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      in World Politics

      Making Sense of India’s Newfound Love for Russian Oil

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      India’s love affair with Russia began a long time ago. India won its independence from the UK in 1947. Jawaharlal Nehru, its first prime minister, was a self-declared socialist who drew inspiration from the Soviet Union. In the decades after independence, India swerved increasingly to the left. As a result, New Delhi developed extremely close relations with Moscow.

      Only after 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed, did New Delhi’s ties with Moscow weaken. In recent years, India has strengthened its relationship with the US. Both democracies find China a common threat. Furthermore, American investment has flowed into India while Indian students have flocked to the US. Indian politicians, movie stars and cricketers use American social media platforms such as Twitter and YouTube to campaign. Therefore, India’s neutrality on the Russian invasion of Ukraine has caused much heartburn in Washington.

      The recent visit of Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar and Defense Minister Rajnath Singh to the US did not go particularly well. The Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke about “monitoring some recent concerning developments in India, including a rise in human rights abuses by some government, police, and prison officials.” Blinken’s comment is less about human rights abuses and more about the US disapproval of India’s Ukraine policy and its purchase of Russian oil. So, why is New Delhi risking its relations with Washington and buying Russian oil?

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      Cheap Oil Option to Counter Inflation

      The Russian invasion of Ukraine has spiked global food, fertilizer and oil prices. The average monthly Brent crude oil price in December 2021 was $74.17. In March 2022, this had risen to $117.25. For an energy importer like India, this has spelled disaster. Inflation has shot up and the Reserve Bank of India has cut projected growth rates for the country. As a result, Russia’s offer of cut-price oil has become attractive to India.

      Given high prices, India is not alone in buying cheap Russian oil. Hungarian, Bulgarian and Greek refineries continue to buy Russian oil as do many others. The Indian press reports that  New Delhi “could be buying Russia’s flagship Urals grade at discounts of as much as $35 a barrel on prices before the war.” This is a very steep discount that offsets American and Western sanctions. With a per capita GDP that was only $1927.71 in 2020 and an unemployment crisis in the country, India cannot afford to forego the option of cheap oil.

      The option of buying Russian oil is also important for another reason. India sources its oil from many countries with Russia providing a tiny fraction of its energy needs. Iraq supplies 23% of India’s oil, Saudi Arabia 18% and the United Arab Emirates 11%. In 2022, exports from the US are likely to increase and meet 8% of India’s oil needs. Crucially though, India’s purchase of Russian oil gives it more leverage against other sellers. As Jaishankar rightly pointed out, India’s “total purchases for the month would be less than what Europe does in an afternoon.” Therefore, the US fixation with Indian oil purchases from Russia seems shortsighted and misguided.

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      A History of Romance, A Marriage of Geopolitical Realities

      As has been said by many foreign policy experts, India has shared a close strategic relationship with Russia for many decades. Once India chose socialism, the then Soviet Union traded preferentially with India. Moscow also provided and continues to provide the bulk of India’s defense needs. Even today, an estimated 70% of India’s defense equipment comes from Russia. Perhaps even more importantly, Moscow has shared nuclear, missile and space technology with New Delhi, enabling India to emerge as a major power.

      In 1971, the Soviet Union and India signed an important treaty. Later that year, Moscow backed New Delhi while Washington backed Islamabad. India was a democracy that reluctantly went to war to liberate Bangladesh. In the run up to the conflict, Pakistan’s military dictatorship was conducting genocide and using rape as a weapon of war against poor Bengalis in what was then known as East Pakistan. Russia has consistently backed India on Kashmir. In contrast, the US has regularly chided India for human rights abuses in Kashmir and taken a pro-Pakistan stance.

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      Even as ties with the US have improved, relations with Russia have remained important. In 2021, Russian President Vladimir Putin flew to New Delhi to meet Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. After the visit, retired Indian diplomat Ashok Sajjanhar concluded that Putin’s brief India trip had “reinvigorated a time-tested partnership.” Both countries signed many agreements, paying considerable attention to trade and investment relations. Traditional areas like nuclear energy, space and defense also got attention. Here, in the words of Sajjanhar “the most important decision was to commence manufacture of more than 700,000 assault AK-203 rifles with transfer of technology under the ‘Make in India’ program.”

      Russia is also helping India indigenize its defense production of T-90 tanks and Su-30-MKI aircraft. Russia also supplies spares and helps upgrade MiG-29-K aircraft, Kamov-31, Mi-17 helicopters, MiG-29 aircraft and multiple rocket launcher BM-30 Smerch. Despite an ongoing war with Ukraine and severe sanctions, Russia is delivering the second regiment of S400 missile defense systems to India. 

      India is in a rough neighborhood with two nuclear-armed neighbors. Both Pakistan and China claim Indian territory. The specter of a two-front war is a real one for India. Therefore, good relations with Russia, its biggest defense equipment and technology supplier, are critically important. This is a key reason for New Delhi to take up Moscow’s offer of cheap oil.

      As an independent nation and a rising global power, India has to act in its strategic interest. At the moment, this is best served by buying cheap Russian oil.

      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

      Why Did the Pakistani Parliament Pass a Vote of No-Confidence against Imran Khan?

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      The unprecedented political drama finally concluded with a successful vote of no-confidence in the National Assembly, Pakistan’s lower house of parliament. On April 9, the National Assembly of Pakistan ousted Prime Minister Imran Khan in a late-night vote. After an entire day full of dilatory tactics and backstage negotiations, the opposition bloc ultimately cobbled together 174 members to vote in favor of the resolution — two more than the required 172 vote threshold. Sudden resignations from both the speaker and the deputy speaker allowed Sardar Ayaz Sadiq to take charge. He is a former speaker of the National Assembly and a senior leader of Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), known as PML-N. With Sadiq in the speaker’s chair, Khan became the first Pakistani prime minister to lose a no-confidence vote in parliament.

      Economic Collapse, Not Foreign Conspiracy Led to Fall

      Khan claimed there was a foreign conspiracy to oust him. He tried to subvert both the parliament and the judiciary to cling on to power. Yet his claims of a foreign hand in his ouster appear overly exaggerated. In three years and eight months as prime minister, Khan was known more for headlines than for results. He was vocal on the incendiary Kashmir issue where he sought US intervention. Khan was in the limelight for visiting China for the Winter Olympics and for visiting Russia even as Russian troops invaded Ukraine. For all his flirtation with China and Russia, Khan did little to hurt US interests in the region. In fact, Khan was a middleman between the US and the Taliban that led to the Doha Agreement. He facilitated the peaceful takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban, allowing US troops to withdraw from the region.

      The real reason Khan was voted out of the prime minister’s office is his lack of competence in economic matters. Inflation has run persistently high and stood at 12.7% in March. Not all of it is Khan’s fault. Commodity and energy prices have been surging. However, Khan’s government presided over the greatest increase in public debt in Pakistan’s history. The nation’s debt went up by over $99 billion (18 trillion Pakistani rupees). This unleashed inflationary pressures in the economy and caused the economy to enter free fall.

      Pakistan’s foreign currency reserves dropped dramatically. On March 25, these reserves were $12,047.3 million. By April 1, they had fallen to $11.32 billion, a loss of $728 million in a mere six days. The Pakistani rupee also fell to a record low of 191 to the dollar.

      What Next for Pakistan?

      After the ouster of Khan, PML-N leader Shahbaz Sharif has taken over. He is known as a competent administrator. Political analysts believe that Sharif would pivot Pakistan toward a traditional foreign policy vis-à-vis the US and Europe. His government has already resumed talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). It will try its best to avail the remaining $3 billion under the IMF’s $6 billion loan program more speedily to stabilize its foreign exchange reserves and strengthen the rupee.

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      Political uncertainty was roiling markets. They might settle now that a new government is in charge. Pakistan faces a tricky situation, both politically and economically. Khan still has ardent supporters and the country is divided. The economy is perhaps at its lowest ebb at a time when the risk of a global recession is running high. To navigate such a critical period, a coalition government formed by an alliance of seasoned politicians might be a blessing for Pakistan.

      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

      Jacob Zuma Threatens to Bring South Africa to its Knees If He Is Jailed

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      The former President of South Africa, Jacob Zuma, is the glowering figure who looms large over the country’s future. The 80-year-old is determined that never again will he suffer the ignominy of being jailed — despite being charged with hundreds of counts of corruption in a case that has dragged on for nearly 17 years. Zuma has pleaded not guilty to corruption, money laundering and racketeering in a 1990s $2 billion arms deal that he promoted.

      To head off any chance of being imprisoned, he has deployed the so-called “Stalingrad defense.” This is a term for a legal strategy of stalling proceedings based on technicalities. Zuma’s lawyers are fighting every attempt to put him before a judge on the basis of arcane technicalities. Finally, this strategy is wearing thin and Zuma’s supporters are now resorting to alternative tactics.

      Past Precedent

      This is not the first time that Zuma faces time in prison. Last year, the Constitutional Court of South Africa found Zuma guilty of contempt of court and sentenced him to jail for 15 months. Zuma’s supporters took to the streets in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng. They blocked roads, assaulted people, and looted and burned supermarkets.

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      When Zuma’s legal team were in court on April 11,  they reminded the court of what had happened. They warned the judge that the riots that ensued after his jail sentence last year resulted in the deaths of more than 350 people. Zuma’s lawyers claimed that the riots “were partly motivated or sparked, to whatever extent, by a sense of public outrage at perceived injustice and special treatment of Mr Zuma.” They were making an obvious threat.

      It is important to put Zuma’s July 2021 riots in context. The country’s most notorious mass killing remains the Sharpeville massacre of March 1960. This occurred during the era of apartheid. The massacre cost 69 lives as the police fired into a crowd. The Zuma riots cost many more lives than the Sharpeville massacre.

      To contain these riots, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa had to deploy 25,000 troops. He admitted that he had no prior warning from his intelligence services of the scale of the unrest. This is unsurprising. Zuma was an intelligence agent for the African National Congress (ANC) and has strong links with South Africa’s security services. As the South African media have reported: “Former senior security agency and ANC members aligned with Jacob Zuma have allegedly instigated the unrest in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal. Citing sources in the intelligence community…these former agency members used intelligence networks to spark the riots.”

      The government made promises to bring those who instigated the Zuma riots to justice.  Duduzile Zuma-Sambundla, Zuma’s daughter, was one of those accused of stoking the riots. She and none of the major figures allegedly behind the Zuma riots have been held accountable. Of the 3,000 suspects arrested, all of them have been small-fry.  

      Constitutional Challenge And Risk of Becoming a Failed State

      Like a latter-day Samson, the former president is threatening to bring down the South African constitutional order around him. Those close to Zuma have threatened both the judges and the constitutional order itself. The South African constitution, shaped under Nelson Mandela is today questioned by factions of the ANC who want to make the judiciary and the constitution subservient to the political establishment.

      Many ANC leaders, keen to stave off allegations of wrongdoing, have muttered darkly about the constitution for years. KwaZulu-Natal Premier Sihle Zikalala recently criticized the courts, saying “It is time we should debate whether the country does not need parliamentary democracy where laws enacted by Parliament should be above all and not reviewed by another organ…” Ironically, Zikalala is calling for a return to parliamentary supremacy — the hallmark of the apartheid years.

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      There is a real cost to such maneuvers by ANC politicians. In its December conference,the party will elect a new leadership. If some ANC members have their way, they could even remove Ramaphosa, although this seems unlikely as of now. Nevertheless, the ANC’s branches and its provincial structures are experiencing a bitter battle between the pro- and anti-Zuma factions. These factions are fighting for the support of the ANC’s 1.5 million members in meetings across the country, some of which are turning violent.

      While the ANC is locked in internal battles, there are warnings that South Africa might be turning into a failed state. The government has failed to provide many essential public services already. The railways have been vandalized and looted so severely that no trains have run in the Eastern Cape since January 7. Critical coal and iron ore exports are grinding to a halt because of cable theft  that has gone unchecked for years because of South Africa’s systemic corruption.  As per Bloomberg, “more than $2 billion in potential coal, iron ore and chrome exports were lost” in 2021.

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      The failure of the electricity supply system is so chronic that it is hardly remarked upon. In the Cape, the opposition Democratic Alliance has plans to dump the state electricity provider — Eskom — and establish its own power supply.

      In a September 2020 report, Eunomix warned that “bar a meaningful change of trajectory, South Africa will be a failed state by 2030.” The remarks were echoed in March this year by the treasury director general Dondo Mogajane. He took the view that, if South Africa continued on its present path, it could indeed become a ‘failed state’ with “no confidence in the government, anarchy and absolutely no control in society.”

      In April, Ramaphosa was forced torespond to Mogajane. The president adamantly declared that South Africa was “not a failed state yet and we will not get there.” Ramaphosa claimed that his government was taking steps to rebuild South Africa’s capacity and fight corruption. This claim remains an admirable but unfulfilled ambition.

      Zuma has not been brought to court and his associates are locked in battle with Ramaphosa’s supporters for control of the ANC and the country. Meanwhile, growth rates slide, unemployment rockets and poverty remains endemic. Even as South Africa is on the slide, the world’s attention is elsewhere. This is a tragedy. Africa could lose one of its few genuine democracies and see the collapse of its largest economy.

      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 US Politics

      Can theatre predict 2024’s US election? Politics Weekly America

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      Playwright Mike Bartlett prophesies a Donald Trump v Kamala Harris showdown against a backdrop of rolling violence

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know

      Mike Bartlett’s new stage work, The 47th, explores a Donald Trump v Kamala Harris contest in 2024, set against a backdrop of rolling violence. Jonathan Freedland asks why artists and writers are drawn to American politics again and again, and what theatre can reveal about the protagonists that news coverage can’t Listen to this week’s episode of Politics Weekly UK with John Harris Send your questions and feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com Help support the Guardian by going to gu.com/supportpodcasts

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      in World Politics

      The MADness of the Resurgent US Cold War With Russia

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      The war in Ukraine has placed US and NATO policy toward Russia under a spotlight, highlighting how the US and its allies have expanded NATO right up to Russia’s borders, backed a coup and now a proxy war in Ukraine, imposed waves of economic sanctions, and launched a debilitating trillion-dollar arms race. The explicit goal is to pressure, weaken and ultimately eliminate Russia, or a Russia-China partnership, as a strategic competitor to US imperial power.

      The US and NATO have used similar forms of force and coercion against many countries. In every case they have been catastrophic for the people directly impacted, whether they achieved their political aims or not. 

      The Bitter Fruits of US Intervention

      Wars and violent regime changes in Kosovo, Iraq, Haiti and Libya have left them mired in endless corruption, poverty and chaos. Failed proxy wars in Somalia, Syria and Yemen have spawned endless war and humanitarian disasters. US sanctions against Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Venezuela have impoverished their people but failed to change their governments. 

      Meanwhile, US-backed coups in Chile, Bolivia and Honduras have sooner or later been reversed by grassroots movements to restore democratic, socialist government. The Taliban are governing Afghanistan again after a 20-year war to expel a US and NATO army of occupation, for which the sore losers are now starving millions of Afghans.     

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      But the risks and consequences of the US Cold War on Russia are of a different order. The purpose of any war is to defeat your enemy. But how can you defeat an enemy that is explicitly committed to respond to the prospect of existential defeat by destroying the whole world?

      Mutually Assured Destruction

      This is in fact part of the military doctrine of the US and Russia, who together possess over 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons. If either of them faces existential defeat, they are prepared to destroy human civilization in a nuclear holocaust that will kill Americans, Russians and neutrals alike.           

      In June 2020, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree stating, “The Russian Federation reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in response to the use of nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction against it and/or its allies… and also in the case of aggression against the Russian Federation with the use of conventional weapons, when the very existence of the state is put under threat.”

      US nuclear weapons policy is no more reassuring. A decades-long campaign for a US “no first use” nuclear weapons policy still falls on deaf ears in Washington.

      The 2018 US Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) promised that the US would not use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state. But in a war with another nuclear-armed country, it said, “The United States would only consider the use of nuclear weapons in extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States or its allies and partners.” 

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      The 2018 NPR broadened the definition of “extreme circumstances” to cover “significant non-nuclear attacks,” which it said would “include, but are not limited to, attacks on the US, allies or partner civilian population or infrastructure, and attacks on US or allied nuclear forces, their command and control, or warning and attack assessment.” The critical phrase, “but are not limited to,” removes any restriction at all on a US nuclear first strike.     

      So, as the US Cold War against Russia and China heats up, the only signal that the deliberately foggy threshold for the US use of nuclear weapons has been crossed could be the first mushroom clouds exploding over Russia or China. 

      For our part in the West, Russia has explicitly warned us that it will use nuclear weapons if it believes the US or NATO are threatening the existence of the Russian state. That is a threshold that the US and NATO are already flirting with as they look for ways to increase their pressure on Russia over the war in Ukraine.

      To make matters worse, the twelve-to-one imbalance between US and Russian military spending has the effect, whether either side intends it or not, of increasing Russia’s reliance on the role of its nuclear arsenal when the chips are down in a crisis like this.

      NATO countries, led by the United States and UK, are already supplying Ukraine with up to 17 plane-loads of weapons per day, training Ukrainian forces to use them and providing valuable and deadly satellite intelligence to Ukrainian military commanders. Hawkish voices in NATO countries are pushing hard for a no-fly zone or some other way to escalate the war and take advantage of Russia’s perceived weaknesses.

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      Nuclear Risks Escalate 

      The danger that hawks in the State Department and Congress may convince President Joe Biden to escalate the US role in the war prompted the Pentagon to leak details of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s (DIA) assessments of Russia’s conduct of the war to Newsweek’s William Arkin.

      Senior DIA officers told Arkin that Russia has dropped fewer bombs and missiles on Ukraine in a month than US forces dropped on Iraq in the first day of bombing in 2003, and that they see no evidence of Russia directly targeting civilians. Like US “precision” weapons, Russian weapons are probably only about 80% accurate, so hundreds of stray bombs and missiles are killing and wounding civilians and hitting civilian infrastructure, as they do just as horrifically in every US war. 

      The DIA analysts believe Russia is holding back from a more devastating war because what it really wants is not to destroy Ukrainian cities but to negotiate a diplomatic agreement to ensure a neutral, non-aligned Ukraine. 

      But the Pentagon appears to be so worried by the impact of highly effective Western and Ukrainian war propaganda that it has released secret intelligence to Newsweek to try to restore a measure of reality to the media’s portrayal of the war, before political pressure for NATO escalation leads to a nuclear war.

      Since the US and the USSR blundered into their nuclear suicide pact in the 1950s, it has come to be known as Mutual Assured Destruction, or MAD. As the Cold War evolved, they cooperated to reduce the risk of mutual assured destruction through arms control treaties, a hotline between Moscow and Washington, and regular contacts between US and Soviet officials. 

      But the US has now withdrawn from many of those arms control treaties and safeguard mechanisms. The risk of nuclear war is as great today as it has ever been, as the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists warns year after year in its annual Doomsday Clock statement. The Bulletin has also publisheddetailed analyses of how specific technological advances in US nuclear weapons design and strategy are increasing the risk of nuclear war. 

      Peace Dividend Lost

      The world understandably breathed a collective sigh of relief when the Cold War appeared to end in the early 1990s. But within a decade, the peace dividend the world hoped for was trumped by a power dividend. US officials did not use their unipolar moment to build a more peaceful world, but to capitalize on the lack of a military peer competitor to launch an era of US and NATO military expansion and serial aggression against militarily weaker countries and their people.

      As Michael Mandelbaum, the director of East-West Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, crowed in 1990, “For the first time in 40 years, we can conduct military operations in the Middle East without worrying about triggering World War III.” Thirty years later, people in that part of the world may be forgiven for thinking that the US and its allies have in fact unleashed World War III, against them, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Somalia, Pakistan, Gaza, Libya, Syria, Yemen and across West Africa.

      Russian President Boris Yeltsin complained bitterly to President Clinton over plans for NATO expansion into Eastern Europe, but Russia was powerless to prevent it. Russia had already been invaded by an army of neoliberal Western economic advisers, whose “shock therapy” shrank its GDP by 65%, reduced male life expectancyfrom 65 to 58, and empowered a new class of oligarchs to loot its national resources and state-owned enterprises.

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      President Vladimir Putin restored the power of the Russian state and improved the Russian people’s living standards, but he did not at first push back against US and NATO military expansion and war-making. However, when NATO and its Arab monarchist allies overthrew the Gaddafi government in Libya and then launched an even bloodier proxy war against Russia’s ally Syria, Russia intervened militarily to prevent the overthrow of the Syrian government. 

      Russia worked with the US to remove and destroy Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles, and helped to open negotiations with Iran that eventually led to the JCPOA nuclear agreement. But the US role in the coup in Ukraine in 2014, Russia’s subsequent reintegration of Crimea and its support for anti-coup separatists in Donbass put paid to further cooperation between Obama and Putin, plunging US-Russian relations into a downward spiral that has now led us to the brink of nuclear war.

      The Cold War Is Back  

      It is the epitome of official insanity that US, NATO and Russian leaders have resurrected this Cold War, which the whole world celebrated the end of, allowing plans for mass suicide and human extinction to once again masquerade as responsible defense policy. 

      While Russia bears full responsibility for invading Ukraine and for all the death and destruction of this war, this crisis did not come out of nowhere. The US and its allies must reexamine their own roles in resurrecting the Cold War that spawned this crisis, if we are ever to return to a safer world for people everywhere.

      Tragically, instead of expiring on its sell-by date in the 1990s along with the Warsaw Pact, NATO has transformed itself into an aggressive global military alliance, a fig-leaf for US imperialism, and a forum for dangerous, self-fulfilling threat analysis, to justify its continued existence, endless expansion and crimes of aggression on three continents, in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Libya. 

      If this insanity indeed drives us to mass extinction, it will be no consolation to the scattered and dying survivors that their leaders succeeded in destroying their enemies’ country too. They will simply curse leaders on all sides for their blindness and stupidity. The propaganda by which each side demonized the other will be only a cruel irony once its end result is seen to be the destruction of everything leaders on all sides claimed to be defending.

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      This reality is common to all sides in this resurgent Cold War. But, like the voices of peace activists in Russia today, our voices are more powerful when we hold our own leaders accountable and work to change our own country’s behavior. 

      If Americans just echo US propaganda, deny our own country’s role in provoking this crisis and turn all our ire towards President Putin and Russia, it will only serve to fuel the escalating tensions and bring on the next phase of this conflict, whatever dangerous new form that may take. 

      But if we campaign to change our country’s policies, de-escalate conflicts and find common ground with our neighbors in Ukraine, Russia, China and the rest of the world, we can cooperate and solve our serious common challenges together. 

      A top priority must be to dismantle the nuclear doomsday machine we have inadvertently collaborated to build and maintain for 70 years, along with the obsolete and dangerous NATO military alliance. We cannot let the “unwarranted influence” and “misplaced power” of the military-industrial complex keep leading us into ever more dangerous military crises until one of them spins out of control and destroys us all.

      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

      Democracy and France’s Theater of the Absurd

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      In Sunday’s first round presidential race, even though the ultimate result is to set up a repeat of the 2017 runoff between the incumbent Emmanuel Macron and the xenophobic candidate Marine Le Pen, there were two enormous surprises. The first was the utter humiliation of the two political groupings that traded turns at running the country for the past 70 years. Valérie Pécresse, the candidate of the Republican party (the establishment right), ended up with 4.7% of the vote. The Socialists, heirs to the Mitterrand legacy and the last of the dominant parties to hold the office, didn’t even reach 2% (they got 1.75% of the vote), less than the communist candidate who got just over 2%.

      The second surprise was the strong showing of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a non-establishment leftist, who, it now transpires, would have overtaken Le Pen had any of the other candidates dropped out to line up behind him. It’s a moral victory of sorts for voters on the left, who have now been excluded from the final round of the two most recent presidential elections. The compensation is that, with legislative elections looming in the immediate aftermath of the April 24th presidential face-off, it will inevitably lead to some kind of intriguing regrouping or redefinition.

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      In its reporting on the election, The New York Times focused on the one issue that is of most interest to its American readers: the impact on what it calls the “Western unity” US President Joe Biden has so solidly engineered in his response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The Times foreign editor, Roger Cohen expresses the fear that, “in the event of an ultimate Le Pen victory” France will become “anti-NATO and more pro-Russia.” He adds that this “would cause deep concern in allied capitals, and could fracture the united trans-Atlantic response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.” In other words, make no mistake about it, The New York Times is rooting for Macron.

      Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Anti-NATO:

      Opposed to the ideal the United States government imagines for Europe, defining it as a continent composed of free, enlightened democracies irremediably dependent — both economically and militarily — on the benevolent leadership of a powerful American Deep State and the sincere brotherly love offered by the American military-industrial complex.

      Contextual note

      The Times may have reason to worry. While the odds still favor Macron, Le Pen could possibly duplicate Donald Trump’s incredible overcoming of the odds in 2016 when he won the US presidency, and largely for the same reasons. Macron has been a contested leader, branded by opponents on the left and right as the “president of the rich.” Hillary Clinton similarly suffered from her image of being a tool of her Wall Street donors. There comes a point in every nation’s life when the people seem ready to take a chance with what appears to reasonable people as a bad bet.

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      Perhaps that time has come for France. Its electors exercised what they call “republican discipline” against far-right politicians when Jacques Chirac defeated Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie, in 2002. He harvested 82% of the vote to Le Pen’s 18%. In 2017, though Macron was still an unknown entity with no serious support from either of the major political groupings, the young man easily defeated the far-right candidate with 64% of the vote to Le Pen’s 36%.

      Prognosticating statisticians might simply follow the curve and assume that the downward slope will lead this time to a 50-50 election. They may be right. But the reason lies less in an arithmetical trend than in the growth of a largely non-partisan populist revolt directed against what is perceived to be an occult power establishment comprised of powerful industrialists, bankers, unrepresentative parties, corrupt politicians and a political class marked by an attitude of subservience to the American empire. Macron, the former Rothschild banker, has himself tried to burnish his image as a neutral, pan-European visionary who seeks to break free from the chokehold held by the power brokers of Washington DC, Arlington, Virginia and Wall Street. His attempts to negotiate with Vladimir Putin before and after the Russian invasion were undoubtedly designed to bolster that image.

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      The explanation everyone likes to give for Marine Le Pen’s success in distancing her rivals – including fellow xenophobe, Eric Zemmour – is her focus on inflation. James Carville may be applauding from afar. It is, after all “the economy, stupid.” The issue has been there throughout Macron’s term. It was the COVID lockdown and not Macron’s policies that cut short the dramatic “yellow vest” movement that was still smoldering when the pandemic struck. The French have not forgotten their own need for economic survival while living in a society in which the rich keep getting richer. Voters remember Macron’s joyous elimination of the wealth tax and the alacrity with which he announced higher gas taxes would fill the gap.

      A musician I work with regularly told me recently: “I’m not voting in the first round, but I’ll vote against Macron in the second round.” In other words, of the possible rivals in the second round – Le Pen (far right), Mélenchon (progressive left), some even predicted Valérie Pécresse (right) – he would have voted for any one of them, just to eliminate Macron. I don’t believe he’s a racist, but he is now ready to be voting for a woman who has put xenophobia at the core of her political program.

      Historical note

      If we tally up the scores of the candidates who are clearly anti-NATO — without including Macron who keeps his distance but adheres to the US alliance in the current campaign against Russia — the total climbs towards 60%. Historically, France is the only European country to have declared independence from NATO, when De Gaulle withdrew from NATO’s military structure and banished all NATO installations from the nation’s territory in 1966.

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      Roger Cohen’s and The Times’ concern may be justified, even if Macron wins the election. Even more so if the results are close. Very few commentators, even here in France, have begun trying to tease out what’s likely to emerge from June’s legislative elections. With the two traditional establishment parties on the ropes and utterly leaderless, is there any chance that a reassuringly “coherent order” dear to establishment politicians might reappear? Even if Macron wins, he never really managed to assemble a stable majority in his first term. The real questions now are these: among the defeated, who will talk to whom? And who will even grudgingly accept to defer to whose leadership? If Le Pen wins, it is unlikely she will be able to muster anything resembling a loyal majority. It is often said that “the French voters’ heart is on the left, but their vote is on the right.” With a president so far to the right, the voters won’t deliver a presidential majority in parliament, as they have so often done in the past.

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      Like the US and the UK, France’s democratic institutions have become profoundly dysfunctional. In no way does the political class even attempt to implement the “will of the people.” The globalized economy, with its arcane networks of power, had already diminished the meaning of democracy. The US is now consciously splitting in two that same globalized economy through its campaign of sanctions against Russia, possibly as a broader strategic move designed to create a degree of chaos that will ultimately embarrass its real enemy, China.

      That radical split points in one direction: militarizing even further an economy already dominated by military technology. And as we have seen, a militarized economy means an increasingly militarized society, in which surveillance, propaganda, control and enforced conformity in the name of security cancel any appeal not just to the will, but even to the needs of the people.

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      It is a real pity that Jean-Luc Mélenchon didn’t make it to the second round, if only to enrich a largely impoverished debate. Independently of any of his political orientations concerning the economy or foreign policy, the leader of his party, La France Insoumise (France Unbowed), was already insisting in the previous election five years ago that the nation needed to replace with a 6th Republic an out-of-date 5th Republic created in 1958 by Charles de Gaulle. Mélenchon’s idea of a 6th Republic contained less presidential power and weaker parties, meaning better access for the people.

      A lot of water has flowed under the Pont Neuf since 1958, and neither of the candidates appears interested in reducing presidential powers. But the result of this election demonstrates clearly that both presidential power and the ability of parties to give direction to the politics of the nation have become non-existent as tools of democratic government. The results show that they have reached a point of no return. No one should be surprised to see —  at some point in time after the legislative elections —  France being rocked by a constitutional crisis on the scale of the one Pakistan lived through this past week. At which point, a 6th Republic may emerge from the ashes, Phoenix-like, but with more than a few burnt feathers.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Fair Observer Devil’s Dictionary.]

      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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      Should PR Agencies Not Represent Fossil Fuel Clients?

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      The most basic objectives of public relations (PR) agencies are rather straightforward. They make an impact on the public perception of their clients and increase profits for shareholders. PR agencies work for companies in many sectors and represent these companies on several issues. Some issues resonate well with international norms and expectations, others less so. When PR agencies are perceived to be working against a global good, they are often castigated by  pressure groups and concerned citizens.

      These days, environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria have become important for most businesses and PR agencies are no exception. If businesses use child labor, burn forests or bribe politicians, many suppliers, buyers, investors and other stakeholders stop engaging with them. This focus on ESG has profound implications for PR agencies. Many expect them  to stop taking on clients with poor ESG records. For instance, some demand that PR agencies should stop taking on fossil fuel companies such as Chevron or Shell as clients.

      Such an argument raises key questions. As businesses, should PR agencies shut off a key source of revenue? What if they go bust? Are PR job losses desirable? Many businesses cause environmental damage. Should PR agencies also not accept mining companies and automobile manufacturers as clients? Should the burden of responsibility of accepting or not accepting clients rest on individual PR agencies?

      Public Pressure on Public Relations

      The outcry against PR agencies acting for fossil fuel companies has a context. Many believe that these agencies have downplayed scientific data revealing the scale of climate change to help the cause of their clients. Recently, a global coalition of over 450 climate scientists signed a letter calling on PR agencies and advertising firms to end relations with fossil fuel companies. These scientists want them to get behind legislation for climate change mitigation.

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      In 2021, a study highlighted hundreds of elaborate campaigns purportedly designed by PR agencies to hinder climate action. Their clients include Shell, Chevron and other fossil fuel entities. Around the same time, the Clean Creatives collective published an open letter calling on Edelman, the world’s largest PR agency,  to end the ‘greenwashing’ of fossil fuel clients. 

      Edelman’s response to the climate emergency emphasized working with partners to accelerate climate action, develop best practices, and hold clients as well as itself accountable for mitigating climate change. The agency also promised many other changes but stopped short of dropping its energy clients.

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      The Pickle Over Climate Change

      To casual observers, these actions by Edelman might be indicative of an industry that uncompromisingly prioritizes profit above ethical standards. Despite the unquestionably sales-driven nature of the business, such a conclusion is too simplistic and a bit unfair. Like other sectors, PR has professional bodies that set ethical standards for the industry. Ethical competence is a prerequisite for membership. Of these, the International Public Relations Association’s (IPRA) code of conduct is one of the most comprehensive. Among its many provisions, the code states that practitioners must not intentionally disseminate false or misleading information.

      Last November’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) inspired IPRA to form a chapter to heighten professional knowledge of climate-related issues. In doing so, the organization seeks to enable members “to play a valuable part in furthering communications aspects of climate change.” Neither IPRA nor this specific chapter urge PR professionals to cease business with fossil fuel clients, making it unlikely that Clean Creatives and climate change scientists will stop criticizing them.

      PR agencies are in a bind. When they work with fossil fuel producers, they have to abide by a code of conduct that might limit what they can do for their clients. The other option for PR agencies is to drop these clients altogether.

      Dropping fossil fuel companies might not be an entirely good idea though. If Shell sets its target of becoming a net-zero energy business by 2050, PR agencies could help. From developing communications strategies to running press offices, these agencies can help achieve this goal. They can also help in a crisis. Crisis communications helped citizens after  an oil spill off the coast of Peru.

      Ethics Matter and Might Be Good Business

      Any PR professional worth their salt knows that emphasizing the industry’s ethical charters and practices alone is unlikely to cut it with climate activists. For them, such is the severity of the climate emergency that PR agencies should just cease working with fossil fuel companies. Finding a way forward that will satisfy all sides, and suitably addresses climate change communication, remains challenging.

      For starters, some consultants may need to get better at managing some of their clients’ expectations. PR agencies might consider the value of emphasizing how they don’t support harmful aspects of oil and gas production. It goes without saying that PR agencies do promote oil and gas producers in Nigeria. However, they do not represent illegal oil refineries on the continent, which cause much pollution and drain state coffers. The risk of expulsion from trade associations and the fall of a leading firm like Bell Pottinger are very real for PR agencies. These businesses might upset their critics but they play by their own rules and do not cross thin lines in the sand.

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      Many PR agencies might also find inspiration from ESG business successes. In the 1990s, the UK’s Co-Operative Bank ran a powerful advertisement, promising not to invest their “customers’ money in countries with oppressive regimes.” This advertisement was part of a series that highlighted the bank’s commitment to ethical finance. The bank’s compelling ads had hard hitting and often harrowing content about landmines, fossil fuels and more. In 2021, the Co-Operative Bank was  named the best high street bank for ESG. Such sort of clients might represent the future of PR agencies.

      Fossil Fuels Are Legal and Essential, So Are Their PR Needs

      It is unlikely that PR agencies could run advertisements like the Co-Operative Bank for all their clients. Such campaigns would certainly not work for oil and gas producers. Giving them up as clients might not be the right business move. In fact, if PR agencies did  what the likes of Clean Creatives say and jettisoned these clients, climate change would still go on.

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      The Russia-Ukraine conflict provides a timely reminder that fossil fuels still power the global economy. As essential players in the global economy, oil and gas producers need strategic communications support. They are not Colombian cartels operating in the shadow economy. If nothing else, these companies have to maintain crisis communications preparedness for public interest reasons. What happens if there is an oil spill? How does an oil company communicate about such a spill to the public? As long as we depend on oil for cars and on gas for power, PR agencies have a role to play for bona fide legal businesses.

      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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      Virtual Reality is Impossible, Like Perpetual Motion

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      Over a hundred years ago, most scientific evidence pointed toward an impending invention which would change the world, encapsulated in the paradoxical expression “perpetual motion.”  Ultimately that invention proved to be impossible because of the brand-new scientific discovery that energy cannot be created nor destroyed.

      Nowadays, a similarly profitable fantasy builds on a similarly paradoxical expression: “virtual reality” (VR).  Turns out Nature says VR won’t succeed either, because VR will inevitablyinduce “simulator sickness,” as it always has.

      The Industrial Revolution started with steam, allowing fuel (coal) to do the work of many men.  As the technology improved, more and more power became available. Part of that power came from burning more coal. Another part came from improved mechanical efficiency, that is by recovering and reusing waste heat, force and momentum.  Many tinkerers were convinced that by using clever mechanical trickery, such as lifting weights over here in order to drop them on lever-arms over there, engines could in fact “recover” more energy than went in.  Evidence made this hypothesis reasonable, because the trend of recovered energy had been rising upward steadily for decades. Hopefully it could pass 100%.

      The idea behind perpetual motion was that if the trick worked — that if a machine could essentially harvest its own momentum to keep itself running forever — then even a tiny excess of power could be amplified and scaled, and no one would need to burn actual fuel any more.

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      Back then physics and physicists didn’t really exist, but thoughtful people ever since da Vinci have known perpetual motion was a fantasy. A hundred years ago, they proved it scientifically by finding a deeper principle at work, one which absolutely limited the amount of energy in play. The new science said that energy is not created, not destroyed, and certainly not free.  The total energy must be “conserved” (kept fixed).  No free lunch from Nature.  But optimistic tinkerers kept trying anyway, until the US Patent office stopped allowing applications altogether, killing the “technology” for good.

      Virtual Reality or Unreal Virtuality?

      That fantasy repeats itself with so-called “virtual reality.” According to the evidence, VR gets better every year.  An extrapolation of that trend would let VR replace the boring physical world we’re usually stuck in, literally creating whole new universes (or metaverses) and whole new streams of revenue, almost out of nothing. Free reality.

      I know VR cannot work because I happen to know how nervous systems work. New technology won’t fix that mismatch, but at least new research explains it.  That research explains both human and machine learning in the same terms; neuroscience and data science account for both as signal bandwidth. So formerly fuzzy questions about how brains work now have mathematically absoluteanswers.  In the case of VR, as with creating energy, it turns out there are absolute limits on what brains can and can’t do, limits not provable before.

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      There are many ways to prove that VR makes people sick; two will do for now.  One involves how different senses mix together in the brain.  The other involves how much time a brain takes to mix and make sense of them.

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      Vertebrate brains evolved 500 million years ago to do exactly one thing, a task which even now is far more difficult than memory or speech: making 3D pictures out of tiny input pulses (a computational process called “tomography”).  Our everyday experience bears this out. The sensory inputs into our bodies (and outputs from nerves into the brain) come from eyeballs, eardrums, taste and smell receptors, and especially from millions of vibration-sensors spread throughout the body. Airborne sound hits ears and skin together, and our brains combine them into a single unified experience so solid and believable that we know for sure the world exists, even behind us, even when we can’t see it. Lived sensory experience is unified by the hardware of our brain: that’s how brains work and what they do. Neuroscientists call the process “sensory fusion.”

      Obviously, a brain fabricating a single unified experience is the opposite of fabricating two inconsistent, competing experiences, which is what VR forces on our brains.  For example, a gamer’s eyes may be convinced that he is flying high-G rolls inside a fighter plane aloft, because VR is so good at creating visual illusions, making every visible cue consistent with all the rest….looming, moving, twisting, occluding, dropping, all synchronized so the visual world makes 3D sense.

      But vision isn’t everything to brains, not even half. In the gamer’s case, all the other senses agree that the body is not moving or flying, but sitting in a chair. Neural signals from the inner ear, the legs, the gut, the spine all confirm no barrel-rolls, no upside-down, no special forces pulling or pushing.  No jet engine sounds rattling the body, just injected in the ears.  In this configuration roughly half the brain is convinced the body is quite still, the other half convinced it’s flying hard and fast.  A brain can’t hold such a deep contradiction for very long, so “simulator sickness” makes the gamer nauseous. That problem hasn’t changed in 40 years, and won’t, ever, because brains can only feel one reality at a time, and the real reality is always centered in your gut, regardless of what the eyeballs say.

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      Vision and motion

      Another insoluble problem with VR is how fast it responds to self-motion. In the regular real world (no VR yet), every time you move your body, neck, head, or eyeballs, the image into your eyeballs (and onto your retina) changes with that motion.  To make its picture of the world, the brain anticipates the physical shift before it moves its muscles, and uses that anticipation to predict what it will see. The brain uses an interactiveprocess of continual exploration and zooming (neuroscience buzzword: “sensory contingencies”). Because the brain makes plans, then sends pulses., And then the head and eyes begin to move., The brain therefore creates internal expectations long before any motion could be visible from outside.

      But at best VR can measure your self-motion from the outside, after the fact.  It can’t measure things which haven’t happened yet. (Even access to your brainwaves would not solve this problem, since even brain waves are merely delayed traces of yet smaller and more subtle processes). So even an ideal VR response would be fatally delayed, relative to how your eyes and brain normally work.  What VR shows your eyeballs is not exactly what would come from a real world, but milliseconds slower, and only approximate. The faster you move your head and eyes, the more weirdly a fake world slips under them.

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      The core problem is not with VR, but with brains themselves because their task is nearly impossible already. It’s clear most humans see the world in high-resolution (HDMI or better in space, seamless motion in real time). But synthesizing high-resolution 3-D moving images is hard even for supercomputers and MRI machines. It’s even harder for the brain to synthesize so much data (teravoxels) if it gets a million pulses per second of input from two jiggling spheres of jelly (the eyeballs). That’s about a million data points synthesized for each single input pulse.  It’s a miracle that Nature can leverage such internal fakery, then erase the artifacts so perfectly the result seems not merely realistic, but absolutely real. Unfortunately for VR, that miracle is utterly dependent on the 3-D world actually being there. There is no mathematical way to make a consistent world-image from partial, delayed, corrupted data injected into only part of a brain’s input stream, while ignoring all the rest. Our brains need real-live 3D data like our lungs need air, and no amount of hype will change that fact.

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