Germany And France View Ukraine Differently From US, UK

Germany And France View Ukraine Differently From US, UK

                                                                                      Saeed Naqvi

“Stupid son of a bitch” President Joe Biden snapped at a Fox News reporter who had the temerity to ask him whether 7% inflation would be a liability in the mid-term election. “No, it will be an asset” snarled the President, grinding his teeth. A few days ago a similar expletive was hurled at another reporter. The question this time was about Ukraine. Is the President losing his nerve?

Donald Trump hovers over his Presidency, like Banquo’s ghost, even as Biden walks around minefields – pandemic, plummeting ratings, economy, charges of stolen election, exaggerated fears of civil war – he has added another to the list – Ukraine.

What is the problem in Ukraine all about?

Keep in mind Nord Stream I and Nord Stream II: the first brings gas from Russia to Germany; the second when complete will double the volume, bypassing Ukraine. Ukraine will thus be denied transit fees. This will give Russia the hold on Europe which a depleted US does not want. This may well be the nub of the matter.

NATO and subsidiary regional military alliances came into being during the cold war. When the cold war ended it was the Berlin wall which fell. Germany had been in the eye of the storm. Note the understated centrality of Germany even in this crisis. The German Naval Chief, Kay-Achim Schonbach’s statement at a New Delhi seminar on Ukraine revealed Germany’s understanding of the crisis. His subsequent resignation clarified that Germany wears an EU hat as well particularly on collective security issues. Schonbach debunked US anxieties that Russia wanted to invade Ukraine. “That was nonsense” he said. All that President Vladimir Putin wanted was respect. “It is easy to give him the respect he really demands – and also probably deserves.”

There may have been some cheer when the cold war ended but West’s victory also reunified Germany, a country which was at the heart of two previous world wars. In the post cold war redistribution of global power Germany possibly having a larger share of the pie was an anxiety. The Japanese economy too was at its peak. “Axis” again?

Margaret Thatcher, on a visit to Finland, was asked by a reporter: “Does Britain need its nuclear deterrent now that the cold war is over?”

Thatcher: “We still have a problem in the Middle East.”

The coalition of the willing into which a most unwilling Francois Mitterrand was dragged at the last minute, launched Operation Desert Storm to pulverize Saddam Hussain, ofcourse, but mostly to put western imprimatur on victory over the Soviet Union. The status quo was maintained in the global power structure. A reunified Germany was not given any space to make any impression.

Similar fears again lurked in the background when the former Yugoslavia broke up. Croatia’s Cardinal Franjo Kuharic met the Pope in Rome. German Foreign Minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher went one better: he “recognized” Croatia, a war time German ally, ahead of the European partners. This set the cat among the pigeons. “Axis” again?

The UN system was utilized to side with friends like Serbia who had been with the allies during the war. So we had British General Sir Michael Rose’s daily briefings from the Serbian side, until the ghastly events of Srebrenica happened. 8000 Bosnian Muslims, boys and young men, were shot and buried in mass graves by Serbian soldiers.

The tragedy came into profile once again the other day when Germany withdrew an award to well known Israeli historian, Gideon Greif, known for his work on the Holocaust. He did not consider Srebrenica a “genocide”. Germany held back the award.

Again, on Ukraine, Germans demonstrate their own exceptionalism.

Some 170 tonnes of US “lethal equipment” reached Ukraine last week. The UK is sending more defensive weapons and extra troops for training. In other words the most enthusiastic arms donors – with some boots on the ground – are the US and UK, two countries where the leader’s survival in the gaddi is suspect for different reasons.

When the media mentions “several” NATO members sending arms, is France among them? Why then has Emanuel Macron been suggesting that EU must talk to Putin? He is himself arranging to meet Putin, even as I write.

Germany has been the most straightforward: no weapons will be sent. In the name of goodwill, it has sent a full fledged field hospital. Germany has also blocked Estonia from sending German origin weapons, according to the Wall Street Journal. This immediately invited an angry response from Ukraine. Berlin is “undermining western unity by refusing to transfer weapons to Ukraine.” Nor was it allowing allies like Estonia to do so.

The image of the western alliance, in lock step, rearing to go for Putin’s jugular is not borne out by facts on the ground. Much of western coherence on Ukraine is media hype. In fact the consequences of hurried supply of arms to the armed forces of Ukraine where salaries are meagre could spur an arms smuggling bonanza in the region.

Look at the other side. Putin has China by his side now as it was in Kazakhstan earlier this month. When 2,500 Russian troops marched into Kazakhstan to restore order, Washington was cross. Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken thought he was at his invective best when he picked on Russians as guests who never leave. Xi Jinping supported CSTO entry.

Russia having moved 1,20,000 (one lakh twenty thousand troops) to Ukraine’s border is the prime western grouse. This is a precursor to an invasion, regime change in Kiev and worse, proclaims the media.

The Russian argument is that since 1991, 14 new members have been added to NATO, mostly from the former Soviet bloc. And now Jens Stoltenberg, Chief of NATO has decided that Georgia and Ukraine would also be added as members. This, for Russia, is a red line. Supposing Russia were to position nuclear weapons on America’s borders. What would Washington’s response be? Meanwhile remember Nord Stream II which, says the State Department will be blocked, “should Russia invade Ukraine.”

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No Leftists Please: We Prefer Drunken Prime Minister, Weak President

No Leftists Please: We Prefer Drunken Prime Minister, Weak President

                                                                                      Saeed Naqvi

The saga of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s serial drinking binges signifies democracy’s nosedive. If he were not Prime Minister, he would be fictionalized as a pub companion of Sir John Falstaff, a boozy, buffoonish suitor of women, quarrelling with them in public.

Nick Hopkins of The Guardian and BBC’s newsnight had written some years ago a graphic account of Johnson, rolling like a drunk sailor at the San Francesco d’ Assisi airport. He was returning from the castle of newspaper owner Evgeny Lebedev, renowned for hosting uproarious parties. Hopkins quoted eye witnesses “Boris looked like he had slept in his clothes, and was struggling to walk in a straight line.”

Hard to believe because he was Foreign Secretary in those days. He had apparently evaded the 24/7 security detail and travelled without a suitcase. He must have slept in pyjamas he borrowed from Lebedev. Little wonder, then, Labedev has been a member of the House of Lords since 2020 – i.e. during Johnson’s Prime Ministership.

Mark my word, he will leap into action should the Ukraine issue boil over. Who cares for drunken binges when issues of national, nay, Western security are at stake. US President Biden will lead him because he is sinking too.

Calls for Johnson’s resignation are becoming louder, but will he step down? No if he has not done enough for the establishment which brought him to power in the first place. The belief that in democracies people vote a government to power is increasingly a delusion. The electoral process, voters pressing buttons or pushing slips of paper into the ballot box, provided legitimacy, a plausibility. Even that is now evaporating. Remember, 70% of the Republican voters believe that the 2019 election was stolen.

A government to remain in power, needs help in managing the opposition too. In India the easiest way to obstruct the unity of various regional parties is for the media to keep focus only on the solitary ruling class national party, namely the Congress. Since the Congress has no heart to win nationally, the balance of advantage remains with the other ruling class party, the BJP. Corporates will gradually, imperceptibly begin to redistribute their favours if the government they have brought into being begins to slip in the popularity stakes.

Why would the British establishment have settled on Johnson when his reputation for being flippant, unreliable, a liar was all over the British media atleast since 2017? Because the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was too far left to be acceptable. All the world’s sins had to be pasted on him by the media – he was a friend of Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan communist; he was anti semitic. Liberal values would be threatened should he ever become Prime Minister and so on.

He has to be grounded before he can take off. He faltered balancing diverse approaches on Brexit, clinching issue in 2019, but the media had left him no lee way to recoup. The alternative may be an unreliable drunk but he is atleast not a “communist”.

No wrong doing was involved if Corbyn knew Hugo Chavez. He knew many others of varied persuasions. You had to be in London to see hatchet jobs, not just in the media, but even in biography form: Dangerous Hero: Corbyn’s Ruthless Plot for Power. Written by Tom Bower, the book paints Corbyn in lurid colours – “a ruthless Marxist” hell bent on destroying liberal values. What Peter Oborne of the Daily Mail calls a “spurious” document, soon found itself on the second slot in The Sunday Times best seller list. Oborne researches revealed the biography was “replete with falsehoods.”

“It is hard to see how any decent person reading much of the newspapers or absorbing the broadcasting coverage of the last few years could have possibly voted for Corbyn”, Oborne wrote.

Corbyn himself noted in an interview that even he “would not want to live on the same street” as the man (Corbyn) he read about in British newspapers.

This was the new McCarthyism amplified a hundred times by a media in the thrall of the post 90s Murdoch culture. And the malaise is on both sides of the Atlantic. The establishment dug its heels in against Corbyn and ended up with the embarrassment called Johnson. The system in the US would not allow Bernie Sanders, with his socialist ideas, as a possible candidate for the White House.

An anti establishment mood had been diagnosed for months before 2016 US elections, even before the primaries had picked up. Washington establishment was in bad odour, but the Democratic Party machine had set its heart on Hillary Clinton who, ironically, was at the very core of that establishment. Hillary got the nomination but lost the election – to Donald Trump. Any data analysis will tell you that Sanders would have won.

Despite the outcome in 2016, the very same Democratic Party shackled Sanders once again. The media was in action. Thomas Friedman of the New York Times wrote two columns on “Why I like Mike”. The “Mike” of his adoration, billionaire Michael Bloomberg, way to the right of the John Birch Society, tossed his hat in the ring for the Democratic nomination, spent billions on the campaign and muddied the water. Everyone scrambled to produce a compromise candidate, Joe Biden. In the popularity stakes Biden is so low that Trump is only one percentage point behind him.

Contemporary democracy has gifted us a US President so weak as to be a virtual invitation for Trump to return. The process has also produced a serial binge boozer as Prime Minister.

Irish poet Brendan Behan, known for his drinking bouts was asked: “Wouldn’t you be a much greater poet if you didn’t drink so much.”

Behan: “I am basically a drinker with a writing problem.”

Recast the same question for Johnson; what would he say? To save his job he would probably fall back on blasphemy:

“Don’t you know there ain’t no devil, it’s just God when he is drunk.”

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Kazakhstan: Blinken Receives Punch On The Jaw By Russian Foreign Office

Kazakhstan: Blinken Receives Punch On The Jaw By Russian Foreign Office

                                                                                         Saeed Naqvi

The upheaval in Kazakhstan is totally incompatible with the image of serenity etched on my mind. The Tien Shan Mountains brooding over the endless steppes, the biggest in the world: in this panorama, a solitary horseman followed by a sheep dog, travelling to heaven knows where.

A TV crew of three – Devlin Bose, Kabir Khan, now an outstanding film maker and I drove through all the Republics on an eight seater van, with a burly Russian driver at the wheel. Some images were common everywhere. American capitalism had established visibility. In Almaty, as in other capitals, the biggest departmental store, spacious enough to contain a tennis court, had United Colors of Benetton painted above the glass exterior, end to end. Inside, a dozen or so young men and women, in designer clothes, walked between galleries of lingerie, dresses, blouses, coats, scarves and fancy shoes – all to be sold in dollars which the Kazakhs did not have.

At night our hotel room door was virtually pushed open by the loudest banging that a wooden frame can withstand. I called up Ambassador Kamalesh Sharma to rescue us from the fallen ladies of Almaty, desperate to find access not so much to us as to our wallets.

This is what the Soviet collapse had done to all post Soviet economies. Dollar was king. In these circumstances, The United Colors of Benetton in every major city, was not an invitation for citizens to buy. It was an advertisement for capitalism.

The meat selling centre was a carnivore’s delight – beef, horse, game animal, pork. Pork in a Muslim country? Don’t forget 70 years of Sovietism. Yes, there was considerable propaganda about the Central Asia having opened up to Islamic fundamentalism. Our inquiry was revealing. Almaty’s solitary priest, a scrawny young man in shirt sleeves, supervised a congregation of zero. Kabir found a unique way of gauging how “Islamic” a country was: a vox pop on camera in every city asking for directions to the “mescit” or mosque. Nobody knew the way to the masjid. In contrast, the orthodox churches, which had played a role in bringing down communism, were packed. After all, 45 percent of Kazakh population being Russians and 70 years of Communism had altered local cultures.

This was the state of affairs that Nursultan Nazarbayev inherited the key central Asian republic as large as India but with a population of only 18 million. Like his previous boss, Boris Yeltsin, he shuffled out of his communist coil and, if you will stand for a mixed metaphor, took to authoritarianism like duck to water. Like Yeltsin’s coterie, Nazarbayev’s family cornered much of the oil wealth. Naturally, people were angry. In 2021 Nazarbayev, 81, handpicked Kassym Tokayev as President, retaining top security positions himself. When the riots erupted last week, Nazarbyev’s coterie was seen to be hand in glove with “foreign” elements seeking Tokayev’s ouster. A “colour revolution” was suspected. Then came stories of the US being hand in glove with the regime since the 90s in manufacturing chemical weapons. This was possible in the wave of pro Americanism when the Republics became independent. Sadly for America, the wheel has come full circle now.

The messy, humiliating American departure from Afghanistan in August, 2021 was more debilitating than the Vietnam debacle. In 1975 the US had enough spunk left to enable Ronald Reagan to mount a counterpunch in the 80s which shook the USSR. Leaving Afghanistan was a bigger disaster because it put an imprimatur on American decline.

Nazarbayev had seen the full gamut –– America’s sole super power moment, a phase of over reach, and decline, reaching its nadir in Afghanistan. Consistent with regional realities, Kazakhstan deftly navigated between the US, Russia and China.

This strategic state kept altering its distance from the three powerful nations according to the waxing or waning of power in the neighbourhood. With the US on a slope, China, Russia became the new rising powers.

After the Afghan fiasco, was the US going to pick up its marbles in the region and walk away? Was 20 years of Afghan occupation and clandestine biological research programmes, scores of sleeper cells – all going to be abandoned? Not quite.

How to look muscular in foreign affairs, having been so weakened from within? Wise men of foreign policy, Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski and a host of others, whispered the mantra to The White House: a weak America must dedicate itself to the task of keeping China and Russia distant from one another.

Quite the opposite has happened. Russia and China have seldom been closer. When the State Department criticized Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev for having invited the Russia led Collective Security Treaty Organization, to send 2,500 Peacekeeping troops to control the situation, Xi Jinping made a most uncharacteristic statement supporting Tokayev’s move. US diplomats were embarrassed. As soon as violence erupted, Tokayev relieved Nazarbayev of his post. The former strongman’s coterie had given the violent demonstrations a helping hand. CIA was accused of plotting a “colour revolution”.

Not only has the US been caught with its hand in the till of biological weapon manufacture but they are flat footed on regime change allegations.

The new Secretary of State, Antony Blinken must be red faced, having been socked on the jaw by the Russian Foreign Ministry. Without having an inkling of what the Russian intention was when 2,500 CSTO peacekeepers were sent to Kazakhstan, he put his foot in his mouth: “One lesson of recent history is that once Russians are in your house, it’s sometimes very difficult to get them to leave.” Blinken looked silly when Russian troops began to leave after having restored order. But the Russian foreign office was merciless in its parody on Blinken’s statement.

“When Americans are in your house, it can become difficult to stay alive, and not be robbed or raped. Indians of North American continent, Koreans, Vietnamese, Iraqis, Panamanian, Yugoslavs, Libyans, Syrians and other unfortunate people who are unlucky enough to see these uninvited guests in their “homes” will have much to say about this.”

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UP Tough For Modi But 2024 Demands Brand New Platform

UP Tough For Modi But 2024 Demands Brand New Platform

                                                                                         Saeed Naqvi

Drawing room hopping in the capital, restricted as much by corona as by a singular absence of information on which lively political gup-shup can be sustained, came alive last week with Meghalaya Governor Satya Pal Malik’s public assault on the Prime Minister. Narendra Modi was “ghamandi” (arrogant), he said. This was not all. He quoted Amit Shah saying unflattering things about the Prime Minister’s mental balance. Malik has not yet been removed as Governor of Meghalaya. He clashed with Narendra Modi on the issue of farmers. Is that the reason why he is not being “touched” on the eve of state elections next month, particularly in UP.

Drawing room chatteratti are perking up. On political issues they are breaking out of the whispering mode; they are giving voice to speculations, even of infirm veracity. “Inside” sources are cited by the more unreliable. But when more than, say, four persons, unconnected with one another, begin to tot out the same figures, it is discreet to take note – 150 to 155 for the BJP in UP. The more adventurous speculators are bringing the figure down to 125. Why would the BJP ever accept this outcome in exchange for the 312 seats which it has at present in a House of 403?

Remember always Modi’s genius, his ability to transform a negative into a positive for himself. Look at the whodunit of his cavalcade stranded on a Punjab overbridge for 20 minutes. Had he travelled to his destination, he may have faced an almost absent audience. That is why he changed the route and ran into a traffic jam. This is the opposition narrative. His version is that he was deliberately exposed to danger. Temples have been mobilized for special prayers for the Prime Minister.

There is every likelihood of the Omicron virus peaking in February. Surely this will call for a strict adherence to Covid norms. Look how the virus galloped in Goa after the New Year eve jamboree. Can political rallies be permitted in these circumstances? Priyanka Gandhi has already jumped the gun – no rallies for two weeks. Is there a suggestion that elections can be postponed by making Omicron the excuse because the field reports are negative for the ruling party? Should this happen, would not the thousands of crores spent on advertising one infrastructure project after another go down the sump?

This invites the riposte: once the public has been made aware of the good works the government has done – in this case Yogi Adityanath – electoral advantage can be extracted within a reasonable period. This line of thinking ignores a fundamental reality: public memory is very short, shorter still in the time of google. This advertising blitz must be encashed immediately because otherwise there is nothing as dead as yesterday’s newspaper and nothing less persuasive than stale ads.

Ground reality is that the wind is not blowing in the BJP’s favour. The surge for Akhilesh Yadav is in reality a surge against the BJP. “Hubbe Ali kum; bughz e Muaviya zyada” which means “not for love of Ali but for hatred of Muaviya, Ali’s implacable enemy.” For a precise application of this aphorism the BJP will have to be broken up into its constituent parts. The surge in UP is against the Yogi. Modi is losing points largely by association with Yogi Adityanath.

The extent to which the BJP High Command has a say in UP, Yogi will be the fall guy either way. Victory in UP will be because of Modi’s tireless campaigning. Defeat will be placed at the Yogi’s door.

In other words, this could well be Yogi’s last term in Lucknow – so goes the drift of drawing room punditry. Those who claim to possess inside information talk of a tussle between the Yogi and High Command. Yogi is demanding 120 seats for his Hindu Yuva Vahini. He imagines this would give him leverage to dig his heels in should there be a move to replace him even in the event of a BJP victory.

Modi’s eyes are primarily set on the 2024 General Elections. Towards that goal UP is an irreplaceable staging post. Win or lose in UP, can the BJP ever go into a national election without hardening the Hindutva already in play.

The hard Hindutva, relentless minority bashing, scared voters into believing they were on God’s side because it flowed straight into the global torrents of Islamophobia during the post 9/11 war on terror. A miraculous coincidence has gone totally unnoticed by the global media. Modi was sent to Ahmedabad to replace Keshubhai Patel. He took charge on October 7 as Chief Minister. October 7 turned out to be the date of choice for the Pentagon to launch the war on terror, with Afghanistan as the target.

TV sets world over were saturated with fireworks on Afghanistan. Geraldo Rivera of Fox News was brandishing a gun on camera. “I shall shoot Osama if I see him.” Hysterical Islamophobia was enveloping the world. It was in that mood of global bigotry that Modi’s Hindutva was given shape. Hindutva had tailwinds of global Islamophobia behind it.

Circumstances today are exactly the opposite of what they were when Modi embarked on blood curdling Hindutva. Not only is there no Rivera flourishing a gun in front of the camera to finish Osama bin Laden and his cohorts, the Mujahideen have since mutated into Taleban. Today Taleban are the rulers in Kabul. Sooner or later a photograph will appear of Modi and a Taleban, even a Pakistan leader in some international conference on Afghanistan. Global and regional development are not conducive to a hard line. Hindutva by itself is politically useless. You don’t win elections on beef and love Jehad. Communalism has to be tied to nationalism to yield political results. In other words Balakot and Kashmir are required to stir up the cauldron. That string to Modi’s bow may loosen further as 2024 approaches.

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