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A History of Indian Conservatism
by Philippa Kaur 23 December 2020, 11:03
At the time of independence from British rule in 1947, India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, adopted a mode of governance that came to be known as Nehruvian socialism. State control of industrial production and government interference in all spheres of life came to define this era and, indeed, the entire Indian political and intellectual landscape. Social mobility became virtually impossible without having the right connections or lineage, while a lumbering, deeply corrupt bureaucracy — the so-called “License Raj” — further handicapped the fledgling economy. Nehru’s descendants, including his daughter Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv Gandhi, both of whom served as prime ministers, further reinforced the socialist legacy.
The economic climate changed somewhat during Prime Minister Narasimha Rao’s tenure, when his finance minister, Manmohan Singh, carried out a series of long-overdue structural reforms in 1991 to spur economic growth by liberalizing Indian markets.
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A notable holdout to the near-total Nehruvian consensus was the Swatantra Party, committed to equality of opportunity of all people “without distinction of religion, caste, occupation, or political affiliation.” Created in 1959 by C. Rajagopalachari as an alternative to Nehru’s increasingly socialist and statist outlook, the party envisioned that progress, welfare and happiness of the people could be achieved by giving maximum freedom to individuals with minimum state intervention. Perceived to be on the economic right of the Indian political spectrum, Swatantra was not based on a purely religious understanding of Indic culture, unlike the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Jana Sangh.
Jaitirth “Jerry” Rao, a former Citigroup honcho, MPhasis CEO and presently chairman of the Value Budget Housing Corporation, in his 2019 book, “The Indian Conservative: A History of Indian Right-Wing Thought,” explores the philosophical roots of modern Indian conservatism in five domains: economic, cultural, social, political and aesthetic. The book clearly and concisely conveys the intellectual underpinnings of conservative thought based on indigenous traditions and culture. True conservatives advocate for evolution and not revolution, and the idea that conservative thinking is static, frozen and fixated on a Utopian golden past is a caricature designed by detractors, according to Rao.
In this guest edition of The Interview, Vikram Zutshi talks to Jaitirth Rao about what it means to be an Indian conservative today, about the history of right-wing thought, and the conflicts in Kashmir and with China.
The text was lightly edited for clarity.
Vikram Zutshi: What is your personal understanding of conservatism? Can you give us a timeline of conservative thought in the Indian context?
Jerry Rao: Conservatism is more a way of looking at the world than a philosophy. In politics, conservatives support gradual, peaceful, constitutional change where care is taken not to abandon the good things inherited from our ancestors. In aesthetics, conservatives have a love for old established traditions in music, dance, drama, painting, literature and, above all, in town-planning and architecture. A conservative will always oppose the Corbusier school of town-planning and architecture.
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In economic affairs, conservatives support market-based systems not because they are efficient, which they might very well be. Conservatives support markets because they are time-honored, organic, voluntary institutions evolved by human beings and are predicated on peaceful intercourse, negotiations, bargains and consensus.
Markets have a positive moral dimension as far as conservatives are concerned. Symmetrically, conservatives opposed central planning in economics as it concentrates power and reduces citizens to serfs. Conservatives believe in a minimalist state which is strong. They do not believe in anarchic libertarianism. Conservatives believe in cultural cohesion in societies. We believe that the culture we have inherited from our ancestors, while always in need of modest change, is nevertheless a precious legacy which we need to preserve and hand on to our descendants intact or in an enhanced way. It is not to be abruptly jettisoned.
The same spirit pervades apropos of the environment. Our forests, water bodies and landscapes are sacred trusts given to us, which we need to pass on as trustees rather than as short-term owners. Conservatives are usually positive toward religion, which is seen as an important cultural inheritance — conservatives are very fond of religious music, liturgy, chanting, painting, architecture, sculpture, dance and ritual — and also as being a very successful part of the moral cement that a society needs.
The roots of Indian conservatism go back to the Shanti Parva of the Mahabharata and the Tirukkural. Modern Indian political conservatism has had two fathers: Ram Mohan Roy and Bankim Chandra Chatterjee. The intellectual descendants include Rajagopalachari, Minoo Masani on one side, and Deen Dayal on the other. In economics, the tradition of Naoroji and Dutt has been carried forward by Shenoy all the way down to contemporary market-friendly economists. In aesthetics, the traditions of Bharata Muni, Sarangadeva, Abhinavagupta and Appayya Dikshitar have been carried forward by Ananda Coomaraswamy all the way down to the present efflorescence.
Zutshi: To what degree does the current government in India embody conservative ideals?Rao: The present government of India, in political terms, is the very embodiment of conservatism. The Constitution of India represents a gradual constitutional change over the Government of India Act of 1935, which represented gradual constitutional change over previous acts like the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms, the Minto-Morley Reforms, the Indian Councils Act, the Queen’s Proclamation, The EI Company Charter Acts, the Pitt India act and the Regulating Act. We have retained the same constitution for 70 years, unlike Latin American countries which jettison constitutions quite quickly.
Changes to our constitution have been done through a complex amendment process and has been subject to judicial review. While conservatives are not happy with all the changes, we must perforce be happy with the gradual, peaceful, constitutional nature of the changes. No revolutionary changes here.
Now, coming to the current political dispensation, which has been in power for six years, we can state that it is more conservative in character than the previous dispensation. It is not as market-friendly as some conservatives may desire. But it is more market-friendly than the government of the previous 10 years. It is also more scrupulous about constitutional propriety — no outrageous acts like retrospective legislation. In its emphasis on subjects like yoga and Sanskrit, it certainly supports a cultural continuity so dear to conservatives. Its focus on the Ganga River and on solar power demonstrates a sense of trusteeship about the environment.
Principally, the government needs to be more market-friendly and it needs to dismantle large parts of the intrusive administrative state which it has inherited. It needs to hasten slowly in this area. I cannot think of any serious blunders.
Zutshi: At what juncture did your political philosophy begin to crystallize? To what extent does Indian conservatism resemble its American and British counterparts?Rao: This took some time to grow. Reading a biography of Edmund Burke in 1975 may have been when it started. It has taken years, even decades to crystallize. There is an amazing synchronicity between the ideas of the Shanti Parva of the Mahabharata, the ideas of the Tirukkural, the ideas embedded in the Apastamba Sutra of the Yajur Veda and the ideas of Edmund Burke, Benjamin Disraeli and Roger Scruton. In modern times, great Indian conservatives like Ram Mohan, Bhandarkar, Bankim, Rajaji and Masani acknowledged their debts both to the classical Indian texts and to Burke.
Zutshi: There is much noise in the Indian media about the silencing and incarceration of dissenters. Many activists and academics have been locked up without due process, for example, Varavara Rao, Sudha Bharadwaj, Hany Babu and others. Do you think such draconian measures are justified?
Rao: The Indian state and republic have been under attack. The previous prime minister, Manmohan Singh, emphatically stated that Maoists were India’s greatest security threat. So there is a continuity between governments in the threat perception. We are dealing with people who wanted to destroy bourgeois democracy from within. In recent times, the alliance between Maoists and jihadists who are bent on an Islamic reconquest of India has led to considerable concern and alarm. Those who supply the ideological basis for violence against the republic, those who shelter the extremists, those who help the extremists acquire arms and those who create a penumbra of respectability around people who violently murder Indian police personnel and ordinary citizens, have much to answer for.
These ideologies have until now taken advantage of the soft Indian state. They have been foolish. The Indian Republic has contained Naga, Kashmiri and Khalistani separatists and the bomb-throwers and murderers of Naxalbari. Sooner or later, the velvet glove was bound to get a little loose. That is what has happened.
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Zutshi: What is China’s long-term agenda with regards to India? What are we to make of the ongoing aggression between the two powers? Can India afford another war at this point? If not, what are its remaining options?
Rao: In my opinion, China’s leaders see India as an irrelevant pinprick. They see America as their natural rival. Having said this, the Chinese do have a desire to break up India and they will try their best to do so. There is no “aggression between the two powers.” There is only Chinese aggression and aggressiveness. I don’t know what we can make of it, except to assume that their expansionist and irredentist stance is not likely to abate. In strictly economic cost-benefit terms, we cannot afford it. But if the other option is servitude and disintegration, they do not leave us with much choice but to resist irrespective of the economic calculus.
Truman articulated the doctrine of “containment” apropos of the Soviet Union. A global coalition along those lines is the answer. We do not have the choice of being non-aligned now. The Soviet Union was far from us and did not attempt to encroach on us or weaken us. China is our neighbor and seems to have decided that we are like Poland of the 1930s. We might need to demonstrate that we are closer to the weak and inefficient Russia which suffered much but still did halt the efficient German juggernaut in the 1940s.
Zutshi: Finally, do you agree with the abrogation of article 370 in Kashmir? More importantly, is the lockdown and curtailment of civil liberties justified?
Rao: Yes. It was a serious anomaly. It was detrimental to Kashmiri women, religious minorities like the Hindus and the Buddhists, Dalits, refugees and so on. It was allowing for the retention of a space for Islamist groups like the ISIS to infiltrate; 370 had to go.
Noisy sections of the valley’s population took the public and publicized position that a self-proclaimed ISIS terrorist was a hero and a martyr. The previous local government either could not or chose not to do anything. When such things happen, any organized state worth its name has to take drastic intrusive action. Let us not forget that Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the American Civil War and Pitt suspended habeas corpus during the Napoleonic Wars.
Zutshi: What will it take to bring Kashmir back to normal again, or is that just a pipe dream?
Rao: The Kashmiri Sunni leadership has to realize that if they do not change, in 40 years, they will resemble the Naga Muivarh faction leaders seeking medical treatment in Delhi and talking gibberish. The rank-and-file Kashmiri Muslims need to realize that they have been fed ridiculous propaganda. Joining Pakistan means joining a failed state that is a bit of an international joke. Given the years and decades of educational damage and brainwashing that has happened, this is not going to be an easy task for the Indian state to accomplish. But slowly, inevitably, inexorably, it will get done.
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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Is Russia Immune to Anti-Semitism?
by Philippa Kaur 22 December 2020, 18:03
A new report on anti-Semitism in Russia for June-September 2020 was published in Moscow in October by the independent Center for Information and Analysis, SOVA. A month earlier, another study by a Russian think tank specializing in public opinion polls, the Levada Center, analyzed Russian attitudes to national minorities as well as to labor migrants. The quarterly report on anti-Semitism, as well as monthly monitoring by SOVA, indicate that Russia will register a similar number of anti-Semitic displays as in 2019 and 2018. In general, offenses related to anti-Semitism have been declining in the country for almost 10 years in a row.
Indeed, judging by this latest data, from January to September, there have been no attacks on Jews in the country, with only a minimal number of anti-Semitic statements made on social media and in the mainstream press. The attempted murder of Rabbi Yuri Tkach, the head of the Jewish community in Krasnodar, would probably be the hate crime of the year. The plot was hatched by activists of a cartoonish and unregistered organization, Citizens of the USSR, who do not recognize official Russian documents, carry old Soviet Union passports and refuse to obey Russian laws. The core of its activists are retired women. All of this has contributed to the fact that the police and the wider society did not take the group seriously.
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Nevertheless, according to the investigation, two Citizens found a potential assassin in September, providing Tkach’s personal data as well as an assembly knife and promising a high position in their organization in case of a “successful liquidation of the rabbi.” Although the assassination attempt was interrupted at this stage — the “killer” turned out to be an operative working undercover — the order itself can be considered real, given that the Soviet Citizens in Krasnodar had previously been distinguished by aggressive anti-Semitism and marginality.
Desirable Minority
In late July vandals damaged over 30 tombstones in the Jewish section of the January 9th Memorial Cemetery in Petersburg. In September, a drunken hooligan shouting anti-Semitic slogans failed to enter the premises of the Shamir community in the east of Moscow, threw a Hanukiah from the porch, tore down the sign with the name of the organization, broke the mailbox and knocked the license plate off the rabbi’s service car. To put these attacks in context, over the same time period, dozens of vandals attacked World War II memorials, monuments to Vladimir Lenin (that still decorate many squares in Russian cities) and even the statue of the great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin in Orsk.
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Overall, the number of anti-Semitic incidents is lower than over the same period last year. All indications are that in 2020, there will also be fewer convictions for crimes previously committed on the grounds of anti-Semitism. On average, this picture is consistent with the previous two years.
The September report by the Levada Center shows that Jews are becoming a more desirable minority compared to other groups like the Chinese, Ukrainians, Chechens, immigrants from Africa, Central Asia and the Caucasus, as well as Roma and migrant workers. The social distance between Jews and the ethnic majority is steadily shrinking. Its coefficient, in which higher values indicate social distrust, is 4.23 points. For comparison, Ukrainians, traditionally close to Russians, score 4.67, with Chechens at 5.21 and 5.83 for the Roma. The positive dynamics of the different components of this coefficient are also impressive. For example, the number of people willing to see Jews as their family members increased by more than six times and as close friends by three.
Of course, there is still a domestic anti-Semitism in Russia, which sometimes slips out even in the utterances of state officials. But today, the harsh insults have been replaced by other, more subtle ones that could even be taken as a sign of respect. Russian journalist Anna Narinskaya gives an example of a Jew promoted in a commercial company “because your nation knows how to [handle] money.” This is an improvement on past attitudes when Jews were not hired or admitted to university because Russians didn’t want to study or work with the “people with such surnames.”
This is all the more surprising because the level of nationalism in Russia decreased by only 2% in 11 years. While in 2009 the number of those who would like to implement the idea “Russia for Russians” was 18% and the number of those who were ready to support it “within reasonable limits” was 36%, in 2020 these figures were 19% and 32%, respectively. In this context of a relatively high prevalence of ethnic-majority nationalism, the number of anti-Semitic crimes in Russia has been steadily declining despite the decrease in the number of convictions. Unlike the trends in the West, levels of xenophobia against the Jewish minority are also decreasing.
How can this phenomenon be explained, and why are attitudes toward Jews undergoing such a change? Have people in Russia really become kinder and more tolerant of Jews? And if so, why?
Tolerance and Democracy
The first reason behind this trend is stricter punishment for extremism crimes that has emerged over the past decade. This is an extremely important factor that has replaced impunity of hate-motivated attacks, which prevailed in the Russian public consciousness until the end of the 2000s. This led to a decrease in the number of hate crimes in the country as a whole as well as a lower level of xenophobia.
Second, Russia doesn’t harbor an anti-Israel sentiment, characteristic of Western societies — what can be called the new anti-Semitism. As Narinskaya writes, a decent person in the West cannot say “Jews are inherently bad people,” but they can easily say that “Israel is the creator of the new Holocaust, and Jews all over the world are loyal to it, so I don’t like them.” In Russia, a doctor can legally refuse to admit a woman wearing a hijab, but the story of an Austrian doctor refusing to admit a patient wearing a Star of David “until you equip hospitals in Gaza” would be impossible, according to Narinskaya.
Finally, the third and most important reason is the position of the president. Vladimir Putin, unlike all the previous leaders of the country, has a respectful attitude toward the Jewish community. He publicly congratulates Jews on their religious holidays, has authorized the annual erection of Hanukkah menorahs in Russian cities, including Moscow, and meets regularly with Jewish leaders.
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The latest study on Jewish life in Russia also points to this factor. Its author is the sociologist Alexei Levinson, the head of the sociocultural research department at the Levada Center. Levison writes that the attitude to the Jews in Russia “has become so liberal that they [Jews] have reached the highest echelons of Russian society.” However, “Jews today are not at all euphoric. The community’s fears are based on Russian history, when they were subject to the whims of whoever was running the country.”
“Anti-Semitism goes hand in hand with the history of Jews for ages and ages, and they think these days are just a short interruption of this tradition,” Levinson told The Media Line. He attributes the current decline in anti-Semitic actions by the state to Putin’s personal position, suggesting that Jews in Russia “think that if he changes his mind, or if another less tolerant person takes his place, the whole state apparatus and the public will revert to the usual anti-Semitism.”
Such an eventuality will also remove the restrictive framework in situations involving domestic anti-Semitism, the potential for which is still great and even growing insignificantly. This is indirectly confirmed by Rabbi Alexander Boroda, the president of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia. In June, he stated that he was concerned about the level of latent anti-Semitism in the country. Boroda says that the US State Department report on religious freedom indicates a relatively high level of latent anti-Semitism in Russia, stressing that in 2017-19, the number of Russians who declare themselves as anti-Semites was already at 15%-17%. However, at the moment, these people, for the reasons mentioned above, prefer not to advertise their views in public.
Nathan Sharansky, the former chairman of the Jewish Agency and a political prisoner in Soviet times, believes that “Putin is not suited to Russian democracy, so Jews and other citizens of Russia may be disappointed by the restrictions on freedom.” It is difficult to disagree with him that, in the event of a change in leadership, “anti-Semitism returns to the level it was at for 1,000 years … today’s positive societal views of Jews won’t be enough to stop it. The democratic composition of the country has to be strong enough to fight these pressures.”
*[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.
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What Should Business Expect From Bolivia’s New President?
by Philippa Kaur 21 December 2020, 18:36
On October 18, the Bolivian public went to the polls and elected Luis Arce Catacora as the country’s 67th president in a surprise result that returned the socialist party of former President Evo Morales to power. Morales had previously ruled Bolivia as the leader of the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) between January 2006 and November 2019, when he resigned from office and fled the country under pressure from the military following a controversial general election.
The closeness of that contest — in which the conservative candidate Carlos Mesa missed forcing a runoff against Morales by 0.58% of the official vote tally — meant that 2020 was also expected to be a tight race. In the event, this year’s election saw Arce gain over half a million more votes than Morales had the previous year, with a similar amount bled away from Mesa’s 2019 total, handing Arce an outright victory without the need for a run-off.
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While it would be tempting to see the Arce administration as a continuation of the Morales era, on the campaign trail, the new president repeatedly stated, “I am not Evo Morales.” Since being elected, Arce has made clear that Morales would have “no role” in his government. Nevertheless, with Arce serving as minister of economy and public finance for most of Morales’ tenure, any consideration of what to expect from the new president must take into account his predecessor’s record.
Business Under Morales
The Morales administration presided over a period of considerable economic growth and social development, which saw the rate of extreme poverty drop by more than half, from 48% in 2006 to 23% in 2018, while gross national income (GNI) per capita — a general indicator of prosperity among the population — more than tripled to reach $3,530 in 2019. GDP growth was also continuous and relatively consistent during this period, fluctuating between 3.4% and 6.8% until 2019, when it dipped to 2.2%. Those figures made Bolivia one of the fastest-growing countries in the region for much of Morales’ presidency.
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These changes were partly the result of a policy of nationalizing the petroleum, telecommunications and mining industries, enacted by decree early in Morales’ first year in office and less than two years after 92% of Bolivian voters had supported the nationalization of hydrocarbons during a compulsory referendum. While the country’s revenues from hydrocarbons increased dramatically and provided the funds to support poverty alleviation programs, that approach did not lead to a dramatic fall in foreign direct investment (FDI) in oil and gas extraction or mining, as many expected. In fact, both industries saw significant increases in FDI, which subsequently declined again but never below the levels seen before Morales came into office. Throughout this time, it was Arce overseeing these programs and investment, as well as a process of agricultural development and rural land redistribution, which was followed by both a significant increase in cereal and fisheries production.
It is important to note that a major policy shift occurred toward the latter years of the administration, with Arce himself stating during Morales’ final term that “our nationalisation agenda is over. … we need FDI, and we respect genuine, new private investment. Today FDI makes up 2 percent to 3% of our GDP. We want to double that by 2020.” In 2017, the country signed deals with foreign investors for hydrocarbon exploitation worth $1.6 billion, supplemented by a further $2.5-billion deal the following year.
The fact that the interim presidency of Jeanine Añez, who occupied the office between Morales and Arce, largely coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic makes it incredibly difficult to properly assess its performance, given the massive economic upheaval experienced throughout the region. While the interim government ordered an audit of the previous administration early on, it was soon forced to focus on implementing a range of measures designed to address the closure of businesses and an increase in unemployment.
In October, the interim government reported that the economic damage caused by the pandemic totaled around $5 billion, with an economic contraction of at least 4% expected by the end of 2020. While this unprecedented situation might make an assessment of the interim government difficult, it at least provides some important context for Arce’s approach to business and investment, which will be framed by the need to address the deep economic wounds caused by the pandemic.
Arce’s Approach to Business
As a candidate, Arce highlighted the efficacy of the economic policies pursued during the Morales administration and his intention to continue them. While this has been met with concern among some commentators, the more FDI-friendly latter years under Morales should give some cause for hope for investment in the country. Arce has proposed a drive for industrialization to replace importing foreign products in order to stimulate the internal market and generate more opportunities for locally-based companies. He has also said that he wants to encourage new company formation in Bolivia in order to stimulate employment.
Yet Arce has also said that some form of austerity to deal with the country’s economic woes will be needed, even as he has pledged not to reduce public expenditure. In a sign of his pro-FDI approach, he has also highlighted his desire to tap into Bolivia’s massive and unexploited lithium reserves, at a time when demand for the mineral is skyrocketing in the face of the shift toward electric vehicles. Arce has stated that exploitation of those reserves will demand the help of a “strategic partner” and could pour an additional $2 billion into state coffers over the course of his five-year term.
With the economic uncertainty that continues to swirl due to the ongoing pandemic, it is difficult to draw concrete conclusions about what to expect from the Arce administration, given that it is impossible to know what challenges and obstacles may present themselves in the coming months or years. Nevertheless, his early moves have pointed to a clear desire to stimulate business, with measures taken to provide for deferred credit, refinancing and rescheduling of debts, as well as forbidding additional interest being added to such credit by banks.
What is abundantly clear is that Luis Arce understands how critical FDI is to Bolivia’s future development, and that understanding will surely only have deepened in the context of the economic turmoil that has traversed the globe. With Bolivia boasting a host of investment opportunities and unsaturated markets, and with the new president already highlighting his desire to bring foreign investment into Bolivia’s massive untapped lithium reserves, it seems reasonable to expect that his administration will pursue a significant deepening of FDI even while he maintains the high levels of social spending seen under Evo Morales.
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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Washington’s Sanctions on Turkey Are Another Gift to Putin
by Philippa Kaur 18 December 2020, 10:45
The latest sanctions against Turkey introduced by Washington on December 13 were invoked under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, a US federal law that imposes economic sanctions on Iran, Russia and North Korea. The act came into effect in August 2017. This is the first time it has been used against an ally and, what makes it even more remarkable, an ally who is also a NATO member.
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As reported by AFP, “The sanctions target Turkey’s Presidency of Defense Industries, the country’s military procurement agency, its chief Ismail Demir and three other senior officials. The penalties block any assets the four officials may have in U.S. jurisdictions and bar their entry into the U.S. They also include a ban on most export licenses, loans and credits to the agency.”
Long Anticipated
The decision, long anticipated — and long resisted by President Donald Trump — came about because of Ankara’s refusal to back down from the purchase of the Russian S-400 missile defense system. Turkey announced back in 2017 it was going ahead with the deal, after feeling it had been rebuffed in its efforts to acquire the US Patriot system at what it considered a fair price and by the refusal of the US to allow for a transfer of the system’s technology.
Tied into the politics swirling around the S-400 is the F-35, the stealth fighter jet the sale of which to the United Arab Emirates has caused ripples of anxiety in Israel. And given the ambitions of and mutual animosities between Mohammed bin Zayed, the Abu Dhabi crown prince and de facto UAE ruler, and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, there are, without doubt, similar feelings of anxiety in Ankara, though for different reasons.
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The Americans took the sale of 100 F-35s to Turkey off the table because of concerns that the presence of the S-400 would potentially enable the Russians to acquire in-depth knowledge of the stealth fighter. In July last year, the White House released a statement that said, in part, that “Turkey’s decision to purchase Russian S-400 air defense systems renders its continued involvement with the F-35 impossible. The F-35 cannot coexist with a Russian intelligence-collection platform that will be used to learn about its advanced capabilities.”
It was a decision that President Trump, eyeing the half a billion dollars the deal was worth, only grudgingly agreed to. “It’s not fair,” he said. And he groused: “Turkey is very good with us, very good, and we are now telling Turkey that because you have really been forced to buy another missile system, we’re not going to sell you the F-35 fighter jets. It’s a very tough situation that they’re in, and it’s a very tough situation that we’ve been placed in, the United States.”
Trump, it hardly needs to be said, blamed the Obama administration, claiming his predecessor had blocked the sale. As ever with this president, that’s not true. (For readers who are interested in the actual story, the defense and security site War on the Rocks provides a blow by blow account which can be found here.)
More in Sorrow
Though Erdoğan and Trump have had a good relationship, the US president has no time now for anything other than his increasingly pathetic and forlorn crusade to stay in the White House. He couldn’t be bothered to veto the bipartisan decision to invoke sanctions on Turkey. It was left to the outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to try to paper over the cracks. In a statement couched in a tone of “more in sorrow, than in anger,” Pompeo said: “Turkey is a valued ally and an important regional security partner for the United States,” adding that “we seek to continue our decades-long history of productive defense-sector co-operation by removing the obstacle of Turkey’s S-400 possession as soon as possible.”
The Turks were having none of it. And from them, there was plenty of anger and no sorrow. Calling the decision “inexplicable,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry delivered a blunt rejoinder: “We call on the United States to revise the unjust sanctions (and) to turn back from this grave mistake as soon as possible. Turkey is ready to tackle the issue through dialogue and diplomacy in a manner worthy of the spirit of alliance. (The sanctions) will inevitably negatively impact our relations, and (Turkey) will retaliate in a manner and time it sees appropriate.”
Purring like the proverbial Cheshire cat was Vladimir Putin. The sanctions, though less harsh than might have been anticipated, play well to his strategy of pulling a NATO member, one with the second-largest standing army in the pact, closer to Moscow. Building on initiatives in Syria where Russian and Turkish forces are jointly policing a shaky ceasefire and on the deal the two countries brokered in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the Russian president has further strengthened his hand.
Faced with an already challenging Middle East portfolio, it is yet another Trumpian mess that the incoming president, Joe Biden, and his pick as secretary of state Antony Blinken, will have to contend with.
*[This article was originally published by Arab Digest.]
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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Why Education Is Democracy’s Best Bet
by Philippa Kaur 17 December 2020, 19:23
Joyce Appleby, a renowned historian of the Founding Fathers and Republican ideology, wrote in her 2001 book “Inheriting the Revolution” that the first generation of Americans (1790-1830) believed a good education was a requirement for every responsible citizen. The majority of men, and notably a wide cross-section of women, in the early days of the republic viewed education as a “critical bridge to responsible citizenship,” according to Appleby. They admired the intellect of our Founding Fathers and felt a patriotic duty to elevate their knowledge so they could better understand the leaders and politics of the day, and thus become better citizens.
In 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville captured his enthusiasm for America and its enlightened citizens in his famous book, “Democracy in America,” proclaiming that in the future, “all the world will be America.” How times have changed.
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Following Boris Yeltsin appointment of Vladimir Putin as his successor to the Russian presidency in 1999, after the death of China’s Deng Xiaoping in 1997 and, finally, at the end of the Arab Spring in 2012, the world has seen a reversal of democratic government and the rise of authoritarianism. More than a few Americans would say that had President Donald Trump been reelected to a second term, it is likely that many of our institutions and norms built to protect democracy would have suffered a similar fate. Many were already under assault in his first term, like the politicized Department of Justice.
For the first time in our history, we are witnessing something other than a peaceful, orderly transition of presidential power that was enshrined in our American memory beginning with Washington’s “Farewell Address” in 1796. We have never seen anything like Trump’s assault on the facts, the electoral process and the sacred nature of a free and fair vote for all Americans. How in the world can more than half of Republicans believe the election was rigged?
Disinformation and Lies
The answer — a campaign of relentless disinformation and lies, spread by social media and irresponsible cable TV and talk radio journalists, believed to be true by a large swath of the population, who apparently received little or no instruction in civics and US history. If this debacle teaches us anything it is that civics and history deserve a much bigger role in our primary and secondary education curricula, even at the expense of a reduced STEM (Science Technology Engineering Math) curricula that has been over-emphasized for too long.
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Look at the voting process. Several recent surveys of Republican voters indicate that anywhere from 50% to 80% of them believe the 2020 presidential election was not free and fair. This despite the fact that Christopher Krebs, the former head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure and Security Agency and a former Microsoft cybersecurity expert, stated that the recent election was “the most secure in US history.” Every state and every Republican and Democratic governor has certified their results with only negligible, immaterial changes in vote counts.
Yet we are witnessing a horrific display of threats against state officials — of both parties — who have certified the election results by those who do not trust the voting process. Why? Because they do not understand the voting process and how it is protected. Many do not understand the Electoral College either. This unacceptable in America. We are looking a lot more like a banana republic than the beacon of democracy to the rest of the world. Clearly America’s reputation has suffered terribly around the globe.
The vitriol and emotion, amplified and reinforced on cable TV and social media, builds continuously until it drowns out rational thought. These conditions — extreme ideologies, absence of compromise and bipartisanship and the threat of domestic terrorism created as a result — are a major threat to our republic. Left unchecked, the situation will worsen and could destroy us if we don’t act immediately. Let’s hope and pray that nobody gets hurt as a result of these mindless protests dangerously getting close to becoming violent.
There are some short-term political and economic solutions to mitigate our divisions. Not the focus of this essay, but initiatives like publicly-financed campaigns to take “dark money” out of politics will go a long way to bringing the parties together. Economic policies to rebuild the middle class and reverse the growth of inequality will foster a shared prosperity to reduce fear and anxiety amongst a large portion of our population.
However, these political and economic solutions will not take hold unless we begin to restore the health of our underlying culture and start to remember who we were as Americans, and who we need to be going forward. It starts and ends with an informed electorate. In times of crisis, we look to history — and those who made it into history books for all the right reasons — to instruct us in a time of need.
A Time of Need
The 19th-century thinker Horace Mann often called the founding father of public education in America called out the importance of an educated public to the health of a democratic government: “A republican form of government, without intelligence in the people, must be, on a vast scale, what a mad-house, without superintendent or keepers, would be on a small one.” Even before Mann, Thomas Jefferson offered similar wisdom: “Ignorance and despotism seem made for each other, [but if the new nation could] enlighten the people generally … tyranny and the oppressions of mind and body will vanish, like evil spirits at the dawn of the day.”
Regarding the importance of a strong civics curriculum in our schools, we have George Washington stating, on the one bookend of US history: “A primary object should be the education of our youth in the science of government. In a republic, what species of knowledge can be equally important? And what duty more pressing than communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of the country?”
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Echoing similar opinions some 244 years later as the world’s longest-enduring democratic, self-governing republic, is Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts: “But in the ensuing years [following the ratification of the Constitution], we have come to take democracy for granted, and civic education has fallen by the wayside. In our age, when social media can instantly spread rumor and false information on a grand scale, the public’s need to understand our government, and the protections it provides, is ever more vital.”
This is quite a commentary on the importance of education generally, and civics specifically, to the health and continued survival of “American exceptionalism.” Beyond the voting process and the Electoral College, how well does the public understand how government is structured, how it works? The Annenberg Public Policy Center reported the results of a broad survey of Americans and found that only one in four Americans could name all three branches of the federal government. This an astounding discovery. The same survey found that fewer than 15% of the same cohort could name more than one First Amendment right, with only 37% of respondents able to name a single First Amendment right — their response, by and large, was freedom of speech.
How beneficial would it be to society if everyone knew that our federal government does not sanction any religion, nor prevent anyone from practicing their own beliefs, or not? Freedom of the press, the right to peaceably assemble and the right to petition the government round out all the First Amendment rights.
How are we doing in terms of education outcomes in this age of information overload, hyper-partisanship and emotion crowding out reason and thoughtful reflection? Not so great. According to DoSomething.org — a youth nonprofit whose corporate sponsors include 3M, Ford Foundation, Johnson & Johnson, Google and General Motors among many others — in 1985, the quantity and quality of high school graduates in the US as a group was ranked number one in the world. But by 2015, our high school population was ranked 36 in the world.
Michael Porter at the Harvard Business School has been conducting expansive and thorough surveys since 2011 of more than 2,000 senior-level business leaders, across a wide spectrum of industries in the US, regarding the competitiveness of the US economy. The conclusions of the study team strongly align with the findings of DoSomething.org noted above. Porter has concluded that shared prosperity is a key component of an economy’s competitiveness and that the US economy is failing to deliver shared prosperity to an ever-shrinking middle class.
More importantly, Porter has tied this economic failure to political and cultural failures. To find solutions to our political failures — climate change, inequality, health care and immigration — we must focus on revising election and campaign financing laws. To find answers to our cultural failures — systemic racism, increased polarization, domestic terrorism and crime — we must improve outcomes in K-12 public education as the most critical solution.
Restoring Trust
There is nothing more important to the long-term survival of our democracy than a large investment in education as well as in our defense and military capability. Turns out, that as a nation, we invest about the same amount annually in each, which is surprising to most people. The 2020 defense budget is projected to be about $750 billion, and total spending on public education — elementary plus secondary — in 2015 across the country, according to the National Center for Educational Statistics, was $706 billion. The problem is that education is funded and administered locally and, as a result, there is a wide variation in the quality of its delivery as the DoSomething.org and the Harvard studies both demonstrate.
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The current noise and disinformation around election fraud — a president asking state legislators to overturn a popular vote in choosing electors to the Electoral College and how presidents can lose the popular vote of the nation and still be elected — threaten our democracy. How? In short, even more people begin to lose trust in our government to be fair, and “for the People.” Trust in Congress is already at an historical low point according to Pew Research.
How do we restore this trust? A strong civics education is a good start. Why is this so important? Here’s the deal: The 2016 presidential election came down to fewer than 80,000 voters in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Even though Trump lost the popular vote among over 125 million total voters, his narrow wins in these three battleground states gave him an Electoral College majority of 306 over Hillary Clinton’s 232.
This means that just 0.06% of all the voters in America determined the outcome of the 2016 election. In the 2000 presidential election, it came down to 537 votes in Florida. It is frightening to consider that so few voters could make such a difference, and how easily it might be to corrupt such a small number of voters. If that doesn’t argue for a strong civics curriculum in our schools, what does?
Education is the single most important component of the common good for maintaining the long-term health of our democracy. Why? Because we will not meaningfully transform our political and economic models until we begin to transform our culture. And you do not transform culture by screaming at people. You transform culture by educating people and celebrating rational discourse among all citizens.
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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Britain’s Commitment to Retaining the Spoils of History
by Philippa Kaur 17 December 2020, 15:52
This past weekend, The Guardian unearthed a story from the past that throws an oblique light on the present. It began with an odd couple and led to the creation of a real one. The odd couple is the American actor George Clooney and the current UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Their conflict aired in public at the time marks the origin of the making of a real couple: Clooney and his future bride, the human rights lawyer Amal Alamuddin.
In 2014, Clooney made a public statement about a controversy that had been raging for decades over the presence in London of what are called the Elgin Marbles or, more properly, the Parthenon Sculptures. These are a collection of ancient Greek statues and carvings removed from the most famous monument of ancient Athens by the Scottish aristocrat, Thomas Bruce, earl of Elgin.
This transfer of ancient artwork took place at the beginning of the 19th century, when the Ottoman empire controlled Greece. Lord Elgin was Britain’s ambassador to the Ottoman empire, who clearly was more interested in Greek history and art than the Ottomans themselves. He requested permission to sketch the remains of what had been left in partial ruin and even obtained weakly formulated permission to “to take away any pieces of stone with old inscriptions or figures thereon.”
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He employed artists to do the sketching but took on board personally the business of taking away the pieces with inscriptions and figures. As traditional Muslims, the Ottomans were not merely iconoclasts, but aniconists, denouncing the representation of sentient beings. They may have felt relieved that some of the “graven images” were being removed from a territory they controlled. Bruce dutifully collected what interested him and sent them to England, where for nearly two centuries they have been on display in the British Museum.
While promoting the release of his film “The Monuments Men,” about the Nazi theft of great European artwork, consistent with the theme of the movie Clooney voiced his support for the Greek claim that the artwork should be returned to Athens. Clooney’s remarks drew the attention of London’s mayor at that time, a certain Boris Johnson. Boris felt very strongly that the town over which he presided should be recognized as the rightful owner of the Greek artwork.
Summoning up his patented talent for stale puns and personal put-downs, Johnson told The Telegraph: “Someone urgently needs to restore George Clooney’s marbles.” This turned into a public scandal as Johnson went further, accusing Clooney of “advocating nothing less than the Hitlerian agenda for London’s cultural treasures.”
Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:
Cultural treasures:
Valuable items produced by one culture that are considered even more valuable when pilfered from their original setting and possessed by another culture, in part because they stand as a symbol of former dominance.
Contextual Note
Since those events in 2014, several things have happened. Johnson eventually became Britain’s prime minister, thanks primarily to a series of shambolic episodes surrounding the still ongoing dog-and-pony show Boris put together in 2016, known as Brexit. Clooney married later that year.
The actor explained to The Observer that, after Johnson’s outburst, he needed to be briefed on the status of the controversy surrounding the Parthenon marbles. He accordingly arranged to meet the lawyer who was pleading the case for the return of the artwork. The lawyer’s name was Amal Alamuddin. Without Johnson’s denunciation of an American interloper in London’s business, the now happy couple might never have met.
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In the same edition of The Guardian, a casual reader could have happened upon another article, with the title “Wealthy MP urged to pay up for his family’s slave trade past,” which is also about the British habit of plundering the riches of other regions of the world in the days of empire. The authors, Paul Lashmar and Jonathan Smith, recount how Richard Drax, the Conservative MP for South Dorset, recently inherited a plantation in Barbados that owed its prosperity in former times to the brutal exploitation of African slaves.
Modern voices, including the Barbadian historian of slavery, Sir Hilary Beckles, are now demanding “reparatory justice” for the crimes of Drax’s ancestors. Beckles reminded Drax of the historical truth that “Black life mattered only to make millionaires of English enslavers and the Drax family did it longer than any other elite family.” The Guardian notes that Drax recognizes these facts from his family’s past. But like many Britons, he has been taught to think of history as a subject of study that serves primarily to fascinate schoolchildren with inspiring stories of heroism from the past.
Serious people, as the MP clearly understands, must focus on the issues of the day. Brexit for instance, which Drax has consistently voted for, as well as aggressive Britain’s military combat operations overseas. After all, all modern combat engaged by Britain, essentially in the Middle East, aims at telling darker-skinned people who’s boss. It’s in his family’s tradition.
Historical Note
The Guardian notes that Drax “is probably the wealthiest landowner in the House of Commons, with 5,600 hectares of farmland and woodlands. The estate’s finances are largely opaque to the public gaze and involve at least six trusts and other disconnected financial entities.” With such resources, Drax has had plenty of time to reflect on the logic of history and to develop an understanding of his own position in it, both as the scion of a colonial family and a legislator in a modern democracy.
Drax explains the state of his understanding: “I am keenly aware of the slave trade in the West Indies, and the role my very distant ancestor played in it is deeply, deeply regrettable, but no one can be held responsible today for what happened many hundreds of years ago. This is a part of the nation’s history, from which we must all learn.” With his repeated “deeply,” Drax appears to echo the Lewis Carroll’s Walrus feasting on the oysters he had earlier befriended.
I weep for you,’ the Walrus said:
I deeply sympathize.’
With sobs and tears he sorted out
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Will Bolsonaro Leave Trumpism Behind to Embrace a Biden-led US?
by Philippa Kaur 16 December 2020, 17:15
Joe Biden’s victory in the US election is distressing news for Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s right-wing populist president who admires Donald Trump. Five days after the American media called the race in Biden’s favor, Bolsonaro was yet to congratulate the Democrat. Since Brazil became a democracy under the Sixth Republic in 1985, almost every Brazilian president has formally congratulated the American president-elect within 24 hours of the election. The exception was the 2000 US presidential race because of the Florida recount.
The 2020 election is another exception. Oddly, Bolsonaro has kept a low profile on the topic. On November 4, he expressed support for Trump: “I think everyone has a preference, and I will not argue with anyone. You know my position, it’s clear, and that’s not interference. I have a good policy with Trump, I hope he will be re-elected. I hope.” Officials said that Brasilia was awaiting the US Supreme Court’s decision on the final vote tally before congratulating anyone — which Bolsonaro finally did yesterday, following Biden’s Electoral College win.
The Biden-Bolsonaro equation matters because the United States and Brazil have had strong links for nearly two centuries. The US was the first country to recognize Brazil’s independence in 1822. During the period of the First Republic, from 1889 to 1930, the country’s official name was the Republic of the United States of Brazil. It imported a federal system of governance from the US and tried to associate with its northern counterpart.
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The US-Brazil relationship goes back a long way and is deeper than ideological affinities between the two countries’ presidents. Until China overtook it in 2010, the US was Brazil’s biggest economic partner. A report by the United States Congressional Research Service on US-Brazil trade relations gives insight into American thinking. China’s investments in Latin America and the Caribbean from 2005 to 2019 amounted to $130 billion, with Brazil accounting for $60 billion and Peru for $27 billion. It is no surprise that the report states that there are “strategic and economic reasons for strengthening trade ties” with Brazil.
In 2016, bilateral trade between Brazil and the US hit a low of $23.2 billion in exports and $23.8 billion in imports. In the first year of Bolsonaro’s presidency, exports reached $29.7 billion, a new high since 2008, and imports rose to $30.1 billion, the highest figure since 2014. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic, falling oil prices and restrictions on trade have led to a negative performance. Amcham Brasil, published by the American Chamber of Commerce, tells us that exports and imports have fallen by 25% this year as compared to 2019. The total trade figure from January to September was $33.4 billion, the lowest in 11 years.
A Conservative Alliance
When Biden enters the White House next January, Brazil may suffer a stronger fallout. Bolsonaro aligned very closely with Trump’s highly conservative, anti-globalization agenda. Brazil and the US will have to sort out their personal and strategic differences.
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According to Cristina Pecequilo, author and professor of international relations at the Federal University of São Paulo, the personal bond between Bolsonaro and Trump will be difficult to let go of. Bolsonaro and his minister of international affairs, Ernesto Araujo, have aligned themselves with and have often emulated Trump. They repudiated multilateralism, undermined state actors and attacked intergovernmental organizations. Bolsonaro was critical of the World Health Organization and the United Nations in his speech at the UN General Assembly this year. He was appealing more to his anti-globalization voters back home than his audience at the UN.
“There is this idea that Brazil and the US belong to the West and that they should be a unit. However, when we look north, it is clear that they historically understand it as themselves and Western Europe, what we call the ‘new transatlantic.’ Brazil is out of that equation,” Pecequilo told me in an interview.
Araujo sees the world differently. He is a strong Trump supporter. In 2017, in an article titled “Trump and the West,” Araujo praised the US president, describing him as a crusader against communism, Islam and globalism. Araujo then reposted the text in his blog Metapolítica. In the minister’s view, “The United States was getting into the boat of western decay, surrendering to nihilism, by deidentifying itself, by deculturation, by replacing living history with abstract, absolute, unquestionable values. They were going into that, until Trump.” Last month, he deleted the post.
Such words are unlikely to have gone down well with the Biden team. Therefore, Pecequilo believes that Araujo will have no option but to resign when all legal challenges to the US election result are exhausted.
The Question of the Environment
Apart from ideological differences, environmental and human rights issues will also present major challenges to US-Brazil relations. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have both openly and repeatedly criticized Bolsonaro’s environmental policies and beliefs. On September 29, Biden even took the issue to the first presidential debate, saying that he “would be right now organizing the hemisphere and the world to provide $20 billion for the Amazon, for Brazil to no longer to burn the Amazon. And if it doesn’t stop, it would face significant economic consequences.”
The statement generated an angry response from Bolsonaro, who characterized the comment as “regrettable, disastrous and gratuitous.” Ricardo Salles, Brazil’s environment minister, mocked the speech and questioned whether the amount would be an annual or a single transfer.
Nevertheless, it is necessary to place Biden’s remarks in context, delivered by a candidate reaching out to the more progressive voter. Such rhetoric often comes up in a debate. Biden will behave differently when in the Oval Office. His policy will be more centrist. Gabriel Adam, professor at Brazil’s Superior School of Advertising and Marketing, says: “There will be pressure concerning the Amazon, but there will be no sanctions. Pressure shall come through diplomatic means, but at no time will it harm relations concretely. Brazil has more risks of damaging trade relations with the European Union.”
Bolsonaro’s handling of the environment is a key element for Brazil’s relations with the European Union. In 2019, the EU and Mercosur, the South American trading bloc formed by Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, announced an agreement to boost trade between the two continents. They agreed to eliminate import tariffs on more than 90% of the products. However, the ratification faces opposition by European civil groups and members of the European Parliament. Both criticize Brazil’s environmental policies. Last October, parliamentarians passed a non-binding resolution calling for changes in Mercosur countries’ environmental agenda to ratify the agreement. This is likely to hurt not only Brazil but also Mercosur’s other members.
Historically, the US has not been a great advocate for the environment. Recently, this issue has been growing in importance. At the center of the recent discussion is the Green New Deal, the project conceived by Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markley. Nevertheless, not even Biden and Harris seem to agree on a position on the subject. While Harris claims to support the plan, Biden says the Green New Deal is a “crucial framework” for his own platform but shies away from fully embracing the plan.
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Biden’s climate plan is aggressive when compared to other American presidents. His first duty is to work domestically and demonstrate that the US is no longer a climate change denier. Internationally, the president-elect intends to “name and shame global climate outlaws” through “a new Global Climate Change Report to hold countries to account for meeting, or failing to meet, their Paris commitments and for other steps that promote or undermine global climate solutions.” Brazil is a candidate to be part of this ignominious group.
Brazil faces international outrage over deforestation in the Amazon. It must also decide whether to strengthen the country’s environmental targets under the Paris Climate Agreement by the end of the year. This decision could improve or worsen Brazil’s image on the international arena. On November 4 this year, the US formally withdraw from its commitments under the Paris accords, but the Biden administration promises to rejoin on its first day in office. American action may push Brazil in the same direction, even if unwillingly.
More Pragmatism, Less Ideology
Like their American counterparts, many Brazilians value the US-Brazil relationship. In an interview with CNN Brazil, the Brazilian ambassador to Washington, Nestor Forster, said that a Biden victory would change in the relationship’s emphasis, not its essence. He stressed that he would seek to increase the Brazilian presence in discussions in the US Congress.
Some people in Bolsonaro’s government have shown signs that they understand that changes are about to take place in January 2021. Paulo Guedes, the minister for the economy, said that Biden’s eventual victory would not affect the country’s growth dynamics. An admirer of the Chicago School of minimal state intervention and free competition, Guedes declared that Brazil’s government would “dance with everyone.”
While Bolsonaro’s silence on the US election and failure to recognize Biden as the president-elect has been widely criticized as hostile, the president, unlike his congressman son, Eduardo Bolsonaro, has not openly speculated about voter fraud. While the time it took the Brazilian president to recognize Biden’s win was damaging, it is unlikely to undermine a historic and extremely important relationship where strong mutual interests remain. Yet there are wrinkles to iron over. The Biden administration will not accept open hostility from Bolsonaro.
Despite current ideological differences, common sense will prevail on the American side. Good relations with Brazil will help the US contain China in Latin America. Pecequilo believes that “Biden will keep his pragmatism. We will see localized tensions, but, structurally, Biden will not want to lose the advantages that Trump obtained in the Brazilian market.”
It is Bolsonaro who faces a great dilemma. If Brazil’s ties with the US are further corroded by a blind belief in Trumpism and a lack of pragmatism, the South American giant will emerge as the major loser. As a superpower, it is easier for the US to find other partners and make Brazil a global pariah. Jair Bolsonaro’s choice will have significant consequences for Brazil.
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
India’s League of Internationalists
by Philippa Kaur 16 December 2020, 12:58
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.
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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.
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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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