Over the course of 24 days – from December 28 to  January 20 – I was able to take in the sights and sounds of Moscow and Saint Petersburg, as these two cities celebrated both the New Year and Russian Orthodox Christmas (I also got to experience the freezing cold of the Russian winter, which was very much part of the experience!)

I viewed my winter sojourn in Russia as an extension of the journey I began in May 2023, when I embarked on a mission of trying to discover the country's essence in a manner that could be made discernible to my fellow Americans as sort of an antidote to the poison of Russophobia. The combined experiences of observing the Christmas Eve service hosted by Kirill, the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in the center of Moscow and watching Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker performed live in St. Petersburg’s renowned Mikhailosky Theatre on Christmas Day, January 7, helped ground me in the importance of family and culture in the lives of the Russian people.

Russia’s mettle, however, can't be measured by its social and cultural accomplishments alone. The true test of a people comes only when the foundation of their society is threatened, and the nation is called upon to rally together in its collective defense. Amidst all the holiday celebration and fanfare that I witnessed there lurked an underlying reality that Russia was very much a nation at war. This war was defined in the mindset of those people I met not so much in terms of a Russian-Ukrainian conflict as it was an existential struggle between Russia and the collective West – led by the US – in which Ukraine is being used as a proxy.

To a person, the Russians I spoke with were insistent that the time for compromise had long passed and that, given the investment in blood and treasure that Moscow had made to date, there is no alternative to a decisive victory. Yes, the Russian people are tired, but they also understand that the war is a necessary evil which has to be endured all the way to a final comprehensive victory if there is ever to be a chance of a lasting peace. I was able to glimpse the character of the Russian people during the portions of my sojourn to Russia that took me out of its two largest metropolitan centers, and to the south of the country –  into what I have come to call the “Russian Path of Redemption” – Chechnya, Crimea, Kherson, Zaporozhye, Donetsk, and Lugansk.

Redemption is the action of saving or being saved from sin, error, or evil. In the case of Russia’s conflict with Kiev, the six named territories all play a role that precisely matches this definition. Of them, Chechnya stands out as having no geographic, historic, ethic, religious, or political connection with Ukraine. And yet it is with Chechnya that the Russian Path of Redemption begins. 

It was the scene of two bloody wars between Moscow and separatists fought between 1994 and the early 2000s (with the final counter-guerilla operations concluding in 2009) that killed tens of thousands of people. The fighting that transpired was bloody and ruthless; little mercy was shown by either side. By 2002, Chechnya’s capital city, Grozny, had been completely leveled.

The rancor and bitterness produced by a conflict that witnessed so much violence between people with different religions, cultures, and languages made the notion of reconciliation all but impossible to imagine. Add to this was the fact that the Chechens possessed a history that lent itself to prejudice and resentment against the Russians, even without the horrors of the two wars. The exile of the Chechen people by Joseph Stalin's Soviet government during the Second World War saw nearly 610,000 Chechen and Ingush forcibly evicted from their homes and relocated to Central Asia, where nearly a quarter of them died due to poor conditions. The survivors were allowed to return to their homeland in 1957, following Nikita Khrushchev's reforms. But the resentment generated by the years of suffering was passed down through the generations that followed.

They succeeded.

Today, throughout the Chechen Republic, the visages of Vladimir Putin and Akhmad Kadyrov can be seen on display, side-by-side, in recognition of the role both men played in overcoming the history of violence, mistrust, and resentment that had defined the relationship, and instead forging a new path forward governed by the notion of mutual respect and shared prosperity. The success of their joint work is manifest in the fact that while the Chechen people today maintain their distinct identity, defined in large part by the Muslim faith, they very much identify themselves as being part of the Russian Federation, something that was unthinkable back in the 1990’s when they fought for independence from Russia.

While in Chechnya, I had the opportunity to meet with several prominent Chechen figures, including former deputy interior minister Apti Alaudinov, State Duma member Adam Delimkhanov, chairman of the Chechen republican parliament Magomed Daudov, and the head of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov. What these four individuals all had in common was that, at some point in their lives, they had taken up arms against Russia. But they were also united in the fact that, at some point during their resistance against Russia during the Second Chechen War, they realized that the cause of an independent Chechen Republic had been hijacked by foreign jihadists whose passion for violence had superseded any logical notion of Chechen nationalism, and instead created the conditions where continued conflict threatened to consume the Chechen people.

“We have witnessed for ourselves how outside parties sought to infect us with their foreign ideology in order to further their larger struggle against Russia,” I was told. “We ended up realizing that the best way to protect ourselves from being destroyed by these foreign agents was to align ourselves with Russia. In doing so, we discovered that the Russians shared our same desire to live in peace, free from outside manipulation. This is why we have made fighting alongside Russia in the Special Military Operation such a high priority. We see in the Banderist forces in Ukraine the same evil that we saw in the foreign jihadists who came to fight in Chechnya. We worked with Russia to destroy this evil back in the early 2000’s, and today we are working with our Russian brothers to destroy the same evil as it has been manifested in Ukraine.”

If someone had suggested in 2002 that there would come a time in the not-to-distant future where 25,000 Chechen warriors could be assembled in Grozny not for the purpose of fighting against the Russians, but instead fighting side-by-side with the Russians against a common enemy, they would have been dismissed as delusional. And yet I bore personal witness to this very phenomenon, watching in amazement as Ramzan Kadyrov exhorted these heavily armed men to fight for the memory of his father, for their faith, and for the cause of greater Russia.

The Chechen miracle is the living manifestation of Russian redemption.

“Agreement! The European Council delivered on our priorities. Supporting Ukraine…. A good day for Europe,” tweeted unelected European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Thursday, as EU farmers “high-fived” her by throwing eggs, lighting fires and dumping manure in Brussels, where a reported 1,300 tractors had gathered in protest.

Surely it must have been in anticipation of this “great day for Europe” that Brussels rolled out the barbed wire to keep the bloc’s own struggling farmers at bay while its leaders cut yet another check for Ukraine — after threatening the one anticipated holdout with national economic “blackmail,” as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban qualified it. It’s hard to believe that this meeting actually took place in Brussels. These officials are so disconnected from reality that it may as well have been held on a whole other planet. 

Unlike the Ukrainian products making their way onto Western European dinner plates to stick it to Russian President Vladimir Putin (because turtlenecks and short, cold showers apparently failed to do the job), this crisis is certifiably EU-made. No one knows this better than the farmers, who also realize that it makes more sense to blockade the streets of Brussels than the national highways of their home countries, which they’ve been doing with overwhelming public support – from nine out of every ten citizens in the case of France, according to a recent Odoxa poll.

It was the EU with its climate change obsession that imposed a Common Agricultural Policy on farmers across the entire bloc, managed by bureaucrats divorced from the reality on the ground. Pencil pushers use EU Copernicus satellite images to spy and crack down on farmers whose paperwork doesn’t match – even if any discrepancies can be chalked up to uncontrollable but temporary conditions like the weather. 

It was also the EU that piled on regulations under the pretext of ensuring the quality of farm products, while at the same time flooding the bloc with grain, poultry, and other imports from Ukraine. Does “Chernobyl chicken” mass-produced by workers who are paid a pittance represent a threat to the physical health of citizens and economic health of farmers? If not, then why can’t Brussels take its jackboot off the necks of its own farmers so they can compete on a level playing field? The EU has also suddenly decided to ease up on some pesticide bans, angering greens. Paris is promoting the idea that ideologically-driven bans need to end, which seems like a tacit admission of their uselessness. So what should we be more worried about now – ideologically-driven authoritarianism under the guise of health consciousness, or an actual health threat? 

It was also the EU that screwed itself, its entire population, industry, and farmers out of cheap Russian energy, driving inflation that caused consumers to turn to cheaper food products and, in turn, driving industrial distributors to buy more cheaply, favoring Ukrainian imports. French President Emmanuel Macron said that he’d now be merciless with those industrials, as he limbers up to toss them under the tractors instead of taking responsibility for his own inaction or blaming Brussels for a top-down anti-Russia policy that’s doing far more harm than good.

The farmers’ problems are existential. And while some French farming union chiefs have called for the suspension of blockades in light of the most recent series of promised reforms announced by Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, it’s not clear whether the rank and file will actually listen in the long term. These are people who don’t talk much, but when they do, they’re direct and concrete. As one farmer told me, “Our feet may be in the dirt, but the dirt is clean” – in contrast to some politicians who have different narratives depending on their audience. Even with the suspension of the blockades on Friday, union reps admit that if government action and implementation doesn’t follow shortly, then the blowback from the same farmers risks being “catastrophic.” 

For many farmers I’ve spoken with, it’s far too little, and way too late. The average French farmer’s income, estimated by government statistics back in 2021 at around €17,700 a year (for people who regularly work 70 hours a week), has since been subjected to even more blows. Yet governments have insisted on milking this particular cow until there’s nothing left. How else to explain the careless decision to raise taxes on farm fuel by 3 cents a liter, every year, and the insistence on maintaining such a policy at a time when the price of energy had skyrocketed as a result of knee-jerk anti-Russian ideological choices imposed by the EU? Until the tractors spilled onto the highways in France, Paris showed no interest in reversing this tax policy, which was implemented to drive the “green transition” away from conventional energy, and against all pragmatic reality. Clearly French officials knew of its devastating impact, as it was one of the very first concessions that Attal tried tossing like a speed bump in front of the advancing tractors on January 26 – and which the farmers rolled right over, demanding more. 

And how exactly could she know this demagoguery was killing European farming? You’d think that the first clue would have been the fact that EU policies ended up strong-arming Dutch farmers to sell their land to the government because their cattle’s nitrogen emissions exceeded climate policy limits. 

Macron has now started to lobby the EU to restrict Ukrainian imports. Wow. You’d think these tractors were Decepticon Transformers about to rise up and kick their behinds, the way that all these EU leaders are suddenly springing into action. But the fact that an elected president even has to go cap in hand to plead with unelected Brussels bureaucrats, rather than make sovereign decisions in the best interests of his own country, is pathetic. Like, what if they say no? Then what? Does Macron think that he’s going to single-handedly and permanently derail the new Mercosur free trade deal, ready for signature, and set to flood the EU with even more farm products from Brazil and the rest of South America?

If Macron, or any other EU leader had any courage, they would have vetoed the €50 billion for Ukraine and demanded that it be used in consultation with EU farmers to ease their burden and “unscrew” the bloc. That’s a lot of bought time for the EU to figure out how to deconstruct the mess that it has made of its own house through corruption and special interests – all in hope that one day, people doing honest work can also make a commensurately decent living.

NATO has launched its largest exercise since the Cold War ended. Steadfast Defender 2024 will last several months and involve about 90,000 troops, over 50 naval vessels, 1,100 ground vehicles (including at least 133 tanks and 533 armored troop carriers), and 80 aircraft of various kinds (planes, helicopters, and drones).

All 31 alliance members will participate, as will Sweden, which is in the process of joining. However, it’s not only a matter of numbers and duration. The massive event is also special for two more reasons, one fairly straightforward, the other more complicated and worthy of serious scrutiny.

In simple terms, the exercise will test regional defense plans, which NATO has not done since the end of the Cold War. A political benefit of returning to such detailed plans is that they provide leverage, in essence to Washington through NATO’s SACEUR office, to make European governments toe the line by committing troops, gear, and money. That is what The Economist pointed out, with satisfaction, at the time of last year’s Vilnius summit, when all of this was set in motion. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko’s observation is correct: The maneuver marks an “irrevocable return” of the alliance to Cold War mode, although, this, too, is only a new peak of a long period of aggressive development. Hence its no surprise either that the enemy targeted in this imaginary fight is Russia (even if appearing only as a “near-peer adversary” in Steadfast Defender’s official announcement). 

The more complicated issue is that the exercise was preceded by a veritable onslaught of propaganda - or in up-to-date NATO-speak, cognitive warfare. One dead give-away that this has been deliberate is that the Western think tank/information-war platform the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) is already accusing Russia of engaging in “an information operation to misrepresent” the purely “defensive” Steadfast Defender. 

In reality, NATO's representatives and spin masters (official and in the guise of academics and think tank experts), politicians, and journalists were laying down a narrative barrage. Through official statements, interviews, and even Tom-Clancy-style fantasy scenarios, the Western public, especially in the EU, was made to imagine a scary – and near – future in which Moscow launches an invasion of European NATO member states. In this sense, “Steadfast Defender” is not merely a return to Cold War patterns but to the dark tone of its most virulent and dangerous phases, for instance, the early 1980s. Think of deep-frosted Cold War Hollywood classics such as “Firefox,” where Clint Eastwood steals a Soviet super-jet, or (the original) “Red Dawn,” where valiant American teenagers die heroically fending off evil Russians (and Cubans!) who had landed smack in the middle of America's heartland. That kind of vibe.

It’s important to note that there is nothing self-evident about this propaganda blitz. NATO could conduct its big maneuver but make less of a fuss about it. Or accompany it with a different, less strident message, stressing due security diligence but refraining from detailed statements about Russia’s putative actions, as it were, tomorrow. Hence, this cognitive warfare offensive is deliberate. It was driven so far, that, after the initial wave attack of panic-mongering; even the formal figurehead of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, got cold feet and felt compelled to remind everyone that there is “no direct threat.”

Let’s look at some examples of this remarkable propaganda offensive: 

Not-yet-even-NATO member Sweden hurried to display exemplary verbal militancy: Its commander-in-chief General Micael Bydén urged his fellow Swedes to “prepare themselves mentally” for war, while Civil Defense Minister Carl-Oskar Bohlin stressed that “war could come to Sweden.” (It seems abandoning neutrality can make you more anxious.) Partly in response to Bydén, Germany’s minister of Defense Boris Pistorius then shared his wild guess that a Russian attack on a NATO country could occur within less than ten years. 

In a press conference, the chairman of NATO’s military committee, Dutch admiral Rob Bauer, followed up by striking the same tone, albeit with more details. Bauer spoke about operations to shape the armed forces of the alliance for decades, a historically unprecedent degree of integration between NATO and national defense plans, and “resilience” to be cultivated by a “whole-of-society approach” to war as well as to preparing for war. All of this may sound grandiloquent. However, it would be a mistake not to take it seriously.

The NATO war talk barrage is also not only about Russia. In a way, it is even more about the European NATO member states’ societies: a very clear reminder that their sovereignty is worth about as much as that of Greece when the “Troika” of Western overlords came knocking in 2015. None of this is surprising, of course: as a key tool of US control and European (self-)subjugation, NATO has always been a through-and-through imperialistic (in the technical, not polemical sense of the term) tool of US power projection and control in Europe. 

Now, with the EU submitting to America to the point of serious self-harm, Bauer's style of cajoling Europeans is only consistent. However, there is something remarkable about how brazenly NATO is displaying its will to power now, especially against the background of Donald Trump, a declared NATO foe, now the man most likely to win the American presidential elections at the end of this year: This could turn out to be NATO’s last hurrah. 

For the mass media handling of the messaging offensive around Steadfast Defender 2024, let’s pick just two examples. The hyper-popular British tabloid The Sun was as blunt as you would expect, hammering its readers with the headline “GEARING UP FOR WAR: Nato calls up biggest global force in DECADES with 90,000 troops to begin ‘Steadfast Defender’ WW3 drills in days.” The rest of the article is as sensationalist as the title promises, including allegations of a Russian plan to attack on “Day X” as early as 2025. 

More of a middle-class paper, the British Daily Mail was a tad more subtle, running a long, illustrated piece (with big red arrows on maps and all that) about the “Herculean war games.” Speculating how a Russian attack sometime in the next twenty years would unfold, the paper depicts Moscow’s massive future cyber-attacks, deep missile strikes, and AI-operated tanks on the move. (Clearly, the times of Westerners fantasizing about Russian soldiers storming forward with nothing but shovels are well and truly over.) Hapless retired US general Ben Hodges, who last spring still predicted a victorious Ukrainian counteroffensive, has moved on and is now prophesying about how Russia’s large coming strike against NATO in Europe will unfold.     

What is all of this about?

The most frightening interpretation would be that NATO is dead set already on fighting Russia, come what may. That would be highly irrational and suicidal, but, then again, the West has not shown much rationality recently. Call it the “Baltic Kamikaze” or “Britain is Suicidally Bored” explanation of NATO behavior.

My guess: We are, luckily, not quite there yet. Don’t get me wrong: I am certain that there are nutcases in NATO (and the EU) who’d love to go to war, better yesterday than tomorrow. In that respect, rumors about Kaja Kallas, the would-be iron lady of Estonia being tapped for the de facto EU foreign ministry are very disturbing indeed. Yet what is more likely is a messy internal compromise: Where some already want war, others are playing for something else: Compensating for the West’s looming defeat in Ukraine.

But let’s zoom out for a moment: There’s an irony grand strategists like Admiral Bauer miss: If you want the “resilience” of a “whole-of-society approach,” then your society needs to be basically content, with its elites enjoying the ultimate reserve currency of politics - fundamental legitimacy, which sustains polities even when the ruled greatly disagree with the rulers. However, that kind of agreement grows only from trust, which is precisely what all too many citizens of the EU, and the US as well, do not have any more.

War – and preparing for war – remain essentially political activities, but not in the shortsighted manner NATO is applying now: Imbuing societies with a sense of a great outside threat can work, for a while. However, it will be futile in the not-so-long-run when two things happen: That outside threat fails to materialize, and, instead, the frustration that most people really feel in their own lives keeps coming from the inside. That’s, by the way, what killed the Soviet Union, which, as some NATO Cold War re-enactors may care to remember, died while armed to the teeth and having practiced “whole-of-society” defense indoctrination for decades.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is on the cusp of a historic third term in office. With general elections barely three months away (due by April-May), he has just witnessed the dismembering of his political opponents. 

The opposition has been bleeding leaders in agonizingly slow motion for months, with those who still foresee a viable future for themselves switching sides to join the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) or its adjuncts.

A near-death blow was administered to the failing opposition when the original architect of India National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) – Nitish Kumar, the Chief Minister of the key state of Bihar, split with his opposition allies and teamed up with the BJP. 

Kumar is now called “Kursi Kumar” (‘chair’ Kumar, referring to the game of musical chairs) in a nod to his lack of fidelity. Kumar is known for partnering with the dominant party in order to  stay in office. However, given that he publicly swore that he would prefer to die than partner with the BJP, the fact that he so readily ditched his coalition speaks volumes.

Just before Kumar jumped into the BJP’s waiting arms came the defection of legacy politician Milind Deora, formerly a minister in the Congress-led Manmohan Singh United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government. He was also a close personal friend of Rahul Gandhi, the de facto leader of Congress, the country’s oldest political party, which is now in opposition. 

The modus operandi is as follows. Whichever senior leader is the flavor of the month, the “durbar” (court) of former Congress President Rahul Gandhi – who continues to run the party behind the scenes – comes out and criticizes the newest defector. This script was followed by Jairam Ramesh, who is in charge of the Congress party’s communications. He said Deora was a deadweight whose exit was timed by Modi to derail Rahul Gandhi’s ongoing walkathon through the country,  the Bharat Jodo Yatra (‘Unite India Justice March’). 

If this was not incredible enough, Kumar’s somersault to the BJP also had Ramesh claiming it was “good riddance for the India bloc with opposition leaders heaving a sigh of relief.” Incredibly, before he defected, the same Congress party was batting to make Kumar the formal convenor of the INDIA alliance, and its possible face against Modi.

The Congress party is known for its nepotism: all three members of the Gandhi dynasty are active in politics: Sonia Gandhi, the longest-serving party president, and her two adult children, Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi.

Rahul Gandhi has now lost two general elections and seems poised to lose a third. The big political flex of all the Congress defectors, starting from Himanta Sarma Biswa, currently the chief minister of the northeastern state of Assam, is to blame the lackluster leadership of Gandhi before quitting. Biswa also blamed Gandhi’s pet dog, who he said got more attention in his final meeting with Gandhi before the former decided to join BJP.

Incidentally, Scindia, Prasada, and Singh are all from the elite Doon School that Rahul Gandhi’s father, the late Rajiv Gandhi, attended. All are heirloom politicians, born with a silver spoon (like Gandhi), and formed a close-knit group around him in the halcyon days of the UPA government. The 'RG gang', as they were dubbed, are all sons of now-departed Congress leaders close to the Gandhi family, who were made ministers by Sonia Gandhi.

The Congress defectors aren’t just young and impatient. Amarinder Singh, a septuagenarian and the former chief minister of the northern border state of Punjab, was forced out by the Gandhi siblings in September 2021 in what turned out to be a disastrous political call that led the party to lose the following state election to the newbie AAP (Aam Aadmi Party). 

Kapil Sibal, a former minister and a distinguished Supreme Court lawyer who is also handling the defense in the corruption cases filed by the Modi government against the Gandhi family, left the party after going public about the throttling of inner-party democracy and the disastrous leadership of Rahul Gandhi. Another senior leader Ghulam Nabi Azad, the former CM of the border state of Jammu and Kashmir, quit saying he was insulted by Gandhi.

Because of the widely perceived leadership deficit in the Congress, wildly ambitious regional party chieftains sense a vacuum and don’t take the Congress seriously. Regional leaders such as Mamata Banerjee, the Trinamool Congress chairperson and chief minister of the West Bengal state; Arvind Kejriwal, the Aam Aadmi Party founder and chief minister of Delhi; and Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy, The Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party president and chief minister of the Southern Andhra Pradesh state: each share a common allergy to the Congress and in most cases have left the Congress to found their own parties.

Each of these parties has managed to attain power by depriving Congress of its vote share; and their party cadre is locked in fierce combat with the mother party. The opportunistic contradictions of the opposition alliance are immediately obvious to the voter: They can’t claim to be national allies but fight state elections as rivals.

Wherever the Congress is in a bi-polar contest with the BJP in the states, Modi becomes the party totem and routs the Congress.

The INDIA alliance had ambitious plans to provide one united candidate against the BJP candidate in each parliamentary seat in the general election across India. Incredibly, it has still not been able to talk about sharing seats, and opposition chief ministers like Kejriwal and Banerjee are refusing to concede a single seat to the Congress.

All of this makes the big battle of 2024 a virtual cakewalk for Modi. In the sarcastic words of one senior opposition leader: “Modi is blessed to have such an opposition.” Even as an existential crisis looms, the opposition seems to be sleepwalking to its next drubbing. Indian democracy needs a better opposition.

Where India Meets Russia – We are now on WhatsApp! ‎Follow and share RT India in English and in Hindi 

As support for NATO’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine shows signs of collapsing, hysterical anti-Russian rhetoric is accelerating to the point of countdowns towards all-out war.

The year 2024, barely emerging from the cradle, is already forced to deal with reckless predictions of an imminent clash between NATO and Russia in what would be nothing less than the outbreak of World War III.

Europe has between three and five years to prepare for Moscow to become a military threat on NATO’s eastern flank, Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas told The Times in an interview. “Our intelligence estimates it to be three to five years, and that very much depends on how we manage our unity and keep our posture regarding Ukraine,” Kallas said.

Not to be outdone, the German Council of Foreign Relations, pointing to Russia’s “imperial ambitions,” came out with a report that said the Kremlin “may need as little as six to ten years to reconstitute its armed forces.”

Johnson’s role in upending the hopes for peace was reported in May 2022 by the online publication Ukrainska Pravda. According to the outlet, the British prime minister arrived in Kiev with “two simple messages” that Vladimir Putin was “a war criminal” who should not be negotiated with and that even if Kiev was prepared to sign an agreement with Moscow, the West was not. In other words, it is the West that wants continued war between Moscow and Kiev, not Russia.

The abovementioned prognostications are not happening in a vacuum. As already mentioned, the US is heading headlong into a momentous presidential election, which will greatly determine the future trajectory of the conflict in Ukraine. As proven by the non-stop legal hurdles being thrown in Trump’s way, the Democrats have no intention of relinquishing power with so much war booty at stake. That’s why the months running up to the US presidential election are going to be filled with all sorts of aggressive posturing aimed square at Russia, with the goal of convincing the public that Western Europe is about to be invaded by Russian forces.

Aside from ludicrous projections of an imminent Russian invasion, NATO member states are ramping up the fear factor by conducting their largest military exercises in a decade – smack on Ukraine’s border with Germany and Poland.

Dubbed “Steadfast Defender 2024,” the war games will host some 90,000 troops from all 31 member states – as well as Sweden. The last military exercises to rival the size of the upcoming one came in 1988, at the peak of the Cold War, when 125,000 Western troops assembled for the US-led “Reforger” games.

“Exercise Steadfast Defender 2024 will be the largest NATO exercise in decades, with participation from approximately 90,000 forces from all 31 Allies and our good partner Sweden,” the US-led military bloc’s Supreme Allied Commander for Europe Christopher Cavoli said during a press briefing, adding that the drills would simulate an “emerging conflict scenario against a near-peer adversary.”

It goes without saying that these massive war games come at a very precarious time in the showdown between Russia and Ukraine, which the former is handily winning. In the event that things continue to deteriorate as they have been for Kiev, then there is the possibility that ‘Steadfast Defender’ will be used as a ploy for NATO forces to enter and occupy Western Ukraine. This idea has been getting a lot of traction among military pundits of late.

Aside from the possibility of proxy military actions against Russia, Moscow can expect an assortment of ‘pinpricks’ from NATO’s minions, and not least of all from the Baltic States.

“In 2014, there was also a coup d’etat and the declaration of Russians in Ukraine as a non-titular nation. This was followed by a whole series of other decisions that nullified and actually led to what is now happening in Latvia and in other Baltic republics when Russian people are simply dumped across the border,” Putin said.

The message here is clear: The year 2024 is not going to be an easy ride. The Western military bloc is going to do everything in its power – much as Barack Obama did as he was leaving office in 2016, evicting Russians from their homes on New Year’s Eve – to make Western-Russian relations as bad as humanly possible. Then, in the event that Trump wins another four years in the White House, the political situation will be so muddied that the chances for Trump to help the peace process will be dramatically diminished, and the interested parties will be able to continue profiting off of war. That’s why Moscow will have to endure the slings and arrows throughout 2024 and hope that some reason and common sense settles on the geopolitical landscape in the event of a Trump victory.

The world’s richest man has visited one of the world’s darkest places. Elon Musk has gone to Auschwitz – to be precise, to the museum that preserves the memory of the Nazi camp in that location.

A whole complex of camps – which combined mass murder with brutal slave-labor – Auschwitz played a key role in the Holocaust, the genocide of Jews committed by Germany (with some help from others) between 1933 and 1945.

The background of Musk’s visit is simple: Last year, the tech billionaire got himself into serious – and well-deserved – trouble by retweeting and endorsing an anti-Semitic tweet on X, the powerful social media platform (formerly known as Twitter) that he took over in 2022. Since then, he has been on what the New York Times gloatingly calls his “rehabilitation” (as in criminal) and “penitence” (as in sinner) tour. 

He has called his own nasty tweet “literally the worst and dumbest post I’ve ever done.” He has gone to Israel and de facto helped its government in its propaganda effort to “justify” its ongoing genocidal attack on the Palestinians. And now he has visited Auschwitz in an attempt to signal that he understands the gravity of anti-Semitism and what it led to, namely, a genocide. Contradictory? Indeed. We will get back to that.

Let’s get one thing out of the way: Let’s not simply assume that Musk is nothing but a deliberate and complete opportunist, doing anything he calculates he has to do in order to mitigate the consequences of his endorsement of an antisemitic message. Let’s instead give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that, like most of us, he is acting out of both base and sincere (not the same as ethically correct!) motives. While (again like most of us) rationalizing away his more sordid motivations and idealizing himself as simply “true to himself” (as he has tweeted).

For Musk could easily have shown a true and genuinely compassionate understanding of what the lessons of the Holocaust are. Imagine the richest man in the world, who also has a lot of cultural (in the wider and more important sense of that word) and political influence, going to Auschwitz and saying one simple and (moderately) courageous thing: “The lesson of the Holocaust is indeed ‘never again’. And that never, actually, means never: never and to no one and by no one. Hence, the best – and, really, the only – way to honor the memory of the victims of the German genocide of the Jews is to now stand with the victims of the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians.” 

But Musk, probably very predictably, did no such thing. Instead, he took along the well-known right-wing talking head Ben Shapiro, who has recently spent much of his usual venom on running interference for Israel’s great crime. Once again, I cannot help but agree with Jackson Hinkel. His conclusion was spot-on: The visit to Auschwitz – a site to remember a horrific genocide in the past – was perversely instrumentalized to make us forget a genocide in our own time.   

How did this happen? And how did Musk end up in such a low farce?

Regarding his initial anti-Semitic tweet, Musk is now pleading ignorance. Or, in his own words, he has come to feel that he used to be “naïve” about the extent of anti-Semitism. That is, on the face of it, a commendably frank admission. It’s shameful for a man of his age (and means) to choose to be so ill-informed for so long. Maybe there’s some merit in being open about it now.

Yet, in reality, his admission also betrays that he is not honest enough to face the root of his own moral failure: If he used to be “naïve” about how much anti-Semitism there is, then he should avoid being (or appearing?) even more naïve now.

But he is. Musk, in his obsessive crusade against “wokeness” sometimes invokes George Orwell, whom – I suspect – he has never read, like most libertarians and other right-wingers who misunderstand that complicated socialist as their guru. Orwell would have kicked Musk’s behind, very hard. Because Musk is right about one thing: He hated lying. Yet, here is Musk lending his considerable influence to three big lies:

The second big lie Musk is now helping to spread is that the opposite of anti-Semitism is relentless support for an Israeli state that is run by a far-right government that systematically and massively abuses millions of Palestinians – including by killing tens of thousands of their civilians – and openly defies basic morality and international law. In reality, the opposite of anti-Semitism is, of course, to resist and reject all forms of murderous stereotyping. Always, everywhere, and against everyone. You never side with the stereotypers and the perpetrators. No, not even those who claim to represent former victims. (And, by the way, it doesn’t matter if you feel “aspirationally Jewish,” as Musk now tells us he does. There are many Jews – real ones, not the “aspirational” type, freshly fine-tuned by Ben Shapiro – who are opposed to Israel’s crimes, too.)

And the third big lie Musk is supporting now is that the memory of the Holocaust is the property of Zionists to do with as they please. And what they want is always the same: Namely, use it to shut down any resistance to their own agenda.

Again, let’s assume that Musk genuinely aspires to be more than a humdrum conformist adjusting to pressure. After all, he prides himself on knowing his own mind, doing his own thing, and pursuing the truth. Let’s take these claims seriously, not because they reflect much reality but because he shares them with many others in the West (even if they are less blunt about their self-adulation). How does such a personality reconcile this flattering self-image with such obvious intellectual inconsistency and moral failure?

By not perceiving the equal humanity of others. There are, for Musk, clearly, always those who matter and those who don’t. Recall, for instance, that the anti-Semitic tweet he endorsed was also a mean, racist complaint about migrants, who were caricatured as nothing but a tool to demographically “attack” “white” societies. Yet Musk is now on his “penitence tour” to show contrition to Jews (as he should, just not the way he does), but not to migrants. See a pattern?

Recall also that one reason Musk has given for his former underestimating of the virulence of anti-Semitism is that so many of his friends are Jews (so that anti-Semitism does not appear much among them, he says). I doubt, Musk has – or cares to make – many Palestinian friends. And the Palestinian victims in Gaza (and elsewhere) simply do not matter enough for him to be worth mentioning in Auschwitz, which is precisely where they must be mentioned, because Auschwitz is not “only” about the Holocaust but about all genocides as well.

The ultimate tragedy (if that is the word) of Elon Musk – and so many like him – is that he is far less special or individualist than he believes. His lazy lack of attention to – and empathy for – those who do not have the power to bother and push him is the sign of a deeply ordinary personality responding to very ordinary stimuli. One day he may realize that “being true to oneself” is a primitive, petty motto worthy only of an immature narcissist. (Shakespeare hinted at that fact by making an idiot say it.) If Musk could learn to, instead, be true to his conscience and to what other humans justly deserve, all other humans – now that would be the beginning of progress. The richest man in the world surely has the means for some genuine self-improvement. The good news: It’s all still ahead of him. Less Netanyahu, more, say, Ali Abunimah and Norman Finkelstein; less Shapiro, much more Kant would be my prescription.

Last week, on January 26th, Australians celebrated Australia Day – the country’s national day, akin to July 4th in America or Bastille Day in France.

Australians are not as overtly patriotic as the Americans or the French, and usually celebrate the public holiday by having a barbeque, going to the beach, or having a few beers with family and friends.

Australia Day this year, however, witnessed displays of political extremism from both ends of the political spectrum – a disturbing trend in a nation that has remained relatively immune from the political instability that has plagued other Western democracies in recent years.

Thousands of people calling for the abolition of Australia Day – recently rebranded as “Invasion Day” by the woke elites that rule Australia – flocked to protest rallies in state capitals throughout the country. And in Sydney, Australia’s largest city, police forcefully prevented dozens of black clad, balaclava wearing neo-Nazis from confronting the protestors. 

How has the traditionally apolitical celebration of Australia’s national day come to this?

The short answer is that irrational elite politics in Australia is now generating an even more irrational right-wing extremist backlash that neither side, nor the government, seems capable of controlling.

Traditionally Aboriginal politics was focused on repealing racist laws, ending discrimination, obtaining land rights, and remedying Aboriginal disadvantage and poverty – particularly in remote communities.

Over the past fifty years Aboriginal political leaders have achieved substantial reforms – explicitly racist laws have been abolished, formal discrimination ended, and land rights have been recognised in all states and nationally. Sadly, the problem of Aboriginal disadvantage and poverty in remote communities has grown worse.

Unfortunately, in recent years a new generation of Aboriginal political leaders, in conjunction with a few leaders of the previous generation, have been seduced by Australia’s elites and have adopted wholesale their irrational mode of politics.

As a result, the Aboriginal political elite has split into two bitterly opposed groups – one still focused on ending Aboriginal disadvantage and poverty in remote communities; the other irretrievably woke in its orientation. 

The latter group is not interested in conditions in remote communities – and focuses its energies on virtue-signalling issues such as unattainable claims of sovereignty, creating the Indigenous Voice to Parliament, rewriting history, destroying statues and, last but not least, calling for the abolition of Australia Day.

The demand to abolish Australia Day derives from the crudely simplistic view – embraced enthusiastically by guilt-ridden white elites and their ignorant millennial and Gen Z children – that Australian history is nothing more than a continuing genocidal war conducted by white colonial oppressors against the Aboriginal people.  And if Australian history is nothing more than a protracted exercise in genocide, it follows that Australia’s national day should be abolished.

Those Aboriginal political leaders who have thrown their lot in with the elites now regularly espouse this mantra as a matter of blind faith, as do influential media organisations like ABC and Channel 9.

Those Aboriginal political leaders who are aware of the complex and tragic history of black-white interaction in Australia – and realise that confected elite self-hatred and virtue signalling will do nothing to eliminate Aboriginal disadvantage and poverty – take a contrary view. These leaders also realise that the woke elite takeover of Aboriginal politics is not only extremely damaging and hypocritical, but also insincere.

Albanese promised to establish the Voice – a constitutionally enshrined Aboriginal advisory body to the federal parliament – the night he won the federal election in May 2022.

Albanese did this at the behest of the group of Aboriginal leaders that had allied with Australia’s elites  – as had Albanese and the Labor party years before. The Voice was their idea, and it was opposed by other Aboriginal political leaders.

The Voice was a classic elite project – it was divisive, expensive and would have achieved little. But it would have established dozens of well-paid sinecures for members of the Aboriginal elite who invented it, and, not surprisingly, it was was enthusiastically supported by large corporations, universities, public service organisations, the Labor party, and media organisations. 

Albanese’s campaign in favour of the Voice never explained how it would achieve anything worthwhile. Albanese cried crocodile tears while giving endless emotional speeches; pro-Voice Aboriginal leaders told white Australians they were genocidal murderers; and anyone who dared oppose the Voice was immediately branded a “racist”. 

Not surprisingly, late last year over 60% of the Australian electorate voted against the Voice.

Albanese responded to this political debacle by saying that he was not responsible for the failure because he was was not Aboriginal, and that anyway Aboriginals were used to disappointments. It is clear that Albanese’s brief and disastrous flirtation with Aboriginal politics has now ended. 

Those Aboriginal leaders who campaigned against the Voice were probably not surprised by Albanese’s response – but they are aware that the divisive campaign waged by Albanese and his woke mates has damaged the Aboriginal cause by alienating many white Australians who were sympathetic to legitimate Aboriginal demands. 

Those Aboriginal leaders who supported Albanese’s divisive Voice campaign have apparently learnt nothing from its failure, and it is they who are now doubling down in their misguided commitment to white elite politics by supporting protests in favour of the abolition of Australia Day. 

How did all of this this play out on Australia Day last week?

In Melbourne a statue of the eighteenth century explorer Captain Cook – who took possession of Australia for Britain in 1770 and engaged in the first act of reconciliation with Aboriginals – was vandalised and desecrated earlier in the week. And the media conducted extensive campaigns criticising Australia Day and calling for its immediate abolition.

No wonder that thousands of protestors – urged on by elite political leaders both black and white – attended marches demanding the abolition of Australia Day.

Nor should the fact that a group of neo-Nazis sought to confront these protestors in Sydney come as any surprise. For some years such groups have been active in disrupting political demonstrations in Victoria – by far the most woke of all states in Australia.

Media organisations like ABC and Channel 9 have given these groups a disproportionate measure of publicity in recent years. So too have Labor governments by passing repressive so called “hate speech” laws together with laws banning Nazi insignia and the Nazi salute. This week the Labor Premier of New South Wales announced plans to “name and shame” neo-Nazis – thereby ensuring more publicity and advancing their cause even further.

The demonstrators on Australia Day and the neo-Nazis that tried to confront them are different sides of the same irrational political coin.

It should not surprise anyone that calling all white Australians genocidal killers and racists should engender a political movement whose stated aim is to defend white Australia.

As politics grows more irrational in Australia, it appears that political extremism will only intensify in the future.

US President Joe Biden has deployed overseas his CIA Director William Burns, who served as secretary of state and deputy secretary of state under President Barack Obama, to try and broker a deal between Israel and Hamas.

Details of what exactly Burns discussed with high-level diplomatic and intelligence officials from Egypt, Qatar, and Israel are unknown at this time. It is reported, however, that Israel’s latest proposal would see a 60-day pause in combat in return for the staggered release of more than 100 captives still held by Hamas, with women and children first, then civilian men, military members, and the remains of hostages who died in captivity.

While, indeed, the CIA chief’s met with peers from the intelligence community, his attendance displays something that reflects poorly on the state of US diplomacy, and implies a lack of savoir faire at the State Department.

It should be noted that the US government has many different offices, bureaus, and departments that compete against one another for funding and clout. For decades, the CIA and the State Department had tried to stay apart. It has been noted, for example, by CIA founding member Miles Copeland Jr. that the State Department was originally averse to some of its covert activities, such as agents using diplomatic credentials as cover. During the Cold War, Copeland said, the State Department not only refused to take part in CIA activities but did not even want to be informed about them, as in the case of the coup d’etat in Syria in the 1960s.

During the administration of former President Donald Trump, he promoted Mike Pompeo from CIA director to Secretary of State. The Trump administration’s foreign policy style thus shifted to a much more aggressive and subversive approach, emulating how the CIA conducts its business. This was particularly aimed at undermining the resurgence of China, as well as ratcheting up tensions with Russia.

In contrast, President Joe Biden enlisted William Burns, a long-time diplomat, as his CIA director. According to Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former chief of staff, this pick was because of Burns’ reliability, experience, and honesty – traits becoming of a diplomat. Biden apparently did not want someone who’d gained their professional experience from the CIA to head the spy agency, probably because such people are prone to what Pompeo described as lying, cheating, and stealing.

The fact that the director of the CIA is getting so intimately involved in negotiations between Israel and Hamas, having already been a part of the November agreement that led to the release of Palestinian and Israeli hostages and to a week-long ceasefire, may perhaps be worrying. It could be interpreted that the US is not actually interested in real diplomacy but rather in trying to threaten Hamas leaders into surrendering on behalf of West Jerusalem.

As Burns has been managing negotiations between Israel and Hamas, Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrapped up a West Africa trip that analysts believe was an attempt by Washington to shore up transatlantic trade in light of instability in the Middle East. He also stuck to the same tired script with regard to China, invoking ‘debt-trap diplomacy’ and unfair labor and trade practices. Meanwhile, protesters sat outside Blinken’s Arlington, Virginia home demanding a ceasefire in Gaza – apparently unaware that he’s not even the one leading diplomatic efforts currently.

A lack of leadership on behalf of Blinken at this defining moment in the conflict in Gaza, as American soldiers die in the Middle East and international trade is threatened by Houthi attacks on ships that use the Suez Canal, is apparent. The fact that the CIA has had to step in at this juncture demonstrates the sorry state of US diplomacy, underscoring the gradual but inevitable decline of American soft power.

The United Nations’ International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ruled on the case that South Africa has brought against Israel. Those who mistake realism for simplistic materialism – the ‘it’s only there if I can touch it’ variety – may underestimate the significance of that ruling. In reality, it is historic. Here’s why.

First, and most importantly, the court has ruled against Israel. South Africa’s well-prepared brief was over 80 pages long, closely argued, and very detailed. But its gist was simple: It had applied to the ICJ – which only handles cases between countries, not individuals – to find that Israel is committing genocide in its attack on Gaza, thereby infringing on fundamental Palestinian rights as brutally as possible.

Such a finding always takes years. For now, at this preliminary stage, South Africa’s immediate request was for the judges to decide that there is, in essence, a high enough probability of this genocide taking place to do two things: First, continue the case (instead of dismissing it) and, secondly, issue an injunction (in this context called “preliminary measures”) ordering Israel to abstain from its genocidal actions so that the rights of its Palestinian victims receive due protection.

The court has done both, with a majority of 15 to 2. One of the two judges dissenting is from Israel. Those voting, in effect, against Tel Aviv* included even the president of the court, from the US, and the judge from Germany, a country that has taken a self-damagingly pro-Israel line. As to the Israeli pseudo-argument claiming ‘self-defense,’ the court rightly ignored it. (Occupying powers simply do not have that right regarding occupied entities under international law. Period.)

It is true that the ICJ has no power to enforce its rulings. That would have to come through the UN Security Council, where the US is protecting Israel, whatever it does, including genocide. Yet there are good reasons why representatives of Israel have reacted with statements so arrogant and aggressive that they only further damage Tel Aviv’s badly damaged international standing:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for instance, has displayed his legal nihilism by dismissing as “outrageous” the closely reasoned finding of the court, at which Israel had every opportunity to argue its case. Israel’s far-right Minister of National Security, convicted racist and terrorist supporter Itamar Ben-Gvir, has derided the ruling with an X post simply saying: “Hague schmague.”

And, of course, as always, everyone not toeing Israel’s line is smeared as an “antisemite”: The ICJ is now joining the UN, the World Health Organization and, by now, almost everyone and everything outside the ideological bubble of Zionism on the list of those slandered in this manner. (One side effect of this rampant abuse of the accusation of antisemitism is, of course, that soon it won’t be taken seriously anymore, even when it should. And we will have Israel to thank for that.)

Notwithstanding the ICJ’s lack of an army to compel Tel Aviv to obey the law, these outbursts of rage betray great fear. You may ask why. After all, the one thing the ICJ did not do was order a ceasefire. Some commenters have focused on that fact, to argue – gleefully on the side of Israel and its allies, with great disappointment on the side of Israel’s victims, opponents, and critics – that this vitiates the ruling.

Beyond the issue of the ceasefire, there are other – and, from an Israeli perspective, probably more frightening – factors. For even if the US keeps shielding Israel, this is a bigger world. Western governments and politicians that have supported Tel Aviv unconditionally – with arms, diplomatic and public-relations cover, and by repressing Israel’s critics – will feel a chill: The UN Genocide Convention and the Rome Statute don’t just condemn perpetrating a genocide but also not preventing or being complicit in one.

With the ICJ now having confirmed at the very least that genocide is probable enough to merit a case and require immediate action, Joe Biden, Antony Blinken, Ursula von der Leyen, Olaf Scholz, Rishi Sunak, Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron, Annalena Baerbock, to name only a few, should start worrying: While the ICJ does not go after individuals, the International Criminal Court (ICC) does. Despite dragging its feet as much as it could, it is now especially likely to be compelled to open a full-fledged investigation.

In addition, cases can also be brought under national jurisdictions. All of this will take years. But it could end very badly for hubris-addled Western politicians who never imagined that such charges could escape their control (where they serve as politicized tools to go after African leaders and geopolitical opponents) and become their very own, potentially life-changing problem. In sum, the cost of siding with Israel has gone up. Not all but most politicians are solid opportunists. Tel Aviv will find it harder to mobilize its friends.

It is true that some Western governments and leaders, for instance, Canada or Rishi Sunak, have hurried to show their disdain for international law by attacking the ICJ’s ruling. But there’s an element of desperate bravado, of whistling in a darkening forest. And there’s a Catch-22 as well: Because, the more representatives of the West display their arrogance, the more they alienate the world. They may think that they are relieving Israel’s isolation. In reality, they are joining it on its downward trajectory: They are showing, once again, that their touted “rules-based order” is the opposite of the equal rule of international law for all.

If the world is bigger than the US or the West, it also contains much more than politics in the narrow sense of the term. In the realm of narratives, this is also a harsh setback for Israel and its supporters: Those who arrogantly dismissed the South African case as baseless or “a mockery,” for instance in The Economist, are now paying with their credibility. Their value as weapons in Israel’s struggle for global public opinion is reduced.

Last but not least, the domains of politics and narratives intersect, of course, with that of war: It is inevitable that those fighting Israel with arms will feel encouraged, and rightly so. For forces such as the Palestinian Resistance, the Ansar Allah (Houthi) movement de facto ruling Yemen, Hezbollah, and Iran, this ICJ ruling coincides with Israel’s military failure in Gaza: For while its troops have massacred civilians (and obsessively recorded proud evidence of their crimes that is now coming to haunt them), they are far from either “eradicating Hamas” (the putative war aim) or freeing the hostages by force. Seeing that Israel’s international isolation is getting worse, its opponents will have ever less reason to give up.

This, in short, was a great setback for Israel. Its political model, combining apartheid, militarism, and a might-makes-right outlook, is not ‘working’ any longer, not even on its own terms. The future is not predictable. That Israel will be in worsening trouble is.

*Russia recognizes West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, as shown on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Consular Department website

The US and UK are currently waging a bombing campaign against the Ansar Allah militia group in Yemen, commonly known as the Houthis. The Houthis have been responding to the ongoing conflict in Gaza by attacking shipping lanes in the Red Sea, attempting to use the geopolitically critical Gulf of Aden to strangle one of the world’s most important commercial routes, and therefore escalating pressure on the West to end the conflict.

Of course, the US has been completely unreasonable in its unconditional backing of Israel’s military campaign, and rather than confronting the problem directly, it has proposed another idea – to outsource both blame and resolution to China and ask Beijing to help end the conflict. This is not a new tactic by Washington, as it has done the same thing with the Russia-Ukraine war, crafting a narrative that it is China’s “responsibility” to end it, of course, conveniently on terms that are favorable to America.

In reality, the US has absolutely no chance of getting China to end these respective conflicts, primarily because it is in China’s best interests not to secure outcomes that amount to geopolitical gains for America. However, that is the point in itself, as the US wants to intentionally frame Beijing as “the bad guy” and therefore push the perception that Beijing is a challenge to the international order and a threat to peace. The US is effectively trying to gaslight China by making it look morally bad for conflict Washington itself creates and not agreeing to the outcomes Washington wants. It is a blame game.

American foreign policy has little room for compromise and is driven by a zero-sum mindset that emphasizes absolute strategic gains for the US at all costs. The US does not negotiate with its adversaries for the sake of peace, but rather attempts to maintain a long-term strategic posture in the hope they, through pressure or other means, eventually capitulate to US preferences. For example, the US position regarding the Ukraine war has never been to negotiate with Russia or respect its strategic space but to attempt to impose a strategic defeat on Moscow and enable further expansion of NATO, which in turn is another vehicle for American pressure. Even as this approach is proving increasingly ineffective, there’s no shift in Washington’s foreign policy in sight.

Now, the US is articulating a strategy whereby when conflict occurs, it tries to outsource responsibility by blaming the lack of peace on China. As the narrative generally goes, “If only China would act and stop this, then there would be peace,” whether it be in Gaza, Yemen, Ukraine, or wherever. Of course, that peace is strictly conditional on terms the US has set and not terms that China itself might want to set. If Beijing does press for peace but on alternative terms to what America wants, such as attempting to mediate in Ukraine rather than pushing for the collapse of Russia, those peace terms are quickly rejected and condemned by the mainstream media.

What we have is a no-win situation where Beijing is framed as a perpetuating, if not instigating, force in conflicts, no matter what it does. China is portrayed as actively preventing peace, or alternatively, enabling the “enemy” side to continue its perceived aggression and offering terms that favor said “enemy,” and therefore is complicit in antagonism towards the West. China is therefore made out as a threat to the international order and world peace unless it agrees to exactly what the US wants, which of course, logically works against the interests of China as a whole. Why, for example, would China agree to crippling Russia? Or turn against its strategic partner, Iran? This narrative always and deliberately ignores the role that the US has played in instigating, escalating, and perpetuating the given conflicts at hand and pushes the “good vs. evil” binary rather than acknowledging the complex realities of geopolitics.

In reality, China is always careful to explicitly take no sides in such conflicts and strives for balance, such as when it mediated between Iran and Saudi Arabia. However, for the US, which thinks only about zero-sum political gains as opposed to peace in the interests of all, this will never ever be acceptable. Therefore China remains a villain and a threat.

On a sunny day in August 1955 Boeing test pilot Alvin ‘Tex’ Johnston was to take the Dash-80, the prototype of the Boeing 707, out for a test flight at an annual hydroplane race over Lake Washington near Seattle. The large crowd gathered for the event included many of the top names in the aviation industry.

Rather than perform a simple flyover, the swaggering Tex, who got his start flying crazy loops on daredevil flights on a tri-motor plane across the dusty plains of Kansas, aimed to impress the gathered luminaries. Instead, he put the plane into a stunning barnstormer-like double barrel roll that left the crowd below astonished and his boss, Boeing CEO Bill Allen, mortified that the newly crafted jet was out of control and about to crash.

It was a fitting gesture for a plane whose very genesis was the result of a huge gamble. As the 1950s dawned, Boeing was at a crossroads. Having thus far thrived as a manufacturer of military aircraft whose modest forays into commercial aviation had met little success, the company needed direction as its defense contracts had mostly dried up with World War II over and the Korean War winding down.

It was at this time that CEO Bill Allen decided to bet the house – $16 million to be exact, a huge sum in those days – on building a jet transport prototype. It is hard to overstate how ambitious this project was. Not a single customer had committed to buying the plane, and it was hardly clear that such an aircraft would be viable in the market. “The only thing wrong with the jet planes of today,” said the head of TransWorld Airlines around that time, “is that they won’t make any money.”

Failure may very well have meant the end of the company. It was a resounding success. After a few lonely, uncertain years, an aircraft was built that would shrink the world and usher in the glittering jet age. A few short years later, the company would embark on another hugely expensive gamble that paid off when it undertook to build the six-story-high, 225-foot-long Boeing 747. 

In 1957, when the 707 made its maiden flight, fewer than one in ten American adults had ever traveled in an airplane. By 1990, more adult Americans had flown than owned a car.

For many decades, Boeing was a decidedly unpretentious, engineer-driven company with a culture emphasizing both dazzling innovation and the sober virtue of impeccable craftsmanship. It was a place where the top managers held patents and could talk shop with the floor workers.

Even as late as the mid-1990s, the company’s chief financial officer reportedly kept his distance from Wall Street and answered colleagues’ requests for basic financial data with a dismissive, “Tell them not to worry.”

In hindsight, this principled aloofness has a bit of Shakespearean “last of all the Romans” feel. The company would soon be transformed beyond recognition.

Great companies invariably embody some intangible quality of the nations that spawned and nurtured them. Boeing came to represent in distilled and mythologized form something that Americans had come to see as forming an essential part of their national identity: unpretentious and focused on the task at hand. But if Boeing was the quintessential American company on the way up, it came to embody many of the country’s ills on the way down. Few companies have traced an arc of ascendancy and decline that so closely mirrors the nation’s own trajectory.

The self-effacing and introspective Bill Allen, Boeing’s genteel CEO through the post-war era and the man behind the 707 gamble, described his company’s ethos as “to eat, breathe, and sleep the world of aeronautics.” But a new generation of leaders was emerging who brought new priorities and a new vocabulary. It was no longer about making great airplanes; it was about “moving up the value chain.” What it was really about was maximizing shareholder value.

Now looming like a colossus over Boeing was the figure of Harry Stonecipher, McDonnell’s CEO. The blunt, hard-nosed son of a coal miner, Stonecipher was known for vicious cost-cutting, emails written in all caps – and for jettisoning executives who didn’t hit financial targets. But Stonecipher was a ‘winner’: McDonnell’s stock price had risen fourfold under his tenure.

What predictably ensued was nothing short of a complete transformation of Boeing from being a company run by engineers to one that prized financial profit over all, and was willing to cut all manner of corners to reduce costs and boost returns. The quality of the product was, to put it mildly, severely compromised.

Downstream from these changes are the spectacular failures we all know about: the outrageous cost overruns, delays and production issues in making the Boeing 787, which ended up being temporarily grounded for battery fires that regulators attributed to flaws in manufacturing, insufficient testing and a poor understanding of an innovative battery; the abject failure of the jimmy-rigged 737 MAX, which saw two deadly crashes and, most recently, a harrowing incident in which a sealed-off emergency exit blew out mid-air in an Alaska Airlines flight, leaving a gaping hole in the fuselage. 

The writer David Foster Wallace once wrote that “America… is a country of many contradictions, and a big contradiction for a long time has been between a very aggressive form of capitalism and consumerism against what might be called a kind of moral or civic impulse.”

What is evident is that starting roughly in the 1970s, this “aggressive form of capitalism” became ascendant in the US and for a long time overwhelmed – and is arguably still overwhelming – the “moral and civic impulse.” However, to view this as simply a moral failing is to miss the greater economic pressures at work.

The ‘70s were, in the words of historian Judith Stein, the “pivotal decade” that “sealed a society-wide transition from industry to finance, factory floor to trading floor, [and] production to consumption.” America had emerged from World War II with unquestioned manufacturing supremacy, but within a few short decades, US companies had begun falling behind. Whereas Japan, Germany, and, later on, China invested heavily in their industrial bases in the post-war period, the US came to emphasize innovation at the expense of capital investment. The 1970s were when nascent industrial powerhouse Japan pulled off its so-called ‘revolution of quality,’ which went a long way toward putting American manufacturers on the back foot.

Bloated and increasingly uncompetitive American companies needed a way forward – and that way forward can most succinctly be summed up as a switch in resource-allocation strategies from value creation to value extraction. Whereas the highly vertically integrated American companies of old practiced a ‘retain-and-reinvest’ approach, the new regime was one of ‘downsize-and-distribute,’ to use a phrase coined by economist William Lazonick.

This can be described, depending on one’s point of view, as either maximizing the value of the company or asset-stripping it for the benefit of executives and shareholders – with a corresponding hemorrhaging of the workforce.

If, as Stein asserts, the US went from “factory floor to trading floor,” it necessarily meant a step up in prominence for Wall Street analysts and a step down for the factory managers – or, in Boeing’s case, the engineers. So what did the denizens of Wall Street want? They wanted to see the unwieldy industrial giants generate a better return on their assets – in finance lingo, they wanted a higher RONA (return on net assets). 

Now, a naive observer might assume that the path to achieving this lies in using one’s assets more efficiently to generate more money. But there’s another way to increase RONA that proved a lot easier: generate (roughly) the same amount of money with fewer assets and lower costs. A constant numerator divided by a lower denominator gives a higher number. Outsourcing does exactly that: it removes assets from the balance sheet and that is precisely the path Boeing and many others went down under the ‘downsize-and-distribute’ model. The problem in Boeing’s case was that the supply chain for building an airplane is so complex that it made it practically impossible for the company to maintain quality standards.

Boeing’s embrace of this new regime can be described as nothing short of whole-hearted. The figures are staggering. Over the past decade, it has directed an incredible 92% of its cashflow back to shareholders in the form of dividends and buybacks. 

Since 1998, the company has spent a staggering $63.5 billion on share buybacks. This, according to financial analyst Scott Hamilton, is equivalent to about four wide-body and five or six narrow-body airplane programs at today’s costs.

But Wall Street doesn’t need airplanes, it needs dividends. Hamilton recounts how at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in April 2020, CEO David Calhoun gave conflicting signals about a new airplane program and also about a return to a dividend policy. The following day, Melius Research gave the quintessential Wall Street view in a note for clients: “We struggle to see how the business case for a new airplane closes favorably these days.” It was a vote for dividends. In other words, today’s profits trump the company’s future.

Historians and economists will have to parse through the implications of a currency gaining in stature precisely at a time when a country’s manufacturing base recedes, but such a circumstance could hardly fail to push the entire system into the arms of Wall Street.

Harder to comprehend, meanwhile, is how the generation of leaders exemplified by the likes of Harry Stonecipher seemed to have completely embraced this transformation of the American economy.

In an interview with the Chicago Tribune in 2004, he said: “When people say I changed the culture of Boeing, that was the intent, so that it’s run like a business rather than a great engineering firm.”

What is startling about this is not so much Stonecipher’s actions at Boeing, but that he felt free to absolutely lay bare his motives. Had he been out of sync with the zeitgeist of the time, he may have still pursued the same aims out of whatever personal motives – such as greed – but, fearing opprobrium, would have done so much more furtively. That he felt he could unabashedly broadcast the destruction of Boeing’s finely hewn, decades-old culture says as much about the country as it does about the man.

Many of the beleaguered Americans who have watched their country being overrun for decades by never-ending streams of illegal aliens were cheered up by the latest salvo in Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s border-security feud with US President Joe Biden.

It’s easy to see why. Watching the Biden administration wave in record flows of lawless migrants – with total disregard for the harms caused to American citizens – is painful, so seeing Abbott defy the federal government is soothing. Two days after the US Supreme Court upheld the federal government’s right to dismantle border barriers installed by Texas National Guard soldiers, the governor declared on Wednesday that the state’s right to self-defense “supersedes” all federal laws, so he will continue fighting the “invasion.”

The Republican governor insisted that because the Biden administration shirked its constitutional duty to defend US states against foreign invaders, Texas is filling the void to protect its own citizens. Therefore, the state troops will keep working to block the immigrant influx, regardless of what the Supreme Court says.

Republican politicians – such as US Representatives Clay Higgins and Chip Roy, Senator Ted Cruz, and Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders – cheered on Abbott’s move. Former President Donald Trump, the leading Republican candidate to face Biden in this year’s presidential election, said Texas “must be given full support to repel the invasion.” He encouraged other governors to deploy their National Guard troops to help secure the border.

Case in point: Republicans controlled both houses of Congress when Trump took office in 2017, but the border wall that he promised was never built. There were no mass deportations of illegal aliens. Nor were there mass arrests of the traitorous employers who enable the influx by hiring people who can’t legally work in the US. Taxpayers were forced to continue footing the bill, as always.

That’s the ruling-class expectation for law-abiding citizens: Work hard and shut up while paying for us to undercut your wages and make your communities more crowded and less safe. Those who whimper too loudly are branded with the scarlet R-word (racist).

That same ruling class will make sure that Abbott’s border maneuverings have no significant effect. The Biden administration has fought much harder to block the state’s security measures than to police the border. Despite claiming that it doesn’t have enough border agents to secure the border, the administration had plenty of manpower to rip out the concertina wire that Texas troops were using to seal off high-traffic crossing points. When Texas put floating barriers in the Rio Grande River, the administration sued the state, claiming that Abbott was endangering migrants.

The Texas National Guard has seized control of a park at a key crossing point, but Biden can simply federalize those troops to get his way, as some Democrat politicians have already suggested. He wants to ensure that Border Patrol agents can do their important work of removing the state barriers to avoid inconveniencing the immigrants who flout US law.

Those who are ‘encountered’ aren’t turned back. The administration has released millions of illegal immigrants and bogus ‘asylum seekers’ into the country, ostensibly to await court hearings. Those hearings won’t happen for years, or even decades, and many immigrants will simply skip them when their court date finally arrives. Millions more have come through the border as ‘gotaways’, without being ‘processed’ by the Border Patrol.

It’s no coincidence that the surge in border traffic has been accompanied by increases in child trafficking and drug trafficking. Fentanyl transported across the border by drug cartels is killing thousands of Americans every month. More than 112,000 Americans died from drug overdoses between May 2022 and May 2023, primarily from fentanyl and other synthetic opioids. At the same time, there has been a 56-fold increase in the number of Border Patrol encounters with people who had been flagged on the US terrorist watch list.

The situation has gotten so bad that Americans of all political stripes and demographic categories see it as not merely a crisis, but an invasion. A Rasmussen Reports poll released this month showed that nearly two-thirds of US voters – including 55% of Democrats – agree that the country is under invasion.

Abbott also has made headlines by sending busloads of illegal immigrants to Democrat-controlled cities, such as New York and Chicago. Republicans have celebrated this tactic, as it forces pro-immigration virtue signalers to get a real taste of the crisis. New York Mayor Eric Adams was so flustered that he claimed the migrant influx will “destroy” America’s largest city.

The problem is, although this is fun to watch, it’s a distraction from the fact that the border remains wide open, and shifting the consequences around the country isn’t a victory. Confuse, divide, conquer. Lather, rinse, repeat.

In any case, Texas has no legal authority to deport the millions of illegal aliens coming across the border or those already in the state. And if it did have the power to do so? Both major political parties have already demonstrated that they have no intention of removing the cheap labor favored by their donors.

The Texas-Washington DC tensions may be eased if Biden is able to cut a deal with Republican lawmakers to beef up border security. He’s seeking to trade some tough-sounding (but ineffectual) immigration measures to get Republicans to approve more than $60 billion in additional funding for another disastrous Washington project: The Ukraine proxy war.

The longer-term goal is to finally achieve the ruling-class dream of “comprehensive immigration reform,” which basically means amnesty for millions of illegal aliens already here and some fake gestures on border security.

Law-abiding citizens will continue to suffer the consequences and incur the costs, and their votes will be disenfranchised over time. Short of armed rebellion or the secession of border states (no chance), the show will go on.

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has caused a stir. But this time not by haranguing the West on how much it owes his country (in short: everything and then some). Or because prominent Ukrainians (former presidential adviser Aleksey Arestovich, for instance) are plausibly accusing Zelensky of missing a real and favorable opportunity for peace with Russia almost two years ago.

Rumors of intrigues surrounding the military leadership of General Valery Zaluzhny or accusations of authoritarianism leveled by, for example, the mayor of Kiev, Vitaly Klitschko, are not the reason either. By now, that sort of thing is just Kiev background noise.

Instead, this time Zelensky has managed to get attention by issuing a decree ‘On Territories of the Russian Federation Historically Inhabited by Ukrainians’. Much of this fairly short document, which officially came into force on Ukraine’s Unity Day (January 22) is unsurprising. First, there is a rehash of weaponized/nationalized ‘history’ narratives that would make any serious historian blush, painting Russia (including during the Soviet period) as an evil empire that has ‘systematically’ sought to ‘destroy’ Ukrainian national identity for centuries. In Zelensky’s own words, the decree is meant to “restore the truth about the historical past for the sake of the Ukrainian future.”

But the document itself offers not truth but a silly and crude caricature. In reality, modern Ukrainian identity emerged comparatively late, and the Russian-tsarist authorities did try to curtail and restrict it, while the Soviet authorities attempted to shape it by both attacking it and promoting one version of it (as well as fighting alternatives, including a fascist version that allied with Nazi Germany). As you would expect, beyond politics, the even greater complexity of Russian-Ukrainian interactions – across the realms of (mixed) identities, beliefs, and culture, for instance – finds no reflection either.

But let’s be fair, Ukraine and Russia have been openly at war – and on a large scale – for almost two years now. (The causes of this avoidable war are, fundamentally, the West’s reckless, shortsighted, and cynical strategy of expanding NATO come-what-may; the Ukrainian leadership’s unforgivable decision to let the West use Ukraine and its people as a proxy to weaken Russia; and last but not least, great miscalculations on all sides.) Against that background, a Ukrainian president – even one less ill-educated than Zelensky – can hardly be expected to deliver a sophisticated lecture on the discontents of national identity. So, let’s not believe the caricature he is offering us, but let’s not get worked up about it either.

What is more intriguing is another feature of the decree. Its central explicit purpose is to protect the national identity and rights of Ukrainians living in the Russian Federation, including but not limited to six named regions. Three of those regions border Ukraine and the other three used to border it before 2014, when Crimea became part of Russia. The decree labels these territories as “historically inhabited by ethnic Ukrainians.” The list of measures to be taken to do so is predictable and, frankly, not interesting. It is a mix of lawfare, international lobbying, and instrumentalization of academics and experts that you would expect (again with a special mission for those historians eager to let themselves be used as information warfare foot soldiers). The Ukrainian World Congress, Ukraine’s Academy of Science, and the Foreign Ministry, for instance, are all charged with making their contribution to what the decree promises will be a “truthful history” – apparently without irony. Pro tip: Truth in history, insofar as possible, never comes from a government decree.

Of greater interest is the question of what this decree is really supposed to accomplish. It is, after all, a strange document to issue now. Zelensky’s regime is facing a serious, potentially fatal decline in Western backing. The situation on the front lines – think Avdeevka, the crucial fortress town in eastern Ukraine about to be taken by Russia – is so dire that the common Western euphemism of ‘stalemate’ has simply become silly: This is not what a stalemate looks like, this is what being on the verge of losing looks like. Moscow, meanwhile, has signaled no hurry in making peace, especially after recent Ukrainian attacks inside Russia, some with major civilian casualties.

Did Zelensky feel that he needed something uplifting to offer for Ukrainian Unity Day (22 January, the day of the decree’s publication)? Is the decree meant to confirm that the president wants to continue the war, by hinting that as bad as things may look now, in the future, Ukraine will turn the tables? If so, it seems a risky gamble. Among Ukrainians abroad, especially in the so-called ‘diaspora’, such gestures may still play well. (And maybe that is why the Ukrainian World Congress received separate mention.) It is intriguing, in this regard, to watch Zelensky’s public address on the occasion of Unity Day. Produced in his signature high-stagecraft style (complete with a dramatic score that seems to come out of a Hollywood melodrama), it climaxes in a long sequence highlighting Ukrainians abroad. But those Ukrainians actually in Ukraine could feel alienated. For them, this decree at this time may come across as a gimmick, and worse, as revealing (or confirming?) that Zelensky is no longer attached to reality.

But what if the motives behind the decree are more complicated? Could it be an attempt to create a bargaining chip (weak, certainly, but perhaps better than nothing) for a future settlement with Russia? If that is the case, it is most likely to come across as a sign of despair, a case of clutching at straws. For it is difficult to see why future Russian negotiators would care. If Zelensky – and those around him – really still believe that yet another narrative offensive can compensate for real defeat on real battlefields, then they have learned nothing.

That was an awful idea. But it never went away. While most of the war has unfolded more conventionally, as a clash between large armies, there have also been infiltration, sabotage, and assassination campaigns. With the war going badly for Ukraine, some irresponsible strategists in both Washington and Kiev are bound to consider a plan B – namely, answering a Russian victory with an attempt to launch an extended insurgency.

The guerrilla-style operations undertaken up until now have one feature in common with Zelensky’s strange decree – the targeting of areas inside Russia. It may appear far-fetched, and it is a matter of speculation, but we should not rule out the possibility that Zelensky is trying to hint that Ukrainians inside Russia could become an asset in this type of warfare. If so, then the true intention of the decree would be to promote paranoia inside Russia. And the best response is to absolutely ignore it.

The French government is scrambling to get a whole lot of tractors off the nation’s major highways. Good luck with that when 89% of French citizens back the protesting farmers, according to a new Odoxa poll.

France is joining a movement that now encompasses nearly 20% of the EU, with farmers in five of the bloc’s 27 countries convoying and blockading major roads. Farmers in Poland, Romania, Germany, and the Netherlands have now been joined by their counterparts from the country virtually synonymous with revolution. And one particular incident here in France has just shifted the nascent movement into overdrive. 

Alexandra Sonac, a 35-year-old cattle and corn farmer from the south of France, and two of her three family members were struck by a car in the dark early morning hours at a farmers’ highway blockade near Toulouse. Sonac and her 12-year-old daughter were killed, while her husband is in intensive care. The incident is still under investigation, but to add insult to injury, the three Armenian occupants of the vehicle that struck the family were reportedly under an expulsion order.

The symbolism here is glaring. A productive farmer resisting government economic oppression was killed by someone who has enjoyed the benefits of government laxity. Just 12% of expulsion orders were carried out by France between 2015 and 2021, one of the lowest rates in Europe, according to recent statistics.

French farmers’ complaints converge with those of their counterparts across the EU. They’re angry with their own governments, but only because these elected officials have insisted on sliding into the fitted straitjacket imposed on them by the unelected technocratic tyrants in Brussels and their top-down, ideologically driven policies. There’s a good reason why French farmers this week have ripped up and burned the same EU flag that President Emmanuel Macron insists on placing alongside the French tricolor in his various appearances.

It’s no surprise that the average person sympathizes, since they’re equally fed up with their incompetent heavy-handed government serving as a white glove for Brussels’ iron fist. They see that their gas and electricity costs are endlessly climbing, and their buying power is circling the drain, all while the French defense minister, for example, talks about how the Ukraine conflict, that has served as a convenient pretext for Europe’s transfer of wealth from the people to the elites, is such a wonderful opportunity for the military industrial complex. And when the French National Assembly approved themselves a €300 ($327) a month increase in their own allowances this week, just to offset the inflation that’s crushing the average citizen, it serves as yet another example of their total tone-deafness. 

On the afternoon of January 24, a massive row of tires and manure was set ablaze by angry French farmers right in front of the prefecture of Agen, in southwest France. Some farmers present denounced the move, others voiced their support, but all agreed to being fed up. More tellingly, police and firefighters on the scene dragged their feet in reacting as the smoke extended almost to the height of the adjacent building, considered a symbol of the French state. Apparently, even frontline workers who serve the state’s institutions are getting fed up with the establishment elites. And not just in Europe, but elsewhere in the West. 

Canadian Freedom Convoy truckers and their supporters were vindicated in Canadian Federal Court this week when a judge ruled that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government constitutionally violated fundamental rights and freedoms when it evoked the Emergency Act against protesting opponents to the government’s Covid mandates, which they considered a violation of basic rights and freedoms. The fact that the government ordered bank accounts blocked as a deterrent against protesting should have been the first big hint of growing authoritarianism, but apparently it took a federal judge to spell it out. 

German farmers and truckers who began convoying across the country earlier this month told me in Berlin that they were inspired by the Freedom Convoy as they railed against the German government’s imposition of more taxes on the diesel that fuels their farm vehicles, already pricy as a result of the government’s misguided energy policies driven by ideological, knee-jerk opposition to fossil fuels and to cheap gas from Russia. In both the Freedom Convoy and farmer cases, grotesque attempts by government officials to portray protesters as some kind of right-wing radicals, to absolve elites from responsibility, have fallen flat among the general population. 

French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, who only started in the job on January 9 and probably still hasn’t found all the washrooms at his new office, trudged down to the rural southern Rhone region last weekend. Attal said that “our farmers are not bandits, polluters, people who torture animals, as we sometimes hear.” Where does he hear that? In Brussels? His seduction skills could use some work. It’s like showing up for a date and saying, “Hey, you’re not as psycho as I heard you were.” What a charmer. Can’t wait to see how this diplomatic savant is going to resolve this whole mess. 

A meeting last Monday between Attal and farming reps included a delegate for the Young French Farmers Union. I spoke with several of their counterparts in Berlin at that protest earlier this month – young entrepreneurs, so well-spoken and educated. These young farmers say they work 80-hour weeks and feel there is so much red tape or prohibitions from the EU that it’s paralyzing. And yet France is desperate to encourage young people to adopt farming as a profession at a time when it’s a dying business. Gee, big mystery why that might be, geniuses. 

The tragic deaths of Alexandra Sonac and her daughter this week will forever stand as a symbol of struggle against the oppression of the working class by an authoritarian global governance that’s fomenting chaos as it caters to special interests increasingly divorced from those of the average citizen. No amount of tinkering by the offending governments will quell the growing unrest. Only a deep and fundamental rethinking of their relationship with their citizens, whose interests they’re supposed to serve exclusively, would have any hope of resolving this deepening crisis. 

Coming off of a resounding victory in the New Hampshire primaries, former US President Donald Trump is on the road to a second presidential showdown against the incumbent Joe Biden.

Predictably, Trump soundly defeated Nikki Haley in New Hampshire on Tuesday, making him the first Republican presidential candidate to win contests in Iowa and New Hampshire since both states began leading the election cycle back in 1976.

For her part, Haley, who spent over $30 million in an effort to take the Granite State, has stubbornly refused to concede defeat, pinning her hopes on victory in her home state of South Carolina on February 24. Yet the former UN ambassador will need much more than time and cash to bring down the Orange Man, whose cult of personality and enduring political message has proven unshakeable in the face of numerous relentless attacks. Barring some unpredictable event, Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee.

Against almost insurmountable odds, Trump – who is facing 91 felony counts across five indictments – has managed to corral much of the GOP into his MAGA camp while keeping the circling wolves at bay. For a 77-year-old man, this is no small physical and mental achievement.

At the same time, his fiercely loyal base is of the opinion that the Democrats, ‘hyping up’ the so-called insurrection of January 6, 2021, are engaged in the very worst form of election interference and intimidation ever directed at a presidential candidate. In fact, Trump is the first and only former president to be criminally charged and many Republicans do not view that as an accident. What the Democrats learned too late, however, is that those attacks only served to bolster their opponent’s credentials.

Much to the delight of the defense industry, the presidential election cycle is happening at a precarious moment on the global stage, where military conflicts – complete with the participation of nuclear powers – are raging in both the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Many Republicans cannot imagine Haley anywhere near the levers of power at such a dangerous juncture. At least Trump can say that he kept America out of new military conflicts during his four years as president, a rare feat by modern US standards.

On the question of national defense, it’s also necessary to mention Trump’s arch-nemesis, US President Joe Biden, who secured a write-in victory in New Hampshire. Undoubtedly, the greatest point of contention between the MAGA camp and the US leader is the situation on the US-Mexico border, where every year millions of illegal immigrants pour into the country at great expense to both safety and financial resources.

This month, Texas Governor Greg Abbott attempted to halt the madness by installing barbed-wire fencing along the Rio Grande. Those efforts were quickly dashed by the Supreme Court, which is supposedly weighed in favor of the Republicans. Here is what Trump had in mind when he uttered on the campaign trail that he would be “dictator for a day” if elected president. Just like Joe Biden became a veritable Caesar on his first day in office, signing off on dozens of executive orders without congressional oversight, Trump, if given the opportunity, will swiftly reverse those very same orders as the back-and-forth power struggle in Washington, DC continues unabated. But does America really need a ‘dictator’ in office every four years?

With these and many more pressing issues on the table, perhaps the biggest question confronting the US as it heads into the final stages of the presidential election is whether the country can keep it together before November 4.

With really bad ideas, you can often ask two pertinent questions. First, why will it not work? Second, why would it be harmful if it did? That rule holds in Germany, where the really bad idea of banning the party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is currently getting much debate.

The background of this debate is simple. Founded a decade ago, the AfD has established itself as a lasting feature of the political landscape. A populist right-wing party (roughly comparable to, for instance, the Austrian FPÖ), it brings together politicians and voters across a spectrum of positions. In the AfD, this spectrum ranges from very solidly conservative to far right.

Still comparatively small, the AfD is significant. With currently just over 40,000 members, it holds 78 of 736 seats in the Bundestag, the central parliament in Berlin. Importantly, it is also well-represented in 14 of 16 regional parliaments, where it occupies 242 seats of 1898 (for all regional legislatures taken together). In terms of its impact on national debates, it clearly punches far above this quantitative weight.

Most importantly, however, the AfD is on a roll, on both the central and regional levels. If Germans were to vote for the Bundestag now – and thus in effect the chancellor’s office – the AfD would net 23%. That can be compared with the traditional center-left SPD, leading the hapless coalition government, at 14%. All parties from the ruling coalition (SPD, Greens, and the market-liberal FDP) together muster just 31% approval.

No wonder that Germany’s under-qualified and somewhat hysterical minister of the economy, Robert Habeck, in whose head all of Russia seems to live rent-free, is publicly hallucinating that the AfD wants to make Germany like Russia. (The irony is, of course, is that with Habeck’s own mismanaged ministerial portfolio, quite a few Germans would welcome having Russia’s growth rates.) 

Such rhetoric, as well as the timing of when the idea of an AfD ban is being floated, betrays the fact that the attempt to popularize the idea of outlawing the AfD is an opportunistic response to its increasing electoral clout, which of course cannot be openly admitted. So, those in favor of a ban argue that the AfD is an extremist party.

But crucially here, extremism has a specific, legally (and narrowly) defined meaning. According to the German Constitution (Article 21.2), the Constitutional Court (and only that court) can prohibit a party when it substantially endangers the constitutional order of the Federal Republic or its existence itself. An important and often overlooked caveat, is it is not enough for a party to display hostility to the constitutional order. A prohibition is only an option if the party does so in an “active-combative, aggressive manner,” as Germany’s Ministry of the Interior puts it. 

Only two parties have ever been banned, a far-right one in 1952 and a far-left one in 1956. Other attempts to proscribe parties (or to be precise, the same party) have also failed twice: In 2003 and again in 2017, the Constitutional Court refused to outlaw the very far-right NPD (Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands).

Here’s why trying to ban the AfD is a bad idea in the sense that it is unlikely to work:

The second criterion is why, in 2017, the Constitutional Court did not prohibit the NPD, although its program is openly extremist in a fascist register. Put simply, the Court found that the NPD is sufficiently mean but insufficiently important for a ban. 

Considering the AfD, its opponents could of course argue that it has real influence and is going to have more. But the AfD’s enemies would still have a much harder time than with the NPD: While the NPD’s program is clear about policies that are principally irreconcilable with the German constitution, that is not the case with the AfD. In programmatic terms, it is a populist-right party (for which I, full disclosure, feel no sympathy) but it is not fundamentally challenging the German constitution. If a prohibition case were to rely exclusively on party programs, trying to ban the AfD would be hopeless.

Yet such cases also depend on another kind of evidence. To outlaw a political party requires a large body of incriminating material of the type that only security services can collect. To put it bluntly, before you can hope to get a party proscribed, you need to spy on it – a lot – and including by undercover agents inside that party. That is, by the way, the real relevance of German domestic security services (in the regional Länder and on the federal level) officially categorizing the AfD as, in essence, suspect. This classification says little about the chances of any prohibition procedure. What it really means is that the snoops can get to work. 

It is this issue – the question whether the AfD is systematically lying about its real nature and intentions – that has made recent revelations about at least one secret meeting with other far-right representatives so resonant. Discussions there featured conspiratorial plans for expulsions, including of holders of German passports (euphemized as “remigration”), which runs directly counter to the constitution. Yet even such meetings, on their own, will not suffice for a ban.

But here too, there is a downside for the proponents of a prohibition attempt. If one of the three institutions (the parliament, the federal assembly, and the government) legally empowered to do so were to actually initiate a case with the Constitutional Court, then all undercover agents would have to be de-activated at once. Indeed, it was the fact that agents were still active inside the NPD that scuppered the first prohibition attempt against that party in 2003.

Now add the fact that such cases take years, and a paradoxical effect emerges. Starting the procedure would free the AfD from domestic security interference, at least officially, and in the sense that no evidence from any continuing spying could be used against it.

The fact that prohibition cases take so long to decide also means that there is no chance to deal with the current rise of the AfD through banning it. Any ban would be far too late to have an effect on, for instance, upcoming regional and federal elections. Indeed, if a prohibition case were initiated now, it would probably only allow the AfD to profit by playing the victim card.

And last but not least, there is another paradoxical effect of a prohibition attempt. If (when) it fails, in legal theory, the Constitutional Court will only find there is not enough evidence for a ban. But in political reality, the AfD would present such an outcome as proof that it is as clean as can be. Guess which story would be more resonant with the voters. 

Secondly, the issue is a textbook case of polarization. As a fresh poll shows, 42% of Germans would welcome initiating a banning case. How many are against it? Also 42%. Good luck.

Thirdly, those politicians who make up the AfD, and the voters who side with the party, would obviously not simply disappear. On the contrary, they would seek to reorganize and start over. And the experience of prohibition would only alienate them more from the political system. And since the AfD is not a small party with a minuscule number of voters, that effect would be especially detrimental.

Finally, the overall legitimacy – in the practical sense of principal acceptance by many citizens – of Germany’s remaining parties, in particular those having participated in a prohibition campaign against the AfD would decline further. Ironically, the very parties claiming to be fighting incipient authoritarianism, would be perceived not only as using authoritarian tactics but as doing so for selfish and dishonest purposes. And with good reason.

Is this a dilemma? Maybe. Can it be resolved by banning the AfD? No, definitely not.

A few days ago an analysis piece appeared on the North Korea research website 38North with the headline asking the question: “Is Kim Jong un preparing for war?”

38North is a respected source of analysis and does not push an agenda or sensationalism. This particular piece was authored by Robert Carlin and Siegfried Hecker, who are also not known to be alarmist.

Their argument is as follows: North Korea has attempted to pursue a process of normalization with the US, particularly during the Donald Trump administration in 2018-2019, and failed after Trump walked out on the February 2019 meeting in Hanoi. After that effort failed, Pyongyang has now effectively “given up.” It believes it has no options left, and has continued developing its nuclear program and increasingly hardening its position, emboldened by the geopolitical context in respect to Russia and China.

It might be noted early on that this assessment does not give “hard” evidence of North Korea pursuing such a path, and relies only on changes in Pyongyang’s rhetoric to argue that the DPRK’s claims are not “bluster” but a true reflection of its strategic position. Many things have changed since 2019 that should be taken into consideration: the Biden administration has no interest in negotiating with North Korea, a hostile Presidency has came to power in Seoul under Yoon Suk-yeol, who is pro-Japan and has abandoned the reconciliatory approach of Moon Jae-in, while the US’ confrontation against both Russia and China has given the DPRK new options to try and subvert the isolation it experienced during the era of American unipolarity.

North Korea’s entire diplomatic strategy from the 1950s onwards has always been to exert maximum leverage for itself as a small country, by creating crisis. This is the Juche ideology’s ultimate focus on independence and sovereignty at all costs, even to its own population. To this end, the DPRK has always been provocative, whether it be killing US soldiers with axes, capturing the US spy ship USS Pueblo, shelling South Korean islands indiscriminately or even sinking a South Korean warship during an exercise. In doing so it aims to force the hands of not only its enemies but also of those who are friendly to it.

Recognizing its critical strategic position, Pyongyang has absolutely no problem dragging Moscow and Beijing into a crisis whether they like it or not, and was happy to cause significant trouble during the Sino-Soviet split. Therefore, in an era when China and Russia are both in a state of tensions –even confrontation– with the US, North Korea ultimately calculates opportunity for itself and extended leverage. Kim Jong-un will recognize that neither state in such a geopolitical situation could tolerate the fall of his regime and the reunification of the Korean peninsula on US-centric terms, which, for China, places an American military presence right next to its own border.

So where does this leave the DPRK? It leaves Kim Jong-un with a window of time to achieve a series of geopolitical objectives and goals, in a context which is favorable to him, and therein raises the prospect of a serious escalation of tensions in some way. We’ve already seen how similar considerations led to a full-scale war, or two now, in the Middle East. We can’t determine whether they will lead to the outbreak of a conflict on the Korean peninsula, but it would be foolish to rule out the possibility, given the world we live in today.

Multipolarity has arrived and it heralds the collapse of the US-centric, unipolar order which imposed stability by force as a one-way street. Many obviously assume the DPRK’s Soviet-era military could be destroyed by overwhelming US and allied power in the same way Saddam Hussein’s was in 1991 and 2003, but that was a different world. Here, you have a nuclear capable DPRK that has overseas backers who, while never wanting such a conflict, can’t afford to see the state fail. North Korea has made attempts at peace but met with America’s absolute unwillingness to compromise – therefore, what options does Kim have left to deal with South Korea?

On the centenary of the death of the leader of the world proletariat and founder of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin, RT is re-publishing his article addressed to the workers of the United States. In the late 1910s, the document played a major role in changing public opinion in the US and intensified the mass movement in defense of Soviet Russia.

Comrades! A Russian Bolshevik who took part in the 1905 Revolution, and who lived in your country for many years afterwards, has offered to convey my letter to you. I have accepted his proposal all the more gladly because just at the present time the American revolutionary workers have to play an exceptionally important role as uncompromising enemies of American imperialism — the freshest, strongest and latest in joining in the world-wide slaughter of nations for the division of capitalist profits. At this very moment, the American multimillionaires, these modern slaveowners, have turned an exceptionally tragic page in the bloody history of bloody imperialism by giving their approval — whether direct or indirect, open or hypocritically concealed, makes no difference — to the armed expedition launched by the brutal Anglo-Japanese imperialists for the purpose of throttling the first socialist republic.

The history of modern, civilized America opened with one of those great, really liberating, really revolutionary wars of which there have been so few compared to the vast number of wars of conquest which, like the present imperialist war, were caused by squabbles among kings, landowners or capitalists over the division of usurped lands or ill-gotten gains. That was the war the American people waged against the British robbers who oppressed America and held her in colonial slavery, in the same way as these “civilized” bloodsuckers are still oppressing and holding in colonial slavery hundreds of millions of people in India, Egypt, and all parts of the world.

The four years of the imperialist slaughter of nations, however, have not passed in vain. The deception of the people by the scoundrels of both robber groups, the British and the German, has been utterly exposed by indisputable and obvious facts. The results of the four years of war have revealed the general law of capitalism as applied to war between robbers for the division of spoils: the richest and strongest profited and grabbed most, while the weakest were utterly robbed, tormented, crushed, and strangled.

The British imperialist robbers were the strongest in number of “colonial slaves”. The British capitalists have not lost an inch of “their” territory (i.e., territory they have grabbed over the centuries), but they have grabbed all the German colonies in Africa, they have grabbed Mesopotamia and Palestine, they have throttled Greece, and have begun to plunder Russia.

The German imperialist robbers were the strongest in organization and discipline of “their” armies, but weaker in regard to colonies. They have lost all their colonies, but plundered half of Europe and throttled the largest number of small countries and weak nations. What a great war of “liberation” on both sides! How well the robbers of both groups, the Anglo-French and the German capitalists, together with their lackeys, the social-chauvinists, i.e., the socialists who went over to the side of “their own ” bourgeoisie, have “defended their country”!

The American multimillionaires were, perhaps, richest of all, and geographically the most secure. They have profited more than all the rest. They have converted all, even the richest, countries into their tributaries. They have grabbed hundreds of billions of dollars. And every dollar is sullied with filth: the filth of the secret treaties between Britain and her “allies”, between Germany and her vassals, treaties for the division of the spoils, treaties of mutual “aid” for oppressing the workers and persecuting the internationalist socialists. Every dollar is sullied with the filth of “profitable” war contracts, which in every country made the rich richer and the poor poorer. And every dollar is stained with blood — from that ocean of blood that has been shed by the ten million killed and twenty million maimed in the great, noble, liberating and holy war to decide whether the British or the German robbers are to get most of the spoils, whether the British or the German thugs are to be foremost in throttling the weak nations all over the world.

While the German robbers broke all records in war atrocities, the British have broken all records not only in the number of colonies they have grabbed, but also in the subtlety of their disgusting hypocrisy. This very day, the Anglo-French and American bourgeois newspapers are spreading, in millions and millions of copies, lies and slander about Russia, and are hypocritically justifying their predatory expedition against her on the plea that they want to “protect” Russia from the Germans!

It does not require many words to refute this despicable and hideous lie; it is sufficient to point to one well-known fact. In October 1917, after the Russian workers had overthrown their imperialist government, the Soviet government, the government of the revolutionary workers and peasants, openly proposed a just peace, a peace without annexations or indemnities, a peace that fully guaranteed equal rights to all nations — and it proposed such a peace to all the belligerent countries.

It was the Anglo-French and the American bourgeoisie who refused to accept our proposal; it was they who even refused to talk to us about a general peace! It was they who betrayed the interests of all nations; it was they who prolonged the imperialist slaughter!

It was they who, banking on the possibility of dragging Russia back into the imperialist war, refused to take part in the peace negotiations and thereby gave a free hand to the no less predatory German capitalists who imposed the annexationist and harsh Brest Peace upon Russia!

It is difficult to imagine anything more disgusting than the hypocrisy with which the Anglo-French and American bourgeoisie are now “blaming” us for the Brest Peace Treaty. The very capitalists of those countries which could have turned the Brest negotiations into general negotiations for a general peace are now our “accusers”! The Anglo-French imperialist vultures, who have profited from the plunder of colonies and the slaughter of nations, have prolonged the war for nearly a whole year after Brest, and yet they “accuse” us, the Bolsheviks, who proposed a just peace to all countries, they accuse us, who tore up, published and exposed to public disgrace the secret, criminal treaties concluded between the ex-tsar and the Anglo-French capitalists.

The workers of the whole world, no matter in what country they live, greet us, sympathize with us, applaud us for breaking the iron ring of imperialist ties, of sordid imperialist treaties, of imperialist chains — for breaking through to freedom, and making the heaviest sacrifices in doing so — for, as a socialist republic, although torn and plundered by the imperialists, keeping out of the imperialist war and raising the banner of peace, the banner of socialism for the whole world to see.

Small wonder that the international imperialist gang hates us for this, that it “accuses” us, that all the lackeys of the imperialists, including our Right Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, also “accuse” us. The hatred these watchdogs of imperialism express for the Bolsheviks, and the sympathy of the class-conscious workers of the world, convince us more than ever of the justice of our cause.

A real socialist would not fail to understand that for the sake of achieving victory over the bourgeoisie, for the sake of power passing to the workers, for the sake of starting the world proletarian revolution, we cannot and must not hesitate to make the heaviest sacrifices, including the sacrifice of part of our territory, the sacrifice of heavy defeats at the hands of imperialism. A real socialist would have proved by deeds his willingness for “his” country to make the greatest sacrifice to give a real push forward to the cause of the socialist revolution.

For the sake of “their” cause, that is, for the sake of winning world hegemony, the imperialists of Britain and Germany have not hesitated to utterly ruin and throttle a whole number of countries, from Belgium and Serbia to Palestine and Mesopotamia. But must socialists wait with “their” cause, the cause of liberating the working people of the whole world from the yoke of capital, of winning universal and lasting peace, until a path without sacrifice is found? Must they fear to open the battle until an easy victory is “guaranteed”? Must they place the integrity and security of “their” bourgeois-created “fatherland” above the interests of the world socialist revolution? The scoundrels in the international socialist movement who think this way, those lackeys who grovel to bourgeois morality, thrice stand condemned.

The Anglo-French and American imperialist vultures “accuse” us of concluding an “agreement” with German imperialism. What hypocrites, what scoundrels they are to slander the workers’ government while trembling because of the sympathy displayed towards us by the workers of “their own” countries! But their hypocrisy will be exposed. They pretend not to see the difference between an agreement entered into by “socialists” with the bourgeoisie (their own or foreign) against the workers, against the working people, and an agreement entered into for the protection of the workers who have defeated their bourgeoisie, with the bourgeoisie of one national colour against the bourgeoisie of another colour in order that the proletariat may take advantage of the antagonisms between the different groups of bourgeoisie.

In actual fact, every European sees this difference very well, and, as I shall show in a moment, the American people have had a particularly striking “illustration” of it in their own history. There are agreements and agreements, there are fagots et fagots, as the French say.

When in February 1918 the German imperialist vultures hurled their forces against unarmed, demobilized Russia, who had relied on the international solidarity of the proletariat before the world revolution had fully matured, I did not hesitate for a moment to enter into an “agreement” with the French monarchists. Captain Sadoul, a French army officer who, in words, sympathised with the Bolsheviks, but was in deeds a loyal and faithful servant of French imperialism, brought the French officer de Lubersac to see me. “I am a monarchist. My only aim is to secure the defeat of Germany,” de Lubersac declared to me. “That goes without saying (cela va sans dire ),” I replied. But this did not in the least prevent me from entering into an “agreement” with de Lubersac concerning certain services that French army officers, experts in explosives, were ready to render us by blowing up railway lines in order to hinder the German invasion. This is an example of an “agreement” of which every class-conscious worker will approve, an agreement in the interests of socialism. The French monarchist and I shook hands, although we knew that each of us would willingly hang his “partner”. But for a time our interests coincided. Against the advancing rapacious Germans, we, in the interests of the Russian and the world socialist revolution, utilised the equally rapacious counter-interests of other imperialists. In this way we served the interests of the working class of Russia and of other countries, we strengthened the proletariat and weakened the bourgeoisie of the whole world, we resorted to the methods, most legitimate and essential in every war, of maneuver, stratagem, retreat, in anticipation of the moment when the rapidly maturing proletarian revolution in a number of advanced countries completely matured.

The American people resorted to these tactics long ago to the advantage of their revolution. When they waged their great war of liberation against the British oppressors, they had also against them the French and the Spanish oppressors who owned a part of what is now the United States of North America. In their arduous war for freedom, the American people also entered into “agreements” with some oppressors against others for the purpose of weakening the oppressors and strengthening those who were fighting in a revolutionary manner against oppression, for the purpose of serving the interests of the oppressed people. The American people took advantage of the strife between the French, the Spanish and the British; sometimes they even fought side by side with the forces of the French and Spanish oppressors against the British oppressors; first they defeated the British and then freed themselves (partly by ransom) from the French and the Spanish.

Historical action is not the pavement of Nevsky Prospekt, said the great Russian revolutionary Chernyshevsky. A revolutionary would not “agree” to a proletarian revolution only “on the condition” that it proceeds easily and smoothly, that there is, from the outset, combined action on the part of the proletarians of different countries, that there are guarantees against defeats, that the road of the revolution is broad, free and straight, that it will not be necessary during the march to victory to sustain the heaviest casualties, to “bide one’s time in a besieged fortress”, or to make one’s way along extremely narrow, impassable, winding and dangerous mountain tracks. Such a person is no revolutionary, he has not freed himself from the pedantry of the bourgeois intellectuals; such a person will be found constantly slipping into the camp of the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie, like our Right Socialist-Revolutionaries, Mensheviks and even (although more rarely) Left Socialist-Revolutionaries.

Echoing the bourgeoisie, these gentlemen like to blame us for the “chaos” of the revolution, for the “destruction” of industry, for the unemployment and the food shortage. How hypocritical these accusations are, coming from those who welcomed and supported the imperialist war, or who entered into an “agreement” with Kerensky who continued this war! It is this imperialist war that is the cause of all these misfortunes. The revolution engendered by the war can not avoid the terrible difficulties and suffering bequeathed it by the prolonged, ruinous, reactionary slaughter of the nations. To blame us for the “destruction” of industry, or for the “terror”, is either hypocrisy or dull-witted pedantry; it reveals an inability to understand the basic conditions of the fierce class struggle, raised to the highest degree of intensity that is called revolution.

Even when “accusers” of this type do “recognize” the class struggle, they limit themselves to verbal recognition; actually, they constantly slip into the philistine utopia of class “agreement” and “collaboration”; for in revolutionary epochs the class struggle has always, inevitably, and in every country, assumed the form of civil war, and civil war is inconceivable without the severest destruction, terror and the restriction of formal democracy in the interests of this war. Only unctuous parsons — whether Christian or “secular” in the persons of parlor, parliamentary socialists — cannot see, understand and feel this necessity. Only a lifeless “man in the muffler” can shun the revolution for this reason instead of plunging into battle with the utmost ardor and determination at a time when history demands that the greatest problems of humanity be solved by struggle and war.

The American people have a revolutionary tradition which has been adopted by the best representatives of the American proletariat, who have repeatedly expressed their complete solidarity with us Bolsheviks. That tradition is the war of liberation against the British in the eighteenth century and the Civil War in the nineteenth century. In some respects, if we only take into consideration the “destruction” of some branches of industry and of the national economy, America in 1870 was behind 1860. But what a pedant, what an idiot would anyone be to deny on these grounds the immense, world-historic, progressive and revolutionary significance of the American Civil War of 1863-65!

The representatives of the bourgeoisie understand that for the sake of overthrowing Negro slavery, of overthrowing the rule of the slaveowners, it was worth letting the country go through long years of civil war, through the abysmal ruin, destruction and terror that accompany every war. But now, when we are confronted with the vastly greater task of overthrowing capitalist wage-slavery, of overthrowing the rule of the bourgeoisie — now, the representatives and defenders of the bourgeoisie, and also the reformist socialists who have been frightened by the bourgeoisie and are shunning the revolution, cannot and do not want to understand that civil war is necessary and legitimate.

The American workers will not follow the bourgeoisie. They will be with us, for civil war against the bourgeoisie. The whole history of the world and of the American labour movement strengthens my conviction that this is so. I also recall the words of one of the most beloved leaders of the American proletariat, Eugene Debs, who wrote in the Appeal to Reason, I believe towards the end of 1915, in the article “What Shall I Fight For” (I quoted this article at the beginning of 1916 at a public meeting of workers in Berne, Switzerland) — that he, Debs, would rather be shot than vote credits for the present criminal and reactionary war; that he, Debs, knows of only one holy and, from the proletarian standpoint, legitimate war, namely: the war against the capitalists, the war to liberate mankind from wage-slavery.

I am not surprised that Wilson, the head of the American multimillionaires and servant of the capitalist sharks, has thrown Debs into prison. Let the bourgeoisie be brutal to the true internationalists, to the true representatives of the revolutionary proletariat! The more fierce and brutal they are, the nearer the day of the victorious proletarian revolution.

We are blamed for the destruction caused by our revolution. Who are the accusers? The hangers-on of the bourgeoisie, of that very bourgeoisie who, during the four years of the imperialist war, have destroyed almost the whole of European culture and have reduced Europe to barbarism, brutality and starvation. These bourgeoisie now demand we should not make a revolution on these ruins, amidst this wreckage of culture, amidst the wreckage and ruins created by the war, nor with the people who have been brutalised by the war. How humane and righteous the bourgeoisie are!

Their servants accuse us of resorting to terror. The British bourgeoisie have forgotten their 1649, the French bourgeoisie have forgotten their 1793. Terror was just and legitimate when the bourgeoisie resorted to it for their own benefit against feudalism. Terror became monstrous and criminal when the workers and poor peasants dared to use it against the bourgeoisie! Terror was just and legitimate when used for the purpose of substituting one exploiting minority for another exploiting minority. Terror became monstrous and criminal when it began to be used for the purpose of overthrowing every exploiting minority, to be used in the interests of the vast actual majority, in the interests of the proletariat and semi-proletariat, the working class and the poor peasants!

The international imperialist bourgeoisie have slaughtered ten million men and maimed twenty million in “their” war, the war to decide whether the British or the German vultures are to rule the world.

If our war, the war of the oppressed and exploited against the oppressors and the exploiters, results in half a million or a million casualties in all countries, the bourgeoisie will say that the former casualties are justified, while the latter are criminal.

The proletariat will have something entirely different to say.

We know that fierce resistance to the socialist revolution on the part of the bourgeoisie is inevitable in all countries, and that this resistance will grow with the growth of this revolution. The proletariat will crush this resistance; during the struggle against the resisting bourgeoisie it will finally mature for victory and for power.

Let the corrupt bourgeois press shout to the whole world about every mistake our revolution makes. We are not daunted by our mistakes. People have not become saints because the revolution has begun. The toiling classes who for centuries have been oppressed, downtrodden and forcibly held in the vice of poverty, brutality and ignorance cannot avoid mistakes when making a revolution. And, as I pointed out once before, the corpse of bourgeois society cannot be nailed in a coffin and buried. The corpse of capitalism is decaying and disintegrating in our midst, polluting the air and poisoning our lives, enmeshing that which is new, fresh, young and virile in thousands of threads and bonds of that which is old, moribund and decaying.

For every hundred mistakes we commit, and which the bourgeoisie and their lackeys (including our own Mensheviks and Right Socialist-Revolutionaries) shout about to the whole world, 10,000 great and heroic deeds are performed, greater and more heroic because they are simple and inconspicuous amidst the everyday life of a factory district or a remote village, performed by people who are not accustomed (and have no opportunity) to shout to the whole world about their successes.

But even if the contrary were true — although I know such an assumption is wrong — even if we committed 10,000 mistake for every 100 correct actions we performed, even in that case our revolution would be great and invincible, and so it will be in the eyes of world history, because, for the first time, not the minority, not the rich alone, not the educated alone, but the real people, the vast majority of the working people, are themselves building a new life, are by their own experience solving the most difficult problems of socialist organisation .

Every mistake committed in the course of such work, in the course of this most conscientious and earnest work of tens of millions of simple workers and peasants in reorganizing their whole life, every such mistake is worth thousands and millions of “lawless” successes achieved by the exploiting minority — successes in swindling and duping the working people. For only through such mistakes will the workers and peasants learn to build the new life, learn to do without capitalists; only in this way will they hack a path for themselves — through thousands of obstacles — to victorious socialism.

Mistakes are being committed in the course of their revolutionary work by our peasants, who at one stroke, in one night, October 25-26 (old style), 1917, entirely abolished the private ownership of land, and are now, month after month, overcoming tremendous difficulties and correcting their mistakes themselves, solving in a practical way the most difficult tasks of organizing new conditions of economic life, of fighting the kulaks, providing land for the working people (and not for the rich), and of changing to communist large-scale agriculture.

Mistakes are being committed in the course of their revolutionary work by our workers, who have already, after a few months, nationalized almost all the biggest factories and plants, and are learning by hard, everyday work the new task of managing whole branches of industry, are setting the nationalized enterprises going, overcoming the powerful resistance of inertia, petty-bourgeois mentality and selfishness, and, brick by brick, are laying the foundation of new social ties, of a new labor discipline, of a new influence of the workers’ trade unions over their members.

Mistakes are committed in the course of their revolutionary work by our Soviets, which were created as far back as 1905 by a mighty upsurge of the people. The Soviets of Workers and Peasants are a new type of state, a new and higher type of democracy, a form of the proletarian dictatorship, a means of administering the state without the bourgeoisie and against the bourgeoisie. For the first time democracy is here serving the people, the working people, and has ceased to be democracy for the rich as it still is in all bourgeois republics, even the most democratic. For the first time, the people are grappling, on a scale involving one hundred million, with the problem of implementing the dictatorship of the proletariat and semi-proletariat — a problem which, if not solved, makes socialism out of the question.

Let the pedants, or the people whose minds are incurably stuffed with bourgeois-democratic or parliamentary prejudices, shake their heads in perplexity about our Soviets, about the absence of direct elections, for example. These people have forgotten nothing and have learned nothing during the period of the great upheavals of 1914-18. The combination of the proletarian dictatorship with the new democracy for the working people — of civil war with the widest participation of the people in politics — such a combination cannot be brought about at one stroke, nor does it fit in with the outworn modes of routine parliamentary democracy. The contours of a new world, the world of socialism, are rising before us in the shape of the Soviet Republic. It is not surprising that this world does not come into being ready-made, does not spring forth like Minerva from the head of Jupiter.

The old bourgeois-democratic constitutions waxed eloquent about formal equality and right of assembly; but our proletarian and peasant Soviet Constitution casts aside the hypocrisy of formal equality. When the bourgeois republicans overturned thrones they did not worry about formal equality between monarchists and republicans. When it is a matter of overthrowing the bourgeoisie, only traitors or idiots can demand formal equality of rights for the bourgeoisie. “Freedom of assembly” for workers and peasants is not worth a farthing when the best buildings belong to the bourgeoisie. Our Soviets have confiscated all the good buildings in town and country from the rich and have transferred all of them to the workers and peasants for their unions and meetings. This is our freedom of assembly — for the working people! This is the meaning and content of our Soviet, our socialist Constitution!

That is why we are all so firmly convinced that no matter what misfortunes may still be in store for it, our Republic of Soviets is invincible.

It is invincible because every blow struck by frenzied imperialism, every defeat the international bourgeoisie inflict on us, rouses more and more sections of the workers and peasants to the struggle, teaches them at the cost of enormous sacrifice, steels them and engenders new heroism on a mass scale.

In spite of this, we are firmly convinced that we are invincible, because the spirit of mankind will not be broken by the imperialist slaughter. Mankind will vanquish it. And the first country to break the convict chains of the imperialist war was our country. We sustained enormously heavy casualties in the struggle to break these chains, but we broke them. We are free from imperialist dependence, we have raised the banner of struggle for the complete overthrow of imperialism for the whole world to see.

We are now, as it were, in a besieged fortress, waiting for the other detachments of the world socialist revolution to come to our relief. These detachments exist, they are more numerous than ours, they are maturing, growing, gaining more strength the longer the brutalities of imperialism continue. The workers are breaking away from their social traitors—the Gomperses, Hendersons, Renaudels, Scheidemanns and Renners. Slowly but surely the workers are adopting communist, Bolshevik tactics and are marching towards the proletarian revolution, which alone is capable of saving dying culture and dying mankind.

In short, we are invincible, because the world proletarian revolution is invincible.

Vladimir Lenin

August 20, 1918

In the symphony of American politics, the Iowa caucus has once again unveiled its complex dance as the first major contest in the run-up to the presidential election, leaving candidates and observers alike mesmerized in its wake.

Among the cacophony of contenders, one name resonates louder than the rest – Donald J. Trump. The maverick, the disruptor, the maestro of political showmanship, is back, and his showing in Iowa has stirred both supporters and critics into a fervor.

As the Iowa caucus unfurled its drama on Monday, Trump’s presence loomed large. Despite the unorthodox scenario of a former president participating in a caucus typically reserved for contenders and the fact that he has refused to participate in televised debates with his rivals, Trump’s decision to engage in the Hawkeye State signaled a reprise of the political opera that had captivated the nation during his presidency.

His opening gambit was nothing short of spectacular – a strategic dance between traditional Republican values and his unapologetic Trumpian brand. It was a calculated performance and a firm reminder that the GOP, as it stands today, is unmistakably Trump’s domain.

In short: Trump’s influence was palpable and he never had a chance of losing the caucuses. His base, a formidable force that has weathered storms and controversies, mobilized with a zeal reminiscent of a movement rather than a mere political campaign. The Trumpian faithful, armed with red hats and unwavering loyalty, stood as a testament to the enduring impact of the 45th president.

The Iowa caucus, with its intricate dynamics, exposed a conundrum within the GOP. The party finds itself at a crossroads, torn between the allure of Trump’s unapologetic approach and a desire to reclaim a semblance of its pre-Trump identity, with such carbon Republican cutouts as former UN ambassador Nikki Haley and former VP Mike Pence. Trump’s shadow, cast long over the proceedings, poses a challenge that the GOP must confront – embrace the Trumpian legacy or attempt a return to a more traditional conservative narrative, the latter apparently next to impossible.

As the maestro orchestrates his political comeback, the legacy of Trumpism emerges as a defining force. It’s a legacy that transcends party lines and polarizes political discourse. Trump, with his unfiltered rhetoric and dozens of standing felony charges related to his alleged attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, continues to be a lightning rod for both adoration and disdain.

In Iowa, Trump’s legacy was not merely a campaign strategy; it was a spectacle that showcased the enduring influence of a political outsider who disrupted the established norms. The latest polls show that he is edging out incumbent President Joe Biden in a head-to-head, with the most recent Morning Consult poll having Trump ahead by 2 percentage points. Other polls reflect the same basic direction. Additionally, a recent approval poll by McLaughlin and Associates commissioned by America’s New Majority Project for Biden has him at a 60% disapproval rating. Trump has also been leading Biden in seven swing states since December.

Despite all of his controversies, including his failure to responsibly manage the Covid-19 pandemic, his dictatorial handling of the George Floyd protests, and his hints that he wants to transform the US into a dictatorship, Trump has managed to make people nostalgic for a time before Biden. The former vice president was meant to be a technocrat, and someone the American elite could trust to defend their interests and maintain US hegemony. Biden’s administration has failed miserably at this task, consistently losing diplomatically vis-a-vis China and outright losing its proxy war in Ukraine.

Trump’s results in Iowa may not be a mere prelude but rather the opening notes of a political saga that promises unpredictability, fervor, and a relentless pursuit of dominance. Some important Democrats recognize this, including Independent Senator Bernie Sanders, who caucuses with Democrats. Sounding the alarm on Trump’s strong showing, he said: “If Democrats hope to win this November, they must stand with working people and fight for an aggressive progressive agenda.”

This will never happen. Biden, whose own base does not believe he is a suitable candidate, once famously said during the 2020 elections that “nothing would fundamentally change” if he were elected, and so he was correct: Under his watch, the rich have gotten richer, the poor have gotten poorer, and the war machine has kept on a-chuggin’. 

Biden’s mediocrity has made America yearn for Trump once again, and the results of the Iowa caucus show that Trump is the very clear favorite in this race.

Once a nation built on the foundation of meritocracy, where the most qualified people – regardless of race, creed or gender – rose to the top, America is now satisfied to fill positions based on quotas.

US identity politics has been coming under heavy scrutiny of late, following a highly publicized scandal involving three female presidents of leading US universities – Dr Claudine Gay of Harvard, Liz Magill of UPenn, and Dr Sally Kornbluth of MIT. The issue at hand was their refusal to say, amid the hostilities between Hamas and Israel, that calling for genocide on their campuses violated college rules and encouraged harassment.

Following their testimony before Congress, the presidents quickly fell under the laser focus of the internet and it was Harvard’s Claudine Gay, the first non-white person to serve as president of the private university, who attracted the most criticism. And not without cause. It was discovered that Gay had plagiarized dozens of passages in her dissertation work, a serious offense that put the spotlight on DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) hires and on whether Gay had been awarded her lofty position not due to her academic credentials but rather due to the color of her skin, and to her sex.

Only weeks after a lengthy debate on whether Gay was qualified to preside over America’s most prestigious university did she tender her resignation – although returning to her position as a member of the faculty while keeping her whopping $900,000 yearly salary.

This is certainly not an isolated case of DEI thrusting questionable candidates into top jobs, especially as many states now legally mandate the controversial policy. One need only consider the second most powerful position in the US government, the vice presidency, to see where America is heading in a handbasket. It’s not an inside secret that Kamala Harris was a diversity hire; Joe Biden admitted as much on the campaign trail. “If I’m elected president, my Cabinet, my administration will look like the country, and I commit that I will, in fact, appoint a, pick a woman to be vice president.” Later, Biden was even more specific: “Preferably it will be someone who was of color and/or a different gender,” he said.

Now let it sink in: Biden chose a woman of color who was polling at 1% during the Democratic race to challenge Donald Trump in 2020. Certainly, there were other potential candidates with better qualifications he could have chosen.

Who else has been granted a golden elevator ride to the top based on DEI? Look no further than Rachel Levine, the deputy health secretary, who is a transgender woman. While Levine may be qualified to fulfill her duties – after all, she was named as one of USA Today’s women of the year in 2022 – how many other equally (or superior) candidates were overlooked simply because they didn’t check the critical boxes?

Or how about Pete Buttigieg, who is currently serving as the 19th US Secretary of Transportation. Formerly the mayor of South Bend, Indiana (population 103,453), Buttigieg, 42, who came out as gay in 2015, was lifted out of relative obscurity when he ran as a candidate for president in the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries. In the dog-eat-dog world of US power politics, such an astonishing rise to the top is almost unheard of, and only so much can be attributed to Buttigieg’s intelligence and articulation to explain such a leap over dozens of other more qualified contenders. How much of Buttigieg’s overnight success was based largely on his sexual orientation will never be known, but suffice it to say that Democrats were actually fretting at one point that the former mayor “was not gay enough” for their liking.

Meanwhile, the Federal Aviation Administration, overseen by Buttigieg’s Transportation Department that just unveiled its new ‘Diversity and Inclusion’ program to hire people with “severe intellectual disability” and “psychiatric disability” just days after an in-air disaster nearly occurred when a door blew off a Boeing 737 Max, causing more scrutiny about the rush to inclusivity.

“Targeted disabilities are those disabilities that the Federal government, as a matter of policy, has identified for special emphasis in recruitment and hiring,” the FAA’s website read. “They include hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability, and dwarfism.”

The failure of the woke radicals to read the room, however, was never more conspicuous than when the advertisers at Anheuser-Busch chose the transgender social-media influencer Dylan Mulvaney to sing the praises of Bud Light, thus wiping out a huge segment of its working-class, beer-consuming contingency. Mulvaney was clearly not the right ‘man’ for the job.

Or consider the detrimental effect that DEI policies are having in the field of medicine, where medical students, instead of spending as much time as possible learning their demanding trade, are being forced to learn about previously unknown topics, like “implicit bias” and “White privilege.” This is yet another way that DEI is helping to downgrade the workplace.

“There is a finite amount of time in residency training to mold a competent surgeon from a fumble-fingered intern,” Dr Richard Bosshardt wrote in a recent article for the National Review. “To assume that we can continue to turn out excellent surgeons and simultaneously burden surgical education with the degree of time-consuming indoctrination in anti-racism and DEI demanded by the ACS tool kit is, at best, foolish and futile, and, at worst, dangerous to our patients.”

A person may be absolutely qualified for any job regardless of their race, gender or sexual orientation. However, what is happening in the US is that many people who are lacking in the necessary qualifications are getting an unjustified career boost because their lifestyle(s) check one or more of the required boxes. Or they are being unnecessarily compelled to learn the new mantra of wokeness instead of concentrating on the basics of their field. Either way, the US campus and workplace is slow to understand that instead of working to eliminate discrimination, DEI policies are now the primary cause of it. Reducing the pool of applicants for jobs is not only a gross insult to the ‘American way’ but also promises to strip the workplace of its professionalism. Americans need better.

Germany is in severe crisis. Between a tanking economy and an increasingly unpopular government, the country has begun to show just how much stress it is under. Half a year ago, the head of German carmaker Volkswagen warned that “the roof is on fire,” while The Economist concluded that “disaster,” meaning not just the decline but collapse of the German car industry, is “no longer inconceivable.”

At this moment, the wintry beginning of 2024, German farmers are staging large-scale and escalating protests and forcing the ruling coalition into concessions, the trains are not running on time due to a strike, the country’s wholesale sector has dropped to pandemic-level pessimism, “dampening hopes of a rapid rebound in Europe’s largest economy,” as reported by Bloomberg, residential property prices are in record decline, and the office real estate market “has collapsed,” according to leading German news magazine Der Spiegel.

The Economist finds Germany to be “down” politically as well – in fact, self-relegated – from its status as leader of Europe (or, at least, the EU) to less than second fiddle (that would be France, perhaps): while “Angela Merkel was the continent’s undoubted leader, Olaf Scholz, has not taken on her mantle.”

That is a very British understatement. In reality, in the toxic yet key relationship with the US, Germany, with its hapless attempt to transfer the management concept of “servant leadership” to geopolitics, has now subordinated itself so thoroughly to American neocon-type interests that it has no leverage left at all. Because once you make your loyalty unconditional, you will be taken for granted: Selling oneself may be inevitable for any but the greatest powers. Selling oneself for free takes a special lack of foresight.

We could go on heaping up examples of malaise. But the gist is simple: Germans may love to lay it on thick when it comes to venting their misery and “angst” (I should know, being German), but, clearly, something has to – and will – give. The question is what. 

As the name BSW suggests, the new party is, in part, a vehicle for Wagenknecht’s considerable personal political acumen and charisma. Opponents of “Red Sarah,” as the popular, generally right-leaning newspaper Bild still calls her, like to stereotype her as an “icon.” Yet, wiser from the failure of an earlier attempt to strike out on her own (under the label “Aufstehen,” roughly: “Stand Up”), this time, Wagenknecht has gone out of her way and made sure to do her homework, preparing a well-crafted organization, a set of junior leaders around her, and, last but not least, a solid program. This is politically significant: Unlike “Aufstehen,” the BSW will not fold quickly under the weight of its own problems.

On the contrary, the party’s chances of making a strong impact from the get-go are very good, as polls consistently indicate. The most recent one – commissioned by Bild and carried out just days after the party’s founding by a top pollster – shows that 14% of Germans would vote for the BSW in a federal election.

For comparison: the SPD, traditionally one of the core parties of Germany and the political home of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, reaches 14% as well. For the BSW this is an impressive figure, but for the SPD it is catastrophic. Meanwhile the Greens, the second partner in Berlin’s governing “Ampel” coalition, are at 12%. The FDP, the third “Ampel” component, would fail to get any seats at all (due to not crossing Germany’s electoral threshold of 5%). Sarah Wagenknecht’s own former party, Die Linke, would suffer the same fate. The only two parties that would do better than the BSW are the traditional center-right CDU (27%) and the populist-right/far-right AfD (18%).

Representatives of the threatened traditional parties and their expert and mainstream media surrogates often denounce the challengers from the wings as extremists or, at least, irresponsible populists (just another way of saying “demagogue”). But they only have themselves to blame: The true cause of this tectonic movement is the failure of the traditionals. The challengers’ rise marks a reaction to it. Wagenknecht is right about this: Germany’s “democracy is imperiled most of all” by government policies that make ever more citizens feel left alone or alienated.

Against that background, the BSW promises more generous social policies, such as on education, wages, and pensions (and higher taxes for the wealthy). As Germany is doing badly economically, this will resonate. And Wagenknecht, a political “natural,” knows how to signal: She has just taken the side of the protesting farmers – as do the majority (68%) of Germans, according to polls.

Mainstream media are making desperate attempts to frame the rebellious farmers as serving extremists and somehow playing into the hands of – guess which country! – Russia. The ever more besieged minister of the economy Robert Habeck has even detected financing by – guess who! – “Putin!” (without, of course, providing any evidence). This time, these tired scare tactics are failing to catch on. Wagenknecht’s public call for chancellor Olaf Scholz to apologize to the farmers will fare better.

Crucially, Wagenknecht and the BSW have combined socially left approaches with a set of traditionally conservative stances, challenging, for instance, the hypertrophic development of new gender categories or, in general, “symbolical struggles” over hyper-sensitive terminology, so fashionable with what Wagenknecht dismisses as the “lifestyle Left.”

While this push-back against political correctness is a largely symbolic, though effective, operation, migration is a more substantial field. There as well, Wagenknecht has adopted positions closer to the right and center than the liberal left, stressing the need for control and limits. The fact that she herself had a Persian father and that prominent BSW heads are also non-ethnic Germans gives her a strong starting position for this kind of debate, shielding her points from dismissal as racist or xenophobic.

In reality, Wagenknecht has positioned her new party to resist the push for ever more confrontation with Moscow, especially with regard to Ukraine. At this moment, for instance, she is speaking up against the delivery of German Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine, which is the latest fad among the insatiable “miracle weapon” addicts. More generally, she is demanding to shift from a policy of military confrontation by proxy to one of negotiation and compromise, which makes, of course, perfect sense.

For her enemies, there is an irony waiting to catch them: They may hope that accusing Wagenknecht of being too friendly toward Russia will weaken her appeal. Yet that ship has sailed. The days of making hay with unbridled neo-McCarthyism are ending. It is more likely, fortunately, that the BSW’s reasonable approach to foreign policy will only get it more sympathy and voters. As it should. Because remember: At this point, Germany is so dependent on the US that it is treated not only like a vassal, but like a vassal whose wishes and interests do not count. Even Germans who distrust Russia will come to understand that this is fundamentally unsound. In its own national interest, Germany must re-establish some balance by rebuilding its relationship with Russia.

The European Union has put together a preliminary agreement that includes a €10,000 cap on cash payments to address the challenges posed by money laundering and the financing of terrorism. The accord, reached through negotiations among member states and the European Parliament this week, seeks to protect citizens and the EU financial system from illicit financial activities.

However, the proposed legislation raises privacy concerns and fears of state surveillance and government control over how people spend their money, as well as potential abuse of the new powers.

The newly established regulations will impose the cash payment limit on entities engaged in financial services, banking, real estate agencies, asset management firms, casinos, and merchants. Moreover, these entities will be obligated to verify the identity of individuals making cash payments within the range of €3,000 to €10,000.

While member countries have the flexibility to set lower limits for cash payments, the interim agreement introduces a heightened focus on monitoring high-net-worth individuals, a provision advocated for by Members of the European Parliament (MEPs). 

Another late night, another deal! @Europarl_EN and @EUCouncil have agreed the new Anti-Money Laundering Regulation.

This means strong, consistent rules across the EU in the fight against dirty money: a game changer.

Congratulations @EU2024BE @DamienCAREME @EeroHeinaluoma pic.twitter.com/xnFL9znOcP

— Mairead McGuinness (@McGuinnessEU) January 18, 2024

In an expansion of the scope of oversight, the interim agreement now encompasses a significant segment of the cryptocurrency sector. Crypto service providers will be required to authenticate customer identities for transactions equal to or exceeding €1,000.

Beginning in 2029, the regulatory framework will be extended to include professional football clubs and agents, which will be categorized as obligated entities. This classification mandates these entities authenticate customer identities, monitor transactions, and promptly report any suspicious money transfers to the financial intelligence services of their respective countries.

The agreement empowers member countries to exclude football clubs and agents from their national lists if they are determined not to pose a risk.

National financial intelligence services and other competent authorities will gain access to information on ownership, bank accounts, and land and property registries. These authorities will also supervise the transfer of ownership for specific luxury goods, setting thresholds at €250,000 for cars and €7.5 million for yachts and aircraft.

Skepticism has been cast on the effectiveness of these regulations, prompting queries about their ability to genuinely combat money laundering and fostering calls for a more inclusive strategy that addresses the burgeoning cryptocurrency sector.

Conversely, some interpret the EU’s cash payment cap as a positive stride toward meeting the needs of the contemporary economy. They acknowledge the evolving financial landscapes and the digitization of cash flows, including the growing influence of central bank digital currencies. However, there are those who condemn these measures as excessive state control. The ongoing discourse reflects a polarized perspective on the EU’s actions, encapsulating concerns about potential abuses of power and the necessity of adapting payment methods to contemporary needs. This debate underscores the intricate dynamics between financial regulations, surveillance, and individual freedoms in the digital age. 

It used to be a point of pride for Western nations that their citizens were so eager to go play Rambo in Ukraine with dreams of 'smoking' Russians. Or at least they didn’t seem too keen on stopping them. Now, they don’t even want to admit they exist. 

Such patriots, fighting for nothing less than Western freedom! It all seemed like fun and games until the missiles started flying and they realized (too late, in some cases) that the Russian army isn’t just a non-playable entity in a video game. 

Just this week, Russia’s Defence Ministry said it had hit a nest of 60 foreign fighters in Kharkov — most of whom, it claims, were French. If true – although the French government denies that’s the case – it would raise a lot of questions, like why are French nationals fighting Russia in Ukraine? Who are these people, exactly? Why the Gallic shrug from Paris over their presence in an armed conflict zone when the ubiquity of Western intelligence in Ukraine suggests that France should be well aware of what’s happening?

The French government has already proven that it has a really good idea of what French citizens are doing in Ukraine. Last year, French domestic intelligence has said that of the 400 French fighters in Ukraine, about 30 are already known as neo-Nazis. Russia has even said that it’s investigating alleged crimes committed by some of these French mercenaries. French National Assemblyman Frederic Mathieu of the left-wing France Insoumise party alerted the French interior minister last year to the threat of French citizens who head over to Ukraine to hang out with Ukrainian fighters, thinking that it’s a neo-Nazi Disneyland, and then come back as a terrorist risk themselves. The head of the French domestic intelligence service (the DGSI) suggested the same in the French press in July 2023, citing the mercenaries' “neo-Nazi inspiration.”

One of the French mercenaries had previously been featured in reporting on neo-Nazis in the French army. He was in the alpine hunter division, so no doubt could teach a thing or two to the “Snow ISIS” neo-Nazis trained and equipped by NATO allies against Russia in the run-up to the conflict. He reportedly also has a tattoo of the SS loyalty pledge to Adolf Hitler, and is said to have written on Facebook in 2018 that migrants should get a “good bullet in the back of the head.”  

The previous year, Hungary nabbed another French neo-Nazi, previously accused of murdering an Argentinian rugby player, claiming that he was en route to fight in Ukraine.

So at least one French elected official expressed worry last year over the potential proliferation of extremism upon the return of these fighters from Ukraine, and about the influence on them of Azov battalion neo-Nazis, even as these same “heroes” are invited and praised as guest speakers at the prestigious Stanford University, and generally glorified as defenders of Western democracy and freedom.

The Western establishment politicians don’t generally seem keen to discuss some of the inconvenient details that have come out about their neo-Nazi protégés. Nor do they seem interested in explaining what some of their citizens, including former military, have been doing hanging out with them in Ukraine. Not exactly a convenient exploratory discussion to be having when the French government has been trying to dismiss Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “denazification” argument as justification for military intervention in Ukraine.

The incident also risks raising questions over the role that French private military contractors may be playing in Ukraine. While some French citizens might be drawn to Ukraine for the kicks and giggles and fascist camaraderie, others may be seduced by financial opportunity. And that’s a conversation that Paris probably doesn’t want to have, particularly given that French law dating back to 2003 prohibits mercenary activity. 

But even European officials have given Paris side-eye as far back as 2012, with Polish politician Tomasz Piotr Poręba asking the European Commission to address French military and security companies that “have their head offices or registered offices in the European Union — in particular in countries such as the United Kingdom and France — and services are outsourced on the EU market by public and private organisations from both within and outside the European Union.” 

Some talking heads in the French press have chalked down Moscow’s French mercenary strike claim to little more than manufactured “media blowback” against French President Emmanuel Macron in the wake of his announcement earlier this week that Paris would provide 40 long-range Scalp missiles for Kiev.

“Another clumsy Russian manipulation,” the French Foreign Ministry called it, adding that “France has no 'mercenaries' either in Ukraine or anywhere else, unlike some people.” But the Russian foreign Ministry was already saying back in July 2023 that since June 2022, French PMCs “have been bringing onboard volunteers to participate in hostilities on Kiev’s side…French nationals taking part in the hostilities in Ukraine often get there via foreign PMCs or the Ukrainian International Legion.” 

There’s one way to settle the debate over whom exactly perished in the incident once and for all. Moscow should just call Paris’ bluff and release their identities. Let’s call it an open source global collaboration in the interests of transparency. 

On January 15, Maldives President Muizzu’s government set a March 15 deadline for India to withdraw its troops from his country, following months of negotiations on the matter and a recent diplomatic spat over “derogatory comments” that several of the island nation’s officials made on social media regarding India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi. 

The current tension between Muizzu’s government and New Delhi has several contexts. 

There is a general one that does not apply to the Maldives alone. India, as a big country, looms very large in its neighborhood, creating insecurity among the much smaller neighbors, irrespective of its policies. These smaller neighbors fear interference in their internal affairs, and harbor concerns about being dominated and becoming over-dependent. 

Often the bigger neighbor is used as a whipping boy in internal political battles. It is commonly accused of being hegemonic and treating the smaller neighboring nations as its “backyard.” This situation is not unique to India – other large countries with smaller neighbors face similar problems.

Since 2013, when Beijing conceptualized its Belt and Road Initiative, this card has become more effective. Under this initiative, China has been building large infrastructure and other projects in all the countries noted above. China’s “maritime silk route” strategy in the Indian Ocean, and the acquisition of port facilities in India’s neighborhood, which also facilitates the movement of its naval and “research” vessels, is a strategy in which India’s smaller neighbors are willing to cooperate.

Another context that cannot be ignored is India’s own concerns – especially those in the strategic security domain. 

India-China relations deteriorated sharply in 2020 after the deadly clashes in the Galwan Valley in Ladakh region; in the aftermath, up to 50,000 troops on each side still face each other at close range with little sign of de-escalation. As a result, China’s overtures to India’s smaller neighbors have become a big worry for New Delhi. Therefore, China’s enhanced presence in the region affects India’s relations with its neighbors, raising concerns at the bilateral level.

Zoom in on the Maldives. China has been paying a great deal of attention to the island nation in recent years. It has undertaken major infrastructure projects in the country and sought to acquire islands in the archipelago for “development” purposes. To make this happen, the Abdulla Yameen government (2013-18), which was oriented towards Beijing and antagonistic towards New Delhi, amended the country’s constitution in 2015. The amendment allowed foreigners to own land if they were ready to invest an amount of $1 billion or more. The move raised concerns that the land could be used by foreign powers for military purposes. The law was eventually repealed in 2019 by the new government. 

There is another, more complex angle, hidden from the eyes of many commenters. The Maldives’ internal politics is deeply divisive, with a great deal of volatility. It spills into its foreign policy, including its relations with India and China. Ties with New Delhi have been traditionally close, with India giving importance and priority to the Maldives as a neighbor. 

In 1988, New Delhi thwarted a coup attempt against then-President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom (1978 to 2008). India was the first country to respond when the tsunami struck the Maldives in 2004, and when a water crisis hit Male in 2014. India also helped the nation in preventing a measles outbreak in January 2020 by supplying it with 30,000 vaccine doses, and in providing rapid and generous assistance during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Out of  Maldives’ 1,192 islands, 187 are inhabited. The country has a large Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of 923,322 square kilometers. Monitoring the EEZ and otherwise ensuring its own maritime security presents a major challenge, which India has helped with as a longstanding partner in assisting the island nation. Since 1988, defense cooperation between the two countries has expanded. 

During Mohamed Nasheed’s presidency (2008-2012), India supplied its neighbor with radars and helicopters and built a military hospital. New Delhi also provides medical training and humanitarian and disaster response assistance and helped with search and rescue operations as well as medical evacuations. India has been the Maldives’ partner for hydrographic mapping and maritime domain awareness. Indian pilots and engineers operate the aircraft which have been gifted to the nation. New Delhi offers the largest number of training opportunities for the Maldivian National Defense Forces, meeting around 70% of their defense training requirements.

President Muizzu seems bent on confronting India and is seeking an end to existing defense arrangements. He has already revoked the Hydrographic Survey Agreement. Male also skipped the latest national security advisor-level meeting, the Colombo Security Conclave, a maritime security grouping formed in 2011 in which the Maldives is a member state along with India, Sri Lanka and Mauritius.

President Muizzu made ‘India Out’ the main plank of his election campaign, contrasting with the Solih government’s ‘India First’ policy, which underlines the toxic political competition in the country between those who understand the positive aspects of Maldivian ties with New Delhi and those who seem to be guided by foreign interests seeking to dilute India’s presence in the country.

India did not interfere in the election process, even when the opposition was vociferously campaigning for India Out. This should set to rest the propaganda which bemoans India’s “hegemonic”, “big-brother” attitude towards the Maldives and its lack of respect for the island nation’s sovereignty. 

The reality is, that in addition to a divided polity at home and the perceived utility of countering India with the ‘China card', the “Islamization” of the Maldives is a driving force behind this antagonism towards India by a section of the Maldivian population. 

The recent squabble between the Maldives and India was caused by three junior Maldivian ministers making derogatory remarks, personally insulting Prime Minister Modi and mocking the Hindu religion. The reaction in Indian social media has been vigorous, with calls for a boycott on Maldivian tourism. 

The three ministers have been suspended and the opposition parties have condemned the offensive remarks against India. India summoned the Maldivian ambassador in New Delhi, but has desisted from making any public statement. All in all, it is not surprising that unlike in the past, when newly elected presidents of the country chose India as their first destination for a state visit, President Muizzu’s first went to Turkey and then – China.

Maldives will import staple foods such as rice, sugar and flour from other sources such as Turkey.New Delhi will of course meet the political challenge that President Muizzu poses to bilateral relations and the greater space he is opening for increased security threats to India by unfriendly non-regional powers. The ‘China challenge’ is not new for India, as under former President Abdulla Yameen China expanded its presence in Maldives. 

India is pragmatic enough to understand the dynamics at play, which it has faced before, in the Maldives and elsewhere in its neighborhood. It has continued to pursue its own priorities, with more trade, more India-financed infrastructure projects, more health care projects, and the like. A mutually beneficial India-Maldives relationship has considerable support in the country. What internal consequences President Muizzu’s hostile policies towards India will have remains to be seen. India will be patient and respect Maldivian sovereignty. 

India believes in the Neighborhood First policy. If Maldives under Muizzu repudiates a Neighborhood First policy of its own, India will wait and watch.

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Failing to achieve its primary objectives of crushing Hamas and recapturing its detainees by force, the Israeli military recently announced that it is moving into what it calls “phase 3” of its war in Gaza.

Despite claims to the contrary by the Israeli leadership, around a dozen armed groups based in the besieged Palestinian territory continue to wage daily battles from north to south. Having inflicted what UN aid chief Martin Griffiths called “the worst ever” humanitarian crisis, killing roughly 30,000 Palestinians in the process, the invading Israeli army has very little to show for it militarily. 

In light of the military debacle in Gaza, where Hamas has only grown in popularity and credibility, the attention of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seems to have shifted outside the borders of Palestine-Israel. This is likely down to the fact that the Israeli PM knows his political career is effectively over once the war on Gaza ends. On January 2, Israel carried out an assassination strike in Dahiyeh, a southern suburb of Beirut, killing the deputy head of Hamas’ political bureau, Salah al-Arouri, and six others who were with him. This constituted the first Israeli strike on the Lebanese Capital since the Hezbollah-Israel war of 2006.

Following the 2006 war between Lebanon and Israel, the Secretary General of Lebanese Hezbollah, Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah, has repeatedly made it clear that the targeting of the nation's Capital is a red line for the armed group. Israel’s war government knew this and that the attack merited a response by Hezbollah, which has been engaged in frequent armed exchanges along the Lebanese southern border since January 8.

Israel is, however, testing the Lebanese party, having gone a step further on January 8 by assassinating Hezbollah infantry commander Wissam Taweel in an airstrike on his car in southern Lebanon. In response to the two assassination attacks, Hezbollah launched strikes on Israel’s northern command center in Safad and the northern military base of Meron, with precision missiles, drones, and rockets. Despite these attacks representing a qualitative jump in the level of targets that the Lebanese group is willing to hit, they were strategic and clearly designed to prevent the situation from deteriorating into a full-scale war. 

Another important operation by Hezbollah was the targeting of an Israeli Merkava tank from a distance of 8km using an improvised guided anti-tank weapon. This served as a warning to Israel’s military leadership, indicating that any attempt to invade Lebanese territory will be combated from significant distances and will likely result in failure.

Although the full capabilities of Hezbollah are not fully understood, we know from publicly available data and estimates that the group has a standing military force of around 100,000 fighters, armed with hundreds of thousands of missiles, many precision-guided. It is widely understood that in the event of war the Lebanese armed group is capable of leveling entire suburbs in cities like Tel Aviv and Haifa. The US knows all of this and has publicly expressed its opposition to a war between Lebanon and Israel, yet its actions in the region say something different.

To begin with, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has on two occasions bypassed Congress to transfer hundreds of millions worth of munitions to Israel, while providing unconditional all-round support for the Israeli offensive against Gaza. While giving Israel the green light to commit any action it likes, and refusing to reprimand it for extrajudicial assassinations in Lebanon, the Biden administration ordered an assassination strike of its own in Iraq. The US launched airstrikes in Baghdad that killed Mushtaq al-Jawari, a commander of the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units (PMU). The assassination of an Iraqi commander considered an integrated part of Iraq’s official security apparatus was a reckless move that led to the Iraqi prime minister stating the US had violated its agreements for remaining in the country. 

Meanwhile in Yemen, as part of its multi-national “Operation Prosperity Guardian” the US military launched strikes on three boats belonging to the Ansar Allah (Houthi) movement, killing ten, and followed this up with a joint US-UK air attack on targets throughout the country. While Houthi forces, who lead a government from the capital city Sana’a, have not killed anyone in their attacks on commercial ships heading to the Israeli port of Eilat, the US quickly acted to escalate tensions. This was in preference to listening to the simple Houthi demand that aid be allowed into Gaza to keep the population from starving to death.

Hezbollah has no interest in a war at this time, as an end to the war in Gaza would represent a massive victory for the Palestinian national movement and promote an end to the illegal siege of the Gaza Strip, in addition to triggering negotiations for a Palestinian State. If Hezbollah were to engage in a war with Israel, focus would shift to Lebanon and even the reconstruction efforts in Gaza would be undermined in a post-war scenario. It is apparent that Hezbollah is acting to draw Israel’s resources to the north and to play a supporting role in favor of the Palestinians, which has led to an extremely measured approach from the group, even in the face of an attack on Beirut. 

The only ones who could benefit from an Israeli-Lebanese war are current Israeli military, political, and intelligence leaders. Israeli leaders have failed to secure any major military achievements in Gaza. They know their time in power is limited and appear poised to drag their own nation into a war that cannot be won. In the event of a war with Lebanon, which would certainly spark a wider regional conflict, Israel would hope to drag in the US military. Such a conflict could lead to hundreds of thousands, if not millions of deaths. All of this could be stopped in a day if the Biden administration simply put its foot down, yet it seems to possess neither the motivation nor the competence to prevent this doomsday scenario.

“The strikes in Yemen were necessary, proportionate, and consistent with international law.” With this statement, the United States delegate to the United Nations defended the joint US-UK military strikes against targets affiliated with the Houthi militia undertaken on the night of January 12, 2024.

The irony of this statement is that it was made before a body, the United Nations Security Council, which had not authorized any such action, thereby eliminating any claim to legitimacy that could possibly be made by the US.

The Charter of the UN specifies two conditions under international law in which military force can be used. One is in the conduct of legitimate self-defense as articulated in Article 51 of the Charter. The other is in accordance with the authority granted by the UN Security Council through a resolution passed under Chapter VII of the Charter.

British Foreign Minister David Cameron cited the UN Security Council in his justification of the UK’s involvement in the attacks on Yemen, claiming that the Council had “made clear” that the “Houthi must halt attacks in the Red Sea.”

While the Security Council had issued a resolution demanding that the Houthi cease their attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea, this resolution was not passed under Chapter VII, and therefore neither the US nor the UK had any authority under international law to carry out their attacks on Yemen.

The main problem with this argument is that the Houthis had not attacked Americans, either at home or abroad. To the extent that US forces had previously engaged weapons fired by the Houthis, they had done so to shield non-American assets – either the State of Israel or international shipping – from Houthi attack. Under no circumstances could the US argue that it had been attacked by the Houthis.

The US attacks, Biden asserted, “were carried out to deter and weaken the Houthi ability to launch future attacks.”

This language suggests that the US was seeking to eliminate an imminent threat to commercial maritime operations in international shipping lanes. To comply with the requirements of international law regarding collective self-defense – the only possible argument for legitimacy since the US itself had not been attacked – the US would need to demonstrate that it was part of a collective of nation states that were either under attack by the Houthis or were threatened with imminent attack of a nature that precluded seeking Security Council intervention. 

In late December 2023, the US had, together with several other nations, gathered military forces in what was known as Operation Prosperity Guardian to deter Houthi attacks on maritime shipping that had been taking place since November 19, 2023.

US Central Command (CENTCOM), which is responsible for operations in the Middle East, issued a press release shortly after Washington launched a second attack against a Houthi radar installation that it claims was involved in targeting shipping in the Red Sea.

The statement claimed the attack on the Houthi radar installation was a “follow-on action” of the strikes carried out on January 12, and had “no association with and are separate from Operation Prosperity Guardian, a defensive coalition of over 20 countries operating in the Red Sea, Bab al-Mandeb Strait, and the Gulf of Aden.”

By distancing itself from Operation Prosperity Guardian, the US has fatally undermined any notion of pre-emptive collective self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter, highlighting the unilateral, and inherently illegal, nature of its military attacks on Yemen.

In Thomas Mann’s seminal novel ‘The Magic Mountain’, a tuberculosis sanatorium nestled high in the Swiss Alps comes to represent Europe’s bourgeois society on the eve of the violent upheavals of World War I. This week, in the very same town of Davos that inspired Mann’s epic work, the annual World Economic Forum is taking place.

I am not the first to make the connection. In fact, the decision by founder Klaus Schwab to host the event in Davos was made with an awareness of the symbolic connection to Mann’s novel that the venue would provide. A 1981 article by Time magazine titled ‘Magic Meeting Place’ trumpeted the location’s ability to get business and political leaders to relax and speak candidly. By all appearances, Schwab was after just such liberating effects for the substantive and lively discussions he envisioned.

These days, a reference to the novel is as appropriate as ever, but hardly in the glowing terms of the 1981 Time article. If Mann’s novel offers a snapshot of Europe as it careens toward a disastrous war, what Davos now represents is a similarly allegorical portrait of a moribund society.

Every bit as cloistered as Mann’s Berghof Sanatorium and exhibiting more than a touch of fin-de-siecle excess – not to mention an insufferable messianic flair – the contemporary Davos gathering is where an out-of-touch global elite doubles down on the exact same set of behaviors and policies that have given rise among the masses to the pejorative term Davos Man. 

The hypocrisy of the world’s movers and shakers arriving in Davos by private jet to opine about the need to reduce emissions has elicited plenty of sardonic wit. So have the fully booked escort services and cocaine-infused ‘bunga bunga’ parties. For many, Davos represents everything that is wrong with the world and it has become something of a punching bag for all manner of angst.

The historian Arnold Toynbee, a giant in the field of the philosophy of history in the 20th century, developed as one of his central theses the idea that what kills a civilization is a split between its leadership – encompassing not just the rulers but the entire elite class – and everybody else. In a rising civilization, the leaders form what he calls a “creative minority” (referring to a small cohort, not a racial minority) that earns the respect of the people it leads by responding to problems and implementing solutions that actually work.

However, trouble comes when a civilization’s vital energies are exhausted as this class of people ceases to innovate and no longer offers creative responses to real problems. Instead, they turn into a despotic minority, merely insisting over and over and ever more stridently that their preferred solutions be applied even as it becomes increasingly apparent that they aren’t working.

“A creative minority degenerates into a dominant minority which attempts to retain by force a position which it has ceased to merit,” Toynbee wrote.

One must be careful about applying such a broad generalization of history too literally and, of course, Toynbee was surveying a horizon much larger than the evolution of the WEF. However, there is no question that, in observing the contemporary Western elite – especially in its most concentrated form at Davos – Toynbee’s analysis strikes a chord.

The evolution of the WEF does seem to almost mimic Toynbee’s sweeping portrayal of cultural decline. Initially held under the decidedly unpretentious title ‘European Management Symposium’ in 1971, the gathering began as a serious and sober affair that sought to bring together actual business leaders to search for creative solutions to various issues. It eventually outgrew its first format and in 1987 was renamed the World Economic Forum. But the revamped forum actually enjoyed a string of early substantive successes: diplomatic talks between Türkiye and Greece in 1988 and a meeting between South African Apartheid-era leader F.W. de Klerk and activist Nelson Mandela in 1992.

As Vanity Fair pointed out in a trenchant article last year, Schwab “has developed the Forum from an earnest meeting of policy wonks into a glittering assembly of the world’s richest people.” 

The article continues, noting that “the core activities of the Forum – the sober speeches and panel discussions – have long been eclipsed by the extracurricular events that dominate Davos outside its official auspices: cocktail parties and banquets hosted by global banks and technology companies.”

Participants at the event “boast about having attended zero panels and never setting foot inside the main assembly hall – a cynical mark of sophistication – while celebrating their invites to notorious soirees full of privileged debauchery.” 

The gradual transformation of the forum into a see-and-be-seen event has coincided quite closely with a deepening lack of trust in the global elite, and the burgeoning view that this very same elite is making a mess of running the affairs of the world.

‘The Magic Mountain’ concludes as World War I is just starting. When the novel’s protagonist finally returns to the world below after seven years at Berghof, he is thrust right into the war – and thus into a world he had been avoiding during his long sojourn. It is a haunting image.

If there is a new Thomas Mann in our midst, future generations may be treated to a cutting portrait of a sclerotic and out-of-touch ruling elite breathing the same rarified air and gazing out upon the same imposing Alps as the German novelist described 100 years ago before descending to the chaos below that they themselves had such a hand in creating.

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I spent a week with farmers protesting near the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. Too bad Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government didn’t get down off its high horse and do the same. It was a missed opportunity to benefit from a much-needed mugging by reality. 

Instead, the Interior Ministry contented itself by preemptively framing the protesters as susceptible to far-right infiltration. Scholz said that “rage is being stoked deliberately” by “extremists”. When asked about this concept, the unanimous response among the farmers was laughter, eye rolling, or one-line jokes. If you want to put down a dog, just say it has rabies – or has been hanging out with the far-right.

Despite the protest taking place right across the street from the German parliament, farmers said the only officials whose presence was noticed, as they inquired about the protesters’ concerns, were from the right-wing Alternative for Deutschland. Oh no, looks they’re co-opting already! Or maybe they’re just doing their jobs in trying to actually grasp the “ground truth” of the situation rather than framing it up with a convenient narrative in an effort to dismiss it. 

When a government official finally graced the protest with his presence on January 15, at the apex of the week-long protest, it was Finance Minister Christian Lindner, who took to the stage and loudly proclaimed that the government basically had no money. “I can't promise you more state aid from the federal budget. But we can fight together for you to enjoy more freedom and respect for your work,” he said. 

I’m not even a farmer – although I was raised on a farm in Canada – and still I find this infuriating. Mostly just as a woman, though. Because Lindner sounds like a guy on a date who says that he’s broke, but instead of just splitting the check, he wants you to pay for the whole thing. The farmers aren’t asking Berlin to pay their bills. What they want is for Team Scholz to refrain from taking even more of their hard-earned money in the form of taxes on diesel fuel for their farm vehicles, particularly at a time when government efforts to stick it to Russia and to the climate-change bogeyman, by making fossil fuel energy less available and affordable, is making it increasingly harder for them to do the job of feeding the country. 

Here’s a clue. Scholz said last fall that Germany had to “be able to help Ukraine on the basis of solidarity. We support Ukraine in its defense struggle, with financial resources and weapons.” Yet German farmers are not only told to eat cake, Marie Antoinette style, but also to pay up for the government’s screw-ups. Team Scholz blasted a hole in its own budget when it transferred cash from a Covid fund into a “climate and transformation fund,” but then couldn’t pay it all back, leaving a €17 billion ($18.5 billion) deficit and a scramble to somehow recoup the funds through austerity measures. So Scholz wants the farmers to pay his bills, but also to pay for his mistakes. And if they refuse, they must have been infiltrated by far-right extremists. 

Unlike this government, farmers pride themselves on productivity and self-sufficiency, which is why they’re juicy targets for the gold diggers in the Bundestag. When floods hit Germany, it was farmers, they say, who were on the front lines rescuing people even before the army was on-site. Throughout the entire protest week of sub-zero temperatures, farmers weathered the elements with several large wood-burning heaters fueled by a massive bin of chopped firewood. Many slept in their trucks or tractors all week. It’s hardly surprising that firefighters were captured on social media expressing their support and admiration for this group, as a large number of farmers also serve as volunteer firefighters in their communities.  

While he’s hiding across the street in his office, being serenaded by big-rig honking, Scholz’s popularity is hovering around 20%, while 69% of Germans support the farmers’ protests, according to an INSA poll from earlier this month. Has it dawned on the bundeskanzler that if such an overwhelmingly large swath of the population, from the right to the left, all agrees on something, then maybe he just has a “you” problem? 

The solidarity and unity witnessed in front of the Brandenburg Gate (a symbol of division once located in no man’s land between East and West Berlin) was astounding – from a woman in a hijab handing out soup from a basket to Berliners of migrant origin walking among the participants and expressing their support. Not only did trucks join the tractors, but word got out that farmers and truckers from the Netherlands were on the Autobahn’s A2 and heading towards Berlin. There was also buzz that Polish and Russian truckers were joining forces en route from the Polish border, just hours away.

It’s not just farmers and truckers who are fed up. The folks who actually drive the Deutsche Bahn trains went on strike in the same week as the farmers. While the government is haggling with them over their union’s request of a €3,000 ($3,265) one-time employee bonus to cover government-driven inflation, it managed to nonetheless find several million more euros for each of nine top executives of the wholly government-owned company.

Dutch farmers, in solidarity with their German counterparts, were themselves pressured by their government to give up their farmland to state buyouts in light of European climate directives mandating reductions in nitrogen produced by defecating cows.

The French farmers’ union (FNSEA) director, Arnaud Rousseau, said in supporting the plight of German farmers that “these movements all have the same root cause: the growing gap between the reality of farmers’ practices on the ground and the administrative decisions centralised in Brussels.”

He added that 55% of French chicken now comes from Ukraine, undercutting local farmers. Similarly, Polish and Romanian farmers are now actively convoying against the flooding of their own markets with cheap Ukrainian farming products as a result of the EU lifting restrictions on goods and services for Ukraine providers until at least June 2024.

Meanwhile, Eastern European truckers have protested against Ukrainian drivers undercutting their jobs in the EU by blocking the Ukrainian border to the point where a 127-hour wait ensued, making it sound like trade between neighboring Poland and Ukraine could have been faster via the Suez Canal. 

“We've taken the farmers' arguments to heart and revised our proposals. A good compromise," Scholz said, referring to his plan to now slow roll the clawing back of tax breaks instead of doing them all at once. This is like demanding that someone pay for your broke arsch in installments – all while you keep throwing cash at a joker best known for regaling crowds with pant-less, hands-free piano routines before he was elected president of Ukraine. And also because you’re obsessed with counting carbon molecules in the air like a Hollywood starlet counts calories. 

Scholz’s political fate, and that of Germany’s establishment, is in his own hands. And he should start by taking those hands out of the farmers’ pockets before he regime-changes himself right out of power at the next election.

The Maldives is an archipelago nation just south of India. With a population of just half a million people, the islands may seem inconsequential, and the small republic is mostly known as a paradise getaway for tourists.

Despite this, the nation is, in fact, a stage for a political flashpoint between China, India and the West, having recently elected a new president, Mohamed Muizzu, who is actively pro-Beijing and openly antagonistic to New Delhi, so much that Indians are now threatening a tourism boycott of the country. Muizzu has just visited China, where he inked a series of agreements with Xi Jinping, particularly in the area of infrastructure.

Why is the Maldives important? First, the islands are situated in a critical spot of the Indian Ocean, forming a sort of logistical crossroads between the Indian subcontinent, the Arabian peninsula and the Red Sea, Africa, and Australia. This indispensable position is precisely why the islands were part of the British Empire, because whoever has maritime access to the islands can project both commercial and military influence into the Indian Ocean writ large, and into the seas that span from it. Likewise, the location of the Maldives means that it is also a critical variable in India’s own security, especially in its own geopolitical struggle with China.

India’s foreign policy seeks to maintain a localized hegemony over its “backyard” region in what is known as its Neighborhood First policy. Here, it seeks to militarily contain Pakistan while also dominating the smaller states on its periphery, including Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan, as well as the Maldives. However, a challenge India faces is that all of these states have sought to resist Indian dominance by courting closer relationships with China, leading to a tug of war over the allegiance of the states of South Asia, which plays out in the fields of trade, infrastructure and investment.

This of course plays into the wider dynamic of the West’s “Indo-Pacific strategy,” whereby the US and its allies seek to promote the rise of India as a commercial and military power to try and contain China in the surrounding oceans and prevent a shift in the global balance of power. Naturally, the Maldives is a big part of that equation.

India espouses, on a national level, the Hindu nationalist ideology Hindutva, which is seen by critics as “discriminating” against minority religions. It has also been growing increasingly pro-Israel. Such politics produce anti-India sentiment on the ground in the smaller regional states, especially Muslim ones, such as the Maldives, which thus only strengthens their resolve to engage with Beijing. Hence, the Maldives has elected a pro-China and anti-India president who openly campaigned on an “India Out” platform.

Does that mean the island nation is taking sides? Not necessarily. Diplomacy is never truly the same as public opinion, and small countries often aim to hedge between rival big powers, in this case India and China, in order to gain maximum benefits. This strategy is how they maintain their autonomy and independence, ultimately recognizing that their geographic position is what makes them valuable for the major powers. Still, being a small nation on India’s periphery, the Maldives faces potential consequences if it becomes too hostile to New Delhi, yet Beijing is attractive as a powerful guarantor against the worst of such consequences.

As much as the Maldives dislikes India, it cannot feasibly afford to ignore or dismiss New Delhi completely, only to balance the equation more towards China. This is more about holding its ground against India’s “neighbourhood” policies than actively disregarding or challenging them. India is experiencing rapid growth, but it will still be some time before it develops the economic, financial and infrastructure capabilities to compete dollar for dollar with China, setting the stage for a protracted competition for influence and allegiance across South Asia.

In the heart of the Asia-Pacific, the self-governing island of Taiwan – formally the Republic of China (ROC) – finds itself at the crossroads of history and geopolitics once again as it rides the wake of a pivotal presidential election.

While important not only for the domestic future of Taiwan’s people and a major global issue, this election saw the emergence of a major third party, showing that the region’s political landscape is evolving and that locals are looking to escape the two-party duopoly that is consistently cast every cycle as a vote between “war and peace,” as New Taipei Mayor Hou Yu-ih from the Kuomintang party (KMT) described it.

The victory of Lai Ching-te, leader of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the party of outgoing President Tsai Ing-wen, appears to be a strategic win for the US and the collective West – at least at a first glance. But delving deeper, the election – in which Lai received a plurality of votes (just over 40%) and not a majority – reflects deeper frustrations locals have with their livelihoods and the fact that they do not take the DPP’s overtures toward formal independence from Beijing that seriously.

At the heart of Taiwan’s political discourse lies the complex tapestry of identity politics. The island has long grappled with its historical ties to mainland China and the question of independence. President Tsai Ing-wen, the incumbent who could no longer seek re-election but whose policies will endure with Lai, has been a staunch advocate for Taiwan’s sovereignty, emphasizing the island’s separate identity and pushing back against Beijing’s claims of reunification.

Lai’s main opponent, Hou, however, echoed a more conciliatory approach. Indeed, the KMT has long been the party willing to play ball with Beijing, tone down the rhetoric, and make concessions. It was the KMT that helped establish the island’s current status quo through the so-called 1992 consensus, which saw both sides of the Taiwan Strait agree to the One China principle but differ on their definition of China – i.e., the ROC or the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

In 2022, the KMT had a strong showing in the local elections that prompted Tsai Ing-wen to step down as DPP chairwoman. The newly elected officials from the nationalist party vowed to step up cross-strait exchanges with the mainland in hopes of cooling tensions and undermining the DPP’s use of the “China threat” in this year’s election.

But, importantly, the last pre-election survey on the topic of reunification by Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council in October 2023 found that more than 60% of voters support the current status quo of the island’s undetermined political status. Not only would people prefer to neither seek formal independence (almost certainly triggering war with mainland China) or reunification, but it appears they don’t even think a change in the status quo will actually happen, chalking it up as just hype, and are instead focused on other issues.

To name a few: In 2023, Taiwan’s economy, dependent on exports, was estimated to have grown at its slowest pace in eight years – just 1.61% – on the back of weakening global demand for its high-tech products. The monthly median wage in Taiwan was $1,386 in 2022, far lower than the other Asian Tiger economies, which include South Korea ($1,919), Hong Kong ($2,444), and Singapore ($3,776). Additionally, Taiwan is facing an acute housing crisis. As of November 2023, public housing only constituted 0.2% of all residential units in Taiwan, which was far below other developed economies, statistics from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development show.

It is for these exact reasons that Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) candidate Ko Wen-je put on a strong showing, upsetting both sides of the “China threat” debate, which he mostly ignored in favor of pressing domestic issues.

But even if people voted along the issues that impact their daily lives the most, it is undeniable that Taiwan’s geopolitical position places it in the midst of a turbulent region, with simmering tensions between the US and China.

The strategic importance of Taiwan in the broader Indo-Pacific region cannot be overstated. As the US reaffirms its commitment to Taiwan’s defense, even sending an immediate delegation to congratulate the winner of the election, it is guaranteed that tensions – even if short of full-scale war – will flare.

A DPP victory means that this spat will likely escalate, and probably to the detriment of locals, as trade with the mainland has continually suffered since Tsai’s election in 2016. It could also see the further implementation of the “porcupine defense strategy” for Taiwan, wherein the island arms itself to the teeth in hopes of deterring aggression from the mainland. Further arms deals are certain to be in the works.

Starting this year, 2024, it is also important to recognize that President Tsai had already extended mandatory military service for young men from four months to one year. According to reports from CNN last year, Taiwan’s military training is woefully outdated, and, given the sense of apathy many young people have toward the very idea of a conflict with the mainland, it is clear that the island would not be able to mobilize a fighting force to withstand an offensive from Beijing. This is one of the primary reasons it can be surmised that even with US support, the DPP could never achieve formal independence for Taiwan.

The presidential election in Taiwan is not merely a domestic affair; it is a microcosm of the broader geopolitical struggles defining the 21st century. There has been immense foreign pressure surrounding the island’s election, principally from the US, and yet still, it was clear that political openings presented themselves for people who reject the notion of their island as one square on a chessboard. Though Washington has “its man” firmly in power, it is not enough to fundamentally change the current of global affairs and the reality of a waning unipolar hegemon in the US.

So, Gonzalo Lira is dead. As he warned in his last video message before being disappeared (this time, as it turned out, forever) by the Ukrainian regime, his political journalism has cost him his life.

A successful social media commentator and American citizen, Lira died while incarcerated by Ukraine’s repression apparatus for his criticism of the Western and Ukrainian position on the war against Russia. His terms were often direct, even harsh and polemical. But he was not a spy or some sort of subversive influence agent. He was transparent and open to a fault, standing with his own name – and life – for everything he said. He was a political prisoner (yes, I agree with Tucker Carlson on this one); the official Ukrainian charges against him are a ludicrous disgrace.

The immediate cause of his death is virtually certain to have been severe, prolonged, and systematic neglect, which led to his indirect killing – fully deliberate or not – by a condition (pneumonia and complications) that is perfectly treatable. In legal terms, this qualifies as, at least, manslaughter or even murder, committed by Ukrainian officers of the “law” and those issuing their orders.

According to what Lira stated when he could still communicate, he was also tortured in a more hands-on fashion, so as to plunder his personal wealth. If you know how Ukrainian politics and authorities operate, there is no reason at all to disbelieve him.

In spite of laudable efforts by fellow American citizens as prominent as Tucker Carlson and Elon Musk to help Lira, the US government made itself a de facto accessory in his killing by refusing to assist one of its own citizens who was, obviously, in extreme danger. Lira, by the way, told us he had heard from people in the know that Victoria “Neocon Cookie Monster and Queen of Coup and War” Nuland herself knew about his case and “hated his guts.”

First of all, to pay our respects. It is true that Gonzalo Lira was no saint (just like the rest of us, by the way). He had things on his CV (operating as a "dating coach," for instance) that he, like everyone else, should have had a full life to come to regret. He also had political views that I, for one, heartily disagree with, such as his own brand of libertarianism and an apologetic attitude toward Chile’s abysmal Pinochet dictatorship.

And so what? He was unusually courageous, which, in the end, cost him his life. And he had the extraordinary honesty to not only understand just how wrong the US-NATO proxy war in and via Ukraine was, but to say so loudly and very publicly. While based in Ukraine. (And full disclosure again, I had the genuine honor and pleasure to be invited onto his program on YouTube, where he was a smart and gracious host with an irreverent sense of humor.)

In a world of cowardly careerist underhandedness (looking at you, Olaf Scholz, Robert Habeck, Annalena Baerbock, for instance…) and habitual, crass lying (your turn, Benjamin Netanyahu, Joe Biden, Antony Blinken, and, yes, Vladimir Zelensky), Gonzalo hollered the truth where it mattered and it took guts.

That’s why Stella Assange, the wife of the single most important political prisoner in the world, Julian Assange, has tweeted about Lira’s death, correctly pointing out the responsibility of the US authorities.

“I cannot accept the way my son has died. He was tortured, extorted, incommunicado for 8 months and 11 days and the US Embassy did nothing to help my son… The responsibility of this tragedy is [with] the dictator Zelensky with the concurrence of a senile American President, Joe Biden… My pain is unbearable. The world must know what is going on in Ukraine with that inhuman dictator Zelensky.”

We can genuinely commiserate, although we can’t literally feel the depth of his pain. But for all of us, Gonzalo Lira’s protracted, through-and-through unjust and entirely avoidable killing is yet another brutal sign that those who rule the West have no limits left.

Last week the Central Statistical Office of India released official projections for gross domestic product (GDP) growth for 2023-24. It was a pleasant shock, especially given the grim circumstances facing most of the world. Economic growth, beating all expectations, is forecast at an impressive 7.3%.

A few weeks earlier the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the country’s central bank, signaled as much during its credit policy review. Not only did RBI raise its growth forecast for the current fiscal year from 6.5% to 7%, but it also retained its projections for inflation. In other words, the central bank is confident that the acceleration in growth will not stoke another round of inflation.

Independently, Axis Bank, India’s third-largest private sector bank in terms of total assets, went a step ahead and claimed that India was transitioning to a higher growth trajectory. One that will mean the economy will expand at a trend rate of growth of 7% – as opposed to the previous average of 6%. This week of good news on the Indian economy was topped off with a year-end report released by Edelweiss Mutual Fund, arguing that this was India’s decade.

Pull all these strands together and it appears that India is on a growth highway. If indeed this rosy forecast does pan out, then it will be a gamechanger. It will, at the least, accelerate the reordering of India and help the economy reach $5 trillion by the 2030 deadline, set by the leadership.

The reason for this remarkable uptick in optimism is the coming together of three key trends: A young demography (with two-thirds of India less than 35 years of age), the initial signs of a revival in private capital expenditure, which has been in the doldrums since 2009, and a government policy conducive to fostering business.

Clearly, it is the beginning of the cycle of private capital expenditure that is tilting the scales in the economy’s favour. So far, it is the union and state governments that have been shouldering the burden. At the end of October, their capital expenditure grew by a staggering 36.7% compared to the same period of last year.

It is undoubtedly an impressive number. However, neither is this outlay sufficient – government capital expenditure as a proportion of GDP is less than 5% – nor is it sustainable given that the exchequer is over-stretched playing defence in the aftermath of the economic shocks that struck the world after the Covid-19 pandemic.

Addressing a press conference following the presentation of the credit policy review last month, RBI defended its upward revision of the growth outlook and claimed it could be higher than forecast. Citing high-frequency economic data, the central bank’s deputy governor, Michael Patra, said, “If you look at October, November high-frequency data which we use for our nowcast, they are all very robust right now; if you just take October-November data, you will exceed 7%. So, at present, 7% is a conservative estimate.”

The Opportunity

India’s legacy of underdevelopment, wherein millions have been denied even basics like water, electricity, banking and housing, is now turning out to be an opportunity. Over the last 15 years, these deficits are being resolved. For instance, between 2005 and 2020 India lifted 415 million people out of poverty – an outcome of targeted social welfare spending delivering better bang for the buck. Similarly, in the last 10 years, the country provided banking services to 511 million people.

Measures to address these deficits are providing a stronger and deeper foundation to the consumer economy. In turn, this is proving to be a buffer at a time when global demand is shrinking, as countries struggle to stay afloat.

With most of the population playing catch-up, the Indian economy has become stratified – growing at different speeds. Analysts see this as an opportunity: pursuing premiumization with the rich and super-rich, while serving the untapped opportunity in basic needs for the largest cohort.

For example, a report by the Edelweiss Mutual Fund estimates that only a fifth of Indian households own a washing machine. With growing access to reliable power, they see increased acquisition of non-essential items such as air conditioners and refrigerators by households, expanding the consumer economy. Simultaneously, India has improved the ease of doing business and tweaked its industrial policy to incentivize manufacturing in 14 sectors using the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme.

Where India Meets Russia – We are now on WhatsApp! ‎Follow and share RT India in English and in Hindi 

A recent Foreign Affairs article purports to expose “China’s game in Gaza,” accusing Beijing of “Exploiting Israel’s War to Win Over the Global South.”

The author alleges that “in calling for a two-state solution, refusing to condemn Hamas, and making symbolic efforts to support a ceasefire, [China] has taken advantage of global anti-Israeli sentiment in a bid to elevate its own standing in the Global South.”

This argument is interesting, because it is premised on the logic that the war on Gaza can end quickly if Beijing simply supports the US position, which the article claims is “to reconcile public support for Israel with private pressure to more carefully target its attacks in Gaza and to be more open to a political settlement with the Palestinians.” So let’s get this right, it’s the US that wants to end this conflict fairly and China is exacerbating it and therefore is at fault?

This kind of analysis is farfetched at best and outright dishonest at worst, and overall an insult to every observer’s intelligence. It really shows the lengths to which the mainstream cycle of journalists and think-tankers will go in order to not place any blame on Israel whatsoever, but to scapegoat third parties who do not in fact have a hand in the conflict. China has always taken a neutral position on the Israel-Palestine issue, though it recognizes the State of Palestine’s sovereign existence, and therefore advocates a two-state solution.

First of all, the Foreign Affairs article takes the misleading State Department position that the US is some kind of honest broker and mediator in the Israel-Palestine conflict that just wants the two sides to make up and get along. This is an absolute lie. All the US has offered is unconditional, uncritical and blanket support to Israel which Benjamin Netanyahu has calculated allows him to do whatever he wants, effectively consequence-free. Will the US actually sanction Israel? Will the US condemn Israel at the UN? Will the US stop arming Israel? Absolutely not, and he knows this, therefore anything Washington might claim in regards to sparing civilians or talking about a ceasefire is hollow because it is not backed up by any substance. Israel is allowed to do whatever it sees fit, because placing any restraints on it is domestically politically untenable in the US, as well as in allied countries such as the UK.

Therefore, even if it wanted to, how could China possibly end the conflict, let alone be responsible for it? It is the scenes of unprecedented, Western-backed slaughter and carnage in Gaza that are provoking outrage in the Global South, and the reality that Israel is a law unto itself. This backlash is entirely and exclusively Western-generated and there is no conspiracy nor agenda by China as a neutral player to exploit it. In fact, if China were serious, it would be actively whipping up anti-Israeli sentiment, but it is not doing so because Beijing for the most part is restrained and has little to say on third-party issues.

In this case, China doesn’t need to say anything regarding Gaza to inflame the Global South because the situation really is quite self-explanatory. The US is costing itself support throughout the Global South by showing that it is an enabler of genocide through the unconditional political and military backing it grants the Israeli state, yet here in Foreign Affairs we have the lopsided rendition that really it’s just all China’s fault, as usual.

At first it feels like a blast from the past but it's really about the present and future: Journalist Simona Mangiante Papadopoulos has released a long interview with former Ukrainian MP Andrey Derkach. In which Derkach makes allegations about corruption in the US and Ukraine. In particular about the American President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken. 

With regard to graft, while the various allegations (by no means only Derkach’s) and ongoing investigations are complex, in essence several simple questions are at stake: Did the current president’s son, Hunter Biden, sell his services as a Washington influence-peddler by using the “brand” (as one witness, Devon Archer, has put it) of his father’s connections (as then vice-president under Barack Obama)? And, potentially even more disturbingly, did the elder Biden himself profit from such influence-peddling? Finally, most disconcerting of all, did the current president use his leverage as Obama’s point-man on Ukraine to shield his son and, possibly, himself from investigations in Ukraine? Including by bringing down Ukrainian chief prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who got too close to the truth about Hunter Biden’s shady role in the Ukrainian Burisma gas company?

In sum, did the highest-ranking American official, charged with overseeing (among other things) Kiev’s putative “fight against corruption,” make things even worse by injecting a strong dose of US-establishment corruption into Washington’s newest client state? And, if so, could that two-sided entanglement have left a legacy, including of compromising actions, that has been influencing America’s reckless and failing (even on its own misconceived terms) proxy war policy in Ukraine?

Full disclosure: I happen to believe that the answer to all these questions is yes. Which is depressing, since it means that decisions, costing many human lives and making our shared global politics very dangerous, have been influenced by corrupt motives reminiscent of the world of organized crime.

This is the background against which Derkach has now spoken up. Make no mistake: There will be attempts to dismiss all of this as – yes, you guessed it – the beginning of BIG BAD RUSSIAN MEDDLING in the 2024 presidential elections. In fact, they have already started. Frankly, yawn: Let’s not be distracted.

Such attempts will inevitably seek to make use of Mangiante Papadopoulos’ and Derkach’s own records. Mangiante Papadopoulos is a journalist and the wife of the former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos. As such (though, to be precise, still his girlfriend at the time), she was questioned by the FBI in 2017, during the hot phase of the neo-McCarthyite campaign commonly known under the misleading label “Russiagate.”

Misleading because it was not really about Russia, but about the American Democrats’ foul-play attempt to undermine the reality of Donald Trump’s victory in 2016. (which was really down to Trump’s gifts as a populist and the Democrats’ arrogant decision to try and ram down the country’s throat the unelectably unappealing and politically terrifying candidacy of Hillary Clinton.) 

“Russiagate” was, in reality, Russia Rage, a mix of Centrist and Liberal conspiracy theory-mongering and mass hysteria. The true scandal was that a sizable part of the US political and media establishment further ruined what was left of any working relationship with Russia, and undermined the American public’s faith in a legitimate election result. (No, Trump was not the first one to do so in 2020/21: The roots of the January 6 riot in Washington are deeply bipartisan.)

Derkach came to international attention a few years later, with respect to Trump’s successor. A Russian-Ukrainian businessman and politician (who is open about receiving elite Russian intelligence training in the early 1990s), American and Ukrainian officials have accused him of playing an important role in “meddling” in the election of 2020, specifically by helping undermine Biden’s reputation. Derkach released recordings of what he claimed were conversations between then-vice-president Biden and then-Ukrainian president Pyotr Poroshenko that, critics argued, pointed to illicit dealings. (Ironically enough, for a while these revelations were welcomed by the team of Poroshenko’s successor Vladimir Zelensky because they embarrassed his opponent.)

Derkach has also been accused of – and in Ukraine formally charged with – working for Russian intelligence and with treason. No wonder he fled the country in 2022 and now lives in exile in Belarus. The 56-year-old is, in sum, a very ambiguous figure whose statements should be treated with caution.

Derkach is a complicated source; Mangiante Papadopoulos has also been accused of promoting Russia’s interests. (But then, frankly, who hasn’t?) But the question among adult observers is not who may be interested in a given piece of information seeing the light of day. Because here’s a little secret: As long as the information is of any political relevance at all, there’s always someone interested (as, by the way, Derkach openly admits in the interview, as far as his case is concerned). And here’s another one: That doesn’t mean that a given piece of information is untrue (“disinformation,” as we have been trained to say now). And finally: Remember, interests are involved not only in revealing, but also in hiding facts. Or, indeed, in pooh-poohing inconvenient revelations as nothing but propaganda.

So, what to make of what Derkach has had to say now? In the interview, which is almost an hour long, he makes many detailed statements, involving a large number of specified persons, especially in Ukraine. Let’s try to focus on key aspects and look at three of his most striking allegations one by one.

First, Derkach states that the Ukrainian authorities started going after him in earnest, including by extra-legal and life-threatening means, when (or because?) US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told them to resolve that Derkach problem. The interview is somewhat ambiguous: Is Derkach saying that Blinken himself gave, in essence, an order to use criminal methods or that Blinken – Henry II/Thomas Becket-style – “merely” called for someone to somehow rid his president of that turbulent Ukrainian? 

Either way, it would have been a highly incriminating and tawdry act on Blinken’s part. But it would be naive to consider the current Secretary of State incapable of stooping so low. We are, after all, talking about the man who, during Biden’s election campaign, played a devious behind-the-scenes role in organizing the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story. 

Back then, by mobilizing the American intelligence community to, once again, serve party-political purposes, Blinken helped Biden win and, in the long term, further shredded what’s left of American establishment credibility. (Not to mention that, currently, Blinken is displaying his absolute legal nihilism in stunning fashion by shielding Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza.)

Secondly, Derkach also maintains that former Ukrainian chief prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who lost his job for going after a Biden (or was it even two of them?), is in danger of assassination and should receive help to leave Ukraine. What makes this claim sound improbable is the fact that Shokin is still alive. What makes it plausible is the fact that there has already been at least one attempt on his life, although that took place years ago when he was still in office: As a matter of fact, for Shokin, losing his job may have made losing his life less likely.

As regards Nord Stream, after an initial period of plainly silly Western disinformation absurdly trying to point the finger at Russia (anyone remember that?), it is now fashionable to blame it all on Ukraine, as if the latter could have acted without NATO permission and assistance. So, here as well Derkach gets a grade of 'at least partly true'; and his allegation about how some of these activities have been financed cannot be dismissed as implausible either.

Let’s return, however, to the biggest issue at stake here: the Bidens. And let’s note a simple but generally overlooked fact: They are amazingly good at lowering expectations. They and their media allies are engaged in an ongoing, largely successful operation of shifting US baselines even farther down: In a normal country, there simply should not be an endless, partisan struggle over whether and how much money exactly went to the current president personally. In a normal country, the fact that, at the very least, Joe Biden has long tolerated, facilitated (to one extent or the other) and, finally, defended and shielded the screamingly unethical behavior of his son, should be more than enough to have forced him to resign.

These days in Africa, we often hear calls for reparations for the three Western heinous crimes: slavery, slave trade, and colonialism. Reparations for these atrocities are long overdue, but they are not just about financial restitution. The intersectionality of these crimes robbed victims of their identity, cultures, and, more significantly, dignity. Monetary compensation, no matter the value, cannot restore any of these.

Africa’s social, economic, and political challenges are connected to imperialism. Without addressing the legacy of domination, it is almost impossible for Africa to overcome poverty, inequalities, economic stagnation, and political instability. Fundamentally, the call for reparations is about morality and justice. The beneficiaries of imperialism have a moral duty to compensate their victims. The dignity and heritage of black people have been desecrated across time through historical mass crimes and imperial subjugation, as it included the erasure of identity through the looting of religious symbols and cultural relics.

Accra summit

The African Union (AU), the successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), is one of the oldest pan-African organizations aimed at increasing integration within the continent, and, being a G20 member since last September, in the group it represents African nations collectively. Through its various departments, such as The Department of Political Affairs, Peace and Security (PAPS), the Peace and Security Council (PSC), the Economic, Social and Cultural Council (ECOSOCC), and the Citizens and Diaspora Organizations Directorate (CIDO), the bloc is at the forefront in championing reparations for black people in Africa and in the diaspora. In this line, the AU organized a reparations summit in Accra, Ghana, in 2023 that drew a raft of resolutions, one of which was the formation of a Global Reparations Fund for compensation for the victims of slavery, slave trade, and colonialism. “It is time for Africa – whose sons and daughters had their freedoms controlled and sold into slavery – to also receive reparations,” said Ghana’s president, Nana Addo Akufo-Addo. 

The exploitative capitalist framework is intact under the dependency paradigm. Calls for reparations, therefore, must include overhauling institutions of inequalities. Unequal economic and power imbalance globally manifests through the UN Security Council, World Trade Organization, International Financial Institutions, and rapacious Western corporations. Restitution by way of reparations must include the removal of oppressive laws and policies that impoverish former colonies in Africa and the Caribbean.

Apologies from Germany: Why now?

Germany has apologized for colonial-era atrocities in Namibia and Tanzania. In Namibia, German colonists were responsible for the first genocide in recorded history against the Nama and Herero people. Between 1904 and 1908, German soldiers massacred 65,000 Herero and 10,000 Nama people during a revolt against land seizures. Germany had never apologized or acknowledged this atrocity or correctly characterized it as genocide until 2021. On an official visit to Namibia, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier pledged $1.2 billion for development projects in Namibia for the benefit of the victims of these colonial-era atrocities. But the Herero paramount chief, Vekuii Rukoro, dismissed the agreement between the two governments as an “insult” from “a so called civilized European nation” because it did not include reparations. Rukoro argued that Germany must engage the communities that bore the brunt of this genocide since the Namibian government could not pretend to negotiate for them. It was irregular, this traditional leader further argued, for the Namibian government to purport to speak for the victims, yet it did not exist at the time the genocide was committed.  

In 2023, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier also apologized for colonial-era atrocities in Tanganyika (modern Tanzania), another former colony in which German colonists presided over mass atrocities. But this apology did not involve compensation and reparations either. In colonial Tanganyika, 75,000, or by some records, 200,000-300,000 people were massacred during colonial resistance known as the Maji Maji rebellion. Some of the victims were starved and tortured to death. German colonists also plundered the remains of traditional leaders in Tanganyika, which are still being ghoulishly exhibited in their museums. But it was not only Germany that desecrated the remains of traditional leaders. British colonists were also implicated in this barbaric practice in Kenya. Other colonists across Africa were just as base. The British monarch, during his official visit to Kenya in 2023, the first to a commonwealth member state following coronation, acknowledged the British atrocities in colonial Kenya but did not apologize or pledge reparations.

Why, after decades, is this supposed remorse from Germany? It is not indicative of a change in attitude – but inspired by self-preservation in a fast-changing global order. With the rise of China and other emerging powers, Africa has become strategic to the West. Besides, an increasingly assertive Russia is making a foothold in Africa’s security, especially in the Sahel. The second Russia-Africa Summit held in St Petersburg in 2023 is also evidence of Africa’s strategic significance to Russia’s positioning globally. The expansion of the BRICS bloc, an acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, during its 15th summit in Johannesburg, South Africa in 2023 is significant. The admission of Ethiopia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, in a way, signals the broadening of a Global South alliance against Western hegemony, much as these new entrants are Western allies.

Therefore, the US and its European partners have been forced by these developments to reconsider their historically paternalistic policies towards Africa. In the case of Britain, its exit from the European Union makes it imperative to reach out to Africa to reinforce relations that it had ignored to shore up its economy. Western hegemony is on the wane as multipolarity takes form. This has afforded Africa options in trade, investment, research and development, and security. Although it has not discarded it, the paternalism that the West has historically exhibited in relation to Africa is no longer a viable approach. The African Union’s admission to the G20 is part of efforts to shift from paternalism and the characterization of Africa as an appendage of the globe. This move, however, collapses Africa and is insidiously paternalistic.

China’s inroads into Africa’s infrastructure development through the Belt and Road Initiative has rattled the West. Beijing’s footprint in Africa is growing through aid, agriculture, its military presence, education and research, and diplomacy. To counter China, the West has cranked up its relations with Africa. Germany, for instance, is targeting Africa’s energy sector consistent with its climate change concerns, whose mitigation includes a shift to renewable energy. Since he assumed office, Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has visited several African countries, including Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa – Africa’s anchor states – on a diplomatic charm offensive. It is unprecedented. These visits are for trade, investment, and skills transfer from Africa. The Russia-Ukraine conflict upended Germany’s energy source and exposed the risk of overreliance on Russia. Africa is one of its alternatives for diversification.

Beyond reparations

It is imperative that measures are put in place at the national and international levels to ensure that countries, companies, and individuals that benefitted from imperialism pay reparations for heinous injustices. The AU-proposed Global Reparations Fund is a step in the right direction. These beneficiaries are morally and legally obliged to repair the economic, social, cultural, and political damage wrought by the unholy trinity of slavery, slave trade, and colonialism. Imperialism inflicted incalculable damage on the colonized, and the most enduring one is psychological. The abiding mindset in colonized societies to mimic colonizers, an indication of low self-esteem and an inferiority complex, is difficult to remedy.  

There is a need for a special development fund for former colonies in Africa and the Caribbean. However, anything that carries the word “special” and is reserved for former colonies pathologizes them. The starting point is to rectify the current global financial system. Neoliberalism is responsible for poverty, inequalities, joblessness, and underdevelopment in Africa and other developing countries by way of adverse conditionalities and punitive lending rates. The overhaul of an oppressive and exploitative financial system is imperative. An alternative framework by the BRICS bloc is a welcome initiative.

There is a need for access to international markets for Africa’s products. Trade, research, and development are viable approaches to relations between Africa and former colonizers – but not aid. The Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) initiative by the United States (US) somewhat seeks to deemphasize aid. Selected African countries are allowed to export goods to the US duty-free. This arrangement is aimed at earning these countries foreign exchange and boosting their manufacturing. AGOA, however, is a drop in the ocean. And, crucially, it is still a political tool for manipulation that the US wields to make African countries toe its line. Uganda, for instance, was removed from this pact when it enacted laws against homosexuality, along with the Central African Republic, Gabon, and Niger, starting in 2024. The Bretton Woods institutions followed suit and threatened to cut aid to Uganda unless it repealed these laws. 

Debt cancellation is also a realistic way to advance the reparations agenda. Former colonies are held back by back-breaking debts that dent their development budgets. This causes poverty, inequality, and underdevelopment since these countries cannot meet the basic needs of the people – healthcare, education, food security, potable water, and housing, among other amenities. This situation accounts for political instability in Africa and the diaspora. As such, there are not any novel initiatives to actualize the reparations cause. An oppressive global system consistent with colonialism must be dismantled. The beneficiaries of an unequal world cannot be expected to lead this cause. To demonstrate genuineness regarding atonement for atrocious legacies in Africa, the Caribbean, and the Americas, however, these beneficiaries must endorse campaigns for a just, equitable, and humane global order – which they actually oppose. The enduring imperialism and its corroding capitalist system must be supplanted by an arrangement that dignifies Africans and other former colonies in the diaspora.

Billionaire tech entrepreneur, space visionary, and the richest man in the world Elon Musk may be wrong about any number of things, but he and many observers are certainly right about one thing: a recent Wall Street Journal article detailing allegations about his use of drugs was a hit piece.

One dead give-away was the astonishingly weak sourcing, as conservative-leaning polling and media company Rasmussen Reports has correctly noted. The Wall Street Journal, one of the most important newspapers in the US, has relied on what can only be described as a large heap of hearsay. It’s big but hollow.

Another clue is that the allegations belabored at exhausting, mind-numbing length are, actually, not new. Similar claims have been made before, for instance in a less blunt if still underhanded piece by the occasionally controversial journalist and centrist favorite Ronan Farrow (of “Me-too” fame) in the New Yorker.

Musk’s response has been threefold. He has lashed out at the Wall Street Journal, denouncing it for, essentially, stooping to yellow-press level. He has a point. Beyond that, on one side, he – and his lawyer Alex Spiro – have denied the allegations as “false.” On the other, Musk has argued that, in principle, using drugs makes sense if it increases productivity. Among adults, the message should be pretty clear. Musk defends himself in legal terms, as he would (share values, contracts, and security clearances could be at stake), while also signaling that whatever drugs he may be taking are no one’s business.   

So far, so expectable. You can agree or disagree with the billionaire’s position on his own use (or not) of various alleged substances, including LSD and psychedelic mushrooms. But that is not what is most interesting here. The more intriguing question is what is behind the attack and why it is happening now.

The Wall Street Journal piece itself hints at the real stakes in the very first sentence, referring to the tycoon’s “contrarian views, unfiltered speech and provocative antics.” Oops. Seems someone has been a bad boy. But then again, many bad boys (and girls, too) get away with much worse. Think Hunter “that laptop really did belong to him” Biden, for instance. What’s special about Musk’s case?

I also see extremely disturbing patterns of purging critical voices from the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), which he now controls. More long-term, my heart beats on the left. Hyper-rich, right-wing libertarians with a sterling record of fighting unions are just not my thing.

Yet it is a matter of healthy skepticism toward those going after Musk to ask what those “contrarian views” are. Among Musk’s frequent scraps, several key things come to mind. They all have one thing in common; and they fall into two main categories. It’s always about politics, and some of the issues concern domestic US politics, while others touch on geopolitics. 

Let’s look at the geopolitics first. Over the last two years or so, Musk has spoken up about two places that are at the heart of American global strategy: Taiwan and Ukraine. In both cases, he has been maligned and accused of two things: acting contrary to US interests – that is, as the Washington blob misunderstands them – and of being out of his depth. Regarding Ukraine, he advanced his own suggestions of how to end a war already ongoing; concerning Taiwan he pointed out facts that may help avoid another one.

The irony is that, with respect to the war in Ukraine, one key point of Musk’s position in the fall of 2022 has by now become if not mainstream then at least acceptable. Back then, he was roundly condemned for arguing that Russia should keep Crimea and Ukraine should choose neutrality. Now, one predictably failed Ukrainian counteroffensive and many dead and injured later, even a former NATO commander has gone public to suggest that Kiev should let go of territory (and more than Crimea, by the way) to make peace. Musk is right. The West’s flag-waving “friends” of Ukraine only make its territorial (and other) losses worse.

Coming round to neutrality (at least in public) may take Western “elites” longer. But on territory, a key issue, Musk was simply ahead of the curve, and it is likely that the question of neutrality will go the same way. Put differently, Musk – and others (full disclosure again: this author included) – were right to call for a compromise peace early. Ukraine would not have been worse off than now but probably better, and fewer people would have died.

But making reasonable peace proposals when no one felt like listening was not Musk’s only sin with respect to the Ukraine war. There was also the matter of Starlink, a technology produced by Musk’s company, SpaceX.

In the first year of the war, Musk did two things. First, he made this mobile satellite internet service available to the Ukrainian military, which was vital and made Ukrainians gush with gratitude. Second, he then limited its use geographically, which made Ukrainians very angry.

At the time, he unconvincingly argued that the service was costing SpaceX too much (although he had a point, asking why he was supposed to provide it for free or subsidize it in the first place).

That – and the unheard-of offense of actually talking to Russian President Vladimir Putin – became the peg for Ronan Farrow’s New Yorker take-down of Musk’s “shadow rule,” which went after the recalcitrant billionaire for being too full of himself (it takes one to know one…) and monstered him as, in effect, a national security risk and also a bit of Bond villain.

Taiwan may well be the next Ukraine – another place to be ground into dust in a perfectly avoidable war mostly fueled by Washington’s almost pathological inability to pursue its national interest through grown-up compromise instead of futile fights for unipolarity.

A few months ago, Musk committed the unforgivable sin of stating the facts. From Beijing’s standpoint, he explained, Taiwan is “an integral part of China that is arbitrarily not part of China mostly because … the US Pacific Fleet has stopped any sort of reunification effort by force.” That is, actually, true. (Yes, he also made a comparison with Hawaii. Frankly, who cares?)

Taiwan, it is also true, is a special case. The US and China have long practiced a compromise, going back to 1972. China has insisted that it has the right to use force to reunite Taiwan with mainland China, but, crucially, it has refrained from doing so. The US has recognized that Beijing speaks for China (and not Taiwan’s capital Taipei), while still supporting Taiwan militarily and maintaining a policy of “strategic ambiguity.” This is designed to leave open the question of whether Washington would fight for Taiwan. This compromise has been inconsistent but helped preserve the peace for half a century. 

Yet since 2022, it has been Washington, not Beijing, that has upset this fragile balance the most, by provocative visits, exercises, and statements, most importantly by President Joe Biden himself. This is the context in which Musk reminded everyone of the underlying reality: that Taiwan is not a sovereign country, and that China has a legitimate claim under international law.

Yet the narrative build-up to what may be the next major war for American global hegemony (this time to be lost against China, not Russia), requires us to forget that basic fact. It would be hard for CNN et al to whip Western publics into the requisite furor against “Chinese aggression,” if they were too well aware that, as a matter of fact, China is after what is legally its own territory.

If Musk has been worse than tactless, namely factual, about the world outside the US, he also has created upset at home. In general, he has become more outspoken about his politics that tend strongly – and for my taste – very unattractively to the right, even by American standards, in a capitalist-libertarian register. In particular, he has loudly challenged what he sees as the bane of the “woke-mind virus” and the failure of American border and immigration policy. In addition, he has been open about shifting his allegiance from the Democrats to the Republicans. And, worst of all, of course, he has taken over the social media platform once known as Twitter.

It is, however – as Jill Lepore, another Musk-slayer with impeccable centrist credentials has rightly pointed out in the New Yorker – not a matter of “free speech” or “representation.” Because Twitter/X has always been a business. What is at stake is something else: control, or, as the perspicacious Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci would have put it, ideological hegemony. And with Musk at the helm, the former Twitter is certainly not a stable tool of such hegemony. That does not make it an agent of revolution or even progress. But it does make for an increase in establishment insecurity and infighting, for now.

The greatest irony of the Musk case may be that it shows, again, that, in the US such pluralism, as it is, warts and all, is dependent on the will and personality of individuals owning media, whether new or traditional. On the verge of the 2024 election, which may well turn into a severe crisis of the American oligarchy, whether with or without Donald Trump and Joe Biden, the attacks on Musk are not really about Musk. Rather, they reflect what is at one and the same time America’s essence and its worst, quite possibly fatal problem: “freedom” has been reduced to property, and property is unequal as never before.

As we enter 2024, a convergence of robust economic activity and waning inflationary pressures has shifted the prevailing market narrative towards the likelihood of a soft landing. The past year has been marked by unforeseen developments, deviating from the trends anticipated by many. Contrary to widespread predictions, the expected recession in the US did not materialize. Economic growth showcased remarkable resilience across global economies, surpassing projections. Additionally, inflation, which had surged to multi-decade highs, has since subsided.

Against this backdrop, international markets have made a significant recovery, regaining more than half of the lost ground from the market’s peak in late 2021 to the low point in October 2022. The global economy’s performance in 2023 not only met but exceeded the most optimistic forecasts. Predicted global GDP growth is set to surpass consensus estimates from a year ago by 1 percentage point worldwide and by 2 percentage points in the US. Moreover, core inflation has decreased from its peak of 6% in 2022 to a consecutive decline to 3% in economies that underwent a post-Covid surge in prices.

Despite favorable indicators in growth and inflation for 2023, concerns about a potential recession persist among forecasters, and this cautious stance is justified. It is essential not to become complacent, especially given that the median forecaster still assigns a 50% probability of a recession within the next 12 months. Nevertheless, my optimism for 2024 remains intact, driven by the belief that central banks, in their efforts to manage inflation, will endeavor to sidestep a recession. Notably, emerging market early adopters like Brazil and Poland have already initiated policy rate cuts, signaling a trend likely to continue. While the scope for preemptive easing in developed market economies may be limited, there is a clear indication that central banks stand ready to pivot towards rate cuts if the growth outlook significantly deteriorates. An analysis of past hiking cycles underscores the fact that major central banks are twice as likely to cut rates in response to downside growth risks, particularly after inflation has normalized to sub-3% rates, highlighting the importance of this strategy as an insurance policy against recessionary threats.

In recent years, global inflation led major central banks, except in Japan and China, to aggressively raise interest rates. While short-term rates responded quickly, longer-term yields caught up later. Investors believe inflation will stay higher, prompting the rate reset. Despite agreeing with this view, I anticipate a near-term decrease in inflation. In the US, inflation dropped from over 9% to under 3.5%, with encouraging signs in service sectors. Globally, inflation is slowing, expected to approach central banks’ 2% target by 2024. Improved labor balance in the US resulted in slowed wage growth, and I foresee 2% inflation as a baseline, with investors expecting 2.0% to 2.5% over the next decade. This shift suggests more variability than the previous decade.

Looking ahead to 2024, the landscape appears set for diminishing interest rates and a rebound in corporate earnings, rendering cash a less attractive option. Despite expectations of a prolonged central bank pause, there are optimistic signals as economic resilience persists, albeit transiently. Encouragingly, signs indicate a tapering of inflationary pressures, both in headline figures and wages. The labor market is cooling, alleviating the intensity of cost-of-living concerns, with workers showing less eagerness to switch jobs for higher pay, particularly evident in the US and anticipated to extend to Europe. With the interest rate reset concluded, it’s a prudent time to lock in yields. The pivotal question now centers on the strategic allocation between fixed income and equity in this evolving financial landscape.

Is 2024 the year for AI stocks? It may seem like the train has already left the station, with the most prominent beneficiaries of the generative AI revolution experiencing substantial market cap growth in 2023. However, as we enter the next phases of AI buildout, there are still potential opportunities for investors. It’s certainly not too late to tap into the exponential growth of artificial intelligence. While mega-cap tech leaders offer reliable exposure to the AI trend, sectors such as semiconductor equipment, robotics, drug discovery, and cybersecurity stand out as clear beneficiaries of the forthcoming integration of AI into everyday business and personal lives. Ultimately, aligning investments with individual goals remains paramount.

Oil above $100

In 2024, it is anticipated that Brent crude oil prices may trade above the $100 mark, contingent upon crucial geopolitical factors influencing the market. These factors encompass heightened tensions in the Middle East, such as attacks on vessels in the Red Sea and potential escalations from Iran. Additionally, the ongoing dispute between Venezuela and Guyana poses a potential threat to oil production, potentially resulting in price increases. There is also the possibility of shifts in OPEC+ strategy, involving increased oil production, which could lead to temporary challenges for energy companies but offer greater flexibility in the future.

Starting in the summer of 2024, oil prices are expected to fluctuate above the $100 per barrel mark for a significant part of the year. This forecast is based on the anticipation of a slowdown in raw material demand amid a complex global economic situation. 

India’s economic triumph: A beacon of global prosperity

“The Indian economy will double in size by the end of the decade” – Jim Reid, Deutsche Bank 

India is poised for an extraordinary economic resurgence as it approaches elections in April, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking a third term. A historical economic powerhouse for over a millennium, India’s narrative is shifting positively, fueled by robust factors that promise to reinstate its global prominence.

Challenges on India’s path to economic ascension are seen as opportunities for positive transformation. Embracing trade globalization, expediting privatization, and implementing transparent tax reforms are steps that signal a commitment to sustained growth. As the world turns its attention to Asia’s renaissance, India’s emergence as a genuine economic powerhouse appears not just plausible but a harbinger of global prosperity, marking a triumphant chapter in the global economic narrative.

China’s strategic economic shift: Even more stimulus

China is in the midst of a profound economic transformation, shifting from a sole emphasis on growth metrics to a more nuanced expansion strategy. Projected to close 2023 with a growth rate slightly above 5%, China’s recalibration of policy stimulus aligns with broader visions encompassing national security and income equality, recognizing challenges like demographic aging and geopolitical complexities. Looking ahead to 2024-25, deleveraging emerges as a central growth determinant, presenting challenges for Chinese assets post-real estate consolidation in 2021. Fiscal policy maintains moderate expansion, targeting a 3.4% headline deficit.

However, with the Chinese economy's growth by just 5.2% in 2023, challenges loom. As an exports-driven economy, slow growth in the developed world and trade tensions have impacted the manufacturing sector. The domestic real estate sector continues to grapple with recovery, and Chinese consumers are navigating a ‘balance sheet recession’, prioritizing debt reduction. The limited stimulus measures offered in 2023 have provided little impetus for significant growth, and a much larger fiscal boost may be necessary. The government’s initiatives and the ongoing deleveraging process may keep economic growth subdued at around 4% in 2024, although there’s potential for positive surprises. The lack of inflationary pressures allows room for further fiscal and/or monetary stimulus, and the focus on ‘Common Prosperity’ underscores the commitment to long-term structural reforms, potentially opening up fresh opportunities for investors despite the current challenges.

Entering 2024, the Russian economy faces a spectrum of inflationary challenges, spanning both short-term and long-term dimensions. While demographic constraints and structural easing of budget rules contribute to the latter, short-term risks involve credit market overheating and ruble depreciation. Despite these challenges, there are positive indicators, with GDP expected to grow by 3.4% in 2023, surpassing optimistic forecasts. Encouragingly, real income growth and robust corporate profits are poised to alleviate credit risks. The population’s inclination toward savings remains relatively high, even with the recent rate hike. Although the ruble faced pressure due to a decline in the current account surplus, measures such as mandatory export revenue sales provided some support, and a potential ruble move toward 80-90 RUB/USD in 2024 is anticipated. While the Russian central bank is expected to maintain a rate above 10% in 2024, the positive trends in income and corporate profits may benefit equity market investment flows.

While a minor correction may occur in the first quarter, potentially influenced by interventions from regulatory bodies like the SEC or the Fed, it’s essential to attribute any fluctuations to typical market dynamics. Despite this, my optimistic projection indicates a potential surge for bitcoin to reach $125,000 in 2024. The cryptocurrency’s recent price stability, supported by technical indicators and positive market dynamics, suggests a consolidation phase around the $40,000 mark. Factors such as declining US interest rates and ongoing discussions about a spot Bitcoin ETF (exchange-traded fund) contribute to sustained institutional interest, fostering a conducive environment for bitcoin’s growth. My earlier projection of bitcoin trading around the $50,000 mark this Christmas has been partially realized as it hovers around the $45,000 level.

Positioned for an upward trajectory amidst market dynamics and potential ETF approvals, bitcoin demonstrates resilience and strength, as emphasized by my reiterated $125,000 forecast. This highlights bitcoin’s dominant position in the cryptocurrency market, indicating a path of continued expansion despite inevitable market challenges. However, it’s crucial to note that the journey will be accompanied by 20% fluctuations, both upward and downward.

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Farmers and their tractors started gathering on Monday here in Berlin as well as in cities across all of Germany’s federal states, including Hamburg, Cologne, and Bremen. The culmination, a massive planned protest, is set for Monday, January 15. 

The aim? To get Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition government to backtrack on its decision to eliminate tax breaks on the diesel fuel used for farming – a sector already struggling with high energy costs as a result of the government’s de facto policy to screw itself and its own citizens over “for Ukraine” by cutting off cheap fuel from Russia because Brussels ordered it to. And then deciding that it’s cool because gas isn’t “green” enough anyway. Who knew that the German economy couldn’t just run on wind and sun? Not this government, apparently.

Feeling the heat, Team Scholz has already said that it’ll now just slow roll the cuts to subsidies. Apparently he’s never tried removing a band-aid really slowly. The farmers responded with some slow rolling of their own – right down the Autobahn and up to the Brandenburg Gate. The other issue is a road tax exemption for agricultural vehicles that the government decided to reimpose. Well, at least the farmers are getting their money’s worth this week by taking their tractors out for a spin along roads they probably never would have bothered with, just to join up with the protests. 

The government can now hear and see the honking tractors and big rigs from the Bundestag, gathering just a stone’s throw away from the epicenter of the protests at Brandenburg Gate. But Scholz has been talking instead about the need for European nations to mirror Germany in devoting more money to Ukraine – like he has nothing else going on inside his own country. You’d think that if he didn’t keep loading Ukraine up with cash and weapons then Russian tanks would just roll right into Berlin. He really should be more concerned about the German tractors and trucks that are already nearly right up under his office window. Germany doubled its Ukrainian military aid to €8 billion just before the New Year. Compare that with the €900 million that its rolled back tax breaks on farmers are expected to save them. 

If Team Scholz was so blasé about shuffling money around in the creation of this whole debt problem, you’d imagine it would be easy enough at the very least just to hold onto that cash for Ukraine and take the jackboots off the necks of the farmers. It seems that German farmers may have to move to Ukraine to get treated fairly by their own government.

Team Scholz is making one of the most productive elements of German society pay a heavy price for its own relentless screwups. The precise cost amounts to €10,000 annually for some farmers, who say it represents a potentially catastrophic loss for them. But the message being peddled by government officials is that farmers are already subsidized enough. You’d think they were just rolling in cash. Clearly, the reality is quite the opposite when €10,000 represents a make-or-break scenario. 

Instead of acknowledging the damage it’s doing, the government’s Interior Ministry is employing the tried-and-true tactic of attempting to diminish the farmers’ plight by conflating their cause with the “far-right,” which, allegedly, is already attempting to glom onto the cause. Anyone who disagrees with the Western establishment’s agenda seems to be labeled “far-right” these days. It’s like calling someone a racist – clearly a cynical attempt to shut down debate and marginalize entire movements. The average German doesn’t seem to be buying it, though, since 70% of them say they want Scholz to step down before the next election in October 2025, according to a new poll. 

The establishment constantly lectures about the need for unity. Apparently these officials wouldn’t know authentic unity if it literally rolled up to the Brandenburg Gate. Truckers have already joined up with the farmers’ cause. There are nearly as many average Germans who support the farmers – 68%, according to a new INSA/Bild poll – as there are who want Scholz to go. Now that’s real unity. Right, left, center, and people from all walks of life coming together behind two of the only groups in society that have the proven ability to make the government sweat. And this government’s response is to try to foster even more division by Balkanizing society, identifying various factions among those unhappy with the state of things and attempting to play them off against each other so they tear themselves apart instead of focusing on the real problem: the government itself. One German official even mentioned that the small farmers should blame the big farmers for their predicament. As though the kind of heavy-handed government action that led to this mess in the first place isn’t also totally responsible for the phenomenon of giant industrial players.

Polls suggest that the farmers are now the very incarnation of unity among Germans. If there’s one thing about which most Germans seem to agree, it’s how much those in charge truly suck. Of course, Team Scholz can continue to bury their heads in the sand and pretend to be broke while shoveling cash out the door to Ukraine. But in that case, stand by for the inevitable reckoning at election time when voters seek out an alternative to the establishment responsible for the chaos.

Amid hopes that the 2024 US National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) would lead to an uptick in troop strength, just the opposite has occurred, as military brass fear what messages a shrunken force will send to America’s enemies.

Not since before World War II has the US fielded such a small military force, and not since World War II has the US military been spread so thin around the world.

Personnel slashes to the US Army have been the deepest. The national defense budget must be satisfied with a force of just 445,000 active-duty soldiers, down more than 40,000 (8.4%) in three years. 

Meanwhile, the Marine Corps is set to shed 8,900 active-duty service members from fiscal 2021, a 4.9% reduction, while the Air Force is prepared for a loss of 13,475 airmen, a 4% drop. Finally, the Navy is scheduled to have 10,000 fewer sailors, down 2.9%.

All told, the total number of active-duty soldiers in the armed forces will decrease to 1,284,500 in fiscal 2024. That’s a decline of almost 64,000 troops in the last three years and the smallest total for America’s military since 1940. For perspective, America’s top perceived ‘adversaries’, Russia and China, have 1.15 million and 2.35 million active duty troops, respectively.

Such a precipitous drop in troop strength presents major challenges for any country, but especially for one with serious imperial ambitions. The problem with recruitment does not seem to be caused by a lack of funds. The defense policy bill passed last month provides a jaw-dropping $886 billion for defense programs, which includes a 5.2 percent boost in salaries for service members, the largest increase in 20 years. 

“Do you know what the recruiting numbers are at the Army, Navy and the Air Force,” asked Democratic Senator Dick Durbin last month. “They can't find enough people to join our military forces. And there are those who are undocumented who want the chance to serve and risk their lives for this country. Should we give them a chance? I think we should.”

The Democrat’s ‘solution’ to the problem conveniently ignores the question: what happened to the recruiting pool inside of the US in the first place? Why have so many young men and women decided to shun the life of a professional soldier compared to previous times? Does it have anything to do with the fact that confidence in the US military has plunged to its lowest levels in two decades? Have young men and women come around to the conclusion that the true nature of the US military is not to ‘defend the homeland’ from would-be attackers, but rather to dominate the entire globe with its imperialistic mindset?

Then there are questions about the mental and physical health of America’s youth, plagued as they are with alarming rates of obesity, drug use and mental health issues. These problems are symptomatic of a nation that is experiencing the unraveling of its entire social fabric.  

“The problem lies within American society, or rather, the lack thereof,” writes Brian Berletic, a geopolitical analyst and former US Marine. “It suffers from a general unraveling of family values, work ethic, and social cohesion. Additionally, there is a collapse of America's education system, including vocational education, which creates a shortage of qualified candidates for economic and military activities.”

Meanwhile, other people point to the woke mentality that has – against all expectations – infected the highest levels of the military apparatus, a phenomenon that the media regularly reports on in a totally uncritical fashion. Yet in much the same way that ‘wokeness’ has had a disastrous impact on the bottom line at Disney and Budweiser, for example, it is no stretch of the imagination to say that people are put off by a military career for exactly the same reasons.

This leads to the question of patriotism at a time when public schools are teaching kids to hate their country. Can these youth be expected to sacrifice their comfortable, sedentary lifestyles in defense of their homeland? A quick scroll through the self-obsessed world of Instagram, TikTok and Facebook shows where the nation’s attention is focused, and it does not give one cause for hope.

All things considered, the US and the world would be a much safer place if Washington recalibrated its foreign policy to a more defensive posture. It could turn down the global temperature by bringing home some of the troops, while freeing up the funds for a much-needed national revitalization program at home. This would provide the troops it needs for a much-needed ‘isolationist’ foreign policy that would apply the brakes on military adventurism at a time when a global conflagration - possibly with Russia or China or both - looks increasingly likely. Instead, the US will always opt for militaristic imperialism, and like empires of the past that will be its ultimate downfall.

We are hearing more and more suggestions that Kiev should get ready for a compromise peace. In particular, there are mountings calls to cede territory to Russia.

Two things have changed in both the West and Ukraine: First, there are now growing demands for a “plan B,” as the former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko calls it, and, more importantly, the taboo on talking about this need is gone.

Given Ukraine’s difficult and dangerous – not to mention that things could quickly get much worse – military, financial, and political situation, these calls are no surprise. The real question is not why this is happening, but what it may mean for the future: Do these calls signal a real readiness to make peace? And if so on what terms? And is it a realistic prospect?

Let’s start with a voice from the West: James Stavridis – a retired American admiral, former military head of NATO, and dean emeritus of the prestigious US Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy – has used his perch as a Bloomberg columnist to ask how the war will end. He finds that Ukraine is unlikely to retake what has been lost to Russia and, in effect, recommends it “consider temporarily or even permanently ceding Crimea and the ‘land bridge’ connecting it to Russia.”

A few months ago, such a statement would have been scandalous; now it’s part of the new normal. Despite the fact that it directly contradicts Ukraine’s official war aims, namely, to make no territorial concessions at all. And note that such a scenario is what Stavridis pitches as the desirable outcome of continuing Western support: This is a former NATO commander telling the West that the new best-case result is a compromise peace that Kiev officially abhors.

What do we hear from Ukraine? The single most resonant statement there has come from Timoshenko. Once a cunning and energetic top player in Kiev politics and still leader of her own ‘Batkivshchyna’ party, she has clearly not given up trying for a comeback: Recently, she made headlines by resisting a new mobilization law and launching an offensive against LGBTQ politics. The two issues have little in common except they both show her angling for popular appeal: On the mobilization law she poses as the defender of the next cohort of young recruits to go into the meatgrinder (she suggests sending police and other “siloviki [security professionals]” instead…); and regarding LGBTQ, she presents herself as upholding traditional values.

And then there is Aleksey Arestovich. A former adviser to Zelensky and top promoter of war against Moscow, when it could still have been avoided, he has recently made a splash by suggesting that Ukraine and Russia should make peace and then unite against the West. That would be yet another way of ending the war, if it were realistic.

But what about the conditions that Stavridis, Timoshenko, and Arestovich foresee?

The former NATO commander is an example of how even those in the West who have rediscovered some realism, still suffer from wishful thinking as well. Stavridis’ scenario for ending the fighting involves not only Ukraine ceding territory to Russia, but also Moscow acquiescing in Kiev acceding to EU and NATO membership. If he is serious about this, then he is outlining what is a perfect non-starter for Russia. As its President Vladimir Putin has just reiterated, Moscow’s war aims still include Ukraine’s neutrality.   

Timoshenko’s ideas don't look much more hopeful. She may have only one real aim: to embarrass Zelensky and his “leadership.” Her “plan B” is still a plan “of victory,” and her rhetoric has remained generally strident: In a recent op-ed, she insists that Ukraine has “already won” multiple battles, such as being acknowledged as part of “the West” (good luck with that…), achieving domestic unity, and dismantling Russian influence. And yet, she is a wily operator: Could her list of victories already claimed also be read as signaling that, perhaps, for now at least, more may not be needed?

Which one is the real Arestovich: the one calling for an anti-Western alliance with Russia, the one who says (on a YouTube channel that he seems to assume no one in the West will ever hear about) that that was merely a bluff to cajole the West, or the one who hovers high above such tactical plays to ponder the very big picture, namely, how to secure global peace?

And yet, here as well, things may be more complicated: In the same interview and following the recent revelations of former Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Aleksandr Chaly, Arestovich also spends much time on the great missed opportunity of the Istanbul talks in spring 2022, confirming that Moscow then offered very advantageous conditions to Kiev and that peace was almost made. A “parade of unexpected generosities” from Russia he now calls what was on the table then.

Before Istanbul, Arestovich was also involved with the Minsk Agreements. Between the spring of 2015 and early 2022, Minsk II in particular, endorsed by the UN, could have served as a basis for a peaceful resolution of the then comparatively small-scale conflict. Yet neither the Ukrainian leadership nor its Western sponsors were interested in making the deal work, as Ukrainian politicians boasted at the time (usually on Ukrainian media) and Western leaders admitted in retrospect. It is no surprise to find Arestovich deriding the Minsk Agreements as a “trap” and a “dead end.” Yet while that merely confirms the Ukrainian obstructionism we already knew about, it is still interesting to note that, for him, Kiev got much better out of the Istanbul talks.

In that sense, Arestovich’s new statements about Istanbul 2022 can be read as implying future possibilities as well: If peace was so close once, it cannot be entirely impossible now. Yet the former presidential adviser also warns – realistically – that terms as good as were available then to Kiev are not likely to return. Indeed, he confesses his pessimism as to finding an end to the war soon.

The “Plan B” team is daring to join the debate, albeit cautiously. That’s good news. But a closer look is disappointing. We find few serious, concrete, and explicit suggestions as to how to make peace. Stavridis, who has the freedom to be the most outspoken, combines his realistic call for territorial concessions by Kiev with NATO membership for Ukraine, an idea that he must know will never fly in Moscow. Timoshenko and Arestovich remain ambiguous, even self-contradictory. And none makes a genuine effort to think through what Stavridis – in his most insightful aside – at least mentions: that any plans will depend on Russia agreeing.

Relations between New Delhi and Moscow have grown steadily despite the Western sanctions on Russia. Exercising its strategic autonomy, India, to the West’s disappointment, refrained from openly criticizing Russia’s military actions in Ukraine, according to Arvind Gupta, the director of New Delhi-based think tank Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF), ahead of the first Valdai Club Russian-Indian Conference, which will be held in New Delhi on January 8. 

The bilateral conference, titled ‘India and Russia: Views on Alternative World Orders, Regional Problems and Bilateral Ties’ and organized by Russia’s leading think tank, the Valdai Discussion Club, in partnership with the VIF, will discuss trends in the transformation of the world order and key developments on the bilateral front. 

International environment

Global tensions are currently running high and the mechanisms to resolve them have been ineffective. The ongoing Ukraine conflict and the Israel-Hamas war have exposed the international community’s inability to resolve conflicts and lessen tensions. Most multilateral mechanisms are dysfunctional as the world becomes fragmented and polarized along multiple axes. 

The risk of a wider military conflagration is considerable. Arms control and disarmament mechanisms are non-existent or at a standstill. Global nuclear and missile arsenals are being expanded at a rapid pace. The risk of the weaponization of cyberspace and outer space has also increased. The indiscriminate use of sanctions as a weapon causes economic and social disruptions globally. 

In a multipolar world, a sovereign nation has many options – but there is no guarantee that a world such as this would necessarily be peaceful and stable. Russia and India, along with other countries, can and should contribute to the evolution of a peaceful, stable multipolar world based on the idea of harmony in diversity, the rule of law, cooperation, and accommodation, in which the aspirations for security and growth for all are taken into account.   

New trends in bilateral ties

Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar’s visit to Moscow from December 25-29, 2023 reaffirmed that Indian-Russian ties remain healthy despite the current geopolitical turbulence in the world. Jaishankar was received by President Vladimir Putin, who expressed satisfaction at the state of relations and invited Prime Minister Narendra Modi to visit Russia. He said that he has kept Modi informed about the Russia-Ukraine conflict and has studied proposals made by India.

Conveying a message from Modi to Putin, Jaishankar described the relationship between the two nations as “very strong, very steady,” due to a convergence of strategic interests. The foreign ministers of the two countries also exchanged views on global and regional issues. 

As the international environment changes, Russia and India are taking steps to further deepen their “special and privileged strategic partnership” which was set up in 2010. Their cooperation involves a wide range of topics, including energy, defense and security, trade and investment, education and culture, science and technology, global and regional issues, and connectivity. A strong institutional framework for bilateral exchanges has been set up.  

The latest innovation is a ‘2 plus 2’ mechanism involving the defense and foreign ministers of both sides. The inaugural meeting of the group was held in Delhi in 2021. The two countries also engage with each other in the multilateral formats of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), BRICS, RIC, G20, and the UN. India has also begun a discussion on a free trade agreement with the Eurasian Economic Union. 

As a result of these measures, bilateral ties have grown stronger. Two-way trade is set to exceed $50 billion in 2023-24. Russia is now India’s fourth-largest trading partner. Both sides have also set a target of bilateral investment of $50 billion by 2025. Russia has emerged as a top supplier of crude oil to India, particularly since the beginning of the Ukraine conflict. India is a major supplier of pharmaceuticals to Russia. Russia is building six nuclear power plants in India, two of which have already been commissioned, and the other two are nearing completion. 

Two joint ventures are co-producing Brahmos cruise missiles and AK203 rifles. Brahmos missiles are also being exported to third countries. India has procured the S-400 missile defense system from Russia despite US pressure. Russian companies are looking to participate in India’s ambitious ‘Make in India’ program aimed at enhancing the production of military hardware indigenously. Russia has also started exporting fertilizers to India, thus strengthening India’s food security. These are a few examples of successful cooperation in recent years. 

It is noteworthy that India’s ties with Russia have grown steadily despite the Western sanctions on Russia. Exercising strategic autonomy, India, to the West’s disappointment, has not openly criticized Russia’s military actions in Ukraine. Instead, Modi conveyed to Putin that this “should not be an era of wars,” and that the conflicts should be resolved through peaceful means. Russia has shown appreciation for India’s position. Putin praised Modi for his leadership in ensuring a balanced G20 Leaders’ Declaration in which Russia was not criticized. 

India and Russia have a long tradition of cooperation in science and technology, particularly in space and defense. Moscow is working with New Delhi on the Gaganyaan human spaceflight program. High technology cooperation between the two countries has good potential. India is now a major technological power in the world. Both India and Russia have launched major programs in artificial intelligence and quantum computing. Projects of a commercial and strategic nature can be developed in areas of emerging technologies. India can also benefit by sourcing critical minerals from Russia needed to enter the era of electric vehicles.

In 2019, India formulated its Act Far East policy to focus on Russia’s resource-rich and relatively underdeveloped Far East region. The two countries decided to build maritime connectivity between Chennai and Vladivostok, passing through the Indian and Pacific Oceans. New Delhi announced a soft credit line of $1 billion to encourage Indian investments in Russia’s Far East, which will lessen Russia’s anxieties about India’s involvement in the Indo-Pacific. 

Russia is a major player in the Arctic, with around 5,600 kilometers of coastline along the North Sea Route, which has opened up for summer passage due to the thawing of the Arctic Ocean on account of global warming. Although the Arctic is a sensitive region geopolitically, India cannot ignore this area. New Delhi announced an Arctic policy in 2022, and Moscow can be an important partner in implementing it. 

Geopolitics

Although both sides have managed the current global turbulence reasonably well, they should remain alert to the fact that the geopolitical factors are uncertain and can have an unexpected impact on bilateral relations. A sound appreciation of each other’s security concerns is needed. India has deep strategic interests but also security vulnerabilities in Eurasia, as well as the vast Indo-Pacific region. Russian security is closely tied up with Europe, the Balkans, the Middle East, Afghanistan, and the Eurasian regions. Both countries are affected by issues of terrorism, radicalization, and instability in Afghanistan.  

India-China relations were adversely impacted by clashes in Eastern Ladakh in the Galwan region in 2020. This comes at a time when Russia-China ties have become more strategic, particularly after the start of the Ukraine conflict. Thus, Russia and India have a different lens through which they perceive China. Likewise, Russia and China have different perceptions about the US and the West in general. 

In Russian strategic circles, there is some anxiety over the perceived Indian ‘tilt’ towards the West. The fact is that India follows an independent foreign policy guided by strategic autonomy. India’s participation in the Quad, a grouping of the US, Japan, Australia, and India in the Indo-Pacific region, is seen in Russia with anxiety. Likewise, Russia’s growing strategic closeness with China and Pakistan cause some concern in India. Both sides need to have a proper assessment of each other’s strategic priorities and concerns. 

Way forward

To give further impetus to bilateral ties, it is important that the tradition of annual summits between the leaders of India and Russia, which was interrupted in 2022, is restored. There are some structural issues the two sides need to address to take relations to the next level. 

Following the imposition of Western sanctions on Russia, payment mechanisms to settle trade transactions have been found to be inadequate. Although India has purchased large quantities of Russian oil, stable payment mechanisms have yet to be formulated. This issue must be addressed urgently and creatively so that bilateral ties are not affected adversely. Similarly, the two sides should conclude a bilateral investment protection treaty soon to facilitate investments. Non-tariff barriers to trade should also urgently be removed. The relationship between their banks and insurance companies are inadequate and underdeveloped. These issues need to be resolved to buttress the trade and economic potential of the two sides. 

India has an ambitious target of installing 500 GW of renewable energy by 2030. Presently, it has a combined renewable energy installed capacity of 180 GW, which includes 44.5 GW of wind power and 72.3 GW of solar power. India took the lead in setting up the International Solar Alliance (ISA) in 2015, which now has 110 members, and a Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI), with 39 members. 

It is necessary to strengthen individual contacts between the two countries, particularly among young people. Russia has a rich tradition in the field of Indology. This must be revived. Russian academics could focus more attention on India’s 5,000-year-old civilization, going back to the Indus-Saraswati Civilization. The vast treasure of Indian strategic thinking, culture, and civilization needs to be approached from a non-Western, non-colonial perspective.

Likewise, Indian institutions of higher learning should pay greater attention to Russia, its history, culture, and civilization. There needs to be joint programs of research, studies, and dissemination among experts on both sides. Indian academics have regularly participated in high-level conferences organized by prominent think tanks such as the Valdai Discussion Club. These types of contacts should be expanded. 

During its G20 presidency, India put forward the civilizational idea of ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’, a vision of one planet, one world, and one future. This vision recognizes multiplicity, plurality, and diversity in the world, envisioning a world of mutual cooperation, accommodation, caring and sharing, respect for nature, the environment, and biodiversity. A multipolar world requires this type of inclusive vision – otherwise, there will be chaos. Both India and Russia are in a unique position to contribute to the emergence of a harmonious, peaceful, and stable multipolar world. 

At the end of 2023, Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans Frontieres, RSF), the international organization ostensibly advocating for freedom of information, released its annual report. The paper massively downplays the widespread and deliberate targeting of Palestinian journalists in the Israel-Gaza war.

The report's announcement, titled, “Round-up: 45 journalists killed in the line of duty worldwide – a drop despite the tragedy in Gaza,” excludes most of the Palestinian journalists killed by Israel in 2023, particularly in the past few months. It claims 16 fewer journalists were killed worldwide in 2023 than in 2022. This doesn't reflect reality.

The report claims that (as of December 1, 2023), only 13 Palestinian journalists were killed while actively reporting, noting separately that 56 journalists were killed in Gaza, “if we include journalists killed in circumstances unproven to be related to their duties.”

Other sources put the overall number of Palestinian journalists killed in the enclave much higher. The UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported on December 1 that 73 journalists and media workers had been killed, citing to the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate (PJS).

While The Committee to Protect Journalists' (CPJ) December 20, 2023 numbers are lower (at least 61 Palestinian journalists killed since October 7), CPJ at least didn't disregard dozens of slain Palestinian journalists like RSF did.

In fact, in contrast to RSF's cheerful “things are much better for journalists than previous years” tone, CPJ emphasized that in the first 10 weeks of Israel's war on Gaza, “more journalists have been killed than have ever been killed in a single country over an entire year.” It voiced its concern about, “an apparent pattern of targeting of journalists and their families by the Israeli military.”

However, in the methodology section near the end of its more detailed report, RSF notes it “logs a journalist’s death in its press freedom barometer when they are killed in the exercise of their duties or in connection with their status as a journalist.”

Many Palestinian journalists in Gaza have received death threats from officers in the Israeli army precisely due to their status as journalists. And many of those threatened have subsequently been killed, along with family members, when Israeli airstrikes targeted their homes or places of shelter.

We also have the precedent in prior wars (in 2009, 2012, 2014, and 2021) of Israel bombing Gazan media buildings (including one I was in in 2009) with varying severity, damaging and finally destroying two major media buildings in 2021. This is clearly intended to stop the flow of reports from Gaza under Israeli bombs, and so is the killing of journalists.

On December 15, the Palestinian Journalists' Syndicate criticized the RSF report, going as far as accusing RSF of complicity with Israel's war crimes against Palestinian journalists through whitewashing.

This is the same PJS whose statistics the UN's OCHA cites, statistics which PJS says are “accurate and based on professional and legal documentation that follows the highest standards in documenting crimes against journalists.” This documentation includes journalists who Israeli airstrikes targeted in their homes, killed precisely because they are journalists.

In response, RSF claimed it, “did not yet have sufficient evidence or indications,” to state that any more than 14 journalists in the Gaza Strip (as of December 23, the date of its response) “had been killed in the course of their work or because of it.”

At least three journalists were shot dead, at least three killed by an Israeli airstrike on media outlets in central Gaza City, and many more were killed by Israeli airstrikes on “safe” areas – areas south of Wadi Gaza, which Israel had commanded civilians to flee to for their “safety.” In spite of this command, Israeli bombings continued all over the strip, including all the way south to Rafah.

Still many more – in Gaza City, as well as to the north and to the south of it – were killed at home with their families, including one journalist in Khan Younis, killed along with 11 members of his family when an Israeli airstrike targeted his home on November 2. On November 23, a journalist was killed in an Israeli airstrike on his home in Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, along with 20 family members.

The Cradle reported that, “The Israeli army sent a letter to legacy news outlets, Reuters and AFP.” The letter said, “The [Israeli Army] is targeting all Hamas military activity throughout Gaza. Under these circumstances, we cannot guarantee your employees' safety.”

One Israeli bombing of a journalist's home on November 7 killed him and 42 family members. Like many of his slain colleagues, he was a journalist for Palestinian Authority-run Wafa news. Many of the other murdered journalists worked for: Palestinian Authority-run Palestine TV, independent news agencies, local TV and radio programs, and larger outlets like al Jazeera. Others worked with Hamas-affiliated media and radio. Still others were freelancers.

On November 5, PJS reported that at least 20 of the journalists killed (since October 7) “were intentionally targeted by strikes on their homes or during their work covering Israel’s attacks.” This tally is already greater than RSF's reported total of 13 journalists killed at work or because of their work, even though the RSF report covers a period of almost a month more.

Israel threatens journalists, kills family members

Many Gaza journalists report being threatened by the Israeli army. CPJ noted it is “deeply alarmed by the pattern of journalists in Gaza reporting receiving threats, and subsequently, their family members being killed.”

One such incident followed a threat to Al-Jazeera Arabic reporter Anas Al-Sharif. CPJ noted he had received multiple phone calls from officers in the Israeli army instructing him to cease coverage and leave northern Gaza. Additionally, he received voice notes on WhatsApp disclosing his location. His 90-year-old father was killed on December 11 by an Israeli airstrike on their home in the Jabalia refugee camp.

On November 13, CPJ noted, “eight family members of photojournalist Yasser Qudih were killed when their house in southern Gaza was struck by four missiles. Qudih survived the attack.”

On October 25, an Israel airstrike on the Nuseirat refugee camp in the center of Gaza killed the wife, son, daughter, and grandson of Al-Jazeera’s bureau chief for Gaza, Wael Al Dahdouh.

The popular young independent journalist, Motaz Azaiza, reported receiving multiple threats from anonymous numbers urging him to cease his coverage, CPJ reported, noting that another Al-Jazeera correspondent, Youmna El-Sayed, said her husband received a threatening phone call from a man who identified himself as a member of the IDF and told the family “to leave or die.”

RSF bias: Not only in Palestine

Whereas RSF only reluctantly, as an afterthought, mentioned Palestinian journalists killed in “circumstances unproven to be related to their duties,” in a 2021 report on Syria, it stated, “at least 300 professional and non-professional journalists have been killed while covering artillery bombardments and airstrikes or murdered by the various parties to the conflict,” since 2011, going on to say, “this figure could in reality be even higher.”

Aside from reporting numbers it could not confirm, RSF cited a body in no way impartial or credible. As an investigative article noted, the SNHR is “based in Qatar... funded by foreign governments and staffed by top opposition leaders,” and “has openly clamored for Western military intervention.”

In 2017, Stephen Lendman wrote of RSF's attempt to shut down a panel sponsored by the Swiss Press Club in which British journalist Vanessa Beeley would be participating. “An organization that defends freedom of information is asking me to censor a press conference,” the club's executive director Guy Mettan said at the time. He refused to cancel the event.

RSF's 2023 roundup also didn't include two Russian journalists killed this year, one by a Ukrainian cluster bomb strike and the other by a Ukrainian drone attack (targeting journalists).

Sputnik pursued the matter and reported that RSF, “refused to give any comments to Sputnik” citing “editorial policy.”

Journalist Christelle Neant likewise noted RSF's glaring omission of the Russian journalists. She wrote about the body's funding from various governments, and more notably from regime change agencies: the Open Society foundation, The Ford Foundation, and the National Endowment for Democracy, funded by the US Congress.

RSF's notorious funders explain why it cherry picks or inflates its reports. The borderless organization has lines it won't cross. It reports a grain of truth but otherwise whitewashes the crimes of Israel and Washington.

The names of some 200 individuals connected to accused sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein were publicly released this week, but nobody should expect justice to be served in this sensational case involving members of the global elite.

In the first tranche of documents released on Wednesday involving Epstein and his powerful, globetrotting friends, there were no bombshell revelations –no smoking guns, as it were – and such an anticlimactic trend will most likely continue. After all, we are talking about individuals – businessmen, politicians, celebrities, and even royalty – for whom the justice system has a curious way of never really working, at least in the way the public would like it to.

But first, for those still recovering from their New Year’s revelries, who was Jeffrey Epstein? A native of New York City, Epstein has been described as an “enigma” who traversed the social spectrum from college drop-out to a financial advisor to the rich and famous. The Associated Press described his dazzling success on Wall Street as “shrouded in mystery,” while others believe he was an agent for Mossad or the FBI, tasked with blackmailing his unsuspecting associates as they unwittingly compromised themselves with underage girls.

Whatever the case may be, Epstein, who was found dead in his jail cell on August 10, 2019 of an apparent suicide, had a knack for finagling his way into affluent social circles in New York and Palm Beach. It was at these locations where the billionaire was accused of recruiting and sexually abusing underage girls at his residences in the early 2000s.

Epstein’s white-knight facade began to slip in 2005, as police in Florida opened an investigation over reports that he had sexually abused a 14-year-old girl. After a four-year trial, which saw the charges dramatically watered down, Epstein pleaded guilty to state charges, which included one count of solicitation of prostitution and one count of solicitation of prostitution with a minor under the age of 18. He was given a relative slap on the wrist with 18 months in prison under lax conditions, and released five months early.  

Despite his newfound reputation as a predatory pedophile, many of Epstein’s friends did not abandon him at this point; in fact, public figures who should have known better, like Bill Gates, Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton, continued their friendship, traveling aboard the so-called ‘Lolita Express’ to Epstein’s private Caribbean getaway known as Little Saint James, and later as ‘Pedophile Isle.’

In the ultimate Christmas gift, Manhattan federal Judge Loretta Preska ordered the release of the sealed documents against Epstein and his associates in a previously settled defamation lawsuit that Virginia Giuffre, 40, brought against Epstein’s madam, Ghislaine Maxwell, back in 2015. Maxwell is now serving a 20-year prison sentence. Giuffre alleged that Epstein sex-trafficked her to Prince Andrew, and in a lawsuit against the royal she claimed the Duke of York had sex with her on three separate occasions. The prince publicly denied the accusations in perhaps the most cringeworthy interview of all time.

As mentioned, much of the information contained in the 900 pages of court files has either been already reported or comes across as no surprise. Nevertheless, the descriptions make an Epstein party resemble a visit to the Barnum & Bailey’s Circus while under the influence of strong drugs. Imagine discovering, for example, the likes of pop-star Michael Jackson, the Duke of York, US politician Al Gore (apparently his fear of climate change did not stop him from flying on Epstein’s private jet), and the magician David Copperfield all in the same room. It’s enough to make one’s head explode. And by way of crude details, we also learn that former US President Bill Clinton 'likes them young', physicist Stephen Hawking allegedly participated in an underage sex party, and Epstein, allegedly, forced minors to engage in sex with the Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, who vehemently denies the claims. Incidentally, since we have just entered a momentous election year in the US, it’s crucial to note that while former President Donald Trump’s name does appear in the documents, witnesses maintain he did nothing wrong.

While it’s important to remember that inclusion in the documents does not equate to guilt, it beggars the imagination to explain such wildly diverse individuals and their affiliation with Mr. Epstein. And while the public is invited to examine the salacious details of this degenerate party, there are other things –far more damaging to the perverts-that-be – that we will never know about. This involves the intelligence information that was reportedly vacuumed up by the FBI.

Many social media users have speculated that the information contained on the computers removed from Epstein’s residence were so-called ‘blackmail files’ that the deceased sex offender, together with whatever intelligence agency he may have been working for, used to control high-powered individuals in high places. In other words, a massive intelligence operation.

Around the time of the raid, then Attorney General William Barr vowed that the investigation into Epstein’s alleged misconduct would continue and the perpetrators would face justice.

“Any co-conspirators should not rest easy,” Barr said. “The victims deserve justice and they will get it.”

Today, more than four years after Jeffrey Epstein’s death, not a single individual involved with the late socialite and financier has spent a single day in jail, and that will most likely not change. The rich and powerful may occasionally suffer from blackmail, but they rarely suffer at the hands of a justice system, predicated as it is on money and influence.

Here’s a little experiment that you can replicate at home: Type ‘Russia Danger’ into Google (or Bing, or whatever search engine you like, but it probably has to be in English or another NATO-affiliated language; say German or French or Polish). Peruse the results.

Then type ‘Russia Weak’ and repeat.

Funny, isn’t it? Both searches will net you a rich catch of links and titles, of opinion pieces, longform articles, surveys and so on, depicting a dangerous or a weak Russia, as the case may be. And many of those sources will be high-quality or, at least, thoroughly mainstream: Reuters, The Telegraph, The New York Times, NPR, reputable think tanks, institutes, and experts – that sort of thing.

In other words, the West is producing two roughly equally prominent narratives about Russia that are mutually exclusive. True, there are some attempts – vaguely reminiscent of medieval scholasticism – to reconcile them. Almost a year ago now, Reuters, for instance, ran the headline that “even a weak Russia is a problem for Europe.”

How convenient from a Western point of view! That way, you can have your triumphalism (because the phrase “Russia weak” here, of course, implies “West strong”) and, at the same time, you can still spread the fear of big bad Russia, with all that means for intra-NATO politics (i.e. US dominance), military budgets, and arms manufacturers. The latter have been doing very well out of yet another war that has – surprise, surprise – turned out to be a racket, in the famous words of US Marine Major General Smedley Butler.

Yet, on the whole, we are looking at a stark contrast. You may think that this is simply reflecting a healthy debate, with two opposing opinions clashing or that differences are due to time passing and things, especially in Ukraine, changing on the ground. To an extent, you’d be right: It is obvious, for instance, that the Western mood has become more pessimistic after the failure of Ukraine’s summer counteroffensive had to be acknowledged.

But the above is far from the whole explanation for the striking Western bipolarity (to use a term from clinical psychology) about Russia. For as so often with Western narratives about that country, they may not help you much to understand the real Russia, but if you read them against the grain, they can tell you a lot about the West’s imaginary Russias (yes, there is  more than one). And that, in turn, offers some timely insights into the real West.

Let’s look at a sample of points habitually made about Russia in the two big Western narratives.

For ‘Russia Danger’ we get: obsessively imperial (wants the Soviet Union back or, at least, something similarly dominant); supremely devious (never means what it says and not even the opposite, either); very subversive (able to make or break American presidents, for instance); militarily powerful and ruthless (its forces are battle-hardened and learning, its weapons advanced and adaptable, and, worst of all, its war economy is effective – unlike the West’s); well-connected (it gets ammunition from North Korea, sells oil to India, China just won’t stop siding with it, and, exasperatingly, much of the world is not heeding the West’s command to isolate it); and last but not least, politically “totalitarian,” of course (just disregard here that that term makes absolutely no sense with regard to Russia now).

For ‘Russia Weak’ we find: Not all it’s cracked up to be and really just a fraud (this is where almost no one can resist that deadly tired cliche about “Potemkin” this and “Potemkin” that); primitive in terms of, well, really, everything: values, politics, organization, technology (Remember German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock’s Wayward Washing Machine Theory regarding how Russians get their microchips? No? Lucky you.); savage (This one easily blends with “primitive,” of course – see under “Russian soldiers without guns but with sharpened shovels”); isolated (at least by the very proper crowd in the West), and, last but not least, always brimming with repressed popular discontent and, potentially at least, on the verge of color revolution and regime change (so to speak, authoritarian enough to condemn, but terribly bad at that, too – see under “Potemkin” and “primitive”).

We could refine the picture, but the outlines should be clear enough. And here is what it reveals: what is behind the West’s two Russias is not merely a debate or differences of opinion and assessments, but the latest iteration of a deep cultural pattern with a long history, reaching back to, at least, the moment when Peter the Great gate-crashed the European Great Power club in the early 18th century.

On one side, the West loves to imagine Russia in what – after the great Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said – we have learned to call an Orientalist framing, as a Backward Other: a part of that perennial fantasy ‘East’ that the West simply can’t imagine – or accept – as its equal. That’s the root of all those descriptions of today’s Russia as a kind of shovel-wielding gas station running on empty (if you will forgive a metaphor as muddled as the thinking it designates).

But there is another powerful register in the West’s Russia imagination: the Sinister Other. Whereas in the Orientalist key, Russia is ultimately always seen as reassuringly weak, the Sinister Other is different: a kind of evil mirror image of the West’s self-idealization, this Russia appears as modern, wielding up-to-date means of power across multiple domains from information, to the economy, to the battlefield. The Sinister Other can also mobilize its population well; it has, like the West, solved the political challenge of bringing the masses into politics, only in a way the West likes to imagine as morally inferior to its own brand of manufacturing consent.

Consider the issue of how Russia has been fighting the current war between it, on one side, and Ukraine and (de facto) NATO on the other. Initial – and gleeful – Western observations about Moscow’s mistakes and predictions that, with its call-up of September 2022, Moscow would fall flat on its face and even trigger large-scale rebellion, if not revolution, were a classic example not only of wishful groupthink but of the Orientalist, Backward-Other register. Put crudely: “Those Russians just can’t hack it, because – they are Russians.”

Yet, when Russia did succeed in mobilizing and also adjusted its military tactics, at least some Western perceptions shifted into the Sinister-Other key: as Barry R. Posen, an unusually perceptive Western observer wrote in Foreign Affairs, “the most alarming thing about Russia’s bombing campaign is that Moscow knows what it is doing.” Indeed. But where’s the news?

It is crucial to understand that this Western pattern is not merely about passive observation. On the contrary, there is a proactive aspect to it: We can read the last decades, essentially since the end of the Soviet Union, as marked by the West’s obstinate attempt to not only imagine Russia as backward and weak. Rather, Russia – and Russians – were supposed to fit that image: Under Western eyes, Russia was to be relegated in the real-existing hierarchy of international politics – a big country (and market), sure, but still one that, when push comes to shove, can be coerced and even defeated. And because Moscow has resisted this demotion successfully, Russia is now the Sinister Other again.

That shift illustrates the single most depressing thing about the West’s views of Russia: the West may change its tone from time to time, it may even produce two very different, mutually exclusive narratives about Russia at the same time, when stuck in a moment of transition or confusion. But it never actually learns. All it does, collectively and with all too few exceptions, is alternate between different frameworks of stereotypes. What a missed opportunity. Again and again.

An American court this week released over 900 documents relating to the sordid and seemingly never-ending Jeffrey Epstein saga.  

Epstein was the very well-connected billionaire financial adviser – with a fondness for being “massaged” by teenage girls from Miami trailer parks – who committed suicide (so it is said) in a Manhattan prison cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

The Western media had, of course, conferred celebrity status on Epstein – in tandem with his lover and partner in crime, Ghislaine Maxwell, long before his controversial and opportune death. Maxwell, no stranger to scandal in her own right, is the daughter of disgraced billionaire publisher Robert Maxwell - who committed suicide in 1991 on the eve of being exposed for having stolen hundreds of millions of pounds from his companies’ pension funds.

Epstein was one of Robert Maxwell’s financial advisers, and when Ghislaine moved to New York after her father’s death, they became romantically involved. She needed and valued his financial advice, and he was impressed with her wide range of social connections within elite circles globally – that extended even to the British royal family.

Ironically, Epstein and Maxwell were brought down by one of the young girls that they exploited sexually – an Australian, Virginia Giuffre, who pursued them both relentlessly through the American legal system. Giuffre also took legal proceedings against the hapless Prince Andrew – a close friend of Epstein and Maxwell with whom she says she was forced to have sex on numerous occasions – that resulted in a multi-million dollar out-of-court settlement and the Prince’s banishment from public life two years ago.

The inherently salacious nature of the long-running Epstein tale and its #MeToo subtext no doubt account for the Western media’s ongoing fascination with Epstein and Maxwell. But there is also another factor at work – a desire to expose and bring down those individual members of the global elites who associated with Epstein and were beneficiaries of his hospitality and largesse.

There is, however, an element of political naivety in this – after all, haven’t Western elites always sexually exploited young girls from the lower orders? More importantly, surely the widespread fraudulent financial activities of these powerful individuals and the corporations they govern are more deserving of exposure?

It should come as no surprise that a clever and ambitious spiv like Epstein (who did not come from a privileged background and was a teacher before becoming a financial adviser to the global elites) should also regularly supply his clients with young working-class women at his private residences.

Media coverage of this week’s document release – and there are more releases to come – has therefore focused on the identity of those prominent individuals who are named in the pleadings, depositions, and exhibits that have now been disclosed.

Famous American lawyer and academic Alan Dershowitz receives numerous mentions in the documents – including one allegation that he had sex with an underage girl while staying with Epstein. Dershowitz, who acted for Epstein and obtained a favourable plea bargain for him in relation to sex charges that he faced in 2008, has strongly denied this allegation. He admits, however, that he often visited Epstein’s residences and that on one occasion had a massage – but denies any impropriety or knowledge of Epstein’s egregious misconduct. Dershowitz’s denials are strengthened by the fact that he sued Giuffre over allegations that she made about him a few years ago, and she settled the action after admitting that she may have mistaken Dershowitz for someone else.

Prince Andrew, again not surprisingly, figures very conspicuously in the released documents – but his very close association with Epstein and Maxwell is old news, as is his liaison with Ms Giuffre and his subsequent denial of it. Michael Jackson is mentioned once in the documents – although it is very unlikely that he committed any sexual impropriety while enjoying Epstein’s hospitality. The documents make absolutely clear that only young women were on offer at Epstein’s residences. Donald Trump is also mentioned in passing – but it is a matter of public record that Trump’s relationship with Epstein ended decades ago.

Of more interest are those members of the global elites with lesser public profiles who are mentioned in the documents.  These individuals include Tom Pritzker, billionaire head of the  Pritzker Organisation and Executive Chairman of Hyatt Hotels; Glenn Dubin, billionaire investor and co-founder of Highbridge Capital;  Marvin Minsky, AI pioneer and MIT Professor; and Bill Richardson, former Governor of New Mexico, where Epstein had one of his homes.

No doubt, the release of the Epstein documents this week – and the subsequent releases – will be front-page news in the Western media. Details of the sexual crimes allegedly committed by Epstein and his friends will be salaciously pored over by readers excited by such scandals, and the reputations of a few individual participants will be so damaged that they will not be invited to Davos next year.

But the corrupt financial system that created Epstein and allowed him to prosper – he had amassed a fortune of $700 million – will continue to operate completely unchecked and beyond effective scrutiny. And even at the level of exposing those individuals who exploited the young girls that Epstein supplied them with – most will simply escape unscathed.

Portions of many of the documents released this week are redacted, and only Epstein and Maxwell know the names of all the elite individuals who were actually involved in their activities. Epstein is conveniently dead, and Maxwell has remained silent on this issue throughout her trial and incarceration - a wise move, perhaps given Epstein’s fate. Media coverage of the Epstein saga in the West purports to be investigative journalism – but its defects disclose the real scandal, namely that genuine investigative journalism no longer exists in the West.

Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar’s 2023 year-end visit to Moscow was a focused initiation of a preparatory effort that will reorient Russia-India relations when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visits Russia this year.

Defense, nuclear, and space will continue to be the core elements of the bilateral relationship. In the coming months and medium to long term, other poles will be added: an important role for the Indian diaspora in Russia, connectivity, tourism, fin-tech and info-tech.

Among such a mix of old and new pillars, the much-discussed energy collaboration will have to find its feet. Both sides are looking to convert their flourishing energy business from a buyer-seller relationship into a strategic energy partnership similar to what Modi has built with Gulf states.  

Hinting at changes to come in bilateral relations, Putin told Jaishankar that at the Putin-Modi summit next year, “we have to cover a lot of ground.” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov acknowledged at his joint press conference with Jaishankar on the same day that “we are respectful of the aspiration of our Indian colleagues to diversify their military and technical links.” 

Indians who know about Russia-India defense ties concede that this will take decades in view of the depth, diversity, and history of them. However, a public discourse on India’s aspirations point to steps in that direction beyond the 22nd Russia-India summit this year.  

Jaishankar’s crowded itinerary during his December 25-29 visit included a pioneering effort to turn to and seek support from the Indian diaspora in Russia to help augment bilateral relations. There are 30,000 Indians living in Russia, according to figures available with the Indian embassy in Moscow. Some of them have lived in Russia for more than three decades. It is being planned that when Modi visits Russia this year, he will address this numerically significant community at an agreed location to be decided in the coming months. 

Interacted with the Indian community in Moscow. Appreciated their contribution to building a strong and steady collaboration between India and Russia.

The Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership reflects experiences and sentiments of last 75 years. Urged the community to… pic.twitter.com/rl06FPhbeh

— Dr. S. Jaishankar (@DrSJaishankar) December 26, 2023

Diaspora engagement has been a pillar of Modi’s overseas outreach all over the world in the nearly ten years he has been prime minister. Jaishankar’s initiative to meet a cross-section of this community in Moscow on December 26 was enthusiastically welcomed by those who attended this meeting.

Attendees claimed this was the first time that a visiting Indian foreign minister had addressed the diaspora in Moscow. The claim was not challenged. The Indian embassy’s archives have records of external affairs ministers meeting sections of the diaspora – such as students at universities in the Soviet Union – but not the Indian community as a whole.  

Jaishankar was unfazed. The next day, in his opening remarks at a press conference with Lavrov, the minister brought up this subject. He said India had recently increased the number of flights to Russia from 52 to 64 every week, adding, “We are open to increasing it further.” Greater air connectivity is now an important bilateral agenda item. 

Jaishankar acknowledged at his various interactions, including one in Saint Petersburg with indologists, that culture has always been a very strong element in Russia-India relations. Even on his latest visit, the minister went to see a school named after Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore.

But a new and changing world requires additional, innovative drivers in bilateral relationships. It is relevant in this context that the character of the Indian diaspora in Russia has changed. They now belong to professions such as financial technology, business consultancy, information technology and other areas that did not exist in the heyday of Indo-Soviet amity. 

“Many people in Russia are not familiar with what has changed in India,” he said. In Jaishankar’s view, if the diaspora fills this knowledge gap about opportunities for doing business, the present bilateral trade of $50 billion – an all-time high – could double to $100 billion. All in all, the Indian community in Russia now has its task cut out for them. It is a new leap that brings them on par with the Indian diaspora in the Gulf, Far East and North America. 

Beyond the obvious, Modi has not given up hope for an end to the conflict in Ukraine. Putin told the Indian Minister: “We know the position of Prime Minister Modi ... his attitude to complicated processes, including hot spots, the situation in Ukraine. I know about his striving to resolve this problem through peaceful means.” 

A few days before traveling to Moscow, Jaishankar pointedly recused himself from discussing Ukraine when he launched a book in New Delhi by his multilateralist diplomat colleague Ambassador Mohan Kumar. From what Putin said, it was clear that Ukraine was discussed in depth with Jaishankar more than meets the eye. “Now, we will talk about this [Ukraine] in more detail ... I know that our colleagues have spoken about this, but nonetheless we will give you additional information on the situation.” Jaishankar’s visit was not a substitute for the interrupted annual summit, but it was a good augury for Russia-India relations in the new year. 

Where India Meets Russia – We are now on WhatsApp! ‎Follow and share RT India in English and in Hindi 

For years now, the US has been strongarming the Netherlands into accepting technology restrictions on the export of advanced lithography machines to China. These machines, produced by the Dutch firm ASML, use lasers to help create circuits for microchips.

Although ASML is a world-leading specialist company, its foundational patents are derived from the US, which allows Washington to coerce it into following unilateral export controls as the Americans see fit.

American restrictions have come in several waves, building on the sweeping export controls introduced in 2022. One such update concerning a specific kind of lithography machine came into effect on Monday, January 1, 2024. ASML attempted to rush through the sale of several such machines to China before the deadline but canceled it at the last moment – reportedly due to pressure from the US.

The news caused ASML’s US shares to drop. The fundamental goal of US foreign policy here is to try and crush China’s semiconductor industry and hobble its high tech ambitions, which has become one of the critical strategies to try and curb China’s military and economic rise as a whole.

In doing so, the US has blacklisted Chinese technology firms and has increasingly tried to stave off the exports of semiconductor equipment to China, describing it as a “small yard, high fence” approach. Despite this, there is overwhelming evidence at this stage that such sanctions are not working, not least because China is pursuing a coordinated state and industry effort to forcibly advance itself in semiconductor technology which has seen Huawei, the original US target of sanctions, effectively piece together its very own semiconductor supply chain.

However, moves targeted at companies such as ASML show that the US continues to represent an obvious threat and challenge to European economic competitiveness and prosperity. Why? Because EU firms are being forced, by command of a third party, to sever ties with their most lucrative market, in order to meet American goals. The US likes to claim that it supports free and fair trade in a market governed by the rule of law, but what kind of “rule of law” is there in a system where a firm you operate has secured a large number of sales in anticipation of a restriction deadline imposed by a third party outside of your legal system and then has to cancel those sales anyway because the same third party doesn’t want to wait for the deadline?

China is the world’s largest semiconductor market, whose high-tech development fuels a greater demand for microchips than anywhere else in the world. The US believes it can hamstring China’s long-term prospects by blocking this ascension as the country moves away from low-end manufacturing. Washington’s plan to stop China’s development and induce stagnation is based on faulty logic that China is incapable of innovating or moving forward without Western technology, which goes against all evidence to the contrary.

Instead, in the long-term, this approach will effectively cut off Western firms from the critical and lucrative Chinese market, as the US aims to create a new global supply chain in technology which it dominates, and therefore make the EU dependent upon it. This reminds us that the EU is the biggest loser of America’s war on China as it seeks to break a lucrative trading relationship but also, more critically, undermine European competitiveness, as it has done by depriving it of Russian energy over the war in Ukraine, and therefore absorb the market space for itself. To follow American wishes on China is to sacrifice sovereignty, geopolitical autonomy, and prosperity to serve the goals of the United States. It is a lose-lose situation. What happens to ASML when the time comes that China is capable of creating its own high-end chips and lithography equipment? And no longer has need of it for its domestic market, and offers the same solutions to other countries? You need to be in China to compete in the game, you don’t win by refusing to participate when the other side is still kicking the ball.

Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar’s five-day official visit to Russia was timely and significant for more than one reason. 

India and Russia had held annual summits at the leadership level since 2000. This sent an important message in terms of the value attached by the two countries to bilateral ties, but it also conveyed a broader geopolitical message to other international partners of the two countries.

But this practice was broken largely because of Russia’s pre-occupation with the Ukraine conflict and its fallout. The last annual summit took place in 2021.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin could have held a summit on the margins of the BRICS summit in Johannesburg in South Africa or the G20 summit in New Delhi, but Putin did not attend either. While Jaishankar’s visit does not substitute for a summit meeting, it was intended to fill a political gap. 

Jaishankar and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov have met six times during the year, and the Indian external affairs minister also met with Russian Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov during the year on the economic agenda. For Jaishankar to visit Russia before the end of the year, undeterred by the Russian winter and holiday season, reflects the importance both sides attach to the further expansion of ties.

This is high and unusual praise by Putin. It can be interpreted on several levels – particularly as an acknowledgement that India has resisted pressure from the US and others to condemn Russia over the Ukraine conflict, impose sanctions, and reduce defense ties with Russia. India has, on the contrary, bought discounted Russian oil to the point that Russia has become its biggest oil supplier. It has argued that ensuring this market flow of Russian oil has helped avoid a major spike in oil prices and checked global inflation. Indian-Russian trade has expanded, while the G7 has broken economic and trade ties with Russia.

India played a major role as G20 president in negotiating the part in the Leaders’ Declaration on the Ukraine conflict despite the hardening of the G7 position and that of Russia and China after the G20 summit in Bali. The final text does not mention Russia by name, while the G7 was satisfied that the general formulations in it could be sold as being directed at Russia’s military operation in Ukraine.

It is against this backdrop that Putin received Jaishankar at the Kremlin, the first time that such a gesture has been made to him personally. The general unavailability of Putin to visiting foreign ministers is well-known.

Jaishankar delivered a personal message from Modi to Putin. During the meeting, Putin invited his “friend Modi” to visit Russia in 2024 and noted that Indian-Russian ties were on the whole developing well. He said that he had been briefing Modi on developments in Ukraine, remarking that he understands the Indian prime minister is willing to do his utmost to resolve the matter by peaceful means. He added that he would give additional information to Jaishankar on Ukraine. 

Putin’s praise for Modi and India and the gesture of receiving Jaishankar takes into consideration these realities of India’s foreign policy which are meant to safeguard the larger national interests. At the core of this is Russia’s respect for India’s policy of strategic autonomy. Jaishankar’s high-profile visit and the vigorous language used to mark the importance of India’s traditional ties with Russia would have caught Washington’s attention.

Indian-Russian trade is at an all-time high, exceeding $50 billion last year, and should pass that figure this year. It includes energy, fertilizers, coking coal, and other items, for which long term arrangements were discussed. India intends to expand investments in Russia’s oil and gas sector.

On the nuclear side, two important amendments were agreed to which will take the Kudankulam nuclear power project forward. Mutual investments, progress on a bilateral investment treaty, and the resumption of negotiations between India and the Eurasian Economic Union for a free trade agreement will be resumed in the second half of January 2024.

Moscow and New Delhi will expand cooperation in the Russian Far East. India expects a large representation from this region at the Vibrant Gujarat Summit in January 2024.

The talks between Jaishankar and Lavrov were comprehensive. They discussed the global strategic situation, Ukraine, Gaza, the Indo-Pacific, ASEAN, Afghanistan, UN-related matters, the challenges facing the Global South, and the building of a multipolar order. China would undoubtedly have been discussed, but diplomatic discretion here would be normal.

In the joint press conference, Lavrov spoke of prospects for more defense cooperation, including joint production of modern weapons under New Delhi’s ‘Make in India’ program, and, importantly, expressed respect for India’s efforts to diversify its defense ties. He noted bilateral cooperation in rocket engine manufacturing and satellite navigation systems.

Jaishankar’s visit was productive in maintaining the momentum of Indian-Russian ties, which have been built over 60 years, a relationship that he believes is not just about politics, diplomacy, or economics, but is much deeper.

Where India Meets Russia – We are now on WhatsApp! ‎Follow and share RT India in English and in Hindi 

As we conclude the year 2023, we look back on another 12 months of global turmoil, upheaval, and uncertainty. Conflicts such as the war in Ukraine continued, while another full-scale war broke out in the Middle East between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. While tensions between China and the West cooled after reaching a boiling point, they still remain in the same geopolitical frame and could easily explode at any unpredictable moment.

Because of this, the past year has undoubtedly been one of the starkest periods of global turmoil since the run up to the first World War, and the historical parallels are uncanny. As a unipolar political order fragments with new challenger powers emerging, the world has descended into a security dilemma fraught with explosive regional conflicts, widespread struggles for influence, arms races and weaponization of trade. Following on from 2022, this has ushered in a new and less secure era.

The decline of unipolarity

A unipolar political order is a system where one power has exclusive dominance or hegemony over all the rest, and therefore is free to shape the rules and outcomes of the system to its own ends and interests. When the United States overcame the Soviet Union in the Cold War, it became an undisputed global hegemon and used this status to permeate the entire world with its cultural, economic, political and military influence, aiming to shape what it described as a “New American Century.” To this end, the US engaged in unrestrained military adventurism all over the world.

Similarly, an earlier unipolar order was known as “Pax Britannia,” which after the defeat of Napoleon’s France as its sole challenger, saw the British Empire become the global hegemon with France as a junior partner. However, in both instances, the “peaks” of those unipolar eras only lasted for a few decades until new challengers began to emerge, which transformed the world into a multipolar system where multiple great powers compete for influence, with often destructive consequences. The British Empire’s dominance was challenged by the rise of Imperial Germany, Japan, and Italy, three new empires which emerged at the end of the 19th century, subsequently paving the way for the events of World Wars I and II.

The new, dangerous era

Likewise, US unipolarity began to wane by the 2010s following the resurgence of Russia, as well as the rise of China. The years of 2018-2023 have been exceptionally consequential in opening a new period of geopolitical turmoil and struggle, as the US pivoted its foreign policies to confront both powers with a view to containing them and sustaining its dominance over the entire planet. No hegemony, of course, goes down without a fight. Britain fought both World Wars precisely for this reason but was exhausted to the point it was forced to pass the baton on to the US. Similarly, in the modern day, neither will America go down without a fight.

But beyond this, what has been more important to this year, and ultimately what lies ahead, is the fate of the Middle East. In October, war broke out after Hamas decided to launch a full-scale assault on Israel from Gaza. The war was triggered by US appeasement of Israel’s hardline policies through the Abraham Accords, as well as the emerging multipolarity providing more political space for Hamas to resist. Israel responded with an overwhelming bombardment and invasion of Gaza, invoking strong condemnation from around the world. It aims to militarily occupy the strip, a series of decisions which will push the Muslim world’s relations with the Zionist state to the point of no return and therefore pose consequences for the entire region, which in turn will impact the West’s engagement with the Global South and the power struggle there with Russia and China. Ultimately, the war is also a marked failure of the hardline US policies on Iran and unsuccessful attempts to try and contain it by force.

Although Tehran is not a competitor for hegemony, it is nonetheless a formidable regional adversary for Washington, boasting significant power and population, with growing military capabilities, and is fighting to force the influence of the US and Israel out of the Middle East. To this end, Washington’s decision to give Israel free rein to destroy Gaza is a strategic setback in multiple domains. The US will have to commit to a new chapter of violent struggle across the Middle East to sustain its position, whether the it wants to or not.

Then of course, there is the top priority of American foreign policy, the ongoing struggle with China. Washington seeks to contain the rise of Beijing as a military and technological superpower, and militarily encircle it in the region it calls the Indo-Pacific. Although presently the two sides are undergoing a detente after Xi Jinping met Joe Biden in San Francisco, with the Taiwan issue likewise less critical in 2023, the relationship nonetheless remains the overall driver of the strategic environment we live in today, and there is little expectation the US will relent. Beijing is patient and prefers to play ‘the long game’ but is certainly rising to the challenge, which enables every other actor to assert its position, and thus further stretch the international order.

Thus, 2023 has been a geopolitically divisive year that will certainly be remembered by the history books, especially in reference to the Middle East, and will usher in 2024 as another decisive year which may determine the outcomes of many of these conflicts. The old world, the comfortable world of American privilege, is evaporating, and we potentially now face the return of a world we had hoped was confined to the experiences of our forefathers. Who said history was over, Francis?

Ukraine needs to come to an agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and then Kiev and Moscow should unite to sue the West.

You may think the above idea is rather radical and unusual. Sue the West? Where? In what court? The same West that has no issue with either Ukraine or the US (or both) blowing up Germany’s – and the EU’s – vital energy pipelines? Or the West that ignores its leaders' complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, a crime explicitly proscribed – the complicity no less than the act itself – in Article III (e) of the 1948 UN Genocide Convention?

But wait till you hear about the fertile mind that produced this very outside-the-box idea. It’s none other than Aleksey Arestovich, once an adviser to Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky. Not necessarily a household name (yet) outside Ukraine, Arestovich was, until very recently, a man of extraordinary influence in Kiev, and used it to energetically promote the very proxy war that he'd now like to end and to then blame on the West alone.

University dropout, sleazy pop psychologist (of the how-to-manipulate-others-to-succeed type), former military and virtually certainly also intelligence officer, blogger and would-be-geopolitics guru with very adaptable views, and, of course, Zelensky aide from 2020 to 2023,  Arestovich is not merely an individual but a syndrome: He stands for a social type, the smart but psychopathically empathy-less conman who managed to ruthlessly exploit the disorientation left behind in post-Soviet societies with a coldhearted cynicism that would have made Machiavelli blush.

Arestovich’s 180-degree turn is yet another absurdity produced by the theatrical politics of the Kiev elite. But, embittering as it may be to hear this former warmonger extraordinaire speak about peace and who's blame, the stark contrast between the old anti-Russian jingoist Arestovich, and the new, would-be-friend of Russia and foe-of-the-West Arestovich, provides a depressingly accurate measure of just how irresponsible Ukrainian politics has become under the de facto authoritarian Zelensky regime.

In 2019, it was Arestovich who infamously 'predicted' a big and devastating war (beyond the conflict which started in 2014) with Russia over Ukraine’s attempt to join NATO, which, eventually, in 2022, left some naïve Western commenters gushing over his “eerie” foresight. 

Except Arestovich did not really predict the big war in 2019. Instead, he sold it as good as he could. Ruling out any possibility of peacefully ending the then-ongoing, smaller-scale conflict with the Donbass republics (Minsk II, anybody?), he used the usual baseless talking points (“Putin wants to rebuild the Soviet Union, destroy NATO, and the EU, dominate Europe” and so on, the whole hogwash then fashionable from Annalena Baerbock to Tim Snyder) to present an escalation into a bigger war as absolutely inevitable: Because not only did Minsk II hardly appear on this great fantasy-strategist’s radar, he also insisted that neutrality was impossible for Ukraine and misled his followers into believing that NATO would easily (“all very simple now”) accept Ukraine, even if it had unresolved territorial conflicts with internal insurgents or with Russia.

At the same time, Arestovich presented the future big war as Ukraine’s great chance. Having posited the false alternative – at least back then – of either joining NATO after that big war against Russia (which he recklessly assumed Ukraine would win) or being absorbed by Moscow in the near future, he wholeheartedly recommended course number one: war with Russia. Even three such wars in succession seemed to him both inevitable and advisable; back then, that is.

And, finally, he also invited Ukrainians to indulge in the West’s favorite fantasy, namely that Russia might suffer collapse and undergo a regime change. “Some kind of liberals” would come to power, he claimed, and say “we are a nice country again.” That part of his sales pitch for a steadfast “no” to diplomacy, compromise, and peace is particularly ironic now. For he has announced an utter and complete change of heart in an interview with Russian journalist and broadcaster Yulia Latynina.

Even good old Europe is still too soft on simple people for her: All that “social-democratic” mumbo-jumbo about human rights, etc. won’t cut it for Latynina; her true European 'values' are about property, innovation, and competition. So much for those regime-change fantasies, then. It’s the Latynina type that Arestovich was wagering on. No wonder most Russians, including those critical of President Vladimir Putin, say “anybody but that.”

Yet in their recent tête-à-tête on YouTube, the Ukrainian conman and the Russian libertarian couldn't see entirely eye to eye. Even Latynina felt that Arestovich’s idea of joining up Russia to sue the NATO states was a bit of a non-starter. Moreover, as much in awe of the West as she is, she had to remind him that it “doesn't owe Ukraine anything.” Arestovich, carried away by his newest brainwave, insisted it does. 

Both were missing the point: It does not matter what the West owes or does not owe you. The West will always only give you what is best for the West (and that usually means the US). And when that is “nothing,” then that is what you will get. If only arrogant former warmongers like Arestovich could finally start facing reality. All of it.

“There is an active hunt not only for promising research, the data and parameters of our weapons, but also for our specialists who are especially valuable,” Russian Industry and Trade Minister Denis Manturov recently said, referring to Western spies and their efforts to seek information about Russian defense production by targeting industry experts.  

Well, approaching “soft target” experts for info is certainly a better bet for spies than trying to chat up a soldier whose BS-detector is more finely tuned to espionage. And Western spooks know this better than anyone else since they’ve been busy practicing – among themselves. 

Ultimately, all spying is about getting an economic advantage – whether in conflict or war, where the outcome determines the prominence of any future economic foothold, or more directly through theft of economically valuable secrets or the subversion of trade or competition. The current focus on the military conflict between Russia and the Western military alliance via Ukraine obscures the fact that for all the public proclamations of unity and solidarity by Western leaders, they’d all screw each other over economically if given even the slightest chance.

The Ukraine conflict has really underscored the American view of Germany as an economic rival, which once translated into Washington’s systemic criticism of Germany’s Nord Stream economic lifeline of Russian gas (before it was mysteriously blown up). Now, it’s seen in the form of Uncle Sam’s enticing of German companies to US shores with green tax breaks and plentiful energy as limited and pricey replacement American liquified natural gas sold to Europe has sparked German deindustrialization. It was a longtime dream come true for the US, having considered Germany a key competitor on the global stage since the early ’90s. 

By 1999, the European press was reporting the theft of wind turbine blueprints from German company Enercon, to the benefit of an American rival. The US electronic espionage service (the National Security Agency) was blamed for it, and for targeting at least 30 German firms. 

Berlin was apparently so outraged by US spying that its BND foreign spy service actually helped the same NSA industrially spy on German business interests and on its neighbor and fellow US ally, France, for over a decade in the wake of this incident, as the German press reported in 2015. It’s no secret that the Franco-German-led Airbus Group (the known as EADS) is really the only major global rival to Pentagon contractor and commercial jet maker Boeing, yet Germany’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported at the time that Germany helped the US spy on it, too. So when current German Chancellor Olaf Scholz stood beside Biden before the Ukraine conflict and smiled while the latter mused like a mafioso about taking care of the Nord Stream pipeline of cheap Russian gas, it wasn’t the only time that Berlin appeared enthusiastic about bending over for Washington. 

Washington also long considered France to be an industrial powerhouse, particularly under former President Charles de Gaulle, whose official policy of nuclear power development turned the country into a cheap energy powerhouse to rival American industry – and therefore into a target for US industrial spying. The CIA station in Paris was rolled up and expelled in a 1995 French domestic intelligence operation that ended with Paris publicly accusing the US of economic espionage. While the details of that spy operation still remain murky after all these years, it appears to be the same kind of trade-related espionage that the US also practiced during the Clinton administration on another ally, Japan, amid automobile-related trade negotiations, as the Los Angeles Times reported in 1995. 

More recently, acquisitions of French industrial knowledge by US competitors have been the visible tip of the iceberg of Washington’s cut-throat methods of securing industrial advantages – like when France’s nuclear know-how division of Alstom was acquired by Pentagon contractor General Electric, as the heat was turned up on Alstom executives, including the CEO, jailed and charged in the US under American extraterritorial law for alleged corruption in developing countries.  

Of course, what remains unseen is far more egregious. About 100 French companies were targeted by NSA spies, Wikileaks reported in 2015 – “including almost all of the CAC 40” index of the country’s top businesses, according to France’s Liberation newspaper. 

Not that the French have been immune from dabbling in a little ami-on-ami spying. In 1993, two French officials were sent back to Paris after being caught spying on US industry under diplomatic cover. Around the same time, a French intelligence report leaked to the press cited “49 high-technology US companies, 24 financial services companies and US officials handling sensitive trade talks… which are being targeted by spies for their negotiating strategies,” Britain’s Independent reported at the time.  

Not to be forgotten is America’s “best ally,” Israel, cited by the US government in targeting American business people for research and development intelligence as far back as 1992 – and more recently through its military-grade Pegasus spyware and its larger cyber-surveillance industry, whose separation from the state is highly questionable at best and nonexistent at worst. 

Moscow’s public acknowledgement that it’s now actively the target of the West’s orgy of industrial espionage means that it now has the same choice as every cat owner. It can interpret any bite as an act of aggression, or just do what the West does among themselves and chalk it up to a love bite, all while plotting how to step on the offending cat’s tail – with plausible deniability, of course.

As the five-day visit of External Affairs Minister of India Dr. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar wraps up, along with the year 2023 – which happened to be truly unmatched for bilateral relations between old friends New Delhi and Moscow – one can assume that the countries are now on a clear path to reenergizing their strong, predictable, mutually beneficial, but somewhat sluggish ties. 

As part of his official schedule, Jaishankar met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov, engaged with the Indian community in Moscow, and interacted with Russian President Vladimir Putin, which is a rare deviation from the Kremlin’s protocols.

Jaishankar’s visit holds importance due to the conflict in Ukraine, which has created deep geopolitical divisions in Europe and globally. India has consistently maintained a neutral stance by calling on all parties to pursue a resolution through peaceful means. Therefore, the current visit highlights the importance that Russian-Indian relations play despite Western calls for sanctions on Moscow and a boycott of Russian exports, notably oil and armaments.

Officially, Indo-Russian relations enjoy the unique title of Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership. Since the start of the Ukrainian crisis, while Russia and Europe have suffered a break in their geopolitical relationships, Russia’s subsequent eastward focus and Indian neutrality have resulted in an explosion of trade and commerce between the traditional Cold War allies. Highlighting the significance of ties, Dr. Jaishankar stressed the great care taken by previous leaders to nurture this relationship.

Russia has found an eager market among Indian oil buyers as Western states have imposed restrictions on Russian oil imports. Led by the United States and its European allies, a new price cap of $60 per barrel was declared on Russian seaborne crude. India has quietly refused to recognize the Western price ceiling.

During his address, Jaishankar also highlighted that while the economic relationship between the two nations has shown tremendous growth, increasing Indian exports to Russia would be welcomed. Some other challenges identified during his public interaction were the lack of familiarity with some of the economic players, solutions, and platforms emerging in both countries. Enhancing cultural exchanges, business-to-business interactions, tourism, and collaboration between civil society organizations of both nations, were some of the areas singled out as holding potential for growth.

The Indian external affairs minister also interacted with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin on December 28. Highlighting the increased economic partnership between India and Russia, Putin noted that commercial collaborations between the two states have seen greater investments, especially in the oil, coal, and high-tech sectors.

Oil imports have also given new economic impetus to a relationship that had become restricted to mainly defense equipment for the past few years. Both countries are now searching for ways to expand and reinvigorate commercial ties, as Moscow looks for greater integration with Asian markets and India searches for new business partners to fuel its rising economic status. 

Vladimir Putin extended an invitation to Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi to visit Russia next year. “I know about his desire to do everything to resolve this problem through peaceful means,” he said, noting that Modi was “repeatedly informed” and kept in the loop on the Ukraine crisis. 

When discussing broadening collaboration with Russia in the defense, nuclear, and space sectors, Jaishankar highlighted a point that won't escape the attention of keen observers: “These are collaborations you only do with countries with whom you really have a high degree of trust,” he said during his interaction with the Indian community. He added that significant agreements were signed on expanding the Kudankulam nuclear power plant (KNPP) joint project.

The current visit is indeed being closely watched in Western capitals, especially since India has successfully walked a difficult diplomatic tightrope between expanding relations with Western states while also deepening its partnership with Moscow. The visit is also a way for New Delhi to signal its independent foreign policy and strategic autonomy in pursuing its interests, at a time when India is drawing closer to the United States and its allies. 

The perennial India-Russia ties are best described by Jaishankar’s recent post. It contained a picture of a 1962 Soviet visiting card to Red Square when he was there with his father, and his recent picture in front of the Kremlin with the captions, “How it started; How it’s going.”

The year 2023 was a banner year for change, underscoring the reality of a world transforming away from American hegemony toward the uncertainty of a yet-to-be-defined multilateral reality. This transformation was marked by many events – here are the five most important ones.

The failed Ukrainian counteroffensive

Perhaps the most-hyped event of the year, Ukraine’s much-anticipated spring/summer counteroffensive was NATO’s version of the German Ardennes offensive of December 1944 – a last-gasp effort to throw all remaining reserves into a desperate attempt to score a knock-out blow against an opponent who had seized the strategic initiative. Any sound military analyst could have predicted the inevitability of a Ukrainian defeat – one cannot responsibly speak of launching a frontal assault on a heavily defended, well-prepared defensive position using forces who are neither equipped, organized, or trained for the task.

The amount of delusion surrounding Ukrainian and NATO expectations only underscores the desperation that underpinned their cause – the West’s support of Ukraine was always of a superficial nature, where domestic politics trumped global reality. The ignorance of those who believed Ukraine could pierce the Russian defenses was easily matched by those who thought that a Moscow Maidan movement could be created through the combined impact of economic sanctions and a forever war against Ukraine.

The counteroffensive is the manifestation of the Russophobia that has gripped the collective West, where ignorance trumps fact, and delusion supersedes reality. The failed NATO/Ukrainian counteroffensive, far from weakening Russia, proved to be the incubator for the birth of a more powerful, confident, and resilient Russia that will no longer allow itself to be classified as a second-class citizen in the world community.

On October 6, 2023, Israel was sitting on top of the world. It had cowed the administration of US President Joe Biden into forgetting about a two-state solution to the Palestinian problem. Instead, it embraced the vision of a greater Israel, which glossed over the continued theft of Palestinian land through unchecked support for illegal Israeli settlements by focusing on the broader geopolitical benefits of normalized relations between Israel and the Gulf Arab states. The Israel Defense Forces were the best military in the region, backed by an intelligence and security establishment possessing a legendary reputation for knowing everything about all potential enemies.

Then came October 7 and the Hamas surprise attack.

All talk of Israeli-Arab normalization is finished. The IDF is being embarrassed by Hamas and defeated by Hezbollah. The Israeli intelligence service has been exposed as an empty shell whose greatest accomplishment is an AI-assisted targeting system that facilitates the killing of Palestinian civilians.

The new reality of the Middle East is now shaped by two related issues – the necessity of a Palestinian state and the inevitability of a strategic Israeli defeat. The paths toward resolving each of these issues will not be easy ones to follow, and they may unfold over the span of years rather than months, but one thing is certain – this new geopolitical reality would not have been possible without the events of October 7.

Africa: The Sahel revolt

In the span of three years, Françafrique, or the post-colonial French-dominated sphere of influence in the Sahel region of Africa, has gone from serving as the springboard for the projection of French-led American and EU efforts to project military power in an attempt to defeat the forces of Islamic insurgency, to being humiliated and defeated at the hands of nationalists who overthrew traditional pro-French governments and replacing them with anti-French military juntas. Starting with Mali in 2021, then Burkina Faso in 2022, and finally Niger in 2023, the collapse of the Sahel component of Françafrique has been as dramatic as it has been decisive. There was seemingly nothing France nor its supporters could do to reverse the tide of anti-French sentiment in the region. In the end, the threat of outside military intervention to change the July 2023 coup in Niger collapsed in the face of a unified collective defense posture taken by the three former French colonies.

The dramatic eviction of France from the region was matched by the emergence of a new regional power – Russia. The rise of the new tripartite regional alliance between Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger coincided with a more assertive Russian foreign policy, which looked to form common cause with an Africa still straining from the bonds of post-colonial existence manifested in geopolitical relationships like those formed under Françafrique. The Russian approach was borne out in the success of last summer’s Russian-African Summit, held in St. Petersburg, and the growing economic and security relationships between Russia and many African states – including Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, that have emerged since. The Russian tricolor flag, it seems, has replaced that of France as the most influential symbol of foreign involvement in that region.

BRICS

In 2022, China hosted the 14th Summit of the Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South African economic forum best known by the acronym formed from the first letters of its five-nation membership – BRICS. At that summit, BRICS aspired to greatness but was unable to accomplish anything more than talk about the creation of a so-called “currency basket” designed to challenge the global supremacy of the US dollar and speak wistfully about the possibility of opening its membership to other nations.

The South African-hosted BRICS Summit proved to be the perfect counterpoint to the combined pathos of the G-7 Summit in Hiroshima, Japan, and the NATO Summit in Vilnius, Lithuania. In Japan and Lithuania, western impotence was on full display for the world to see. In sharp contrast, the virility of the BRICS phenomenon provided a multilateral alternative that proved to be attractive to many nations, including the six that were accepted into BRICS as part of its expansion strategy (Argentina, Egypt, Iran, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, although Argentina withdrew its membership package following the election of Javier Milei as president in December 2023), and the fourteen other nations who have formally submitted applications to join in 2024, when Russia takes over the chairmanship. BRICS has surpassed the G7 in terms of collective economic clout, and the geopolitical influence of its collective membership is such that it will exceed both the G7 and NATO forums in terms of overall international relevance in the years to come.

The US: The Naked Emperor

The United States spends nearly $1 trillion a year on its defense – more than the combined defense expenditures of its ten closest rivals for the top spot. This money funds the strategic nuclear deterrence force and the conventional military power projection potential of the US. Given the enormous sums involved, one would anticipate that the dominance of US military power worldwide would be unmatched. Curiously, this is not the case.

By spending a fraction of what the US does for similar services, Russia has overtaken the United States when it comes to strategic nuclear forces. The US needs a major upgrade to its nuclear triad – the land-based and submarine-launched ballistic missiles and manned bombers – that comprise its nuclear strike capabilities. While replacement systems are in the works, it will take more than a decade to get these systems online, and the cost of doing this will run into the hundreds of billions of dollars – or more, given the history of US defense industry inefficiencies and cost overruns.

Russia, meanwhile, has begun putting advanced missiles into service – missiles designed to defeat US missile defenses, along with new submarines and manned bombers. Traditional venues used by the US to offset Russian strategic advances, such as arms control, are no longer available due to short-sighted US policies that rejected arms control for the potential of achieving a strategic nuclear advantage. The script, so to speak, has been flipped, and it’s now the US that finds itself on the short end of the atomic power equation. This disadvantageous position will be even further exacerbated by the growth of China’s strategic nuclear force, which is in the process of expanding from possessing some 400 nuclear weapons to matching the US and Russia’s 1,500 deployed warheads.

In the Pacific, the US is facing the fact that it lacks sufficient military power to defend Taiwan in the face of any potential Chinese military operation. There have been advances in the accuracy and lethality of Chinese stand-off weapons, including new advanced hypersonic missiles, which, in theory at least, could overcome US air defense systems that protect the centerpiece of American power projection – the aircraft carrier battlegroup. This weakness is not just limited to any potential conflict with China—the US Navy has deployed carrier battlegroups off the coast of Lebanon, in the Persian Gulf, and to the Red Sea, where they have been prevented from engaging in any decisive military intervention out of fear that missiles fired by Hezbollah, Iran, and the Houthi of Yemen could damage or sink the most visible symbol of American military power today.

With a budget of nearly $1 trillion, one would expect the US to be parading itself worldwide via a military second to none in terms of capabilities and lethality. Instead, the US has been exposed as an emperor with no clothes whose nakedness is a source of embarrassment on a global stage that had grown accustomed to the finery and pageantry of American military power. The humiliation of the US Navy at the hands of the Houthi is but the most recent manifestation of a trend exposing US military weakness. This trend will only expand in 2024.

The well-known Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen – author of bestselling books and a staff writer at the New Yorker magazine – has become embroiled in a scandal about the Holocaust and Israel’s ongoing assault on the Palestinians.

Comparing the Warsaw Ghetto with Gaza earned Gessen, who is Jewish, a canceling, if in an oddly roundabout way: She had been awarded the German Hannah Arendt Award for Political Thought. While the prize was not rescinded, its two sponsors, the Heinrich Boll Foundation and the City of Bremen, publicly signaled their displeasure with the recipient: Bremen’s top burghers, in effect, harumphed they would not host a ceremony for such an author, then the Foundation demonstratively declared its withdrawal from an event that was no longer happening anyhow, and, to top it all off, the University of Bremen also hurried to let everyone know that its doors are closed to Gessen as well.

Gessen was not even as daring as the Palestinian scholar and writer Refaat Alareer, who thought Gessen’s comparison through to its logical conclusion long before she even made it: If Gaza resembles the Warsaw Ghetto, then the Palestinian Resistance resembles those Jews rising up in that Ghetto in 1943. Gessen is a New York intellectual, while Alareer is one from Gaza.  His “cancelation” turned out to be all-encompassing: He was deliberately murdered, together with several family members, by Israel. His killing was preceded by social-media character assassination, which involved the prominent American-Jewish culture-war bully Bari Weiss.

Gessen still got the prize in the end, but in a “scaled-down” ceremony and not in public, at an undisclosed venue (Gessen bizarrely cited fear of “Russians” as the reason for the semi-secrecy, but let’s not dwell on silly things).

Especially in Germany, treating a Jewish awardee in this manner should have been a self-evident no-no. For it is painfully reminiscent of how, in the worst old days, all too many ethnic Germans who were not themselves card-carrying Nazis but adapted to its creed and treated their (former) Jewish acquaintances when the regime pressure mounted as such: “Surely you understand I have nothing against you, but could we please avoid being seen with each other from now on? Nothing personal, you know.”

How did this happen? German tact is legendary, of course, but in this case, more serious issues are at stake. Gessen is no stranger to controversy. Indeed, as her off-hand blaming of “Russians” in the context of a very German fiasco reveals, she and the Russian state have not seen eye to eye for a long time, and the relationship has not been improving recently: Gessen has just been put on an Interior Ministry wanted list under the charge of spreading misinformation about the Russian army. The core of the issue is that she has accused Russian forces of atrocities in the Ukrainian town of Bucha, and Russia rejects these accusations as false.

Against that background, it is a special irony of the Arendt Award affair that Gessen has now been attacked for, in essence, agreeing with Russian President Vladimir Putin: The latter warned as early as October that Israel should not adopt tactics similar to those used by Nazi Germany in its 1940s siege of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), where Putin’s family suffered severely. Gessen took much longer to arrive at the same place, but her comparison between the Warsaw Ghetto and Gaza points in precisely the same direction. Canceled together with Putin – that must be a whole new experience for Gessen.

The long-standing tension between Gessen and the Russian authorities did not cause the scandal in Germany. On the contrary, Gessen’s criticism of the Russian government is really her main stock-in-trade and played a key role in getting her the Hannah Arendt Award in the first place. That part of Gessen's work was welcome, especially, it is fair to assume, at the Boll Foundation. The foundation is, after all, the key civil-society influence organization of the hyper-“Atlanticist,” fiercely anti-Russian, and militarist Green Party, which has given Germany – and the world – Berlin’s comically undiplomatic and incompetent diplomat-in-chief, Annalena Baerbock.

Clearly, the good old Western double standards are alive and well. Criticism of Russia gets a big cookie (sprinkled with €10,000 in prize money); but criticism of Israel is not welcome. Since, in this case, both came from the same person, the scandal has shown with preposterous precision that Western elites follow the geopolitics of friend and foe: Our friends can get away with, literally, mass murder. In fact, we will help them commit it. Never mind that complicity in genocide is punishable under the UN 1948 Genocide Convention no less than the crime itself, and there already are attempts to launch charges accordingly.

The West’s foes, however, are held up to stringent standards. The overall impression is one of breathtaking hypocrisy. The ultimate irony here is that that impression, in turn, has real geopolitical effects: The West has become so proficient at discrediting its own claims to “value” superiority that it is undermining its own global influence. A “tectonic shift” in the world order was well underway before the Israeli-Western slaughter in Gaza. But the latter is now certain to catalyze it. And the West has only got itself to blame.

Gessen’s case shows how impervious to learning that Western pattern is, for two reasons. First, even in Germany, Gessen’s Jewish identity did not protect her. You would think that Germans would think twice before going after a Jewish author who has something to say about Israel and the Holocaust. Nope. It is tempting to think of this failure as a German particularity, but, unfortunately, it is more widespread. In fact, there is a general Western pattern of not “only” suppressing Palestinian and pro-Palestinian voices but of censoring “even” Jews when they dare criticize Israel.

Second, Western Russophobes will howl with rage and pain, but Russian President Vladimir Putin is right: Even on the worst possible reading, Russia’s record in Ukraine, almost two years after the February 2022 invasion, is substantially better than that of Israel in Gaza after two months of relentless, indiscriminate bombing, starvation, siege, and systematic and wholesale destruction of vital infrastructures.

Finally, there is the issue of comparison. Gessen has walked into a trap so obvious that one has to ask if she did it on purpose. Israel, its extremely aggressive lobbies in the West, and those Western elites complying with both have developed an absurd habit: According to their rules, comparing the Holocaust with anything is absolutely verboten, as if this horrific genocide had been an event outside human history. Yet, especially those who can’t stop shouting “never again,” make no sense when condemning all and any comparison. How, then, are we supposed to know when something similar is happening “again” if we cannot even compare?

But the underlying issue is, of course, not one of intellectual confusion but of deliberate, politically motivated dishonesty. Ask yourself a simple question: What is a comparison? It is holding up different (not the same, by definition) things against each other in your mind on the suspicion that they may have similarities. To be precise – enough similarities so that the comparison can offer you fresh insights. If it works – great, you have learned something. If it doesn’t, you’ve also learned something: Namely that the two things aren’t that similar.

Those afraid of such an elementary procedure which should make ourselves smarter and maybe even a little better, morally, simply fear its results, most likely because they know them all too well. And that is the core of this scandal: Gessen was not really semi-canceled because she joined those who have long made plausible comparisons between Nazi methods and current Israeli methods in Gaza, but because the comparison does produce terrible similarities.

No, the Holocaust and Israel’s devastation of Gaza are not the same (frankly, duh…), but they are both instances of genocidal attacks. And of bystanders who abandon the victims or even support the perpetrators. Hannah Arendt would have seen this no less than Gessen. No wonder many Zionists could not stand her either.

The main trouble with the “rules-based order” promoted by the West is that the ‘rules’ in question keep changing. Take, for example, Sunday evening’s riot in Belgrade, which saw sympathizers of the ‘pro-Western democratic civic opposition’ try to break into City Hall and declare themselves winners of the recent municipal election.

At least 2,000 protesters gathered outside the building known as the Old Palace, smashed its glass doors, and attempted to force their way inside. Riot police held the line, used teargas to push them back, and then batons to disperse the mob.

What the opposition claimed had happened, however, was that they were just peacefully protesting a “stolen” election against a “tyrannical” regime, which had the police break the doors so it would have an excuse to engage in brutality. 

Obviously, the protesters didn’t get the memo from Our Democracy – meaning the US – dated January 6, 2021, and spelling out that any questioning of electoral results makes one a criminally liable “denier,” while smashing the doors of a government building amounts to a “deadly insurrection” allowing the police to indiscriminately use deadly force.

However, these protesters were working off a different American precedent: the color revolution that first brought their ideology to power in Serbia on October 5, 2000. Back then, a motley “pro-democracy” coalition cobbled together by the US Embassy, trained by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and funded by “suitcases of cash” smuggled across the border stormed the parliament, torched the ballot boxes, and insisted they had actually won the presidential election. The tactic worked, and was then repeated in Georgia (2003) and Ukraine (2004 and 2014), among other places. So imagine their shock when the US ambassador in Belgrade disavowed them instead!

“Violence and vandalism against state institutions have no place in a democratic society,” Christopher Hill pronounced. “Grievances should be raised through legal, peaceful, nonviolent means.” 

In the hours and days ahead, Serbia's leaders and its citizens should remember: The legitimacy of democratic processes depends upon transparency and on the readiness of all parties, winning or losing, to respect the will of the people as expressed at the ballot box.

— Ambassador Christopher R. Hill (@usambserbia) December 25, 2023

“All of Serbia’s citizens have a right to be heard and a responsibility to express their political views peacefully and without resort to violence,” added Hill.

So political violence was OK in Serbia in 2000 – and in the US in 2020, according to some people – but not now, according to Hill, who asserts to be the proper arbiter of such matters, even though on paper he is a mere ambassador bound by the Vienna Convention rules.

For the past week, they coped with the loss at the polls by insulting the electorate as too stupid, uncouth, and primitive to appreciate their greatness – when they weren’t lying about 40,000 Bosnian Serbs supposedly showing up to illegally vote in Serbia, that is. These people certainly seem as thick as the Belgrade Fortress wall.

The joke could be on the rest of us, however. For while both the government and the opposition in Belgrade are obsessing about an election, the US-backed ethnic Albanian regime in the breakaway province of Kosovo is destroying Serb cemeteries and illegally seizing churches, and generally refusing to abide by signed agreements. Because, again, the “rules-based order” means that those who have the blessing of Washington and Brussels can do no wrong.

These days, Hollywood produces endless quantities of cultural dross – superhero franchise epics that Martin Scorsese has said have nothing to do with cinema at all; boring, lengthy, reverential biopics (‘Oppenheimer’ and ‘Maestro’); and the crude #metoo propaganda of the ‘Barbie’ movie.

Yet last month a remarkable American film was released that stands out for its political realism and insight.

The film is ‘Leave the World Behind’ – a dystopian political tract directed, written, and produced by Sam Esmail, and based on a novel by Rumaan Alam published in 2020.

The movie features Julia Roberts, Ethan Hawke, and Kevin Bacon – three Hollywood stars of note – and their involvement in such an iconoclastic film is not only surprising, but very much to their credit.

Esmail was born in New Jersey. His parents were Egyptian immigrants. Alam was born in Washington, to parents who emigrated to America from Bangladesh. It is surely their immigrant backgrounds that account for the film’s unique and critical perspective on contemporary America.

Leave the World Behind is not easily categorised – thematically, it is similar to the 2022 European film ‘Triangle of Sadness’, but it is much more politically sophisticated. The film also harks back to the science fiction films that Hollywood churned out with monotonous regularly in the 1950s and 60s.

That entire film genre was, of course, the ideological product of the Cold War.

In science fiction films of that era, the irrational fear of an imminent Russian invasion was cinematically transformed into attacks by aliens from remote galaxies – and a powerful, liberal-democratic America was pictured as being threatened by these sinister forces from without.

Inevitably in these films, after a stirring heroic conflict, a victorious America prevailed over those malevolent alien forces that had sought to destroy the home of liberty and the land of the free.

Now that a weakened America is seeking to wage a recalibrated Cold War – against China as well as Russia – it is hardly surprising that an American film should echo the science fiction films of the Cold War era, albeit in a radically different form and with more realistic content.   

Leave the World Behind is firmly based in current American political reality – no need to resort to fictitious aliens, as the threat the global elites pose to liberal democracy in America is all too apparent – and the film resolutely refuses to provide the bogus solace that was an integral ideological component of the science fiction films of the 1950s and 60s. 

The film is bleakly pessimistic – a reflection of America’s dramatic decline as a world power since the 1960s, as well as its current state of acute internal cultural and political disintegration.  

This is perfectly understandable – no intelligent and politically aware contemporary American filmmaker could embrace the complacent optimism that characterised America in the 1950s and 60s.

The plot of the film – a middle class Brooklyn family holiday in a mansion on Long Island, only to be caught up in a series of cataclysms that are gradually revealed to be part of an unfolding elite political coup – could only take place in a post-Trumpian America.

In fact, the film eerily reflects a prediction made by the astute conservative political commentator P. J. O’Rourke shortly before he died in 2022.

O’Rourke despised Donald Trump and regarded him as a buffoon, but realised that his political significance lay in the fact that he was a crude and inept harbinger of an America that could easily come to be ruled by a competent elite dictatorship.

O’Rourke’s insight into Trump is, in fact, the central theme of Leave the World Behind – the film is about a successful coup, of which Trump was the harbinger, that a culturally and politically disintegrating America is unable to comprehend, let alone resist.

The January 6 riots were a crude insurrection fomented by Trump in order to prevent Vice President Mike Pence from certifying the 2020 election result. The riots were not an attempted coup – and Trump, as O’Rourke recognised, has more in common with the farcical 19th century French politician General Boulanger (whose attempt to overthrow the Third Republic in 1889 failed) than with a Hitler or Mussolini. 

Leave the World Behind depicts a successful modern political coup – qualitatively different from fascist coups – carried out by global elites. 

The coup’s genesis is revealed in an exchange between the owner of the mansion, a wealthy black funds manager played by Mahershala Ali, and the misanthropic wife of the Brooklyn family, played by Roberts, who have rented his palatial residence on Long Island. 

As the family’s holiday is disrupted by a series of catastrophes – their technological devices cease to work; an oil tanker runs aground on the beach where they are swimming; airplanes fall from the sky; leaflets falsely suggesting that foreign invasions are occurring are dropped from drones; and hundreds of self-driving Teslas crash into each other, blocking highways – Ali tells Roberts about a conversation that he had recently with one of his wealthy clients with links to the defense department and arms manufacturers. 

The client recently moved his considerable fortune offshore and told Ali in some detail how easy it would be to stage a coup in advanced Western societies.

First, the populace would be isolated by disabling all their technological devices. Havoc would then be created by spreading disinformation amongst the populace. Finally, internal fighting would break out, and society would collapse as a result of its own internal divisions and political apathy. 

As the catastrophes pile up around them, Ali and Roberts realise that this is precisely what is happening – and that they are powerless to do anything about it.    

Shades of C. Wright Mills’ ‘power elite’ and Eisenhower’s ‘military-industrial complex’ in a modern, more frighteningly totalitarian guise – save the elites behind the successful coup that engulfs America in the film are global elites, a reflection of the fact that the world economy is now a truly globalised one.

The themes of cultural decadence and dependence upon technology are depicted in graphic detail in the film. The scene involving the out-of-control Teslas is both prophetic and horrifying. 

Roberts and Ali understand what is happening only because Ali has a close connection to the elites that are staging the coup. No one else in the film – including Roberts’ genial academic husband, played by Ethan Hawke, has any notion of what is occurring. 

The real horror at the heart of the film, however, arises from the depiction of the main characters’ millennial teenage children.

The three children are portrayed as mindless victims of a completely worthless popular culture that deprives them of any understanding of themselves or the society in which they live.

They are completely dependent upon technology, and immersed in a vacuous celebrity culture that is utterly divorced from reality. Even their relations with their parents are meaningless and perfunctory.

Roberts’ teenage son spends his time masturbating and taking salacious pictures of Ali’s daughter as she sunbathes in a bikini by the swimming pool. She in turn tries to sexually entice the middle-aged Hawke in Lolita-like fashion.

Roberts’ and Hawke’s young daughter is obsessed with the television program ‘Friends’, and the only affection that she is capable of is fixated upon the characters of that mindless soap opera.

As the nuclear cloud spreads, she gains entry to a fallout shelter in the basement of the house and compulsively watches the final episode of Friends – completely oblivious to what is happening outside and her own fate.

The film ends with her grinning and gazing narcissistically and moronically at the television screen. 

In interviews since the film was released last month, Esmail and Roberts have attempted to place a positive spin on the film – by suggesting that the other characters may have also eventually found their way to the fallout shelter.

Given the relentlessly pessimistic tenor of the film, however, this is surely beside the point. As D. H. Lawrence once said. “Always trust the tale, never trust the teller.”

Leave the World Behind is an extraordinary and compelling film. Anyone with an interest in the cultural and political decline of contemporary America should make the effort to see it.

German farmers rolled into Berlin on their tractors last week to have a very public word with the managers who have revoked their long-standing discount – a subsidy on diesel fuel, which powers their farm equipment. 

It seems that up until now, the government figured that feeding Germans was important enough to support, outweighing any ‘green’ obsessions. But that all changed abruptly for reasons that have little to do with the climate change agenda and more with its desperation for spare change. 

The drama kicked off when Germany’s coalition government led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz found itself in a bit of a bind recently. Team Scholz had quietly moved €60 billion from a Covid-19 pandemic support fund into a green energy transition fund. The opposition noticed and finked to the court – which told Team Scholz to put the cash back because the sneaky move was a blatant violation of a law that had been ushered in under former Chancellor Angela Merkel specifically in an effort to ensure that the government was never able to bury itself in debt. Whoops, too late. Subsequently finding themselves underwater on the overall annual budget by an estimated €17 billion, they set about looking for ways to plug the hole.  

Farmers, Team Scholz apparently figured, can at least be bilked for cash on the pretext that the government tax subsidies for the sinful diesel fuel that powers their equipment deserve to be canceled – sacrificed on the altar of climate change. It all sounds so virtuous, and not at all like scrambling to compensate for a major screwup.  

So with Germany now strapped for cash, surely it’s time to really get radical about focusing on the most critical interests of the average citizen’s daily life – Ukraine, Ukraine, and Ukraine.

“We are forging ahead with the climate-neutral transformation of our country. We are strengthening social cohesion. And we are standing closely by Ukraine’s side in its defense against Russia,” Scholz said, as parliament agreed on a budget deal. “However, it is clear that we will have to make do with significantly less money to achieve these goals,” he added. No doubt Germans were thrilled to know that Ukraine wouldn’t be going without – unlike Germans. 

In addition to taxing farmers, jacking up the carbon tax on things like fuel will help get the job done, the government figures. Way to rip off French President Emmanuel Macron’s failed plan that sparked France’s Yellow Vest movement, which gave rise to months of violent unrest. Looking forward to seeing what color vests Germans end up choosing. Green would be fitting. 

Has anyone bothered pointing out to Scholz that increasing taxes on productive farmers in the name of fighting climate change takes some nerve considering his own government has overseen coal plants being brought back because their green dreams turned out to be a massive flop when wind and solar wasn’t sufficient to power the country’s (and the EU’s) economic engine after shunning Russian gas? When a wind farm has to be dismantled to expand a coal mine, as was the case in North Rhine-Westphalia, that doesn’t exactly scream strategic victory – more like a green wet dream that didn’t survive the glaring light of reality. 

This trend of EU governments trying to throw farmers under their own tractors is rampant. The Netherlands has expropriated farms that failed to comply with EU climate change legislation, citing research on the impact of belching and defecating cows. Surely it’s just a coincidence that Brussels is pushing for relaxed rules on lucrative industrial genetically modified crops, now that they have all this farmland becoming available in the EU’s top beef exporting country. According to a leaked draft of EU legislation obtained by Politico earlier this year, EU countries won’t be able to ban genetically modified (GMO) crops produced with new technology. Sounds like a looming windfall for companies like Bayer, Syngenta, and Corteva, in the same way that green tech shareholders have made out like bandits thanks to underperforming taxpayer-funded climate change projects. 

And it’s not just climate change that has served as a pretext for impoverishing farmers to the ultimate benefit of the establishment special interests. Ukraine must be allowed to feed the world’s poor, the EU cried. And who could be cold-hearted enough to argue with that?

So at this point, some folks may still be thinking, “Well, at least the establishment is only targeting farmers, and it’s all being done in the greater interests of helping the climate and Ukraine.” Newsflash: the British government-funded ‘Center for Ecology and Hydrology’ has just published, in the Public Library of Sciences Journal, a study underscoring the impact that “human breathing is contributing to greenhouse gas emissions.” The research recommends “caution in the assumption that emissions from humans are negligible.” Better hope that no one shows it to the bureaucrats in Brussels or Berlin responsible for actionable policy. 

Twelve years ago, the so-called Arab Spring visited Libya, ending Muammar Gaddafi’s rule and plunging the country into chaos, leaving it divided along tribal and regional lines. Gaddafi himself was murdered at the hands of Western-supported militias.

NATO’s disguised military invasion of Libya

What started in February 2011 as a small and limited civilian demonstration against the Gaddafi government in Eastern Libya turned out to be Western-supported regime change endeavour involving military intervention by NATO disguised as “protection of civilians.”

The UN Security Council was forced by the US, UK and France to adopt Resolution 1973, which opened the door for the use of force against Libya simply because Western powers wanted to depose Gaddafi in a blatant violation of the resolution itself. The rest is history.

Confused Libyans were told that democracy, prosperity, and freedom were just around the corner. However, once they turned that corner they discovered that Gaddafi may have disappeared but, in a way, he took Libya with him.

Years later, the country is at a stand-still with little progress towards freedom and stability. Many of its sovereign decisions are made by others, while armed militias dominate the country, acting as proxies for foreign powers.

Most Libyans feel that their country has lost its independence and fallen under a new form of occupation. Politicians can hardly decide on anything without foreign input. The same countries that destabilized Libya over a decade ago are impeding its progress now.

National sovereignty and independent domestic and foreign policies were the two important pillars of Gaddafi’s rule. During his four decades as leader of the oil-rich North African state, he managed to make them part of the Libyan national identity. As a result, Libyans became wary of all kinds of foreign interference in their country’s affairs, suspecting almost everything that comes from the West, in particular, Italy, the US, Britain and France. These four countries have played a sinister role in Libya’s history, much of which is not forgotten. All of them stand accused of violating Libya’s sovereignty.

Prior to the 2011 Western-forced regime change and the ensuing civil war, Libya used to celebrate four annual holidays, each marking a turning point in the country’s proud history and reminding the younger generations of the importance of being an independent sovereign nation. Foreign dignitaries, sometimes even heads of states, attended these symbolic national events to further emphasize their importance.

Proud old Libya

For example, March 28 marks the expulsion of British forces who used to occupy a strategic airbase in Tobruk in Eastern Libya. In 1970, just six months after taking power, Gaddafi ordered all foreign troops to leave the country, or face a public uproar. On June 11 of the same year, American troops evacuated their huge military base just outside Tripoli. Wheelus Air Base, given its size and the services on offer was nicknamed ‘Little America.’ It had the largest military hospital outside the US, a multiplex cinema, a bowling alley and high school. At its peak, it sprawled over some 50 square km on the Mediterranean coast, from which Libyans were banned! Wheelus was home to about 15,000 military personnel and their families. Pilots had access to five shooting ranges in nearby Al-Wytia in the Libyan desert. Today, Wheelus has been turned into Mitiaga Airport.

Up until 2011, Libya also used to celebrate October 7 as the anniversary of the expulsion of some 20,000 Italian settlers in 1970. They were the civilian face of Italy’s occupation of Libya starting in September 1911. At one point, they owned or controlled almost the entire trade of major commodities, repair shops, and small mills. In Eastern Libya, they owned the most fertile land on which Libyans were merely cheap laborers.  Many of them were paid in food and shelter instead of money, while the settlers owned handicraft workshops that employed local craftsmen but paid them a pittance.

The former regime made it its duty to remind Libyans of their proud history of fighting the colonial powers that have invaded their country, particularly the Italian colonization, which killed nearly half a million Libyans between 1911 and 1943, including the leader of the resistance, Omar Mukhtar, who was captured and hanged in 1931.

After years of pressure and negotiations, Libya managed to do what no other country has done: compel Italy to apologize for its colonial brutality and pay reparations. In 2008, Tripoli and Rome signed the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership settling their colonial period grievances while setting anti-colonial example. Under the treaty, Rome committed to pay Tripoli half a billion dollars over a period of 25 years in the form of development projects including roads, hospital, railway network, educational scholarships for Libyan students and return of stolen artefacts.

The no longer proud new Libya

The new Libya is not keen to remember, let alone celebrate, either “its distant or recent history,” says a Tripoli-based historian who wishes to remain anonymous. He added that “history is an integral part of national personality” that is built over time through “educating the young and informing the old” about their country’s past. His colleague Milad, also fearful of revealing his surname for fear of reprisals, agrees, adding that “one of the big legacies of the Gaddafi era was making Libyans proud of themselves through honoring past national events.”

Since October 2011, not a single national commemoration or celebration has been observed in the country. Even worse, Libya’s politics, including election issues and economic affairs, are being managed by foreign countries or through their local proxies.

The majority of Libyans are unhappy with the presence of foreign forces at Libyan bases in Misrata, Benghazi, Al-Watya, southwest of Tripoli, and other locations. They see it as a form of occupation.

Feeling of hidden occupation

In the eyes of ordinary Libyans their country is indeed under indirect occupation both “militarily and politically,” said Samia Al-Hussain (not her real name), a Benghazi-based lawyer. The planned 2021 elections were indefinitely postponed because the US and UK ambassadors did not want presidential elections with Saif Al-Islam Gaddafi, Muammar’s son, as the frontrunner.

The younger Gaddafi still enjoys wide support across the country and, in 2021, was cleared by the courts to run for president after initially being banned. If elections had taken place, as planned in December 2021, he would have been the inevitable winner. To prevent such an eventuality, both the former UK ambassador, Caroline Hurndall, and her American counterpart, Richard Norland, publicly spoke against his nomination.

Faced with public anger, the parliament, as opposed to the Foreign Ministry, was forced to declare Hurndall persona non grata specifically because of her comments on the elections. Yet, in another indication of the hidden occupation, she never left the country until her term ended last October. Norland was not even reprimand by the Libyan Foreign Ministry as would have been the case in other countries. Why? Because he is America’s ambassador.

Despite being in the anti-Gaddafi camp, Al-Hussain pointed at the recently exposed secret meeting between the now-fugitive former Foreign Minister, Najal al-Mangoush, and her Israeli counterpart in Rome last August. She asks: “What Libyan interests would such normalization serve, and why would any Libyan official think of meeting a representative of the Zionist state, if not ordered from outside?” She added that Libya “takes enormous pride” in having supported Palestinians throughout its history. Hundreds of Libyans volunteered to fight in the first Palestine war in 1948. Al-Hussain also feels that Libya’s reaction to the Gaza war is “less than what is expected” from a country where Palestine is a sacred cause. Most Libyans think that their country should do more despite the government donating some $50 million dollars in aid to Gaza.

Musbah Adokali, a law student in Bani Walid, a Gaddafi stronghold, thinks Libyan leaders are receiving orders from outside and acting against the will of the people. He points out what happened to Libyan citizen Abu Agila Mas’ud, who was kidnapped and taken to the US to face charges of participating in the bombing of Pan AM Flight 103 35 years ago. The student said “this was done upon the orders of the US,” otherwise it would not have happened. “If this is not occupation, I do not know what is,” Musbah concluded.

In yet another case of blowback, reflecting the failure of Western military interventionism in West Asia, Yemen’s Ansarallah (Houthi) movement has inserted itself as an active participant in the ongoing war between Israel and Gaza. First launching batches of loitering munitions, ballistic and cruise missiles towards Israel, Ansarallah then moved on to prevent the passage of Israeli-owned or operated ships through the Red Sea, before announcing a complete closure of the shipping route for any vessels destined to dock at the port of Eilat.

After the Houthis seized a number of ships, while attacking others with drone strikes, activity at Eilat has dropped some 85%. International and Israeli shipping companies have opted to take the long route, which in some cases takes an additional 12 days, to reach Israel with their cargo, a costly diversion to say the least. In opposition to this, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin traveled to the region and announced the formation of a multinational naval task force to be deployed in the Red Sea. Despite talk of the coalition including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and even the United Arab Emirates, the only Arab nation that joined was Bahrain.

So, without a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution to back them up, usually required to make the militarisation of a territory legal under international law, the US has launched yet another foreign intervention. This one is significant because it failed to convince any major regional players to join, demonstrating the decline in American influence, but has also elevated the status of Yemen’s Ansarallah.

Under former US President Barack Obama, Washington backed the Saudi-led coalition’s intervention in Yemen back in 2015. Since then, some 377,000 people have died, largely as a result of the deadly blockade imposed on the majority of the country’s population, while some 15,000 civilians have died due to direct conflict. The objective of the Saudi-led intervention, which received the backing of the US and UK, was to remove Ansarallah from power in the nation’s capital, Sanaa. Although the group does not enjoy international recognition as Yemen’s governing force, it rules over more than 80% of the population, has the support of two-thirds of the nation’s armed forces, and operates a government out of Sanaa.

The context above is crucial for understanding the capabilities of Yemen’s Ansarallah, which was downplayed as a band of “Iran-backed rebels” in Western corporate media for years. While the governments of the collective West have tried to pretend that the Yemeni group is insignificant, Washington’s recent decision to form a multi-national naval coalition to confront the Houthis is an admission that they are a major regional actor. In fact, Ansarallah is the only Arab movement that controls state assets and a standing army that is participating in the ongoing war with Israel.

The reality that the US is now confronting is something that both Saudi Arabia and the UAE came to realize early last year. Following two separate drone and missile attacks on Abu Dhabi and Dubai in January of 2022, it became apparent that the West’s current level of support could not provide sufficient security for the UAE. Up until a nationwide ceasefire was brokered in April 2022, Ansarallah had also demonstrated its developed missile and drone capabilities, striking valuable economic targets inside Saudi Arabia too.

Despite receiving a lot less attention than it deserved, Ansarallah forces strategically timed their second attack on the UAE to coincide with the arrival of Israeli President Isaac Herzog in the country. This was a clear message to the Emirati and Saudi leaderships that Western support will not provide sufficient security. It’s likely because of this threat from Yemen that Riyadh sought a security pact with the US, in order to make a normalization agreement with Israel possible. Such a security pact would have stipulated that an attack on one is an attack on all, hence dragging the Americans into a direct war against Yemen in the event that the conflict was to flare up again.

Backing the Israelis to the hilt in their war on Gaza, spelling out that there are no red lines as to how far the government of Benjamin Netanyahu can go, the US has allowed a Palestine-Israel war to expand into a broader regional Arab-Israeli conflict. The threat of escalation between the Israeli army and Lebanese Hezbollah is growing by the day, while Ansarallah leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi has stated that his forces “will not stand idly by if the Americans have a tendency to escalate and commit foolishness by targeting our country.”

By every metric, US diplomatic stock has dropped internationally as a result of its handling of Israel’s war on Gaza. It has failed to convince any major regional actors in West Asia to back its escalatory agenda, all of which are standing on the same side as Russia and China in calling for a ceasefire. The world sees the hypocrisy of Washington. For the sake of comparison, the death toll in Gaza today is said to have exceeded 23,000, the majority being women and children. Israel has killed this many people in just over two months, while in the first two years of the ISIS/Daesh insurgency in Iraq, the UN estimated that the terrorist group killed some 18,800 civilians. The total number of civilians killed by ISIS in Syria is set at just over 5,000.

The level of human suffering being inflicted in Gaza is without precedent, breaking records in modern history for the tonnage of explosives dropped on such a small territory, in addition to the highest number of journalists, medical workers, and children killed in a single conflict. In reaction, the US government has repeatedly blocked ceasefire resolutions at the UNSC, gives Israel unlimited support unconditionally, and now threatens to drag a coalition of Western nations into a war on Yemen. The solution here is very simple: Ansarallah has said the blockade on ships to Israel will end when the war on Gaza ends. Washington has the ability to stop the war, but refuses to do so, while its threats against Yemen will not work to achieve any result beyond further escalation.

In a surprising disclosure, the Walt Disney Company acknowledges in its latest filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that its recent embrace of a ‘woke’ agenda has adversely affected its financial performance.

Despite claiming a 7% revenue increase in fiscal 2023, a figure that seems less impressive given the post-coronavirus shutdown context, the company grapples with challenges such as a reduction in content production spending, significant layoffs, and the abandonment of a planned corporate campus in Florida.

The filing underscores the risks associated with misalignment with public and consumer tastes, emphasizing the imperative to create content that resonates with evolving consumer preferences.

Disney's stocks on the New York Stock Exchange have experienced a considerable decline. From their valuation of $197 in 2021, their current value stands at approximately $92, marking a substantial 53% decrease from the 2021 figure. In contrast, the broader stock market has experienced a positive trend of about 10% over this timeframe. The notable reduction in Disney's stock value prompts the question: Could there be a connection between the adoption of woke ideologies and financial decline, reflecting the sentiment encapsulated by the saying "go woke, go broke"?

Despite these challenges, Disney remains steadfast in its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). The company's inaugural digital platform, dedicated to amplifying underrepresented voices, signifies a bold step. Beyond the platform, Disney aims to strengthen its enduring dedication to DEI principles, reflecting proactive efforts of Disney employees influencing workplace dynamics, content creation, and community engagement.

Amidst a barrage of criticism for 'woke' box office disappointments, Disney, particularly with "The Marvels," prompts scrutiny of the efficacy of socially conscious messaging in popular media. As consumer boycotts against woke brands gain traction, the repercussions extend beyond Disney, causing a ripple effect leading to the unraveling of other brands.

In an enchanting turn of events, Disney has opted to push back the release of "Snow White" to 2025, a decision seemingly influenced by the considerable backlash against the perceived 'woke' remake. Additionally, there are indications that Disney has abandoned the use of "diversity creatures" in favor of CGI dwarves that closely resemble the characters from the original production. This shift suggests a response to public sentiment and raises questions about Disney's adaptation choices, reflecting the ongoing dialogue surrounding the film's creative direction and societal expectations.

The resolution of the protracted SAG-AFTRA strike marks a pivotal moment for Disney, allowing the resumption of film productions after a prolonged hiatus. However, the aftermath of this strike resolution unveils a significant challenge for Disney, as the company announces a strategic reorganization of its film release calendar. In a recent official statement, Disney disclosed the necessary adjustment of release dates for several high-profile projects. "Deadpool 3", initially slated for May 3, 2024, will now see its theatrical debut on July 26, 2024. "Captain America", another flagship title, faces a shift in release date to February 14, 2025, while Marvel's "Thunderbolts", originally scheduled for December 20, 2024, is rescheduled for July 25, 2025. "The Blade" reboot experiences a similar fate, moving from February 15, 2025, to November 7, 2025. Beyond the Marvel universe, Disney has also recalibrated the release date for the prequel to its 2019 CGI remake of "The Lion King". "Mufasa: The Lion King", initially set for July 5, 2024, is now slated for release on December 20, 2024.

In conclusion, Disney's woke pivot appears to be a risky gamble that is threatening the magic kingdom. The company's admission of financial setbacks, clashes with influential figures like Elon Musk, and the broader industry challenges paint a complex picture for the iconic entertainment giant. As the company navigates these complexities, its fortunes in the wake of the woke pivot remain uncertain, and the magic of the kingdom faces an unprecedented test.

India’s history with Africa goes back several centuries when Indian traders traveled to the eastern coasts of the continent using the monsoon winds. Immediately after gaining independence from the British in 1947, India, as one of the first decolonized countries, decided to spearhead the struggle for a more just global order.

While ‘the Global South’ is in the headlines of the media around the world today, few would recall that in April 1955, representatives from 29 governments of Asian and African nations that emerged from the yoke of their European colonialists gathered in Bandung, Indonesia to lay the groundwork for the formation of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).

In 1961, the first NAM summit in Belgrade drew delegates from 25 African, Asian, Latin American, and European countries under the leadership of Tito of Yugoslavia, Nasser of Egypt, Nehru of India, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, and Sukarno of Indonesia, to discuss the role of the Third World in the Cold War.

Over the decades, India has succeeded in holding on to its strong friendship with most African nations. Today, Africa draws more attention from New Delhi partly because of its camaraderie forged through shared experiences of economic development post decolonization.

However, as the rise of Africa would increase global multipolarity, it is also a strategic consideration for India. As the country seeks a leadership role in the Global South, it is important to have the African bloc as its ally.

Under the framework of the Group of Twenty (G20) presidency, India hosted the final summit on September 9 and 10 in the presence of more than 40 world leaders, including the G20 heads of state or their representatives. One major outcome of the event, arguably the most significant, was that India successfully secured a permanent place in the G20 for the African Union (AU), the continental body of 55 member states.  

The AU’s entry into the G20 will indeed provide India with another platform to engage with Africa on a continental level, but this cannot replace the framework of the India-Africa Forum Summit, which has been India’s key outreach program for Africa since 2008.

Indeed, New Delhi’s active engagement with the region was initiated in the early 2000s. The first India-Africa Forum Summit took place in 2008 in New Delhi and was attended by the governments of 14 African nations selected by the AU and India. India also hosted the second summit in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia.

The third summit was held in 2015 in New Delhi. This was the most extensive diplomatic outreach undertaken by the administration of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which involved representatives from 54 African countries, 41 of which were presidents, including Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Abdel Fatah el-Sisi of Egypt, Jacob Zuma of South Africa, and Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria.

Since then, there has been a significant increase in senior Indian leadership visits to Africa, along with a greater emphasis on training and development assistance. The establishment of new embassies in 18 African countries in the past five years demonstrates the increased attention paid to Africa by New Delhi.

In total, India’s development outreach globally since 2008 has expanded to 64 countries with 300 Lines of Credit (LOCs) for 540 projects. Out of these, 321 projects encompassing 205 LOCs are currently being implemented in Africa. 

In recent years, these initiatives have been qualitatively expanded, particularly concerning the scale and complexity of the projects inside the LOCs.

Prominent initiatives funded by India include the construction of government buildings in Burundi and Ethiopia, sugar plants in Ethiopia and Ghana, cement production in Djibouti and the Republic of Congo, power plants in Sudan, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, and Malawi, water in Mozambique, Tanzania, and Guinea, and health in Cote d’Ivoire, Guinea, and Zambia. This steady growth in Indian interests in Africa is reflected in an expanded footprint and deeper engagement – 51 out of 54 nations of the continent host such development projects.

A more coordinated strategy and tighter supervision by the Exim Bank of India have also improved the efficiency of their planning and execution. Grant support provided by the government of India is distributed globally, encompassing nearly all developing regions, even more broadly than the LOCs.

An enhanced track record of project delivery has coincided with increased development aid offers. However, as the government does not make these impact analysis reports public, it is difficult to evaluate its overall utility.

At the same time, training collaboration under ITEC (Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation) involves over 10,000 Africans annually in subjects ranging from IT and public administration to election management, SME, entrepreneurship, rural development, parliamentary affairs, and renewable energy.

Two digital initiatives are also in pilot mode in Africa today – e-Vidya Bharati distance learning and e-Aarogya Bharati distance health. Going beyond mere cooperation, these initiatives reflect India’s growing leadership role in the Global South. To some Indian Ocean island states, India has supplied naval equipment, provided training, and undertaken hydrographic services.

The heart of the Global South revitalized

At the G20 summit this year, India unveiled several novel initiatives, including the Global South Center of Excellence, the Global South Science and Technology Initiative, the Global South Young Diplomats Forum, the Global South Scholarships, and Aarogya Maitri (Wellness Friendship). Even as the specifics of these measures are still being worked out, Africa – the ‘heart of the Global South’ – would undoubtedly benefit from these programs, adding an extra layer of support beyond that given to African countries under the framework of the India-Africa Forum Summit.

Since the latest summit in 2015, a lot has changed geopolitically, economically, and in terms of global priorities. In order to build on the successes of earlier summits and to cater to the needs of the evolving global landscape, it is imperative that India host the fourth summit. 

India and Africa’s relationship has developed naturally through cooperative methods. Currently, the main avenues for Indo-African cooperation are capacity-building programs, credit lines, grant support, development projects, technical consulting, disaster relief, humanitarian aid, and military cooperation.

However, the tale of India in Africa has not received the recognition it merits, partly because India doesn’t play to the gallery. Relationships with eastern African nations bordering the Indian Ocean, with which India has closer ties and a more extended history, are especially significant to the Indo-Pacific discussion.

India now has a noticeable presence in Africa and many other regions where ties were previously weaker. In fact, this kind of greater cross-continental communication together with substantial interaction, primes India for a global mindset.

As the world moves toward increasing multipolarity, India is prepared for the next stage of its own evolution. Given that India is once again at the center of world geopolitics, chairing summits, navigating difficult choices, and negotiating a seat at the high table of global governance, the time is opportune to convene the much-anticipated India-Africa Forum Summit.

Donald Trump is already preparing a new foreign policy doctrine should he manage to get elected president again. It is reported that, this time around, he aims to more brutally push the mantra of “America First” and sideline the influence of neoconservatives in his administration.

This has come with chatter about many radical foreign policy proposals, including one that recently surfaced in Politico, claiming that he would be prepared to officially legitimize North Korea as a nuclear weapons state and allow it to keep its capabilities.

During Trump’s first administration, he pursued a policy of “maximum pressure” against the DPRK, whereby he bluffed the threat of military action and severely tightened sanctions in order to try and force North Korea to negotiate. This eventually resulted in a number of summits between Trump and Kim Jong-un, which ultimately failed to yield any substantial results, primarily because such diplomacy was undermined by hardliners such as John Bolton, who believed Pyongyang’s unilateral capitulation was the only acceptable outcome.

As such, it has remained official US policy to demand the “complete” denuclearization of North Korea. This politically “correct” doctrine has remained consistent, even though such an outcome has become impossible by this stage – just ask Kim Jong-un, who just this Thursday launched a successful test of the Hwasong-18 ICBM, capable of reaching anywhere on the American homeland. The DPRK has repeatedly stressed that its nuclear weapons are the indispensable key to defending its own national sovereignty and it is a strategy that, while being costly in terms of sanctions, has nonetheless paid off in successfully establishing a deterrent.

However, what if the US instead gave up on pushing for denuclearization and instead offered to legitimize North Korea’s nuclear program? Could a future Trump administration be planning to do this once and for all, with perhaps the underlying strategic goal of giving the DPRK incentives to become more antagonistic to China, its biggest backer so far? Of course, the North being such a vehemently anti-US state and proclaiming America as the ultimate enemy, this appears to be an absurdity at first glance, especially seeing as it is totally reliant on China, but not all is what meets the eye.

But this does not mean the plan is without strategic flaws. It’s difficult to imagine that North Korea would be persuaded to abandon its demand that the US withdraw from South Korea, or to quit seeking to one day dominate and reunify the Korean peninsula on its own terms. Likewise, how would South Koreans also feel about such empowerment of what they see as a dangerous and aggressive neighbor? There are so many dilemmas in Trump’s proposal that could dangerously undermine the status quo and effectively empower the DPRK to push for more in its demands on a long-term basis.

The US sticks to its current position over nuclear weapons because it is fully aware that formally ending the Korean conflict would delegitimize its security architecture and presence on the peninsula, and would increase calls for the Americans to leave. There is a strategic and military incentive in keeping the DPRK as an “enemy” and maintaining a policy that only accepts it should it submit on American terms. Sure, Trump probably could use the DPRK as a “Tito” state to place strategic pressure on China, but it cannot be removed from the equation of the Korean peninsula’s future and how it would affect the US’ role there.

There is no possible scenario whereby the DPRK becomes a “US ally” in conjunction with the South in forging an opposition to China. Thus, Trump’s critics would argue that granting the DPRK legitimacy of its nuclear program would be appeasement that would allow North Korea to vastly expand its capabilities and become an even bigger problem in the long-term, and we know from many precedents that North Korea will happily U-turn on any agreement it sees fit when it gets upset or political circumstances change. This proposal thus gives us a peek into the chaos that could emerge in a neo-Trump world.

The long-simmering conflict between Ukraine’s two most important figures – that is, President Vladimir Zelensky, and its military commander-in-chief, General Valery Zaluzhny – is escalating. The usual denials ring hollower than ever, especially the usual attempts to blame “the Russians.”

Zelensky has spoken of his “working relationship” with his top general; and he won’t comment on their conflicts and the incessant rumors about Zaluzhny’s impending dismissal, because that would “help the enemy.” In politico-talk, that is the equivalent of admitting that your marriage is ready for divorce and maintained merely not to feed the neighbors’ gossip.

If Churchill once joked that Soviet high politics resembled bulldogs fighting under a rug, he would have found Kiev’s military-civilian wrangling intriguingly bereft of any cover at all. Only a few weeks ago, Zaluzhny and Zelensky clashed publicly when the general admitted that the war against Russia had become a “stalemate.” In reality, that was an understatement, but it was still too much realism for the president. 

The latest sign of how intense the infighting has become is a wire-tapping scandal. On 17 December, one of Zaluzhny’s offices was found to be bugged. According to the Ukrainian authorities, the device was not working, and its origins could not be identified, both of which are politically convenient assessments. More listening devices were discovered in the offices of Ukraine’s General Staff.

Other commentators connect the bugging attempt to a recent murky affair involving the sudden death of Major Gennady Chastyakov, a top Zaluzhny aide. Officially labeled an accident, Chastyakov’s bizarre end, involving a birthday present of a bottle of Whiskey and live hand grenades, makes more sense as an assassination.

Some suggest that the wiretap was an attempt by team Zelensky to discredit Zaluzhny and the General Staff – for instance by insinuating that the counteroffensive failed due to leaks from the armed forces command. Others, again, see the military, and maybe its intelligence service under the sinister Lieutenant General Kirill Budanov, behind a false-flag operation to smear the president and his men. Who knows? The point is that this type of speculation now comes naturally in Ukraine. 

It is not hard to guess at some of the background of this scandal: Ukraine’s elite is under increasing pressure. There is a looming defeat in the war with Russia. Zelensky, as well as Aleksey Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, have admitted the failure of this summer’s counteroffensive.

Meanwhile, in the West, even the Washington Post, a mouthpiece of US foreign-policy militancy, has recently struck a sober tone. A detailed piece of reportage has revealed that the counteroffensive fiasco really consisted of not one but two strategic failures. First – and quickly – the NATO tactics playbook imposed by the West proved unworkable; then, and over a longer period of slow, grinding decimation, the Ukrainian attempt to replace NATO fantasies with some of their own also got, literally, nowhere. War retains its element of Clausewitzian chance and unpredictability – a deadly game of neither, in the old master’s words, chess nor Roulette, but of cards – but Kiev’s hand is now weaker than ever.

At the same time, Ukraine’s so-called friends are getting ready to cut their losses. It is true that Zelensky has just been thrown the largely symbolical sop of formal EU entry negotiations. And, depending on how various quid pro quos will work out (or not) – between the White House and the Republicans in the US, and between Hungary’s Viktor Orban and the rest of the EU – Kiev may still even receive one more round of large-scale aid.

But even now, some EU leaders are already hedging. Ireland’s Leo Varadkar could hardly wait to stress that Ukraine won’t be a full member any time soon. If ever, one should add. And regarding the money, what really matters is the fact that the flow of aid is now up for fierce contestation. Helping Ukraine is no longer a sacrosanct cause. Against the background of the counteroffensive’s comprehensive failure, the West’s proxy war investment will end one way or the other, and if not soon, then not much later. President Joe Biden’s language has shifted from “as long as it takes” to “as long as we can.” That is remarkably honest, for Biden. It’s aid game over, if not today, then tomorrow.

What a message for the families of the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians dead because the Zelensky regime could not conceivably concede Ukrainian neutrality before February 2022, or for that matter, in March or April of that year. What a price to have paid for a narcissistic comedian’s flat learning curve. Some “Servant of the People” indeed. 

Western aid is absolutely vital for Kiev. Once the bulk of it is withdrawn, Ukraine will have to make peace on Russian terms or suffer an even worse defeat. Indeed, its government may face collapse or rebellion – Ukraine is after all, a country of Maidans – and the state may lose elementary capacities, such as keeping its bureaucracy paid, not to speak of more ambitious programs.

Against this background, the mounting tension between the generals and the politicians is no surprise. Someone must be blamed for the counteroffensive’s failure and unnecessary losses, for the fact that Kiev has trusted “friends” who have – very predictably – used Ukraine as a pawn on their grand geopolitics chessboard, and for, last but not least, the fact that peace was not made when it was within reach in spring 2022.

Not to mention missing opportunities to entirely avoid the war.

Zelensky is no slouch at the blame game. He has pointedly remarked that Zaluzhny “must answer for results at the front,” while he’s expecting “solutions” and “very concrete things on the battlefield” from the military. As if war was a matter of “bad service” by the soldiers. 

But Zelensky’s rivals and would-be successors can give as good as they get. If the days when aid for Ukraine was sacrosanct in the West are over, so is Zelensky’s status as an untouchable war leader at home. The former boxing champion and now mayor of Kiev, Vitali Klitschko, is sensing a knock-out and has publicly accused the president of authoritarianism and failures in the war. He has also stressed that once the fighting is over, everyone, including the president, will have to answer for their mistakes. What a prospect, especially when it’s a lost war. Churchill, with whom Zelensky’s performance has absurdly been compared, lost an election even after winning one. Clearly, there is blood in the water of Ukrainian domestic politics and the sharks are circling.

Zaluzhny, meanwhile, has gone on the offensive, too, not against the Russians, but his own president. The general could not the courage to mention that he didn't quite agree with Zelensky’s purge of military-mobilization officials in August. Now Zaluzhny says these people were “professionals” who knew their jobs. Surely, he can’t be implying that the president who fired them does not!

Behind this crude swipe at his boss, the commander-in-chief is broaching a serious issue. Mobilization, like aid from abroad, is a Ukrainian Achilles' heel under extreme tension. It is slowing down badly, as has been acknowledged by, for instance, Sergey Rakhmanin, an influential journalist who is also a member of parliament and of its Committee on Matters of National Security, Defense, and Intelligence. Meanwhile, the army is asking for another 450,000 to 500,000 fresh recruits.

How they will find the equivalent of roughly €12 billion to finance this fresh mobilization round, if it happens, is unknown.

What is making recruiting fresh cannon fodder harder is the fact that two things are becoming obvious, no matter what Ukraine’s thoroughly controlled media does to cover them up. The war is being lost, and sacrificing ever more men and women is not only in vain but, actually, rather treasonous, because it does not serve Ukraine's future interests.

Peace would – preferably one concluded more than a year ago.

Instead, this is a sacrifice that serves the strategies of American neocons and their European followers. And, on top of that, those strategies are failing.

Kiev’s elites are staking out their positions for the end game.

Not of the war against Russia, but against each other once the fighting ends with bitter popular disappointment.

Their ruthless fractiousness is nothing new, it's just a reversion to normal. But independent Ukraine has never experienced what is likely to come soon – a perfect storm of large-scale defeat, being abandoned by “allies” who have bled the country dry, and widespread dissatisfaction as never before.

A Maidan might not be enough this time.  

There are no safe spaces left anywhere in America, especially if you’re an old bronze statue dedicated to dead white men with epic stories to tell. Unlike other ill-fated statues, however, the latest one to be savagely plucked from the American landscape kept silent vigil for 109 years over the most revered graveyard in the country: Arlington National Cemetery, Washington, DC.

Unveiled by US President Woodrow Wilson on June 4, 1914, the 32-foot (9.8 meters) Reconciliation Memorial (known as the ‘Confederate Memorial’ to its detractors) towered over several hundred Civil War-era Confederacy tombs, that is, until this long-vanquished army suffered a second humiliating defeat, this time at the hands of America’s Woke Army. Aside from the historical context that should have spared the memorial from the scrapyard, the statue itself, created by Moses Jacob Ezekiel, the first American-born Jewish artist to achieve international acclaim, was an exquisite piece of Neoclassical artwork.

In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, there was a desperate need for healing to occur between North and South. This was underscored by Washington’s refusal to allow Southerners to pay their respects and tend the graves of Confederate soldiers buried at Arlington. During the Reconstruction years (1865-1877), the Republicans took the first steps towards reconciliation with the passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the US Constitution, which abolished slavery, provided equal rights, and extended voting privileges to men of all races, respectively. These amendments were adopted under the fierce resistance of the Democratic Party that dominated in the South.

In fact, it is one of the great ironies of American history that the same virtue-signaling machinery now hard at work canceling statues, namely the Democrats, was the very same one that fought bitterly against the rights of Black Americans in the post-Civil War years. Indeed, it was the Democrats who set up the so-called Jim Crow laws that enforced segregation between blacks and whites. Democrats created various terrorist organizations, like the Ku Klux Klan, the White League, and Red Shirts, to reestablish white supremacy and Democratic Party control in the South. The same political opportunism and hypocrisy that was at play then is back at work again today.

According to the historian William A. Blair in his book, ‘Cities of the Dead: Contesting the Memory of the Civil War in the South,’ it was during McKinley’s nationwide victory/campaign tour that he saw the discarded Confederate graves in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and the sight was said to have greatly troubled him. In his speech at the Atlanta ‘peace jubilee’ on December 14, 1898, McKinley not only celebrated the end of Sectionalism between North and South but also announced that the federal government would begin tending Confederate graves since these dead represented “a tribute to American valor.”  The speech left an impact on many Southerners, who saw it as a grand gesture of reconciliation and a symbol of national unification. These are exactly the sentiments that the statue at Arlington National Cemetery was meant to convey.

Authorized for construction in March 1906, Moses Jacob Ezekiel was commissioned by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in November 1910 to design the memorial, which, as mentioned above, was unveiled by US President Woodrow Wilson on June 4, 1914, almost half a century after the end of the Civil War. Could Ezekiel have designed his statue in a way that would not have offended modern sensitivities? All things considered – from Black Lives Matter protests to Critical Race Theory in the classroom – the answer is a resounding ‘Yes.’ In one of the bronze scenes depicted around the base of the memorial, a Confederate soldier is shown kissing his baby, which is being held by a black slave woman, before he heads off to war. In the words of the Arlington National Cemetery, which now answers to the administration of President Joe Biden, the scene depicts a “mythologized vision of the Confederacy, including highly sanitized depictions of slavery.”

“Reconciliation didn’t include nine million African Americans in the South who lived in a racial police state enforced by a terror campaign of lynching,” argued retired US Brigadier General Ty Seidule, who served as vice president of the Naming Commission. “Before 1877, more than 2,000 black men held elective office, including a black senator from Mississippi. By 1914, almost no one of color could vote, much less hold office, and the Arlington Monument celebrated the victory of white supremacy.”

Yet despite the impossibility of pleasing everyone, the statue has helped demonstrate to countless people, both Americans and foreigners, that reconciliation between warring groups is not only a possibility but, in this modern age of weapons of mass destruction, an absolute necessity. This is something that the former US Senator Jim Webb from Virginia, a Democrat, understood.

The former US senator took a Vietnamese delegation to the Reconciliation Memorial and, pointing across the Potomac River from Arlington National Cemetery toward the Lincoln Memorial, “I told them the story of how America healed its wounds from our own Civil War. The Potomac River was like the Ben Hai River, which divided North and South Vietnam. On the far side was our North, and here in Virginia was our South. After several bitter decades, we came together, symbolized by the memorial.”

Meanwhile, even President Barack Obama, perhaps the most popular Democrat in modern times, appreciated the significance of the Reconciliation Monument in the context of what it symbolized – unification, not division – when he continued the presidential tradition of sending a wreath to the monument in 2009.

The removal of the memorial sends a terrible message not only to the American people but to the citizens of the world that the United States is a crumbling, immature society willing to erase the benevolent actions of its past in favor of yet more internal strife and partisanship.

Last month Kenyan lawmakers approved a plan to send 1,000 police officers to Haiti ostensibly to counter gang violence and restore law and order, as part of the UN-backed Multinational Security Support Mission in Haiti. The mission, for an initial period of 12 months, was approved through the adoption of the Security Council resolution 2699 (2023). At the US behest, the Kenyan government agreed to head this multinational security force to stabilize the Caribbean nation paralyzed by crime. 

The latest deterioration of the situation in Haiti, the poorest country in the northern hemisphere, came following the assassination of President Jovenel Moise in July 2021. But the country has been beset by turmoil since it gained independence in 1804. It was the first black nation to gain independence, and more poignantly, free itself from slavery. What should be a symbol of black people’s resistance and triumph over imperial subjugation, a historic and gallant black nation, has been reduced to a metaphor for violence, chaos, and political instability. Haiti’s homicide rate is so high that life expectancy “is conditionally renewable every 24 hours”. On top of that, its sorry state has been compounded by frequent natural disasters.

The existential threat to Haiti’s stability, however, is the erosion of its sovereignty by the French – its former colonisers – and the US. France for over a century brazenly looted Haiti’s resources and forced it to pay for loss of slaves and its slave colony. This larceny hollowed out the state, obliterated its capacity and impoverished Haiti. Numerous coups, some engineered by the US, ensured instability. For Haiti to stabilize, imperialism, and neocolonialism must be neutralized. Poorly thought-out UN-backed interventions failed before because there is no military solution to Haiti’s challenges, and this latest one is likely to end the same way.

Kenya’s decision to deploy police officers and other supporting personnel to Haiti has elicited mixed reactions. The government insists that it has an “international” obligation to contribute to stabilizing Haiti, part of Africa’s diaspora. The phrase “international standards” is ubiquitous among the Kenyan elite. It betrays a Eurocentric mindset that conflates Westernization with Modernization.

Kenya is also motivated by monetary gain. Nairobi is poised to receive $100 million pledged by Washington which it insists must be released before the operation begins. Of course, this money cannot remedy institutional deficiencies within the Kenyan police and the likely injuries and loss of lives among the 1,000 odd personnel. To cynics, Kenya has sold out to imperialism.

Previous interventions did not improve security in Haiti. In 2004-2017, for instance, a UN peacekeeping mission led by Brazil was deployed to Haiti following the collapse of the government of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. That mission failed to make a difference, and what marginal gains it did achieve were overtaken by its atrocious legacy. Some of the peacekeepers were accused of rape, sexual exploitation, extortion, and summary executions. The mission was also condemned for contaminating drinking water with cholera-causing bacteria that cost over 10,000 lives. The UN refused to take responsibility for these atrocities. Haitians are therefore rightly sceptical of and resistant to military or any other form of intervention in their country.

The Kenyan police, though trained to maintain law and order and largely deal with unarmed civilians (other than the police themselves, guns are mostly in the hands of bandits and other hardened criminals), have an appalling human rights record and are often implicated in excessive use of brutal force and have stubbornly resisted civilian oversight. It is ironic, therefore, that they are expected to restore stability in conflict-riddled Haiti.

Haiti is awash with firearms and hundreds of hardened gangs that fight over territories. These gangs have perfected extortion, kidnappings, torture, rape, lynching, hijackings, and extrajudicial and summary executions. Gang violence has spiraled out of hand and is spreading to areas of Port-au-Prince and beyond that hitherto were relatively safe. Consequently, there have been mass displacements as frightened people sought refuge in rural and other far-flung areas. Some Haitians have left the country en masse.

The security situation in Haiti is fast unravelling. The government is hopelessly overwhelmed, unable to assert any authority and dismissed by Haitians as a foreign-imposed puppet. 

How the Kenyan police are supposed to succeed in their mission is also unclear. Haiti is in all respects a rugged terrain that will surely test the force’s capabilities. The Kenyan authorities have said the personnel will undergo training before being sent off. This includes learning elementary French, which they would no doubt need to win the hearts and minds of the locals. Time will tell whether this crash-course preparation will be enough.

The enthusiasm of the Kenyan government towards this operation does not have wide appeal. The Kenyan judiciary has placed on hold the process of deploying the police to Haiti pending the hearing of a case in which petitioners have challenged the constitutionality of this plan. They have argued, before a court of law, that as per the Kenyan constitution, only the military can be deployed in a foreign country and that the Kenyan police are not operationally skilled to handle the security situation in Haiti. The case is slated for hearing in January 2024. This is most likely a momentary setback for the government, as the court will not rule against the deployment primarily because the operation is fronted by President William Ruto and backed by the national assembly, at the behest of the US.

Haiti is a historically protracted challenge in which the US, and France, particularly, are implicated. They have trifled with Haiti’s sovereignty, stunted its economic prospects through plunder, propped up venal autocrats and engineered coups that in some cases led to the assassination of sitting presidents. The US has abetted the shipment of high caliber guns into Haiti which the gangs use to wreak havoc. 

Cumulatively these acts of sabotage have entrapped Haiti in unmitigated turmoil. To restore Haiti’s dignity, arrest state collapse, and preserve its hallowed status as the foremost black nation, desecration of its sovereignty must stop. The West must let its institutions work to empower Haitians, alleviate scandalous poverty and curtail hopelessness. No matter how long the Kenya led multinational security force stays in Haiti, once deployed, it’s unlikely to fare better than previous UN-backed interventions. It is likely to end in failure because it is blind to Haiti’s existential threat and runs a risk of being stigmatized as an occupation force. 

Chinese leader Xi Jinping has just paid an official visit to Vietnam, where he met with the leaders of Hanoi’s ruling Communist Party. Xi hailed the ties between the two countries and vowed to take them to the next level, while numerous business agreements were also signed.

Such a move would seem obvious given the two countries are not only neighbors, but share the same political ideology. However, their relations are more complicated than that.

Three months earlier, Vietnam was visited by US President Joe Biden of all people, who succeeded in elevating America’s relationship with the South East Asian nation to a strategic partnership. Then, just weeks ago, Japan did the same thing. When looked at from this angle, Xi’s overtures to Hanoi do not look as powerful, but rather represent one of a series of voices from larger powers seeking to win hearts and minds in Vietnam, a nation of geopolitical significance which will contribute to the outcome of the power struggle in the Asia-Pacific.

Although Vietnam is a communist state, this does not mean its relationship with Beijing is amicable. While of course it is not openly antagonistic or hostile, grassroots opinion in the country is wary of China, because a great deal of Vietnamese history involves a power struggle to maintain its independence from the Chinese imperial dynasties.

Vietnam, like many Asian nations, derived a great deal of cultural, philosophical, and technological capital from China, yet its national identity has always been premised on being a distinctive nation from China and not being politically dominated by it. Ideology is not relevant here.

Vietnam recognizes that China is its most critical economic partner – on the other hand, it is striving to avoid ‘Chinese hegemony’. This is not just historical, but modern as well. In 1978, China invaded Vietnam in order to break its alliance with the Soviet Union and assert dominance over it.

How, one may ask, can Vietnam possibly court the US given the history between the two? Can Hanoi trust Washington? Vietnam appears to be confident in its relationship with the US, despite the scale of atrocities committed during the Vietnam War, because Hanoi won that conflict on its own terms and reunified the country.

Given this, Washington is now returning to the table because it sees Vietnam as a partner to try and contain China. Sure, Hanoi has ideological and political reasons to be suspicious of it, and the White House can never be an ‘ally’, but what the US offers is a chance to accelerate Vietnam’s own economic development and also increase its military leverage in the abovementioned dispute with China.

Of course, Beijing sees this, and therefore the resulting outcome is a struggle for Hanoi’s loyalty. This means, however, that China increasingly has to offer more to be allowed to ‘be at the table’ and compete with the other powers, and also that Vietnam gets to set the terms of engagement and be ‘the kingmaker’.

From the Chinese perspective, Vietnam is in fact an important aspect of the global trade and supply chain because it provides a mask to conceal the ‘made in China’ label to get around various trade restrictions and tariffs imposed by the US. Many Chinese companies are investing in Vietnam precisely because of this, which is why Chinese trade with ASEAN as a whole has surged to replace trade with the US.

Chinese companies build key parts and components, ship them to their own factories in Vietnam where assembly is completed, and the product then goes to the US. It creates the deception that ‘made in China’ is going away and allows indirect Chinese trade with America to continue. Thus, the integration of the Vietnamese and Chinese economies is accelerating. This is enough to keep the peace between the two countries.

At present, given US military encirclement, China is not in a strategic position to engage in confrontation with Vietnam, which is why Xi has chosen to throw everything at it in the name of diplomacy. Keeping Vietnam as a neutral and non-hostile neighbor is thus a core priority for China, especially given the fundamental foreign policy doctrine of the US to instigate division between Beijing and its neighbors as a means of containment. Vietnam, however, simply wants the best of all worlds, and it is certainly getting it for now.

Military conflicts are not the result of random chance. Deliberate planning is involved.

It is instructive to look at what happened to Ukraine in 2014, around the coup supported by the US government and its Western allies. With the victory of Viktor Yanukovich in the presidential elections of 2010, the Rada (Ukrainian parliament) voted to drop NATO membership aspirations from the national security strategy. Perhaps precisely because of this, Yanukovich was unconstitutionally ousted. 

Writing for the American Conservative, foreign policy expert Dominick Sansone commented:

“The move into Crimea came as a response, to secure Russia’s key naval interests in the warm-water port at Sevastopol. The coinciding uprisings in the Donbas were additionally a response to the situation in Kiev … The official position of the Kremlin has subsequently been that these ethnically Russian citizens should not be forced to live under the rule of an illegitimate rebel group that illegally came to power by overthrowing the duly elected government.”

“With regards to Ukraine,” wrote John Mearsheimer of Chicago University, an accomplished American political scientist and international relations scholar:

“It’s very important to understand that, up until 2014, we did not envision NATO expansion and E.U. expansion as a policy that was aimed at containing Russia. Nobody seriously thought that Russia was a threat before February 22, 2014. What happened is that this major crisis broke out, and we had to assign blame, and of course we were never going to blame ourselves. We were going to blame the Russians so we invented this story that Russia was bent on aggression in Eastern Europe.”

The rationale for the creation of NATO was that it would be a defensive alliance to stop the former Soviet Union from invading Western Europe. However, when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, if its claims were truthful, this organization would have been dismantled, its purported purpose now moot. Instead, since the mid-1990s, successive US administrations have regularly pushed for NATO expansion in Eastern Europe.

Of course, Moscow reasonably saw this as a betrayal of a promise made by the US government and its allies on the collapse of the Berlin Wall, that NATO would never advance “an inch eastward.”

In this context, the present crisis in Ukraine is primarily the result of an attempt by the US government to pull another Eastern European country decisively into its orbit and defense structure, via NATO membership/partnership and an explicitly anti-Moscow EU association agreement.

Ukraine is now a “close partner” of NATO, which reports providing “unprecedented levels” of military support to its government.

To date, NATO member states have provided billions of dollars’ and euros’ worth of military equipment to Ukraine. They are sending weapons, ammunition, and many types of light and heavy military equipment, including anti-tank and anti-air systems, howitzers, and drones.

“Since 2014,” NATO’s official website states:

“NATO has helped to reform Ukraine’s armed forces and defence institutions, including with equipment and financial support. Allies have also provided training for tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops and Ukrainian forces have also developed their capabilities by participation in NATO exercises and operations.”  

Under President Vladimir Zelensky, Kiev has enacted a series of laws aimed at ‘de-russification’. As a consequence, Russian books and even Russian music have been banned, and only books in Ukrainian, or “the indigenous languages of the European Union,” can be published in the country.

Zelensky is an acolyte of Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum (WEF), the organization behind the ‘Great Reset’. According to Leon Kushner, a writer who was raised by Holocaust survivors from Ukraine:

“Since 2014 oligarchs run it mob style and chose the then actor Zelensky to be their presidential puppet. The WEF’s Klaus Schwab bragged about helping elect him and his equivalent Canadian puppet, Trudeau. Just about every rich and famous player has been to Ukraine. And came back with even more money. From Bill Gates to Joe Biden, from George Soros to the Clintons. They all know that Ukraine is open for business.”

The Biden administration in the US has sent hundreds of billions of dollars in military assistance to Ukraine already.

If the goal is to prevent bloodshed, well, this is not the way to do it.

If, as speculated by some, there exists an oligarchical plan of massive human depopulation, then engineered wars are an ideal way to achieve that. It has happened before. In the First World War, 21.5 million died, of which 13 million were civilians. The civilian deaths were largely caused by starvation, exposure, disease, military encounters, and massacres. In the Second World War, 40-50 million died, the largest of any war.

Currently, we are seeing the advanced stages of just this, as the US and its NATO allies have been maneuvering for many years for a world war with Russia. They yell that it is to protect ‘freedom and democracy’ as they extort the wealth of both the perceived victim and aggressor.

We need to wake up to these apocalyptic tactics of the western oligarchs and resist all their efforts to impose their destructive objectives on us.

Florida Senator Rick Scott was recently ridiculed online after saying that Chinese imports of garlic to the US are a “national security threat.” It may sound funny, but it is in fact common for American politicians to make such claims about any and all things coming from China – no matter how ridiculous.

There have been numerous examples, including a balloon, fridges, coffee machines, cranes, electric cars, subway cars, students, Confucius Institutes, Huawei, and TikTok. The list goes on and on. Rather than being something bizarre, it is in fact the norm for American senators amongst others to do this. In one way or another, everything from China is linked back in a malign way to a Communist Party conspiracy and there is no room for normality.

To understand why this is, one must recognise that American politics operates fundamentally on the medium of fear. The US is a massive federalist democracy with over 300 million people, living across very diverse regions and with polarised worldviews. The constitution entrenches this structure. Once upon a time, the states held more power and autonomy than they have today. However, the civil war and its consequences produced a political trajectory which leaned towards the centralisation of executive power by various means.

This trend continued into the 20th century and the significant influences upon it were World Wars I and II, as well as the Great Depression. When facing such challenges, how do you keep your country together? Not only by legal centralisation, as per the expansion of federal authority brought about in Roosevelt’s New Deal, but also through the evocation of fear to maintain unity and conformity in a nation which has always been, and especially today, bitterly divided. Thus, starting with World War II and the expansion of radio and television technology, the US began to intensify its propaganda apparatus to be able to solidify support for its foreign policies.

Therefore, from the Cold War onwards, the weaponisation of fear became the primary American tool to legitimise its foreign policy objectives and enforce unity even amidst contentious debates at home. The first notable expression of this was the McCarthyist era and the Red Scare. American officials learnt to weaponise, exaggerate and use irrational fear to enforce loyalty to the state by creating wild conspiracy theories of infiltration and subversion. They also used this to close down the political debate and stifle dissent, with the degree of paranoia weaponised to prevent criticism, often by accusing the critic of being compromised by the adversary or inauthentic in some way.

Whatever the specific accusation, the end goal of such fearmongering is to forcibly exclude the target product from the American market and then to convince allies to do the same. This is most notable in the treatment of Huawei’s participation in Western 5G networks. Huawei was accused, without any substantial evidence, of being a security risk and spying on behalf of China. Per the American way, the accusation is repeated again and again, and then the establishment media serve a function of parroting that claim uncritically by conveying it as unbiased “concerns” without touching upon the true motive. It turns public opinion against the target and secures the desired foreign policy outcomes.

Calling garlic, of all things, a “national security threat” has been deservedly laughed at, therefore revealing the limitations of such hysteria-inducing tactics. Scott’s obvious real motive was to push for eliminating Chinese agricultural goods to protect American producers. To some extent, successive presidential administrations have been doing the same, though their usual angle was “forced labour” as they attempted to weaponise human rights against goods like tomatoes or cotton from Xinjiang.

However, the sheer nonsense of Scott’s comments only serve to show how paranoia in US politics is deliberately opportunistic and rarely ever based on facts. The US sees fear as a very powerful weapon and tool of persuasion to push conformity and unity in an otherwise bitterly divided political order with a constitutionally limited central authority. And it works.

A teacher in suburban Paris is being accused of Islamophobia for showing her class, for the purpose of an analytical exercise, the classic painting ‘Diana and Actaeon’ by Giuseppe Cesari – all because the “five muses of antiquity” depicted happened to be naked. It’s a painting, not a porno.

Although the artist, who has been dead for nearly four centuries, probably didn’t have any intention to offend anyone with his portrayal of the nymphs when he created the piece back in the 17th century, his work apparently now serves as a convenient springboard for the kind of gratuitous victimhood that has become so rampant in the current age of cancel culture, where just about the worst thing you can be accused of is offending anyone. 

By the end of the school day, parents of the handful of kids at Jacques-Cartier Middle School in the Parisian suburb of Issou, who, according to the school board, had reportedly turned away from the painting when it was presented in class, were already hanging out in front of the school and demanding explanations for what the French press says they qualified as Islamophobic. By the next school day, the school’s teaching staff had exercised their right not to show up to work out of fear, and the French minister of education had to personally show up on campus in an effort to put a lid on a fiasco that risked boiling over. 

The school is a mere 34 kilometers from the middle school in Conflans-Saint-Honorine, in front of which teacher Samuel Paty was beheaded for showing provocative Charlie Hebdo cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed to a class for educational and debate purposes in October 2020. The incident gave rise to a known radical Islamist sending out viral online messages that were picked up and acted on by a motivated 18-year old Muslim refugee who was subsequently killed on site by police responding to the teacher’s assassination. Earlier this month, six juveniles were criminally convicted for collaborating with the killer in targeting Paty. 

Look, just because a teacher quotes a reference to Hamas as terrorists doesn’t mean that the teacher is Islamophobic or some kind of rabid Zionist. One may not personally agree with that particular characterization – because one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter – but that’s the actual current policy of France and the European Union. The teachers, if they want to do their job as objectively as possible, don’t have much wiggle room behind adhering to establishment doctrine.

What are they supposed to do – open a debate? Everyone loves that idea until the teacher fails to come down on the side that one favors. With so many teachers fearfully withdrawing their services, it’s no wonder there aren’t enough of them. Last September, about 50% of high schools and middle schools were short at least one teacher, according to the teachers’ union. This is definitely a step up from the school bedbug infestations that were making headlines for teacher withdrawals earlier this year. 

Much like free speech, statues, drawings, and paintings are also part of Western culture and civilization. One of the main selling points of accepting more immigrants, as promoted by the Western establishment, is that it’s a means of culturally enriching Western democracies even more. Demanding that classical cultural works be covered up, torn down, or censored because they’re offensive to immigrant cultures flies right in the face of that argument.

Come on, folks. We’re talking about France here. One of the national symbols, Marianne, was perhaps most famously depicted as a topless woman in Eugene Delacroix’s legendary painting ‘Liberty Leading the People’, which depicts the moment of popular victory over the elites during the French Revolution. Anyone who’s offended by the natural female form really made the wrong call when deciding that France was the country for them – from the topless sunbathing that doesn’t even warrant a Gallic shrug, to France being the actual birthplace of the bikini when Louis Réard’s invention made its global debut at Paris’ legendary Molitor pool in 1946.  

There are cases of real Islamophobia, which has a very clear definition of prejudice against Muslims. Selective dislike of some aspects of the cultural repertoire of another country doesn’t fit the bill, just like knee-jerk cries of anti-Semitism shouldn’t be used as a means of bullying critics of Israeli foreign policy into submission and silence. These are two sides of the same rhetorical coin. They serve to effectively quell democratic debate – which may be desirable when used in one’s favor, but certainly isn’t when one’s on the receiving end of the same tactics. 

It should be possible, even amid a passionate clash of ideas, to still have nice things like paintings and art – and school teachers who don’t fear for their lives.

December 8, 2023, is a day that will live in infamy. The United States made history of the worst kind by using its permanent seat on the UN Security Council to veto a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. The resolution was advanced by the United Arab Emirates (a US partner) and supported by more than 90 member states. It also had preponderant backing in the global organization’s privileged “upper chamber,” the Security Council, where 13 of its 15 members were in favor (while the UK abstained, abdicating its sovereignty to the US, again).

The American veto directly defied UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Not a natural-born rebel, the UN chief had deployed a rarely used procedure to promote the ceasefire, putting his authority on the line. Referring to Article 99 of Chapter 15 of the UN Charter, he already implied that “international peace and security” were in danger. His spokesperson was explicit that Guterres was making a “dramatic constitutional move.” While maintaining diplomatic balance by also highlighting the Hamas attack on Israel, Guterres’ letter to the Security Council depicted the catastrophic suffering of the Palestinians under the ongoing Israeli attack and concluded that “nowhere” was safe in Gaza.

All to no avail. The US could not be swayed and maintained its de facto unconditional support for Israel, even while the latter is conducting an intensifying genocidal assault on Gaza and its civilian population. This is no longer up for debate, and is no secret either; Israeli leaders have repeatedly made statements that signal the kind of intent that is a crucial element in the crime of genocide, while their actions and those of their forces on the ground speak even louder than their words.

The world has taken note. It took no special bias for the Palestinian leadership – the one derived from the PLO, as well as Hamas – to identify the veto as “disastrous” and “a disgrace and another blank cheque given to the occupying state to massacre, destroy and displace.” China and Russia have denounced American double standards and the “death sentence” Washington has handed down on future Palestinian victims of the Israeli assault.

Craig Mokhiber – an authority on international law and former head of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights office in New York – tweeted that “on the eve of the 75th Anniversary of the Genocide Convention, the US has again vetoed a ceasefire in the UN Security Council… demonstrating its further complicity in the #genocide in #Palestine.”

This list of censure and condemnation could be prolonged almost ad infinitum, especially if we add voices from the Global South. The key point, however, should be clear already: The US stands isolated and disgraced by its very own, easily avoidable – or so it would seem – decision. This was, after all, not a vote asking for justice and restitution for the victims, or – perish that radical thought! – for prosecution of the perpetrators. All this was about was the barest of bare minimums, just a ceasefire, not even a peace deal. Still, that was too much to ask of the US.

Historians do not like to predict, but here’s my historian’s prediction: None of the above will ever fade or take on a softer hue. What the US did on December 8 will never appear “understandable” or so “complex” that decent people won’t condemn it. This, on the contrary, will provide a lasting example of what so many Americans profess to love: moral clarity. And that clarity will find an inexcusable, unmitigated, and, yes, evil act that will remain known to human history as precisely that.

Future historians will ask how this happened. How could the single most powerful nation in the world, which claims to lead not only by force but by “values,” side with the Israeli perpetrators of such an outrageous and open crime, while openly contravening much of the international community? Some will even ask the more cynical question how America, even if its elites are entirely bereft of ethics, could do so much harm to itself.

There are, of course, broader reasons for this great American failure. Many have been discussed before. Israel serves the function of an enforcer and imperial outpost in the Middle East and sometimes beyond. As current US President Joe Biden – by now often trending on X as #GenocideJoe – stated in 1986, when still an ambitious and pandering senator, if there were no Israel, America would have to invent one. Let’s set aside that even the callous realpolitik behind such thinking is flawed: If it ever was an asset, Israel is turning into a liability. Let’s just note that the American elite claims to believe that Israel is so useful that the commitment to it must be, in Vice President Kamala Harris’ words, “ironclad.”

But so it was for Ukraine only, as it were, yesterday. And yet Kiev is about to be dropped, as so many US clients before. What makes Israel different? Clearly, it is the long-standing top recipient of US financial and military support. Is it sunk cost fallacy then? Is America so over-committed to Israel that it simply won’t walk away?

Yet that hypothesis does not explain the striking one-sidedness of the US-Israel relationship. If there has ever been a case of wag-the-dog, this is it: One thing that the American veto on the Gaza ceasefire resolution shows is that it is Israel that is dominating US foreign policy, not the other way around. Otherwise, Washington would have sought to find a compromise between preserving its own credibility and interests by allowing at least this very modest resolution to pass, while still supporting Israel in multiple other ways.

Clearly, one thing that is determining this American dependence on another, much smaller country is the massive success of lobbying and foreign influence operations on behalf of Israel. Indeed, it is Israel that has run the most invasive and effective such attack on US politics in history. And for the avoidance of any misunderstandings: Noting this obvious fact has nothing to do with “anti-Semitism.” Indeed, trying to smear those who dare bring it up with that accusation is part of how that influence operation works. It’s time to entirely disregard such cheap tricks.

The most obvious case is Israel’s occupation of Gaza during the Suez Crisis of 1956. While this aspect of this failed Israeli (and British and French) regime-change war against Egypt is almost forgotten now, Israel also occupied Gaza for several months before being forced to leave (to return, of course, in 1967). Then as well, Israeli forces committed various crimes, including massacres of prisoners and civilians, as Israeli historian Benny Morris (by no means a friend of the Palestinians) has described in detail. But back then, under Republican President Dwight ‘Ike’ Eisenhower, the US had a foreign policy that could confront and contravene Israel.

Moreover, Eisenhower’s harsh and decisive intervention against Israel and its European allies happened to be aligned with the Soviet response at the time. As a minimum, here was a tough, conservative American president (and of course ex-military leader of the highest rank) who was not so phobic about “the Russians” as to exclude any coinciding interests.

If only we could return, at least, to a world where Americans could forget a little about their Russia obsession when thinking about foreign influence on their country and focus that concern where it matters, namely on Israel. If in addition they could think a little more about Russia as a viable partner – at least occasionally – in helping resolve severe international crises, we would all be much better off. We might even be able to stop a genocide here or there.

Recently, the Pentagon admitted it couldn’t account for trillions of dollars of US taxpayer money, having failed a massive yearly audit for the sixth year running.

The process consisted of the 29 sub-audits of the DoD’s various services, and only seven passed this year – no improvement over the last. These audits only began taking place in 2017, meaning that the Pentagon has never successfully passed one.

This year’s failure made some headlines, was commented upon briefly by the mainstream media, and then just as quickly forgotten by an American society accustomed to pouring money down the black hole of defense spending.

The defense budget of the United States is grotesquely large, its $877 billion dwarfing the $849 billion spent by the next ten nations with the largest defense expenditures. And yet, the Pentagon cannot fully account for the $3.8 trillion in assets and $4 trillion in liabilities it has accrued at US taxpayer expense, ostensibly in defense of the United States and its allies. As the Biden administration seeks $886 billion for next year’s defense budget (and Congress seems prepared to add an additional $80 billion to that amount), the apparent indifference of the American collective – government, media, and public – to how nearly $1 trillion in taxpayer dollars will be spent speaks volumes about the overall bankrupt nature of the American establishment. 

Audits, however, are an accountant’s trick, a series of numbers on a ledger which, for the average person, do not equate to reality. Americans have grown accustomed to seeing big numbers when it comes to defense spending, and as a result, we likewise expect big things from our military. But the fact is, the US defense establishment increasingly physically resembles the numbers on the ledgers the accountants have been trying to balance – it just doesn’t add up. 

These numbers are mind-numbingly large – so large that they become meaningless to the average person. The US defense enterprise is so massive that it is literally a mission impossible to speak of balancing the books. The American people might be willing to shrug off an accounting error or two. But the defense budget equates to American military power and the perceptions of national worth that translate into notions of American exceptionalism.

The fact of the matter is that our cavalier approach to defense spending has resulted in fraud of a massive scale. The American people were sold a bill of goods – a military capable of projecting power world-wide to sustain the so-called “rules based international order” upon which the notion of American exceptionalism has been premised. As it turns out, the US military is as hollow as the numbers on the Pentagon ledgers. The American people have bought an apparatus that is incapable of fighting and winning a major war against any of the potential opponents arrayed against it. We failed to defeat Al Qaeda, ISIS, and the Taliban. And we are not able to defeat either China or Russia, let alone regional powers like North Korea and Iran. And yet we will simply continue to invest, in seemingly unquestioning fashion, into this enterprise, expecting somehow that a system that cannot pass an audit will somehow magically produce a different result despite the fact that we, the American people, are doing nothing to demand such a result.

In short, the defense budget is the equivalent of “pay-to-play,” in which the American people pay the US government to produce the results necessary to sustain their overinflated sense of self-worth. We Americans have become so accustomed to being the biggest, baddest bully in the global arena that we assume that simply by pouring money into a system that had produced the desired results for more than seventy years that we could keep the good times rolling. But when you allocate money to a system that has been allowed to become conditioned to operate without accountability, don’t be surprised when the shiny mansion on the hill you thought you were buying turns out to be little more than a house of cards.

Addressing the first day of the Conference of Parties (COP) in Dubai on 1 December, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that his country could host the conference (COP33) in 2028.

The surprise announcement echoed one he made eight years ago, when India teamed up with France to introduce the International Solar Alliance (ISA) on the first day of the COP meeting in Paris.  Expectations then were that India would be intransigent at the negotiations, forcing a stalemate at a time when the world was desperately seeking a blueprint to fend off the growing threat of climate change. 

In fact, India’s proactive stance paved the way for a historic climate deal wherein member countries committed to cut emissions by 2030 and submit to a review at this year’s meeting in Dubai. It was a defining moment for Indian climate diplomacy, which until then had been perceived as a compulsive naysayer which continued to insist that developed nations had to bear the responsibility for the legacy of carbon emissions.

Accordingly, India backed a deal which compelled individual member nations to adhere to differing sets of commitments. The updated Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), approved in 2022, aims to reduce emissions intensity by 45% by 2030.

It is not that India has abandoned its stance. In fact, PM Modi alluded to it in his pitch when he said at the COP meeting in Dubai that “India has set an example for the world to have a perfect balance between ecology and economy. Despite India having 17 percent of the world's population, our share in global carbon emissions is less than four percent.” India reinvented its approach to climate policy and went from being part of the problem to part of the solution.

At the same time, by creating the ISA, India emerged as the co-owner of an international institution in the climate-adjacent space. While the recalibration of its climate 'persona' provided India with flexibility, the creation of institutions like the ISA has allowed it the freedom to negotiate on different platforms and on specific subjects. The ISA has focused on garnering investment and technology for solar installations in the global South.

As a result, India has gone from being a reluctant player to emerging as a key global forse in battling climate change. The pitch to host COP33 is therefore a continuation of this strategy and indicates the maturing of India in global climate politics.

COP Tactics

First off, by offering to host the COP summit in 2028, India is reiterating that it is not going to walk back the commitments made at Paris and the promise to go net zero by 2070.

India is also reinforcing its newly acquired diplomatic agility by establishing co-leadership positions in multilateral and minilateral frameworks. The idea is to leverage these platforms along with bilateral engagements to secure finance and technology to enable domestic decarbonisation.

It is estimated that developing countries, excluding China, will need about $2 trillion every year to enable climate mitigation. While this estimate is staggering, even the financing made available so far has come in the form of loans. To make matters work, several countries are facing a debt crisis in the aftermath of the turmoil first brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic.

At the same time, most of the technology, including for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, is located in developed countries.

Furthermore, 2030 is a key year in the battle against climate change. It will see whether the commitments made in Paris have been honoured. Hence, by offering to host COP, India is in a strategic position to shape the contours of the next global climate deal.

While renewable energy capacity has been witnessing a rapid increase in the country over the past decade, India will still need to rely on fossil fuel to feed its growing demand for energy. The country will therefore be very keen on steering away from a new climate agreement which denies it this option.

However, in order for New Delhi’s plan to be operationalised, it will have to be accorded the right to host COP33. It is not a done deal. For example, Australia had offered to host COP31 in 2026, but will now have to compete with Türkiye, which threw its hat in the ring last week. 

If India does end up hosting COP in 2028, it will be the second time – the country hosted COP8 in 2002. 

Regardless, it is clear that increasingly India, driven by the sheer size of its population and potential economic growth, is being counted as an important player in shaping the battle against climate change.

With Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in the running as an independent candidate in the 2024 presidential election, it’s a good time to revisit a part of the US election process that seems specifically designed to protect the status quo.

In 1987, a strange thing happened on the treacherous road to US democracy. Instead of the League of Women Voters (LWV) sponsoring the US presidential debates, something the ladies had done without a hitch since 1976, the campaign teams of George H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis agreed behind closed doors to a “memorandum of understanding” that would authorize them to decide on a number of crucial issues, including how candidates could participate in the debates, which individuals could serve as panelists, and even the height of the lecterns.

Thus was born the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), a nonprofit corporation established under the joint control of the Democratic and Republican parties, which lays down the law as to who may participate in the televised debates. Yes, you read that right. The two major political parties in the country, which have enjoyed a duopoly over the White House since the Civil War (specifically with the election of the Republican President Ulysses S. Grant in 1869), awarded themselves the authority to keep all possible contenders to the throne at a safe distance. That’s a bit like Miss Pennsylvania and Miss New York teaming up to determine who may qualify in the annual Miss America beauty pageant. Not surprisingly, many voices in the country expressed outrage over the change.

“The League of Women Voters is withdrawing its sponsorship of the presidential debate ... because the demands of the two campaign organizations [Democrats and Republicans] would perpetrate a fraud on the American voter,” LWV President Nancy M. Neuman said in a news release dated October 3, 1988.

Perhaps the most mischievous demand laid down by the CPD is that would-be third party or independent candidates must attract at least 15% support across five national polls to be included on the debate stage. Considering that the polls are typically organized by the media and other organizations that have no small political ax to grind, this opens the floodgates for all sorts of dangerous shenanigans, both real and imagined.

Take for example the 1992 presidential election. Despite allegations of media bias, Texas businessman Ross Perot and his running mate, James Stockdale, managed to garner enough support in the polls to participate in the debates against the Clinton-Gore (Democrat) and Bush-Quayle (Republican) tickets. But barely. Since then, no third-party or independent candidate has been allowed to share the stage with the Republican and Democratic candidates. But certainly not for lack of trying. In fact, several presidential hopefuls, with a large base of support, have been imprisoned trying to rock the boat.

On October 8, 2004, two presidential candidates, Libertarian candidate Michael Badnarik and Green Party candidate David Cobb, were arrested while protesting against CPD for excluding third-party candidates from the nationally televised debates sponsored by Arizona State University. The Libertarians filed a lawsuit, contending that the university had broken the law by donating $2 million in public funds to the debate, while prohibiting other legitimate candidates from participating in the “open” event. While the lawsuit had some merit, the courts tossed out the claims, saying the debates would provide “educational value.”

Clearly, the establishment enjoys multiple ways of damaging a candidate’s prospects of reaching the magical threshold – from conducting outright media smear campaigns, to simply reducing the airtime given to the candidate’s political platform. And if the last decade has taught Americans anything, it is that a candidate need not be a Donald Trump to suffer unfair treatment at the hands of the media.

In the run-up to 2012 presidential election, Ron Paul, who campaigned on the highly controversial ‘ending the Federal Reserve’ platform, was routinely shunned by the media talking heads despite placing second at one point among Republican nominees. Things got so bad that the comedian/political pundit John Stewart put together a compilation on this glaring media bias that demonstrates the raw power of the fourth estate in driving the election process.

The last time the CPD faced a serious legal challenge was in 2020 when the Libertarian and Green parties, led by nonprofit group Level the Playing Field, made an unsuccessful bid to sue the Federal Election Commission. The groups argued that the CPD is “not remotely non-partisan,” but instead works to keep third parties on the margins.

Presidential debates became a regular feature of American elections in the 1960 televised showdown between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. The debate was watched by 70 million Americans and, according to the National Constitution Center, it “made politics an electronic spectator sport.” It also gave voters an opportunity to see presidential candidates in a live environment, as potential leaders on the national and global stage.

Unfortunately, independent aspirants to the White House – like JFK’s nephew, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has entered the 2024 presidential election as an independent and possible ‘spoiler’ – will find it increasingly difficult to make it to the ‘live stage’ of the contests with so much at stake.

Whether this is the year that the CPD will finally be exposed for its iron grip on the US democratic process, or it will remain bipartisan politics as usual, remains to be seen.

The ongoing ruling-class meltdown over the recent Dublin riots tells us a lot about the breadth and depth of the gulf fixed between Western governments and their citizens. It’s as if those in charge are outraged by the temerity of their subjects to cry out over the pain and death inflicted upon them by their supposed leaders.

Angry Irish citizens took to the streets, chanting “Enough is enough,” after suffering the latest consequence of mass migration: The November 23 stabbing attack in which three children and two adults were injured in central Dublin. Having failed to be heard by the policymakers who are destroying their quality of life, they burned buses, torched police cars, and clashed violently with officers.

The suspect hasn’t been identified or officially arrested. Unlike the Irish people, he’s being protected by their government, and he’s reportedly too incapacitated to be questioned by police because of injuries suffered during the stabbing spree. He has been described as a 49-year-old Algerian who was given Irish citizenship.

A media controversy erupted days after the attack when independent journalist John McGuirk reported – incorrectly – that the suspect was an Algerian migrant who had been living in Ireland, at taxpayer expense, since 2003. McGuirk referred to a man who faced a deportation order after an arrest years ago, but he was allowed to stay in the country and was later given an Irish passport. Earlier this year, he was arrested for illegal knife possession and damaging a car. He was let go by the court because of a mental health issue, according to media reports.

Police subsequently revealed that McGuirk had identified the wrong Algerian migrant. Although he wasn’t named in the article, the details of his background made it possible for online sleuths to identify him. Police are now protecting the man who was misidentified, according to media reports, while continuing to withhold information about the actual suspect.

McGuirk took down his erroneous article from the internet and issued a statement saying that the source who gave him false identification was a senior police official. He also cross-checked the information with a senior official in the Irish justice system before posting his story. His media outlet, Gript Media, is now investigating whether the false tip was a deliberate act of sabotage.

It would be easy to see why powerful figures in the Irish government would be pleased to have such a story misreported by an adversarial journalist. The discussion has turned to the spread of “misinformation” and the inciting of angry citizens rather than excessive immigration and poor public safety.

The situation is reminiscent of when WikiLeaks reported on emails showing that America’s Democratic National Committee had rigged the party’s 2016 presidential primaries in favor of its chosen candidate, Hillary Clinton. Rather than focusing on the scandal, legacy media outlets made the story about Clinton’s unproven claims that Russian hackers stole the emails and gave them to WikiLeaks.

Ironically, the distraction and misdirection in the Dublin story doesn’t really matter. The fact is that the dangerous migrant identified by McGuirk has been allowed to stay in Ireland by a government that doesn’t prioritize the safety of its own people. He didn’t perpetrate this particular assault, but he’s a criminal migrant, and if and when he commits another crime, it will be an unforced error inflicted on the Irish people by their government. The fact also remains that the real suspect is an Algerian migrant, meaning he came from a country more than 1,000 miles away that isn’t at war. If he was a legitimate refugee, Ireland wasn’t the nearest available safe haven – not by a long shot.

However, if Ireland’s leaders can help it, attention will be shifted away from the country’s migration crisis. Never mind the policies that endanger Irish citizens and diminish their quality of life. There won’t be a serious discussion, either, of why illegitimate asylum seekers and other migrants are allowed to stay in the country, even after they’ve committed crimes.

Rather than decrying the stabbing of children or confronting the policy questions raised by the rampage, Irish government officials and their media stenographers are focusing their ire on the citizens who violently demanded change, dismissing them as “emboldened racists.”

National police chief Drew Harris blamed the riots on a “complete lunatic hooligan factor driven by far-right ideology.” Justice Minister Helen McEntee pledged tougher police tactics to quell any such revolts by the “thugs and criminals” who were using the stabbing attack to “sow division.” Kenyan-born UK politician Lilian Seenoi-Barr blamed the unrest on a small far-right minority and called the rioters an “organized terrorist group of people who want to harm immigrants.”

To the extent the mob was whipped up, it was whipped up by reality – the reality created by the policies of the country’s tone-deaf leaders. The influx of migrants – many of them illegitimate asylum seekers from outside war zones – has swelled Ireland’s population to 5.15 million, up 31% in the past two decades. One in five residents of Ireland isn’t Irish-born. Many young people have given up on looking for homes because of the housing crisis and crushing inflation. Rates of murder and other crimes have risen sharply.

As for the notion that people are violently angry about their collapsing quality of life, recent polling shows that 75% of Irish people believe their country is taking in too many asylum seekers. An even larger majority, 76%, agreed that it was justifiable for people to be angry when migrants were moved into their communities. Presumably, most of those citizens aren’t inclined to torch trams or burn buses, but if even one in 100 of the people who oppose what’s being done to their country are angry enough to rise up, you have a mob nearly 400,000 strong.

Not all of the rioters were motivated by real grievances. Some, for instance, took the unrest as an opportunity to loot. In any case, a strong majority of the Irish people aren’t getting what they want from policymakers. Their message isn’t being heard when they burn things, just as it was ignored when they held peaceful protests. So, what comes next?

Irish leaders have responded by demonizing their critics and criminalizing dissent. For example, Irish MMA legend Conor McGregor is reportedly among the many people being investigated for alleged “incitement to hatred.” McGregor posted on social media that the stabbing suspect was a “grave danger among us in Ireland that should never be here in the first place.” Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin denounced the fighter’s accurate comment as “absolutely disgraceful,” to which McGregor responded by calling the politician “worthless and spineless.”

Contrast the reaction in Dublin with how the Western ruling class treated the Black Lives Matter riots in 2020. There were scenes of police kneeling with the protestors rather than calling them extremist hooligans. Rather than calling for everyone to hush up about the racial overtones of the triggering event – the death of a black criminal, George Floyd, after a white police officer kneeled on his neck – the story was made all about racism.

Even as cities burned and dozens of people were killed, many politicians agreed with the mob’s demands to “defund the police” and “reimagine policing.” The future US vice president, Kamala Harris, promoted a fundraising campaign to bail out rioters who had been arrested during the mayhem. Nike, Google, Apple, and other big names in Corporate America pledged massive donations to “racial justice” causes.

And while inflaming the Dublin rioters by linking the crime to migration has been deemed irresponsible, inflaming the BLM mob with falsehood may even have a government strategy. A new documentary on Floyd’s death has claimed that the original autopsy found no indication that he had died from injury to his neck; however, he was infected with Covid-19 and had fatal levels of fentanyl in his blood. A day after the medical examiner met with FBI agents, the documentary said, the autopsy was altered to suggest that Floyd had been killed by police.

The cop who was found guilty of killing Floyd, Derek Chauvin, is still serving a long sentence in prison, where he was stabbed 22 times by another inmate last month. His attacker was a former FBI informant.

Western rulers seem to base their reaction to civil unrest and violent crimes on the ideology of the perpetrators. If it aligns with the political agenda, the message is amplified and treated sympathetically. If it exposes the folly of destructive policies, it must be crushed. The BLM riots provided an opportunity for race-baiters to further divide the people and promote “reforms” that favor criminals over law-abiding citizens and non-white people over whites. The Dublin riots screamed that the people had reached their breaking point with mass migration and leaders who refused to serve the interests of their citizens.

A similar approach is taken to other high-profile crimes. When a white gunman wounded four people at a Missouri Walmart last month, the FBI came out just two days later to report that the shooter may have been motivated by racist ideology. Never mind that two of his victims were white, and two were black. 

And yet, more than eight months on from an incident in which a transgender shooter killed three children and three adults at a Christian elementary school in Tennessee, police are still refusing to release the “manifesto” written by the murderer. In fact, seven officers have been suspended on suspicion that they may have leaked part of the document online. In leaked pages of the manifesto, shooter Audrey Hale spoke of killing “all you little crackers” with “white privileges.” Similarly, it took seven months for police to reveal that the man who killed five people and wounded eight at a Kentucky bank wanted to inspire tougher gun control laws by killing “upper-class white people.”

The suppression of truth, the lying, and the situational outrage cannot be sustained forever. Leaders who cram down policies that destroy their countries and harm their citizens, whom they supposedly represent, cannot endlessly evade a real reckoning of their betrayals. The critics can no longer be completely silenced, no matter how aggressive the censorship efforts.

How sustainable is being at war with your own people? How long can a government defy the interests of its citizens and vilify those who complain? Short of replacing the native-born population quickly enough to avert accountability, the leaders will have to answer to their subjects at some point.

The same voices that call for tamping down the rhetoric and even suppressing the facts to avoid inflaming the mob in Dublin are only inciting more escalation by dismissing the rioters as extremist, racist thugs. People whose lives are being destroyed – at their own expense, as taxpayers, and by the traitorous leaders who have a moral duty to serve their interests – will eventually find a way to be heard.

The year 2023 certainly cannot end soon enough for the Biden regime. On the very same day House Republicans moved to formalize an impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden, special counsel David Weiss filed a nine-count indictment against Hunter Biden alleging failure to file and pay taxes; evasion of tax investigation; and filing fraudulent tax returns.

The timing is no coincidence, as father and son were practically joined at bank accounts throughout Joe Biden’s two-term vice presidency, which is when the alleged criminal activities occurred.

The charges laid out in the 56-page indictment against Hunter Biden shed a painful light on his infamously fast and furious lifestyle, which included drug use and prostitutes.

“The defendant engaged in a four-year scheme to not pay at least $1.4 million in self-assessed federal taxes he owed for tax years 2016 through 2019,” the indictment read, adding that Biden “spent millions of dollars on an extravagant lifestyle rather than paying his tax bills.”

In 2018 alone, the indictment continued, Biden “spent more than $1.8 million, including approximately $772,000 in cash withdrawals, approximately $383,000 in payments to women, approximately $151,000 in clothing and accessories,” as well as a host of other expenditures, including “drugs, escorts and girlfriends, luxury hotels and rental properties, exotic cars, clothing, and other items of a personal nature.”

If found guilty of the charges (don’t hold your breath), which include three felonies and six misdemeanor offenses, Hunter Biden, 53, would be eligible for up to 17 years behind bars. Previously, Washington’s prodigal son was prepared to plead guilty to misdemeanor tax charges as part of a plea bargain, which the Republicans chastised as a “sweetheart deal” and was ultimately rejected by the judge.

Ever since Joe Biden hit the campaign trail, he promised to the American people that he had never been involved in influence-peddling schemes with family members while serving as vice president in the Obama administration. Now that story appears to be imploding at lightning speed.

This week, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer released subpoenaed bank records showing an enterprise owned by Hunter Biden had made “direct monthly payments to Joe Biden.” The allegations were substantiated by the courageous work of two IRS whistleblowers.

“This wasn’t a payment from Hunter Biden’s personal account but an account for his corporation that received payments from China and other shady corners of the world,” Comer said just days before Hunter was charged. The indictment says Hunter “earned handsomely” while serving on the boards of Burisma, a Ukrainian industrial conglomerate, and a Chinese equity fund, and this is where it gets problematic for “the big guy.”

In 2017, Hunter sent a WhatsApp message censuring Henry Zhao, the CEO of Beijing-based firm Harvest Fund Management, for not fulfilling a “commitment.” He also mentioned, apparently for dramatic effect, that his father, then vice president of the United States, was sitting beside him.

“I am sitting here with my father, and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled,” Hunter wrote. “Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight.” 

“Payments from Hunter’s business entity to Joe Biden are now part of a pattern revealing Joe Biden knew about, participated in, and benefited from his family’s influence peddling schemes,” Comer said.  

For the record, Joe Biden has consistently denied any knowledge or participation in his son’s business dealings.

It goes without saying that Hunter Biden’s indictment and Joe Biden’s possible impeachment has been cheered on by former President Donald Trump, the leading candidate for the Republican nomination to challenge Biden in November, and the only president in US history to be impeached twice.

A final curious note about the indictment against Hunter Biden. It came as some surprise not just because Hunter happens to be the son of the most powerful octogenarian in the world, but because it happened to be a grand jury in California that handed down the indictment. Not only are we talking about the liberal capital of the free world, but it just so happens to be run by a Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, who has serious presidential ambitions. 

“I think a lot of people felt … that David Weiss was going to let these charges skate and Hunter Biden would never be held accountable for making millions of dollars overseas,” Republican lawmaker Sean Duffy told Fox News, adding that if the legal landscape worsens for the Bidens in this Los Angeles case, the Democrats will be forced to seek an “off ramp [and] look to the hair-gel governor” there in 2024.

Those who are inclined to believe that ‘there are no coincidences in politics’ will probably also not be surprised if Joe Biden is replaced as the Democratic presidential candidate in the very near future. Just a hunch.

The South American nation of Venezuela has purportedly voted overwhelmingly in a referendum to affirm its territorial claim to part of the neighboring nation of Guyana.

Caracas, which was recently subject to an unsuccessful American regime change attempt to topple its leader Nicholas Maduro, argues the oil reach territory known as the Essequibo region was its own historically, but had it stolen away by the British Empire. Such grievances may be found all over the world.

While an invasion of the region remains unlikely at this point, given the role of regional power Brazil and obvious opposition from the nearby US, it is a telling sign about the world today that Venezuela feels it can viably affirm its claims like that. Only a few years ago, the US imposed crippling sanctions on the country and appointed Juan Guaido as an “interim president.” Where is Guaido now? He’s a political exile who rode on a failed dream and eventually joined the scrapheap of puppets used, abused and discarded as Washington’s political preferences shift – the likely looming fate of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky.

But more to the point, it is an affirmation that the US-led world order is fragmenting and that American power is declining. This is paving the way for other countries to reshape the international order to address what are deemed to be historic grievances or injustices. The weakening of the unipolar political order’s ability to assert its authority presents a window for overt challenges to the status quo for nations that were previously unable to do so.

In 1990, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein attempted to do the same, but massively miscalculated the shift towards American unipolar hegemony at the end of the Cold War, believing Washington did not have the will to fight. Seeking to rectify the perceived partition of Iraq by the British Empire and the creation of the Sheikdom of Kuwait, Saddam Hussein invaded and attempted to annex the Gulf State. The US and its allies hit back with a powerful response, and George H.W. Bush famously proclaimed the objective of creating a “new world order.” His message was essentially that American hegemony was here, and that the US would now reshape the world on its own terms.

The two wars of 2022-2023 have been instrumental in changing this. First of all, the US and its allies have not been able to muster the political will to defeat Russia in Ukraine or, as they had assumed, even crush the economy of the Russian Federation. Second, America’s support of Israel and its attempts to squeeze Iran have provoked a war in Gaza, with Hamas successfully sensing an opportunity to lure Israel into a destructive conflict which will crater its credibility and global standing for generations. As the US has become distracted by the emerging crises and seemingly unable to resolve them, Venezuela thus sees an opportunity to strengthen its hand by reaffirming its territorial claims over Guyana as a nationalism-driven bargaining chip.

Venezuela is not a major military power and its geographic location means that an attempt to forcibly occupy the Essequibo would be defeated, as the US is on its doorstep and would do everything it takes to crush hostile states in the western hemisphere. However, Washington’s failed regime change, combined with its need to negotiate sanctions relief due to the impact on global oil markets, mean its own hand against Caracas has shrunk, and the US is not in a position to crush Venezuela as of present. Even without the military dynamic, an extended territorial claim gives a country diplomatic leverage that it can use to extract concessions and assert its authority, just like China in the South China Sea, over Taiwan, or Russia incorporating a number of Ukrainian oblasts into its own territory. All these are part of a long list of historic problems which the given states have been unable to address before, held back by American hegemony, but we now live in a different world and because of that, the political map as we know it is changing.

The governments of the US and India are under tremendous diplomatic pressure after Washington accused New Delhi of orchestrating a plot to murder US-based Khalistan movement leader Gurpatwant Singh Pannun.  

Designated by the Indian government as a terrorist, Pannun is a lawyer in New York, who in 2007 founded Sikhs for Justice (SFJ), an organization that is banned in India, as it advocates for a separate homeland for Sikhs – Khalistan – that would be carved out of the state of Punjab and some neighbouring areas.

The plot was foiled by the US FBI. Last week, the US Department of Justice charged Indian national and drug smuggler Nikhil Gupta of plotting to kill Pannun, who is not directly named in the indictment, at the behest of an Indian official. 

The US is taking the case very seriously and has in recent months pressed the Indian government to investigate the matter on its end. 

India has set up a high level committee to look into the case. Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar has stated more than once that if India was provided with specific information, it would act on it, adding that it is not the Indian government’s policy to undertake actions such as this.

Pannun’s saga is unfolding against the backdrop of a similar case – which is, unsurprisingly, mentioned in the FBI investigation. 

Trudeau believed that the allegations were credible and chose to make his sensational accusation on the floor of the Canadian parliament in September, which led to an unprecedented diplomatic spat between the two countries. 

New Delhi called the allegations absurd. It also accused Canada of failing to take action against citizens who support the Khalistan movement, which advocates for separatism in India’s Punjab, a very sensitive state bordering Pakistan that has seen a spate of terrorist violence since the 1980s. This is in spite of the fact that these activists have openly advocated for terrorist violence against India and physically threatened Indian diplomats in Canada, as well as senior Indian leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

India felt that Canada, including its diplomats in India, were interfering in its internal affairs and forced 41 Canadian diplomats to leave the country.

Notably, the US and Canada have worked closely on the Nijjar case. The evidence to support Trudeau’s allegations, even though it was never shared publicly, was collected with the help of Ottawa’s partners in the Five Eyes intelligence group, which also includes the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. All of these countries have expressed their “concern” and sought India’s cooperation on the Nijjar case.  

The White House and the US State Department have asked India publicly to cooperate with the Canadian authorities in their investigation and hold those allegedly responsible in India accountable. Commenting in September on whether Canada’s case could potentially affect US-India relations, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan stated bluntly that no country had any special exemption in such matters.

There is a difference, however, in New Delhi’s reaction to accusations made by Canada and the US. While Ottawa has to date provided no specific information to India on Nijjar’s case that could be pursued on its end, the US has apparently provided specific information on the Pannun case so that India can investigate on its end. This has been stated by India’s Foreign Minister, this time in the Indian parliament. According to an Indian spokesperson, the information that the US has shared involves organized violence, drug smuggling, and terrorism, all of which pose a threat to the security of both countries.

Both the White House spokesperson and Blinken have welcomed the Indian response to US allegations with regards to Pannun’s case. There is a clear desire on both sides to contain the fallout of this case, which explains the White House statement that while they take the Pannun case very seriously, it will not have an impact on the India-US strategic partnership which the US will continue to work to improve and strengthen.

This is borne out by the fact that the India-US 2+2 Dialogue (between the Foreign and Defence Ministers of the two countries) was held on schedule. The Deputy National Security Adviser of the US has just visited India to discuss bilateral ties, particularly the cooperation in critical technologies, even as the Pannun case was raised. New Delhi is also placing the imminent visit of the FBI Director Wray next week in the context of shared security concerns of the two countries. The fact that Pannun has threatened to attack Indian parliament on the eve of the FBI Director’s visit knowing India will raise his case with US suggests that he feels protected and has a sense of immunity.

New York-based Pannun, who belongs to the banned Sikhs for Justice organization, has been organizing “referendums” for an independent Khalistan in India, openly supporting separatism, and threatening the Indian prime minister and the external affairs minister. 

He publicly threatened to blow up an Air India flight on November 19. Sikh terrorists downed an Air India plane in 1985, killing 329 innocent people. Pannun issued a warning of an attack on Indira Gandhi International Airport New Delhi, as well as the finals of the Cricket World Cup in India. This week, Pannun appeared to issue a new threat – claiming that the Indian government had tried to kill him, he said the response on December 13 would shake “the very foundation” of the Indian parliament. December 13 marks the anniversary of a 2021 terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament building, which killed nine people.

Despite the fact that American Sikh extremists have twice attempted to fire bomb the Indian Consulate in San Francisco, no known action has been taken by the US authorities to curb Pannun’s activities. 

This is even more true of Canada, where Khalistani supporters wield political power. Trudeau’s minority government is critically dependent on the New Democratic Party (NDP) party, which is headed by Jagmeet Singh, a known Khalistani sympathizer.

The US, Canada, and the UK claim that they cannot take legal action against Pannun as freedom of speech and the right to peacefully protest cannot be restricted under their laws. This is not an argument that India accepts.

The question therefore arises as to why these countries refuse to take any action against these elements on their own soil that target a friendly country, with which they have a strategic partnership. The first principle of such a partnership should be respecting the sovereignty of the other and non-interference in each other’s internal affairs. The suspicion therefore is that these anti-Indian elements and the cause they espouse is being kept as a pressure point on India by the Deep State. 

It is interesting that the Pannun story was first leaked by more than one unidentified source to the Financial Times. Chrystia Freeland, the deputy prime minister of Canada, held editorial positions at the Financial Times in the UK, was the FT correspondent in Moscow, and the managing editor of FT US. She also held an editorial position at the Globe and Mail in Canada, to which the alleged Indian connection with the Nijjar case was leaked before Trudeau made his statement in parliament. 

The US Drug Enforcement Agency which is involved in the Pannun story has its own methods of working involving active entrapment. The US Department of Justice is allegedly rather politicized. Many elements in the US media, academic circles, think tanks, human rights organizations, and the ‘progressive’ sections of Democratic Party have been targeting India on democracy, human rights, and minority issues. The narrative is that the Biden administration is ‘soft’ on India and its adherence to US values is suspect. 

The Pannun murder plot, an attempt to assassinate a US citizen on American soil allegedly by official Indian elements, would only reinforce that narrative.

While the US has been publicly asking New Delhi to cooperate with Ottawa in its investigation of the Nijjar case, it has never asked Canada to cooperate with India to address the latter’s concerns about extremist and terrorist elements that operate on Canadian soil.

At the end of the day, Pannun is not important enough as a target in the overall scheme of things to take such a risk, as the chances of exposure would be real. India has been suffering from deadly terrorist attacks for decades, including the horrific attack in Mumbai in November 2008 that killed 166 people and injured over 300. But India has not taken out a known terrorist involved in it next door. This is not India’s policy as a law abiding democratic country.

It is regrettable that American, British, and Canadian agencies are working to give an international profile and respectability to terrorists like Pannun. Is the intention by some in these countries to revive a terrorist threat in a part of India where there is virtually no local support, but elements of the Sikh diaspora in the West are active in stirring up trouble.

Where India Meets Russia – We are now on WhatsApp! ‎Follow and share RT India in English and in Hindi 

The president of the United States has caused a stir. Speaking to Congress, Joe Biden brought up the possibility of “American troops fighting Russian troops.”

Biden, of course, has repeatedly had problems staying on script or keeping his thoughts straight, resulting in embarrassing gaffes, such as calling his Vice President Kamala Harris a “great president” or mixing up Ukraine and Iran.

However, in this case, his delivery was reasonably coherent. His statement was deliberate, and he even repeated it to make sure his audience fully appreciated its gravity.

No wonder it raised eyebrows. A war between America and Russia, would feature the two largest – by far – of the world’s nine nuclear powers. And others, such as Great Britain or China, for instance, could be drawn in as well because such a conflict would easily turn into a world war. Even the conventional arsenals of Washington and Moscow would guarantee devastation, at least in Europe and probably elsewhere, too.

Yet it is important to understand the context of Biden’s remarks and to be precise about what he said – and what he did not say.

Regarding the context, the American president is on the defensive, not so much against Russia as against the Republicans. They are steadfastly refusing to pass a spending bill that is mostly a vehicle to transfer yet another whopping $61 billion of aid to Ukraine. That would come on top of a current – as of October – total of $116 billion already approved by the American Congress in response to the war in Ukraine.

The opposition to releasing more funding has more than one reason. Republicans are explicit about the fact that they are using the administration’s request as leverage. They want concessions to their ideas about hardening America’s borders against immigration. Since the White House will not play ball, Republicans will no longer cooperate on money for Ukraine. In that sense, this is just everyday politics: tough horse-trading cloaked in overblown rhetoric.

No wonder Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has canceled his already scheduled remote appearance before Congress. He is no longer treated as special, and his pleas would have made no difference, leaving him with nothing but additional public humiliation.

At the same time, the demotion of the proxy war from a sort of holy war for Western “values” (whatever those may be) to a tradeable item could not have happened without the failure of Ukraine and its sponsors on the battlefield. The Republicans’ intransigence and Biden’s escalating rhetoric are the result of a real, realistic, and by now openly admitted sense that this is likely to be a lost cause.

This brings us back to the question of what exactly the American president has actually said. In essence, he has delivered two key points. One was his unfounded, if popular, guess – presented with the usual aplomb as certainty – that if Russia wins the war in Ukraine, it will inevitably go on to attack other countries. And since Biden also assumes that Moscow’s future targets would include NATO member states – clearly in Eastern Europe, in particular – he concluded that such a Russian attack would trigger America’s treaty obligation to fight Russia directly.

Of course, experts at least know that even NATO’s famed Article Five is not the hair trigger many believe it to be. In reality, according to the letter of the NATO treaty, member states do not automatically have to go to war when another member state is attacked. But it is a political fact that NATO’s real-world credibility rests on the idea that its members will defend each other militarily and without hesitation. 

Hence, Biden’s warning that if Ukraine loses, America and Russia could end up at war both is and is not about Ukraine. It is, because Ukraine’s looming defeat is its trigger. It is not, because Biden has not threatened such a fight in or over Ukraine. Instead, he has not only made clear who Washington claims to be ready to defend by going to war with Moscow but also who it will not defend in that manner, namely Ukraine. For Kiev, this must be bitter. But it was predictable. The Zelensky regime allowed the West, led by the US, to use its country as a pawn – good enough to bleed profusely but not good enough for membership of the club. What Biden has said is simply a summary of that sad, cruel, and humiliating fact. In other times, Zelensky would have had only one honorable thing left to do. He’ll probably go for a golden exile instead.

On the surface, the American president seems to still try to avert Ukraine’s defeat. But that is deceptive, for two reasons. Biden’s talk may sound like an attempt to pressure the obstinate Republicans into finally coughing up the money to save the day. But, in reality, it is more likely that the president or those around him know that the day cannot be saved anymore. Hence, in reality, this warning is an early move in the blame game. Once Ukraine is defeated, the question “who lost Ukraine” will poison American politics, perhaps, depending on the precise timing of that defeat, even during a presidential election.

Biden is merely preparing the ground for blaming the Republicans for what will be the result of his administration’s arrogant high-risk policy. Will that work? Probably not outside Democratic true-believer circles. 

What a message, once unpacked. Even on its own terms, it reeks of despair and bluffing. And if it’s not a bluff, then what a promise: Don’t worry. If you are attacked, there will be World War Three.

The reality is that the Western gamble in Ukraine has done irreversible damage – to the West (apart from Ukraine, of course). NATO has dealt a crushing and probably lasting blow to its own credibility. The West’s – and really Europe’s and the world’s – real hope does not lie in American words about resolve. Ask in Kiev: they were fed the same “with-you-to-the-end” shlock. And Article Five cannot be relied on to make the difference, because the US will only ever consult its own – usually misguided – self-interest, and its NATO “allies” (vassals, really) would be naive to rely on it. Berlin even might; Paris, for instance, not so much. No, the world’s real hope lies in how silly Biden’s premise is. Moscow would be foolish to attack one European NATO member state after the other. And unlike the West, Russia recently has given very few signs of being foolish. It is, in other words, Russia’s rationality that a proxy-defeated NATO-Europe will have to rely on. How ironic.

Each year, editors of the prestigious American news magazine, Time, choose a person, group, idea, or object which, for better or worse, made the most impact on the world. This year’s newly crowned winner is American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift. The choice is totally valid, for reasons that speak volumes about the current state of the Western world. 

In a year marked by billions in Western taxpayer cash being shoveled out the door to Ukraine, Swift was the one person who made headlines for her singlehanded contributions to the US economy. At $93 million spent per show by fans, the Washington Post estimated that her Eras tour alone could add $5.7 billion to the US economy. That’s a lot of cash-to-tax potential for a country addicted to spending. It’s a wonder that last year’s winner, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, hasn’t yet asked for Swift to just hand the cash over to him directly – or at the very least demand that he be allowed to open for her on tour with his pantless, hands-free piano playing routine.  

US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell was shortlisted along with Swift, specifically for his attempts at a “soft landing” of the US economy amid inflation and spending, but that particular plane is still careening down the runway. So as far as efforts to pull the economy out of a tailspin, he’s apparently only really fit to be Swift’s co-pilot. Or Barbie’s. As in the doll. Because the Barbie movie managed to also rake in $1.4 billion worldwide for the US economy to help compensate for Washington’s screwups. Maybe the Pentagon can paint some of its bombs pink in honor of Barbie’s economic contributions before sending them off to Kiev. Or just have a giant inflatable Barbie ride them, in the style of Dr. Strangelove’s Slim Pickens. 

What’s most striking about this year’s shortlist and its ultimate winner is what it says about the weakening role of the traditional Western establishment.  

Prosecutors who laid 90 felony charges against former US President Donald Trump made the list of finalists. Arguably, they’re one of the very few things standing in the way of GOP frontrunner Trump’s reelection next November – other than Trump himself. But the fact that it takes a whole team of people to throw the book at a single anti-establishment loose cannon – and he’s still managing to trounce the Republican competition in the polls between court appearances – speaks volumes about the establishment’s weakness. The fact that Trump is currently neck-and-neck with incumbent President Joe Biden despite having a recent mugshot says even more. 

CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, made the list, amid the drama of him being fired and then rehired when employees rebelled en masse. I guess that’s supposed to make him some kind of anti-establishment hero. At the very least he’s not overtly pro-establishment. But he oversees technology which, incorporated into the ChatGPT app, has allowed C-level students to automatically generate D-level papers that they mistake for A+ grades. Not exactly a tool for the kind of critical thinking that the establishment fears. 

The one single Western establishment leader on the shortlist, King Charles III, made the cut just for existing, basically – and for the fact that his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, stopped doing so last year. “At a moment of change for the monarchy, he signified the power of tradition,” Time noted, referring to his “decades-long wait for the throne,” which sounds like a euphemism for an average Taylor Swift fan waiting in line for the washrooms at a concert.

Finally rounding out the list, there’s Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping – the only two heads of government on the list, and both spearheading a new multipolar world order. Apparently, Time had to go all the way over to the other side of the world to find leaders who could even raise eyebrows. 

We’re talking about people who invent awards to give to each other. As far as they’re concerned, a PR victory in a prestigious Western establishment publication for Putin is basically a war crime against Kiev. 

Putin and Xi weren’t the ultimate winners this time – although Putin did win in 2007 – but the fact that Putin made this list when last year it would have been unthinkably taboo suggests that the PR tide is turning. And the fact that the Western establishment is so glaringly unremarkable and feckless – as its near-absence from this year’s list proves – goes a long way to suggest why.

When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced his independent bid for the US presidency, it sent shockwaves through the Beltway and beyond. Will the scion of the Kennedy clan merely play spoiler, or does the political upstart carry the clout to win the White House?

If there is one thing the Democrats and Republicans despise more than anything, it’s when a meddling independent or third-party candidate joins the political fray, threatening to disrupt the two-party duopoly that has ruled with an iron fist over Washington, DC since 1853 (Millard Fillmore was elected president under the Whig Party banner in 1850; after that, the Oval Office has been owned by either a Democrat or Republican). That’s what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has done after bidding farewell to the Democratic Party and declaring his run as an independent.

Kennedy, 69, now finds himself walking a treacherous tightrope over the snake pit known as the US political system to enamor himself with members of both parties on several hot-button issues. To this end, the son of the late Robert F. Kennedy – the US senator who was assassinated on June 5, 1968 while also making a presidential run – has borrowed heavily from the political playbooks of both Joe Biden and Donald Trump. The outcome is a mishmash of beliefs from both ideological camps, a risky move that has some merit.

Consider, for example, Kennedy’s position on Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine. While the Biden administration has taken a wrecking ball to the US economy, dumping hundreds of millions into Kiev’s war coffers and stoking inflation, Kennedy has pointed to the US and NATO’s failure to heed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s past warnings on Western military expansion as the main cause.

“In 2019, actor and comedian Volodymyr Zelensky ran as the peace candidate, winning the Ukrainian presidency with 70% of the vote,” Kennedy observed on X (formerly Twitter). “As Benjamin Abelow wrote in his brilliant book, ‘How the West Brought War to Ukraine’, Zelensky almost certainly could have avoided the 2022 war with Russia simply by uttering five words – ‘I will not join NATO.’”

Meanwhile, Trump, who has promised to resolve the Ukraine crisis in 24 hours if elected president, has taken a similar position with regards to who should accept the blame for Europe’s deadliest military conflagration since World War II.

Kennedy and Trump share similar positions on other issues as well, like the need for a viable border with Mexico and stronger relations with Israel. On the latter, Biden has paid a price for his pro-Israel stance as a whopping 50% of Democratic voters believe that West Jerusalem and Hamas are equally to blame for the current hostilities and almost as many disapprove of Biden’s response to the war.

Much of this intra-party divide is a direct by-product of the ‘cultural Marxism’ that has invaded US academia, which disproportionately sees the Palestinian people as the victim. This view is passionately supported by the radical wing of the Democratic Party known as ‘The Squad’, comprised of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, and others.

At the same time, Kennedy has endeared himself to many Republican voters over one of the most divisive issues in recent memory, the question of vaccines – specifically, mandatory vaccination for the Covid-19 virus. As Trump endlessly talked up his ‘warp speed’ serum, and got booed by his base in the process, Kennedy was taking a radically different approach, attacking not just the questionable safety of the product but its primary promoters, Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates.

At the peak of the epidemic, Kennedy put out a book entitled, ‘The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health.’ The fact that this work went on to sell more than a million copies spoke volumes about the level of public skepticism and angst at the time, as millions of Americans were struggling for answers that could have meant the difference between life and death – death from either the epidemic or a negative reaction to the vaccine.

While Kennedy has managed to attract some positive reviews for his labors, the bulk of the establishment media has hung him out to dry as a “purveyor of conspiracy theories.” It must be said that some of Kennedy’s allegations – for example, that Covid-19 may have been genetically manipulated to spare populations of Jewish and Chinese people – do seem to cross the threshold of plausibility.

“Covid-19. There is an argument that it is ethnically targeted. Covid-19 attacks certain races disproportionately,” Kennedy said in remarks during a private event. “Covid-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”

While such outlandish views may endear Kennedy to the far-right, lunatic-fringe of Trump supporters, the same cannot be said for some of Kennedy’s other questionable pet projects, primarily climate change. Next only to arguments in favor of gun control, here is an issue that is greeted with absolute revulsion from conservative voters. Yet not only has he promoted the view that greenhouse gases from man-made activities are causing the planet to heat up, he has also gone on record as saying climate change deniers should be prosecuted.

Finally, on the one issue that arguably most separates the Democrats and the Republicans, that of gun control, Kennedy has pleaded in favor of an armed republic.

“I do not believe that there is, within that Second Amendment, that there’s anything we can meaningfully do to reduce the trade in the ownership of guns,” Kennedy said during a townhall in June, “and I’m not going to take people’s guns away.”

So, what should voters make of all this? The first takeaway is that Robert F Kennedy Jr, much like his famous family members RFK and JFK who preceded him, is a fiercely courageous individual who will not sacrifice his personal convictions just to gain easy political points. That much is clear given his views on Covid-19 vaccines and the Ukraine crisis.

Second, Kennedy is obviously aware that both Joe Biden and Donald Trump will be entering the presidential race with a lot of baggage, and that’s apparent from recent surveys. In an October Reuters/Ipsos poll, Biden and Trump each had the support of 35% of respondents, with 11% saying they would vote for some other candidate, 9% saying they would not vote, and 9% saying they did not know who they would vote for.

Many Democrats are disenchanted with Biden largely because of a sputtering economy, while Trump supporters are growing weary of the scandals following their favorite Orange Man. While a no-name independent candidate would having little chance of pulling off a presidential win against such contenders, Kennedy will enter the fray bearing his famous family’s namesake, and that alone could mean a chance – albeit a slight one – of another Kennedy entering the White House in 2024.

After a seven-day lull in the war between Israel and the Palestinian armed groups in Gaza, the resumption of hostilities has been given another green light from Washington. Having failed to lead its Israeli allies towards military victory, the US is permitting a dangerous escalation and rejects a peaceful solution that will prevent further civilian suffering.

Just minutes after the departure of US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, from Palestine/Israel, the war in Gaza resumed, with a large aerial onslaught on Palestinian civilian infrastructure resulting in the deaths of nearly 200 civilians. The White House spokesperson John Kirby announced continued support for Israel’s “right and responsibility to go after Hamas,” but to what end is unclear. As the likes of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak admits that Hamas is far from falling apart, it begs the question: what really is the point of this war? 

Following six weeks of war that resulted in likely over 20,000 Palestinian deaths, the Israeli military has failed to produce any evidence that it has made a significant dent on the military capabilities of Hamas and the other Palestinian armed groups in the besieged coastal enclave. While Israel forced its way into the major hospitals in northern Gaza, claiming that Hamas was using the sites as bases and command-and-control centers, the evidence produced by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) does not support these allegations. The US government backed the idea that a command node had existed at the Shifa Hospital, and when the Israeli forces entered the hospital compound they presented weapons they claimed to have found there, as well as an empty tunnel. Any such images released to the public are curated and edited by the Israeli army, but if independently verified, they could serve as evidence of militant presence – still, not proof of a control center or node. Little of note was discovered in other hospitals, and American claims of having solid intel that confirms Israeli claims is dubious, considering previous public statements such as US President Joe Biden’s words about having seen “confirmed pictures of terrorists beheading children” which the White House later had to walk back.

The Saudi-Israeli normalization deal, which the Biden administration's Middle East policy revolved around, is dead in the water at this time as Riyadh moves closer to Tehran. According to Israeli polling data, Benjamin Netanyahu is only trusted by 4% of Israelis, while the most trusted national figure was recorded to be Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari. Hagari, despite being trusted by Israelis, was turned into the “there is a list guy” and an online meme, after presenting a video in which he claimed a regular Arabic calendar named “terrorists”. That video, in which he referred to the list, was supposed to show evidence of Hamas keeping hostages at the Rantisi Children’s Hospital. 

At least 10 countries have either withdrawn ambassadors from, or suspended ties with, Israel. All this as the largest pro-Palestinian protests to have ever taken place in the West continue to occur in capital cities like London and Washington DC. This, combined with a considerable drop in Joe Biden’s approval rating, all spell disaster for the US-supported war in Gaza.

The White House claims that it is putting certain restrictions on the Israeli army as it plans to invade the south of Gaza, but in the same breath offers unconditional support for Israel’s actions. At no point has the US government taken any responsibility for what has happened since October 7, there has been no apology for their lies, no change in strategy and no acknowledgement in the role that Washington has played in creating the situation on the ground in Gaza that facilitated the Hamas attack.

The real question now is: Where do we go from here? Israel aimlessly fights in Gaza and continues to kill thousands of Palestinian civilians, there is no sign of a Hamas defeat on the horizon and the humanitarian situation, which is described as “the worst ever” by UN Relief Chief Martin Griffiths, is further deteriorating. While these elements are all to be taken seriously, there is also the specter of a regional war erupting in the event that the Israeli attack escalates against Gaza. Lebanese Hezbollah is currently engaged in frequent battles along the Lebanese border and has been expanding the scope of its attacks on Israeli military targets.

The US government is in the driver's seat of the war. It has the power to end the conflict at any time but continues to prolong this disaster. During the seven-day pause in hostilities, nothing shifted in Israel’s favor to make its victory possible. There can be no military solution to the war in Gaza, the US must recognise that this conflict will never end until the Palestinian people are granted justice and freedom. For 75 years the governments of the collective West have ignored the suffering of the Palestinian people, they have never been objective peace-brokers. Violence begets violence and hate begets hate, it is not possible to simply murder the Palestinians into submission. Even if Hamas were to be defeated, there will be more groups that emerge to take revenge for their fallen and fight for statehood in the future. If the international community comes together, this cycle can be broken, but it is going to take courage.

In the heart of Zurich, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban delivered a speech that resonated not only through the grand halls but across the European political landscape.  

Orban’s address at the jubilee event of the Swiss Magazine Die Weltwoche at the end of November was a profound exploration of geopolitics, an ode to Hungary's economic resilience, and a pragmatic take on global alliances, particularly with Russia. This narrative, often overshadowed by mainstream discourse, deserves meticulous dissection for its potential to reshape the contours of European politics.

Orban’s assertion that Europe has relinquished its self-determination struck a resonant chord in the corridors, where the future of the European Union is being debated. His critique of the European Commission’s evolution into a political body lacking the necessary governance acumen echoes the sentiments of those yearning for decisive leadership.

The prime minister’s call for the return of robust, capable politicians harkens back to an era when leaders like Helmut Kohl and Jacques Chirac commanded European politics. Their absence, as Orban rightly notes, has left a void in leadership and decision-making that bureaucrats cannot fill.

He asserted that Europe finds itself in a state of diminished autonomy, grappling with a declining share in the world’s GDP. He also underscored a striking projection: By 2030, Germany is anticipated to stand as the lone European representative in the global top ten rankings, positioned at the bottom.

In a critical assessment, he highlighted the European Union’s shortcomings, emphasizing its inability to navigate the complexities of the enlargement process and effectively manage regional conflicts.

Central Europe: Bastion of Pluralism and Sovereignty

In positioning Central Europe, led by Hungary, as a region liberated from liberal hegemony, coalition battles, and the pitfalls of migration, Orban introduced what he terms “the Hungarian model” – an economic and social blueprint prioritizing workfare over welfare. 

Hungary’s emphasis on family policy, migration restrictions, and its appeal to investments from both the East and the West presents the nation as one charting its own course, undeterred by the directives of Brussels.

Orban’s steadfast defense against illegal migration and Hungary’s financial burdens, exacerbated by a lack of adequate EU support, reflects a commitment to preserving national autonomy against external pressures.

Pragmatism in Geopolitics

One of the most intriguing facets of Orban’s narrative is his pragmatic approach to geopolitics. His recognition that Europe must brace for potential upheaval in the event of a political shift in the United States underscores a nuanced understanding of the ever-evolving global chessboard.

Addressing the conflict in Ukraine, Orban’s call for a “Plan B” challenges prevailing Western strategies, urging a more realistic evaluation of the situation. He has prompted Europe to reconsider its response, cognizant of the intricate geopolitical tapestry at play. The conflict should have been localized, but instead, it has become global, which is bad for everyone, he admitted.

Orban’s evaluation of the Ukraine conflict was marked by pragmatic realism. “Now it is obvious that Ukraine will not win on the battlefield. Russia will not lose.” This straightforward assessment underscored Orban’s nuanced understanding of the geopolitical dynamics in Ukraine. It served as a sober acknowledgment of the complexities involved, urging a reevaluation of strategies and, notably, fostering dialogue with Moscow.

Orban’s diplomatic engagement with Russia, often criticized, reveals a leader who comprehends the intricacies of Moscow’s motivations. Rather than outright condemnation, he calls for understanding modern Russia, recognizing the importance of security in maintaining stability – a viewpoint unconventional in Western political circles.

This nuanced approach could serve as a bridge for dialogue and a more profound understanding of Russia’s role in the global arena.

Orban highlighted what he perceives as a significant opportunity for Hungary in the context of China. He stressed the necessity for cooperation with Beijing and underscored his disagreement with the idea of detaching China from the European economy. 

Orban’s unwavering support for former US President Donald Trump took center stage. 

Although he is one of Europe’s longest-serving leaders, Orban often finds his narrative marginalized in mainstream media. However, it reveals a leader adept at navigating the strong countercurrents of European politics, emphasizing national sovereignty, economic triumph, and pragmatic geopolitics with a resounding “My Country First” ethos. His diplomatic approach, particularly in advocating for an open dialogue with Russia, challenges prevailing narratives, prompting a reevaluation of the forces shaping European politics.

As we meticulously unravel the threads of Orban’s narrative, we uncover a story that challenges the status quo and beckons Europe towards a more nuanced, diverse, and adaptive future. The Hungarian model, as presented by Orban, emerges not just as a unique experiment but a potential paradigm shift in the way European leadership is perceived and practiced.

Toward the end of World War II (in Europe), Germans often shared a dark joke, reflecting their well-deserved dread at the prospect of defeat: “Enjoy the war, the peace will be terrible.” Of course, despite the worst efforts of the Ukrainian far right to damage both the politics and the image of their country, no objective observer would equate Ukraine with Nazi Germany. 

Nevertheless, that old German piece of gallows humor points to a question that is now pertinent for Ukraine. Even the militantly anti-Russian Economist is spotting “war fatigue” in both the US and the EU. The Western funding on which Kiev depends is in danger of drying up; and current promises of more cash are not reliable.

When and how will the war end?

Bloomberg reports a “sense of gloom” in Ukraine and the Wall Street Journal admits that “Moscow holds the advantage on the military, political and economic fronts.” The prominent American military commentator Michael Kofman, often treading a fine line between professional analysis and pro-Western bias, is close to facing reality. Still insisting that “it’s inaccurate to suggest that Russia is winning the war,” he acknowledges that “if the right choices are not made next year on Ukraine’s approach and Western resourcing, then Ukraine’s prospects for success look dim.” He also suggests that Kiev should shift to the defensive. Frankly, it has already, and it had no choice.

Yet a defensive strategy cannot achieve Ukraine’s official war aims, because they include retaking territory from Russia. For Ukraine, Kofman’s “right choices” imply giving up on that. Former war monger and Zelensky adviser – and now foe – Aleksey Arestovich, for one, has correctly spotted that fact. Such an outcome is called “losing.” Redefining it as a form of “success” – a shifting of goalposts popular in the West now – comes across as a clumsy attempt to rationalize and sell a defeat. 

Regarding “right choices” for the West, despite desperate clarion calls by the Cold War re-enactor and Ukraine proxy war booster Tim Snyder and the US grand strategy maitre penseur Walter Russell Mead, the West may continue some funding of Ukraine, but it is unlikely to once again up the ante. Why would it, when all its previous strategies – economic, military, diplomatic, and by information war – have failed at great cost? What is happening instead is an American attempt to shift more of the burden of the proxy war onto the EU.

But what if the West and Ukraine suddenly come up with a whole new suite of brilliant, game-changing strategies? After the “miracle weapons” have crashed, perhaps we’ll see “miracle ideas”? We won’t. Because if Western elites could have them, they would have utilized them already. 

Concerning Ukraine, Maryana Bezuglaya, a member of parliament, has just caused a stir by accusing the military of failing to produce any genuine plan for 2024. Clearly, this attack is part of a power struggle – and blame game – between President Vladimir Zelensky and commander-in-chief Valery Zaluzhny. But Bezuglaya is not lying, just exploiting facts.

Regarding the West, after initial Russian blunders, it has not only been out-fought but also been out-thought by Moscow. Keeping alive the persistently unsophisticated Western tradition of stereotyping Russia at great cost, NATO think-tankers like Constanze Stelzenmüller at the Brookings Institution may go on underestimating Moscow as “not that strategic and not that intelligent” but merely very “determined.” On that assumption, Westerners – including think tankers – stymied by what they insist on imagining as not-so-smart Moscow, must conclude they are even less bright.

But if nothing succeeds like success, the opposite is also true – nothing fails like failure: Ukraine’s and the West’s setbacks are a self-reinforcing trend already. Hence, the pertinent question now is: when the current war ends, most likely with a Ukrainian (and Western) defeat, what will come after it? It’s a question that is both timely and difficult to answer. 

For one thing, there are still all too many, in Ukraine and the West, who believe – or pretend to believe? – that the war should and can continue, perhaps for years. German chancellor Olaf Scholz, for instance, has just claimed that the EU must go on supporting Ukraine because it is essential for the bloc that Russia must not win. Such intransigent positions – or rhetoric – betray an unrealistic assessment of Ukrainian, Western, and Russian capacities. They also imply sacrificing more Ukrainian lives in the EU’s interests.

Scholz, for one, is speaking from an almost touchingly perfect position of weakness. His personal approval ratings have just hit a record low; the coalition government he is trying to lead is not doing much better. No wonder: the International Monetary Fund is now expecting Germany to end up as the world’s worst-performing major economy this year, while the government’s unconstitutional financial trickery has triggered a severe budget crisis that will cause painful cuts in public spending.

Scholz may, of course, be lying. There also are unconfirmed reports – or leaks? – that Berlin plans to join Washington in forcing Ukraine to come to terms.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba may still boldly deny feeling any pressure from his country’s Western sponsors. 

In reality, multiple signals point in another direction: Western leaders are at least considering the option of cutting their losses by making Ukraine give up territory.

Conversely, Western stay-the-course talk on the war in Ukraine has an ever-hollower ring to it. It is ironic that only a few months ago – but before the predictable failure of Ukraine’s summer offensive turned into an undeniable fact – Foreign Policy surmised that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine policy was falling prey to the sunk cost fallacy. By now it is clear that it is the West that is experiencing a feckless gambler’s reluctance to give up before incurring even greater losses. Cynicism, the will to squeeze the last bit of blood from Ukraine, and an obstinate refusal to acknowledge past errors are certain to also play a role.

Yet it should be noted that even some observers who are not suffering from such Western biases are pessimistic about a quick end to the war. That's because they believe that ultimately Washington will keep fueling its proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, whoever is or seems to be in charge in the White House. For Ukraine and Ukrainians, such a strategy would still mean defeat, but after even more losses and suffering. 

On the other hand, given the dire state of Ukraine’s manpower and other resources, a sudden change in the situation on the ground cannot be ruled out. The war could enter a new phase marked by (initially) local breakdowns of Ukrainian forces and such significant Russian breakthroughs that Kiev would have to accept defeat in one form or another, whether under the Zelensky regime or a successor.

All of the above entails a paradox. We cannot yet tell if the end of the war is close, but it is not too early to think about the post-war period. The unknowns of the current situation also complicate the question of what exact shape that post-war era will take.

The fate of Ukraine’s military and NATO ambitions 

Let’s assume the following: first, while a formal state of war may continue, the more important question is what it will take to end the actual fighting. Kiev would lose territory and, in general, would have to make additional concessions to Russia. The one that is easiest to predict is Ukraine reverting to neutrality and, in particular, giving up on its NATO ambitions (and, of course, its current de facto integration in the alliance). The second outcome that Russia is bound to pursue is capping Kiev’s military potential. The third result that Moscow will not let go off is to either completely neutralize (probably impossible) or strongly diminish the influence of Ukraine’s far right.

Thus, post-war Ukraine will be smaller, neutral, militarily weak, and its official politics and institutions (especially those with arms, such as the police and army) will have to let go of far-right personnel and influence, at least on the surface. No more ‘Black Suns’ on display, except maybe at private parties. If these conditions are not met, fighting may still temporarily cease, but not for long. 

Regarding NATO (that is, the US), the fundamental question here is whether Russia will even seek a grand settlement again, a principal reset, but this time from a position of increased strength or, instead, leverage its advantage to achieve the more limited aim of pursuing its security interest by shaping “only” the settlement in and about Ukraine. 

Russia may or may not want – or be able to – also make NATO explicitly give up on Ukraine and, more broadly, its misconceived strategy of expansion. Moreover, Moscow may or may not try to insist once more on a fundamental revision of Europe’s security architecture and its relationship with the US and NATO, as in its prewar proposals of late 2021.

What is certain is that once Moscow has created facts on the ground in Ukraine and Kiev has to revert to neutrality (in word and deed), NATO’s posturing will lose much of its relevance. There are unofficial signals that the bloc may be considering admitting only a part of Ukraine (neither Kiev nor its Western backers will recognize Crimea or other Moscow-controlled territories as Russian and will probably refer to them as 'occupied'). If such a Plan B is serious, despite the fact that it would break NATO tradition and be foolish, Ukraine is rejecting it. And again, any signs of its implementation would be likely to restart the fighting quickly. It is true that some smart observers have speculated that Moscow may be willing to live with a reduced Ukraine being part of NATO. But on this, they are likely to be wrong.

Whatever approach Russia chooses, the key point is that it now has the initiative. That, dear NATO, is what happens when you lose a war: The agenda won’t be the West’s to set. 

The future of Kiev’s EU membership bid

What about the EU? After all, one key cause of the current war and preceding crisis was a regime change in Kiev in 2014, which was triggered by a conflict over Ukraine entering into a special association with the bloc. At this point, the EU shows no intention to change this course. Indeed, it seems to be about to open a formal process leading to full membership. There is resistance from some member states, however. Open pushback is coming from Hungary, whose Prime Minister Viktor Orban is threatening to block this policy as well as more money for Kiev. Where Orban is sticking out his neck, he may not be alone in having misgivings about integrating a large, poor, very corrupt, devastated, and revolution-prone new member state with a security issue from hell.

Post-war Ukraine will probably not be a full member of the European Union. Either for a long time or maybe forever.

Will Zelensky’s regime survive?

What about Ukraine at home? It is hard to imagine the political survival of the current President Vladimir Zelensky in a post-defeat Ukraine. Even now, internal Ukrainian government polling quoted by The Economist shows a drastic decline in his approval ratings. What is worse, while Zelensky is down to 32%, commander-in-chief Zaluzhny still scores 70%, and the especially sinister head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, Kirill Budanov, who proudly runs assassination programs, has a solid 45%.

And, of course, The Economist publishing such figures is yet another sign that Zelensky is also losing Western support. The initially intense personality cult Zelensky enjoyed in the West as an almost miraculous leader may have fooled him into a false sense of security and irreplaceability. In reality, it now makes him the perfect scapegoat. As we know from classical tragedy, with great elevation, comes the potential for a deep fall.

What would come after the Zelensky regime? This is where it’s time to stash away the crystal ball because things become simply too opaque. One thing that true friends of Ukraine should hope for is that whatever is next will actually still be some form of coherent and minimally effective government. Those with ill-conceived fantasies of a “South Korean miracle” in what will be left of Ukraine, may want to refocus on more elementary, Hobbesian issues: In a country full of disappointed citizens and veterans and awash in arms, with a far right second to none in the world, things could turn very ugly indeed.

Freedom of speech in America and most European nations has fully receded into a mythological concept. The American constitutional right is no longer valid.

Take it from someone whose entire YouTube channel has been demonetized and suppressed. My name on Facebook and Instagram is a synonym (at least from Meta’s point of view) of the words “election interference.” Any positive press about me is suppressed, and accounts that support me get punished. X, formerly Twitter, deboosts and shadow-bans me. I am not alone but one of the thousands, maybe millions, of voices the powers that be want to be silenced. We don’t follow the narrative that supports the military-industrial complex of the West.

This system has its own guard dogs, mindlessly following the narrative and attempting to shut down anyone speaking out against it. One recent example was an Irish “anti-disinformation expert” I got in a fight with on X – the kind of “expert” that retweets news about Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian cities and captions them with the word “results.” Nothing new there – they called me a “Putin stooge” (that term is so 2016) because I have asylum in Russia, accused me of “telling lies about Biden” with no counter-argument, as usual. The “expert” finally devolved into finding fault in my command of the written Irish language. That’s the sort of “intelligent discourse” you can expect when you’re not with the crowd.

Those of us who try to reveal the truth about American politicians’ corruption in Ukraine or talk about the death and destruction being inflicted upon the Palestinians by Israel are being systematically silenced by force or simply by suppression. Israel has killed over 70 Palestinian journalists since October 7, according to Gaza authorities. Yet, the Western establishment press keeps twisting words into pretzels to perpetrate the narrative of Israel “defending itself” despite the number of civilian deaths nearing 15,000 in less than two months, including about 6,000 children and 4,000 women.

What is abundantly clear is that leaders backed by this establishment do not care about democracy, freedom of speech or press, or even the lives of their constituents – they only care for the rewards they can reap from the suffering of millions. They will use any brutal means to obtain silence and coerce their populations into obedience. The West and its puppets are attacking, imprisoning, and even killing journalists, whistleblowers, and anyone with an independent voice. Julian Assange is an example of a publisher of truths that embarrassed an empire, was imprisoned, and is now suffering what is effectively a slow public execution for his work.

As the endless wars continue to bring massive profits to defense contractors and Western politicians, their tactics to protect their profit margins at the cost of human lives will continue. The question remains: Will humanity be lost in preserving the narrative?

Earlier this week, the famed former secretary of state and national security adviser Henry Kissinger passed away. This news was announced in a statement from his consultancy firm, without naming a cause of death. Kissinger had lived a long life (to the ripe old age of 100), and he likely died as he lived: Without a care for the retribution that most outside of the A-list of Western elite wish he had faced.

Kissinger was a fixture in American politics for decades. While he was in the administration of former President Richard Nixon, a Republican who supposedly hated liberals, particularly those in the anti-war movement in full-stride at the time over Vietnam, he was a noted friend of the elite of high society. Kissinger, a Republican, was often found with some of Hollywood’s kingpins, as well as with politicians from the Democratic Party.

This was one of his most endearing features, at least to the elite: His insistence on bipartisanship. But his partisanship, wherein people who may disagree otherwise come together, develop a compromise, and devise a plan for their fellow citizens, is not the one most Americans think of. Far from it, Kissinger imagined one where conservative and liberal elites could agree on the one most crucial issue for the maintenance of the American empire: Never-ending war.

It is thus no surprise that bloodthirsty warmongers such as John McCain and Hillary Clinton not only admired the man but would come together to celebrate a common cause with him – as they did on his 90th birthday gala in 2013. The famous American linguist and dissident Noam Chomsky once lamented that if the standards of the Nuremberg Trials were implemented today, then every American president would be hanged for their crimes. If that were indeed the case, Kissinger would need to be hanged ten times over for his role as an adviser to each president since Nixon.

But, to be sure, these were not random acts of violence that Kissinger helped construct for their own sake. Rather, he was one of the key architects of American grand strategy at a pivotal point in the empire’s construction. After World War II, the US had become the regime that underpinned global capitalism and Washington was tasked with perpetuating and protecting international capital – put another way, business without regard for any particular corporation. In the middle of the 20th century, this was upset both by the global anti-colonial struggle and, to a lesser extent, the rise of the Soviet Union as a peer competitor.

He helped develop a system of policies that saw business develop undeterred, held down the global masses in their struggle against Euro-Atlantic dominion, and fought against competing ideologies to capitalism. It is for this reason Henry Kissinger is both loved by the international elite and despised by essentially everyone else, save for perhaps one interesting example.

But it’s not just historical, either. Clearly, it could be argued that Kissinger’s broader strategy may have been to exploit the Sino-Soviet split as a means to triangulate against the Soviet Union. And to what extent this was even the case is debatable, or if it had any effect if it was, Kissinger still always remained a positive public diplomat for the ever-important bilateral ties between the US and China. For that, he is remembered fondly in Beijing – and it is undeniable that, on this issue, he showed much more thoughtfulness even into his advanced age.

When one is in the spotlight so much, finding themselves at so many historical junctures, it is almost impossible to not be a polarizing figure. With Kissinger, it’s pretty clear cut – where your opinion of him lies can almost be used as an indicator of your class (unless you are Chinese). Despite this, one positive thing that we may see about him, compared to today’s politicians and diplomats, is that he was a far more intelligent and remarkable man than today’s ilk and it’s not even close. Love him or hate him, Henry Kissinger was a profound intellect and a brilliant strategist.

After seven weeks of relentless Israeli bombing throughout Gaza, according to the modest estimates of the UN as of November 23 (right before a humanitarian ceasefire came into effect), more than 14,800 people have been killed in the enclave, including about 6,000 children and 4,000 women.

While these Israeli attacks on Gaza are by far the worst yet, with Israel dropping a reported 40,000 tons of explosives in less than two months, it is worth recalling that Israel has repeatedly waged assaults against the Palestinians of Gaza over the past 15 years.

Living in Gaza for years between late 2008 to March 2013, I was witness to two major Israeli assaults (and countless smaller ones over the years). Here, I will highlight what I saw and documented, to show that the horrific Israeli war crimes we are seeing coming out of Gaza are not new, even if they are exponentially worse this time around.

On December 27, 2008, Israel unloaded 100 bombs on Gaza within the first minutes of its Operation Cast Lead. The Shifa Hospital (Gaza's main), was receiving the dead and the injured non-stop. The ICU beds were filled, and doctors told me that as soon as one patient died another took their place.

Together with a handful of international activists in Gaza I made the decision to ride in ambulances with Palestinian medics as they searched for the wounded and took them to hospitals. We did so aware that Israel barred journalists from Gaza, and knowing that, in the past, medics and ambulances had been targets for the Israeli army.

I would see this first-hand soon after first joining the medics, when an Israeli sniper targeted the ambulance I rode in, injuring one medic in the leg when one of at least 14 bullets hit the rear of the car as we sped away.

ISRAELIS ALWAYS TARGETED MEDICS

In 2009, an Israeli sniper fired at least 14 shots at @EvaKBartlett and medics she was with. pic.twitter.com/izneS3DfXY

— Sulaiman Ahmed (@ShaykhSulaiman) November 27, 2023

This was during the January 7, 2009 “humanitarian cease-fire” hours. The Geneva Conventions explicitly state that “medical personnel searching, collecting, transporting or treating the wounded should be protected and respected in all circumstances.”

 Some days prior, Israeli shelling had killed Arafa abd al-Dayem, a medic I knew and had accompanied. He was rescuing injured Palestinians, standing at the rear of the ambulance when it was hit with a shell containing flechettes. Flechette munitions are designed to spray thousands of small metal darts in a wide arc, increasing the chance of injuries and death. The dart's sharp head is designed to break away, increasing the amount of internal damage done. Another 21-year-old medic, a volunteer, was injured, his legs lacerated.

The day after Arafa was killed, the Israeli army fired three times within two minutes on the neighborhood where family and neighbors had gathered to pay their respects. The shelling, again with flechettes, killed six more civilians, including a young pregnant mother, and injured 25 more.

The ambulances and their medical equipment were some of the most bare-bone I've seen, supplies depleted by the long Israeli siege and blockade of Gaza. The medics drove quickly over bumpy roads to get to the people in need, wasted little time collecting them, and bolted away, trying to avoid being targeted by the Israeli army.

After invading the Tel al-Hawa district in the third week of its war on Gaza, the Israeli army repeatedly bombed the Quds hospital, while Israeli snipers targeted Palestinians fleeing residential areas. I was with an ambulance that went to evacuate civilians from the hospital and take them to the Shifa hospital (which had no space), going back repeatedly to save Palestinian civilians, each time at risk of being shot by Israeli soldiers.

By the end of the 2009 war, the Israeli army had killed 23 medics, and injured 57 more, destroying at least nine ambulances and damaging 16 more. None of the journalists or medics that I knew had protective body armor – including me. Given the massive bombs which Israel was dropping on us, it would've made little difference.

One evening, after giving an interview to RT about what I’d seen while riding in ambulances in the extremely dangerous areas of Gaza’s north, just after finishing the interview, Israel shelled the building at least seven times. We scrambled down ten flights of stairs, thankfully intact. Incidentally, in 2021, Israeli airstrikes destroyed the same building as well as another, collectively housing 20 media outlets.

During and after the 2008-2009 war, I took countless testimonies of Palestinian parents who said their children were deliberately murdered by Israeli soldiers: shot point blank, drone struck during ceasefire hours, shot by a sniper. In Shifa hospital, I met the mutilated survivors whose home had been shelled with white phosphorus munitions, killing six family members, including an infant burned alive. I followed up on their story afterwards, learning more chilling details and seeing their bombed-out home with my own eyes. Graffiti, apparently left on the walls by Israeli soldiers, included hate messages and threats, like “it will hurt more next time.” (Warning: disturbing images)

I could, unfortunately, write pages more on what I saw and heard in those three weeks of Israeli bombing, and also during the November 2012 Israeli campaign (when I was based at a hospital in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza), but for the sake of some brevity will stop. What did not stop were the Israeli bombings and shooting immediately post ceasefire, both in 2009 and in 2012.

But almost as brutal as the Israeli bombing campaigns has been the over-16-year-long strangling siege on Gaza. I've written about it at length, but which in summary it has caused a vast increase in poverty, food insecurity, malnutrition, anemia, stunted growth, diabetes, treatable illnesses going untreated, water that was 95% undrinkable (already back in 2014).

On November 24 of this year, a four-day ceasefire was implemented, to allow for exchange of Hamas hostages for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, as well as for deliveries of desperately needed food, water, fuel and medical aid, of which the 2.4-million population of Gaza had been deprived for weeks. Unsurprisingly, there were reports of the truce being violated, including snipers firing on Palestinian civilians.

In the first day after the ceasefire expired, over 100 Palestinians were killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, as Israel started to deliver the promised “mother of all thumpings,” ostensibly to Hamas militants.

What I do what to highlight is that there is no doubt in my mind, or in the minds of numerous other international reporters and observers who have seen the situation on the ground first-hand, that Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza, and the intent, if not the reality, is genocidal.

We have globally watched as Israel commits the definition of genocide: “The intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.” Raz Segal, a genocide expert, wrote of this after only one week of Israel's bombardment, since which Israel has committed uncountable heinous crimes.

In late October, former Director of the UN's New York (OHCHR) office, Craig Mokhiber, resigned from his position in protest and disgust, stating, “Once again, we are seeing a genocide unfolding before our eyes, and the organization that we serve appears powerless to stop it. As someone who has investigated human rights in Palestine since the 1980s, lived in Gaza as a UN human rights advisor in the 1990s, and carried out several human rights missions to the country before and since, this is deeply personal to me.”

He explicitly stated that Israel's “wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people...coupled with explicit statements of intent by leaders in the Israeli government and military, leaves no room for doubt, this is a textbook case of genocide.”

In the last few years, we have seen a worldwide pandemic, geopolitical conflicts, supply chain disruptions, and the weaponization of non-traditional aspects of the economy, especially the digital economy. 

The weaponization of banking systems and digital platforms, systematic cyberattacks, and surveillance using telecommunications hardware has pushed states’ digital policymakers and national security leaders to establish a de-risking strategy in order to regain sovereignty over the digital realm. 

What we mean by ‘de-risking strategy’ is developing trust-based partnerships where economic interests, historical linkages, shared values, and the competitive strengths of partners help them secure a resilient domestic digital economy. In these partnerships, we define trust in a broader sense, allowing states to pursue their national interests while ensuring economic security. In our paradigm, the states would pursue these partnerships to balance their immediate economic needs, build on historical linkages to deepen their relationships, disassociate gradually with states where a value conflict exists, and compete on their manufacturing and trade capabilities. 

Another way for states to carve out a sovereign digital future would be for them to build on the foundations of historical relationships. We are also looking at developments where states deepen their historical partnerships in new areas to diversify their trade baskets. 

In the 2000s, economic growth, individual freedom, and global connectivity were states’ primary national priorities. Economic growth and connectivity incentivised states to open their economies to multinational corporations. States allowed the big technology platforms to set the norms of engagement in the digital world. Soon, there was a realisation that these platforms operated without accountability to local laws. 

Malicious actors used these platforms to spread disinformation and manipulate public opinion. Unfortunately, these platforms were deployed by states and non-state actors to achieve their geopolitical ambitions. There have been rising instances of cyberattacks on businesses, government websites, and healthcare establishments. 

Rising cases of breaches of data privacy through the use of social media platforms have pushed governments to enforce strict data privacy and localisation laws. If technology platforms are in constant conflict with states’ values, such as the rule of law and democratic accountability, then we are looking at a future where systematic restrictions are placed on these technology platforms being able to operate from the respective states’ jurisdictions. 

States fear overt dependence on foreign technology for economic growth as it gives asymmetrical power to other states to weaponise this when relations are not on a strong footing. 

Besides sheer economic contingency, historical linkages, and shared values, we observe that states are bringing their combined competitive strengths to the table using multilateral institutional frameworks. 

The digital world has no recognised borders, and therefore, it is difficult to establish responsibility for the behavior of a particular bad actor. The New Delhi G20 Declaration paved the way for countries to accept the One Future Alliance to equip the Low and Low Middle Income Countries (LMICs) to develop frameworks and strategies to pave their digital futures without any sovereignty risks. In addition, there was an emphasis on agreeing to principles that would govern the responsible deployment of AI for the common good and empower small businesses and farming communities. 

The Indian model of digital public infrastructure (DPI) provides agency to states to pursue the best of private innovation and public accountability. Unlike the private technology platforms, the Indian DPI utilities build using open source architecture in the critical domains of digital identity, payments, banking, and health to ensure that personal data is stored under an established authority.

Access to this data is granted with consent from users using a techno-legal approach of Data Empowerment and Protection Architecture (DEPA), which ensures citizens’ own data is protected by laws and that at the same time, data is made available via anonymised and encrypted technologies to private businesses in a cost-effective manner to build innovative models. DPI with DEPA has helped India to balance sovereignty risks and business innovation interests. India has offered this deployment strategy as a global public good to LMICs and developed nations at multilateral and bilateral engagements. 

Different states would pursue this differently. However, we do see a consensus in the developing world against the weaponisation of non-traditional security challenges, bringing the security dimension to the equation. 

States would see long-term national security threats as outweighing short-term economic interests and pursue some form of digital isolationism with a clear demand for technology-sharing agreements and local manufacturing capabilities. We hope this phase of the de-risking strategy is transitory, as states would utilize multilateral forums like BRICS+, the G20, and SCO to de-escalate these tensions and build on confidence-building measures to balance sovereignty concerns and avoid an AI-led digital arms race. 

This article was first published by the Valdai Discussion Club and edited by the RT team

News has been spreading throughout the media about a “disease outbreak” in China.

For many, this brings back bad memories. The illness, described as a form of pneumonia, has reportedly gone widespread very quickly, triggering comparisons to how the Covid-19 pandemic emerged. As with the coronavirus, it was not long before there followed accusations of a government cover-up of the extent of the spread.

Cases of the same illness occurring outside of China have been the target of media attention, such as those in Denmark and the US, as has the World Health Organization’s request for more information and Beijing’s response.

In reality, there doesn’t appear to be that much to worry about this time around. The pathogen responsible has already been determined not to be a novel virus and therefore not posing a distinctive new threat to humans the way Covid did. Known as “white lung syndrome,” it is a form of pneumonia that is resistant to some antibiotics and usually causes mild flu-like symptoms. In fact, the aforementioned Denmark suffers nationwide outbreaks every few years.

So, rather than a mysterious political conspiracy wrapped in secrecy and malign intentions, this outbreak has a much simpler explanation: China is facing its first winter after having opened up from its zero-Covid policy and therefore old illnesses are reasserting themselves. But that won’t stop the scaremongering.

Throughout history, it has been a human trait to scapegoat a group of 'others' when a disease emerged to threaten the community. Humans are tribalistic creatures, and each social group usually bonds together through a commonly held sense of values and customs, which are deemed superior to those of outsider groups. Disease, however, as abundant as it always has been, contravenes the group’s collective sense of self-esteem, causes misery and consequentially demands accountability on a political level. Because of this, it becomes habitual of human thinking to deflect the origins of a disease outbreak on an outsider group and to frame it as an invasive force which challenges the values they hold, and therefore could not have come from themselves.

This was the narrative which took hold during the Covid-19 pandemic, as Western media and governments scrambled to deflect attention from unpopular decisions and their dramatic consequences. They sought to blame the Chinese government’s negligence, malice or both, for Covid, and propping up that narrative was an astronomical amount of racism which sought to play on stereotypes about Chinese culinary habits and hygiene, perfectly in line with the West-East mentality of Oriental 'inferiority'. Anti-communism, especially in the US, was conveniently layered on top of these prejudices, concealing them in a somewhat acceptable manner. Thus, the science of how Covid spreads was ignored in favor of a dramatic political blame game, which was aggressively amplified by the Trump administration.

This time around, there won’t be a new pandemic, but it’s easy to draw false comparisons. It’s a basic fact that for the past three years China has lived under a strict zero-Covid regime which often entailed extreme precautions to prevent the spread of the disease. Entire major cities such as Shanghai found themselves in lockdown, and these restrictions only became more tedious as Covid variants became more transmissive. Because of this, there was no space in the disease ecosystem for flu and other less sensational illnesses, as they were jammed between the rock and hard place of Covid and all these protection measures. Therefore, as soon as China abandoned these restrictions, with the coronavirus having swept through the population, the winter season meant the less severe viruses could spread their wings again.

Despite this, we are likely to see more media headlines about the scary new “Chinese disease,” because fear of disease, and especially fear of disease linked to a fear of China, sells well. Even though this development is a nothingburger, expect some close coverage, baseless speculations, even outright propaganda and hearsay about how things are worse than they seem, how the Communist Party is covering up deaths, how statistics are rigged, hospitals are full, etc. – we’ve heard it all before. The Covid pandemic has been a lesson in how diseases can be politically weaponized to suit an agenda, and in this case it’s happening again at a smaller scale.

In the cutthroat world of asset management, my gig as an investment banker at Zurich’s top Swiss joint was a tightrope walk between challenge and monotony. Crafting portfolios for the high rollers at the biggest Swiss bank needed a delicate mix of precision and strategy. The daily grind of summarizing, stacking up, and shaping portfolios for the wealthy wasn't just a skill; it was a meticulous drill where financial stability was the goal and the payoff.

In the established 60-40 asset allocation doctrine – a fundamental principle in wealth management – the goal was straightforward: allocate 60% to stocks and 40% to bonds. This implicit guideline, honed through market wisdom, provided clients with a safeguard against the unpredictable nature of individual stocks. However, the intricacies of my role extended beyond the numerical aspects of asset allocation. Placing emphasis on securing a resilient lending value for portfolios became paramount, evolving beyond a mere metric to become a vital component ingrained in each client’s investment strategy.

Amid financial turmoil, stock selection gained extra importance, and in recent years, the spotlight turned towards ESG funds.

What is ESG investing?

ESG – or Environmental, Social, and Governance investing – provides a framework for investing in funds that take into account environmental, social, and governance factors. It is often used interchangeably with terms like “socially responsible investing (SRI)” and “sustainable investing.” ESG investments, falling under the umbrella of socially responsible investing, analyze a company’s societal impact based on three primary factors:

Social (S): This dimension delves into a company’s commitment to fair labor conditions, equal employment opportunities, and support for community organizations.

Governance (G): This facet relates to the standards governing corporate governance, encompassing ethical business conduct, gender diversity within the board, equitable employee compensation, and overall transparency in corporate operations.

The aroma of cash

But then, where the fallible human touch resides, the scent of corruption detects the aroma of cash – a twist that even seasoned investors couldn't have predicted.

Surprisingly, these funds, celebrated for their ethical foundations, have funneled a jaw-dropping $5 trillion into the arms industry. This bombshell was dropped by Bloomberg this week.

As of Q3 2023, over 1,200 ESG funds, pledged to uphold environmental, social, and governance standards, collectively grip shares worth around $5 trillion in the defense sector. This unexpected plunge into defense investments within the ESG framework has triggered heated debates.

Questions swirl about the blurred lines between “defense” and “aggression” and why ESG fund managers aren’t putting up a fight against these investments that seem incompatible with ESG or sustainability ideals. The financial industry, once singing praises for ESG’s ethical focus, now faces a reality check as investments cozy up to an industry inherently at odds with those values.

Despite the ethical eyebrow-raising, funds dipping their toes into the defense sector are laughing all the way to the bank. Notably, the Goldman Sachs Group Inc. fund, playing the European defense game, has skyrocketed by nearly 90% since February 2022 and a cool 13% since October 2023.

US and UK fund honchos wave off regulatory hurdles blocking ESG managers from diving into defense assets. They stress the need for transparent, top-notch reporting from these funds, arguing that investments in specific defense companies can jive with responsible investing, as long as they're not cranking out banned weapons or supplying arms to sketchy countries.

Responsible investing in the war machine, all neatly packaged with the ESG stamp – what a hoot!

Mairead McGuinness, Commissioner for Financial Markets at the European Commission, goes on about how defense is “crucial for sustainability and security” of the EU, adding to “peace and social sustainability.” The intersection of ethical investing and defense industry dalliances puts a big fat question mark on the very core of responsible financial moves. The unplanned rendezvous of ESG funds with the arms industry weaves a tangled narrative, asking deep questions about whether financial smarts can align with ethical investing principles.

Indeed, we’ve reached a point where the politicians who advocate for allowing kids to choose their gender are now dictating terms to hedge funds in the Environmental and Social realm. They even endorse investments in wars and guns, branding them as “crucial for sustainability.”

Say what you want about Napoleon Bonaparte, but there’s no denying that he was an absolute alpha who can still blow a beret right off the head of a Frenchman. The kind that sorely lacks nowadays in Western leadership roles. Which would explain why a new poll, released just as a Ridley Scott-directed biopic about him hits theatres, has found that 74 percent of French view his actions positively. 

Napoleon blazed a trail of death and destruction, with his army slaughtering millions around the world at a time when empire-expanding sword-measuring contests were all the rage — and he happened to be particularly good at it. But he claimed to do it for France, however misguided and extreme. Which stands in stark contrast to today’s parade of self-interested French politicians in front of the courts for abuse of public office.

Napoleon emerged from the ashes of the French Revolution on the side of the people, then went on to conquer much of the world on their behalf. According to the survey, 40% of respondents consider his top achievement to be his creation of the Napoleonic Civil Code to enshrine the values of the revolution. His contributions to academia were also invaluable, as every country that interested him as a potential military conquest led to detailed scientific, sociological and archeological studies that still serve as references today. 

He’s frequently judged by today’s standards, which is patently unfair. Sure, if you took Napoleon and transplanted him into modern day society — stuck him in a typical office cubicle — he probably wouldn’t fit in too well, what with his penchant for global conquest and his belief that women belong at home. He’d wind up in sensitivity training in pretty short order. But the French are willing to overlook his many flaws because his accomplishments are so spectacular; he singlehandedly hoisted France to the front of the global stage. Yeah, maybe he wouldn’t have done so if he had the mores of “social justice” Bob from accounting or your neighbor who never misses date night with the wife. But that whole debate is moot. And stupid. 

What do all these folks have in common? Clarity of vision, and courage in the face of adversity — values with which the French personally want to be associated. Unfortunately, one has to go back quite far in order to find their incarnation. 

While Napoleon put France in a prominent spot on the world stage, it was arguably former French President and World War II General Charles de Gaulle that gave it any hope of persisting there. Beyond leading the French Resistance during the Nazi occupation, De Gaulle subsequently ensured France’s post-war independence by kicking the Americans out of the country, refusing their demand for permanent bases, and then keeping France out of NATO to avoid the ultimate fate of ending up under de facto US military command. Always with French independence in mind, De Gaulle then went to Moscow in 1944 to sign mutual assistance agreements, and envisioned the Soviet Union as an important partner for French independence within a vision of Europe that stretched from the Atlantic to the Urals. 

De Gaulle also spearheaded state-backed nuclear energy projects that were so successful that they’ve saved France amid the current EU energy crunch (and to think that current President Emmanuel Macron was on the verge of killing the whole industry in favor of trendy green energy fantasies — the same ones that flopped when Germany realized that it couldn’t power its economic engine with the wind and sunshine after its Nord Stream pipeline network of Russian gas was mysteriously blown up.)  

Jeanne d’Arc was a teenage peasant girl who led the French to victory against the English, then was unrepentant about who she was and what she did when she was burned at the stake in Rouen — for literally having wild visions of French victory, then making them happen.

French-naturalized Pole Marie Curie was yet another French woman who fell outside the conventional role for females in society, winning the Nobel Prize for physics in 1903 and for chemistry in 1911, for her groundbreaking research, alongside husband Pierre Curie, on radioactivity, including the discovery of radium and polonium. Her achievements put France on the intellectual global map. Over a century later though, in 2019, French officials yanked mandatory mathematics from the last two years of the high school curriculum. It was such an unmitigated disaster for numeric literacy and such a looming disaster for French competitiveness on the global playing field that they had to reinstate the courses in September 2023. 

Therein lies the difference between those still admired by the French — despite having long shuffled off the face of the Earth — and those who have since come and gone from power or prominence with little fanfare. A lack of unwavering leadership — foresight, clarity, and determination. 

Unsurprisingly, the latest Ifop-Feducial poll found that the two current political figures considered to most closely resemble Napoleon are right-wing opposition leader Marine Le Pen and former center-right President Nicolas Sarkozy. It’s hardly a coincidence that both have been criticized recently for speaking out against the French and Western establishment status quo of blindly following anti-Russian US foreign policy on Ukraine — with both favoring immediate peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine and an end to hostilities over prolonged spending on “aid” to keep a conflict going that’s to the net detriment of France and the EU as whole.  

Napoleon came to power with the backing of the people after they had literally beheaded the entire corrupt establishment. Today’s establishment has given itself more than enough rope to ultimately hang itself. One can’t help but notice the parallels. The question is, at what point will the French people have the courage to once again choose the kind of anti-establishment visionary leader on whom they could one day look back and realize they absolutely needed. Until then, they’ll be stuck longing for, and romanticizing, times and figures of greatness.

Last week, Beijing announced that the citizens of six EU countries – Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal – will be allowed to visit China for a 15-day period visa-free, allowing them to bypass the cumbersome process of attaining a Chinese tourist visa.

The announcement comes about a week ahead of the upcoming China-EU summit, which will bring European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel to Beijing.

Recently, von der Leyen has been engaging in increasingly hawkish rhetoric pertaining to Beijing, including making a number of complaints about what she refers to as “China’s unfair trade practices,” pushing for “de-risking,” demanding more market access, and threatening levies over Chinese renewable energy goods. Beijing, on the other hand, has been critical of this attitude and has urged the EU to take a friendlier and more cooperative approach, touting the benefits of engagement.

So how does China respond? By announcing an unprecedented visa-free scheme for select EU countries. Although that may seem like a minor gesture, it’s a big deal. A central complaint and criticism coming from the West towards China in recent years is that it has become increasingly “inconvenient” to travel to, and of course from 2020 to early 2023, it was practically impossible. This is because the Chinese state’s level of bureaucracy and regulations for incoming travelers has intensified, which makes getting a visa even for tourism a nightmarish process.

To receive a Chinese tourist visa, one must make a formal appointment with a designated office. If you do not live in a major city, that means you must have to travel to one. Depending on the country, these offices can be busy, meaning you cannot get an appointment on a whim. When making your appointment, you must already have every element of your trip pre-booked in terms of flights, accommodation, and dates, and then fill it all in on an extensive online form, which will ask about unusual and tedious details such as your family members’ occupations. You must also bring passport scans and photos, as well as the full passport itself, and submit it. If you get the appointment date wrong, it cannot be changed.

If you’re a European businessman from one of these key countries, which coincidentally represent the bulk of the EU economy, your ability to enter China and do business has improved remarkably. It’s a friendly sign, it’s helpful, so do you think those German, Dutch and French executives who are being told to reduce their presence in China are going to be more inclined to listen to von der Leyen and her ilk when they say de-risk? Why would they? Accessing the Chinese market just got that little bit easier, and therefore the de-risk agenda is thwarted. After all, business groups are opposed to such agendas in the first place. The German car industry is never, ever going to give up on the Chinese market.

In addition to this, the move also undercuts the popular Western narrative that China is “closing” to the world, that Xi Jinping is bad for business, and that the mood is “unfriendly.” On the strategic level, Beijing is determined to keep the EU on side as much as possible, a feat which has become increasingly difficult given everything the US is throwing at it to undermine the relationship. China, however, understands the importance of making tactical concessions in the pursuit of long-term gains, and playing the visa-free travel card is a smart move. It’s not likely to sway skeptical EU leaders, but it is likely to ferment the conditions to continue to expand EU-China business ties whether they like it or not.

A few days ago, President Vladimir Zelensky’s most important political ally, David Arakhamia, gave a long interview to TV presenter Natalya Moseichuk. Both are heavyweights of Ukraine’s public sphere, with widespread recognition and significant influence.

Moseichuk’s main platform is the television channel 1+1. Arakhamia heads the parliamentary faction of the ‘Servant of the People’ party, which is Zelensky’s machine and, as such, controls Ukraine in a de facto authoritarian manner.

Bound to attract attention, the interview has done more: Due to Arakhamia’s unguarded (or deliberately revealing?) account of real yet missed opportunities to reach an early peace agreement in the full-scale war between Moscow and Kiev (and its Western sponsors and exploiters), it has caused a sensation.

Regarding the peace negotiations that took place in Belarus at the end of February and the beginning of March 2022, Arakhamia tells Moseichuk that the Russian delegation had one “key aim”: to make Ukraine accept neutrality and give up on NATO membership. In Arakhamia’s own words, “everything else” Russia talked about, such as demands regarding “denazification, Russian-speaking populations, and blah-blah-blah” was merely “cosmetic political seasoning.”

Let that sink in: Here is a prime negotiator for Ukraine and one of the Zelensky regime’s top men stating explicitly that all that peace really required at that very early stage in the large-scale war was Kiev committing to neutrality and giving up on its NATO ambitions. The war could have stopped in the spring of 2022; that is, one-and-a-half very bloody years ago. And for Kiev, this would have come at the price of giving up on a NATO ambition that is based on a false promise encapsulated in the foul compromise of the 2008 Bucharest summit. A pledge which the West has no intention of keeping, as demonstrated again at the 2023 Vilnius summit.

Or, for that matter, inclination. In the same interview, he occasionally uses the racist epithet “orcs” for Russians and displays that trademark arrogance that plays so well with Western visitors and has cost Ukraine so much. Arakhamia has made himself believe that his team had the advantage of 21st-century technology (by which he means Zoom and WhatsApp), while the Russian delegation was stuck in the 19th century (using secure landline phones to communicate with Moscow). Of course, such technology first emerged during the 1940s, but that’s what the man said.

Recognizing that his Russian interlocutors were well prepared, unlike their Ukrainian counterparts, who improvised, he also pats himself on the back for “disrupting their schemes,” i.e. dragging the negotiations down to a level at which the designated “Banderite” (his term) in the Ukrainian delegation gave tubthumping speeches just to make the Russians “go pale.”

“But what about territory?” you may ask. In the same interview, Arakhamia states that, at that point, the Russian negotiators were ready to “go back to where they were,” presumably to the pre-24 February borders. Put differently, not only would the war have ended quickly, but Ukraine would also have kept all those territories that Russian forces have taken since then and those they are now likely to take in the future. Kiev would have had to give up on Crimea and the Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republics, areas whose inhabitants largely do not want to be part of Ukraine. Compared to what has happened since then, that would have been an easy way out.

The West, in this scenario, would have avoided the very damaging proxy war defeat that is now hanging over it. Everyone would have been better off economically as well. Obviously, that applies most of all to Ukraine, which is a devastated shadow of its former – already poor – self, propped up by Western aid (for now) and the European Union, especially Germany.

No wonder that Moseichuk’s next question for Arakhamia was why Ukraine did not take that Russian offer, a question that – as you will agree if you watch the interview – clearly surprised him. Looking a little like a poorly prepared student caught out in an exam, Arakhamia scrambles to patch together an impromptu answer. Here’s what he comes up with: Striking the deal would have been unconstitutional because aiming for NATO membership has been written into the Ukrainian constitution; one can’t trust Russians anyhow, so Kiev could never have been certain that there would not be another Russian attack.

Clearly, what has been added so recently could also have been revoked. Zelensky, with his Servant of the People machine, would have been perfectly able to make such a change if he had wished to. Hence, this was an obstacle that was politically surmountable. It should also not have been there in the first place because constitutions should stick to the fundamentals of political order. Aiming for this or that alliance is not part of these fundamentals by any stretch of the imagination, but a specific policy that should have remained open to ordinary political competition.

Arakhamia’s second pretext for failing to make peace, namely that Moscow could not be trusted “100%,” makes no sense either. For three reasons: First, he himself acknowledges in the same interview that the Russian delegation was very concerned about what Arakhamia dismissively calls “that Minsk,” i.e. Ukraine’s deliberate cheating on the Minsk agreements of and 2014 and 2015. If Russia was willing to extend enough trust for a compromise anyhow, then the least Zelensky’s Kiev could have done was reciprocate by taking a fairly ordinary risk. Because nothing is ever “100%” reliable, except perhaps the fact that when you won’t make peace, you will have more war.

Secondly, why would Russia attack again if its one real reason to fight (as stated by Arakhamia), namely Ukraine’s drive toward NATO, would have been removed? Or is Arakhamia inadvertently betraying his own premise here that even after a deal, Ukraine would have systematically cheated again and continued its strategy of joining NATO (if perhaps surreptitiously), thus provoking another Russian response? That is the only assumption under which his statements are at least consistent. This interpretation seems all the more likely because Arakhamia also proudly admits that his delegation saw its main task in applying delaying tactics, while constantly coordinating with the Ukrainian military to gain maximum tactical advantage from that strategy of bad faith.

Thirdly, Arakhamia seeks to explain one fiasco with another: At the end of a further round of negotiations in Istanbul, he reminds his viewers, then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told Kiev that “we won’t sign a thing, we will just keep fighting.” So, not seizing an opportunity to end the war in early March is, in Arakhamia’s mind, somehow justified by not doing so again one month later. In essence, on orders from a Western leader, as if his word was law to the government of Ukraine, which it clearly was.

That, again, is no surprise. What is intriguing is the wide-eyed honesty with which Arakhamia admits Western control over the Zelensky regime. Challenged by Moseichuk about that impression, Arakhamia’s “defense” – hard as it is to believe – takes the form of denying the claim, while admitting that things were “agreed on” in constant consultation with the Western “partners.” These “partners” received information from Kiev in a “dosed” manner, while also always knowing or given access to “everything,” down to all draft documents produced inside the Zelensky regime. And, according to Arakhamia, “we of course knew that we could not leave the war on our own; therefore, we had to consult with them.” Make of that painfully inconsistent jumble what you will. One thing is clear: Kiev has chosen to see itself as literally unable to make peace without Western permission.

Perhaps the most depressing part of an often bizarre conversation with a man who is either not very much in control of what he says or has a very complicated agenda is Arakhamia’s odd sense of Ukraine’s current situation. He repeatedly declares that the US does not owe Kiev anything, which sits badly with his preceding admission – convoluted and yet clear – that Washington has a de facto veto on Ukraine ever making peace. Ukrainians, he announces, must rely on themselves – and keep fighting. Moseichuk asks him “with what?” and his response is an incoherent rant about “secret factories” and how “we have a lot of stuff.” Clearly, Zelensky is not the only top politician who takes flight in fantasies while Ukraine burns. Onward and downward it is.

On Saturday, Tejas, India’s domestically built light combat aircraft (LCA), received the biggest endorsement in its short history when Prime Minister Narendra Modi undertook a sortie in it.

It surely would not have been easy for the 73-year-old VIP passenger to withstand the 2G force as the LCA took wing.

Soon after landing, Modi took to social media and tweeted, “A flight to remember! Tejas is India’s pride, a manifestation of the strength and skills of 140 crore Indians.”

Modi’s daring effort may well be a shot in the arm for Tejas, which just wound up an impressive showing at the biennial Dubai Airshow. Together with BrahMos, touted as the first supersonic cruise missile in service and showcased at the Dubai Airshow, they make for India’s new calling card in the lucrative but complex business of defense exports.

The theme of this year’s airshow in Dubai was the ‘Future of the Aerospace Industry’ and involved more than 95 countries.

India believes that having successfully produced defense products indigenously that can hold their own internationally, it has what it takes to enter into defense exports. And, hence Dubai, like other international defense shows, was an obvious destination.

According to Indian officials, the two marquee exhibitions – especially the sorties that Tejas carried out during the show – drew buyer interest, though no deal was inked.

The Tejas way

It is a an established fact that the existing fleet of aircraft with the Indian Air Force (IAF) are rapidly ageing and need immediate replacement. Import dependency to bridge this deficit is strategically risky, especially when regional wars are spreading across the world.

The production plan for Tejas drew inspiration from the very successful playbook pioneered by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). It entails growing an ecosystem of vendors to produce components – this has recently evolved and now allows private players to produce final products like satellites.

This playbook has ensured a national footprint for the production of Tejas. The central fuselage of the plane is produced by VEM Technologies, Hyderabad, the fin and rudder by Tata Advanced Systems (TASL) in Bangalore, rear fuselage by Alpha Tocol, Bangalore, wing by Larsen&Toubro, Coimbatore, and front fuselage by Dynamatic Technologies Limited (DTL), Bangalore.

Indeed, the vendors are concentrated in the south and west of India. There is an outlier though in Uttar Pradesh – the traditional laggard in India’s development story – which in recent years has pitched and grabbed defense-related investments.

A HAL spokesperson at the Dubai Airshow explained the logic of the decentralized production strategy.

“The development of a complex supersonic aircraft like the LCA Tejas is a testament to the collaborative efforts and capabilities of India's defense manufacturing ecosystem. It involves the cooperation of various agencies, organizations, and institutions across the country. More than 400 Indian business partners are involved in the development of the LCA Tejas.”

The BrahMos hypersonic missile story is different. It is a joint venture, BrahMos Aerospace, inked with Russia in 1998. Russia’s rocket design bureau, NPO Mashinostroyenia, supplied the supersonic propulsion, while the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), the R&D wing of the government of India, developed the guidance and navigation systems and the command and control elements.

The first successful launch of BrahMos took place in 2001 and soon it was doing the rounds of international exhibitions. The missile is now part of the arsenal of the Indian Army, Navy and Air Force. Unlike the Tejas, it has an export order in the bag – the $375 million deal it clinched with the Philippines last year. The deliveries are scheduled for early next year.

At the Dubai Airshow, the company was also pitching for its mobile autonomous launcher and the BrahMos NG (next generation), a lighter and more versatile missile that will be ready for rollout in mid-2025.

“We will start the trials in the end of 2024,” said Praveen Pathak, director (market promotion and export) of BrahMos, on the sidelines of the airshow.

Once again, the production process involves private-sector companies.

Home advantage

The big upside of indigenization is that it ensures strategic advantage or at the least de-risks by reducing dependence on a foreign supplier. At the same time, it also provides an opportunity to create defense clusters across the country and provide economic opportunities for defense start-ups.

According to the federal government, around 100 Indian firms are engaged in defense exports to 85 countries. An official release claims that India’s defense exports grew 23-fold from 6.8 billion rupees in 2013-14 to nearly 160 billion ($1.92 billion) in 2022-23.

For context, defense exports by the United States aggregated a staggering $51.90 billion.

This capability to indigenously manufacture weaponry has also reduced the country’s dependency on defense-related imports. Their share dropped from 46% of overall expenditure in 2018-19 to 36.7% in December 2022.

Where India Meets Russia – We are now on WhatsApp! ‎Follow and share RT India in English and in Hindi 

It’s sometimes interesting to play “what if,” especially with pivotal moments that didn’t seem so meaningful at the time. For instance, what if Adolf Hitler had become a successful artist? More recently – and more to the point – what if Joe Biden had been expelled from law school when he got caught plagiarizing a writing assignment?

The decision by Syracuse University in 1965 to let Biden, then 22, repeat the course, rather than be kicked out of school, didn’t appear to be consequential at the time. As one of the worst students (ranking No. 76 out of 85) at a mediocre law school, Biden probably seemed like someone of little consequence, a guy who might be chasing ambulances or doing estate planning for elderly clients back in his home state of Delaware – if he managed to graduate and pass the bar exam.

After all, Joseph Robinette Biden never seemed like the sort of shining star who might be pegged for future greatness or influence. The stuttering son of a used-car salesman, Biden has never displayed the attributes of a dynamic and virtuous leader. No one could honestly claim that he rose to power because of inspiring ideas, great political skills, or impeccable character.

Getting caught cheating in law school was just a harbinger of many scandals and embarrassments to come for the future president of the United States, the “leader of the free world.” But just as he got away unscathed at Syracuse – preventing what would have been the destruction of his career even before it began – Biden escaped accountability time after time over the course of his half-century in politics.

When he got caught plagiarizing the speeches of other politicians during his first campaign for president, in 1987, he became a media laughingstock and had to quit the race. However, he was a longshot candidate anyway, and he somehow managed to continue getting elected as a US senator from Delaware in the decades that followed. He also ran unsuccessfully for president in 2008 before serving two terms as vice president under President Barack Obama, and finally winning the top job in 2020.

Somehow, no amount of lying, plagiarizing, racist gaffes, or corruption allegations was able to thwart Biden’s rise to power. When he was accused of sexually assaulting a Senate intern on Capitol Hill, the #MeToo movement suddenly went mute. Likewise, in an age when sexual harassment is a career-killer for many Americans, Biden has been politically unscathed by his handsy tendencies.

Even as he campaigned for president from his basement in 2020, anyone with an internet connection could watch clips of him groping or sniffing women and little girls at public events when he was vice president. Last year, two Florida residents were convicted of trying to sell the diary of Biden’s daughter, Ashley Biden, who had left her journal behind at a rental property. The diary reportedly contained a passage about taking showers with her father at a young age, saying they were “probably not appropriate” and contributed to her promiscuity as she got older.

Legacy media outlets came to Joe Biden’s rescue by ignoring the content of the diary and focusing on the supposed villains who allegedly tried to exploit it. This resembles the time when another Biden child, son Hunter Biden, left his laptop at a Delaware repair shop – revealing possible evidence of selling his father’s political influence. Back then, the media similarly ran interference, touting false claims by former US intelligence officials that the revelations had the hallmarks of “Russian disinformation.” With the November 2020 election just three weeks away, social media platforms helped, too, by censoring the New York Post’s bombshell report on the laptop.

Ironically, Biden campaigned on vows to “restore the soul of America” and “bring back decency” to the White House. He did so while continuing his habit of telling lies, in some cases to make himself the hero or sympathetic figure of every tale. For example, he falsely claimed that he was arrested in apartheid South Africa while on his way to visit Nelson Mandela, and he repeated lies he had been telling since at least the 1980s about working as a civil rights activist when he was a teenager. He has repeatedly falsely claimed that his son Beau Biden died in the Iraq War, and he invented a story about going into a “firestorm” in Afghanistan to pin a medal on a reluctant hero.

Many of Biden’s lies are absurd and inconsequential, as if he’s telling them for sport, like when he claimed that he had worked as a truck driver, or the one about coming from a family of coal miners, or the one about being “raised in a black church.” Others bear more serious consequences, like when he claimed during a 2020 debate that President Donald Trump was spreading Russian disinformation by mentioning the laptop scandal. He cited the letter signed by former intelligence officials to prove that the laptop was a “Russian plant,” and yet he knew it to be legitimate. It later came to light that his campaign allegedly helped orchestrate the phony letter to help kill the bombshell report.

That level of unflinching confidence and condescension while lying is perhaps one of Biden’s biggest selling points for the ruling elite. In their system, a US president has to be able to pontificate about the sanctity of an ally’s sovereignty while carrying on with a nearly decade-long illegal occupation of Syria’s oil fields and meddling in the affairs of other countries all over the world. He has to preach self-determination when it suits the Western neocon agenda, while denying the same privilege when the people in a given location don’t want what Washington prefers.

When the military industrial complex is salivating over a good opportunity for a proxy war in, say, Ukraine, the commander-in-chief must be able to justify funding the bloodshed by touting the need to defend “freedom and democracy” – in a place that has neither freedom nor democracy. That’s also a place where the US helped overthrow the democratically elected government and disenfranchise or kill large swaths of the population. And domestically, an American president must pretend to represent the law-abiding working class while importing millions of illegal aliens to suppress wages and re-engineer the country’s demographics.

Any leader who even threatens to deviate from the program will be politically neutered at least, or killed at most. As Democrat Senator Chuck Schumer warned in 2017, after Trump suggested that US spying agencies were trying to build a false case about Russian hacking, “You take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.” In other words, subvert the interests of the citizenry, or else.

Biden’s lack of any moral conviction also comes in handy. There seems to be no issue on which he’s unwilling to flip-flop if the political winds shift, or if his masters set a new course. He can shamelessly alter the past like an Orwellian Big Brother talking about how Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

For example, during a 2020 presidential primary debate, Biden forcefully claimed to have been an outspoken opponent of America’s illegal war in Iraq, when in fact he had been a leading proponent and praised then-President George W. Bush’s “bold” leadership on the issue. He’s the same politician who eulogized the late Senator Robert Byrd, a former “Exalted Cyclops” of the KKK, in 2010, then claimed in 2020 that he was running for president because he was so outraged by a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Some of Biden’s defenders try to deflect criticism of his character by pointing to the flaws of his political adversaries, especially Trump. Sadly, this is the standard reaction to damning truths in today’s American politics. It’s not false to say the other team’s leader is guilty of something – having skeletons in the closet appears to be a prerequisite for reaching high office in the US – but this approach means that no one is ever held accountable by their supporters.

Arguing that the other party’s leaders are evil doesn’t make your party’s leaders any less vile. It does make it easier for the kingmakers to impose on the people whatever they want – even an octogenarian who is so cognitively degraded that he can’t speak coherently or make his way off stage without getting lost or falling down.

That’s why even though it might be fun to fantasize about what might have been if Biden was held accountable for cheating at Syracuse or somewhere else along the way, it probably wouldn’t have made much difference. Removing one particularly odious politician from the picture doesn’t mean the voters would have been given a more honorable option. In today’s Washington, virtue isn’t on the menu, and the citizens aren’t willing or able to demand something better.

November is set aside for transgender people to raise awareness about the discrimination and violence that the community faces. But have we forgotten the discrimination and dangers that biological females suffer too?

In August, Canadian powerlifter Anne Andres set a record with a final combined score of 597.5kg (about 1,317lb) for her bench press, deadlift, and squat performances. Andres’ total was more than 400lb higher than her closest competitor. Most people would find that unbelievable if not for one critical detail that so many are happy to ignore – Andres was born into a man’s body.

One person who did not ignore Andres’ sex status was April Hutchinson, an Ontario-based female powerlifter who took to X (formerly Twitter) to rally the weightlifting community to action.

“Any woman, man or federation that supports men lifting or competing with women is part of the problem,” Hutchinson said. “They should be ashamed. They are literally helping to erase women’s sports.”

“Bodies play sports, not identities.” ‼️

Professional powerlifter April Hutchinson weighs in on biological male who broke women’s powerlifting record in Canada…

WATCH: #SaveWomensSports pic.twitter.com/VWknsUVi9q

— Independent Women's Forum (@IWF) August 16, 2023

Hutchinson took her wake-up tour to the Piers Morgan Uncensored show, where she slammed the Canadian Powerlifting Union’s (CPU) lack of action, calling it “disheartening and disgusting.”

It’s probably easy to guess how that criticism went down with the Liberal crowd. On November 7, Hutchinson was suspended from competing for two years by the CPU, due to multiple violations of the Code of Conduct and the Social Media Policy.

Before the decision was announced, however, Andres had also taken to social media in a teary-eyed tirade, comparing her pain and suffering to that of an African American being called “the n-word.”

“Let me just ask one simple and open question to those who are deciding to leave me to my own fate through their inaction,” Andres said. "If this other lifter was, say, going after an African American individual and calling them the n-word, which is essentially equivalent to calling a trans woman a man and referring to them as him.”

@JustinTrudeau 's radical disdain for women (and reality) in effect🤡

New national and unofficial world record for trans identifying male, Anne Andres pic.twitter.com/E46860L14P

— Riley Gaines (@Riley_Gaines_) August 14, 2023

Martina Navratilova, the 18-time Grand Slam (biological) female tennis champion, weighed in on the conversation with much-needed common sense and sobriety.

“To put the argument at its most basic: a man can decide to be female, take hormones if required by whatever sporting organization is concerned, win everything in sight and perhaps earn a small fortune, and then reverse his decision and go back to making babies if he so desires,” Navratilova said.

“It’s insane and it’s cheating. I am happy to address a transgender woman in whatever form she prefers, but I would not be happy to compete against her. It would not be fair,” she added.

Yet, as unfair and ‘unsportsmanlike’ as it may have been for Andres to smash female weightlifting records, at least the biologically female competition was not being pummeled on the field of dreams, like some rugby players.

Another way to prove that men and women were never meant to play against each other in sport is to simply ask the females who have had the pleasure firsthand.

“I had never been hit like that before, even at the competitive women’s level,” said a female player from Stoney Creek Camels. “There was so much more brute force. There are women who are bigger than him, but no girl hits like that. This is a strong human.”  

This transgender female player who the anonymous member of the opposite team was speaking about is known as Ash, “a non-binary person who identifies as female – stands about 5-foot-10 and weighs up to 220 pounds,” as reported by the Toronto Sun.

Incidentally, none of the female players on the opposing team wanted to be named for fear of “not wanting to hurt anybody’s feeling and being labelled a bigot.” But apparently it’s totally fine to risk serious injury and possible death by being forced to participate in a contact sport against a physically stronger male. Will they regret ‘hurting somebody’s feelings’ when they are handicapped for life?    

I add, and emphasize- all 3 players injured, were as a result of being dump tackled.

That’s where one is lifted up and dumped on their head. Yes! Picked up and dumped on their heads to inflict harm!

That transplayer should be banned from rugby!

— Diana Murphy (@diana_murphy613) June 23, 2023

It doesn’t take much imagination to see a train wreck quickly approaching. Those teams in women’s sports that don’t field transgender players (and are on a major losing streak) are going to quickly understand that they are at a serious disadvantage and actively recruit trans players to help even the score. And it’s silly to pretend that there won’t be instances when the whole ‘trans’ part of equation is just pretense to get an unfair advantage – after all, cheating in sports is as old as sports themselves. Nobody likes to lose; worse, nobody likes to wake up in the morning with multiple bruises over their body. This is where things are going to get out of control, to the point where the whole concept of ‘female sports’ will become redundant.

In fact, it is already happening. Last year, University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas, who has taken central stage in the debate about transgender inclusion in women’s sports, was beaten by Iszac Henig, a trans male swimmer at Yale University who continued to swim on the women’s team. The obvious question here is: Where is the safe space for biological women in sports? Tragically, what will likely happen is that hundreds if not thousands of young women will quietly opt out of sport altogether. Not only does that deprive these women of the experience that comes with sport, but it will deprive them of scholarship programs to university, or possibly even a trip to the Olympic Games. And they won’t even be allowed to complain about it.

After repeatedly rejecting a truce with Hamas and labeling the idea “ridiculous”, Israel agreed to a four-day cessation of hostilities in Gaza and a prisoner exchange. Six weeks of death and destruction, which Israeli and Western leaders declared should have led to the destruction of Hamas, have now bolstered the Palestinian movement's image throughout the Arab world and beyond.

The four-day truce that was implemented this Friday provided a sigh of relief for those most affected by the war in the Gaza Strip, but has in many ways spelled disaster for the Israeli government. As women and children, held captive by both Hamas and Israel, are being reunited with their families, the threat of further warfare looms. Although the loved ones of those released are now celebrating, the next steps will be crucial in determining the final outcomes of the 46-day battle that has now been placed on pause. At this time, it appears that the idea that “Hamas must go” is no more than a pipe dream.

On October 27, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution to the sound of overwhelming applause, calling for a truce to stop the fighting in the Gaza Strip. Although the non-binding resolution passed with a majority of 120 votes in favour, Israel and the United States outright rejected it. Tabled by Arab nations, the call for a truce was labeled as a “defense of Nazi terrorists” by Gilad Erdan, Israel’s ambassador to the UN. This came after Hamas released four Israeli civilian hostages without conditions, for what the group said were humanitarian reasons.

According to the Calcalist financial newspaper, the Gaza war was estimated early on to cost around $50 billion, roughly 10% of Israel’s GDP. In addition to this, the Israeli military has reportedly suffered losses in intelligence and monitoring equipment along their northern border, due to attacks carried out by the Lebanese group Hezbollah. Yemen’s Ansarallah also seized a ship in the Red Sea, owned by an Israeli businessman, which has severely impacted trade through the southern port city of Eilat. This is not factoring in the inevitable long-term effects on things like Israel’s tourism sector or investment in its high-tech industry.

On top of this, we have seen immense pressure being placed upon US forces throughout Syria and Iraq, with daily attacks occurring against their military facilities, for the sole purpose of pressuring Washington to force an end to Israel’s attacks on Gaza. Across the Arab World, the general public is also boycotting Western products on an unprecedented scale, in particular companies like McDonalds that have shown support for the Israeli army. The blatant double standards of the collective West’s political and economic elites, as well as the establishment media, are also being severely criticized, as the likes of the BBC are feeling the heat for biased reporting on the issue of Palestine-Israel.

Instead of facing the wrath of the whole world and getting crushed, Hamas has not only survived, but is becoming more popular. While US President Joe Biden’s administration provided excuses for Israel’s invasions and bombings of hospitals in the Gaza Strip, claiming that Hamas has maintained a significant presence in places like the recently-raided al-Shifa Hospital, the world has risen in outrage against the atrocities Israel has committed in the Palestinian territory. UN relief chief, Martin Griffiths, has called the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza “the worst ever,” and it's seen as a direct result of the US having drawn “no red lines” for Israel’s behavior in Gaza.

Since the Kerry Peace Plan, which was a failed initiative set forward under the administration of Barack Obama, the US government has not made any real effort towards creating a viable Palestinian state. In fact, until October 7, nobody was talking about a Palestinian state, the focus was instead on the issue of Saudi-Israeli normalization. It was clearly the shared belief of the Israeli and US governments that Hamas could be contained with the periodic issuance of Qatari aid grants, while the Palestinian Authority was to be strengthened only to deal with a number of militias that have formed in the West Bank over the past two years. Today, the whole world is talking about the formation of a Palestinian state. There is also the notion of bringing the Palestinian Authority into power in the Gaza Strip, which would essentially mean the lifting of the 17-year economic blockade that the West has imposed on it. The issue of protecting the status-quo at Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem is also on the regional agenda in a serious way, while the government of Benjamin Netanyahu veers towards collapse.

If Israel and its Western backers choose to escalate the conflict further instead of finding a peaceful settlement, the war threatens to extend into a broader regional conflict; a threat to the stability of all nations involved. The pursuit of a ceasefire agreement can usher in a new era in the conflict, one in which Hamas will remain. Peace is in the interests of the entire region, we have seen what the Israeli army has to offer and it has not resulted in the defeat of Palestinian armed groups, it has only scored a blow against civilians in Gaza. This will be a hard pill for the Western governments to swallow, but the only solution to safeguarding civilian life and securing the release of all prisoners, will be through a peaceful resolution, not through more violence.

On November 16, the Wall Street Journal, one of the most prestigious and influential American media outlets, published an essay under the title “It’s Time to End Magical Thinking About Russia’s Defeat.”

The authors, Eugene Rumer and Andrew S. Weiss, are influential representatives of America’s national security and international relations establishment. After a career in government service, Rumer now directs the Russia and Eurasia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Weiss is Carnegie’s vice president for studies. This is an important text, and both its message and the timing of its publication matter.

The message is simple: “Putin” (by which they mean Russia) has “withstood the West’s best efforts” to roll back the military operation against Ukraine; Moscow’s political system has proven resilient and even become stronger; and “America and its allies” must now switch to a strategy of “containment.”

The timing is more complex. Clearly, the current Israeli war on Gaza – referred to as “tumult in the Middle East” – is one of three key factors. The other two are the approaching presidential elections in the US, and, of course, the failure of Ukraine’s summer counteroffensive, by now acknowledged even in gung-ho outlets such as the British Daily Telegraph. 

In addition, America's hold over the non-Western majority of humanity is continuing to decline. China, in particular, is successfully resisting Washington’s pressure. Domestically, President Joe Biden's government faces tough headwinds from both the official Republican opposition and a growing movement in the American street, where widespread and deep dissatisfaction with politics and the economy is now combining with an unprecedented groundswell of protest against US complicity in Israel’s genocidal war on the Palestinians.

Against this background, this Wall Street Journal article clearly serves as an authoritative call for retrenchment. The object of this signal to retreat is the proxy war in Ukraine, that is, the single most aggressive, most risky, and most defeated US foreign policy strategy in the past two years (if we count from the moment Washington recklessly decided to stonewall Moscow’s clear warning as well as its urgent offer to find a grand bargain-style off-ramp in late 2021).

So far, so telling. But not surprising. For two reasons: the turn away from Ukraine is already fairly old non-news. Even mainstream media spotted the onset of a severe, probably terminal, bout of Ukraine fatigue well before the eruption of the fresh war in the Middle East. Secondly, the skeptical insights now given prominence in the Wall Street Journal as reasons to wrap up its proxy war investment in Ukraine are very old hat indeed. As a matter of fact, the most interesting question the essay – inadvertently – raises is what took you so long?

It would be tedious to address every point raised now in the Wall Street Journal. But since they all have in common that they have been predicted or were utterly predictable, a few highlights will do. 

We learn, for instance, that the West’s attempts to isolate Russia have failed. Yet how hard was it to foresee that the Global South has no reason to follow the West except fear, and that fear is abating? And was it impossible to know in advance that China would answer “No, thank you very much,” when the US and the EU did two things at the same time: urge it to abandon Russia, which would have meant giving up Beijing’s single most important partnership, and signal that China would be next to be cut down to size? China, in essence, initially gestured a little in the direction of distancing itself from Russia, but the strategic fundamentals of the situation determined its real behavior and have become explicit by now. This outcome was predicted, not by every expert but by enough of them to matter. 

Every war is a matter of competitive military performance. But in a war of attrition, three fundamental things matter the most: the size, productive and technological capacity, and resilience of the economy; the stability of the political system, including its real-life popularity and the elites’ legitimacy; and, of course, demography. The Wall Street Journal observes that Russia’s economy has “been buffeted but is not in tatters” (really understating its success, but let’s not quibble) and that its political system draws on “solid” popular support and elites that have neither rebelled nor deserted. 

In the West at least, this was harder to predict. Not because of Russia being so difficult to decipher, but due to Western bias and groupthink, or, bluntly put, wishful thinking. Even before the post-February 2022 Ukraine war, Western politics, media, think tanks, and even academia have rewarded unrealistically pessimistic assessments of both Russia’s economy and political stability. Consider, as a pars pro toto, Western reactions to the Wagner rebellion in June. Quite a few of them predicted the imminent collapse of Russia into anarchy and civil war or, at least, a great and lasting domestic and international weakening of Russia. Yet none of this has come to pass.

The importance of this comprehensive, almost total failure of analysis and prediction lies in how typical it was, reflecting a dominant culture of politicized sloppiness vitiating Western thinking about Russia. A sloppiness that is all the more astonishing as precisely Moscow’s opponents cannot afford it without serious self-harm.

For self-harm is the main result. It is true that Russia has to bear some of the cost of Western shortsightedness. Obviously, Moscow as well would be better off if it could work with reasonable, if competitive, partners instead of irrationally hostile opponents who constantly underestimate Russia and overestimate themselves. Yet the West is suffering even more from its pattern of repetitive mistakes.

The costs of the proxy war in Ukraine demonstrate this fact, and not only in terms of arms and money, but of political prestige as well. Regarding the quantifiable costs, the US Congress, for instance, has approved $113 billion worth of aid for Ukraine since February 2022. Currently, a request for even more is turning into a major domestic headache for the Biden administration, and most likely, a defeat. The EU has shelled out almost €85 billion. 

Of course, not all of these funds have really been appropriated, and much of them have really been fueling corruption in Ukraine or served the donors and especially their arms industries, as US politicians have repeatedly pointed out with proud cynicism. Yet the overall picture remains one of severe fiscal overstretch spent on a losing gamble. Add the self-inflicted losses that the EU’s economies in particular have incurred from their misconceived sanctions policy and the picture is grim. Add, moreover, how much the West will have to spend if it really wishes to finance the rebuilding of Ukraine, and the prospect turns catastrophic. Good luck, EU, with those membership plans.

Whether or when exactly it will do so, and what shape such a new “snapping back” of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s metaphorical “rubber band” will take this time, remains to be seen. What is clear is that such payback is a realistic possibility. Secondly, the West is committed as never before, substantially and rhetorically, when trying to use Ukraine to reduce Russia. Hence, failing to do so exposes Western limits as never before. Rumer and Weiss are not naïve. They cannot say it – and maybe they can’t even quite think it – but in their heart of hearts they know that packaging this defeat as a mere change of strategy to “containment” will not fool anyone who does not want to be fooled. 

It is good to finally see some hard facts appear prominently in mainstream Western debates. But it is not enough. For one thing, the West has to ask itself painful questions why it has stayed so obsessively one-sided for so long. Otherwise, the same pattern will be repeated in starting and waging the next war, for instance, against China or Iran. Secondly, a shift to “containment” will not repair the damage but merely stretch it out. What the West really needs is a complete rethinking of not merely its methods but its aims.

Indian military commanders are rarely seen speaking on geopolitics, let alone at public forums. That job is best left to career diplomats or the political leadership. So, when India’s top commander, Chief of Defense Staff General Anil Chauhan, suggested at an event in Bengaluru last month that Russia’s geopolitical influence would decrease but the world would witness an assertive China in the years to come, it came as a shock to many strategists and geopolitical pundits.

“The current geopolitical environment is in a state of flux. The old order is withering away and the shapes and contours of the new world order are yet to stabilize. The geopolitical importance of Russia will go down in times to come. It is in spite of being a nuclear power. The Wagner rebellion indicates the internal weakness and is indicative of what may lie in store for the future as far as Russia is concerned,” Chauhan stated while speaking on the topic of ‘Inevitability of Changes in the Defense Forces’ at an event organized by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, a public sector aviation company. 

Chauhan’s statement came days after Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said during a visit to the US that India’s relations with Russia are “very, very stable.” For almost two years now, Jaishankar has single-handedly taken on Western leaders and media, defending, or rather clarifying, India’s stand of ‘strategic autonomy’ with regard to the Russia-Ukraine conflict. 

New Delhi had borne the brunt for not openly criticizing Moscow for its decision to launch the military operation against Ukraine in February 2022. The West sees India as being too dependent on Russia for weapons and other needs, and hence not being able to oppose President Vladimir Putin’s actions. So much so that in a scathing attack, Ukraine accused India of taking crude oil from Russia stained with ‘blood’. 

Chauhan was not the first to voice his apprehension about New Delhi’s most vital ally. Earlier this year, Indian Army Chief General Manoj Pande suggested that the “Russia-Ukraine war’s impact on supply chains has impacted the availability of some spares and weapons for India,” adding that it highlights the need for New Delhi to be “self-reliant in defense manufacturing.”

There are many concerns related to the Ukraine conflict, including why a superpower like Russia couldn’t defeat a relatively weak and small country like Ukraine in a matter of days or weeks. Why did Russian ground forces return from the outskirts of Ukraine’s capital leaving behind tanks, armored personnel carriers, and other military vehicles during the initial weeks of the special military operation? 

As the narrative about the conflict has been shaped in India with the help of mainly Western English-language media, not many would recall that Russia had moved back its forces as a result of peace negotiations with Kiev in March 2022. The peace deal was, however, thrown in the dustbin by Ukraine – and today some European politicians are openly stating that the US prevented Ukraine from signing the agreement. 

That is, however, not the case with India’s strategic community. The biggest lesson that New Delhi is learning from the Ukraine conflict and now from the Israel-Hamas war, too, is the need for better military preparedness and security arrangements. 

India, whose relations with both of its nuclear-armed neighbors – China and Pakistan – remain frosty and could, Delhi fears, descend into a two-front war on its borders, can hardly question Russia’s geopolitical significance. 

Relations between India and China have been extremely strained since the deadly June 2020 Galwan Valley clash, when the two nations’ armies engaged in a bloody fight in the high-altitude region of Ladakh, adjoining Aksai Chin. New Delhi regards the area as an integral part of India, while China also claims it as its own. A five-point plan to de-escalate at the India-China border after the clash was signed by New Delhi and Beijing in Moscow.

Notably, Russia is the only country which can act as a facilitator between India and China. Moscow persuaded India and China to send military contingents for Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) exercises in 2017 and then in 2021, even though both countries had earlier canceled a bilateral military exercise at the height of another border dispute in Doklam along Bhutan (tri-junction of India, China, and Bhutan) in mid-2017. Recently, Russia again managed to bring the arch-rivals to the same platform during the war drills held by the ASEAN Plus countries in Vladivostok. 

New Delhi’s bilateral engagement with Russia, particularly in the energy and defense sectors, will not wane anytime soon. 

The new deals and arrangements announced last week during the Dubai Airshow 2023, including India reportedly signing a long-pending contract for the supply and licensed manufacturing of Russian Igla-S portable anti-aircraft missile systems (MANPADS), are just the tip of the iceberg.

While India’s dependency on Russia has been reduced in the past couple of years, Moscow still constitutes 50% of the arms imported by New Delhi, as per global think tank the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

Even after Modi’s flagship program of ‘Make in India’, New Delhi is still the second largest importer of arms and ammunition in the world, next only to Saudi Arabia. Putin, an ardent friend of Modi, is an admirer of ‘Make in India’, under which New Delhi wants to become self-reliant in the defense sector. 

Even if India is inking arms deals with friendly foreign countries, they are mainly under the ‘Make in India’ project. Be it C-295 military transport aircraft, MQ-9 Reaper drones, or GE-414 and Safran aviation engines, all are going to be manufactured in India in conjunction with global arms companies.  

Essentially, Western countries are helping India develop a domestic defense ecosystem, something Russia has been doing for the past several decades. 

Beginning from MiG-21 fighter jets, Sukhoi aircraft, the Brahmos supersonic cruise missile, the INS Arihant nuclear submarine, T-90 tanks, BMP-2 ‘Sarath’ (infantry combat vehicles), and various other military equipment. India still uses Russian aircraft carrier the INS Vikramaditya (the erstwhile Kiev class Admiral Gorshkov), AK series rifles, various anti-aircraft guns like OSA, Pechora and Strela, Grad rocket system, artillery guns, Konkur ATGMs, and Dragunov sniper rifles. 

Even while India is getting closer to the US, France, and other Western countries, it has procured an ultra-modern S-400 missile system from Russia and the two countries have inked a deal for a joint project to manufacture AK-203 rifles in Amethi (northern India state of Uttar Pradesh).

The delay in supplies of the S-400 is believed to be mainly attributed to payment issues caused by sanctions against Russia, resulting in a large number of transfers pending from the Indian side. Moscow and New Delhi have reportedly agreed to resolve payment issues while also formalizing a plan for the local production of Russian equipment and spare parts during the meeting of the countries’ defense ministers on the sidelines of the SCO summit in New Delhi in April. However, many in the Indian military and strategic community still have concerns over the feasibility of this arrangement, particularly the degree of the technology transfer. 

Being self-reliant in defense is thus the biggest lesson India has learnt from the Russia-Ukraine conflict. New Delhi, which is concerned about both a short and swift war, and/or a prolonged war keeping in view the tumultuous relations with two neighboring countries, China and Pakistan, can no longer solely rely on foreign companies for its defense needs if a conflict erupts. 

It is not surprising that the air chief, speaking about Russia’s S-400 delivery, pointed out: India is using its indigenous development to protect its borders. The Air Force has now got clearance from the Defense Ministry to develop five units of Project Kusha, under which the Indian version of S-400 missile systems would be developed. 

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At the beginning of this week, foreign ministers from a group of Muslim-majority countries, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, the Palestinian National Authority, and Indonesia travelled to China in order to seek support for a ceasefire in the ongoing Gaza war.

The unconditional backing of Israel by the United States and its allies has tanked their credibility across the Islamic world, and Beijing has positioned itself as an advocate of peace when others are not willing to take up that role.

It is curious that within the following few days, a report was released by Human Rights Watch, accusing China of expanding its alleged campaign of closing down and repurposing mosques into regions other than Xinjiang – which had so far been the focus of accusations that Beijing is cracking down on the predominantly Muslim Uighur minority. Even those allegations had been somewhat on the backburner in the establishment media lately, but the HRW report was quickly picked up and amplified.

Although relations between the US and China have somewhat calmed down, it is obvious that Washington does not want to see Beijing increase its influence in the Muslim world, as that would inevitably come at the expense of American clout. The attempt to draw attention back to China’s alleged repression of its Muslim population, while underreporting Israel’s devastating attack on the (also Muslim) population of Gaza, is an exercise in deflection and part of the ongoing narrative war between China and the US. Be it about Muslims or not, the Xinjiang issue has long been a key component of that struggle for influence.

The Uighur minority has, since 2018, been a tool of “atrocity propaganda” used to wage public relations offensives against China. It is a means to an end, which often disappears and resurfaces in the media, coinciding with the ebb and flow of anti-Beijing rhetoric coming from the US administration or the State Department. This includes using it to turn public opinion against Beijing in selected countries, including allies, or to manufacture consent for policies aimed at supply chain shifts or “decoupling,” through the accusation of forced labor, especially in the fields of key agricultural goods, polysilicon and solar panels, or to attempt to embarrass China diplomatically at the UN, or to push for boycotting events such as the Winter Olympics.

So when you are faced with a situation whereby Beijing is gaining diplomatic capital over your own failures, what do you do? You desperately aim to deflect by trying to draw attention to another issue in the attempt to smear Beijing: Xinjiang and the Uighurs. Now as it happens, Muslim countries mostly ignore US-led propaganda over the Xinjiang issue, because they see it for what it is and also share a common norm of respect for national sovereignty with Beijing, which is politically beneficial for them. The only Muslim nation who has ever made public comment about it is Türkiye, because Uighurs are a Turkic ethnic group and the issues is viewed through the lens of Ankara’s Pan-Turk ideology. However, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is still likely to ignore the issue, or only involve himself in it based on what he can gain.

On the other hand, the Gulf States, the key US allies in the Middle East, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, support China’s position, and the Gaza issue is putting them under pressure regarding their relations with the US and the decision to normalize relations with Israel. So suddenly we are seeing a resurgence of Xinjiang material because the US, even if it cannot sway their governments, wants to kindle the anger of Muslim populations about another issue instead and diminish China’s credibility. Although this is less likely in Arab States, it could cause public opinion ruptures in key Asian Islamic countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia, where significant resources were placed by organizations such as the BBC in relaying Xinjiang-related content in their respective languages.

But the question is, will this campaign succeed? It might be worth remembering that Xinjiang is an artificially imposed issue pushed “top-down” by governments and the media, whereas Palestine is a grassroots issue pushing from the bottom up, aspects of which media and politicians endeavor to selectively ignore. China’s heavy-handed management of Uighurs in Xinjiang is not really a genocide, and it will never rank on the same level of severity as the outright bombardment and mass killing of Palestinians, no matter how hard you try.

Not since the founding of Israel in 1948 had Tel Aviv suffered as audacious an assault on its soil as the one carried out by the Palestinian Islamist militant group Hamas on October 7, which was more shocking than the Yom Kippur War of 1973.
The fact that Hamas had planned such a massive assault by land, sea and air and managed to avoid detection points to a massive intelligence failure by Israel.

Hamas appeared to have better knowledge about goings-on inside the country than the famed Israeli intelligence agency Mossad did about what was happening in Gaza. Israel’s Prime Minister, “Mr. Security” Benjamin Netanyahu, has certainly suffered a blow from which he may not be able to recover in the long run.

When Netanyahu came to power for the third time last December with the support of the country's right-wing parties, both serving and retired Israeli Army generals expressed apprehension that such a coalition could lead to civil war in the country. That has not happened so far, but the division and months of protests against Netanyahu’s policies certainly emboldened Hamas to carry out its lightning strikes.

The very fact that Israel had to formally declare war was a morale booster for Hamas, which has been at war with the Jewish state ever since its inception when the first intifada, or Palestinian uprising, started in Gaza in December 1987. The world may be shocked by the unspeakable cruelty of the October attack by Hamas, but the Palestinian group is most likely proud of its accomplishment.

Efraim Halevy, whose career as the ninth Mossad director stretched from 1998 to 2002, urged caution as Israel stepped out to destroy Hamas. He warned that while Israel was entering a heightened state of emergency, the reservists were within their rights to refuse to serve in protest against PM Netanyahu’s planned judicial reforms.

Halevy, who was a confidant of the assassinated Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin and played a key role in the Israel-Jordan peace treaty in October 1994, has always been in favor of negotiating with Hamas. He has consistently maintained that Hamas could neither be demolished nor wished away. Halevy, a nephew of the 20th century philosopher Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997), refused to accept Netanyahu as the leader of the country. Israel's security chiefs also realize that destroying Hamas is beyond their abilities. As Israeli journalist and author Gideon Levy said, violence will never end Israeli problems.

Not much is known about the internal workings of Hamas, which remains extremely secretive. What is known, however, is that its goals are retaliation against Israel and its punishment, as well as the freeing of Palestinians languishing in Israeli jails. However, one of the key objectives of the October Hamas attack was the scuttling of the Abraham Accords, diplomatic normalization roadmaps signed between Israel and the Arab world in 2020 and brokered by the US.

Palestine remains a key sensitive issue in the Arab world. Even before the October 7 attacks and the ongoing retaliation, hostilities had been growing between Israel and the West Bank, particularly at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, the third holiest site in Islam, where Palestinians are regularly assaulted and mistreated by the Israeli security forces. Issues like the killing of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by Israeli forces have kept widespread resentment simmering.

During his whirlwind trip to Israel soon after the start of the war, US President Joe Biden appealed to the Israelis not to be “consumed” by rage in response to the attack by Hamas. Even if this never translated into him making any attempt to restrain Israel’s actions, the US president knows what he is talking about. After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Washington launched wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which turned out to be massive blunders. More than 30,000 US troops took their own lives after serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, over three times the number killed in battle.

The social wreckage caused by the wars the US fought after 9/11 led to the rise of President Donald Trump in 2016. An extended conflict in the Middle East may help him return to power in next year’s US presidential elections.

The current Israel-Hamas war has all the makings of such a long-term conflict – or a new, long-term stage of a conflict that has been simmering and flaring up for decades. In the past few weeks, Israel has claimed the killing of three Hamas commanders. In Afghanistan, too, the West kept claiming that it had killed Taliban commanders but fresh faces kept emerging. The US went into Afghanistan in 2001 with the goal of toppling the Taliban, but when they left 20 years later, the Taliban took power, more powerful than ever. Hamas, too, may end up more powerful 20 years from now.

Political issues cannot be swept under the carpet and must be dealt with politically. Governments around the world proclaim that they will never negotiate with evil. And yet they always have and always will, most of all Israel. No conflict, however bloody, ancient or difficult, is unstable.

Key to that deal was the mediation by Qatar, an ally of the US and in a sense, the conscience-keeper of the Arab world. In the past, Doha had worked out the deal with the Taliban and helped US forces move out of Afghanistan before the Taliban arrived. More recently, Qatar was instrumental in a prisoner swap between the US and Iran.

After the four-day pause, the IDF has vowed to continue its attacks on Gaza, but if a longer-term peace deal is to be achieved, Qatar is likely going to play a vital role in it.

The US has always supported Israel, but has no great respect for PM Netanyahu. Biden has been disappointed that Netanyahu went back on the 1993 Oslo Accords and reneged on the two-state formula to resolve the Palestinian issue. Today, the Oslo Accords are long dead and may no longer be relevant.

The great Palestinian thinker, Edward Said (1935-2003) always saw the fate of Jewish and non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine inextricably linked. We need to listen to Said today.