They have created border problems in the Asian landmass and this has prevented Asian land based trade routes for the last 100 years.Paul wrote:Kaplan says the sea routes are like a freeway in the IOR to NE Asia. They may not care so much about the landroutes to the west of India as the sea lanes.
That is why they are ramping up the navy and not so worried about Afghanistan after the the withdrawal.
...the US oligarchs have done everything in their power to build China *up*. Why would would they want to intefere with what they have wrought? They have thrown millions of fellow Americans into unemployment, stagnated the average American income, cleaned out enmass American unionism, destroyed defined benefit pension plans, and essentially drove American light duty manufacturing extinct and a lot of heavy duty manufacturing as well. And then blamed it on automation. Bill Clinton was a major factor in pushing Chinese trade so it wasn't just the rethuglicans. There will be an accounting some day of what really happened. It won't be pretty.Question is if US is serious on cutting China down to size, why is it not stirring trouble in Western China through it's proxies.
habal, the Chinese "string of pearls" is also true.habal wrote:& all the time our fools were trying to convince us about the *Chinese string of pearls*.svinayak wrote: Uncle has a ring around Asia
Like Birbal Did, India just have to draw longer line by simply outgrowing , ignoring all these lines.ramana wrote:There is double encirclement. One by US and other by PRC. Something to ruminate.
As Air Force One prepared to touch down in the Holy Land last year, I looked out my window and was once again struck by the fact that Israel’s security can be measured in a matter of minutes and miles. I’ve seen what security means to those who live near the Blue Line, to children in Sderot who just want to grow up without fear, to families who’ve lost their homes and everything they have to Hezbollah’s and Hamas’s rockets.
And as a father myself, I cannot imagine the pain endured by the parents of Naftali Fraenkel, Gilad Shaar and Eyal Yifrach, who were tragically kidnapped and murdered in June. I am also heartbroken by the senseless abduction and murder of Mohammed Hussein Abu Khdeir, whose life was stolen from him and his family. At this dangerous moment, all parties must protect the innocent and act with reasonableness and restraint, not vengeance and retribution.
From Harry Truman through today, the United States has always been Israel’s greatest friend. As I’ve said time and again, neither I nor the United States will ever waver in our commitment to the security of Israel and the Israeli people, and our support for peace will always remain a bedrock foundation of that commitment.
Over the past five years, we’ve expanded our cooperation and today, as Israel’s leaders have affirmed, the security relationship between Israel and the United States is stronger than ever. Our militaries conduct more exercises together.
Our intelligence cooperation is at an all-time high. Together, we’re developing new defense technologies, such as remote IED-sensing equipment and lightweight protective armor that will protect our troops.
Budgets in Washington are tight, but our commitment to Israel’s security remains ironclad. The United States is committed to providing more than $3 billion each year to help finance Israel’s security through 2018. Across the board, our unprecedented security cooperation is making Israel safer, and American investments in Israel’s cutting-edge defense systems like the Arrow interceptor system and Iron Dome are saving lives.
Our commitment to Israel’s security also extends to our engagement throughout the Middle East. Last month, under American leadership, the international community successfully removed the last of Bashar al-Assad’s declared chemical weapons from Syria. Eliminating this stockpile reduces the ability of a brutal dictator to use weapons of mass destruction to threaten not just the Syrian people but Syria’s neighbors, including Israel. And we will continue working with our partners in Europe and the Arab world to support the moderate opposition and to press for a political solution that resolves a conflict that is feeding a humanitarian crisis and regional instability.
We are also working to ensure that Iran does not ever possess a nuclear weapon. Through tough international negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program, we are attempting to peacefully address a major threat to global and regional security, including the security of Israel. We have been clear that any agreement must provide concrete, verifiable assurances that Iran’s nuclear program is exclusively peaceful, and we have consulted closely with Israel throughout this process. As we draw near to the deadline for negotiations, we do not yet know if these talks will succeed, but our bottom line has not changed. We are determined to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, and we are keeping every option on the table to accomplish that goal.
The United States has also demonstrated our commitment to Israel’s security through our enduring commitment to a lasting peace in the Middle East. We have always been clear-eyed that resolving the decades-old conflict between Israelis and Palestinians would take enormous effort and require difficult decisions by the parties. So while we were disappointed that the tough decisions weren’t made by both parties to keep moving the peace process forward, the United States will never give up on the hope of a lasting peace, which is the only path to true security for Israel.
As I said last year in Jerusalem, peace is necessary, just, and possible. I believed it then. I believe it now. Peace is necessary because it’s the only way to ensure a secure and democratic future for the Jewish state of Israel. While walls and missile defense systems can help protect against some threats, true safety will only come with a comprehensive negotiated settlement. Reaching a peace agreement with the Palestinians would also help turn the tide of international sentiment and sideline violent extremists, further bolstering Israel’s security.
Peace is also, undeniably, just. Just as the Israeli people have the right to live in the historic homeland of the Jewish people, the Palestinian people deserve the right to self-determination. Palestinian children have hopes and dreams for their future and deserve to live with the dignity that can only come with a state of their own. And, in President Abbas, Israel has a counterpart committed to a two-state solution and security cooperation with Israel. The United States has repeatedly made clear that any Palestinian government must uphold these long-standing principles: a commitment to non-violence, adherence to past agreements, and the recognition of Israel. With negotiations on hiatus, these principles are more important than ever. All parties must exercise restraint and work together to maintain stability on the ground.
Finally, peace is possible. This is one of the most important things to remember during setbacks and moments of frustration. It will take political will to make the difficult choices that are necessary and support from the Israeli and Palestinian people and civil society. Both parties must be willing to take risks for peace. But at the end of the day, we know where negotiations must lead—two states for two peoples. Refusing to compromise or cooperate with one another won’t do anything to increase security for either the Israeli or the Palestinian people. The only solution is a democratic, Jewish state living side-by-side in peace and security with a viable, independent Palestinian state. That’s why Secretary Kerry and I remain determined to work with both Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Abbas to pursue a two-state solution. When the political will exists to recommit to serious negotiations, the United States will be there, ready to do our part.
A few weeks ago, I met with President Peres at the White House as he prepares to end his term. As always, it was an honor to sit and talk with a man who has given so much of his life to building the State of Israel and who has so much hope for his country. Shimon Peres has been a dauntless advocate for Israel’s security, and last month, in his historic meeting with President Abbas and Pope Francis at the Vatican, he put it simply: “Without peace,” he said, “we are not complete.”
For all that Israel has accomplished, for all that Israel will achieve, Israel cannot be complete and it cannot be secure without peace. It is never too late to seed the ground for peace—a true and living peace that exists not just in the plans of leaders, but in the hearts of all Israelis and Palestinians. That is the future the United States remains committed to, as Israel’s first friend, Israel’s oldest friend, and Israel’s strongest friend.
Barack Obama is president of the United States of America.
The Chanakya Mandala principle holds good here.ramana wrote:There is double encirclement. One by US and other by PRC. Something to ruminate.
Paul wrote:Foggy bottom on the side of the Islamists versus the DOD (Army) supporting the Mamelukes who are on the backfoot throughout the ME. Interestingly, the Wahabis who are the original Islamists are supporting the mamelukes against the Islamists in Egypt and Pakistan but are for the Islamists (ISIS) in Iraq as the Mamelukes there (Baathists) have been put of business by Paul Bremmer.
To simplify - I submit there are two parties struggling for supremacy in the Sunni world - Egypt, Turkey, Iraq and Pakistan. The Mamelukes (Army) and the Islamists (Erdogan/ISIS/MB/TTP).
Prize is the crown of Kabila sardar in these regions. Shia-Sunni dispute is a separate subject, hence Syria does not count. Wahabis will collaborate with Islamists against Shias if working with Mamelukes is not an option like Syris/Iraq.
Will make a good flowchart.
Moscow is cozying up to its old rival China. China is holding hands with Seoul. Tokyo is striking deals with Pyongyang.
In the ever-shifting game of Asian alliances, where just about everybody has a dispute over something or can actually remember a shooting war with their neighbors, past grudges run deep. But expedience and pragmatism often run deeper.
While U.S. President Barack Obama tries to develop his pivot to Asia policy, the region is rapidly spinning ahead in its own direction, energized by dynamic economies, expanding trade relations and a plethora of long-standing disputes and rivalries.
For sure, the world’s mightiest countries, themselves Pacific powers, still throw a lot of weight around. But as they jockey for advantage in the world’s most populous region, relations across Asia are fluid. Many countries, both at the center of the power game and on the sidelines, have both a chance to capitalize and a risk of getting frozen out:
Turning east
Washington was long able to capitalize on Cold War rifts between Russia and China, but Dmitry Trenin, the director of the Carnegie Moscow Center think tank, recently wrote that the two are rebuilding a relationship likely to grow significantly stronger. This trend has accelerated in part because of Moscow’s frustration with the West over its Ukraine sanctions.
“They are not in a clear alliance, and have a number of diverging, even partially colliding, interests. But they both challenge the global order in which the United States is the norm-setter and the sole arbiter,” he wrote. “The Chinese do this in a much subtler way than the Russians, but both appear to have come to the conclusion that working one’s way into the U.S.-dominated system is not worth it.”
Symbolic of Moscow’s moves toward Beijing is a $400 billion deal they signed last month, after decades of negotiations that went nowhere, to supply China with natural gas through a new pipeline. President Vladimir Putin called the deal “epochal,” though he reportedly had to accept a price lower than hoped for.
In Russia, the effort to improve relations with China is called Putin’s Pivot.
“A strong Russian-Chinese connection has taken shape on the international arena. It is based on a coincidence of views on both global processes and key regional issues,” Putin said earlier this month.
Trenin noted that U.S. relations with China and with Russia are substantially worse than bilateral relations between Beijing and Moscow. He said that is in part because Washington has failed to take Russia seriously as a strategic player in the region. Beijing, meanwhile, may come out with access to more resources and a more secure northern front.
“The unique position that the United States has held since the 1990s as the dominant power in Eurasia is now history,” Trenin concluded.
Trading partners
Here is a puzzle. Why would the president of China, North Korea’s closest thing to an ally, snub Kim Jong Un and go to Seoul to woo his archrival, South Korean President Park Geun-hye, which he did to many a raised eyebrow last week?
Fact is, China is not getting a lot of love from its Asian neighbors these days.
Major trading partner Japan is outraged over what it sees as China’s increasingly assertive claim to a set of small, uninhabited islands in the East China Sea. Vietnam and the Philippines have similar beefs over islands in the South China Sea. North Korea, though still reliant on Chinese aid, trade and political backing on the international stage, continues to develop nuclear weapons, and to sidle up to Moscow, regardless of Beijing’s grumblings.
So, while recalibrating its own relations with Moscow, why not try to sneak a kiss from one of Washington’s better friends?
China’s overtures to South Korea — including the Seoul visit — play into its larger ambitions to build a China-centered network of alliances that sidesteps the U.S. and Japan, said Willy Lam, a political science professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He added that China is already South Korea’s No. 1 trade partner.
Beijing is also trying to show the South that China, and not the U.S., is the solution to the North Korea crisis, said Christopher Johnson, a former China analyst with the CIA who is now chairman of China studies at U.S. think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“Obviously, (the South Koreans) are never going to break away from their alliance with the U.S.,” he said. But he added that China has been “trying to convince the South that they, and not the alliance with the U.S. and Japan, are the key to Seoul’s North Korea problem.”
Increasingly, that is seen as a persuasive argument — China’s rise has unmistakably changed the power equation in Asia. Seen in that way, Johnson says, Beijing’s choice of Seoul over Pyongyang makes perfect strategic sense.
“Different tactics, different approaches for different partners,” Johnson said.
Breaking ranks, a little
Washington has had no closer and more reliable ally in Asia than Japan, which depends on the U.S. for protection and trade.
But Japan’s increasingly angry reaction to its territorial spat with Beijing, its fears of increased Chinese military might and its stalemate with Russia over a different set of disputed islands up north have made many in Tokyo wary.
Breaking ranks with Washington and Seoul, hawkish Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has revived bilateral negotiations with North Korea over the matter of Japanese abductees in the North. The issue is of key interest to the Japanese public but decidedly back-burner to Japan’s allies, who would prefer to isolate the North over its nuclear weapons policy.
Abe also led the charge last week as Japan decided to reinterpret its constitution to allow greater use of military force to defend its allies. The move was welcomed by Washington, which is bound by a security treaty to aid the country if Japan ever comes under attack. But it also underscored fears in Japan that it cannot simply expect Washington to come to the rescue anymore, along with hopes among some Japanese leaders for a bigger say in regional security.
“Countries in the region are increasingly concerned about tension over China’s high-handed approach, and showing high expectations for Japan’s role,” said Narushige Michishita, director of the Security and International Studies Program at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo. “Previously, Japan could have said, ‘We cannot contribute to the region because we cannot exercise the right to collective self-defense.’ Japan now has lost that excuse.”
Playing the field
For those who cannot throw their weight around like Moscow, Beijing or Washington, India has some words of wisdom — hedge your bets.
India has long maintained a policy of nonalignment, deliberately keeping itself away from strong, exclusive alliances in favor of playing the field and pushing for a multipolar world order that would give India more say in global governance. In the unsure waters of Asia, hedging your bets is not a bad idea.
“It’s a ‘frenemy’ kind of relationship,” said Sreeram Chaulia, dean of the Jindal School of International Affairs in New Delhi. “Everyone is a frenemy to everyone else. It’s a much more complex world. No one can clearly say ‘I’m an ally of so-and-so.’
“Our strategy is a hedging strategy — and every other player is also doing this. These days, the economy has been separated from security issues. You can have booming trade and healthy investment alongside territorial disputes,” Chaulia said.
India has more potential to be a major player than most in Asia, and good cause for worry about China. Its main concern — shared in many Asian capitals — is whether the Chinese military will become so mighty that Beijing can effectively dictate orders. India’s most obvious partner in this is Japan, and the two have always been friendly.
“India wants to counterbalance China to some extent. India believes that will give it some breathing space strategically,” Chaulia said.
“Despite its apparent political stability, China is a powder keg with no outlets for expression and an authoritarian regime,” he said, echoing a concern held widely throughout Asia. “It could remain stable and keep on growing, as everyone seems to assume it will. But if it becomes unstable, it will have a huge effect on the region.”
Not to forget sowing FUD via netflix.svinayak wrote:They have created border problems in the Asian landmass and this has prevented Asian land based trade routes for the last 100 years.Paul wrote:Kaplan says the sea routes are like a freeway in the IOR to NE Asia. They may not care so much about the landroutes to the west of India as the sea lanes.
That is why they are ramping up the navy and not so worried about Afghanistan after the the withdrawal.
They have kept the navy powers of the Asian countries below their potential to dominate them
But meanwhile this article says that shanghai is more or less the HQ for BRICS bank.The national capital is engaged in a tight battle with Johannesburg and Shanghai to emerge as the headquarters of the proposed BRICS Bank with a decision on the multilateral body expected next week when leaders from the five countries, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, meet in Brazil.
Leaders have to agree on several issues, including the equity structure and the focus of the development institution that has been in the works for four years. After much debate the issue of equity contribution has been sorted out with BRICS - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - chipping in with equal contribution of $10 billion each, with the authorized capital to be pegged at $100 billion. Earlier, South Africa was reluctant to be an equal partner and China was willing to help it out but that would have given Beijing additional say in the bank.
The other decision is related to the headquarters, where Moscow had also shown interest, but now the race has narrowed down to three capitals, a senior finance ministry official told TOI. Although Delhi is vying for the slot, Johannesburg's chances appear the brightest given that there are concerns over language barrier and freedom of expression in Shanghai. Johannesburg comes with the added advantage of being "centrally located".
Apart from the BRICS Bank, the leaders will discuss a Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA) that will provide a buffer to the five countries in times of a balance of payments problem. It will have an initial subscribed capital of US$ 100 billion, of which India, Brazil and Russia will chip in with $ 18 billion each. China is expected to contribute $41 billion, with the remaining $5 billion coming from South Africa.
Experts said focusing too much on locating the headquarters of the BRICS Bank in Delhi may not be a sensible idea for the government. "What you are going to get is 200-300 jobs for bureaucrats. Instead, India should focus on getting the presidency in the initial years so that it can guide the future of the institution," said a source who has worked on formulating India's strategy.
Another expert said China, South Africa and even Brazil would be more interested in seeing that the BRICS Bank, whose name is yet to be formalized, focused on lending more to Africa, while it made sense for India to get the institution to work in its neighbourhood.
In any case, China is keen on having the maximum say in the proposed development institution, modeled on the lines of the Asian Development Bank.
When the richest and most powerful nations on Earth formed the G7, G8, G20 and the like, they united to combine their dominance over the remaining 175 countries that make up humanity. And for decades, the wealthiest 20 countries led by the US have gotten exponentially more wealthy at the expense of the poorest 175 nations, who in turn have gotten even poorer. That’s been the result of the West’s ‘New World Order’, led mainly by self-appointed global governments like the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization.
133 of those 175 countries have had enough of the New World Order’s rigged global financial system based in New York and London. They’ve seen their economies destroyed by corrupt corporations and global governments that create a cycle of never-ending dependence and poverty. They’ve seen their nations’ vast resources stolen by multinational corporations. Their agriculture landscape has been poisoned. Their citizens bankrupted by the IMF and Wall Street. And their democratically elected leaders overthrown by foreign agents from countries like the US.
They’ve had enough of the New World Order. And an alliance of 133 countries, two-thirds of the nations on Earth, signed an agreement this weekend to end the West’s New World Order and replace it with a fair, honest and legitimate World Order - one that lets everyone participate and benefit, not just the super rich.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is attending the Sixth BRICS summit in Brazil on 15-16 July. During his meeting with President Dilma Rousseff, Mr. Modi will review the bilateral relations with Brazil - with which India is committed to a strategic partnership.
The Indo-Brazil partnership soared to new heights during the term of visionary Brazilian president Lula in 2003-11. But his successor, Ms Rousseff, has given the least priority to foreign policy, focussing instead on domestic issues. Her approach in combination with the passive policy of former PM Manmohan Singh meant a loss of momentum in bilateral relations in the last three years. Mr. Modi, who has Lula-like vision, would have to take the initiative and reenergise the partnership.
Then there is the IBSA alliance, a fascinating combination of the leading democracies of the three continents which has come to be marginalized by BRICS in recent years. But IBSA is equally important, if not more, for India. IBSA's objectives are distinct from those of BRICS in which China and Russia represent the status quo in global power equations. Mr Modi should talk to the Brazilian and South African Presidents to rejuvenate IBSA and keep its identity and aspirations alive.
After the BRICS summit on 15 July in Fortaleza, the Brazilians have organized a meeting for the BRICS leaders with the Presidents of South America on 16 July in Brasilia. This is an imaginative idea by the Brazilians to bridge their regional leadership with their BRICS alliance.
It is perhaps the first time that an Indian Prime Minister will get an opportunity to meet South American leaders together. In the last two decades, South American leaders have started pursuing a more autonomous and assertive foreign policy with a strong belief in a multipolar world and multilateralism.
They have freed themselves from the stigma of being called the "backyard of United States." This is evident from their success in thwarting the US proposal to form a hemispheric Free Trade Area of the Americas. They have preferred to become collectively strong through UNASUR (South American Union). In this context, the South American leaders, will welcome Modi's proactive role in global affairs and will look forward to working with India.
South America is emerging as a contributor to India's energy and food security. Venezuela, Brazil, Ecuador and Colombia have started supplying crude oil regularly.
While there is growing gap between India's domestic production and demand, South America has the potential to increase its oil production and exports in the future.
India has been importing more than a billion dollars' worth of soy and sunflower oil from Brazil and Argentina annually. It has also been importing over 2 billion dollars' worth minerals (copper is the main item) from South America which has rich mineral resources.
On the other hand, the South American political and business leaders view India as a new, large and growing market for their exports. Conscious of the perils of overdependence on China, they are keen to diversify and cultivate India as a trade partner. Argentina learnt this lesson when China imposed a ban on imports of Argentine soy oil in 2010 to express their displeasure with Argentina on some other issue.
Argentina, the world's largest exporter of soy oil, was shocked since China was till then the largest importer of Argentine soy oil. Argentina was relieved and grateful when India came to its rescue by doubling its imports of soy oil in that difficult year. The South American governments and consumers are happy with Indian pharmaceutical companies which have helped them to reduce their cost of health care with low-cost generic medicines.
The South Americans also appreciate the fact that the Indian IT companies in the region provide jobs and training for their young people. As South America is emerging as a significant trade partner, India should deepen and widen the Preferential Trade Agreement with Chile and Mercosur and consider upgrading them to FTAs and also sign FTAs with Colombia and Peru, the second and third largest destinations of India's exports to South America.
India should increase Lines of Credit to South American countries and sign the Double Taxation Avoidance Agreements with major countries to facilitate investment and trade.
ldev wrote:This struggle over MH17 and Ukraine between Russia and the US with the Europeans as supporting cast, is for either the continuation of the present US led global financial system which will happen if the US prevails and removes Putin from power or if Putin is able to prevail,for the nascent BRICS bank to come up with a new international reserve currency (or the Chinese yuan) which will eventually rival/replace the US dollar. So the geopolitical and global economic stakes are enormous. The next few years will be critical in determining which side will prevail.
For the first time in 30 years, global leaders and events are a tipping point. China has a new strongman, Xi Jinping, who has moved very fast in eliminating the collective leadership model of the CCP of the last decades. He is probably the most powerful Chinese leader since the demise of Deng Xiaoping. India has elected a leader who similarly has a mandate from the people not seen for the last 30 years. Both of them have demonstrated an ability to take quick decisions.However, given the history of relations between the 2 countries, even these two leaders may not be able to move beyond their mutual distrust fast enough, and both are pragmatists. Putin is an idealogue who believes that the US has gone back on all undertakings given during the breakup of the former Soviet Union. He is the only one in the BRICS camp who has the ability to bind the grouping together.
However, what underpins the Russian Federal budget are oil and gas revenues. 68% of Russian exports are oil and gas and 50% of the revenues of the Russian budget came from oil, gas and other mineral taxes. Russian oil production will decline anytime after 2018-2021 and consequently its state revenues. Putin therefore has to make that breakout move in the next 5 years, before that irreversible decline sets in, to secure for Russia a position which it can do in cooperation with other BRICS countries and fortunately for him, both China and India have got pragmatic fast moving leaders in power now.
Without Putin in power, China and India will not be able to cooperate nor do they have the ultimate security of 10,000 nuclear warheads.
From the standpoint of the US, the budget situation is out of control, the biggest US export today is the greenback. As domestic US oil production grows, (it will grow and then decline anytime after 2030 or thereabouts) the US will not import any crude oil from abroad. China is already the largest export market for middle eastern OPEC countries including Saudi Arabia. If a viable reserve currency such as a special SDR created by the BRICSs bank is available, that would be a tempting option for OPEC countries to park their reserves, rather than directly in a yuan market which is not entirely stable.(Or the BRICS SDR could add credibility to the yuan similar to what gold convertibility did to the US dollar at the time of Bretton Woods, only to be removed some years later) The oil buyer-seller relationships will be between the OPEC countries and China-India on the other and hence the potential to park reserves in currencies/units/reserve currencies of their largest buyers.
The odds of this happening appear to be significant by the internal calculations of the US and hence the large scale effort via public media and economic sanctions to get rid of Putin asap. After all, without the no limit credit card which the reserve currency status confers on the US dollar, interest rates in the US will skyrocket, standards of living in the US will plummet by 30%-50% over a 5 year period and the US military will resemble the Russian military(unable to project power globally). So the stakes are truly enormous for both sides.
Ukraine and MH17 are only a sideshow, they are the pretext to mount the move to get rid of Putin. From the public media, Putin and his advisors appear to be aware of this, that the ultimate US objective is to get rid of him. The US also knows that Putin must make his moves now before Russian oil revenues start declining and hence the offensive to remove him from power.
Interesting times ahead.
Added later:
The threat to the West from monolithic Islam has been largely defused. Iraq, Libya and Syria are in flames and will continue to burn for many years. Iran did not buckle under 35 years of sanctions and so an agreement will be reached with it. Internecine Sunni-Shia conflict will keep them occupied, with Iraq under Shia control the Sunni-Shia equation is now more balanced to keep the conflict going for a long time.
How the world's economic centre of gravity has shifted
IT IS not exactly news that the world's economic centre of gravity is shifting east. But it is striking how fast this seems to be happening. In a new study on the economic impact of urbanisation the McKinsey Global Institute, the research arm of the eponymous consultancy, has attempted to calculate how this centre of gravity has moved since AD 1 and how it is likely to move until 2025. Although the underlying maths (which involves weighting the approximate centre of landmass of a country by its GDP) has to be taken with a pinch of salt, the calculations show that the centre is rapidly shifting east—at a speed of 140 kilometres a year and thus faster than ever before in human history, according to Richard Dobbs, one of the authors of the study. The main reason for this is rapid urbanisation in developing countries, in particular China. As people are moving into cities many are becoming richer, driving further economic growth. Most of this growth will not occur in much-hyped megacities, such as Mumbai or Shanghai, but in what the authors call "middleweight cities". Few in the rich world would be able to identify these on a map. Ever heard of Foshan or Surat, for instance? (Hint: the former is China's 7th-largest city, the latter India's capital for synthetic textiles.)
In a region where crises seem to be the norm, the Middle East’s latest cycle of violence suggests that something bigger is afoot: the beginning of the dissolution of the Arab nation-state, reflected in the growing fragmentation of Sunni Arabia.
States in the Middle East are becoming weaker than ever, as traditional authorities, whether aging monarchs or secular authoritarians, seem increasingly incapable of taking care of their restive publics. As state authority weakens, tribal and sectarian allegiances strengthen.
What does it mean today to be Iraqi, Syrian, Yemeni, or Lebanese? Any meaningful identification seems to require a compound name – Sunni Iraqi, Alawite Syrian, and so forth. As such examples suggest, political identity has shifted to something less civil and more primordial.
With Iraq in flames, the United States-led invasion and occupation is widely blamed for unwittingly introducing a sectarian concept of identity in the country. In fact, sectarianism was always alive and well in Iraq, but it has now become the driving force and organizing principle of the country’s politics.
When sectarian or ethnic minorities have ruled countries – for example, the Sunnis of Iraq – they typically have a strong interest in downplaying sectarianism or ethnicity. They often become the chief proponents of a broader, civic concept of national belonging, in theory embracing all peoples. In Iraq, that concept was Ba’athism. And while it was more identified with the Sunni minority than with the Shia majority, it endured for decades as a vehicle for national unity, albeit a cruel and cynical one.
When the Ba’ath party – along with its civic ideology – was destroyed by the US occupation, no new civic concept replaced it. In the ensuing political vacuum, sectarianism was the only viable alternative principle of organization.
Sectarianism thus came to frame Iraqi politics, making it impossible to organize non-sectarian parties on the basis of, say, shared socio economic interests. In Iraqi politics today (leaving aside the Kurds), seldom does a Sunni Arab vote for a Shia Arab, or a Shia for a Sunni. There is competition among Shia parties and among Sunni parties; but few voters cross the sectarian line – a grim reality that is unlikely to change for years to come.
Pointing the finger at the US for the state of affairs in Iraq may have some validity (although the alternative of leaving in place a Ba’athist state under Saddam Hussein was not particularly appealing, either). The same could be said of Libya (though the US did not lead that intervention). But the US did not invade any of the other countries in the Middle East – for example, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen – where the state’s survival is also in doubt.
There are many reasons for the weakening of Arab nation-states, the most proximate of which is the legacy of the Arab Spring. At its outset in 2011, Arab publics took to the streets seeking to oust authoritarian or monarchical regimes widely perceived to have lost their energy and direction. But those initial demonstrations, often lacking identifiable leaders and programs, soon gave way to old habits.
Thus, for all of the initial promise of the political transition in Egypt that followed the demise of Hosni Mubarak’s military-backed regime, the result was the creation of a Muslim Brotherhood government whose exclusionary ideology made it an unlikely candidate for long-term success. From the start, most observers believed that its days were numbered.
When the military ousted the Muslim Brotherhood from power a year later, many of the Egyptians who had been inspired by the Arab Spring democracy movement approved. Egypt retains the strongest sense of nation-statehood in the region; nonetheless, it has become a shattered and divided society, and it will take many years to recover.
Other states are even less fortunate. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s evil buffoonery in Libya has given way to Bedouin tribalism that will be hard to meld into a functioning nation-state, if Libya ever was such an entity. Yemen, too, is beset by tribal feuding and a sectarian divide that pose challenges to statehood. And Syria, a fragile amalgam of Sunni, Alawite, Kurdish, Christian, and other sects, is unlikely ever to be reconstructed as the state it once was.
These processes demand a broader, far more comprehensive policy approach from Western countries. The approach must take into account the region’s synergies and not pretend that the changes that are weakening these states are somehow unrelated.
The US, in particular, should examine how it has handled the breakdown of Syria and Iraq, and stop treating each case as if there were no connection between them. America called for regime change in the former while seeking regime stabilization in the latter; instead, it got the Islamic State in both.
Why is the center of the economic activity in AD 1 showing near Afghan-Pakistan border ? What economic activity was there in AD 1 in those regions ? Not much significant. If they meant Kushans, then they are wrong. The Kushan Empire started at AD 30 and did not reach its peak much much later. If they meant, Indo-Greek kingdom centered around present day AF-Pak, then also they are wrong since Indo-Greek kingdom was a economic basket case and survived by trading with the much more resourceful polities in mainland India. During AD 1, the Satavahanas were the dominant political and economic power in Indian subcontinent.That dot should ideally been pointed in mainland India.
RamaY wrote:On Geopolitics...
There was no Geopolitics in western civilization till Romans. Roman empire originally was nothing but today's EU before it became an east european Roman/Byzantine empire.
The next 700yrs are spent on Crusades between West and Middle-East. This left the Asia proper out of this equation.
At this time somehow the Middle-East had enough human/financial resources to fight a two front war > Crusades with West and Conquests of India on the other side.
The next 600 yrs are about West colonizing East bringing the mayhem to Asia proper.
Discovery of Oil in ME forced west to make peace with ME.
Now West is able to replace the old islamic state with new islamic arab states which are loyal to west and are protecting west's eastern frontiers by fighting various asian powers (India, China, Russia etc).
Looking at the map it is high time to push the muslim civilization to go occupy Europe. For that the existing power structures in Arabia must go.
Islam is just a tool in all this things. West wants to protect Islam so it can be a rallying point to hurt asian countries. Asian countries can remove this just by banning islam and forcing their citizens to follow native faiths. Once this is done, Indians need not worry about splintering of India and another partition to assert their national interests. But as long as secularism exists as the guiding principle, it will not let Islam die, thus keeping the breaking-india and future-partition options open w.r.t India.
Lot of people mistake human rights with secularism. Hinduism can offer even better human rights to individuals in the absence of secularism unless people think being an islamist/evangelic is a human right.
To understand the origins of the First World War, we must understand imperial rivalries and the racism that underpinned them
by Kenan Malik
The nations of the world, claimed the soon-to-be prime minister Lord Salisbury in a speech to the Primrose League at the Albert Hall in 1898, were divided into the “living” and the “dying”. The “living” were the “white” nations – the European powers, America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The “dying” comprised the rest of the world. “The living nations,” Salisbury claimed, “will gradually encroach on the territory of the dying” and from this “the seeds and causes of conflict among civilised nations will speedily appear.” The partition of the globe “may introduce causes of fatal difference between the great nations whose mighty armies stand opposed threatening each other.”
Thirty years after Salisbury gave his speech, the mighty armies of the great nations did indeed stand opposed threatening each other, and bringing calamity upon a generation. Virtually from the moment that the “lamps went out all over Europe”, in Sir Edward Grey’s evocative phrase, there has been much debate – too much debate – about why they did so and who snuffed them out, not least in this, the centenary year of the First World War.
Yet in the midst of the often fractious claim and counter-claim, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the issue raised by Salisbury – how the encroachment of the “living nations” upon “the territory of the dying” created “the seeds and causes of conflict”. There has been, particularly this year, much discussion about the role of German militarism. Many who want to make a case for the First World War as a good, or at least as a necessary, conflict, have argued for the importance of Britain having stood up to German aggression. Germany’s expansionist tendencies and virulent racism only make sense, however, against the background of late-19th-century imperialism, of the carving up of the globe between the Great Powers, as the “living nations” encroached unremittingly upon “the territory of the dying”. Imperialist expansion and Great Power rivalry were, as Salisbury understood, intimately linked. Rivalries helped promote imperialist expansion, while imperialist expansion helped foster rivalries.
At the heart of the global imperialist network stood not Germany but Britain. By the middle of the 19th century, Britain had become the dominant world power, already with an unmatched empire, a powerhouse of an economy, unparalleled naval power and unsurpassed political influence. Britain’s pre-eminence in all these areas was, however, also being challenged in an unprecedented fashion by the old powers, such as France, Belgium and Russia, by the new power of the USA and, most ominously, by the newest power of all in Germany.
The rivalries first manifested themselves outside Europe, as the newer powers tried to create their own empires and Britain sought to maintain its supremacy. There was, in the second half of the 19th century, from Africa to the Pacific, a frenzy of land-grabbing. “Towards the end of the nineteenth century,” the historian Ronald Hyam observes in his book Britain’s Imperial Century 1815-1914, “European politicians felt themselves living in an era of world delimitation, ‘a partition of the world’ as Rosebery called it, from which, as Elgin (when viceroy of India) agreed, Britain could not stand aside because of her ‘mission as pioneers of civilisation’.”
Between 1874 and 1902, Britain alone added 4,750,000 square miles and 90 million people to her Empire, ranging from numerous little Pacific Islands to Baluchistan, from Upper Burma to vast swathes of Africa. Britain, the Times declared, must continue expanding her empire because she could not afford “to allow any section even of the
Dark Continent to believe that our imperial prestige is on the wane”.
Behind imperialist expansion lay venomous racism. “What signify these dark races to us?” asked Robert Knox, Britain’s leading racial scientist, in his 1850 book The Races of Men. “Destined by the nature of their race to run, like all other animals, a certain limited course of existence, it matters little how their extinction is brought about.” Half a century later, the future American president Theodore Roosevelt wrote in his four-volume tome The Winning of the West that all must appreciate the “race importance” of the struggle between whites and the “scattered savage tribes, whose life was but a few degrees less meaningless, squalid and ferocious than that of wild beasts”. The elimination of the inferior races would, he insisted, be “for the benefit of civilisation and in the interests of mankind”, adding that it was “idle to apply to savages the rules of international morality that apply between stable and cultured communities”. Here was the grim, genocidal reality of Salisbury’s distinction between “living” and “dead” nations and the true meaning of the “encroachment” of the one upon the other.
If racial ideology justified imperialist expansion, the very fact of empire seemed to confirm the reality of race. “What is Empire but the preponderance of race,” as the Liberal imperialist and Prime Minister Lord Rosebery asked. Even the anti-imperialist Gilbert Murray accepted that “There is in this world a hierarchy of races”, those that will “direct and rule the world” and the “lower breeds of men” who will have to perform “the lower work of the world”.
“The brown, black and yellow races of the world,” the Times insisted in 1910, had to accept that “inequality is inevitable” because of “the facts of race”.
Many politicians and intellectuals feared that the very existence of the “dead” nations created the conditions for conflict between the “living”. “Experience has already shown,” the distinguished Victorian historian WEH Lecky worried in his 1899 book Democracy and Liberty, “how easily these vague and ill-defined boundaries may become a new cause of European quarrels, and how often, in remote African jungles or forests, negroes armed with European guns may inflict defeats on European soldiers which will become the cause of costly and difficult wars.” Unless the world was carved up and parcelled out by the “white” nations, then the very weakness of the rest of the world would create a power vacuum that could, many feared, lead to conflicts between Great Powers.
Here were expressed the complex fears that emerged in the collision between racism and Great Power rivalry. In reality, while racial ideology provided the moral grounding for imperialist expansion, the real driver was economic and political necessity. For a burgeoning power, overseas colonies helped provide raw materials, cheap labour and new markets. They also helped impose political and military control. Britain, for instance, worried that French and German expansion in East Africa would undermine its sea routes to southern Africa and to India. “Its annexation by France or Germany and a seizure of a port would be ruinous” to Britain, wrote the Foreign secretary Lord Granville in 1884. “The proceedings of the French in Madagascar,” he added, “make it all the more necessary to guard ... our sea route to India.” What particularly worried British policy-makers was the fear that the Suez Canal – so central to maintaining Britain’s trade routes and naval prowess across the globe – might be closed down in the event of war. It is “of supreme importance”, observed the colonial administrator Lord Lugard, who was to be Governor General of Nigeria during the First World War, “that we should retain complete command of the only alternative and only feasible route in case of war.” Similar fears were expressed about German activity in southern Africa. “It seems that wherever there is a dark corner in South African politics,” Gladstone sardonically observed in 1884, “there is a German spectre to be the tenant of it.”
As the dominant global power, and as the nation with the largest empire, Britain was anxious to defend the status quo. Germany, as the rising power, and with only tattered shreds of an empire, was desperate to challenge it. At the mid-point of the 19th century, Britain’s navy was as large as all the other navies put together. That exceptional power allowed Britain to control the world’s oceans and sea lanes and to establish “Pax Britannica”. By the end of the century, that supremacy was under threat as America and Germany, in particular, built up their naval prowess. In the half-century leading up the First World War, British naval spending doubled. Germany’s quadrupled, as it sought to play catch-up.
In attempting to displace British power and influence, and to create its own empire, Germany often adopted the more aggressive posture. In reality, however, Britain was no less militaristic or aggressive. Indeed, there was widespread concern within the political elite around the turn of the century that Britain was insufficiently militaristic to meet the new challenges. War, declared General Worsley, commander in chief of the army, in 1897, was a necessary remedy for social decadence; it was “the greatest purifier to the race or nation that has reached the verge of over-refinement”, an “invigorating antidote against that luxury and effeminacy which destroys nations as well as individuals.”
Britain had achieved its position of prominence only through deploying the kind of aggressive militarism the prevention of which many today insist makes the First World War a just conflict. Consider for instance the Opium Wars. In June 1840 a British expeditionary force sailed into China’s Pearl River and unleashed a barrage of cannon fire on coastal defences that barely existed. The battle lasted six hours. So began the First Opium War, a series of unequal military encounters lasting until 1842. A second Opium War culminated in 1860 with the looting and burning of the imperial pleasure grounds, the Yuan Ming Yuan, in the northwest suburbs of Beijing by British and French troops.
The Opium Wars were the nadir of British 19th-century gunboat diplomacy. Britain had built up a huge trade deficit with China, largely because of its insatiable thirst for tea. The East India Company began to fill that deficit by supplying opium grown in British Bengal. Opium had been consumed in China since the eighth century. But it was banned. In 1839 the Emperor cracked down on the trade, seizing the opium stock of British traders, and ordering them to bring no more into China. Four months later, the gunboats arrived. Britain launched a war in effect to enforce its right to be China’s pusher of choice.
The treaties that ended the wars were as scandalous as the war itself. China lost the right to set protective tariffs or to collect custom duties on trade goods. Five “treaty ports” were established, in each of which parts of the city were set aside for foreigners to live and trade in. Britain insisted on the right of extraterritoriality for all Western nations: each could run its own police force and court system, enforce its own laws and deal with any crimes committed on Chinese soil by its nationals under its laws, rather than those of China. Foreigners won the right to travel anywhere they wished in China and to set up Christian missions without restrictions. Western navies won the right to sail at will on any Chinese waterway. Foreigners could import and sell opium. Hong Kong was ceded to Britain. And Britain extracted from the Emperor a large indemnity for all the trouble that he had caused by standing up for his rights in the first place.
Today the Opium Wars are barely remembered in Britain. And when they are, they are seen only as an embarrassment, an exception to the true nature of Pax Britannica. In fact it was the kind of gunboat diplomacy that underpinned British imperialism throughout the 19th century.
Without understanding the background of 19th-century imperialism, it is difficult to make sense either of German militarism or the First World War itself. Equally, understanding this background shows why there is little sense in treating the war in black and white terms of “good” and “bad” participants, or as a war against militarism or aggression. As the historian Christopher Clark put it at the end of Sleepwalkers, his outstanding study of how Europe went to war, “The outbreak of war in 1914 is not an Agatha Christie drama at the end of which we will discover the culprit standing over a corpse in the conservatory with a smoking pistol. There is no smoking gun in this story; or, rather, there is one in the hands of every major character.”
None of the European powers wanted war. All had, over the previous half century, struggled immensely hard to prevent conflict, particularly in Europe. This was one of the reasons that war, when it did arrive, came as such a shock.
Equally, however, all recognised, with Salisbury, that the “seeds of conflict among civilised nations” had already been sown. The growing discord over the partitioning of the world led to the forging of new alliances between the Great Powers. At the time that Salisbury gave his speech, there was in place a multipolar system in which the Great Powers’ interests and rivalries were in precarious balance but which allowed for a large degree of give and take. By the eve of war, this had transformed into a bipolar system as Europe cleaved into two blocs. Britain established alliances with its traditional foes, France and Russia. Germany created the Triple Alliance with Austria and Italy. The new system was both more rigid and more unstable than the previous framework of informal checks and balances.
At the same time, the slow disintegration of the Ottoman empire, and the resulting scramble to assert influence in the Balkans over which the Ottomans had lost control, brought imperialist frictions into the heart of Europe. Russia and Austria both looked upon the Balkans as their own sphere of influence. In the background stood Britain and Germany, neither of whom wanted the other to profit from any Balkan fallout. The kind of tensions that had previously rent southern Africa or the Middle East now expressed themselves within Europe itself.
Traditionally historians have divided between those who regarded the First World War as the inevitable outcome of long-term structural factors, such as imperialist rivalries, the growth of nationalism and the ossified system of alliances, and those who viewed it as the result of immediate or contingent causes, and of individual mendacity or foolishness. More recently, there has been a recognition that both long-term and contingent factors played a role in fomenting war.
But however we understand the causes of the war, the fact remains that aggressive militarism was not confined to one side. Certainly, Germany had expansionist aims and a toxically racist culture. Britain, however, was not much different. We can only rewrite the conflict as a just war against German militarism by airbrushing out the reality of 19th- and early-20th-century imperialism.
It is mostly economics which triggers war when there is imbalance.ramana wrote:Historical forces march on and lead to war as a culmination. When different historical forces meet at a point you get war leading to defeat of one or others. The immediate causes are mere triggers.
The purpose of this thread is identify and study such historical forces and spread the knowledge.
The bottom line: over the next 15 to 20 years a major war in Asia is highly unlikely because Beijing will be playing a cautious game. Even if a military clash does occur, it will be short, with China being quickly routed by the preponderant American force. However, around 2030 the balance is bound to undergo considerable changes, if China is successful in: 1) closing military gap with the U.S.; 2) making its economy less reliant on the Western markets and overseas raw resources; and 3) forming its own alliance structure.
Let's imagine this scenario for 2034.
China -- which four years ago completed its reunification with Taiwan -- is increasingly worried by the growth of India's comprehensive power. In 2030, India overtook China to become the world's most populous country. Even more significant, India, with its much younger population and dynamic economy, has already been growing faster than China. India is vigorously modernizing its armed forces, which in a few years may present a serious challenge to China. With India-China rivalry for primacy in Asia reaching new highs, Beijing resolves to strike first -- before New Delhi has a chance to close the power gap. This is similar to how, in 1914, German concerns over the steady rise in Russia's strategic capabilities contributed to Berlin's decision in favor of war in the wake of the Sarajevo crisis. There was a belief among the German leadership that, by 1917 Russia would complete its military modernization programs and the window of opportunity would close.
Citing Indian meddling in Tibet and incursions across the disputed Himalayan frontier, Chinese forces go on the offensive in the border areas and hit Indian naval and air bases. The attack on India means war with Japan, as Tokyo and New Delhi have concluded a mutual defense treaty in 2031 -- exactly to insure against a probable Chinese assault. Simultaneously with the attack on India, the PLA Navy seizes the Senkakus and tries to capture the Ryukyu Islands.
nageshks wrote:Apologies for the delayed response, KLNMurthy-ji. RL had taken my time.
I am not sure how much nostalgia there was for the pre-Roman times. The Zionism that began in the late 19th century was a product of the nationalisms that were sweeping the continent. Further, it was the nationalisms that exacerbated the problem of the Jews. The secular nationalisms that came in the late 19th century had no place among them for the Jews. Consequently, the Jews across Europe were a group without a state. The Jews from all over Europe were fleeing wherever they could - America, South Africa, etc - you can see this if you see the records of the migrations of the Jews. To quote Raoul Hilberg in his masterpiece `The Destruction of the European Jews', the European Church said to the Jews, "You have no right to live among us as Jews". The secular antisemites that came after them said "You have no right to live among us". Hitler and his Nazis simply took it to the logical conclusion. They said, "You have no right to live." It was out of this desperation for a homeland of their own that the idea of Israel was born. In fact, if you see the type of ruling structures that the Jews adopted in their new to-be homeland, it was not the religious administration of the rabbis, but a far more secular administration that allowed a place for the minorities, but would still be a state with a predominantly Jewish character.KLNMurthy wrote: But we would be making a mistake in ignoring the emotions surrounding the attachment to an idea of an idyllic time before the Romans breaking the Temple or (don't remember the palestinian term for the dispossession) dispossession happened.
By the same token, take the number of Muslim population relocations - by force. Over the past century, I can think of more than a dozen. How many of them have the nostalgia to get back to their plots of land? Why aren't the others fighting similarly for their homelands? In fact, in Israel's own neighbourhood, you will see that the Palestinians have been expelled by force from at least 3 countries (to my knowledge).
The problem was never the plot of land - not after 1980, anyway. The problem is that the Jew has possession of Muslim land - dar-ul-Islam has been turned to dar-ul-harb. If instead of Israel, it was another Muslim power that had done the same thing to the Palestinians, it would never have been a problem - not more than is usual with displaced populations, whose sentiment wanes in time as is usual. No, the Jew taking possession of Muslim land will always be resisted, and they will try to turn the clock back by any means possible.
Here, I will beg to differ with you, Murthy-ji. You are beginning from the point that a solution is possible. My point of departure is that there is no solution. Israel just has to contain its enemies as best as it can, without descending into absolute barbarity. The Arabs will never ever accept the presence of Israel. Pointlessly handing out concessions in the mistaken belief that a solution is possible will only strengthen Israel's enemies.It takes deliberate effort and empathy to try and plug into that kind of sentiment, otherwise we are going to be stuck with saying that the problem is Islamic, as the Palestinians of today's generations have never seen their family plot of land. I mean, yes it is Islamic, but so what? That doesn't give us any further helpful insights that could lead to a solution, unless there is some kind of social engineering equivalent Final Solution of destroying Islam, a solution which at the same time ensures that human beings wouldn't end up becoming something worse than today's followers of Islam. There may be some satisfaction in "proving", yet again, that Islam--or at least some manifest aspects of it--are malignant, but begging pardon, any fool can readily see that. Again, so what?
