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      in World Politics

      The Imperial Presidency Comes Home to Roost

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      US President Joe Biden’s got a problem — and so do I. And so, in fact, do we. At 76 years old, you’d think I’d experienced it all when it comes to this country and its presidencies. Or most of it, anyway. I’ve been around since Franklin D. Roosevelt was president. Born on July 20, 1944, I’m a little “young” to remember him, though I was a war baby in an era when Congress still sometimes declared war before America made it.

      As a boy, in my liberal Democratic household in New York, I can certainly remember singing (to the tune of “Whistle While You Work”) our version of the election-year ditty of 1956 when President Dwight D. Eisenhower faced off against Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson. The pro-Republican kicker to it went this way: “Eisenhower has the power, Stevenson’s a jerk.” We, however, sang, “Eisenhower has no power, Stevenson will work!” As it happened, we never found out if that was faintly true, since the former Illinois governor got clobbered in that election (just as he had in 1952).

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      I certainly watched at least some of the 1960 televised debates between Eisenhower’s vice president, Richard Nixon, and John F. Kennedy — I was 16 then — that helped make JFK, at 43, the youngest president ever to enter the Oval Office. I can also remember his ringing inaugural address. We youngsters had never heard anything like it:

      “[T]he torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans — born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage — and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world … Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.”

      While a college freshman at Yale, I saw Kennedy give a graduation speech in New Haven, Connecticut. From where I was standing, he was as small as one of the tiny toy soldiers I played with on the floor of my room in childhood. It was, nonetheless, a thrill. Yes, he was deeply involved in ramping up the war in Vietnam and America’s global imperial presence in a fiercely contested “Cold War.”

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      Most of us teens, however, were paying little attention to that, at least until October 1962, in what came to be known as the Cuban Missile Crisis, when he addressed us on the radio, telling us that Soviet missile sites were just then being prepared on the island of Cuba with “a nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere.” As a generation that grew up ducking and covering under our school desks in nuclear-attack drills, young Americans everywhere, my 18-year-old self included, imagined that the moment might finally have arrived for the nuclear confrontation that could have left our country in ruins and us possibly obliterated. (I can also remember sitting in a tiny New Haven hamburger joint eating a 10-cent — no kidding! — burger just over a year later when someone suddenly stuck his head through the door and said, “The president’s been assassinated!”)

      And I can recall, in the summer of 1964, hitchhiking with a friend across parts of Europe and trying, rather defensively, to explain to puzzled and quizzical French, Italian and German drivers the candidacy of right-wing Republican Senator Barry Goldwater, who was running against Kennedy’s vice-president and successor, Lyndon B. Johnson. Goldwater was the Donald Trump of his moment and, had I been in the US, I wouldn’t have given him the time of day.

      Still, as an American in Europe, I felt strangely responsible for the weirder political aspects of my country and so found myself doing my damnedest to explain them away — perhaps to myself as much as to anyone else. In fact, maybe that was the secret starting point for TomDispatch, the website I would launch (or perhaps that would launch me) just after the 9/11 attacks so many years later.

      The Coming of a “Presidential Dictatorship”

      Although I never saw Johnson in person, I did march through clouds of tear gas in Washington, DC, to protest the bloody and disastrous conflict — the original “quagmire war” — that he continued to fight in Vietnam to the last Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian. By then, as I was growing up, presidencies already seemed to be growing down and starting to look ever grimmer to me. And of course, as we all now know, there was far worse to come. After all, Johnson at least had reasonably forward-looking domestic policies in an age in which economic inequality was so much less rampant and the president and Congress could still accomplish things that mattered domestically — and not just for the staggeringly richest of Americans.

      On the other hand, Nixon, like Goldwater, a “Southern strategy” guy who actually won the presidency on his second try, only ramped the Vietnam War up further. He also plunged his presidency into a corrupt and criminal netherworld so infamously linked to Watergate. And I once saw him, too, in person, campaigning in San Francisco when I was a young journalist. I sat just rows away from the stage on which he spoke and found myself eerily awed by the almost unimaginable awkwardness of his gestures, including his bizarrely unnatural version of a triumphant V-for-what-would-indeed-prove-to-be-victory against antiwar Democratic candidate George McGovern.

      For Nixon, the V-for-defeat would come a little later and I would spend endless hours watching it — that is, the Watergate hearings — on an old black-and-white TV, or rather watching his imperial presidency come down around his ears. Those were the years when the Pentagon Papers, that secret trove of internal government documents on Vietnam War-making by successive White Houses, were released to The New York Times by Daniel Ellsberg. (His psychiatrist’s office would later be burgled by Nixon’s “plumbers” and he would play a key role in the fall of the house of Nixon.)

      It was in those same years that former Kennedy aide and “court historian” Arthur Schlesinger wrote the book he classically titled “The Imperial Presidency.” And it was then, too, that Senator William Fulbright described the same phenomenon in his book “The Crippled Giant,” this way:

      “Out of a well-intended but misconceived notion of what patriotism and responsibility require in a time of world crisis, Congress has permitted the president to take over the two vital foreign policy powers which the Constitution vested in Congress: the power to initiate war and the Senate’s power to consent or withhold consent from significant foreign commitments. So completely have these two powers been taken over by the president that it is no exaggeration to say that, as far as foreign policy is concerned, the United States has joined the global mainstream; we have become, for purposes of foreign policy — and especially for purposes of making war — a presidential dictatorship.”

      Amen. And so it largely remains.

      The Executive Order

      Keep in mind that those were still the good old days before George W. Bush launched his own imperial war on significant parts of the planet with the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, based only on an open-ended, post-9/11 congressional Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). That first AUMF and a second one passed a year later would then be cited by the presidents to follow, whether to “surge” in Afghanistan or drone assassinate an Iranian leader at Baghdad International Airport. Congress declare war? You mean Congress have anything (other than endlessly funding the Pentagon) to do with the mess that an American world of warfare has created?

      Embed from Getty Images

      So, before Trump ever left “The Apprentice,” the presidency had already become an imperial one on the world stage. Meanwhile, Congress and the White House could still work together domestically, but just in Republican (or in the case of Bill Clinton, Republican-style) administrations largely to further the yawning gap between the 1% of wealthy Americans and everyone else.

      Otherwise, especially in the Obama years (when Mitch McConnell took control of the Senate in all his oppositional splendor), the imperial presidency began to gain a new domestic face thanks to executive orders. What little Barack Obama could do once the Republicans controlled Congress would largely be done through those executive orders, a habit that would be inherited big time by Trump. On entering office, he and his crew would promptly begin trying to wipe out Obama’s legacy (such as it was) by executive orders and similar actions.

      Trump’s presidency would certainly be the most bizarrely “imperial” of our time, as he and his team worked, executive act by executive act, to essentially burn the planet down, destroy the environment, lock Americans in and everyone else out, and dismantle the country’s global economic role. And in the end, in the most imperially incoherent way imaginable, with Republican congressional help, Trump would come at least reasonably close to rather literally destroying the American democratic system (“fake election”) in the name of his own reelection.

      It couldn’t have been more bizarre. Today, in a country experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic like no other and with a Congress so evenly split that you can almost guarantee it will get next to nothing done, any president who wanted to accomplish anything would have little choice but to be imperial. So, who could be surprised that Biden launched his presidency with a flurry of executive actions (30 of them in his first three days), mainly in the Trumpian style — that is, taken to reverse the previous executive actions of The Donald).

      Grandpa Joe

      I doubt it’s happenstantial that the vibrantly imperial, yet still domestically democratic, country that elected the young John F. Kennedy would, 60 years later, elect a 78-year-old to replace a 74-year-old in the White House. Biden will, in turn, join forces with the 80-year-old Democratic speaker of the House of Representatives, while butting heads with the 78-year-old minority leader of the Senate to “run” a country that hasn’t been able to win a war since 1945, a pandemic nation of such staggering inequality as to be nothing short of historic.

      As a senator who arrived in Washington just as Watergate was unfolding, Biden presented himself as the opposite of the corrupt Nixon and so an opponent of an imperial presidency. And as he recently claimed in a phone conversation with PBS NewsHour’s David Brooks, he’s still evidently not a fan of it. And yet in a Congress unlikely to do much of anything, including convicting the previous president of incitement to insurrection, what choice does he have? The way has been paved and he’s already on that ever-wider imperial road to… well, history suggests that it’s probably hell.

      Biden may not believe in the imperial presidency, but it could be all he has. Congress is in disarray; the courts, stacked with McConnell conservatives, will be against much of whatever he does; and those wars launched by Bush and now spread disastrously across significant parts of the greater Middle East and Africa are anything but over.

      Yes, Trump was a nightmare. Still, as I wrote years ago, he was always the mosquito, not the virus. I think it tells you something, thinking back to the vibrant 43-year-old JFK in 1960, that Americans, with the worst outbreak of COVID-19 on the planet, would choose to elect a former vice-president who was an exceedingly familiar old man. In our moment of crisis, we have grandpa in the White House.

      Embed from Getty Images

      And yet what could be more striking than a country, not so long ago considered the planet’s “lone superpower,” its “indispensable nation,” that simply can’t stop fighting distant and disastrous wars, while supporting its military financially in a way that it supports nothing else? As it happens, of course, the “costs” of those wars have indeed come home and not just in terms of a “Green Zone” in Washington or veterans assaulting the Capitol. It’s come home imperially, believe it or not, in the very form of Grandpa Joe.

      Joe Biden is a decent man, acting in the early days of his presidency in decent ways. He’s anything but Donald Trump. Yet that may matter less than we imagine. The odds are, hesitant as I am to say it, that what we face may not prove to be an imperial presidency but an imperial-disaster presidency, something that could leave Johnson, Nixon and crew in the shade.

      At 76 — almost as old, that is, as our new president — I fear that Trump was just our (particularly bizarre) introduction to imperial disaster. We now live on a distinctly misused planet in a country that looks like it could be going to the dogs.

      As I said when I began this piece, Biden has a problem (what a problem!) and so do I. So do we all. We could be heading into American territory where no one of any age has been before.

      *[This article was originally published by TomDispatch.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      Tech Exodus: Is Silicon Valley in Trouble?

      by

      On January 7, the news media announced that Elon Musk had surpassed Jeff Bezos as “the richest person on Earth.” I have a personal interest in the story. Two of my neighbors just bought a Tesla, and this morning, on the highway between Geneva and Lausanne, an angry Tesla driver flashed me several times, demanding that I let him pass. His license plate was from Geneva. Apparently, these days, driving a Tesla automatically gives you privileges, including speeding, particularly if you sport a Geneva or Zurich license plate. In the old days, at least in Germany, bullying others on the highway was a privilege reserved for Mercedes and BMW drivers, who, as the saying went, had an “inbuilt right-of-way.” Oh my, how times have changed.

      Texas: The End of Authentic America?

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      Elon Musk is one of these success stories that only America can write. He is the postmodern equivalent of Howard Hughes, a visionary, if slightly unhinged, genius, who loved to flout conventions and later on in his life became a recluse. And yet, had you bought 100 shares of Tesla a year ago, your initial investment would be worth more than eight times as much today (from $98 to $850). Tough shit, as they like to say in Texas.

      The Lone Star

      Why Texas? At the end of last year, Elon Musk announced that he was going to leave Silicon Valley to find greener pastures in Texas. To be more precise, Austin, Texas. Austin is not only the capital of the Lone Star State. It also happens to be an oasis of liberalism in a predominantly red state. When I was a student at the University of Texas in the late 1970s, we would go to the Barton Springs pool, one of the few places where women could go topless. For a German, this was hardly noteworthy; for the average Texan, it probably bordered on revolutionary — and obscene.

      In the 2020 presidential election, in Travis County, which includes Austin and adjacent areas, Donald Trump garnered a mere 26% of the vote, compared to 52% for the whole state. Austin is also home to the University of Texas, one of America’s premier public universities, which “has spent decades investing in science and engineering programs.”

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      Musk is hardly alone in relocating to Texas. Recently, both Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Oracle announced they would move operations there, the first one to Houston, the second to Austin, where it will join relatively long-time resident tech heavyweights such as recently reinvigorated Advanced Micro Devices and Dell. It is not clear, however, whether Oracle will feel more comfortable in Austin than Silicon Valley. After all, Oracle was very close to the Trump administration.

      Recently, there has been a lot of talk about the “tech exodus” from Silicon Valley. Michael Lind, the influential social analyst and pundit who also happens to teach at UT, has preferred to speak of a “Texodus,” as local patriotism obligates. Never short of hyperbole, Lind went so far as to boldly predict that the “flight of terrified techies from California to Texas marks the end of one era, and the beginning of a new one.” Up in Seattle and over in Miami, questions were raised whether or not and how they might benefit from the “Texit.”

      Lind’s argument is that over the past decade or so, Silicon Valley has gone off track. In the past, tech startups in the Bay Area succeeded because they produced something. As he puts it, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos “are building and testing rockets in rural Texas.” Musk produces cars and batteries. Against that, Silicon Valley’s new “tech” darlings come up with clever ideas, such as allowing “grandmothers to upload videos of their kittens for free, and then sell the advertising rights to the videos and pocket the cash.”

      The models are Uber and Lyft, which Lind dismisses as nothing more than hyped-up telephone companies. Apparently, Lind does not quite appreciate the significance of the gig economy and particularly the importance of big data, which is the real capital of these companies and makes them “tech.” This is hardly surprising, given Austin’s history of hostility to the sharing economy — at least as long as it associated with its industry giants. As early as 2016, Austin held a referendum on whether or not the local government should be allowed to regulate Uber and Lyft. The companies lost, and subsequently fired 10,000 drivers, leaving Austinites stranded.

      In the months that followed, underground ride-sharing schemes started to spring up, seeking to fill the void. In the meantime, Uber and Lyft lobbied the state legislature, which ultimately passed a ride-hailing law, which established licensing on the state level, circumventing local attempts at regulation, which allowed Uber and Lyft to resume operations.

      Unfortunately for Lind, he also has it in for Twitter and Facebook for their “regular and repeated censorship of Republicans and conservatives” — an unusual failure of foresight in light of recent events at the Capitol. Ironically enough, Facebook has a large presence in Austin. Business sources from the city reported that Facebook is in the market for an additional 1 million square feet of office space in Austin. So is Google, which in recent years has significantly expanded its presence in the city and elsewhere in Texas.

      Colonial Transplant

      Does that mean Austin is likely to be able to rival Silicon Valley as America’s top innovation center for the high-tech industry? Not necessarily. As Margaret O’Mara has pointed out in the pages of The New York Times, this is not the first time that Silicon Valley has faced this kind of losses. And yet, “Silicon Valley always roared back, each time greater than the last. One secret to its resilience: money. The wealth created by each boom — flowing chiefly to an elite circle of venture investors and lucky founders — outlasted each bust. No other tech region has generated such wealth and industry-specific expertise, which is why it has had such resilience.”

      Industry insiders concur. In their view, Austin is less a competitor than a “colony.” Or, to put it slightly differently, Austin is nothing more than an outpost for tech giants such as Google and Facebook, while their main operations stay in Silicon Valley. It is anyone’s guess whether this time, things will pan out the same or somewhat differently. This depends both on the push and pull factors that inform the most recent tech exodus — in other words, on what motivates Silicon Valley denizens to abandon the Bay Area for the hills surrounding Austin.

      A recent Berkeley IGS poll provides some answers. According to the poll, around half of Californians thought about leaving the state in 2019. Among the most important reasons were the high cost of housing, the state’s high taxes and, last but not least, the state’s “political culture.” More detailed analysis suggests that the latter is a very significant factor: Those identifying themselves as conservatives or Republicans were three times as likely than liberals and Democrats to say they were seriously considering leaving the state.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The fact that 85% of Republicans who thought about leaving did so for reasons of political culture is a strong indication of the impact of partisanship. Among Democrats, only around 10% mentioned political culture as a reason for thinking about leaving the state. Partisanship was also reflected in the response to the question of whether California is a “land of opportunity.” Among Democrats, 80% thought so; among Republicans, only about 40% did.

      Until recently, thinking about leaving hardly ever translated into actually going. COVID-19 has fundamentally changed the equation. The pandemic introduced the notion of working from home, of remote work via “old” technologies such as Skype and new ones like Zoom. In late February 2020, Zoom’s stock was at around $100; in mid-October, it was traded at more than $550. In the meantime, it has lost some $200, largely the result of the prospect of a “post-pandemic world” thanks to the availability of vaccines.

      At least for the moment, remote work has fundamentally changed the rationale behind being tied to a certain locality. Before COVID-19, as Katherine Bindley has noted in The Wall Street Journal, “leaving the area meant walking away from some of the best-paying and most prestigious jobs in America.” In the wake of the pandemic, this is no longer the case. In fact, major Silicon Valley tech companies, such as Google, Facebook and Lyft, have told their workforce that they won’t be returning to their offices until sometime late summer. Given that California has been one of the states most affected by the virus, and given its relatively large population heavily concentrated in two metropolitan areas, even these projections might be overly optimistic.

      Distributed Employment

      And it is not at all clear whether or not, once the pandemic has run its course, things will return to “normal.” Even before the pandemic, remote work was on the rise. In 2016, according to Gallup data, more than 40% of employees “worked remotely in some capacity, meaning they spent at least some of their time working away from their coworkers.” Tech firms have been particularly accommodating to employee wishes to work remotely, even on a permanent basis. In May, The Washington Post reported that Twitter had unveiled plans to offer their employees the option to work from home “forever.” In an internal survey in July, some 70% of Twitter employees said they wanted to continue working from home at least three days a week.

      Other tech companies are likely to follow suit, in line with the new buzzword in management thinking, “distributed employment,” itself a Silicon Valley product. Its most prominent promoter has been Nicholas Bloom of Stanford University. Bloom has shown that work from home tends to increase productivity, for at least two reasons. First, people working from home actually work their full shift. Second, they tend to concentrate better than in an office environment full of noise and distractions.

      Additional support for distributed employment has come from Gallup research. The results indicate that “remote workers are more productive than on-site workers.” Gallup claims that remote work boosts employee morale and their engagement with the company, which leads to the conclusion that “off-site workers offer leaders the greatest gains in business outcomes.”

      It is for these reasons that this time, Silicon Valley might be in real trouble. Distributed employment fundamentally challenges the rationale behind the Valley’s success. As The Washington Post expose put it, in the past, “great ideas at work were born out of daily in-person interactions.” Creativity came from “serendipitous run-ins with colleagues,” as Steve Jobs would put it, “’from spontaneous meetings, from random discussions.’” Distributed employment is the antithesis of this kind of thinking. With the potential end of this model, Silicon Valley loses much of its raison d’être — unless it manages to reinvent itself, as it has done so many times in the past.

      A few years ago, Berkeley Professor AnnaLee Saxenian, who wrote a highly influential comparative study of how Silicon Valley outstripped Boston’s Route 128, has noted that Silicon Valley was “a set of human beings, and a set of institutions around them, that happen to be very well adapted to the world that we live in.” The question is whether or not this is still the case. After all, at one point, Route 128 was a hotspot of creativity and innovation, a serious rival of Silicon Valley. A couple of decades later, Route 128 was completely eclipsed by the Valley, a victim of an outdated industrial system, based on companies that kept largely to themselves.

      Against that, in the Valley, there emerged a new network-based system that promoted mutual learning, entrepreneurship and experimentation. The question is to what degree this kind of system will be capable to deal with the new challenges posed by the impact of COVID-19, which has fundamentally disrupted the fundamentals of the system.

      Embed from Getty Images

      In the meantime, locations such as Austin look particularly attractive. This is when the pull factors come in. Unlike California, Texas has no state income tax. In California, state income tax is more than 13%, the highest in the United States. To make things worse, late last year, California legislators considered raising taxes on the wealthy to bring in money to alleviate the plight of the homeless who have flocked in particular to San Francisco. Earlier on, state legislators had sought to raise the state income tax rate to almost 17%. It failed to pass.

      At the same time, they also came up with a piece of legislation “that would have created a first-in-the-nation wealth tax that included a feature to tax former residents for 10 years after they left the Golden State.” This one failed too, but it left a sour taste in the mouth of many a tech millionaire and certainly did little to counteract the flight from the state.

      No wonder Austin looks so much better, and not only because of Texas’s generally more business-friendly atmosphere. Austin offers California’s tech expats a lifestyle similar to that in the Bay Area, but at a considerably more reasonable cost. Add to that the absence of one of the most distressing assaults on hygiene: Between 2011 and 2018, the number of officially recorded incidences of human feces on the streets of San Francisco quintupled, from 5,500 cases to over 28,000 cases — largely the result of the city’s substantial homeless population. The fact is that California is one of the most unequal states in the nation. As Farhad Manjoo has recently put it in The New York Times, “the cost of living is taken into account, billionaire-brimming California ranks as the most poverty-stricken state, with a fifth of the population struggling to get by.”

      Homelessness is one result. And California’s wealthy liberals have done little to make things better. On the contrary, more often than not, they have used their considerable clout to block any attempt to change restrictive zoning laws and increase the supply of affordable housing, what Manjoo characterizes as “exclusionary urban restrictionism.”

      To be sure, restrictive zoning laws have a long history in San Francisco, going all the way back to the second half of the 19th century. At the time, San Francisco was home to a significant Chinese population, largely living in boarding houses. In the early 1870s, the city came up with new ordinances, designed “to criminalize Chinese renters and landlords so their jobs and living space could be reclaimed for San Francisco’s white residents.” Ever since, zoning laws have been informed by “efforts to appease the city’s wealthy, well-connected homeowners.” And this in a city that considers itself among the most progressive in the nation.

      None of these factors in isolation explains the current tech exodus from the Bay Area. Taken together, however, they make up a rather convincing case for why this time, Silicon Valley might be in real trouble. Unfortunately enough, the exodus might contribute to the “big sort” that has occurred in the US over the past few decades, meaning the “self-segregation of Americans into like-minded communities” that has been a major factor behind the dramatic polarization of the American political landscape. The signs are there, the consequences known — at least since the assault on the US Capitol.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      Can India and Nepal Find a Path to Peaceful Coexistence?

      by

      When Indian Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla arrived in Kathmandu in late November, he did something that would have seemed impossible just a few months earlier. After landing at Tribhuvan International Airport, instead of continuing to inflame rhetoric over the bitter territorial dispute that had engulfed the two neighbors, he spoke in Nepali about cooperation and connectivity between the two nations. His visit, and the manner of his address, was in sharp contrast to the acidic barbs that had been thrown between the two nations just a few months ago.

      Following Shringla’s trip came the news that Nepal’s foreign minister, Pradeep Gyawali, would make an official visit to New Delhi in December. While this trip was delayed, Gyawali later headed to New Delhi on a three-day state visit in mid-January. Gyawali’s trip, alongside rumors of a potential future trip by Nepali Prime Minister K. P. Sharma Oli, was to be another significant step in the resetting of ties that had been all but severed over the Lipulekh territorial dispute.

      China-India Clash Wakes Up Tibet’s Ghost of Independence

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      Yet hopes for a resumption of strong bilateral relations were severely disrupted when on 21st December when Oli abruptly dissolved parliament, citing a need to seek a fresh mandate amidst rumored upcoming vote of no confidence. In the days that have followed Oli’s highly controversial decision, political attention has been focused solely on who will be taking over the office after Nepal’s new elections to be held in April and May this year. This new political crisis has thrown plans to resolve India and Nepal’s border disputes into disarray.

      Self-Destructive Cycle

      Earlier this year, Lipulekh, a territory situated between the western border of Nepal and the Indian state of Uttarakhand that both India and Nepal claim as their own, became the center of a furious territorial row. After information came to light that a new road through the disputed territory had been inaugurated by India’s Defense Minister Rajnath Singh, Nepal rushed to publish a new state map with Lipulekh and other contested territories firmly inside its borders. A diplomatic standoff ensued. As the media provided daily blow-by-blow updates of the dispute, Indo-Nepal relations lay in tatters. This was only the most recent incident of a series of rows between the two neighboring countries.

      Back in late 2015, a few months after it was rocked by a devastating earthquake and after years of negotiations following the 2006 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), Nepal promulgated a new constitution. Yet instead of offering congratulations, India promptly blockaded the border for 135 days. In the eyes of many Nepalis, India highjacked an internal crisis and leveraged it for its own ends. Many Madhesi political parties that supported the blockade and now saw it spiral from a debate over citizenship concerns into an acrimonious debate about Indian influence in Nepal had to face the wrath of a public angry at their role in the blockade and the violation of the country’s sovereignty. 

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      The border blockade, deployed to pressure Nepal — already engulfed in violent anti-constitution protests — into making changes to the legislation that India deemed beneficial, halted Nepal’s access to vital goods, medicine and fuel. Even if New Delhi squarely denies its involvement, in the eyes of Nepali people, it is culpable. The blockade had a catastrophic effect on a country that was still struggling with the aftermath of the earthquake. As transport ground to a halt and hospitals were left unable to treat patients, anger on the streets of Kathmandu was palpable. Relations between the two sides seemed to have broken down irreparably.

      Yet just a few months after the blockade was eventually lifted, tensions calmed and, before long, relations returned to normal. This is the self-destructive cycle of Indo-Nepal relations: Just at the point when their relations seem in tatters, normalcy is quietly restored. These spats are as infuriating as they are detrimental. They are often damaging and often result from an incredibly poor foreign policy on both sides. Unfortunately, these political disputes come with a heavy price. For example, the 2015 border blockade exacted a hefty humanitarian cost by leaving millions of Nepalis without access to medicine, food or shelter. These disputes are more than diplomatic squabbles. Instead, they have highly damaging, and occasionally deadly, consequences, with little to no gain.

      Lipulekh is no exception. Now, following the two visits of Harsh Vardhan Shirngla and Pradeep Gyawali, relations were said to be almost back to normal. This appears to be yet another spat that disrupted India-Nepal relations for a few months, only to later burn out. In this case, a return to normalcy means a return to periodic disputes and reconciliation. But why do these spats take place in the first place?

      Foundations for a Positive Relationship

      At first glance, there appears to be little indication as to why relations between the two sides so frequently deteriorate. After all, they have much in common. It would not be untoward to say that neither Nepal nor India could be theoretically closer to any other country than each other. They share an unbroken open border both through the Terai lowlands in the south and in the hills to Nepal’s east and west. The two countries are linked by railheads, highways and a multitude of official and unofficial border crossings and trading posts, not to mention a new cross-border oil pipeline. So important is this connectivity that almost all of Nepal’s foreign imports and exports travel over the Indian border. In comparison, its northern Chinese border lies underutilized and poorly connected.

      It’s not just about physical connections. A wealth of bilateral development projects exists, as do deep military ties. Nepal’s rivers are the source of India’s largest basin systems, and Nepal and India have joint ownership over key dams, such as the huge Kosi barrage. The 1950 Indo-Nepal Treaty of Peace and Friendship ensures not just unhindered border access to both sides but also extraordinary close civil and political relations. Millions of Nepalis travel to India for education or work, while around 1 million Indians work in Nepal. 

      They share an immense number of socio-cultural linkages too. A large number of Nepalis understand Hindi, whereas the Nepali language is spoken by approximately 3 million Indians in states such as West Bengal, Sikkim and Assam. Strong religious links exist, with Indian Pandits serving as chief priests in Nepal’s Pashupatinath temple, and each day pilgrims from India throng to Nepal’s Hindu temples and to Lumbini, the birthplace of the Buddha.

      India played a vital role in Nepal’s own political history, with a myriad of exile political groups, including the Nepali Congress, being founded in Varanasi, Calcutta and Darjeeling between the 1920s and 1940s in order to oppose autocratic Rana rule, while many Quit India activists wanted by the Indian Imperial Police often sought sanctity inside Nepal’s borders. Given these factors, despite years of understanding and mutual cooperation, why do both sides fail to build a strong collaborative partnership?

      A Fractious Relationship

      While looking at a list of similarities, the two sides may be natural allies, yet such bonhomie is compromised by geopolitics. A quick glance at a map shows that Nepal is utterly surrounded by India, falling right in New Delhi’s line of vision, firmly inside its sphere of influence. Moreover, given Nepal’s sensitive Himalayan border with China, India sees it as natural, self-evident even, that it would have a say in the country’s foreign and domestic policy. Given the open border between the two sides, many in New Delhi perceive Nepal’s northern border to be India’s frontier. In other words, whatever happens in Nepal echoes in India.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The familiarity between the two sides leads many in India’s political parties, from the Indian National Congress to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), to believe they have the right to influence Nepal’s affairs, almost as if it were any other Indian state. Looking over Nepal’s recent history, India has always been the key external actor. India sees the events surrounding the fall of the Ranas and Nepal’s brief return to democracy in 1950 as something it can take credit for, as it can for the people’s movement in 1990 and the signing of the CPA in 2006. It isn’t just political movements where India feels its influence has been positive. It looks at the numerous hospitals, roads and hydropower plants it built in Nepal and feels a paternalistic sense of achievement. But this exercise of influence causes many issues. At times, this line of thinking borders on India believing that it understands Nepal’s best interests better than Nepal itself, which New Delhi sees as its smaller brother. This is considered highly condescending and patronizing in Nepal. 

      The methods through which India exerts its influence are also controversial, often clumsy and far from covert. In recent years, New Delhi has hidden its self-interest in an altruistic narrative about its concern for Madhesi groups, since 2007 portraying itself as their protector. While successive Nepali governments have indeed repeatedly failed to live up to responsibilities to Madhesi concerns over citizenship and the lack of equitable representation, given India’s own poor record of looking after its own minorities, it seems dubious that any action to protect Nepal’s Madhesi is taken purely out of a rights-based concern.

      This becomes particularly clear given India didn’t raise concerns about the treatment of the Madhesi prior to 2007, as a powerful Madhesi political block that India sought to influence was yet to emerge. India’s defense of Madhesis is politically expedient and explains why New Delhi hasn’t equally taken action to protect the more marginalized parts of Nepalese society. This absence of political benefit explains why India has yet to expend any political capital on Tharu land rights or the welfare of Lepchas or Chepangs. 

      Uncomfortable Truths

      India’s involvement in Nepal is also reflective of the sentiment that India has a right to interfere in Nepal’s affairs. This viewpoint is shared by a large sector of civil society and is widespread in the Indian media. As a result of decades-old comments by Sardar Patel, India’s first deputy prime minister, about the desire to incorporate Nepal and to annex Sikkim, many in India still tend to see the lines that delineate Nepal’s sovereignty as blurred. This belief is rooted so deeply that it has a particular hold on the media and among politicians.

      Occasionally, such sentiments are also fueled by Nepal itself. While numerous Madhesi politicians have openly courted New Delhi, mainstream politicians too have looked to India to influence domestic events in their own favor. The current prime minister, K. P. Oli, who in the last few years has been seen as an ardent nationalist strongly opposed to Indian interference, had very close relations with New Delhi during the negotiations of the 1996 Mahakali treaty. The Maoists and the monarchy have also been known to look to India for support, either tacit or explicit, during the 1996-2006 insurgency.

      However, being reminded of these uncomfortable truths doesn’t always sit well. Many in Nepal look on in anger at the talking heads proclaiming the right to meddle in its affairs, concerned that their own independence is not being respected. Any nuance or subtlety is lost, and debates that are better suited to calmer settings are being played out in the heated environs of the Indian media. This inflames sentient in Nepal, and soon, politicians are provoked into rash statements — and the two sides are at loggerheads again. 

      Embed from Getty Images

      Moreover, it appears that many in India are walking around unaware of the offense and anger they are creating. There is seemingly a lack of understanding in these circles that such actions toward Nepal, far from being seen as paternalistic benevolence, are highly unwelcome meddling. It is hard to believe that, had New Delhi anticipated the anger the border blockade would unleash, it would have undertaken such actions. Not only did Nepal not back down and make the changes to the constitution demanded by New Delhi — albeit some smaller less consequential changes were conceded — India’s public image in Nepal was shattered. A huge amount of political will had been spent, and New Delhi had little to show for it.

      Another example of this lack of self-awareness relates to the Lipulekh case, where Nepal’s decision to repeat its claim of ownership was written off by prominent Indian officials not as legitimate actions taken by a state, but rather as Nepal acting at the behest of China. Nepal is acutely aware of the massive power instability between itself and India, and as such, these comments were taken incredibly badly and only inflamed public sentiment. These recent spats have been further complicated by the arrival of the new narrative that Nepal is “pivoting to China,” clearly a sensitive point for India. This sensitivity is particularly acute when the Himalayas are involved; few in New Delhi have forgotten the humiliation India suffered here at the hands of China in 1962. 

      Admittedly Nepal itself has not helped matters. While accepting Chinese development aid, many politicians have signaled to New Delhi that its influence in Nepal is no more. Moreover, many Nepali politicians have become adept at placing blame on India at a time they themselves are facing accountability for malpractice or poor governance. The nationalist card is not only popular in Kathmandu, but it is also expedient at a time of political crisis. Anger against India is the political well that never runs dry. It is perhaps no surprise that relations between the two sides have broken down a number of times.

      Competing domestic factions within India that make a unified foreign policy harder to develop and implement further complicate relations. While the Communist Party of India and some in the Congress may be more favorable to Nepal, influential members of the BJP take a more combative approach.   

      Both sides need to be careful when it comes to border disputes. India has well over seven decades worth of militarized border disputes with Pakistan and China that have derailed chances of reconciliation. Recent clashes between the Indian and the Chinese army in Ladakh and the disputes in Arunachal Pradesh show how tense these stand-offs can become and how the inability to solve lingering issues will remain a bottleneck for the development of robust bilateral relations. Nepal and India need to calmly negotiate a fair and acceptable settlement for Lipulekh and the adjacent areas if there is to be any chance of long-term stability.

      The Fallout

      This damaging cycle of Indo-Nepal relations is hugely detrimental to both sides. Instead of stable long-term bilateral partnerships, the two countries are locked into a pattern of disputes. While relations never fail entirely — there is too much at stake and the two sides are too interconnected to risk any serious rupture — this is simply not good enough for two neighboring countries, let alone those that share an open border.

      The millions of people who live along and depend on the India-Nepal border do not have the luxury of breaking relations even temporarily over differences in political opinion. They are reliant on leaders in both countries to keep a working relationship on track and ensure they do not unjustly suffer as a result of political failures. The fact that relations will never break irreparably is of is small comfort to those paying the price for this fractious relationship. Without proper management, the livelihoods of those who coexist along the border are at stake. Just take the example of the hundreds of Nepalis stranded on the border due to COVID-19 travel restrictions, with no provision of food, water or shelter, and little information on what quarantine procedures await them if they were able to cross; thousands of Indian workers have also been unable to return home.

      Embed from Getty Images

      This diabolical situation was entirely avoidable had the two countries engaged in a systematic collaborative dialogue. This isn’t the only example of poor co-operation leaving citizens in the lurch. During the border blockade, the failure to secure a political solution to the constitutional protests saw local traders and residents take matters into their own hands. After suffering for months from a lack of trade, people were forced to dismantle the barriers themselves so that business and daily life could return to normal.

      For this damaging cycle to end, New Delhi needs to understand that all its actions will be under the microscope in Kathmandu. Hesitant citizens will be wary of any visit by Indian officials and be keenly aware of the potential to get a raw deal or be strong-armed into agreeing to something undesirable. Indian diplomats in Nepal need to tread carefully and be aware that they are viewed with skepticism, and that there will be little tolerance for blunders or poorly worded remarks that highlight the power imbalance between the two sides.

      Sensitivity and nuance, never a strong point for New Delhi, will go a long way. In Nepal, politicians seeking victory in the spring elections must also resist playing the highly damaging nationalist card and ramping up anti-India sentiment on their path to power. India is too easy a target for politicians not to swipe at for political gain, and such comments may well derail reconcilement. After all, as those in Singha Durbar know only too well, nationalism is never more politically expedient than in an election campaign.

      Hopes for a resumption of good relations were somewhat dashed after the fallout from Gyawali’s trip. While the trip was by no means a failure, it wasn’t a success either. No breakthrough was reached on border disputes or on the procurement of COVID-19 vaccines. Worst of all, despite Nepal spending three days trying to secure an audience with Narendra Modi, Gyawali flew back to Kathmandu amidst allegations of being “snubbed” by the Indian prime minister.

      The trip was supposed to be a step in the right direction. Had Gyawali been able to repeat Shringla’s success, there was a chance that perhaps India and Nepal could finally break the cycle of dispute that has plagued relations for decades. It appears that a resetting of ties will have to wait yet again.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      Angela Merkel: A Retrospective

      by

      Americans like to rate their presidents. In fact, presidential rankings have become something of a cottage industry in political science, ever since the eminent Harvard historian Arthur Schlesinger Sr. started the tradition in the late 1940s.

      In Germany, we don’t do that, at least not in a formal way. We do have, however, a sense of who was a good chancellor and who wasn’t, and there probably is something of a common understanding as to why. Chancellors stand out if they accomplished extraordinary feats. Konrad Adenauer will always be remembered for accomplishing Franco-German reconciliation and anchoring the Federal Republic firmly in the West; Willy Brandt for initiating a radical turn in West German foreign policy toward the East, culminating in the reconciliation with Poland; and Helmut Kohl for seizing the historic opportunity in 1989 and bringing about the peaceful reunification of the two Germanies.

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      What about Angela Merkel, the first woman to hold Germany’s most powerful political office? Her tenure will end in a few months’ time, at the end, one hopes, of a horrific pandemic. On September 26, Germany will elect a new parliament, and Angela Merkel will retire. By then she will have been in office for more than 15 years, second only to Helmut Kohl, who managed to hold on to the office a few months longer. When Angela Merkel took over in November 2005, she was largely dismissed as “Kohl’s girl” who was likely to have a hard time asserting herself in a political party, the Christian Democrats (CDU) largely dominated by men.

      The Anti-Trump

      In fact, shortly after the election, then-chancellor Gerhard Schröder insisted on national television that there was no way that his Social Democratic Party would ever accept an offer from Angela Merkel to form a coalition with the CDU under her leadership. As it so happened, the Social Democrats did, and Schröder was finished. In the years that followed, it became increasingly clear that Merkel was quite capable of asserting herself in the treacherous waters of Berlin’s political scene. In fact, in 2020, Forbes magazine ranked Angela Merkel as the most powerful woman in the world — for the 10th consecutive year.  

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      Throughout her 15 years in office, the chancellor has, on average, received high satisfaction scores. As recently as December, more than 80% of respondents in a representative survey said that Angela Merkel was doing a good job. Appreciation for Merkel, however, has hardly been limited to Germany. In an international Pew poll from September 2020 covering 13 nations, Merkel was by far seen as the most trusted major world leader. More than three-quarters of respondents rated her positively; by contrast, more than 80% saw then-US President Donald Trump in a negative light.

      Poll data also suggest that during Merkel’s tenure, Germany’s stature in the world has substantially increased. In a Pew study of 10 European nations from early 2019, almost 50% of respondents agreed that Germany played a more significant role in the world than a decade ago; fewer than half said the same thing about France and the UK. Germans are, for obvious historical reasons, understandably concerned about the country’s international image and reputation. Not for nothing, Canada’s The Globe and Mail referred to her in 2018 as the “anti-Trump,” only to add that “We need her kind more than ever.” This in itself will secure Merkel an eminent place in post-reunification German history.

      Ironically enough, the article was written at a time when Merkel’s star appeared to be rapidly waning, the result of serious electoral setbacks on the national and regional level. In the election to the German Bundestag in September 2017, the Christian Democrats lost more than 8 percentage points compared to the previous election, which meant a loss of 65 seats in parliament. At the same time, the radical right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) entered parliament, garnering more than 12% of the vote. In subsequent regional elections in Bavaria and Hesse, the Christian Democrats lost more than 10% of the vote, setting off alarm bells in Munich and Berlin.

      By the end of 2018, Merkel appeared to be up against the ropes, her days numbered. Particularly the upsurge in support for the radical populist right caused alarm, particularly in Bavaria. In response, the powerful Christian Social Union (CSU), Bavaria’s independent arm of the Christian Democrats, seriously contemplated once again to reach beyond Bavaria and create a genuinely national-conservative party, competing with both the AfD and the CDU. The CSU had always maintained that there must never be a democratically legitimated party to the right of the CSU. With the AfD, there clearly was, and Merkel’s Christian Democrats appeared not in a position to stem the tide.

      Corona Winner

      Yet Merkel managed to survive the various challenges to her leadership, despite continued electoral setbacks, which largely benefited the AfD. But skepticism abounded. In late 2018, a majority of Germans thought that Merkel would not serve out her mandate, due to expire at the 2021 parliamentary election. At about the same time, however, 70% of respondents in a representative survey said they wished she would finish her mandate. Once the pandemic hit Germany in the spring of 2020, Merkel’s stock started to soar once again. International media celebrated Germany as a most likely pandemic winner that had proven particularly resilient to the virus.

      What a joke. Only this time, nobody’s laughing. At the time of writing, Germany is a coronavirus disaster zone. The country has proved, once again, to be completely unprepared in the face of the second wave of infections that threatens to overwhelm the health care system. Starting in early December, Germany posted record new infections, and this before the arrival of the UK mutation. By now, the situation in some parts of Germany is nothing short of catastrophic. At the same time, the situation on the vaccination front leaves much to be desired.

      In mid-January, Germany recorded more than 22,000 new infections on a single day and more than 1,100 new COVID-19-related deaths. This is at least partly the result of the German government’s indecisive, hesitant and confusing response to the pandemic, made worse by Germany’s federal system, which provides for a plethora of veto points. This means that not only has it been difficult and quite tedious to arrive at a coordinated policy but also that every Land introduced its own measures, some more stringent than others. The result has been a certain degree of public exasperation. In a recent survey, more than half of respondents said they were annoyed at the measures that were “often contradictory.”

      To be sure, Angela Merkel cannot be held personally responsible for the dramatic deterioration of the situation once the second wave hit Germany with full force. A lot of time was lost in December in attempts to get the various political officials from Germany’s 16 Länder to agree on a common strategy. And even in the face of a potential disaster in early January, Merkel had to do a lot of convincing to get support for more restrictive measures.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Cultural Revolution

      Under the circumstances, Angela Merkel’s other accomplishments as well as her failures are bound to fall by the wayside. They shouldn’t. On one hand, Angela Merkel has dragged the Christian Democrats into the 21st century. The CDU used to be the party of “Kinder, Kirche, Küche” (children, church, kitchen). Politics were a men’s world for, as my neighbor, a woman, used to tell me, politics is a “dirty business” — and dirty businesses should be left to men.

      Angela Merkel dared to appoint a woman to the most male of all ministerial portfolios, defense. The German armed forces did not like her, despite the fact — as even Germany’s conservative flagship publication, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, has conceded — that she managed to substantially increase their budget as well as and their image. Today, that former defense minister, Ursula von der Leyen, heads the European Commission, another novum. She was replaced by another woman, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who in 2018 succeeded Angela Merkel as the head of the CDU.

      Probably nothing exemplifies the cultural revolution Merkel set in motion than the question of sexual and gender identity. Those of us who grew up in the postwar period probably recall that once in a while, our parents would hint that somebody was a “175er.” This was in reference to Paragraph 175 of the German criminal code according to which homosexuality was a punishable offense. The paragraph goes back all the way to 1871, establishing that any sexual activity between two males (there was no formal mention of lesbians) was subject to criminal persecution and punishment.

      During the Nazi period, gays suffered from severe persecution, many of them ended up in concentration camps. After the war, the Federal Republic not only retained the paragraph; it also used the Nazis’ “pink lists” — in the camps, homosexuals were marked by a pink triangle on their prisoners’ shirts — to initiate some 100,000 proceedings against homosexuals. It was not until 1994 that the “gay paragraph” was finally abolished, not least because of East German insistence during the negotiations on reunification.

      More than 20 years and many gay parades later, in 2017, the German Bundestag voted on legalizing same-sex marriage. On the occasion, Angela Merkel allowed representatives to vote their conscience rather than following party discipline. Quite a few Christian Democrats came out in the support of the law, which was passed by a substantial majority, much to the chagrin of Germany’s conservatives. Some of them defected to the AfD given its vocal opposition to the law, which, as one of its leaders suggested, threatens to undermine Germany’s traditional values and harm society. Polls showed, however, that a substantial majority supported the law. In June 2017, 60% of men and more than 70% of women came out in favor of same-sex marriage across Germany.

      We Can Handle This

      Angela Merkel’s resolute position during the so-called refugee crisis of 2015-16 also comes out as a positive. In order to understand the enormity of the event, it might be useful to recall one of the great Lebenlügen (delusions) of the Federal Republic, the notion that Germany was “not a country of immigration.” Given the fact that by the 1980s, Germany was home to millions of guest workers and their families, many of whom had permanently settled in Germany, the notion ignored the reality on the ground. Yet it was not until 2001 that an expert commission of the German Bundestag came to the conclusion that the notion was “no longer tenable.” By 2015, a significant majority of Germans agreed with that statement, and in 2019, more than 70% of respondents agreed that in the future, Germany should accept as many refugees as in the past.

      This is quite remarkable, given the storm Angela Merkel provoked when in 2015 she cleared the way for welcoming a million refugees, many of them from war-torn Syria. Her main argument was that Germany is a strong country: “Wir schaffen das,” Merkel announced — “We can handle this.” The German public was not entirely convinced. Perhaps they remembered Merkel’s predecessor, Helmut Kohl, who in 1990 had promised that unification would lead to “blossoming landscapes” in the eastern part of the country. The reality, of course, was the opposite. The West German taxpayers would have to pay the bills for decades to come while in the east, resentment continued to grow only to erupt in substantial support for the AfD.

      Under the circumstances, German skepticism in 2015 was quite understandable. In early 2016, around 80% of the population expressed concern that the government had lost control over the refugee situation; among AfD supporters, it was virtually 100%. As expected, the radical right made the refugee crisis the central focus of their mobilization — a winning strategy, as the party’s success in subsequent elections demonstrated. But in the end, Merkel prevailed; early concerns that the refugee influx would lead to major social problems were largely proved wrong, and, in late 2018, a comfortable majority of Germany’s public agreed that the chancellor had done a good job with respect to her refugee policy.

      Embed from Getty Images

      With Angela Merkel, the CDU moved to the left — or so her critics have insisted and complained. Others have argued that the left-wing turn of the CDU is largely a myth. The reality is somewhere in between. Empirical studies suggest that in the aftermath of reunification, all major German parties gradually moved to the center. With reunification, Germany added millions of citizens from a socialist regime whose value system and views on major social issues, such as abortion and homosexuality, were considerably to the left of the dominant value system that prevailed in the western part of the country. As a result, the conservative ideational elements in the CDU got progressively weakened, provoking vocal protest from the party’s right wing. A study from 2017  (but based on interviews held before the refugee crisis of 2015) found that CDU members largely agreed. They saw their own party “distinctly to the left” of their own position and that way before Angela Merkel’s now-famous “Wir schaffen das.”

      Grey Spots

      Yet against all party-internal resistance and opposition, despite calls for her to hand in her resignation, Merkel once again prevailed — a remarkable feat in these turbulent times. Future historians are likely to consider Angela Merkel’s 15-year tenure in an overall positive light. To be sure, there are grey spots, such as Germany’s handling of the fallout of the financial crisis of 2007-08 and, more recently, Berlin’s intransigence with regard to Italian pleas for “Corona bonds” during the first wave of the pandemic.

      Another grey spot regards the question of gender equality. Officially, the European Union has been committed to gender mainstreaming since the mid-1990s. More often than not, the results are wide off the mark, particularly in Germany. To be sure, even here critics would concede that Angela Merkel has “contributed fundamentally to the recognition of women as leaders and decision-makers in Germany.”

      In other essential areas of gender politics, her record is rather dismal. Her government did little to nothing to narrow the pay gap between men and women or to do away with Germany’s “anachronistic tax system” that privileges married couples “as long as one of the two (usually the husband) has a high income and the other one (usually the wife) earns little or nothing.” And actual reforms, for instance regarding child care and parental leave, were less intended to promote gender equality than to enhance the position of the family, in line with traditional Christian Democratic doctrine.

      The record was equally dismal with regard to public life. As a semi-official account from late 2018 put online by the Federal Center for Political Education noted, in the course of Merkel’s tenure, the number of women in her cabinets progressively declined, from 40% in her first cabinet to 30% in her forth. At the same time, the CDU failed to attract new women members. In 2018, women made up around 25% of party ranks.

      Things were not any better with respect to the composition of Germany’s Bundestag. At the end of the red-Green coalition in 2005, the share of women MPs had been more than 40%. After the election of 2017, it had fallen to a bit more than 30%. In the Christian Democratic parliamentary group, women made up barely 20%. And although Angela Merkel appointed a woman as defense minister, the most important ministries — interior, foreign affairs and finance — remained firmly in the hands of men.

      This was to a large extent also true for Germany’s civil service. In 2020, 35% of top positions in the public sector were held by women. And, as the ministry for justice and consumer protection recently noted, “the higher up in the hierarchy, the lower the share of women.” But at least here, change is underway. By 2025, all senior positions are supposed to have closed the gender gap.

      Klimakanzlerin

      If Germany is a laggard with regard to gender equality, it has prided itself to be a leader when it comes to the environment. The reality, however, is somewhat different. In fact, when it comes to arguably the greatest global challenge, the fight against global warming and climate change, Angela Merkel has been a major disappointment.

      As a reminder: Angela Merkel entered office as a strong advocate of decisive action against climate change. In fact, in the years that followed, German media nicknamed her the “Klimakanzlerin” — climate chancellor. Yet over time, she gradually abandoned her convictions, caving in first to the demands of German’s powerful automobile sector and then to the coal industry. Germany continues to rely heavily on coal for the production of energy. To a significant extent, it is the environmentally most disastrous type of coal, lignite.

      Lignite power plants are among Europe’s worst polluters. Most of them operate in Germany and Poland. And while a number of EU countries, such as France, Italy and the Netherlands, have decided to stop coal-fired power production by or before 2030, Germany won’t phase out its coal plants until 2038. Mining lignite is an important sector in the southeastern part of former East Germany, in Lusatia, around the city of Cottbus. Electoral considerations, particularly given the AfD’s strength in that part of the country, of course have nothing to do with the Merkel government’s reluctance when it comes to coal. Honi soit qui mal y pense.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Overall, Merkel’s climate policy has been suboptimal, to put it mildly. As a former environmental minister recently put it, for the government, political opportunism and convenience counted more than tackling an essential problem. That was before the pandemic hit. COVID-19 appears to have caused somewhat of a reconversion. By now, Angela Merkel has once again started to promote herself as the Klimakanzlerin. And for good reasons. COVID-19 has largely been associated with environmental destruction, the dramatic loss of biodiversity and global warming. Polls show that Germans are quite sensitive when it comes to these issues. A recent survey found around 85% of the German population not only concerned about these issues, but also willing to make lifestyle changes to “protect the climate.” Under the circumstances, Merkel’s return to her environmentalist roots is hardly surprising. It makes a lot of sense, politically speaking.

      Despite a vigorous 15-year resume as chancellor, it is now it is clear that COVID-19 will define how Angela Merkel will be judged once she leaves office and by how well Germany will master this challenge over the months to come. This might be unfair. After all, Merkel is what Americans call a “lame duck.” But, as Donald Trump so eloquently put it, it is what it is. The German government’s recent frantic attempts to regain control of a situation that has largely spun out of control are an admission of unpreparedness paired with incompetence and mismanagement paired with wishful thinking. In March 2020, Angela Merkel stated on national television that COVID-19 represented the “greatest challenge since the Second World War.” She was right.

      As long as Merkel holds Germany’s most powerful political position, she is in charge and ultimately bears responsibility. At the moment, a large majority of Germans have full confidence that once again, she will be at the top of her game and handle the challenge. It is to be hoped that their confidence is justified.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Of Hobbits and Tigers: The Unlikely Heroes of Italy’s Radical Right

      by

      June 23, 1980: After the assassination of magistrate Mario Amato by Italian right-wing terrorists, an anonymous group published a leaflet endorsing the murder:

      “To the members of the ‘Great Fascist Organizations’ we say: Fuck off, you never achieved anything and never will; … you are idiots and sheep. … Our task is to find comrades, if need be, to create them. CREATE ARMED SPONTANEITY. We end this document by telling those who charge us with not being ‘political enough’ that we are not interested in their politics, only in the struggle, and in the struggle, there is precious little room for talking. … To him who needs a hand, we will give it, and it will be bullets for those who go on polluting our youth, preaching wait-and-see and the like.”  

      What distinguishes this flyer from other statements by right-wing terrorists is not its vulgar language or pseudo-sophisticated argument for a palingenetic rebirth of Italy, but rather the fact that it embodies key characteristics that would come to define a new form of right-wing terrorism that emerged and operated in Italy from the mid-1970s until the early 1980s. Although the number of right-wing terrorist attacks massively increased during this period, scholars have traditionally focused on the left-wing terrorism of the Red Brigades or the so-called strategy of tension in the early 1970s that saw the bombing at the Piazza Fontana in Milan in 1969 or the Italicus massacre of 1974.

      The Bologna Attack of 1980: Italy’s Unhealed Wound

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      This new form of terrorism emerged foremost as a youth rebellion against Italy’s “old right” in a situation when they faced further marginalization within Italian society and politics. In the attempt to restore their self-esteem and their damaged masculinity, a younger generation found justification for a “heroic” crusade against the modern world in the texts of the British writer and linguist J.R.R. Tolkien and the Italian philosopher Julius Evola.

      Far From Dead

      In December 1946, the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI) was created and enjoyed rapid success in regional and national elections. To increase its political influence, the party hierarchy collaborated with the ruling Christian Democrats as early as 1954. However, radicals like Pino Rauti and Stefano Delle Chiaie questioned the party’s legalistic approach and founded extra-parliamentary groups such as New Order (ON) and National Vanguard (AN). Due to their ideological and personnel continuity, these groups linked the 1940s with the terrorist groups of the 1970s, which became involved in what later became known as the strategy of tension.

      Already in 1972, the failure of the strategy of tension was obvious. Rather than leading to a decline of the left, the destabilized public order was exploited by the communist and socialist parties. In the mid-1970s, the political right came under further pressure when right-wing groups such as ON were banned, and left-wing terrorism began to rise. However, right-wing terrorism in Italy was far from dead.

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      In 1976, right-wing terrorists killed State Attorney Vittorio Occorsio, officially launching a new phase that saw nearly 1,200 terrorist acts committed between 1976-1980. Among the victims were members of left-wing organizations, so-called traitors and, for the first time, state officials. The perpetrators of the strategy of tension deliberately avoided attacking representatives of the state, in particular of the security apparatus as they were regarded more as allies than as enemies. But now, they were among the preferred targets of right-wing terrorists.

      The majority of those responsible for these attacks were short-lived groups or individual perpetrators — what people today might call lone wolf terrorists. In addition, we find organizations that existed for a longer time period even if their structure was also informal, including Armed Revolutionary Nuclei and Third Position. But what caused the shift within the right-wing terrorist scene in the mid-1970s?

      To better understand the internal changes and dynamics, we have to look at the socio-political framework, especially the cultural situation within the far-right scene. Since the early 1970s, the growing influence of the left in society, politics and the extremist milieu added to a feeling of marginalization among younger radicals, most of them born after 1955, having no ties to the roots of Italian fascism. To overcome this apparent crisis, they pleaded for a radical change of ideology and tactics.

      Led by nonconformist intellectuals like Marco Tarchi, they accused the MSI of being a corrupt party lacking the energy necessary for a revolution. They criticized the rigid hierarchy that had prevented the youth from becoming more involved and characterized the covert terrorist activities and the coup attempts during the strategy of tension years as both misguided and as the reason for the increasing marginalization of the right.

      The charge against MSI’s establishment was led by the satirical journal The Voice of the Sewer, founded by Tarchi in 1974 in Paris. Heavily influenced by the French New Right, the journal used comics and texts to question the actions of Italy’s “old right” and their obsession with nostalgia and tradition. Tarchi, who would become the leader of the MSI youth group Youth Front, wanted to “rejuvenate” the political and cultural debate within the Italian right by looking to the left for inspiration.

      Middle-Earth in Italy

      The scope of this iteration of Italy’s New Right was first demonstrated at the Campo Hobbit festival in June 1977 in Montesarchio, which was organized by Tarchi’s Youth Front and named after Tolkien’s fantasy novel “The Hobbit.” Despite the party leadership’s opposition, the festival drew over 3,000 people and imbued the younger right-wing extremists with a new feeling of strength toward a hostile society and an anachronistic neo-fascist party. Concrete political objectives were rejected and replaced by abstract values such as courage, heroism and, above all, comradeship.

      For the festival organizers and attendants, Tolkien’s fantasy novels served as a metaphor for their rejection of the modern world and their longing for a future that was better than any historical allegory. They perceived themselves as the heroes of Tolkien imagined Middle-earth, fighting against all odds for the betterment of the contemporary world. As Generoso Simeone, one of the organizers, stated: “Looking to the future, let us evoke from Tolkien’s fairy tales those images that enrich our imagination … We are inhabitants of the mythical Middle-earth, also struggling with dragons, orcs, and other creatures.” To express their attachment to Tolkien’s stories, which were deeply rooted in Germanic and old English legends, the Celtic cross became the new symbol of the Youth Front.

      While festivalgoers were able to purchase a variety of books written by, amongst others, Robert Brasillach, Ezra Pound, Pierre Drieu la Rochelle, Oswald Spengler and Julius Evola, the musical performances were the real attraction given that music was considered the most important and efficient form of expression in right-wing counterculture. One highlight was the performance of the right-wing alternative band Compagnia dell’Anello (Fellowship of the Ring). For the occasion of the festival, several far-right musicians, including Mario Bortoluzzi, joined forces and created the band, which was named after the first book in Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Their most famous song, “Il domani appartiene a noi” (“Tomorrow Will Belong toUs”), was a rallying cry to fight together for freedom and a better tomorrow against the forces of “darkness” and ultimately became the hymn of the neo-fascist Youth Front.

      The Hobbit Camps, which took place 1977, 1978, 1980 and 1981, also featured theater, poetry and cabaret shows, art exhibitions as well as debates about issues like ecology, health and housing shortages. By including these traditionally leftist topics, the organizers intended to attract the leftist youth and start a dialogue with their former enemies. Through their engagement and willingness to incorporate these themes and types of events they sought to break out of cultural and social marginalization.

      Their effort to establish contact with their counterparts on the left can also be noted in their leverage of Tolkien’s reputation. In many Western countries, the British writer was associated with leftist student protests, and “The Lord of the Rings” became the “Bible of the hippies.” In Italy, however, his work became associated with the far right thanks to the preface philosopher Elémire Zolla wrote for the first Italian edition in 1970. In contrast to Tolkien, who rejected any deeper contemporaneous meaning of his book, Zolla argued that the myths of “The Lord of the Rings’” represented a perennial philosophy that must be viewed as an outright rejection of the modern world.

      Given Tolkien’s sociopolitical background, Zolla’s interpretation was not too far-fetched. Tolkien was a conservative writer, whose political and social ideas were grounded in a Catholic worldview that developed in opposition to the Anglican Church. He harbored skeptical opinions of economic and technological progress, both for the risk it poses to the human soul and for the damage it causes to its environment. Tolkien rejected socialism, Nazism and American capitalism and saw history as a long defeat. However, he still had hope. He identified among Western culture a strong romantic chivalric tradition of heroism and sacrifice, which would ultimately help to “turn the ship” around.

      Of course, not everyone who loved Tolkien’s fantasy novels or who attended the Hobbit Camps would ultimately turn to terrorism. Those who did would usually look for other texts to justify their path to violence. One of their favorite writers was the Italian philosopher Julius Evola. In particular, his works “Revolt Against the Modern World,” “Orientations” and “Riding the Tiger: A Survival Manual for the Aristocrats of the Soul” became standard reading among the New Right in both Italy and France.

      The Tigers

      Julius Evola, who died in 1974, became a guru-like figure for the radical youth looking for guidance while lost in the mythical lands of Middle-earth. First, Evola never joined a political party despite his well-known affinity with Italian fascists, the National Socialists and members of the Romanian Iron Guard. He called Benito Mussolini’s 1922 March on Rome a “caricature of a revolution” and rejected the Italian fascist regime as too populistic and devoid of any spirituality.

      Consequently, he heavily criticized the MSI’s nostalgia and its failure to create a unique ideology that embraced Evola’s own pagan and spiritual ideas. It was this uneasy relationship between Evola and the MSI that made him an ally of the disorientated radical youth who felt betrayed and abandoned by the party. Nevertheless, the MSI tried to benefit from Evola’s popularity with the younger generation, calling him “our Marcuse (only better).”

      Second, his ideology was abstract and frequently vague. He blended several schools of traditions, including Buddhism, eastern dogmas, Rene Guenon’s traditionalism and concepts of the German Konservative Revolution of the interwar period. This conglomerate of various ideologies and strands of far-right thinking attracted many people who were at odds with the fascist doctrine.

      Third, Evola’s use of myth mirrored Tolkien’s saga of Middle-earth with its eternal fight between good and evil. The similarity between Evola’s philosophy and Tolkien’s novels, which enjoyed immense mainstream popularity, ultimately increased the appeal of Evola’s work among a younger generation of radicals who were in desperate need of a system of cultural references untouched by historical fascism or the MSI.

      Embed from Getty Images

      On the surface, Evola and Tolkien shared another worldview: anti-modernism. It is Evola’s concept of anti-modernism that the terrorists found particularly useful when justifying their acts of violence. In his book “Revolt Against the Modern World,” Evola argues that history was not an evolutionary success story but a devolution from an imagined spiritual and traditional culture to the modern world. While he praises the Knights Templar and the Nazi SS for their efforts to stop further decline into anarchy, he characterizes the Renaissance, the liberal ideas of the French Revolution, and Italy’s postwar economic miracle as “false myths” leading the world into chaos. Moreover, he claims that modernity could never gradually transition into what he considered the “traditional order.” The only way to establish this order — which, according to him, was “outside history” as it has never existed before — was the total destruction of the modern world.

      In his books “Man Standing amid the Ruins” and “Riding the Tiger,” Evola argues that only political detachment — apoliteia — would allow the aristocratic elite to survive in a totally hostile environment. This elite expresses its racial superiority not through biological ideas but through spiritual qualities. Given his complex and seemingly contradictory arguments, his concept of apoliteia was interpreted by right-wingers in two ways. While one group saw it as a call for a complete retreat from all politics, others stated that activity was still possible, even desirable, as long as one’s acts were not influenced by political aims other than the destruction of the current world. For the latter group, absolute withdrawal was treason and achieving supreme spiritual identity was only possible through extreme engagement.

      It should come as no surprise that Italian right-wing terrorists of the late 1970s advocated for the latter. They aimed for the total destruction of the rotten and decaying modern world in order to make way for the new. Terrorist acts — and thus destruction — were regarded as heroic acts, the only way one could achieve spiritual fulfillment. Those who committed such acts were viewed as possessing greater spiritual value and would become part of the avant-garde.

      Debates about political aims and the right means were replaced by existential needs and slogans such as “restoring human values,” “building community” and “creating a new man.” “Evola,” as one right-wing terrorist said, “is a beacon. One of those men, who offers … all reference points necessary to lead a life in a world of ruins.”

      However, such an interpretation necessitated an oversimplification and vulgarization of Evola’s original ideas. What in his doctrine was long, painstaking and by no means linear was reduced to its most literally brutal aspects. Even though Evola did not exclude future action, he stated that “Riding the Tiger” “does not concern the ordinary man of today.” But in their attempts to accelerate the decline and destruction of the modern world, the young right-wing terrorists demonstrated an incomplete grasp of Evola’s core ideas.

      Dissatisfaction With the Modern World

      Tolkien’s popularity among the right-wing youth who felt marginalized in their own country symbolized a deep dissatisfaction with the modern world that was more rooted in a generational conflict than a specific political ideology — not for nothing did they try to transcend the traditional left-and-right divide. Given the many thematic overlaps between Tolkien’s novels and Evola’s philosophy, it was a small step for some radicals to accept Evola’s writings as applicable facts and use them to legitimize their terrorist activities.

      But, what can we learn from a cultural examination of Italy’s right-wing terrorist scene of the late 1970s? How does such an analysis contribute to a deeper understanding of past and present right-wing terrorism as a whole?

      First, Italy’s right-wing terrorist scene is much more diverse than often acknowledged. This might sound trivial. But especially in the public discourse, apodictic and sometimes ill-defined labels such as “fascist” overshadow the complexity of the right-wing extremist scene and its heterogeneous ideology, which often transcends our common understanding of the political left and right.

      Second, right-wing extremism turns to terrorism due to both external and internal dynamics. Analyzing Italian right-wing terrorism highlights the importance of examining the far-right extremist milieu itself, from internal rivalries between different generations to debates about the “right” ideological orientation and tactics.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Third, Tolkien’s world was dominated by male heroes and Evola’s anti-modernist philosophy centered on masculinity, arguing that an elitist group of men would ultimately overcome the materialist decadent modern world and ascend to true spirituality. The promise of a male-dominant, elitist patriarchal society helped to restore self-esteem to young men who felt emasculated by circumstances beyond their control.

      Finally, Evola’s theory offered young radicals who felt marginalized an opportunity to recover their self-esteem and overcome their isolation. Through committing a “terrorist deed” they felt part of a “male” order of “heroic” knights destined to accelerate the destruction of the modern world. I would argue that this behavior shows similarities to what Jeffrey Kaplan defined as “tribalism”— the feeling of belonging to a group even though no direct contact exists between individuals.

      Evola’s work has recently seen a transnational renaissance and has influenced the alt-right movement in the US, the Greek neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party and the Hungarian nationalist Jobbik party. Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s former chief adviser, is also attracted by Evola’s traditionalist and anti-modernist philosophy, his anti-liberal aristocratic elitism, his spiritual racism and his male-dominated worldview. These groups and individuals use Evola’s work to call for a Christian-dominated Western world that must be defended against all immigrants, Muslims in particular.

      Such calls ignore the fact that Evola was highly critical of Christianity and regarded Islam as the more spiritually advanced and thus more traditional religion, a classic example of the cherry-picking also seen during Evola’s initial adoption by Italy’s far-right in the 1970s. Nevertheless, Evola’s growing popularity among the radical right today calls for a deeper understanding of his teachings and philosophy if we want to gain a better understanding of the present transnational right-wing extremist and terrorist scenes.

      *[Fair Observer is a media partner of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      India’s League of Internationalists

      by

      Shivshankar Menon, India’s famous former national security adviser, has stirred much controversy recently. His recent article for Foreign Affairs, titled “League of Nationalists,” argues that India’s illiberal drift and new transactional foreign policy has weakened relations with the US. Coming at a time when relations between India and the US have grown closer than ever, Menon’s comments are troubling and untrue.

      India-US Relationship Is Now Official

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      Menon’s case has been helped by others expressing misgivings about India. Analyst Ashley Tellis has said that the West will be a less willing partner if India becomes illiberal. Writer William Dalrymple, an Indophile who has made the country his home, is “imagining a future where [he] might not die” in India. Rising illiberalism makes him uncomfortable. Thanks to a colonial hangover, thin-skinned Indians have been rattled by what Tellis and Dalrymple have to say. These Indians are still fixated on the West’s views of their nation. In turn, many in the West take a great interest in India.

      Mistaken Assumptions

      There is a good reason for this interest. In 1947, independent India began as an internationalist power. Jawaharlal Nehru, its first prime minister, was a Fabian socialist. Along with Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah, Indonesia’s Sukarno, Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser and Yugoslavia’s Josip Broz Tito, he started the Non-Aligned Movement. It was a group of newly independent nations that rejected the two power blocs led by the US and the Soviet Union. To this day, this movement retains an element of romance, and many intellectuals view it through rose-tinted lenses.

      After seven decades, India is finally moving away from Nehru’s legacy. This is causing heartburn among many, both at home and abroad. Yet Nehruvian internationalism runs deep. Until 2014, his dynasty was in power. It shaped the country’s institutions and patronized its intellectuals. Its legacy still runs strong. Many anglicized Indians see themselves as members of a global leftist movement. They view the Labour Party in the UK and the Democratic Party in the US as natural allies. This metropolitan elite venerates the BBC, The Washington Post and The New York Times. Since Indians now comprise a significant percentage of their readership, these publications offer much advice to India. So do friends of the country like Tellis and Dalrymple.

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      The fundamental argument internationalists make about the dangerous drift of India is based on two assumptions: first, that illiberalism is on the rise in India and, second, that the West must act to stem the tide. Both assumptions are questionable. While US President Donald Trump wins votes from working-class men, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s most loyal supporters are rural women. There may be illiberal aspects to the current government, but the reality is more nuanced than the simplistic liberal-illiberal juxtaposition at which many hastily arrive.

      Furthermore, the idea that the West can stem illiberalism in India lacks historical and political understanding. For the last 500 years, the Western record has not been reassuring. Genocide in the Americas, the colonization of India, the scramble for Africa, the Opium Wars against China and the divvying up of the Middle East reveal a hegemonic bent of mind. In more recent years, the 1953 coup in Iran, the Vietnam War and the 2003 Iraq War reveal that the West may pay lip service to liberal causes, but it functions as per the blood-and-iron laws of realpolitik.

      Anglicized Indians often forget that the West favored Pakistan over India for decades. The former was a military dictatorship and the latter was a democracy, but such inconvenient details did not matter. Indeed, the West favored China over India once Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger decided to seduce Zhongnanhai from the arms of the Kremlin. Thanks to the past patronage of the West, India faces a formidable threat on its border by two hostile nuclear powers.

      Getting Key Facts Wrong

      India’s internationalists fail to pay adequate attention to this threat. To be fair, Menon admits that in “many ways US-India relations are in better shape than ever.” The US has overtaken China to become India’s largest trading partner. In 2019, India-China trade declined to $84 billion while India-US trade grew to $143 billion. The US and India are cooperating on defense and security as well. Yet all is not well because the US and India are “now conceiving of the relationship in transactional, rather than principled, terms.” Given the history of US-India relations, where interests have always trumped principles, this is a rather naive assertion.

      Menon also paints a rather simplistic picture of India for his American friends. He claims that “India has excluded Muslim immigrants from the path to citizenship.” Menon is wrong. A cold read of India’s 2019 citizenship legislation reveals that India expedites the path to citizenship for non-Muslims. It does not bar Muslims from getting citizenship. The act was brought in because of persistent persecution and ethnic cleansing of non-Muslim minorities in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. On September 27, the Associated Press reported how the last embattled Sikhs and Hindus fled Afghanistan after threats from a local Islamic State affiliate. These refugees have arrived in India and have a path to citizenship thanks to the 2019 legislation.

      Similarly, Menon makes another glib allegation. He critiques the Modi administration for limiting “the autonomy of the Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir region.” He forgets that this former princely state comprised of Buddhist Ladakh, Hindu Jammu and Muslim Kashmir. For years, Ladakhis suffered discrimination from Kashmiris and did not want to be under their yoke. Ladakhi autonomy does not seem to be of concern to Menon. He would be well advised to read an article this author co-wrote with Fair Observer’s editor-in-chief Atul Singh on Kashmir that examines the tortured history of the conflict and its geopolitical complexity. The thorny issue of Kashmir is a little more complicated than Menon’s disingenuous throwaway line would have us believe.

      Power, Not Principles         

      Menon’s glibness raises a key question: Is he genuinely standing up for liberal principles or is there more than meets the eye? Menon’s grandfather served Nehru as India’s first foreign secretary, and his father was the ambassador to Yugoslavia. Menon himself is a blue-blooded member of the Indian establishment that was dethroned in 2014. Modi’s victory meant that Menon had to leave his colonial bungalow in Lutyens’ Delhi and play bridge with other out-of-work patricians instead.

      Embed from Getty Images

      One line in particular has angered many, including those who do not have much admiration for Modi: “Uninterested in human rights and democracy, Trump has given the Modi government a free pass on its controversial domestic agenda.” The idea that Trump or any other American president should have the right to give a free pass to a government that won a thumping parliamentary majority at home is neocolonial and deeply problematic.

      Menon notes how it has been left to Democrats like Pramila Jayapal of Washington state and Ro Khanna of California to express “public disquiet” over Modi’s domestic policies. The idea that Democrats should intervene for liberalism in India is similarly flawed and problematic. Menon, Jayapal and Khanna come from the upper caste anglicized Indian elite that has been defenestrated. There is a sneaking suspicion that it is not liberal values but loss of power that drives them. 

      Menon’s grandfather was an internationalist who loyally served Nehru. Ironically, Menon is attempting to enlist American support in stark contrast to his grandfather who opposed the US and wooed the USSR. More importantly, the former diplomat’s diatribes reflect the beliefs of a significant section of India’s bureaucratic firmament that views the world differently from its own citizenry. For them, India’s politicians are a bunch of uncouth upstarts. They are untrained in grand vision, strategic perspective and humanitarian ideals. In 2007, India’s ambassador to the US at the time called Indian MPs “headless chickens” with “vegetable brains” for opposing some clauses of the India-US nuclear deal.

      This blue-blooded elite league of internationalists disdains India’s democratically-elected politicians. They take the view that these politicians should focus on fighting elections and leave matters of state policy to elite bureaucrats. They resent their loss of control over foreign policy and national security under Modi. This league of internationalists, whose children study at Harvard and Yale, want to take back control from the league of nationalists who speak languages like Gujarati, Hindi and Tamil.

      Nehruvian Princelings Have Failed India

      Menon and his ilk take their cue from Nehru. India’s first prime minister fervently believed in international anticolonial cooperation. He despised the military, distrusted the intelligence community and, as a good Brahmin and a committed socialist, looked down on business and entrepreneurship. Nehru molded the nation in his image. He imposed Soviet-style planning through a colonial bureaucracy. The result was the infamous Hindu rate of growth.

      Unlike other leaders who fought for India’s independence such as Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Patel and Maulana Azad, Nehru promoted his family and established a dynasty. Inner party democracy went out of the window. Social mobility vanished. His daughter Indira Gandhi brought in the idea of a “committed bureaucracy.” In the words of Sir Mark Tully, the legendary former BBC South Asia bureau chief, this ushered in an era of the neta-babu raj — domination by a politician-bureaucrat nexus — which kept “India in slow motion.” Menon’s father loyally served Indira Gandhi and was part of this nexus.

      Rajiv Gandhi, Indira’s son and Nehru’s grandson, was not as dictatorial as his mother but not quite democratic either. David Goodall, the then-British high commissioner to New Delhi, observed that Rajiv’s cabinet was like an “oriental court” where he was “king among courtiers.” Menon was a favored page boy in this court. After all, he came from good stock. He was a third-generation Nehru family loyalist. The patrician elite Menon belongs to merrily forgets that India was neither liberal nor democratic when they were in charge.

      In the heydays of the Nehru family, India huffed and puffed as a socialist economy. Victory in the 1971 India-Pakistan War was squandered by poor diplomacy in the 1972 Shimla Agreement. India’s anglicized diplomats snatched defeat from the jaws of victory much to the chagrin of the Indian military. These diplomats also shied away from formulating a clear policy on Tibet or Afghanistan. They threw open Indian markets to Chinese goods, getting little in return.

      Embed from Getty Images

      These heaven-born officials failed to safeguard the rights of Tamils in Sri Lanka or champion the rights of minorities in Pakistan or highlight ethnic cleansing of the Hindu Pandits in the Kashmir Valley. They also took their eyes off Nepal. As a result, Chinese-backed communists took over the country.

      In 2008, India’s financial capital Mumbai was attacked by Pakistani terrorists. Hundreds were killed or maimed. Menon was foreign secretary then. Bomb blasts in major cities had already been a regular occurrence. Yet Menon and his underlings failed to mount a vigorous diplomatic effort against Pakistan for using terror as an instrument of state policy. Worse, the establishment Menon belonged to kept arguing for an “uninterrupted and uninterruptible dialogue” with Pakistan. Menon’s strategy led India nowhere, yet he rose to be national security adviser.

      Dancing in the Shadows

      Today, Menon is dancing in the shadows. His patrons have lost two consecutive elections. Under Modi, Ajit Doval is now national security adviser. He is a former intelligence operative who argues for a muscular foreign policy. Unlike Menon, Doval believes in punishing Pakistan for terrorism through military strikes. He has thrown Menon’s Pakistan policy into the same dustbin where he has deposited Menon’s China policy. This makes Menon and his ilk uncomfortable.

      The likes of Menon, who have run India’s foreign and security policy for decades, have been Nehruvian pacifists and internationalists. They decreed that India occupy the commanding heights of international morality. Some aspects of this policy were commendable, such as India’s support for independence of colonized nations and its sustained opposition to apartheid in South Africa. However, this policy largely failed to further India’s national interests in terms of boosting economic growth or achieving national security.

      Today, this policy has lost credibility for another reason. Like all elites, the Nehruvian one became corrupted by power. Over time, it earned notoriety for nepotism. Menon became foreign secretary by superseding 14 officers senior to him. There is a possibility that he was indeed so brilliant that he deserved to jump the queue. However, the fact that Menon came from a family of Nehru dynasty loyalists might have helped his meteoric ascent.

      There is another tiny little matter. ShivshankarMenon was national security adviser to a government that noted journalist Chaitanya Kalbag damned as “the most corrupt in [India’s] history.” When princelings damn peasants for being unprincipled and transactional, they could do well to remember Bob Dylan’s words that “The Times They Are a-Changin’.”

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      Joe Biden Will Face a Much-Changed and Skeptical World

      by

      Joe Biden was not elected for his positions on foreign policy and national security. Few US presidential candidates are. In his debates with outgoing President Donald Trump prior to the election, those issues were hardly discussed. So, the success or failure of the Biden presidency will not be determined by foreign policy.

      For President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, domestic policy will dominate their time and efforts. Overcoming the coronavirus pandemic, ensuring that newly released vaccines are quickly and effectively administered, and righting a still stressed US economy will be their top priorities in the first year. It is what the American people want and expect. Furthermore, there is America’s worsening and more pernicious longer-term problems: increasing economic inequality, continuing racial injustice and growing political polarization.

      Joe Biden and America’s Second Reconstruction

      READ MORE

      These will be profoundly difficult problems to address successfully, especially as President Biden could face a US Senate controlled by the Republican Party and a thinner Democratic Party majority in the House of Representatives.

      First, Image Repair

      Nevertheless, after four years of an unprecedentedly destructive foreign policy and simply by virtue of the fact he will lead still the world’s most powerful and wealthiest nation, Joe Biden cannot ignore foreign policy. In fact, amidst his formidable domestic challenges, he must confront serious foreign policy challenges vital to America’s interests and to those of its many friends and allies around the world.

      We may already have caught a glimpse of how different Joe Biden’s foreign policy will be from Donald Trump’s, considering the first officials named to his senior foreign policy team: Antony Blinken as secretary of state, Linda Thomas-Greenfield as US ambassador to the UN with cabinet rank, Jake Sullivan as national security adviser, Avril Haines as director of National Intelligence and Katherine Tai as the US trade representative. They are all highly experienced, proven, knowledgeable, principled and committed public servants. Under President Trump, we saw few of those and many more self-interested, self-promoting political hacks and ideologues.

      One of the first jobs Biden must tackle is America’s badly damaged reputation around the world. Donald Trump undermined critical alliances, pointlessly insulted and demeaned allies, abandoned international agreements and institutions, embraced autocrats and dictators from Russia to North Korea, discarded traditional free trade principles and turned America’s back on core values of human rights, democracy and rule of law. In short, it was a side of America no one had ever seen, certainly not in the history of the modern presidency. Most profoundly, it raised the question: Who is America?

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      Joe Biden must try to answer that question, and not just with the eloquent prose of President Barack Obama, under whom he served as vice president. The world expects and will demand to see concrete action, preferably guided by some overarching policy that can show to the world that the United States can still play — and indeed, must play — a leadership role again on the global stage.

      There are some decisions that Joe Biden has indicated he will make right out of the starting block when he takes office on January 20. He will rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement and the World Health Organization. Those are relatively easy and straightforward but also very necessary. He is also likely to make clear in his inauguration address that America will return to be the leading voice for democracy, human rights and rule of law in the world, starting first at home but also unafraid to speak in their defense abroad.

      Then begins the hard part. One priority he has made clear that his administration will take on immediately is reaffirming American membership in and commitment to its alliances and critical partnerships. These constitute America’s competitive advantage in global affairs and remain the heart of its still formidable soft power in the world. After Trump’s destructive practices, Biden will have to appeal to America’s allies in Europe, e.g., NATO and the EU, and in Asia and the Pacific, like Japan, South Korea, Australia and others. And he’ll have to do it with humility, understanding that under his predecessor, America seemingly abandoned principles that had previously united them all.

      China: Work With Allies, Pursue Hard-nosed Diplomacy

      China will be Joe Biden’s biggest challenge. On trade, defense, the South China Sea, Taiwan, cybersecurity, human rights and global leadership, China presents a daunting challenge. We should expect his administration to drive a hard bargain with Beijing but to use a very different approach than his predecessor. Pursued smartly, however, he may be surprised by the inherent advantages America still holds. For example, fortifying the alliances and partnerships as previously mentioned will aid his administration in addressing the China challenge. In fact, if he is to succeed on this account, he will need those allies and partners with him at the negotiating table. Another advantage: He will likely have bipartisan support in an otherwise partisan Congress for taking a strong position on China.

      Trade is the clearest area where the US can capitalize on its extensive network of allies. China’s most important trading relationships — those with the EU and the East Asian nations — also happen to be America’s closest allies. The most effective approach will be one that joins their efforts with the administration to address China’s aggressive and predatory trade practices. Those range from intellectual property theft to intimidation and threats against foreign businesses to coopting confidential and proprietary techniques, practices and technology. But this approach works only if the new administration can establish that it can be trusted again, and not only on trade. If the US can succeed in its trade negotiations with China, it opens opportunities on other fronts.

      The objective must be clear: The US isn’t interested in standing in China’s way as it progresses to superpower status. However, China must understand that it must do so within an international community governed by collaboratively set rules.

      Renewed US Global Leadership: Climate and Global Health

      Climate and global health are two other priority issues for Biden. He has indicated he will want not only to reestablish America’s commitment to them but also to take the lead. Rejoining the Paris accords won’t be enough. The US must marshal a critical mass of other nations in joining a reinvigorated effort to go beyond the mandates of Paris. In that, he’s likely to garner support from the EU and other developed nations. Appointing former Secretary of State John Kerry as his special envoy on climate change demonstrates Biden’s seriousness about the issue and the intention to take a much-needed lead role on this global existential challenge.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The COVID-19 pandemic raging at home makes it imperative that President-elect Biden make global health security a clear foreign policy priority. If there is one thing Americans have learned from the novel coronavirus, it’s that there is no greater threat to America’s national security and economic prosperity than another pandemic, especially one perhaps more catastrophic than COVID-19. If America is to be better prepared for the next pandemic, so must be the rest of the world.

      As he did for climate, Biden may even wish to name a special envoy for global health to begin galvanizing America’s efforts and those of the rest of the world to prepare and coordinate global initiatives for preventing, containing and treating the next pandemic.

      Climate and global health present the Biden administration with just the sort of challenge-cum-opportunity to which America was known to rise in the past. They are issues on which it is uniquely positioned to lead by virtue of its power, size, wealth and technological prowess. To reassume the mantle of global leadership, President-elect Biden must lead the global effort to combat climate change and strengthen the international community’s capacity to address pandemics.

      In the Middle East, Iran and Then Everything Else

      Unlike for the US administrations dating back to Jimmy Carter, the Middle East will not be a top-five priority in 2021. Americans have lost their appetite for inserting themselves into problems that the region’s residents cannot or will not work to resolve themselves. Biden and his foreign policy team recognize this, even as they know they can’t turn their backs on this dangerously volatile region.

      But there remains one exception. Iran is a grave problem, perhaps less for the US than for Washington’s allies in the Middle East, most especially Israel and Saudi Arabia. It also constitutes a major challenge to America’s traditionally unflinching support for the Nonproliferation Treaty. Nothing could be more destabilizing in that region than the introduction of nuclear weapons. It will require almost immediate attention from President Biden.

      The Trump administration’s policy of “maximum pressure” via its punishing sanctions has indeed inflicted enormous economic pain on Iran and its people. But it hasn’t changed Tehran’s behavior. Iran today has begun to reconstitute the nuclear program that had been effectively contained under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), negotiated under President Obama in 2015 and then abandoned by Trump in 2018.

      The purpose of the sanctions cannot be inflicting pain on the Iranian people, who are not responsible for their government’s policies. The objective of sanctions and an overall policy toward Iran must be to change its behavior. By that measurement, the Trump administration’s pressure campaign has not worked. Iran continues to: develop and build longer-range missiles; support malign behavior through the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its Shia proxies throughout the region, from Iraq and Yemen to Syria and Lebanon; senselessly threaten Israel; and deny the most basic human rights to its own citizens, most especially women, journalists, perceived political opponents and religious minorities.

      Whatever trust President Obama and then-Secretary of State Kerry may have been able to build with the Iranians in reaching the JCPOA has been largely destroyed now. So, short of immediately rejoining that agreement, which would be unwise, face-to-face negotiations between Washington and Tehran will not be in the offing for at least one year.

      Embed from Getty Images

      In fact, to tackle the Iran question, Biden and Blinken must address the failures of the Obama approach. That will mean: (a) turning to America’s P5+1 partners — the UK, France and Germany — to work out a modus operandi for rejoining the JCPOA while simultaneously securing a commitment to negotiate a stronger JCPOA version 2.0; (b) consulting regularly and frequently with key regional allies to ensure their concerns and interests are addressed in any follow-on agreement with Tehran; and, most important, (c) including key congressional members in the negotiation process, at least on the Washington end. The last is most vital because the absence of Congressional support was ultimately Barack Obama and the agreement’s downfall. Any new accord negotiated must have the support of a majority of the Congress if it is to avoid the fate of the JCPOA, even it isn’t submitted for formal approval to the Congress. All of these are sine qua non for successfully addressing the Iranian challenge and securing a durable solution.

      While the Iran portfolio remains an urgent priority for Joe Biden, it won’t be one resolved in his first year and perhaps not until well into his second. His administration and the Congress must understand that the US cannot not sanction, bomb, assassinate or otherwise forcibly compel Iran into complying with its norms for behavior. It will take patient, deliberate and determined diplomacy.

      Can’t Ignore the Rest

      These are likely to be President Biden’s top priorities. But they won’t be his only ones. His administration and the US also face serious challenges from a menacing and malign Russia, an arms control agreement with whom due to expire within weeks of his taking office; still extant terrorism and cybersecurity threats; a wave of autocrats with a full head of steam, from Turkey and Hungary to Venezuela and the Philippines; ill-behaved and irrationally aggressive regional actors vying for preeminence in the Middle East; continuing conflict and humanitarian crises in the Middle East, Africa and the Caucasus and elsewhere.

      Joe Biden will be the most experienced and knowledgeable president on foreign policy since George H.W. Bush. As such, he surely knows that it is issues like these that can suddenly rise to crisis proportions and take over his foreign policy or even his presidency. So, they won’t be far from his attention. But a clear-eyed view of what is most important will drive Biden toward those highlighted above.

      However, there is likely to be a critically important domestic component of the Biden foreign policy agenda. This gets to the Achilles heel of previous administrations’ foreign policies that Donald Trump cleverly exploited. Biden and his administration must be able to convincingly articulate to the American people a foreign policy that they will see as in their interests. That will mean a policy that protects American jobs, addresses threats to climate and the environment, ensures security and offers a promise of a better future.

      Crafting a policy that meets these criteria may be Joe Biden’s biggest challenge, especially in view of the historic disconnect between foreign policy and the American people and polarization of the American public exacerbated by four years of Donald Trump. But if this administration is to be successful in confronting and capitalizing on America’s many challenges abroad, it must be able to show that it holds the interests of Americans uppermost — and that they stand behind this policy.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More