Seven months into the Ukraine conflict, Russia has annexed much of the Donbass region and more or less achieved what it set out to do. The fall-out of this conflict is far reaching which could fundamentally change the nature of international institutions, the balance of power and the broad camps. Russia has annexed land before. This time the West decided to make a stand. Led by the United States, it attempted to impose its idea of World Order, otherwise known as Pax American. Countries like India have been caught in a very difficult situation. India does not want to be a push over or be caught on the wrong side of the flux taking place nor be tied to one camp.
Foreign Minister S Jaishankar summed up the new mood in India in its international relations when he said, “…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.” That statement oozed confidence. Not only did it gain respect for India but many developing and underdeveloped countries found a champion to remain neutral in the resurging cold war.
India has stood aside in the Ukraine war, officially refusing to back US sanctions or condemn the Russian State. In recent years, the Indian Government has been inching closer to the United States than Russia. The USA habitually calls favours from friends to support its global strategies. In the Ukraine war, the US has expected all NATO countries to toe its line. It has also called on Japan, and other countries who it considers to be in its axis.
India was expected by the United States to fall in line, condemn Russia and endorse sanctions. That didn’t happen. This shocked the Americans a bit. After all it does a lot of trade with India and has taken in a lot of professional Indians on H1B visas. India is a democracy, hence the US and other western countries like to think of it as part of their family.
India however had other priorities. Its official and get-out clause was simple. Its defence arsenal is largely Russian made and needs Russian parts. It does not want to compromise its defence. The West has not been a willing partner to sell India advanced defence equipment. Moreover the USA has armed India’s enemy neighbour, Pakistan, with powerful weapons.
US foreign policy is simple and tends to discard complexities of international theory. It is a case of ‘you are with us or against us. If you dither, we will quietly work on you to be in our orbit. But don’t ask us to be with you in your hour of need unless it serves US interests.’ There is usually a one-way price to pay for friendship with the United States. It is not the fault of the USA. Its democratic political structure is constructed in that way.
Europe and what is called the West, are beholden to the US. While Americans will sleep in warm homes and drive cars without worrying too much about the price of gas, Europeans are already trembling at the prospect of cold nights as gas prices become unaffordable. Many don’t drive cars now to save money on pricey petrol. Some of the countries going through this sacrifice were not keen to make a stand against Russia. But they had no choice with American demands. In Europe, what America wants, America gets. Macron, president of France is no Chirac and despite his attempts to present himself as a deal maker, could not stand up to bellicose British taunts or American expectations.
The US imposed sanctions isolated Russia at the UN, treated it as a third world country and tried to enforce no-fly zones across the world against any Russian travel outside the country. Apart from China, most countries were scared of going against the US but at the same time did not agree with it. They had no champion.
It is India that has given them strength and means to stand up as neutral in the conflict. India took a sophisticated approach. It didn’t want another dispute on the India-China border or with Pakistan currently. It knew that the Americans would not come to its aid unless it served them to do so. The Americans didn’t physically come to the aid of Ukraine, so neither did the European states. The question in India would be: Will the United States physically come to the aid of India if China and Pakistan invaded concurrently? The obvious answer is NO, unless United States saw tactical benefit in it.
India continues to buy oil from Russia. It has not supported Russia at the UN. However it has not voted against Russia much to the dismay of US. India hasn’t imposed sanctions or no-fly zone against Russia. It is even trading in Russian currency since dollars have been cut off from Russia. Extraordinarily, India has been selling Russian oil to the United States.
India’s strong position on neutrality and refusal to be dragged into this war against Russia has in fact strengthened its hand in its relations with the US. The US needs India more than India needs the US. The US feels threatened by growing Chinese influence around the world. It feels it will lose its eminent place in the world and the Dollar could suffer. It relies on India to be its partner against China. India on the other hand has the option of improving its relations with China if the latter reciprocates and let the US fight its own battle.
India’s stand encouraged many middle east countries to remain almost neutral. Even Israel sat on the fence. Saudi Arabia has refused to condemn Russia. While these countries may have remained neutral anyway, India’s stand gave them that extra courage to gently rebuff the USA.
African countries have in fact quietly praised the leadership of India in this dispute. Many are too weak to refuse the US. But once India did, they felt they could fall behind India’s position.
India has thus gained respect and prestige as a result of refusing to be pushed around by the United States. Currently it appears that actually it is the West which has been isolated in the Ukraine situation rather than Russia. Europe unfortunately had no choice as it is heavily indebted to the US.
A positive result of India’s position is that China seems to have reviewed its entrenched hostility towards India. It was of the opinion that India would jump when the US asked and felt that India was doing America’s bidding in geo-politics. India joining the QUAD (Quadrilateral Security Dialogue) with United States, Japan and Australian had heightened China’s suspicions. Now, China may soften its position against India. It may lead to better regional relations if it understands that its own posturing may be pushing India into the US camp.
Given the complexity of the Ukraine situation, it seems India has not only retained an independent position, it has gained respect around the world and may well achieve regional peace. India’s fine-tuned foreign policy on Ukraine has also left it room to tilt towards the USA if the conflict goes against Russia.
Celebrating the 75th year of the departure of the British from South Asia and end of imperial colonization, the BJP Government gave a clarion call to Indians to put up the national flag on their homes to celebrate independence of the ‘nation’. Even the RSS, that once refused to fly the Tiranga, flew it with pride at Nagpur. However, the flag waving did not find universal enthusiasm within India.
The RSS and BJP have pushed considerable State money and resources to rewrite the history of South Asia, track its Hindu ancestry and frame the rationale of modern Hindu nation based on a pedigree of Hindu ‘civilization’ calling it Hindu Rashtra. It sees this as the uniting thematic identity for India. There are many paradoxes given India’s known history of over 5000 years.
For a start the idea of nation in South Asia did not exist in pre-colonial times. Rashtra is State or governance and not a nation. Secondly the idea of religion and particularly Hindu religion did not exist before the rule of Islam in India. Dharma and religion are not the same. Thirdly there is no unifying identity in India except in the mind and institution of the babus (civil servants) of India and centralist political parties unable to cope with diversity after the architects of modern India, the British left.
Why a region that traditionally treated rulers like hired administrators with both the ruler and the communities knowing their boundaries of coexistence treats the brief interlude of British rule as the greatest seminal period in history of South Asian civilization, remains intriguing. There is no day of ‘independence’ from Mughal rule.
It seems 15th August 1947 is important not because the people of South Asia became ‘independent’ but because India, as a country in the western image, was nurtured and finally released from its maternal womb by the British. To rewrite the wisdoms of the Vedas and Shastras and the great epics of Ramayana and Mahabharata as intellectual seeds of Indian nation is fabrication and a debasing of the depth of those ancient texts. Why celebrate the day when mother (Britain) gave birth (to India) instead of when the first Kingdom of Bharat was established 5 or 6 millennia ago?
The idea of the ‘nation’ is essentially European in origin and in fact its modern genesis is the French Revolution. After the fall of the Monarchy in France, the State then governed by the people needed a unifying idea. The concept of a nation, built on a common language, culture, ideology and egalitarianism took form. The French ‘nation’ went about decimating the languages and cultures of the different communities within the French territory. It is telling that even in the modern world of multiculturalism, France does not have the institutional flexibility to accommodate different communities without forcing them to compromise their identities and cultures to a great extent. In emulating the French idea of nation, India too seems to be moving along that route, derogating from its civilization’s pluralistic inheritance.
France however did not pretend that the ‘nation’ has an ancestry going back to pre-Roman period. France has a theory, an ideology and a narrative that it unapologetically says started with the revolution in 1749.
Other European States also emulated France as Monarchies fell apart. Some imagined themselves as nations, some constructed the ‘nation’. Britain and Switzerland are among the few States that didn’t quite succumb to the fever of ‘imagining the nation’.
The ‘nation’ as an idea was exported by colonialism to rest of world. As regions became decolonized they began constructing the narrative of the ‘nation’ to keep the people within the colonial demarcated territorial boundaries committed to the ‘independent’ State. Across Africa and Asia the process of creatively interpreting history and constructing the nation as a single continuum for thousands of years became academically industrialised often based on the history and culture of the dominant ethnic community.
But they also ‘celebrate’ birth from the colonial mother, calling it independence, although still retaining umbilical relations through institutions such as the Commonwealth. All the siblings meet yearly. The ignominy is a parody.
Imagining the ‘nation’ as a common glue is also what India has been trying desperately since 1947. The difficulty is that it has 22 officially recognized languages, many distinct and regional communities with little in common and without a pre-colonial history of a territorial integrity that was established by the British as an administrative unit.
India is a State of many nations, dharmic panths and religions. Like other post-colonial States, India too has been trying hard to imagine itself as a nation in the French way. Congress party tried to create a secular nation to accommodate its vast diversity. Both the nation and secularism is European with no roots in South Asian civilization. That didn’t stop some of India’s leading academics to reconstruct a pedigree for secularism in India’s long history calling it ‘Indian secularism’ although no previous political philosophy resembling Indian secularism exists. All of it developed on the hoof as Congress tried to culturally engineer South Asian civilization to a European one but met challenges.
The RSS, the organization that is the base of the BJP, was averse to the idea of secular nation as it seemed ‘too European’ and ‘foreign’. It set about recreating a unifying idea of a nation based on Hindu culture, religion and civilization. Its fantasy narrative is called Hindutva.
There has never been a concept of ‘religion’ in India as in Abrahamic sense of religion. There is no one unifying God or belief. In fact the word Hindu has no genealogy in Vedas or Shastras. It is an exonym popularised by Muslim invaders. It was sealed as a religion by British colonialism.
The word ‘Hindu’ stuck and has become a subject of academic contortions to give it relevance as a nation and religion. South Asia has dharmic panths, a fundamentally different concept than religion. They are exploratory and have had thousands of years of history of coexisting as well as accommodating new ideologies without attempting to universalize any one idea or path. But people who call themselves Hindus have internalized the narrative, nomenclature and ideology handed by Muslim invaders and then the British. Mimicking Islam, the people of South Asia also started to imagine a common deity and prophets.
It is an irony that while RSS-BJP has been criticizing Congress of trying to westernize ‘Indian’ civilization, it has itself completely consolidated ‘semitisation’ of Indian civilization and Frenchifying the ‘Rashtra’. The irony is lost on them as they earnestly go about reinventing and dumbing down the great, plural and rich civilization of South Asia.
There is a tragedy in all this. The South Asian civilization had extraordinary depth and a plural philosophy as its foundation. It was based on the syncretic evolved philosophies of its various communities, postulated in the Rig Veda and the indigenous non-Vedic belief systems. The State or States in South Asia had taken many territorial forms but remained plural in essence without the need to unify it as the French did to France. The Mauryan Dynasty is an example.
India could have provided a way forward to the most complex contradiction of the modern multicultural and multiracial State, particularly of the post-colonial States, in their attempt to seek ‘unity’. India could have developed the ideology of pluralism fit for the modern State.
As it is, neither the Congress not the BJP quite grasped that the Nation and the State are different entities. The Nation-State is a French political philosophical idea. To anchor it even more firmly in European civilization, modern India has adopted the idea of the Hobbesian State with the rulers enjoying coercive power over the people. That too is neither Vedic nor indigenous. Both Congress and BJP have infantilized the intellectual depths of South Asian civilizations in this endeavour.
Tiranga nationalism therefore is not a representation of a continuum from thousands of years but a child of Islamic and colonial rule, however much it is cloaked in Hindi and Sanskrit language.
Perhaps the ancient civilization has nothing to offer the modern Indian State and India is dependent on the genius of western philosophers now and for foreseeable future. That may be the vacuity at the heart of the Indian State that necessitates confabulating the Indian ‘nation’. As it is, modern India has little if anything to offer to the history of contemporary ideas. But a South Asian genius may still emerge. First it needs critical enquiry in the best tradition of ancient traditions of Nyaya Sutra, Samvada and Jalpa most of which are discouraged by Tiranga Nationalism.
It is not clear what the President of Ukraine expects the end of the war will look like. It is obvious what India’s options are. It is uncertain whether the West has clearly thought out the consequences of its involvement. However, what is clear is that the Ukraine war has started rearranging the order of power in the world, spelling a possible end to a globalised economy and testing world’s leading institutions. If 9/11 precipitated the age of the neurotic State fearful of its own citizens, the Ukraine war is starting the reshuffling of world order and possibly paving the way to reconfigurations of States in future. In this series, I explore each of this in turn.
That Russia is a very powerful country with some successful military campaigns behind it in recent decade cannot be disputed. That Ukraine is relatively a small power with a much smaller army and arsenal compared to Russia is also not contestable.
When Russia surrounded Ukraine in the East and North East, the general view was that if provoked, it would crush Ukraine in a short time. The United States war in Afghanistan lasted nearly 20 years while in Iraq it was about 15 years. The Syrian war is still going on after ten years. Comparatively, the Ukraine war is expected to last much shorter period, perhaps a year.
Ukraine’s choice was between compromising some of its sovereignty or risk war. It bravely chose to take on Russia. The odds are heavy when one compares the military strengths of the two.
With an army of around a million and reserves of around 2 million, Russia also has a phenomenal arsenal. It has 6,255 nuclear warheads, the largest in the world. Some of its hypersonic missile technology surpasses any in the West. It has so far only deployed about 10-15% of its fighting capabilities in Ukraine.
Ukraine is a smaller country with an army of some 200,000 and paramilitary forces consisting of National Guard and Border Guard etc of 60,000. Comparatively it has far fewer weapons, aircraft and missiles and most of them are from the Soviet era, although it has an arms manufacturing industry as well. But training its army, helping with strategy are officers from several western NATO countries, particularly United States and United Kingdom, although both deny any active participation in Ukraine itself having shifted training centres into Germany since February 2022.
It appears that Russia first surrounded Kyiv from two sides to intimidate Ukraine to give it an opportunity to accept its terms to avoid war. The Russian terms were: Ukraine declare neutrality and pass in law that it would not join NATO. Russia required it to decentralise and give autonomy to Donbas regions, second language status to Russian language and what it calls ‘denazification’ of Ukraine military. Russia considers the Azov forces to be Nazi like outfits. That Azov outfits were hard core right wing with Nazi regalia was also widely reported in most western media until the war started.
Kyiv refused Russian terms. Russia invaded. Having seen that Ukrainian army was intent to fight back ferociously, Russia withdrew and readjusted its tactics to ones it employed in Syria. Concentrating on Donbas as well as South of Ukraine, its approach is merciless destruction and onslaught of key strategic areas using a combination of ground troops and air borne fire. This is producing it results.
There is also suggestions that Russian intelligence about lack of Ukraine resistance was wrong. It is possible that some western agencies may have identified pro-Russian agents and spoon fed them disinformation through Ukrainian officials.
Since the attack, the Ukraine President and other politicians have appealed passionately for the west to get involved directly, either by imposing no fly zones or boots on the ground. However even before the war, USA, UK and European powers had indicated that they would not physically come to Ukraine’s aid. Everyone fears a nuclear war. No one is keen to destroy the whole world yet. The west has nevertheless resorted to sanctions, supply of weapons and training of Ukrainian army. Characteristically Britain has been the most gung-ho, still attempting to play big. Moreover as admitted by US media, the United States has been engaged throughout the campaign in providing intelligence, guiding strategy and targets. Russian media insists that US personnel are on the ground advising tactics, manning equipment etc and some have been captured.
The West is now suppling some advanced weapons. When used it will be an exhibition of their effectiveness. This increases sales as it already has. US arms producers are expected to gain $17 Billion from supply of these weapons and more in future world orders. Some of its decision makers will gain profits from the new package announced for Ukraine. Türkey has already seen manyfold increase in orders for its Bayraktar drones that have gained legendary status against Russian Tanks. Ukraine has been a proxy fighter for NATO, particularly USA and being used as an arms fair to show piece weapons.
For Russia too, the war is an opportunity to learn. It has been engaged in wars in developing countries and against non-State actors such as Syrian rebels. Ukraine is the first real European fighting machine that it is encountering. Armies can do all the simulation exercises in training, but they harden and mature in real battles. Russian arms saw a five-fold increase in sale after Syria. Although components are becoming difficult due to sanctions, Russia is testing some of its latest lethal weapons from time to time in Ukraine. Their sales will grow after the war.
War is an ugly affair and brings out the worst in humanity despite all the human rights treaties and conventions. It’s a merciless killing ground. Once it starts, few if any morals survive in war.
With all the odds stacked against it, realising that no western armies are flying in to help and possibly conscious that they are now fighting a proxy war at great expense to themselves, it is still not clear what the Ukrainian leadership is realistically hoping to achieve at the end. About a quarter of its population is now displaced and many have fled the country. Its cities have been devastated. It has lost territory.
Whether Russia is right or wrong to have gone into Ukraine is immaterial now. Despite the drama of war crimes courts, Putin isn’t going to face any trial any more than Bush or Blair will face trials for Iraq, unless there is capitulation by Russia and a coup hands him over. Fortunes of wars are not decided by morality, laws or international conventions but by might. Currently, it does not look good for Ukraine.
It is all very well to say, Ukrainians have a right to defend themselves. But the western world is indulging its own morals and strategic policies to weaken Russia at the expense of Ukrainian families, children and elderly people, even when the situation looks hopeless.
Russia isn’t going anywhere and Donbas is lost. Russia’s army is still intact. It is weathering the sanctions and seems to have factored in the losses in men and arms. Putin’s ratings are higher domestically. Ukraine’s army has lost about 25% of its personnel. Its weapons are depleting. In some wars, the attacked victim has no choice but to fight or die. Ukraine had choices and still has some. Its choices are now limited as the veteran strategist Henry Kissinger has stated. Is it time to accept the inevitable and avoid further bloodshed.
(This is the first part of a series on Russia-Ukraine war to appear in these columns)
International norms and the international rule based order are based on the universalist ideology of a liberal western civilisation and its Westphalian State history, with little accommodation let alone coexistence of alternative ideological or philosophical positions or dynamics. This has caused tensions but more importantly a situation where the tools for mediation and resolution of conflicts, or of arbitration and institutionalisation of diversity are imperfect in international institutions such as the United Nations. It restricts all efforts to be compliant within options consistent with the paradigm of an interpretation of liberalism with no scope to negotiate as equals or with respect for alternatives.
The current ideology in international institutions, international law and international relations assumes axiomatic universal paradigm status. This means all alternatives are considered in need of correction, reform or improvement relative to the ideal liberal ideological values, norms and principles. This approach permeates all of the institutions of United Nations as the body has institutionalised liberalism within all its organs and treaties.
The consequences of this is two-fold. It militates against nature’s propensity towards diversity and plurality. Secondly it restricts the flexibility of the first article of the United Nations Charter as it cages the scope of activity within a paradigm that assumes hegemony and preference as well as the reference against which possibilities for peace are explored.
The first contradiction is indeed axiomatic. Nature is not universalist. Gravity may be one of the most fundamental force but there are also anti-gravity forces. There is matter but also dark matter and anti-matter. There is the physical universe with its laws but there are also black holes. The range of vegetation, species and life forms is phenomenon. Life needs oxygen but there are others who thrive on its lack. Most species need light, but there are others that are destroyed by light. Most species need warmth but there are others that thrive in sub-zero temperatures. The list is endless. The number of species is almost endless. Some animal species, such as elephants are highly social, matriarchal and collectively look after their young. Others like lions are highly patriarchal and kill the young offspring of male lions they have ousted from the family. Some like wild dogs work in packs and have a hierarchical system, while others like bears are highly individualist and territorial about their hunting ground. Even within species there are variants. Some apes and monkeys have rigid hierarchical cultures that rook no challenge while other like the bonobos have a very cooperative culture. Nature is certainly not universalist. The UN and international institutions are universalist.
Similarly human society and its civilisations have evolved over many centuries and thousands of years in different ways. Some have a strong sense of individual sovereignty while others have complex systems of filial responsibilities or family orientated cultures with duties and obligations. Legal systems also vary among civilisations as do concepts of rights, duties, obligations and responsibilities. Some cultures are hierarchical and both comfortable and strong with such systems while others have high levels of consensus among members before decisions are made. Like nature, human society is not governed by a single set of value systems, legal instruments or political orders. There are some extraordinary and somewhat unrealistic assumptions in some of the treaties of the UN that all of human kind seeks the same set of freedoms, values, rights and life ambitions. This is a universalist assumption that crushes diversity of perspectives and contradicts nature’s propelling tendency towards diversity and pluralism.
Universalism is the presumption that a group of individuals or communities can identify what is fundamental to all human beings and how that can be achieved. While the struggle to live and have dignity is natural to all life, the route to realising this is not necessarily universally through a regime of rights. In some species and in some cultures of human beings, life is sustained and nurtured through a complex set of responsibilities. An unnatural death, or even death by disease, is seen as failure or abrogation of duties and responsibilities of the whole family, relatives and even village community. Life is not protected just by a regime of rights against an aggressor or intruder or negligent State but by a collective sense of commitment to sustaining life.
The United Nations charter starts with the essential mission for which it was established, that is ‘to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war’. In Article 1 it states that its purposes are ‘ to maintain international peace and security and to that end to take effective collective measures for the protection and removal of threats to the peace and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace.
26 nations sign the ‘Declaration by United Nations’
If the foremost primary mission of the United Nations was and remains to maintain international peace and to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, then it would be necessary for it to remove or at least diffuse one of the most recurring triggers of wars in history, particularly in the history of the western sphere and middle east. This is the tensions that arise when one dominant culture tries to impose a hegemonic order upon others based on its idea of the perfect set of values and governance. Through history this fuse has been ignited by religions that assume their truths are universal and divine while others are false. During colonialism wars were supported by the notion that the dominant force was ‘civilising the barbarians’ or ‘civilising those who were in need of a greater civilisation’. Even slavery was justified by ideological propping with one community assuming itself to be ‘civilised’ while others to be ‘uncivilised barbarians worthy of being treated as labour in captivity’. The World Wars were fought with competing secular ideological hegemonies being a major frame in the war. Nationalism and claims of threats to nations was a significant factor although territorial designs and access to resources were just as important.
Nevertheless the UN charter introduces an ideological preference in the next sentence that it assumes is self evidently universal, universally desired by all people and universally applicable across the world. It states in the preamble that’ to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights … in the equal rights of men and women…. The charter in Article 1.3 states‘… in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion’. The Charter then commits to a practical route for itself to attain these by stating in Article 1.4 ‘To be a centre for harmonising the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends’.
Having established the ideology that it feels will bring permanent peace or remove the scourge of war, it embarks on ‘harmonising’ the actions of nations in the attainment of these goals.
Given that many wars in history have been over ideological competition and campaigns or ‘crusades’ as they were called, for ideological hegemony, it is contentious whether the United Nation’s mission to end wars would be achieved by committing to harmonising the actions of nations to the preferred ideology. Harmonising the actions of nations is controversial. It means that ‘nations’ and civilisations would have to sacrifice their distinctive cultural or philosophical and political worldview and adopt the one that the UN promotes. This also means that the power or dominance or even ownership of the ideological hegemony to which all nations have to move towards is in the hands of those countries or civilisations whose worldview and ideological paradigm the United Nations has adopted as a universal preference and standard. It is not difficult to see that this immediately negates the intention of the mission to end wars, since wars in history have largely been fought for ideological hegemony, although as well as resources.
The inevitable happened almost instantly when the UN was instituted. There emerged a block of countries called the ‘west’ that claimed democracy, rule of law, human rights and liberalism as ‘civilised governance’, axiomatically universal and that which they were already practicing and that they felt all countries of the world should ‘harmonise’ towards. Resisting this and seen as the opposing worldview was communism as adopted by the Soviet Union. This was ascribed as authoritarian and anti-democratic, thus either in violation of the principles of the United Nations or in need of reforms to be consistent with the United Nations. In this group were placed, along with the Soviet, the People’s Republic of China and any other countries that did not have western forms of democracy. This group was and still is usually termed ‘dictatorships’ or autocracies. Thus a clear division of opposing ideologies emerged immediately after the formation of the UN and a fertile ground for wars was created by the United Nations itself by tying itself to one ideological mission. The UN had unwittingly created and instituted the conditions that had led to many wars in history. Inevitably there followed a long period of what was called the ‘Cold War’ but which led to many real and bloody wars through proxy and remote management. The two superpowers that emerged from World War II, decided to avoid a direct confrontation with each other as both had nuclear weapons. A direct conflict would lead to the third World War and almost mutual decimation.
The preference to create a hegemonic ideology and persuade nations or force them to ‘harmonise’ their actions to this, is a paradox that the United Nations has failed to appreciate in context of its founding mission. It was and remains the fertiliser for conflict and war. Ideologies usually consider that if the entire world embraces the same ideology, there would be permanent or eternal peace in the world and all wars of differences would come to an end. This is contrary to nature as nature nurtures diversity and pluralism. Any effort to push against nature and create an artificial or human imagined set of universal rules inevitably fail because neither human beings nor human society accept uniformity or universalism. It leads to more wars as the post-war period has shown.
What the United Nations needs to do is to revisit its charter and ask itself whether it sees its purpose as an institution that will work to end wars by mediating among, negotiating between and creating the circumstances for diametrically opposite and different political ideologies to coexist or does it consider its purpose to establish permanent peace by persuading the entire world and its nations to commit to a ‘universal’ set of values, principles, political ideology and standards that one of dominant civilisations that emerged from colonialism thinks is the ultimate ideal universal.
If the United Nations sees its purpose to ‘save succeeding nations from the scourge of war’, then it has to learn from history and avoid promoting both ideological hegemony and ideological universalism. It needs to restate its mission to encourage coexistence of diverse political ideologies and promote pluralism as well as enact instruments and create the tools to make that possible. Mediation needs to be between diverse ideologies without any side feeling they are being judged against one and required to conform to a particular universalist ideology. Dignity and respect of the human being can be achieved through all different ideologies and almost all ideologies claim their purpose to respect the dignity and security of all human beings.
Efforts have been made at the United Nations to establish a ‘dialogue between civilisations’. However this seems to have been marginalised. Moreover the influence of this exercise is almost irrelevant as the body corpus of UN treaties and orientation is to promote one civilisation. A ‘dialogue’ will also only attempt to harmonise others towards this one universalist ideology.
It is also not fair to assume that the west is behind all this or that it is enforcing the liberalism adopted by the UN to impose its hegemony. The charter and the subsequent treaties were drafted and agreed by the State members present. Among them were countries that did not have liberal form of democracies. Whether they lacked arguments against the deep convictions of the west that liberalism was the future, or they were implying that they too would ‘harmonise’ towards the ideals of liberalism, even democracy. There was little if any critique of the ideological hegemony being created and against which every nation, civilisation and ideology was to be judged from henceforth. The world handed hegemony to the west and then accused it of exploiting it.
The impact of this universalist approach based on western liberalism has been that when countries that practice liberalism deviate from it, it is considered as a temporary aberration. But the countries who do not have liberalism as their core political philosophy, are intentionally or unwittingly considered by the UN system as ‘fundamentally flawed’ in need of reform, even if this statement is not publicly stated. There is thus a permanent state of countries who meet UN standards and those that are ‘defective’ or in need of reform. The status of this category of countries is one of defensive. Whatever confidence they assert in international institutions such as UN, crashes against the liberalist wall of the charters, the treaties and the declarations. These countries are therefore in a de facto status of second class and not really in ownership of the agenda. They throw their weight by virtue of their size, power and finance, but ideologically they are always followers.
The United Nations needs reforming itself and needs to adopt pluralism rather than one form of liberalism as its driving conceptual foundation. This will ensure diversity is respected equally and with dignity thus removing one of the recurring causes of wars, the desire for ideological hegemony.
To start a serious debate, research and move towards a United Nations that is genuinely plural without institutionalising hegemony, there is a need for a movement and alliance for pluralism. Countries and civilisations that feel they are being ‘harmonised’ towards one universal ideology that grants control of the debate to one civilisation, could form a Global Alliance for pluralism or the Pluralist Alliance. This alliance could be the start of a genuinely pluralist world and human society moving away from wars, or the traditional notion of war to end all wars, and moving towards coexistence of differences and diversity of world views. Some of the treaties may need to be revisited and the wordings changed so almost all civilisations could coexist, be respected and not made to feel lacking perfection.
During the Cold War, India led the Non-Aligned Movement to duck the pressure to side with one or the other. Some 75 other countries, now increased to 120, joined this group and escaped inordinate pressures to some extent. But in current date the world is multipolar. It is no longer binary, divided in two blocs with a need for non-aligned to stay independent. In fact India itself is now a power bloc.
The current period offers an opportunity to realise this and institute pluralism, particularly at the United Nations, as the world is in a state of multipolar power blocks. The distribution of power and wealth is not binary but genuinely plural with different power blocks having distinct cultures and civilisations too. The time to start and form a serious debate about pluralism and end hegemony is now if ever. It could start with the BRICS countries forming a Global Alliance for Pluralism at the United Nations.
For over four decades, Punjab has been used by national parties for electoral strategies. From Congress Party’s Indira Gandhi who tried to break the Akalis in 1978 after they frustrated her ‘infamous Emergency’ to the Akali Dal’s Badals who treated the state as their fiefdom, to Congress’ Amarinder Singh who could not stop playing the Maharajah and the BJP that tried to break the farming sector, Punjab has only seen violence, divisions, underinvestment, frustration, corruption, drugs and brain drain. Can Kejriwal reverse Punjab’s fortunes?
The Punjab state has tremendous potential. It has a very hard working population that made the Green Revolution possible and end food poverty in India during the 1960s. But this community of farmers has come under repeated pressures from Indian policy makers attempting to change small family farms to commercial farming.
Punjab had some leading educational institutions. Many of these have suffered from lack of investment and brain drain. Mostly they have suffered during the period of unrest when many a young Punjabi was either killed in infamous extrajudicial executions or ran to the West seeking sanctuary. A whole generation of educated Punjabis is missing from Punjab. Further, there is lack of job opportunities. The quality of education institutions and the job market feed on each other.
Punjabis are generally straightforward people and deeply passionate about their culture, language and beliefs. But for nearly two decades, the Akali Dal under the Badals managed to divide the population on religion, caste, political ideals and religious sects. There have been numerous incidents of sacrilege, of intracommunal violence and general distrust among people during their rule.
As a border state, Punjabis tried hard to avoid drugs that came from Afghanistan enroute to rest of the world. But a well-developed network of suppliers with patronage from politicians and allegedly the police have plunged many families into chaos as young men and women become addicted. Neither the Badals (Akalis) nor the Congress Amarinder Singh were able to tackle the issue. In fact a few Akali leaders are facing charges of involvement in the narcotic business. Amarinder Singh who took a holy vow to reverse drug business within four weeks if elected, left the CM office with increase in number of addicts in Punjab.
One of the tragedies of Punjab’s recent history is the issue of Foreign Direct Investment. It was a key issue in the Anandpur Sahib resolution put forward by the Akalis, who complained that Punjab is not being allowed to attract investment from its large diaspora. Under Dr Manmohan Singh as Finance Minister in 1990s, states were given freedom to go and get FDI. Many states, such as Karnataka, Bengal, Gujrat etc took full advantage and their economies boosted with FDIs.
In the 90s, Punjab had unrest and violence. However after 2000 this was largely absent. The Badals came to power. Many a Punjab patriotic Sikh businessperson settled in the rich West wanted to invest, set up industry, technical institutions, IT companies etc. As the initial wave of enthusiasts tried to invest in Punjab’s future, they soon abandoned their efforts.
They met with corruption, red tape, harassment and demands for free shares, sometimes up to 25 percent of the company. Commercially it simply didn’t make sense to invest in Punjab. Frustrated, some took their money to other states in India. But the vast majority of otherwise successful business Punjabis in the West, decided to abandon their patriotism for Punjab. The people of Punjab were deprived of becoming an economic giant in India.
The 2022 election has swept the cobwebs that kept Punjab back and brought Kejriwal’s AAP as an electoral tsunami. The Punjabis have come together after decades to elect one party together. Until now there was the large Sikh Akali camp and the equally significant Hindu vote bank. Parties nurtured this division as their base but formed coalitions to form Government in Punjab. Year 2022 has changed that. Hindus and Sikhs have voted together for their future.
Akali Dal, the traditional party that gave Sikhs an identity, has been abandoned by Sikhs in their thousands in Punjab. Many suspect the Badals of cynical complicity or at least complacency in the several incidents of sacrilege, abuse of religious institutions and misappropriation of Gurdwara funds. So much was the anger among Sikhs that the father-son duo have even have lost their seats. Their relatives have been rejected by the Sikhs. This party that once gave Punjab a glorious history, only managed to gain four seats out of 117.
The Punjabis are astute people. They want a future. They don’t want communalism, unrest or being taken advantage of by national parties. They had no choice. But one finally came along.
Arvind Kejriwal has travelled a long road to Punjab. Not being a Punjabi, he had little understanding of the Punjabis. He was rebuffed in the past. However his attitude and demeanour changed over the years as he got to know the Sikhs and the Punjabis in general.
Kejriwal comes with a clean slate. He has improved the schools, hospitals, roads and civic life in Delhi. People are happy with his management and rule. In Delhi, he has no power over the police. He cannot interfere in their appointments or censor their activities. He cannot control law and order in Delhi.
Punjab is the first real state where AAP (Aam Aadmi Party) under Kejriwal now has almost complete power. Expectations are high. Here he will have control over the police through his Chief Minister. Here he has the possibility of bringing changes and set priorities for law and order. He has the scope to rid Punjab of the drug menace, police corruption, brutality and destroy the police-politician nexus.
Chief Minister Bhagwant Maan is also known as an honest person. Under Kejriwal’s direction he can address many of the simmering grievances that have led to protests, unrest and which pushed people to finally reject both Akalis and Congress. If he shows courage, he might put a few of the political leaders engaged in nefarious activities, behind bars. He might start a crackdown on drug barons.
AAP in Punjab also has the possibility of reversing the missing Foreign Direct Investments. With the right incentives and by checking corruption, Maan can make Punjab an attractive place to invest for the many Punjabi patriots around the world. Punjab has the potential to become one of the most advanced economies in India. It just needs a Government with the political will to do that with investments in infrastructure, institutions, making investment streams easier and getting rid of ‘percentages’ for politicians, bureaucrats and police officers.
AAP will also need to address cultural and religious issues that have been exploited by previous politicians. Some of these politicians will be trying to ignite them again to mire AAP governance into communal quicksand. AAP will need to show political skills to deal with that. Delhi is a metropolis. Punjab isn’t. Identities, beliefs and taboos matter here.
With the right approach and investment, AAP can start a regrowth of Punjab, create hundreds of thousands of jobs and put Punjab back on the path to recovery. It can bring back communal harmony. Punjab is the real test for Kejriwal and the potential to be the stepping stone for AAP to win in other states. It will not be easy as other parties try to trip it, but if he succeeds, AAP can become an alternative force in Indian politics. As usual Punjab is the beacon that leads.
It seemed on the cards and has now happened. Russia has gone into Ukraine to ‘demilitarise’ for its own defence, as it says. As was speculated by some analysts, Russia has attacked from many sides, the east, the north, the south and possibly even into the western part of Ukraine. The invasion took place as the UN Security Council was in session talking about ‘diplomacy’.
Uncharacteristically, the UN Secretary General seemed to have taken side when he told Russia that its incursions into Donbas and recognition of the region as independent entities was against international law. In response to Secretary General’s offer of extending his good offices for dialogue, the Russian diplomat sarcastically responded, ‘what good offices?’ clearly implying that the Secretary General was not being neutral. The UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres is technically right but may have allowed his emotions to compromise a neutral stand in this fight between two giants, Russia and USA.
As country after country criticised Russia and the office of UN Secretary General having expressed an opinion, it was obvious that Russia was going to get angry. There was little of diplomatic negotiation but a lot of advice that all sides should negotiate. No suggestion of any concessions was put forward for discussion by any country. China reiterated its position that placing NATO weapons next door to Russia was a provocation. It was also clear that the vast majority of countries were on the American side of the argument. Not seeing any diplomacy moving forward, Russia has attacked.
What will Russia do? Putin has said he doesn’t want to take over Ukraine. He merely wants to remove the threat to his country, in what he calls an act for ‘demilitarisation and denazification’ of Ukraine. But the speech he made on 21st indicates a different plan if Ukraine’s leadership does not walk away from confrontation.
The long speech as been dismissed as an incoherent ramble about Putin’s version of history before he recognised the two breakaway Ukraine provinces jointly call Donbas, as independent entities called Donetsk and Luhansk.
The hour long speech also appears to give a clear indication of Putin’s intentions and road plan. What is being missed by analysts is that Putin was addressing several audiences at the same time. He was explaining the background and his rationale for intended invasion to fellow Russians who have probably not heard much apart from United States wanting to put bases next door. By appealing to their sense of history, their ownership of the birth of Ukraine as he sees it, he was trying to convince Russians of the legitimacy of invading Russia from the Russian historic perspective. He was painting Ukraine as an ungrateful traitor. The long speech may have got most Russians around to his decisions.
He was also giving Ukraine a clear but chilling message. He has effectively told Ukraine that it does not have a historical hinterland as a nation and that it was essentially a beneficiary of Soviet Union’s administrative and geopolitical strategies. Through that statement he has sent a message that Russia can also undo Ukraine’s existence.
In fact he made that clear, ‘You want decommunization? Very well, this suits us just fine. But why stop halfway? We are ready to show what real decommunization would mean for Ukraine.’
What exactly does he mean by that? Is Putin going to radically disrupt the terms of the current international order and totally dismember a State, running it out of existence?
Under Putin, Russia has shown that it can even go into other countries and assassinate with impunity those it perceives to have committed treason against Russia. It does not tolerate what it calls ‘traitors’ who defect. From Putin’s speech, it appears that he sees Ukraine as a partner that has turned rogue and walked into the opposition camp. He is likely to mete out the same punishment as he does to Russians who take refuge from him in other countries.
Will Russia swallow all of Ukraine or hand it over to a compliant regime? His speech does not suggest that. He also said, ‘Stalin incorporated in the USSR and transferred to Ukraine some lands that previously belonged to Poland, Romania and Hungary.’ It seems he is suggesting to these European countries that they too have a claim on parts of Ukraine that is western Ukraine.
Western Ukraine is a mixed bag of nationalist Ukrainians, Polish Ukrainians, Hungarian Ukrainians and a lot of anti-Russia people. If Ukraine is incorporated into Russia, this is the region that will offer not only most resistance but will continue with insurgency.
While the Russian army will indulge Ukraine for a while, in the longer term, it is likely to dismember Ukraine. It appears Putin is inviting the three European countries to reclaim their lands. If any of them falls for it, he will achieve two purposes. He will divide NATO resolve and at the same time rid himself of areas that are likely to create most problems. Of the three countries Putin has named, Hungary is most likely to welcome taking bits of a dismembered Ukraine.
Putin’s speech may appear to be a rambling diatribe. But looked at closely, it reveals a broad plan if he can get away with it. After Yugoslavia, Ukraine will be the second major country in Europe that will be removed from the map involuntarily.
If Putin does carry through the threats he has made in his speech, it will be the most dramatic challenge to the international order built upon the charter of the United Nations in 1945. Not only sovereignty, but the very existence of a State can no longer be guaranteed.
As the Russians go further into Ukraine, it is unlikely they will meet much resistance. There is a lot of corruption in Ukraine. It is 122 on the Transparency International’s corruption index. Most of the senior leadership is likely to escape to safer places if not caught when the heat really turns on.
The Ukraine army will put up a fight but it is unlikely to be as determined as most people in the west have been led to believe. Most likely a number of Ukraine Army units will surrender and some run away, just as the western backed Afghan forces did. Many of the Ukraine forces probably have relatives in Russia and might see no advantage in fighting Russia over some geopolitical adventures of America.
This leaves China as the side show in this conflict. There has been much forecast on China taking advantage and absorbing Taiwan. However, China is unlikely to do that. Taiwan is still a big risk for it. China is likely to attack parts of India’s borders instead.
In these columns I did predict that Russia will attack after 20th February, the end of Beijing Winter Olympics. Despite America’s daily warnings of an imminent attack since around 8th February, it appears, Putin did patiently wait to let Xi have the glory of winter Olympics. Putin played with the diplomatic game until 21st February. On 21st Putin started the war game by recognising the breakaway republics and sending forces into Donbask.
China is going to wait for the UP election season to pass. Attacking a country when elections are being held is a folly as it will transfer nationalist emotions into votes for the Indian leadership. A week or so after the elections will be another environment.
A lot of change is going to happen in the world after the Russian and possible Chinese incursions, regardless of whether Russia wins or loses. Will it for better or for worse isn’t an issue that history and events grapple with at the time. History creates shifts every few decades.
Even if Russia does not go into Ukraine, President Putin has already won at home with his narrative of ‘only Putin can save Russia’. Any further action, such as annexation of Donbas and exclusion of Ukraine from NATO will be a bonus on the international stage. With his gradual drip-drip action and by putting Ukraine’s future NATO membership at the centre of the standoff, he has managed to convince most Russians that the whole of ‘western world’ is united in its ambition to put nuclear weapons next door on Russian borders and destroy Russia.
Modern democracies survive on creating a narrative of an opposition threatening one’s lifestyle or prospects for a better life. There is less of what ‘our side’ can do and more of what damage the opposition can do. The Brexit tale was all about how Europe is a constraint on Britain’s rise to global glory again. Trump played to the perceived threat to ‘white supremacy’ and individual liberty. Putin similarly plays on the threat the west poses to Russian integrity, pride and power. Indian politicians play the threat by Pakistan, ‘Islamic terrorism’ and secessionists to India’s unity.
Putin is an ex-KGB man. His forte is the dynamics and intrigues between international powers. In the Ukraine standoff, he has played that with remarkable sophistication and reinforced the narrative that the whole of the west is intent to breaking up Russia and reduce its power.
The post Gorbachev and Yeltsin eras are still fresh in the minds of many Russians of the Soviet period. Soviet power on the world stage fizzled away in front of their eyes. The promise of better life with reforms and closer engagement with the west not only didn’t materialise, many Russians went into deep poverty. Thuggery and Oligarch warlords emerged ushering a dangerous period of lawlessness, murders and Mafiosi type gangsterism stripping away State assets.
From that post Soviet ruin arose Putin. His narrative has been that the west or rather America has no love for Russia. Rather it wants to drive Russia to the ground and exploit its natural resources. The narrative has worked well.
In the last few years, the narrative was wearing down a bit. Russia sells and thrives on selling gas, oil and other natural minerals to most of Europe. There are many Russians engaged in constructive business, academic and even social relations with many Europeans. In fact there is a healthy trade between Russia and USA as well. Many western Multinationals, such as BP in Rosneft, have shares in Russian companies. Even some western NGOs operate in Russia. Russians travel to the west and see no hostility.
It was in this atmosphere of improving relationships that Putin’s ‘the West is the threat’ narrative was becoming less convincing to his voters. The Nordstream 2 project appears one of the great triumphs of cordiality and improved relations between the ‘west’ and Russia.
It was not surprising that in this apparent thaw, politicians like Alexei Navalny were becoming popular. He and others like him politically attack Putin of exploiting ‘national threat’ to stifle legitimate opposition, remain in power and enrich himself and his ‘friends’. Putin’s friends allegedly keep their money conveniently in the offshore financial centres that Britain owns, so it remains safe. There are said to be a number of investments in western countries including USA through these off shore companies. Navalny campaigns for a better relationship with the west, a more transparent Russian polity and end to an ‘artificial cold war’.
Despite Navalny being jailed, it was gradually going well for the opposition as it eroded into the Putin narrative. Until Ukraine.
By stationing his army on the doorsteps of Ukraine in what appears to be an ‘imminent’ invasion, he has united the west to echo his narrative. He has put NATO expansion at the centre of the conflict. He has demanded that western weapons not be deployed next to the borders of Russia.
Western countries had differential relationships with Russia. Some like Germany and France had closer relations than United Kingdom. Suddenly the west has started to unite behind the NATO narrative and played into the security neurosis that Putin feeds his own country on.
Almost every NATO member is singing form the same hymn sheet. ‘It is the sovereign right of Ukraine to join NATO’. From Russian public perspective, if Ukraine were ever to join NATO, it would also have the right to have NATO bases, meaning American, next door to Russia as has happened in some other neighbouring countries.
The narrative is game set and match for Putin. He can turn to his people and say. ‘See the threat hasn’t gone. Why do they want to put weapons next door to us if our relations have improved? They still want to disintegrate Russia and destroy its power’. It doesn’t matter how many Russians travel to the west, in their minds will be the question, why does America want to station missiles next door to mother Russia.
The NATO narrative is a difficult one for the west. It is illogical but one that cannot be denied in public. It needed highly competent, creative statesmanship and diplomacy not to fall in the trap set by Putin. Angela Merkel probably would have handled it better. British statesmanship and diplomacy no longer awes the world. And Joe Biden seems out of his depth against a seasoned master strategist. Putin has proven to his people that when it comes to survival of Russia, the whole of the west is united and plays to Washington’s tune.
The reality is that the west is not united on the NATO issue. Countries like Germany and France do not see any strategic gain if Ukraine joins NATO but leads to breakdown in relations with Russia. However no one can publicly declare that and no NATO country can openly say that ‘Ukraine should give up its sovereign right to join NATO’.
Putin has got what he wants and consolidated his position at home. Even if he withdraws all his forces from Ukraine now without a single concession, he can be assured of popularity at home for nearly a decade. The narrative of the ever remaining threat’ and ‘only Putin can save Russia’ will survive and thrive. The Ukraine-NATO narrative will continue to dominate Russian-West dialogues. Putin will make sure it remains in the public discourse. Politicians like Navalny unfortunately will continue to be exploited as ‘traitors’ by Putin.
Nevertheless Putin is also fully aware of the underlying disunity in the west even if on the surface it appears united and falsely bound in its own rhetoric of principles. He will probably stay put with his army on Ukraine’s borders, playing like a ‘cat plays with a mouse’, wrenching up the threat of invasion bit by bit and then getting a few concessions. But he won’t take over Ukraine completely unless provoked.
It is not in Putin’s benefit to invade Ukraine and take it over completely. He needs the threat of NATO next door to be alive to maintain his popularity at home.
When the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz mocked Putin and said, ‘I don’t know how long the president intends to stay in office?’ One wonders whether Putin thought, ‘As long as you keep me in power.’.
From public statements by both the USA and UK, it appears they are keen to see the conflict between Russia and Ukraine blowing into a war. The war will not only cause economic damage to Russia but could also affect its power. On the other hand, Europe, that has quite a lot to lose in this conflict next door, is keen to find diplomatic solutions. Ukraine itself has been playing down the prospect of war, but preparing for one. For India it seems this is a long way off, or is it?
A war is already on. It may not be a physical war, but it is a mental war. It appears that Russia wants to wear down Ukraine, make it nervous, push it towards economic crises, open up divisions and show it that no western country will physically come to its aid. Russia has enough oil and gas to stay where it is for a few more months. Ukraine on the other hand may have problems if pushed into a long blockade. However Russia may also be coordinating its move with China.
Russia has embarked on 10 days of ‘military exercises’ with Belarus. Enough time to prepare a war with its partner as ally. These will end on 20th February. That is also the day the Winter Olympics end in China. It may be coincidence or a strategic alignment of interests and potential actions. Western countries think Russia will avoid waging a war during the Olympics.
It is also evident from the last two decades of conflicts that the United States and its allies at NATO cannot manage two conflicts concurrently. In fact even a single protracted war seems to drain a lot out of them, financially, physically and in their internal unity. It is quite possible that while UK and US are cajoling Putin to play his card, with statements such as no one knows when Putin may act, or making statements that it could be any minute, both Putin and Xi may be considering a multi-regional war on at least two fronts.
There seems to be some coordination of strategy between Russia and China. Both leaders have made statement of solidarity with each other. Both countries are engaged in meetings at several levels including military Chiefs. Clearly there is something on the agenda other than talking Ukraine and NATO. The two are not best of friends, but are united by their common perception of threat from the United States and NATO to their own security interests.
The United States has been overtly threatening China and to Russia. In the Pacific Ocean, it has formed a ring of allies called AUKUS, to form an offensive coalition against China, should the need arise. Currently its focus is to signal to China to keep off Taiwan. On Russia’s western border, the USA has been actively setting up bases in East European countries and has been supporting the Ukraine leadership even before this conflict. Russia suspects that the USA engineered the recent unsuccessful uprising in Belarus.
Meanwhile China is eyeing parts of Kashmir to ensure its Chinese- Pakistan Economic Corridor can safely go through into Pakistan. India has kept away from the Silk Road project and the CPEC, often criticising it. The USA sees the Silk Road project a threat to its financial hegemony.
China sees India as a potential military threat to CPEC and a front line offensive partner for United States in American strategy to contain China. China is thought to have designs on creating a wide enough buffer corridor in Kashmir both for defence and to protect CPEC.
If China’s regional policy is influenced by its economic interest to secure a corridor to the Indian ocean, the Russian Government is driven by vision of a Russian-Slavic civilisation separate from Western European and Anglo Saxon civilisations. It wants to create a Russian-Slav power base, hence its interest in Ukraine.
Russia may indeed wait until after the Olympics to make its substantive move. Increasingly it is becoming obvious that while US and UK are making all sort of threats, they have no intention of sending forces to assist Ukraine. By the 20th February Ukraine may be worn out, shaken and feeling alone against the Russian giant. It may undergo an internal coup or its Government may decide that it is more secure by giving Russia a guarantee that it will accept the terms of Minsk agreement as interpreted by Russia and not join NATO.
However if Russia does attack Ukraine, it is likely to coordinate its attack with China and embark on the invasion when China is ready to move either on Kashmir or Taiwan.
The USA cannot commit forces and resources to Ukraine and concurrently to AUKUS to save Taiwan and at the same time offer support to India to help defend against a Chinese incursion into Kashmir.
NATO and USA may be left standing by as quick and swift moves by both Russia and China change the maps in coordinated moves. Generally it is thought that China may decide to invade Taiwan. However China is more likely to bag Taiwan without a fight in the future. With a key ally in Pakistan and a significant population in Kashmir hostile to the Indian Government, invading Kashmir will be easier and more opportune. The USA support for India is likely amount to megaphone statements and some punitive sanctions.
History has shown as recent as Afghanistan that the USA does not value friendships. It only has time for strategic partners when they benefit its interests. And when the advantage is not there, it also walks away irrespective of the mess left behind.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is also likely to be a swift one. Experts are warning that Russia will be drawn into a long war and a persistent insurgency if it does take over Ukraine. Parallels are drawn with Afghanistan and Middle East wars. However there is a difference. Both Afghanistan and Iraq were occupations of a culturally different and culturally hostile terrain. Ukraine on the other hand is almost 40% Russian. They are more likely to accept a change of power and move on with their lives.
Hence both a Russian invasion of Ukraine and a Chinese invasion of Kashmir are likely to be short and decisive wars that will change the balance of power to some extent.
Therefore Ukraine as a land mass may appear to be far away for India to worry, but Ukraine as a pawn in the geopolitical games of Big Powers is on the door step.
The current Indian Government doesn’t get along with its neighbours. Internally it has created enough enemies within with its hardline Hindutva project. The country isn’t all that united and cohesive as it might like to think. Annexation of land in Kashmir by China could work in favour of the BJP to bolster nationalist fervour. However it could also work against it, if a deft opposition emerges attacking its confrontationist policies in the region.
India’s defence and international strategist have a lot to think about and a lot to prepare for. The fall out of a war in Ukraine is likely to reach the borders of India. Ukraine is far but also so near.
It would appear as if there is a central committee of viruses that meet, learn from their experience and adapt with new strategies. That is of course a metaphoric statement. Viruses are not meant to have brains nor a sense of social community, let alone a strategy team. But what has happened and has happened in the past with dangerous viruses, is not far from this myth.
The Omicron variant of the SARS-Cov-2 Virus is far less potent than its predecessors but more infectious, spreading like wildfire once it takes hold in a population. According to three studies quoted in the British Medical Journal, the infection rate is faster but hospitalisations rate is about 15-80% less than its first predecessor and even the Delta variant. It also lasts shorter, between two and seven days. Some people have almost no symptoms but found to have the Omicron virus on testing.
The studies were done in England, Wales and South Africa. The number of people needing intensive care and oxygenation is even lower. Deaths are far fewer than the first Covid wave.
However that is no reason to let the virus rip through society. India is beginning to see an exponential increase in Omicron cases. That is the pattern with this virus. It starts with a few cases, but then within weeks, there is a steep curve of number of people infected.
The three studies so far have different populations. The South African study is based against a background that over 70% of South Africans have contracted Covid-19 last year and then subsequently the Delta variant. They have developed a natural immunity as the number of vaccinated people are less than countries like UK or India.
Cheryl Cohen, the South African doctor from the National Institute for Communicable Diseases who did the study even declared that their study suggests a positive story with reduced severity.
The England and Wales studies were against a background of over 80% people having been vaccinated twice. The percentage of people with the third, booster vaccine dose, was lower when the study was conducted. The study shows that people with booster dose are least likely to have any serious illness from Omicron. Those with two doses are at slightly higher risk. But most people needing hospitalisation have been those who were not vaccinated. Britain has escalated its booster dose programme and has even declared that it will reach its target before the end of the year. Vaccinators were working during the holidays too.
The studies have implications for India. The number of triple jabbed people is not high. India’s hospital infrastructure needs a lot of investment and is no where near that of developed western countries.
As Omicron starts to spread, the number of people relative to number of hospital beds and doctors is again going to be highly unfavourable. Even if a mere 0.5% people become seriously ill in India, that is over a 5 million patients. Where is the infrastructure to deal with that?
Consequently, India needs to take precautions urgently. Many European countries who have only just finished second vaccination, have gone into full or partial lockdowns. Some countries require quarantine for visitors. These measures have not started in India. There is a general belief among people that the virus is less virulent and therefore will require less stringent measures. There have been demonstrations against Government lockdowns as a result.
The Coronavirus story is typical. A new strain of virus can be extremely virulent as it is with the original SARS-Cov-19. However after a few mutations, it either becomes extinct or finds a form that causes minimal reaction within the human body but also enables the virus to do what it wants. The virus simply needs a host, replicate and die.
It is the reaction by the human body that causes health problems with Coronavirus. Macrophages (cells of defence and clean up) react, cells die and the toxins produced overwhelm the body’s ability to get rid of them. Consequently the SARS-Cov-19 virus now has found a mutation that can slip by through most human defences, cause less disruption and cell death and therefore less toxin production.
Eventually it might end up being treated as another cold. That is beneficial to both the virus and human beings. It seems surrealistic to paint a picture of nature engaged as a silent mediator between a virulent virus and a determined anti-virus human race and finds a settlement that appears to be in sight. The virus becomes less dangerous and humans start tolerating it. However this is in fact mythology or fiction.
When a new strain of virus comes into human race, sometimes it can cause havoc. This was the case with Bird flu, the Spanish Flu (of 1918), Ebola and Zika virus and now the Coronavirus.
Some viruses in history are thought to have become extinct. While others have become so benign that they don’t pose any problem.
What actually happens is that the genetic code is not static. As it replicates, it continues to develop mistakes, changes, mutations etc. Some times the mutation can be deadly for the host, such as humans or an animal. Sometimes the mutations can be self destructive and the virus goes into extinction. Sometimes mutations can become benign and cause fewer symptoms.
Benign viruses can also suddenly develop a mutation that becomes deadly. The Omicron Coronavirus may be less dangerous now but as its genetic code, the RNA in the case of Coronavirus, continues to develop faults, changes and mutations, a future mutation from the Omicron could be fatal.
It will be best if the Virus disappears altogether. However that is unlikely. Coronavirus has already had hundreds of mutations. Some have caught the headlines because they were virulent. Many have disappeared. Others may be lingering in benign form in animals or even humans without symptoms. Any of these could mutate into dangerous ones.
The spread of viruses depends on several factors but mainly transmissibility. Some, like HIV, can only be got through direct sexual contact or fluid exchange. Others like Covid seem to be airborne too and can jump easily from one person to another. Some viruses transmit when the host is fully infected while others jump when the host is still asymptomatic.
Consequently, it will be silly not to take Omicron Virus seriously. There have been quite few other small epidemics and pandemics in the last 20 years. It will be equally silly not to be vigilant for new variants. The vaccines give us hope. Equally Government need to put in place rapid reaction response strategies in case a dangerous mutation evolves. In the war between viruses and humans, indeed between viruses and all species, there are no winners. It is a perpetual war that will carry on as long as life exists on earth.
The long term collateral impact of the biggest sustained protest in contemporary history is yet too early to be assessed. Prime Minister Modi, whose public persona was crafted as a tough leader who never does a U-turn, has been forced to do just that by the relentless farmers of Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. They had more to lose from these laws than Modi did with a U-turn. He has repealed the laws to every one’s relief, except the arm-chair warriors around him who wanted him to stand firm against his own citizens.
What was also remarkable was the unity of the farmers’ leadership. Sikh leadership rarely remains united beyond a few months. The Punjab-Haryana leadership in association with the inspiring and formidable Rakesh Tikait of UP also managed to de-communalise the struggle despite several attempts by the Government to make it appear a Sikh separatist campaign. Astute and intelligent leadership has emerged from this movement. The one to watch.
It will remain to be seen what happens next in the talks. Will the leadership remain focussed and united? Will it successfully continue to be a one purpose campaign, keeping away opportunist politicians eying the potential vote bank?
While the immediate win is obvious, it’s the collateral impact of the protest that could be even more powerful. Struggles in the Punjab have often shaped the course of events in South Asia, sometimes the world. The cracks in the Mughal Empire were first split open in Punjab in 1710. Within 20 years the Mughal Empire began to unravel. It was the fall of the Punjab in 1847 that led to consolidation and expansion of the British Empire. It was the five year sustained protest movement in Punjab in 1920s for regaining control of Gurdwaras that started the collapse of the British Empire. The British invited the Congress in 1932 to talk about possible transfer of power. Why Congress and Gandhi dillydallied for another 15 years has not been looked at by historians. Once India became free, the rest of the British Empire fell apart like dominoes.
It was the communal violence in Punjab in 1947 that continues to dominate geo political issues in South Asia. And it was the Punjab Sikh agitation against Indira Gandhi’s Emergency in 1975 that weakened her and the Congress. It started the rise of the alternatives. It was the Sikh uprising after 1984 invasion of Golden Temple that led to final disintegration of Congress, rise of BJP and Hindutva.
The Punjab rarely gains much politically from its struggles but creates waves that quantumly precipitate other upheavals in South Asia and the world.
What will this movement precipitate? It is possible that a coherent federal Indian movement might arise as a collateral from the weakening of BJP. It is possible that the ‘small farms’ issue could become internationalised and small farmers around the world might rise against the encroaching corporate agri business. It could be the beginning of dismantling of stranglehold that global corporate sector has on power. Struggles from Punjab influence events in many ways and the consequences of this struggle remain uncharted yet.
Equal winners in the struggle were the women of India. The women of Punjab, Haryana and UP have shown a strength, resilience and daring that is an inspiration to the world. They stood shoulder to shoulder with the men and many times endured far more. They refused to go back to the villages and instead brought their children and grandchildren with them. They dared the Government and refused to bow.
It is difficult yet to predict the personal and political impact on the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. People who have met him personally often say that he is a pleasant, charming and a warm person who empathises with the concerns of others. But the BJP electoral machine had built him as an Indian Thatcher, decisive and never taking a U-turn.
Margaret Thatcher, the British Prime Minister who destroyed the coal mines and the Unions, is famously remembered for her rhetoric, ‘You turn, the Lady is not for turning’. Yet in her reign, she did many U-turns, most infamously in the very unpopular poll tax. Similarly Modi has done a few U-turns, with the repeal of Farm Laws as the most spectacular one in full public gaze.
Nevertheless, it is not appropriate to say he lost. He bowed to democracy. He is a leader of a democracy. When he sensed that that the protestors were gaining increasing support from Indians from all corners of the country, he did the decent thing. He ignored his image makers and took a personal decision. He decided to repeal the laws. He may initially have stood his ground against the farmers, but ultimately he defied those who ‘made’ his public persona.
The greatest losers in this have been Canada and Australia and their big Agri businesses assisted by WTO rules set by western powers. It was Canada and latterly Australia that have relentlessly been gunning at the MSP (minimum support price) for farm produce in India. Australia brought a formal complaint against India in 2019 with Canada joining the ‘arbitration board’ to decide whether India has broken World Trade Organisation rules by given 150% MSP (or MPS in WTO language) for wheat and 185% for Sugar Cane.
The Indian Government was under immense pressure to scale down MSP to a mere 110% or bring in the private sector. Both Canada and Australia were drooling when farm laws were introduced and Modi stood firm. They are of the opinion that due to miniscule profit margin under WTO rules and free market, small farmers will stop growing wheat and other food grains thus pushing India to buy these products from Canada and Australia instead. They had the GDP obsessed IMF on board too. India is a huge potential market for the mega farms of both countries. It was no surprise that Sikh MPs in Canada maintained a studious silence on the Punjab Farm Laws.
If Modi decides to stand by Indian farmers and accepts their demand for MSP to be legislated at 150% or more, this will be a great blow for the 30-year campaign by Canada and recently by Australia to break into the Indian grain market.
With growing dissent within the WTO for its pro-western and pro-corporate orientation, this protest may spur India to lead the developing countries and force change in WTO.
Perhaps the greatest winner of the protest and the Modi U-turn is India’s otherwise dysfunctional democracy. Often appearing to be faltering and surviving in Intensive Care, India’s democracy has in fact shown itself to be adaptable and a great survivor. Despite many hiccups, election violence, wannabe dictators, it has shown its resilience time and time again. It broke Indira’s Emergency and it has forced BJP to repeal the laws.
Whatever happens next, whether the BJP starts to lose grip of near total power or federalism emerges as the way forward, democracy will survive in India for long time to come. It will make and break leaders. It is the wider collateral impact on the world that is to be watched from this protests.
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