen once again as a partner in Arctic governance.

For the remaining Arctic states, cooperation on Arctic climate protection diffuses tension in the region caused by the Ukraine war, which mitigates the current lack of defence capacity the US and NATO has in the Arctic. Cooperation also opens up new opportunities to work with emerging Arctic states like India, through the development of new initiatives on Arctic science. This is seen as strengthening the West’s connection to India and towards opening new avenues for partnership to help counter Chinese influence. More selfishly, the loss of Arctic permafrost due to climate change caused by human activity will release vast amounts of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. This would force the Global North to escalate its reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, as well as require further compensation to the Global South for loss and damage caused by the worsening impact of climate change.

Protecting the Arctic slows down the rate at which the Western members of the Arctic Council would need to make the necessary cuts in emissions, buying them more time to phase out fossil fuels. There may be some concerns about cooperating with Russia even in a limited scientific capacity. However, the cooperation between the US and Russia during the Cold War on space science in the 1970s shows that there is precedent for big powers coming together in the common interest of humanity even amidst a wider context of divided geopolitics. This scientific cooperation was crucial to the later development of the International Space Station. The same form of cooperation today would be in the self-interest of Western Arctic states who can expand their Arctic scientific capacities while retaining their wider detachment from Russia.

We must also consider the possibilities from the perspective of emerging Arctic states such as China and India. For China, accessing resources in the Arctic as part of its “Polar Silk Road” initiative will increase existing tensions within the West regarding the disproportionate influence China is exerting on the global economy. On the other hand, working with current Arctic states would demonstrate China to be a credible leader in climate mitigation, without it having a major impact on China’s economy. China can also strengthen and enhance its research capabilities in the Arctic by cooperating with Arctic states on science, which can open new sustainable opportunities for it within Arctic governance and policy. Arctic cooperation would therefore enhance China’s claim to be a “near-Arctic” state.

For India, the rational interest in Arctic climate protection is even more clear-cut. Working with Arctic states on Arctic climate measures bolsters India’s claim as the leader of the Global South, while also granting it a new role in Arctic governance. More directly, it prevents further damage to the monsoons from the teleconnection to the loss of sea ice. The stability of the monsoons is critical to preserving India’s agricultural sector, which ensures that it stays on track to become the third-largest economy in the worldby 2030. India also has first-class expertise in Arctic science and technology, having recently launched its first Arctic winter expedition in 2023. Using this expertise in climate research and monitoring would further strengthen India’s role in the Arctic.

Ultimately, the outcome hinges on collective action to preserve the Arctic sea ice. While resource exploitation may offer short-term gains, the long-term consequences for the planet and each state’s rational self-interest outweigh them. Therefore, prioritizing science-led cooperation to monitor and protect Arctic sea ice is paramount for ensuring a sustainable future for the region and the planet as a whole.

In conclusion, Arctic geopolitics necessitates collective climate action. A unified approach to climate protection can enable Arctic stakeholders to navigate these complexities and secure a sustainable future for the region and the planet.

About the authors:

Zerin Osho is the Director of the IGSD India Program, focusing on fast mitigation strategies and sustainable development in climate-vulnerable states.
Eoin Jackson is a PhD candidate at the London School of Economics and a former Legal Fellow at IGSD.

Source: This article was published by the Observer Research Foundation