The Peninsula Foundation

Category: International & Transnational Affairs

  • The Mask of Western Liberalism Has Slipped

    The Mask of Western Liberalism Has Slipped

    This is an interesting analysis published by ‘Global Geopolitics’ that highlights the aggressive, ruthlessly ‘might is right’ strategy the US employs to restore or sustain its fast-declining hegemony by disrupting global energy security. India’s petroleum minister announces that India’s LPG procurement from the US has climbed to 67%, from less than 10% last year. Nothing could be economically more unwise and disastrous for India. But the petroleum minister is proud of it!                          – Team TPF

    Western Industrial Policy and the Abandonment of Market Orthodoxy Expose the Class War in the Face of Chinese Competition.

    The ideological edifice upon which Western global dominance was constructed has collapsed with remarkable speed. For decades, the United States and its allies justified their hegemony through a simple formula that presented liberal democracy and free markets as the natural endpoint of human development, with China condemned for its authoritarian state capitalism, its violation of free market principles, and its excessive government intervention in the economy. The entire apparatus of liberal ideology rested upon the claim that decentralised markets, guided by the invisible hand, would always outperform the clumsy, coercive hand of the state, and that any deviation from this path represented a regression toward tyranny and economic stagnation. This narrative proved remarkably durable for as long as the West maintained its productive superiority, but the emergence of China as the world’s second-largest economy and the principal strategic competitor to the United States has exposed the lie at the heart of the liberal project (13).

    The West is now adopting China’s methods to defeat China, and in doing so, it is proving through its own actions that the Marxist analysis of the state was correct all along. The state is not a neutral arbiter of national interest, but an instrument of class rule, and the free market was never a universal principle but a weapon wielded against rivals and a self-serving narrative advertised to the masses. The same ruling class that preached fiscal discipline and limited government is now centralising power on an unprecedented scale, coordinating industrial policy, and weaponising the state not for the benefit of the working class but for the preservation of oligarchic hegemony. The mask has slipped, the class war is explicit, and the consequences will determine the trajectory of the twenty-first century.

    Now, the United States is practising the most ambitious state-directed energy strategy in modern history, constructing a global energy monopoly through deliberate acts of sabotage, sanctions, and military aggression. The Nord Stream pipeline, which supplied cheap Russian gas to Germany for decades, was destroyed in an act of industrial sabotage bearing all the hallmarks of a state-sponsored attack, and the Strait of Hormuz, through which passes one-fifth of the world’s oil, is now effectively blockaded through a US-led military encirclement that has deliberately escalated regional conflict to disrupt global energy flows.

    The energy front provides the most dramatic demonstration of this ideological volte-face. The West spent decades lecturing the world on the sanctity of free markets in energy, demanding that governments privatise state oil companies, open resources to foreign investment, and refrain from any interference that might distort the efficient allocation of supply and demand. Now, the United States is practising the most ambitious state-directed energy strategy in modern history, constructing a global energy monopoly through deliberate acts of sabotage, sanctions, and military aggression. The Nord Stream pipeline, which supplied cheap Russian gas to Germany for decades, was destroyed in an act of industrial sabotage bearing all the hallmarks of a state-sponsored attack, and the Strait of Hormuz, through which passes one-fifth of the world’s oil, is now effectively blockaded through a US-led military encirclement that has deliberately escalated regional conflict to disrupt global energy flows. Qatari liquefied natural gas exports, once a major source of energy for Asia, are statistically at zero after Iranian strikes on the Ras Laffan refinery, an attack made possible by the regional conflagration that Washington ignited (1).

    Asian countries that once bought from Qatar are now forced to purchase American LNG at extortionate spot prices that have spiked from ten dollars to twenty-five dollars per million British thermal units, and Japan’s imports of US LNG have increased fifteenfold since February.

    The consequence of this centrally planned energy blockade is the systematic transformation of Asian energy dependency from West Asian producers to American suppliers. Asian countries that once bought from Qatar are now forced to purchase American LNG at extortionate spot prices that have spiked from ten dollars to twenty-five dollars per million British thermal units, and Japan’s imports of US LNG have increased fifteenfold since February. Europe’s gas reserves are so depleted that the entire continent would run out of stored energy in less than six weeks of a cold winter, while American LNG tankers divert to Asia to chase higher profits. This is not a market; it is a centrally planned energy blockade designed to control global energy flows and weaponise them against China, the world’s largest oil importer, whose industrial base depends upon affordable energy imports. The empire’s strategy is to deny China access to affordable energy, fracture its supply chains, and force its vassals into permanent dependency, while the profits for Exxon, Chevron, and the LNG cartel represent a welcome side effect of uncontested global hegemony.

    The financial front reveals an equally stark contradiction between liberal ideology and imperial practice. The West built its ideological dominance on the myth of fiscal responsibility, imposing austerity on the Global South through the structural adjustment programmes of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, while governments that printed money to fund development were condemned as irresponsible populists. Now, the empire is debasing its own currency on a scale that would make the populists blush, borrowing trillions to fund the artificial intelligence arms race, the military buildup, and the energy war, while weaponising the dollar through sanctions, reserve freezes, and exclusion from the SWIFT payment system. The recent intervention to support the Japanese yen reveals the true nature of this financial architecture, as the United States Treasury sold euros to purchase yen in a rare market operation, marking the first American intervention to strengthen the currency since 1998 (1-13).

    The mechanism of dependency is the Federal Reserve’s Foreign and International Monetary Authorities Repo Facility, which allows Japan to swap its US debt holdings for dollars without selling them on the open market, but the price of this facility is permanent financial vassalage. Japan is structurally prevented from diversifying away from the dollar, and the US Treasury now holds effective veto power over Japanese monetary policy, ensuring that Tokyo cannot chart an independent course, trade freely with China, join alternative financial architectures, or refuse to participate in the empire’s economic war. A Japan locked into the FIMA Facility must hold US debt, defend the dollar, and follow Washington’s lead, and this dynamic is being replicated across the empire’s network of vassals. The empire is tightening the leash not merely to enrich Wall Street but to ensure that when the order comes to isolate, embargo, or wage proxy war against China, its vassals have no choice but to obey (13).

    The military front demonstrates the empire’s willingness to abandon its stated values in pursuit of strategic advantage. The United States presented itself as the indispensable nation defending freedom and democracy against tyranny, with NATO portrayed as a defensive alliance and wars justified as humanitarian interventions to liberate the oppressed and spread universal values. Now, the mask has slipped entirely, as Washington constructs the institutional architecture for a global war against multipolarity. NATO is expanding not to defend against a non-existent Russian invasion but to encircle China, and AUKUS, the Quad, and the deepening US-Japan-South Korea trilateral military alliance are not defensive arrangements but the scaffolding of a centrally planned military encirclement designed to control the South China Sea, the Taiwan Strait, and the sea lanes on which China’s trade depends (1).

    The US-Israel military merger, which passed the House in late July by a narrow vote, directs the Secretary of Defense to designate a permanent executive agent to accelerate the integration of American and Israeli defence technology, research, and production, authorising seven hundred and fifty million dollars for joint projects and making the relationship institutionally permanent. Once a supply chain is integrated and a production line is established, it becomes nearly impossible to dismantle, and this represents class interest institutionalised through a permanent military alliance that will be used to project power in the Middle East against China’s Belt and Road Initiative. The USS George Washington Carrier Strike Group sails through the South China Sea, challenging Beijing’s territorial claims, while Washington coordinates the defence industries of its vassals, directs their military spending, and integrates their command structures. This is not about selling weapons, though the defence contractors profit handsomely; it is about strategic encirclement, preparing for a confrontation that the empire knows it cannot win through economic competition alone (1).

    The technology front represents the most complete abandonment of liberal ideology, as the West practises the most aggressive state-directed industrial policy since the Soviet Five-Year Plans. The CHIPS Act pours tens of billions of dollars into domestic semiconductor manufacturing, explicitly framed as a response to China’s dominance, and tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, solar panels, and batteries are not temporary adjustments but permanent walls designed to strangle China’s green technology advantage. Export controls on advanced semiconductors, artificial intelligence chips, and chip-making equipment are not about national security but about denying China access to the technological base of the twenty-first century. Japan’s $2.3 trillion industrial revival plan is explicitly dependent on American technology, including 27,500 Nvidia Rubin chips to build artificial intelligence-powered robotics systems to challenge China in manufacturing, ensuring that any challenge to US hegemony would mean economic collapse for the vassal (13).

    The same policies that the West condemned when China practised them, including state subsidies, industrial policy, and protectionism, are now the official doctrine of the empire, and the goal is not to enrich Silicon Valley but to strangle China’s technological independence. A China that controls its own semiconductor supply chain, its own artificial intelligence infrastructure, and its own green energy technology is a China that cannot be stopped, and the empire’s technology strategy is designed to prevent that outcome. The West’s embrace of state-directed industrial policy is the most explicit admission that the “free market” was always a weapon to be wielded against rivals and abandoned when it ceased to serve the interests of the ruling class (5-13).

    The contradictions documented across these four fronts are not accidents, policy mistakes, or temporary deviations from liberal principles; they are the exposure of a lie that was always at the core of the liberal project. The Western ruling class never believed in free markets; it believed in markets when it was winning and abandoned them when it started losing. The rules-based order was a weapon to discipline rivals while the empire did whatever it wanted, and now that the rivals are too strong to discipline, the empire is tearing up the rulebook and revealing its true nature: a centralised capitalist dictatorship organised for class war. The liberals are no longer liberal, because the material conditions no longer permit the luxury of ideological consistency. When the empire was ascendant, it could afford to preach free trade, open markets, and limited government; now that China is overtaking it, the empire must do exactly what it condemned China for doing: plan, direct, and control (5-13).

    This is the class war revealed, with the Western oligarchy consolidating a centralised capitalist dictatorship to defend its global hegemony against China’s socialist-oriented state, while the liberals who once defended freedom and democracy now cheer the empire’s authoritarian turn.

    The difference between these two systems is the class that each serves. China’s planning serves the working class, lifting eight hundred million people from poverty, building the world’s largest high-speed rail network, and leading the green energy transition, while the empire’s planning serves the oligarchy, enriching the few, immiserating the many, and preparing for war. This is the class war revealed, with the Western oligarchy consolidating a centralised capitalist dictatorship to defend its global hegemony against China’s socialist-oriented state, while the liberals who once defended freedom and democracy now cheer the empire’s authoritarian turn. They were never defenders of liberty; they were defenders of a system that benefited their class, and now that the system requires centralised, authoritarian methods to survive, they embrace those methods without hesitation (5-8).

    The mask has slipped, and what remains visible is the reality that Marxism has always insisted upon: the state is an instrument of class rule, and the free market was always a lie sold to the masses while the ruling class did whatever it wanted. The Western ruling class is adopting China’s methods to defeat China, proving that China’s methods were always superior and revealing that the ideological contest was never about freedom versus tyranny but about which class would control the fruits of production. The empire is preparing for a confrontation that will determine the future of humanity, centralising power on every front, sacrificing short-term profits for long-term domination, and willing to immiserate billions to achieve its goal. The struggle continues, and the outcome will be determined not by the sophistication of liberal ideology but by the capacity of the working class to recognise the class war and unite in opposition to the oligarchy that wages it.

     

    References

    China Daily. 2026. “Deepening Geopolitical Differences Highlighted Before Munich Meeting.” China Daily, 11 February.

    China Daily. 2026. “Negotiating the ‘Gracchi Trap’.” China Daily Global, 6 August.

    Dawn. 2026. “Dawn of Highly Volatile Multipolar Order.” Dawn, 23 March.

    Munich Security Conference. 2026. Munich Security Report 2026. Munich: Munich Security Conference Foundation.

    Xinhua Español. 2026. “Latinoamérica y el Caribe Posee Activos para Sortear Nueva Era Geopolítica.” Xinhua, 5 August.

     

    This article was authored and published earlier by Global Geopolitics

    Feature Image Credit: ussc.edu.au

     

     

  • On the wrong side of History

    On the wrong side of History

    So, at a time when Israel finds itself on the back foot and bereft of friends, the question arises as to how have we ended up backing this losing horse? In actual fact, we have, as a nation, leaving aside the odd oligarch, little to gain from this relationship and much to lose.

    Some may be aware of the global internet-based market research and data analytics firm, YouGov, that continuously collects and disseminates data from around the world on all manner of topics, concerns, and opinions, including political opinion polls. In fact, the banner headline on its website reads “YouGov: What the World Thinks”.

    However, a caveat here worth keeping in mind, however accurate their polls, perceptions and opinions tend to be highly subjective and not necessarily an accurate reflection of ground realities.

    For example, the vast majority around the world must necessarily be quite upset with the intemperate behaviour and antics of President Trump, especially his blatant racism, misogyny and the horrendous Epstein allegations. Apart from the horrific devastation he has wrought in Iran, his clampdown on immigration and the tariff fiasco have had a debilitating impact globally.

    Given his multitude of sins, one could easily be forgiven for believing that he must surely be the worst performing and least popular President in American history. One would be wrong in drawing such a conclusion, because YouGov in its latest polls ranks him 38th out of the 45 Presidents to date. Incidentally, not unexpectedly, Abraham Lincoln leads this poll, with George Washington a close second, followed by John F Kennedy.

    Interestingly, among the top three Presidents in popularity, two ended up assassinated. This not only makes popularity a questionable aspiration in the States, but also speaks volumes about the American psyche. Indeed, Trump would probably do well to avoid topping the charts, though if history is any indication, the real threat to his life may well lie elsewhere, and not necessarily from Iran, if some commentators are to be believed.

    There is an interesting series on Substack by US Navy veteran, Rolf Kvalvik, on the JFK assassination that makes fascinating reading—-

    In this eight-part series, he delves into new documentation that has recently been unclassified, ironically enough by President Trump, on the assassination of President Kennedy.

    He points out that President Kennedy was extremely upset with Israel over its secret nuclear weapons programme and had put in motion various robust steps to shut it down. Going so far as to threatening to cut off all aid to that country, apart from clipping the wings of the very influential Zionist lobby in the States. So much so, that his actions were perceived as an existential threat by the Israeli leadership.

    In Kvalvik’s view, he was thus neutralised by the Israeli Intelligence Services working in collusion with rogue elements within the CIA, the Mafia, Zionist lobby groups in the United States and some senior politicians.

    Indeed, following his murder, Israel benefitted the most. Within days President Johnson ensured JFK’s directives against Israel were watered down sufficiently enough to make them ineffective and within two years Israel had produced a workable nuclear bomb.

    Trump must be fully aware of what these and other documents hold, as well as of the brutal truth that the Zionist regime will stop at nothing, including blackmail, assassination, deception and false flag operations, in its pursuit of its Greater Israel agenda.

     

    As remains evident, Zionist influence on Congress and the Government is fairly obvious, and in the circumstances one can clearly understand Trump’s fawning over Netanyahu, and as to why the Israeli tail gets to wag the American dog when it comes to West Asia.

    Unfortunately for Israel, however, their pet project appears to have hit a dead end, thanks to Iran’s intransigence, against which even American military power seems rather ineffectual. Of course, America does have the ability to initiate massive destruction all around, but that in turn is bound to result in a military confrontation with Russia and China. Even Trump’s compromised military leadership must baulk at such a possibility.

    So, at a time when Israel finds itself on the back foot and bereft of friends, the question arises as to how have we ended up backing this losing horse? In actual fact, we have, as a nation, leaving aside the odd oligarch, little to gain from this relationship and much to lose.

    Aside from advanced weaponry, whose value in the transformed conventional warfare environment is highly questionable, seeing their inability to stop Iranian attacks, they have little to give us. In any case, those weapons don’t come cheap.

    Of course, there is the employment factor, as Israel is keen; we provide the menial and blue- collar labour they require as replacement for the Palestinians who performed those tasks earlier. Ironically, one could say we are Israel’s equivalent of the much-maligned Bangladeshi’s here. In any case, this will amount to around a lakh or so at best finding employment.

    Our importance lies in what Brigadier General (Reserve) Erez Winner told a mainstream television channel: “Israel has 1.4 billion Indians as a production line”. We are perceived by them as bonded labour available to them to fulfil their Zionist agenda.

    From the Israeli point of view, however, apart from providing their murdering conscripts a safe and cheap haven to chill out in after completion of their terms, our importance lies in what Brigadier General (Reserve) Erez Winner told a mainstream television channel: “Israel has 1.4 billion Indians as a production line”. We are perceived by them as bonded labour available to them to fulfil their Zionist agenda.

    Being perceived as lackeys of the Israeli-American duopoly is hardly helpful for the government’s reputation and plainly demeaning for us as well. Clearly, in purely geopolitical or socio-economic terms, there is hardly any reason to justify our pro-Israel tilt. Especially given that around 10 million of our citizens are employed around the region, other than in Israel.

    Some opposition politicians, analysts and commentators here tend to believe that our government’s tilt towards Israel is predicated on the fact that the Hindutva and Zionist agenda have much in common, especially in regard to their virulent hatred for the Muslim community. While there may well be some truth to this, it is inconceivable that any government would risk its relationship with other countries of the region over this, given the socio-economic impact that would have.

    In the circumstances, it increasingly appears, as Mr Gandhi and the Congress allege, that our government is being held hostage to other extraneous factors that could well embarrass the government if they ever came into the public domain. One cannot help but wonder what cost the general public will have to pay in the long term to keep these secrets out of the public eye.

     

    Views expressed are the author’s own.

     

     

  • Analysing India’s Trade Bottlenecks

    Analysing India’s Trade Bottlenecks

    U.S. is raising vague arguments and challenges such as ‘forced labour’ and ‘surplus capacity’, while advanced countries do not help with technological development.

    On July 15, the India-U.K. trade deal came into force. That day, India banned the import of goods made using forced labour so as not to get unfavourable treatment from the U.S. under Section 301. A day later came the news that a bipartisan Bill has been proposed by U.S. Senators to levy up to 100% tariff on India and others for buying Russian crude. One way or the other, India’s trade with the U.S. is being buffeted by bottlenecks.

    China’s trade
    In contrast, without a trade deal, China has become India’s largest trading partner. Imports from China in the first half of 2026 have shot up by 21.8% while exports have risen by 37.2%, though on a small base. The already-high trade deficit with China of $116 billion last year is likely to rise since it has already topped $67 billion in the first half of the current year. The imports from China are high- and low-tech items, while exports are mostly low-value-added items.
    India’s dependence on China is overwhelming. Factories and exports increasingly depend on China for machinery and intermediates. For instance, pharmaceuticals depend on imports of API from China. The average wage rates in key sectors such as automobiles and apparel are half to one-third of China’s. Yet, India is unable to outcompete China in global markets because of the huge technological advantage the latter has gained in the past 35 years.
    While multinational companies (MNCs) have invested in China, as a share of total investment, it has been small. Further, to capture markets, China has been investing in other countries under the One Belt, One Road initiative. Thus, net foreign investment in China has been small. Finally, as Chinese companies have become big, they are outcompeting MNCs such as Tesla. And many U.S. companies have left China, including Amazon, Apple, Dell, IBM, and Uber.
    India is unable to finalise a trade deal with the U.S. since at least July 2025, though Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal keeps assuring the nation that it is almost done. Last August, India’s exports were hit by a 50% tariff, leading to a decline in labour-intensive exports of apparel, shrimps, leather goods, and so on. India’s overall trade deficit increased in 2025 to $120 billion from $94 billion in 2024. China faced high US tariffs, but by diversifying trade, it increased its trade surplus in 2025 to $1.19 trillion from $992 billion in 2024.
    Technology and investment
    The lesson is that technology is the key to trade in today’s globalised world. China is accused by the West of currency manipulation and massive government help to cheapen its exports. The implication is that China is draining its surplus to sell to the rest of the world. And, it is supposed to have been doing so for at least the past 35 years. Such trade over long periods of time should have drained resources and made China suffer. Instead, the Chinese economy has boomed and become five times larger than India’s economy.

    The reason is China’s high savings rate of above 35% of GDP since the 1980s and at times reaching close to 50%. This has been able to finance its huge investments of 40% and more, peaking at 47%. Its growth has not depended on foreign investment.
    This massive investment has enabled China to invest in technology development and expand its industry. This has fuelled rapid economic growth, and initial low consumption levels have risen rapidly, as is visible in any modern Chinese city. The U.S. has tried to thwart Chinese advances in technology by putting restrictions, but China has managed to circumvent that and continue upgrading technology. So much so that the U.S. has come to depend on Chinese imports.

    Since Trump has squeezed India, the latter has entered into trade agreements with important trade partners — the U.K., the European Union, the UAE, New Zealand, and so on. But caution is required since the earlier trade agreements with Japan, Korea and Australia led to a larger trade deficit with them. India could not increase its exports as much as others could because of their technological advantage.

    The advanced countries have not helped India with technological development. They want to export but not share technology. The United States Deputy Secretary of State said at the Raisina Dialogue in New Delhi that the U.S. made a major strategic and economic error roughly 20 years ago by giving China extensive access to American markets, technology, and capital. He said such a mistake would not be made vis-a-vis India. The implication is that India has to develop its own technology; otherwise, it will lag behind the advanced countries and China.

    Forced labour
    By investigating India on “forced labour” under Section 301, the U.S. is seeking to create a bottleneck to extract concessions. Forced labour implies coercion to work. Workers have no choice but to do the bidding of the employer because the option is hunger. Employers take advantage and pay low wages. This gives an exporter an advantage as its produce becomes cheaper. The U.S. says that is unfair to its producers.

    But wages in the developing world are much less than in the advanced nations. Does that mean that all production in the developing world is using forced labour? In India, unorganised labour receives low wages since it has little bargaining power to obtain decent wages. Thus, most of India’s production can be said to be based on forced labour. And its imports from developing nations can be said to be based on forced labour. This is a non-tariff barrier that the U.S. wants to apply to India.
    Another non-tariff barrier the U.S. is threatening to use is “surplus capacity” in steel, textiles, and so on. Any export by any country is over and above what it uses within its own territory. So, all export is based on surplus capacity. The U.S. has a massive agricultural surplus which it wants to dump on India. Its companies provide massive amounts of defence armament to the rest of the world. Which country does not produce for export so that it can import what is needed by its economy? Entire trade depends on these surpluses based on “comparative advantage”. So, what is India being penalised for? Are these bargaining chips to extract concessions?

    India’s trade with the U.S., till recently its largest trading partner, is being buffeted by vague arguments and challenges. Earlier it was the so-called “reciprocal tariffs” and now, Russian crude purchases, “forced labour” and “surplus capacity”. This huge uncertainty is buffeting Indian exporters. Indian officials negotiating a trade deal with the U.S. were hoping for favourable treatment, but that seems unlikely.

    Meanwhile, trade with China has boomed, though there is no trade agreement with it. India avoided joining the RCEP in 2019 to stall Chinese dominance. Given U.S. coercive steps on trade, both India and China have diversified their trade with the rest of the world. That is the way to go. And the lesson from China is that trade deals or not, India needs to upgrade its R&D to become globally competitive.

    This article was published earlier in ‘The Hindu.”

    Feature Image Credit: aninews.in      US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer meeting Union Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal in New Delhi in June. | Photo Credit: ANI 

  • Guyana’s Energy Rise and the US-China Contest

    Guyana’s Energy Rise and the US-China Contest

    Introduction

    In just five years after oil production began, Guyana has become the world’s largest per-capita oil producer and South America’s second-largest supplier of crude. Daily output now stands at ~926,000 barrels, with recoverable reserves exceeding 11 billion barrels in the Stabroek Block alone. Guyana has recorded a GDP growth of 43.6 per cent in 2024, one of the fastest rates globally. The former British colony has very rapidly transitioned from being a peripheral Caribbean economy to a strategically significant energy producer. This has attracted growing attention from both the United States and China, both seeking to secure economic, political and strategic influence in the world’s newest petro state. The manner in which Georgetown navigates and hedges against great-power competition over its resources shall determine whether its oil wealth translates into prosperity or succumbs to the familiar resource curse.

    The Energy Architecture

    Guyana’s transition has been remarkably rapid, with commercial oil production commencing in December 2019, within five years after ExxonMobil’s discovery in 2015. The Stabroek consortium, comprising ExxonMobil (45 per cent), Chevron (30 per cent) and China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) (25 per cent), has invested billions in developing Guyana’s offshore resources. CNOOC alone has committed approximately $17.7 billion across six projects, making Guyana the company’s largest overseas investment. ExxonMobil projects production to reach 1.7 million barrels per day by 2030, placing Guyana among the world’s major non-OPEC producers.

     

    Guyana’s energy strategy also goes beyond crude extraction. The Guyanese government is pursuing downstream industrialisation through the $2 billion Gas-to-Energy project, which will transport offshore natural gas to a 300-megawatt power plant at Wales. Supported by a $526 million loan from the US Export-Import Bank, it aims to reduce electricity costs and support the development of a domestic manufacturing base. The participation of companies such as TotalEnergies, QatarEnergy and Petronas indicates efforts to broaden the investor base beyond the Stabroek consortium. At the same time, the continued political consensus around the original Stabroek production-sharing agreement between the Guyanese government and the Stabroek consortium has provided a degree of policy predictability through the 2030s.

    Washington’s Role

    The United States has moved quickly to leverage Guyana’s newfound energy boom into a broader strategic partnership. In March 2026, US Energy Secretary Chris Wright met President Irfaan Ali ahead of the inaugural Shield of the Americas Summit, describing Guyana as “a huge part of this strategy, a very well-governed country with great energy resources”. The summit established the Americas Counter-Cartel Coalition, including Georgetown among a select group of participating Caribbean states. While it has been officially framed as a counter-transnational crime initiative, the initiative reflects broader US efforts to strengthen its security presence in the Caribbean and refocus attention on the Western hemisphere.

    US engagement has also deepened militarily, with the USS Normandy and USS Mahan conducting exercises with the Guyana Defence Force (GDF) in 2025, while US Army Security Force Assistance Brigades have trained GDF units in jungle warfare and engineering since 2022. Washington has also supported the development of coast guard facilities and communications infrastructure, aiming to strengthen Guyana’s security amid continuing tensions over the Essequibo dispute with neighbouring Venezuela. The growing American footprint in Guyana is visible in the consolidation of Washington’s economic and strategic presence across Guyana’s energy, infrastructure and security sectors. Guyana’s strategic value to Washington also lies in its geography, where a sustained American presence in Georgetown helps shape the trajectory of a post-Maduro Venezuela, particularly as the question of whether Caracas drifts back into Beijing’s or Moscow’s orbit remains unresolved through the medium term.

    Beijing’s Parallel Track

    China’s presence in Guyana differs in scope and character. CNOOC is a passive financial partner in the Stabroek block, earning returns from a basin operated primarily by US energy companies. However, CNOOC has leveraged this expertise, earning secure production-sharing contracts for two offshore blocks in Trinidad and Tobago, citing its experience in Guyana.

    For Georgetown, Beijing has emerged as a significant infrastructure and development partner. Guyana signed a Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) memorandum in 2018 and is negotiating a Joint Action Plan. Chinese state entities have financed or constructed major projects, including the expansion of the Cheddi Jagan International Airport, the $260 million Demerara River Bridge, East Coast road upgrades, and the $184 million East Coast rail-highway project. Beyond existing ones, Chinese developmental financing has been associated with prospective projects, including a deep-water harbour and the Amaila Falls hydropower project. Beijing has also provided approximately $36.6 million in debt relief, helping it earn political goodwill without generating the levels of debt distress seen elsewhere in the Caribbean. At the same time, Guyana’s trade asymmetry is visible, with its non-oil exports to China at $17 million in 2022, while imports from China are multiple times higher at $372 million. The Chinese telecom giant Huawei has emerged as a major player in Guyana’s telecommunications sector, drawing scrutiny from Washington on data governance and cybersecurity, amplified by cybersecurity researchers and Guyanese civil society.

    Venezuela’s Shadow

    For Guyana’s rise, the unresolved Essequibo dispute continues to cast a long shadow, with Caracas having escalated its rhetoric under former Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. With Maduro’s removal, the risk of military escalation over the Essequibo has diminished, and the transition government in Caracas is likely to prioritise political stabilisation and economic recovery. However, the medium to long-term challenge for Georgetown remains economic, as Venezuela, which is gradually integrating into global energy markets, will compete with Guyana for the same Gulf Coast refining demand. Guyana’s growth opportunity remains intact, provided that the Caribbean remains within the US security umbrella and the Venezuelan energy sector’s recovery remains gradual.

    Guyana’s Balancing

    Amid intensifying great power competition, Guyana has sought to pursue multi-alignment. President Irfaan Ali’s re-election in September 2025 has ensured continuity in economic and foreign policy at a critical moment in the country’s growth story. Alongside the expansion of hydrocarbon production, Georgetown has pursued a dual-track approach to balance its oil-led growth by advancing its Low Carbon Development Strategy 2030 using its extensive forest cover to generate revenue through carbon credit mechanisms, including a $750 million agreement with Hess Corporation. At the same time, Georgetown has maintained close security and economic cooperation with the United States, retaining Chinese participation in the energy and infrastructure sectors, and continuing its adherence to Beijing’s One China policy. These policies reflect Guyana’s attempt to advance its economic and strategic objectives pragmatically, while seemingly preserving strategic autonomy by leveraging external partnerships.

    The Outlook

    By 2030, Guyana’s oil production could reach 1.7 million barrels per day. As the country’s energy sector grows, competition between the United States and China is likely to intensify in areas such as infrastructure and digital connectivity. While souring relations between Guyana and Venezuela increases Georgetown’s security dependence on Washington, a stable regional environment would allow Guyana to pursue a balanced foreign policy and more diversified external partnerships. Ultimately, Guyana is better positioned than other petrostates to convert its hydrocarbon wealth into prosperity, with the Natural Resource Fund Act of 2019 and the Stabroek production-sharing structure indicating a stable economic and institutional architecture that was absent in Venezuela. Georgetown’s deliberate policy of balancing American security cooperation with Chinese infrastructure financing is indicative of a conscious strategy of multi-alignment, rather than succumbing to great power competition that has polarised other petrostates.

     

    Feature Image Credit: panamericanworld.com

    Guyana map Credit: cfr.org

  • The Evolving Situation in Myanmar and it’s Impact on India-Myanmar Relations

    The Evolving Situation in Myanmar and it’s Impact on India-Myanmar Relations

    For Indians researching security issues in the Northeast, three recent developments in Myanmar have once again put the spotlight on the situation there. The first is a May 2026 report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) that pieces together eyewitness accounts of the killing of at least 170 Rohingya men, women, and children, with many others likely injured, in Hoyyar Siri village in Buthidaung township in Northern Rakhine on 02 May 2024[i]. The second is an account of another influx of Chin refugees into Mizoram in May 2026, following the Tatmadaw’s capture of Falam town in Chin state (adjoining Mizoram and Manipur).[ii] The third is the recently concluded visit of Myanmar President (formerly General) U Min Aung Hlaing to India from May 30 to June 03, 2026. According to the initial press release of the Ministry of External Affairs, ‘…he will be accompanied by a high-level delegation comprising several Cabinet Ministers, senior officials and business leaders. This will be the first visit of President U Min Aung Hlaing to India in his current capacity.’ The three events encompass a spectrum of issues that impact India’s relations with Myanmar, broader regional security, and India’s Act East Policy.

     

    Map: Courtesy – Nations online Project

    Myanmar is the bridge connecting Northeast India to Southeast Asia. If geographically included in Southeast Asia, it would be the region’s largest country, with 135 officially recognised ethnicities and a population of over 52 million (2003 census)[iii]. Myanmar is more than four and a half times larger in area than its Western neighbour, Bangladesh, yet has roughly one third of its population. Myanmar is a vital component of India’s Act East policy

    Outline Economic Situation

    Myanmar’s parliamentary elections were held from Dec 25 to Jan 26, with the Junta-supported Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) winning an overwhelming majority, further consolidating the military’s hold over the state apparatus. As a result of the USDP being perceived as a proxy for the military regime, the continuing clampdowns on civil liberties at home and the visibly close ties with Russia, most sanctions imposed earlier by the West on the military government remain in place. The nexus between Myanmar’s military and Iran, which is rumoured to be supplying drone parts to the Tatmadaw, has also reinforced the West’s perception of the Junta[iv].

    The pressure of sanctions was intensified by the impact of the war in Ukraine and compounded by energy shocks from the current West Asian crisis.  According to the Lowy Institute, ‘Myanmar has probably been affected more than any other country in Southeast Asia — both in terms of the lack of access to fuel, and also the rising prices… Myanmar is the only country in Southeast Asia whose economy has not recovered to its 2019 pre-COVID levels[v]. With fuel prices having increased more than threefold and deepening scarcity in rural areas, the economy is in a downward spiral, accelerated by power outages, a shortage of essentials such as fertiliser (due to cutbacks by exporters like China), and an overall lack of investment. As per figures of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), ‘…GDP has declined by a cumulative 16 per cent since 2020, with growth falling 2.2 per cent in fiscal year 2025 alone. Inflation has been consistently high, reaching 29 per cent in 2024 and 25 per cent in 2025.[vi] Today, Myanmar has the highest inflation rate in the whole of Southeast Asia[vii].

    Currency:  One of the most significant issues for the economy is the agreement between the Central Bank of Myanmar and the People’s Bank of China to link the Kyat and Renminbi digitally[viii]. This would bypass the international SWIFT banking system and convert Kyats directly to Renminbi, reducing dependence on the dollar. This move effectively ties Myanmar’s economy to China’s, with attendant consequences, especially regarding sovereignty.

    The Security Situation

    The civil war between the Tatmadaw and ethnic armies continues unabated in a see-saw fashion. It is taking a toll on the military, which is in the process of updating its conscription lists. According to a May 2026 report, around 13 million citizens have been found fit for conscription, and about 120,000 individuals have been recruited since the Conscription Law was enacted in February 2024[ix].

    Since its reverses after the launch of ‘Operation 1027’ on 27 October 2023 (an offensive by the Three Brotherhood Alliance (3BTA), composed of three Ethnic Armed Organisations (EAOs) in Shan state bordering China, with tacit Chinese approval for rooting out the scam centres there, the Junta has managed to claw back territory. After 15 months, it is in full control of an important central artery, the Mandalay Myitkyina Road and the connected towns in the Sagaing region[x] (see map on first page). With the capture of Myitkyina, the capital of Kachin state, the Junta is inducting fresh troops and equipment into Kachin. Seeing this, the regional EAO, the Kachin Independent Army (KIA), is reported to have gone on the defensive[xi]. The Junta also continues to hold the important ports of Kyaukphyu (the mouth of the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor) and Sittwe (the gateway of the India-built Kaladan Multimodal Port Project), both in Rakhine, though Sittwe is blockaded on land by the AA and is being supplied by air and sea.

    Elsewhere, too, the Tatmadaw has gone on the offensive. It has launched an offensive on multiple fronts to retake the trading hub of Maw Taung, which borders Thailand in the Thantharyi region (see map below) and has been under the control of the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) since November 2025.

     

    Note: Location of Maw Taung is approximate and not to scale. Map: Courtesy – Nations online Project.

    As mentioned earlier, Falam, where Chin state’s only airport is located, was captured by the Tatmadaw in April 2026. With the Tatmadaw aiming to reestablish control over the Myanmar-Mizoram border crossings, the Myanmar border town of Rikhawdar would be the next objective (see map). This could spark another influx of refugees into India’s Zokhawthar. Even today, after the May 2026 influx of Chins into Zokhawthar, residents claim that refugees now outnumber the local residents there[xii].

     

    Visual of Zokhawthar border gate. Map: Courtesy – Nations Online Project.

    Overall, the Tatmadaw has enhanced its capabilities with assistance from its main benefactors, China and Russia, enabling it to conduct offensive operations across the country. In the short- to medium-term, any overthrow of the regime by EAOs aligned with the opposition National Unity Government (NUG) appears unlikely, despite the EAOs still controlling substantial portions of territory in various regions.

    Interestingly, the NUG continues to retain Myanmar’s seat in the UN. It has recently cleared pending UN membership dues of around one million dollars using existing funds and public contributions[xiii], a symbol of the support they still generate.

    Outside Influences

    Myanmar is one state in the Bay of Bengal where Russia, China and the USA have specific, sometimes overlapping and frequently competing interests. Gen (now President) Hlaing has visited Russia seven times to date. Russia is a major supplier of weapons to Myanmar and is rumoured to have shared intelligence with the Tatmadaw, even as it continues cooperation in the energy sphere, including nuclear energy. In February 2026, it signed a five-year military cooperation agreement with Myanmar to protect its territorial integrity and strengthen national sovereignty and security, as per Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu during his visit to Naypyidaw[xiv], further consolidating ties with the Junta. Russia, therefore, has no interest in regime change.

     China continues with its on-off strategy of support to the Tatmadaw and the rebels, stopping aid when its own interests, especially along the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC), are threatened. China supported the EAOs in cleaning up the scam centres on the border when the Tatmadaw was unable to do so. Its role in subordinating Myanmar’s economy has already been mentioned. The release of Aung San Suu Kyi from prison to house arrest days after Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s visit in the last week of April is being interpreted as another sign of Chinese influence over the Junta[xv]. Also, between 2021 and 2023, it has supplied around $ 267 million worth of weapons to the Junta[xvi]. Thus far, it has shown no interest in engineering regime change. China appears to be working towards better border security, securing Myanmar’s rare earth supply chains to Yunnan, and making economic investments in that country. Its other objective is access to the Bay of Bengal. Towards this end, it practices ‘selective intervention through multi-actor engagement, ceasefire management, security outsourcing and border pressure. Though it speaks the language of non-interference, China is actively shaping developments in its neighbour to advance its strategic interests in the Indo-Pacific...’[xvii]

    The USA has drastically reduced assistance by nearly $1.1 billion since 2025[xviii], but lifted some sanctions on Myanmar companies. The Junta is interested in repairing relations with the US and has hired a Washington, D.C., lobbying firm for around $3 million per year to that end[xix]. The US has shown interest in the rare earth deposits in Kachin state, which are currently being mined by China and, in value terms, account for 60% of Chinese imports – though the process for moving the minerals out of Myanmar remains unclear, as do the prospects for future cooperation. However, it is apparent that the US, like China, increasingly views Myanmar (and Bangladesh) through the Indo-Pacific lens and would endeavour to expand its influence in myriad ways, including using aid as a lever to consolidate further in the Bay of Bengal region and limit Chinese influence.

    The Rohingya Factor

    There is increasingly palpable discontent among the Rohingya. Many still attempt to enter Malaysia (which is reported to hold over 200,000 Rohingya) by sea. Inside refugee camps in Bangladesh, cuts in food rations, overall shortages and depredations by militias /criminal gangs, including killings, torture and abductions, have worsened the law-and-order situation[xx]. Hierarchies, some of them criminal, run daily lives here through enforced diktats. Recently, triggered by the death of a youth, the Rohingya Gen Z organised themselves in protest by carrying out a coordinated online campaign in the camp, challenging self-styled community leaders. As observed by a journalist,’…for the first time in years, a segment of the Rohingya community is not just reacting to events, it is attempting to shape them’[xxi]

    Rohingya militancy is getting increasingly better organised. Four known groups operate across the Myanmar-Bangladesh border and in settlements – the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), Rohingya Solidarity Organisation (RSO), Arakan Rohingya Army (ARA), and Rohingya Islami Mahaz (RIM)[xxii]. The Junta frequently employs ARSA to fight the Arakan Army (AA), which ARSA regards as its main enemy. The AA’s self-propagated doctrine, ‘The Way of Rakhita’[xxiii] with its four pillars- Nationalism, Militarism, Historical Criticism and Pragmatism, has varying interpretations. It could denote inclusiveness and a broader national identity, safeguarding the nation, revisiting past errors, and preparing for the future in a practical way – which might include reconciliation with the Rohingya. Equally, it might indicate a narrow focus on an exclusive Arakan identity, backed by military force and a willingness to deal with anyone supporting such goals, which bodes ill for future prospects for the Rohingya and Myanmar-Bangladesh ties. With relief aid for Rohingyas progressively reducing and unrest in the camps barely contained, Bangladesh’s social fabric is coming under increasing strain. This is fuelled by the spillover of activities of such terrorist groups into Bangladesh, which finds its policy options in Myanmar increasingly restricted as outside powers come to terms with the Junta. The fallout of the Rohingya and Chin refugee crisis remains of prime concern for India, which shares borders with both countries, warranting greater vigilance by Indian border guarding forces and dynamic updation of internal security schemes, co-opting the latest technologies.

    Views of the NUG: The NUG, Myanmar’s shadow government, recently announced a new council in a statement titled ‘Announcement by the Steering Council for the Emergence of a Federal Democratic Union (SCEF) ‘ on its website.  A line on ‘inclusiveness’ states ‘…Furthermore, we are committed to protecting and promoting the diverse identities of all ethnic nationalities residing within member states and units of the Union, and to firmly building a new Federal Democratic Union composed of states that fully guarantee equality among nationalities and the right to self-determination. However, as mentioned earlier, the question of the NUG coming to power remains moot, as does the issue of implementing such a contentious agenda in a nation with a well-documented history of ethnic violence and discrimination.

    India and Myanmar

    Indian President, Draupadi Murmu, with the President of Myanmar, Min Aung Hlaing

    Despite the 2021 coup and the overthrow of Aung San Suu Kyi’s government, India has continued to adhere to its principle of non-interference in the affairs of neighbouring states. Accordingly, it has maintained bilateral relations with the Junta. Following February 2021, as a large number of Myanmarese Chins sought refuge with their kin in Mizoram (and some in Manipur, where ethnic strife between Meiteis and other tribal groups continues), India had to formulate a uniform policy to address this issue, incorporating humanitarian aspects, local sensitivities and security concerns. This has since been done.

    To ensure peace at the local level and prevent disruption to work on its two-decade-old Kaladan Multimodal Port Project (KMMPP), which links Kolkata to Mizoram (via Sittwe onto Paletwa on the Kaladan River and thence onward to Zorinpui in Mizoram by road, bypassing Bangladesh), India resorted to a tactical outreach that included an unofficial meeting between an Indian Member of Parliament and Myanmar rebel groups[xxiv]. This was further expanded by opening a dialogue in Delhi in late 2024 with the concerned EAOs in Chin and Rakhine, as well as representatives of the NUG and the Junta. Ultimately, separate meetings were held with each group; India advocated for a ‘Myanmar-led, and Myanmar-owned’ solution, thereby reiterating its policy of non-interference.

    President Hlaing’s visit to Delhi in June 2026 may have been partly inspired by an appreciation of India’s articulation of the above (non-threatening) policy. Some opine that the primary objective of this visit was to bolster the regime[xxv]‘s legitimacy. That said, the briefing by the Foreign Secretary after President Hlaing’s meeting with Prime Minister Modi indicates that Myanmar has broadly agreed to accommodate India’s major security concerns, notably an ‘assurance that Myanmar’s territory would not be permitted to be used against India’s security interests’[xxvi]. India further emphasised the importance of stability and peace in Myanmar for the security of its Northeast along the 1,643-km-long border. Discussions on cooperation in defence and security, critical minerals and rare earth and connectivity projects were also held. It is hoped that these interactions will lead to visible improvements in border security.

    India’s contribution to various facets of Myanmar’s development (as with its other neighbours in South Asia) is vividly illustrated in the note on bilateral relations posted on the website of the Indian Embassy in Yangon.  While discussion on defence cooperation during the recent visit was limited to aspects of training, capacity building, institution building, and UN peacekeeping, the larger issue of cooperation in the Bay of Bengal and the Indo-Pacific was addressed during the visit of India’s naval Chief, Admiral DK Tripathi, to Yangon in May 2026. This included strengthening existing arrangements for joint exercises, patrolling, hydrographic surveys, training exchanges, and staff talks. With increasing Chinese naval activity in the Bay of Bengal, India-Myanmar naval cooperation is likely to become increasingly important for India, especially given China’s majority shareholding in Kyaukphyu port at the mouth of the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC) and the rumoured infrastructure build-up in the Coco Islands[xxvii].

    Conclusion

    Internally in turmoil, Myanmar, as a neighbour, is becoming increasingly important to India. Great power competition, increasing Chinese inroads into that country and its impact on India’s security remain prime concerns. This necessitates realistic, sustained engagement with the ruling regime. Another factor is the future of India’s substantial investments in infrastructure projects in Myanmar, such as the Trans-Asian Highway and the KMMPP. Of these, the KMMPP, which was initiated in 2007-2008, was estimated to cost around Rs 3,200 crore four years ago [xxviii]. Yet even now, the Paletwa port on the Kaladan river remains in the hands of the AA. This also requires India to maintain engagement with rebel groups.

    Overall, India needs to retain leverage with all parties in Myanmar without being perceived as an inimical neighbour. Only then will its border be secured and the vision of Act East, which includes developing the Northeast as a springboard towards Southeast Asia, be actualised.

     

    References:

    [i] ‘Skeletons and Skulls Scattered Everywhere’ Arakan Army Massacre of Rohingya Muslims in Hoyyar Siri, Myanmar 18 May 2026.

    [ii] ‘Over 800 Myanmar refugees enter Mizoram amid Fears of fresh Junta offensive’ The Assam Tribune  17 May 2026.

    [iii] Website of the Embassy of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar, New Delhi.

    [iv] ‘New resistance alliance built to win Myanmar’s civil war’  Dan Swift and Sean Turnell  Asia Times 15 April 2026.

    [v] Podcast ‘Myanmar at a crossroads: Five years after the coup’ by Hunter Marston, Sean Turnell  The Lowy Institute 22 May 2026.

    [vi] Myanmar’s Economy Faces Grim Outlook Under New Government ‘ Ambassador Scot Marciel  Bower Group Asia  23 April 2026.

    [vii] Inflation Forecast 2026 South East Asia (from TheGlobalEconomy.com)

    [viii] ‘Myanmar at a crossroads: Five years after the coup’ Podcast by Hunter Marston and Sean Turnell , Lowy Institute  22 May 2026.

    [ix] ‘New Myanmar Regime Tightens Forcible Conscription Covering 13 Million Citizens’  Myo Pyae The Irrawady 18 May 2026.

    [x] ‘Myanmar Regime Takes Full Control of Mandalay–Myitkina Road to Kachin’ The Irrawady 08 May 2026.

    [xi] ‘KIA Announces Shift to Defensive Strategy as Regime Troops Pour into Kachin State’  The Irrawaddy

    May 19, 2026.

    [xii] ‘‘Over 800 Myanmar refugees enter Mizoram amid Fears of fresh Junta offensive’ The Assam Tribune  17 May 2026.

    [xiii] ‘NUG-funded payments secure Myanmar’s UN voting rights through 2026’ Mizzima News 11 February 2026.

    [xiv] ‘Russia and Myanmar Sign Military Cooperation Agreement’  AFP  03 Feb 2026.

    [xv] ‘Optics Over Outcomes: Myanmar’s Diplomatic Rehabilitation and India’s Tightrope’  Sreeparna Benerjee Observer Research Forum 13 May 2026.

    [xvi] ‘Tatmadaw Moves to Re-Establish Control Over The India-Myanmar Border’ Afiya Ibnath Ayshi  Bangladesh Defence Journal  14 May 2026.

    [xvii] ‘

    [xviii] ‘The Cut of USAID Programs in Burma’ Gemma Nailer  The Borgen Project   17 January 2026.

    [xix] ‘Myanmar’s military rulers hire Trump ally for US$50,000 a month to lobby Washington’ Maria Siow South China Morning Post 07 May 2026.

    [xx] On Myanmar (Substack) 11 May 2026

    [xxi] ‘Rohingya Gen-Z breaks the silence’ Shafiur Rehman  Dhaka Tribune  13 May 2026.

    [xxii] ‘Southeast Asia and the Rohingya Militant Threat ‘  Jasminder Singh The Diplomat  19 February 2026.

    [xxiii] ‘Understanding the Philosophy of the Way of Rakhita’   Rhee Rakha   Global Arakan Network  22 August 2025.

    [xxiv] ‘Mizoram MP meets Myanmar militants in push to speed up work on key connectivity project’. Isaac Zoramsanga,  The Print   01 March 2024.

    [xxv] ‘What the Myanmar President’s visit means for New Delhi’  Takhellambam Jagjit Singh  The Statesman  01 June 2026.

    [xxvi] ‘Won’t allow our territory to be used against India’s interests: Myanmar’ Shubhajit Roy  Indian Express  02 June 2026.

    [xxvii] Operationalising the East: India’s Naval Engagement with Myanmar’s Sreeparna Banerjee  ORF 20 May 2026.

    [xxviii] ‘India-Myanmar Kaladan project’s completion hangs in limbo’ Yeshi Seli  The New Indian Express 05 June 2022.

     

    Feature Image Credit: ddindia.co.in

  • Sustainability and Climate Change: Part of the Environment Complex Challenge

    Sustainability and Climate Change: Part of the Environment Complex Challenge

    Sustainability can be addressed through an independent inquiry into the fundamental issues at hand; at the same time, its interconnection with climate change cannot be ignored. What is more, both sustainability and climate change are part of a wider, existential challenge humanity faces, which I prefer to describe as the Environment Complex Challenge, encompassing biodiversity loss, environmental degradation, and air, water, and soil pollution. While I would prefer to use the fitting term Anthropocene – as the concept offers a comprehensive description of human impact on Earth and is clearly a primary concern in any debate on sustainability and climate change – it is too closely associated with the failed attempt to name a geological epoch in Earth’s history.[1] Though I was never much of a supporter of that undertaking, I always appreciated the comprehensiveness of its focus. Indeed, in the words of Delanty and Mota (2017), the Anthropocene approach highlights the co-existence of natural and social worlds and the deep intertwining of human and other planetary life. After all, sustainability is about the enduring relationship among society, the economy, and the environment, including how society organises its impact on resources and the critical issue of how to organise economic development and growth.

    With regard to sustainability, it is worth recalling its basic definition as stated in the Brundtland Report: meeting the development needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (Our Common Future, 1987). The core argument is that we should be mindful of resource use and not consume more of existing resources than can be replaced, so that future generations will have the same opportunity for development. It is also worth recognising that reducing resource use will help mitigate climate change. While the definition in the Brundtland Report represents a general call for conscious behaviour, several more specific ‘calls to action’ can be identified. One with overriding importance is the increasing global water scarcity, a global challenge but with region-specific impacts. A recent United Nations report (Global Water Bankruptcy, 2026) highlights the seriousness of the water shortage that humanity is facing, assessing that humanity is living beyond water sustainability, as most water-related resources (rivers, lakes, aquifers, wetlands, and glaciers) are beyond full recovery; consequently, water-related risks have become systemic. It added that billions of people face water insecurity, and almost three-quarters of the global population live in countries classified as ‘water insecure’. Another serious topic is food security, and, equally worrying, food waste. A recent UN report states that in 2022, 1.05 billion tonnes, close to one-fifth of the available food, was wasted (UNEP Food Waste Index Report, 2024). With it, a considerable amount of resources is lost in growing and transporting the food in the first place, thereby having a strong negative impact on resource sustainability and on the dynamics of climate change. Land use offers another important focus, not least in connection with biodiversity loss.

    When we consider these aspects, the inherent interlinkage between sustainability (the misuse and overuse of resources) and the dynamics of climate change needs to be acknowledged. Yet sustainability is also closely aligned with the broader human environmental imprint, which, in turn, links it to core aspects of the Anthropocene discourse (setting aside the earlier call to describe a geological epoch). As such, resource extraction and resource (mis)use are critical aspects that link sustainability to the Anthropocene concept. Such a perception is also supported by a critical discussion within the Anthropocene movements: when exactly humanity started to generate a fundamental and recognisable impact on the earth. Ruddiman et al. (2015) focus far back in human history on the beginning of the agricultural era, while Delanty and Mota (2017) identify the 18th-century Industrial Revolution as the beginning of the Anthropocene. While the selection of each date can be well supported by different perceptions and interpretations, one could still argue that, from the perspective of resource use, the Industrial Revolution may be the more impactful and lasting event. After all, it can also be interpreted as the starting point of capitalism and as a never-ending demand for resources, pursued through a continuous economic growth strategy at all costs. Indeed, it is capitalism, with its relentless push for relentless economic growth and resource overuse, which undermines any long-term sustainable prospect for humanity. This unyielding pressure for continued economic growth also underlies the dynamics of climate change and thus fundamentally contributes to what I describe as the Environmental Complex Challenge.

    Returning to the Brundtland definition of sustainability, the primary demand is that humanity, indeed, every individual, must reconsider their use of resources to reduce the individual’s and, in extension, humanity’s environmental impact as much as possible. One may argue this is not only with a view towards future generations, but also with a view to the present. After all, reducing resource overuse will reduce air, water, and soil pollution, contributing to a healthy environment and a healthy life for everyone. It will also be an integral part of mitigating the climate change dynamic and, thus, climate change-related risks. However, one can argue that the list of public-professional references to sustainability exists longer than the list of references to the climate change dynamic, with a line of connected concepts and programs identifiable from the Brundtland Report (1987) to the Rio Declaration and its Agenda 21 (1992) to the Sustainable Development Goals (Agenda 2030). In addition, we could observe influential regional concepts related to sustainability, such as the Factor 4 approach, developed by von Weizsaecker, Lovins, and Lovins (1997), which advocates increasing resource productivity to achieve sustainable development. They emphasise that improving resource efficiency would not only enhance sustainable development by reducing resource overuse but also generate additional wealth. This concept reminds us again of the interlinkage between the environment, the economy, and society. This triangular relationship is a defining one for thinking about sustainability.

    Take, for example, climate change as part of the Environment Complex Challenge, of which sustainability is an inherent aspect. While it represents a global challenge, its impact is always local or regional, thereby affecting the individuals living in those areas. Examples include urban heat waves in Europe and South Asia, and widespread changes in rainfall patterns across Asia, which generate extensive negative impacts on vast rural communities that can last for years. Indeed, extreme weather events are becoming increasingly the norm and increasingly impactful. An estimation of the increasing costs associated with extreme weather events is provided by the World Economic Forum. While during the 1970-1979 decade, associated costs were USD 183.9 billion, they rose to USD 906.4 billion in the 1990-1999 decade, and to USD 1.5 trillion during the 2010-2019 decade (Charlton, 2023). Certainly, responding to extreme weather events by rebuilding and protecting is resource-intensive and therefore a challenge to sustainability in the long run or short run, depending on local circumstances. The threat of sea-level rise, again a global challenge with different local and regional implications, provides another good example. One just has to think about the various Asian megacities, from India to China, that are exposed to sea level rise. Or the threat of sea level rise to food security, when considering the potential devastating impact on the Mekong Delta, the ‘rice bowl’ of Vietnam. While localities and communities around the world are affected by climate change, some face a more severe challenge. We may take the case of Bangladesh, where rising sea levels may submerge wide parts of the country. Where will the people go? They will not stay to drown. As a consequence, tens of millions of climate refugees may move towards West Bengal, in India, and will not be stopped by security measures, when the alternative is drowning. Reducing resource use or increasing the productivity of its use will provide strong support for mitigating climate change by slowing the rate of CO2 increase. Once again, these factors highlight the linkages within the Environmental Complex Challenge and the role of sustainability within it.

     

    At the same time, humanity still faces a fundamental challenge: widespread underdevelopment. One approach to addressing this challenge was the establishment of Agenda 2030, with the aim of ending poverty and hunger in all their forms and dimensions. The sustainable use of resources and protection from environmental degradation are two of the stated goals. Acknowledging the challenges facing the majority of the human population, 17 goals with 169 associated targets were identified (UN Resolution, 2015). What is more, the 2030 Agenda also underscores the interlinkages between development and the climate change challenge. Not only can climate change undermine some of the success already achieved in addressing underdevelopment, but it also increases the challenge of achieving some of the 2030 Agenda goals. Fuso Nerini et al. (2019) assert that 16 of the 17 SDGs and 40 per cent of all targets are impacted by climate change. The climate change challenge to sustainable development is increasing, since we are failing to arrest the climate change dynamic. A recent assessment indicates that we can no longer remain below a 2°C increase, let alone the 1.5°C enhanced climate target agreed in the Paris Agreement. Instead, the predictions made in the last couple of years state that we will be reaching 2.7°C warming by the end of the century (Climate Action Tracker, 2024: 1).

    The Environment Complex Challenge highlights and supports another discussion, one related to reconsidering the object of security. While this topic is linked with the late-1980s to mid-1990s debate on the meaning and interpretation of security, by replacing the state as the object of security with a focus on the individual, the relevance of these challenges is as powerful as it was back then, considering the fundamental challenges humanity is facing; unsustainable use of resources, climate change dynamic, biodiversity loss, widespread pollution issues, and environmental destruction. Lipschutz (1995) states that individual security offers a broader recognition of the insecurity people face by including human welfare issues and underdevelopment. Similarly, Smith (2005) argues that security should focus on the real conditions of insecurity that people and collectives are facing. Such a strong focus on the individual, while the role of neither central nor regional governments should be ignored when addressing the sustainability and climate change challenge, is further justified because sustainable development and addressing climate change require a change of behaviour at the individual level. Otherwise, change will not happen. Indeed, it is our responsibility to bring about change and address the fundamental challenge to our future.

    Bibliography

    Brundtland Report (1987) World Commission on Environment and Development. Oxford University Press. https://www.brundtland.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Brundtland-Report-1987-Our-Common-Future.pdf

    Charlton, E. (2023). This is what the climate crisis is costing economies around the world. World Economic Forum. https://www.weforum.org/stories/2023/11/climate-crisis-cost-global-economies/

     Climate Action Tracker (2024) Warming Projections Global Update. Climate Action Tracker.https://climateactiontracker.org/documents/1277/CAT_2024-11-14_GlobalUpdate_COP29.pdf

    Delanty, G., & Mota, A. (2017). Governing the Anthropocene: Agency, Governance, Knowledge. European Journal of Social Theory, 20(1), 9-38.

    GLOBAL WATER BANKRUPTCY Living Beyond Our Hydrological Means in the Post-Crisis Era

    The United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH)

    https://collections.unu.edu/eserv/UNU:10445/Global_Water_Bankruptcy_Report__2026_.pdf

    Nerini, F., F., Sovacool, B., Hughes, N., Cozzi, L., Cosgrave, E., Howells, M., Tavoni, M., Tomei, J., Zerriffi, H., & Milligan, B. (2019). Connecting climate action with other Sustainable Development Goals. Nature Sustainability, 2(8), 674–680.

    Lipschutz, R. D. (1995). On Security. In R. D. Lipschutz (Ed.), On Security (pp. 1-23). Columbia University Press.

    Ruddiman, W. F., Ellis, E. C., Kaplan, J. O., Dorian Q., & Fuller, D. O. (2015). Defining the Epoch We Live In. Science, 348(6230), 348-389.

    Smith, S. (2005). The Contested Concept of Security. In K. Booth (Ed.), Critical Security Studies and World Politics (pp. 27-62). Lynne Rienner Publisher.

    United Nations Environment Programme (2024). Food Waste Index Report 2024. Nairobi.
    UNEP Food Waste Index Report 2024
    https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstreams/5c6e505d-e1d3-4731-b5b8-4ecb9693a056/download

    UN Resolution (2015). Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 25 September 2015 70/1. 31, https:// digitallibrary.un.org/record/3923923?v=pdf.

    von Weizsäcker, E. U., Lovins, A. B., & L. H.(1997). Factor Four – Doubling Wealth, Halving Resource. Use Earthscan.

    [1] In early March 2024, the International Union of Geological Sciences confirmed the dismissal of recognition of the Anthropocene as a description of a new geological time.

  • The West Will Fall; Fall It Must: A Moral and Civilisational Analysis of Hegemonic Decline and the Imperative of Justice

    The West Will Fall; Fall It Must: A Moral and Civilisational Analysis of Hegemonic Decline and the Imperative of Justice

    Colonial and Imperial culture of greed for wealth, manifested in exploitative and extractive strategies, and an attitude of racial supremacy-endorsed by the Church,  is so deeply entrenched in the West that it has never gone away but has continued in different forms and structures. It is this culture that needs to fall, to truly lead to a world of equality, values and ethics – reflected by the 2000-year old declaration –

    “Yaadhum Oorey, Yavarum Kelir”  – meaning “To us the world is one, All people are Kin”.

    To say the West will fall is neither prophecy nor vindictiveness but the recognition of a historical necessity. Western global dominance — built across six centuries of slavery, colonial extraction, and neocolonial control — rested on the systematic violation of ethical principles that every major civilisation has independently affirmed. Systems founded on extraction and racial hierarchy carry the mechanisms of their own collapse. The decline now visible across economic, diplomatic, and moral indicators is not an accident of geopolitics but a consequence.

    The Peninsula Foundation reads this moment through humanity’s deepest ethical traditions: Thiruvalluvar’s Thirukkural, Kaniyan Poongundranar’s declaration that all places are one and all people kin, Confucian governance by virtue, Platonic justice as harmony, and African Ubuntu — a person is a person through other people, in other words – I am because We are. Arising independently across continents and millennia, they converge on the very principles imperialism negates: universal human dignity, compassionate restraint, justice as social order, and communal interdependence.

    By 2026, even Western institutions will concede the turn. The UN Secretary-General calls for accelerating an inclusive multipolarity; the JPMorgan Centre for Geopolitics describes a multi-speed order in which universal rules no longer bind; at Davos, middle powers spoke of permanent rupture rather than transition. Against this backdrop, the United States Secretary of State stood before the world’s premier security forum and called for the restoration of five centuries of colonial empires.

    The Rubio Confession

    On 14 February 2026, at the Munich Security Conference, Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered what critics across the spectrum called the most openly pro-colonial address by a senior Western official this century. He mourned the loss of five centuries of Western imperial expansion; named anti-colonial uprisings as a cause of Western decline; urged European allies to shed their guilt and shame over colonialism; and summoned the West to a new Western century by competing for market share in the economies of the Global South — framing that South not as sovereign nations but as an economic space to be recaptured, that precise colonial and predatory framing.

    This is not merely reprehensible; it is a confession. Facing structural decline, the imperial culture has abandoned even the pretence of moral authority and reverted openly to the logic of domination. Harvard’s Mathias Risse called the speech civilisational panic dressed as statecraft. The Global South’s response was swift: Indian commentary asked whether an American East India Company was coming; Brahma Chellaney saw the restoration of an exclusionary hierarchy; Sanjaya Baru urged India, as the beacon of anti-colonialism, to condemn it with the contempt it deserves.

    The Architecture of Extraction

    Rubio’s call to shed guilt is not only obscene; it is historically false. Utsa Patnaik’s study for Columbia University Press establishes that Britain drained £9.2 trillion — some $45 trillion — from India between 1765 and 1938, seventeen times Britain’s current annual GDP, by compounding India’s intercepted export-surplus earnings at the ordinary rate of opportunity cost.

    India’s gold and foreign-exchange earnings — among the largest in the world — were permanently diverted to London, funding Britain’s industrial revolution, its wars, and its administration, and consuming between a quarter and a third of the central budget.

    The mechanism was an elegant deception. After 1765, the East India Company taxed Indian producers, then used roughly a third of that revenue to buy their goods for export — paying them with their own taxes while acquiring their produce for nothing. The Council Bills system of 1861 industrialised this: foreign buyers paid London in gold and sterling for bills cashable only in rupees, which the colonial government paid out of its own budget. India’s gold and foreign-exchange earnings — among the largest in the world — were permanently diverted to London, funding Britain’s industrial revolution, its wars, and its administration, and consuming between a quarter and a third of the central budget.

    Jason Hickel calculates that rich countries have drained $152 trillion from the Global South since 1960 alone. There is no Western century to restore that was not built on the theft of other civilisations’ wealth — legitimised for six centuries by the Three Cs of civilisation, Christianity, and commerce, and continued after independence through structural-adjustment programmes, an African external debt of $824 billion, and more than 13,000 active US sanctions.

    The result was stark. India held the world’s second-largest export surplus for three decades before 1929, yet per capita income barely moved between 1900 and 1946, because the surplus was siphoned abroad rather than invested at home. Its share of global industrial output collapsed from 25 per cent in 1750 to 2 per cent in 1900. Japan, which kept its earnings, industrialised; India, whose earnings were confiscated, could not. The same logic ran through slavery, which research now confirms accelerated Britain’s industrial revolution — vindicating Marx’s image of capital arriving dripping with blood and dirt. Jason Hickel calculates that rich countries have drained $152 trillion from the Global South since 1960 alone. There is no Western century to restore that was not built on the theft of other civilisations’ wealth — legitimised for six centuries by the Three Cs of civilisation, Christianity, and commerce, and continued after independence through structural-adjustment programmes, an African external debt of $824 billion, and more than 13,000 active US sanctions.

    The sanctifying licence was issued long before the Council Bills, in Rome. A sequence of papal bulls — Nicholas V’s Dum Diversas (1452) and Romanus Pontifex (1455), and Alexander VI’s Inter Caetera (1493), proclaimed the year after Columbus reached the Americas — granted Catholic monarchs the asserted right to “invade, search out, capture, vanquish and subdue” non-Christian peoples, reduce them to perpetual slavery, seize their lands, and partition the non-Christian world between Spain and Portugal. From these decrees grew the Doctrine of Discovery: the claim that lands not inhabited by Christians were free to be “discovered” and their peoples’ sovereignty void. It furnished the racial and civilisational hierarchy — Christian over heathen, European over all others — on which five centuries of conquest were built, dressing the pursuit of gold, land, and labour in the vestments of salvation. The piety was the facade; extraction was the motive. Nor is the point contested by Rome: in 2023 the Vatican formally repudiated the doctrine, conceding the bulls were “linked to political questions” and never expressions of the faith — an admission, five centuries late, that the licence to colonise was always politics wearing the mask of God.

    The Civilisational Verdict

    Every tradition the Foundation invokes condemns this architecture. Thiruvalluvar’s Kural 113 warns that gain wrongly acquired must not be retained even for a day — the exact verdict on a Council Bills system that gave Indians rupees while stealing their gold; his Kural 551 holds a ruler who works injustice crueller than a murderer. Kaniyan Poongundranar’s Yaadhum Oore Yaavarum Kelir dissolves, at its root, the civilisational tribalism Rubio attempts to revive, for exploitation requires first believing that the exploited are not our kin. Confucius taught that legitimacy flows from virtue, not force; Plato named the tyrant as one who turns governance to private enrichment — the shape of a state that declares it will run another nation and seize its oil; and Ubuntu’s relational personhood is negated wherever a system is built to take from people, unawares, what they have earned.

    Risse’s verdict is sharper still: Rubio’s West has no Indigenous peoples, no colonised subjects, no enslaved Africans, no Buchenwald near Weimar — only heroes and temporary setbacks. Such a West has never existed, and cannot be reinvigorated in 2026.

    The New Theatre of Predation

    The doctrine is not rhetorical. In January 2026, the United States bombed Venezuela, abducted its elected president, and announced that US companies would seize its oil while Washington “ran the country” — a clear violation of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, the International Commission of Jurists held. The same month, it cut off Cuba’s main oil supplier and, through Executive Order 14380, threatened any country that resupplied it, until the UN warned of humanitarian collapse — collective punishment of a civilian population. And in February 2026, the US and Israel launched a full-scale attack on Iran, killing its Supreme Leader, striking over 42,000 civilian sites, and — at a girls’ school in Minab — at least 167 children; the American Society of International Law named it a crime of aggression, and the UN Secretary-General confirmed it contravened international law. As Britain once dressed theft as commerce, the US now dresses resource seizure as law enforcement — the structural logic is identical.

    The Measured Decline

    The economic premise of the Rubio doctrine is fiction. Asia’s share of global GDP reached 55 per cent in 2024, years ahead of projection, and BRICS economies now exceed the G7 at purchasing-power parity. The Global South’s ascent is no Western beneficence but a return to the norm colonialism interrupted — China and India together held half of world income in 1700 before colonialism drove their share below a tenth. A declining West, in truth, needs the Global South to survive.

    Moral authority has collapsed in tandem. Only 39 per cent of Americans now believe the United States is the world’s moral leader, down from 60 per cent in 2017; across Europe, support for Israel has fallen to between 13 and 21 per cent. Above all, Gaza has erased Western moral pretension: independent research estimates roughly 75,200 violent deaths and the displacement of about 90 per cent of the population, as governments that once lectured the world on human rights moved to justify mass killing — not an aberration, as one analysis put it, but an unveiling.

    The Oligarchy Behind the Flag

    Analysing nearly 1,800 US policy decisions, Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page found that economic elites and business groups exert substantial independent influence on policy while ordinary citizens have little or none — a pattern they termed economic-elite domination rather than democracy.

    There is a sharper way to name what must fall. “The West” is not its peoples; it is a structure of concentrated power that governs in their name while serving far narrower interests. Analysing nearly 1,800 US policy decisions, Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page found that economic elites and business groups exert substantial independent influence on policy while ordinary citizens have little or none — a pattern they termed economic-elite domination rather than democracy. Their method has been contested, but elite-skewed influence is widely corroborated.

    The architecture is visible and legal. Since Citizens United (2010), outside US election spending has risen more than twenty-eight-fold — from $144 million in 2008 to over $4.2 billion in 2024 — roughly $1.9 billion of it untraceable “dark money,” a few hundred mega-donors providing the bulk. Oxfam records billionaire wealth at a record $18.3 trillion in 2026, up 81 per cent since 2020; the twelve richest now hold more than the poorest four billion people, and billionaires are four thousand times likelier than ordinary citizens to hold office. Across 66 countries, nearly half of those surveyed say the rich simply buy elections.

    The same convergence runs through the war and information economies. Some $191 million was spent lobbying the US defence sector in 2025, and more than 315 senior officers passed through the revolving door into the top weapons firms between 1995 and 2021 — Eisenhower’s “military-industrial complex” at industrial scale. At the 2025 presidential inauguration, the heads of Amazon, Meta, Apple, Google, and Tesla stood arrayed behind the president — a tableau of what Shoshana Zuboff calls surveillance capitalism, in which control over information becomes a lever over democracy itself, as a Stanford working group chaired by Francis Fukuyama warned.

    None of this requires a secret cabal — only aligned interests, legalised influence, and a public whose consent is manufactured rather than freely given. The decisive point is this: the structure that drains the Global South is the same one that hollows out wages, democracy, and dignity within the West. The dividing line is not West against the rest but concentrated extractive power against the world’s peoples — the Western working majority among them, conscripted to fight its wars and absorb its costs. When we say the West must fall, it is this structure that must fall, and democratic power that must be restored, at home as much as abroad. That is not the elimination of a people; it is the end of their domination by an oligarchy that has long claimed to speak in their name.

    The Self-Defeating Logic of Overreach

    Like the Council Bills before it, the Rubio doctrine carries the mechanism of its own defeat, for each intervention rebounds structurally. The seizure of Russian assets accelerated de-dollarisation; the bombing of Iran united a region against the US–Israel alliance; the abduction of Venezuela’s president hastened Latin America’s diversification away from Washington; the oil siege of Cuba drew unprecedented condemnation. An order that must abduct, blockade, and bomb to assert itself is not ascendant — it is exhausting the legitimacy on which power finally depends.

    The Imperative of Justice

    The fall of Western hegemony opens the possibility of justice but does not guarantee it; the outcome depends on whether rising powers build the multipolar order on genuine ethical foundations rather than replicating what they inherit. That demands sovereign equality without exception — Article 2(4) applied universally, and a Security Council reformed so that no state acts as judge, party, and executor at once. It demands historical accountability: reparative justice through climate finance, debt cancellation, technology transfer, and restitution is not charity but the minimum acknowledgement of documented theft. It demands that the ICJ, ICC, and UN human-rights bodies function without great-power interference; civilisational pluralism against civilisational supremacism; and, finally, democratic renewal within the Western societies themselves, whose peoples are not the authors of empire but among its subjects.

    India is uniquely placed to articulate that alternative. Its inheritance — Thiruvalluvar’s justice, Kaniyan Poongundranar’s universal kinship, and the Gandhian tradition of non-violent resistance to precisely the domination Rubio seeks to revive — is the moral tradition colonialism suppressed but could never extinguish. Against a new Western century of restored hierarchy, the Peninsula Foundation offers the Tamil poet’s ancient answer, as relevant in Munich today as on the banks of the Kaveri two millennia ago:

    Yaadhum Oore, Yaavarum Kelir — to us all towns are one, all people are our kin.

    The West will fall. Fall it must. From its ruins, may justice arise.

    Sources

    THE MULTIPOLAR TRANSITION

    • JPMorgan Centre for Geopolitics — World Rewired: Navigating a Multi-Speed, Multipolar Order
    • United Nations — Secretary-General’s press conference on his 2026 priorities
    • World Economic Forum — Davos 2026: How middle powers are reading the global moment

    THE RUBIO MUNICH SPEECH AND RESPONSES

    • US Department of State — Secretary Rubio at the Munich Security Conference (14 February 2026)
    • The New York Times — In Munich, Rubio Stresses Shared History to Europeans
    • Mathias Risse, Harvard Kennedy School (Carr Center) — A Human-Rights-Based Reply to Marco Rubio’s Munich Speech
    • China-US Focus — American Neo-Colonialism and the Confessional State
    • Chatham House — The West vs the West at the Munich Security Conference
    • India Today — Rubio’s Munich speech signals US colonial competition for the Global South
    • The Wire — Marco Rubio’s Defence of Colonialism Demands a Response from India
    • Firstpost — Rubio’s claim of a Western century is a myth

    COLONIAL EXTRACTION: THE DRAIN AND THE COUNCIL BILLS

    • Utsa Patnaik (Columbia University Press), via Al Jazeera — How Britain stole $45 trillion from India
    • NDTV — How the British Empire robbed India of $45 trillion
    • self_study_history — Drain of Wealth: the Council Bills mechanism
    • COLLECTIVE India — ‘Drain of Wealth’, today
    • Wikipedia — Economy of India under the British Raj (global GDP share)
    • CEPR / VoxEU — Slavery and the British Industrial Revolution
    • Walter Rodney — How Europe Underdeveloped Africa
    • Jason Hickel, via Al Jazeera — Rich countries drained $152tn from the global South since 1960

    THE LICENCE TO COLONISE: PAPAL BULLS, CHRISTIANITY, AND NEOCOLONIALISM

    • Vatican News (2023) — Church defends Indigenous peoples: ‘Doctrine of Discovery’ was never Catholic — the formal repudiation
    • Canadian Museum for Human Rights — The Doctrine of Discovery (papal bulls and their language)
    • Church Life Journal, University of Notre Dame — Papal Condemnation of the Doctrine of Discovery
    • Emory University — The Philosophy of Colonialism: Civilization, Christianity and Commerce
    • Church Mission Society — Mission after George Floyd: on white supremacy, colonialism and world Christianity
    • Catalyst (McGill) — The IMF and World Bank: Neocolonial Domination, Debt Trap and Resistance

    THE CIVILISATIONAL FRAMEWORK

    • Thiruvalluvar, Thirukkural (G.U. Pope translation) — Project Madurai
    • Kaniyan Poongundranar, Purananuru 192 — Kaniyan Pungundranar
    • Confucius, The Analects — LibreTexts, Compact Anthology of World Literature
    • Plato, Republic — Plato’s Theory of Justice
    • Mogobe B. Ramose — African Philosophy Through Ubuntu

    THE OLIGARCHY BEHIND THE FLAG: CONCENTRATED POWER IN THE WEST

    • Martin Gilens & Benjamin I. Page — Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens (2014)
    • Omar S. Bashir (Research & Politics, 2015) — A Review of the ‘Oligarchy’ Result — methodological critique
    • Oxfam International (January 2026) — Resisting the Rule of the Rich: billionaire wealth and political inequality
    • Brennan Center for Justice — Dark Money Hit a Record High of $1.9 Billion in 2024 Federal Races
    • Center for American Progress — Undoing Citizens United and Reining In Super PACs (28-fold rise in outside spending)
    • OpenSecrets — Defense Lobbying Profile ($191m in 2025)
    • Quincy Institute, via Jacobin — The Publicly Funded Defense Contractor Revolving Door (315+ officers)
    • ProMarket (Stigler Center) — The Trends That Defined US Antitrust in 2025 (platform power and modern oligarchy)
    • Shoshana Zuboff — The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (PublicAffairs, 2019)

    VENEZUELA

    • International Commission of Jurists — Territorial sovereignty, the rule of law and human rights must be respected
    • Le Monde — The US intervention in Venezuela violates foundational principles of international law
    • UN Security Council — US action in Venezuela puts sovereignty of states, international law at stake

    CUBA

    • Al Jazeera — US sanctions reshaping life in Cuba: UN rapporteur
    • Baker McKenzie — US declares national emergency on Cuba; Executive Order 14380
    • UN News — Cuba: UN warns of possible humanitarian ‘collapse’ as oil supplies cut

    IRAN

    • American Society of International Law — Statement Regarding the Use of Force Against Iran (2 March 2026)
    • Reuters — Iran’s UN envoy says 1,332 civilians killed in the war
    • Al Jazeera — Iranian government reveals scale of civilian casualties (42,000+ sites damaged)
    • Associated Press — International legal order tested by war in Iran (‘crime of aggression’)

    DECLINE METRICS AND MORAL AUTHORITY

    • Atlantic Council — Piece by piece, the BRICS really are building a multipolar world
    • Mastercard — Welcome to the nuanced reality of the Asian Century
    • Forbes — Americans think the US is losing its moral authority, new poll shows
    • The New Humanitarian — The end of Western values

    GAZA

    • Al Jazeera — Gaza death toll exceeds 75,000 as independent data verify loss
    • OHCHR — End unfolding genocide or watch it end life in Gaza: UN experts
  • The Costs of Strategic Silence: An Analysis of India’s Stance during the 2026 Iran War

    The Costs of Strategic Silence: An Analysis of India’s Stance during the 2026 Iran War

    As West Asia’s geopolitical flashpoints grew more volatile, most notably with direct confrontation between the U.S., Iran and Israel, and the broader regional escalation, New Delhi’s diplomatic posture has come under intense scrutiny. India’s response is not a sign of diplomatic paralysis, nor a passive withdrawal from the global stage, but a calculated, measured quietude – an active realisation of its “calibrated multi-alignment” strategy.
    This analysis decodes the rationale behind India’s silence through the lens of deep economic vulnerabilities, critical infrastructure dilemmas and multilateral frictions that New Delhi must navigate in order to preserve its foundational doctrine of strategic autonomy.

    Juggling Act of Multi-Alignment

    India’s diplomatic manoeuvring is taking place in a highly fractured West Asian landscape. Crucial regional partners are pulling New Delhi in opposite directions, and the government has to use precise verbiage and a highly restrained tone.

    Two conflicting diplomatic realities illuminate the complexity of this tightrope. One is New Delhi’s Gulf alignment. India signed landmark defence and energy pacts during a high-profile state visit by the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the UAE, standing “shoulder-to-shoulder” with Abu Dhabi after drone and missile strikes by Iran hit Emirati soil.

    Second is Tehran’s direct engagement with New Delhi, assuring the security of Indian commercial ships in the key Strait of Hormuz, and proposing a long-term constructive role for India in the region.

    At the same time India was hard at work, striving to ensure some degree of balancing vis-à-vis the warring parties that include negotiating for U.S.  strategic partnership and Israeli technology and weapons (The West and Israel Axis); UAE energy and defence cooperation and Saudi capital flows (The Gulf Cooperation Council – GCC); and striving to retain its stakes in the Iran and Eurasian corridor via the Chabahar port and INSTC (International North–South Transport Corridor) trade route.

    Now that these bedrock bilateral partnerships are in direct conflict, it is extraordinarily difficult to maintain tight strategic autonomy.

    Costs of Silence

    Diplomatically, India’s external attitude is restrained, but the internal home reality is one of high-stakes management of acute energy and trade vulnerabilities. The ongoing conflict between the U.S., Israel and Iran has created immediate economic headwinds to New Delhi’s neutrality, threatening its viability.

    Economic Vulnerability

    For New Delhi, the most immediate casualty is energy supply security with long-term impacts.  Retaliatory disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz have forced India to draw down its national petroleum inventories by 15%. Rising domestic fuel prices and supply chain shocks present a risk to broader inflationary pressures. These are evident in high-level political appeals to citizens to conserve fuel and undertake temporary demand reduction, and in suggestions of structural changes, including working from home and limiting gold imports, to stabilise the current account deficit.

    Unfortunately, the public at large interpreted these as signs of impending doom rather than the precautionary measures, which were the intent. Thus, people rushed in to stock up on cooking gas, vehicle fuels, and even groceries, with many hoteliers reducing their menu offerings and food aggregators that service home delivery charging additional amounts in the guise of “packing charges,” etc., pushing up retail prices for unfounded reasons.

    The most chaotic but strategic impact is expatriate safety. The transport disruptions, especially air transport to and from the Middle East, heightened fears of the potential displacement of the large Indian workforce in the region (approximately 8.5 to 10 million Indians reside and work across West Asia, primarily in the GCC countries). This prompted transactional diplomacy over “prestige politics,” focusing on localised maritime safe-passages and repatriation readiness.

    Chabahar Port Puzzle & Infrastructure Stakes

    India’s Eurasian connectivity plan is based on two big projects, the Chabahar Port in Iran and the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC). New Delhi’s investments are designed to bypass overland blockades and build a direct trade route to Central Asia and Russia. However, the recent surge of regional hostilities has put these strategic transit corridors in temporary jeopardy.
    India can cede operational stakes to an indigenous Iranian operator to avoid secondary sanctions, or retain direct control and risk an instant diplomatic confrontation with Washington.
    The impasse starkly illustrates the tension between India’s desire for sovereign regional connectivity and the hard realities of international secondary sanctions regimes.

    Strategic Silence: Neutrality and Autonomy
    India’s quiet reactions and generic pleas for “dialogue and restraint” are often seen by detractors as diplomatically problematic – the reluctance of a rising power to take a stand. But this could also be interpreted as a deliberate tactic for survival.

    For decades, India has been decoupling its bilateral ties under its multi-alignment framework: procuring oil from Iran and the Gulf; sourcing weapons and defence technology from Israel; securing advanced technology and strategic backing from the U.S.; and taking sovereign wealth and capital out of the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

    Both the Russian and Iranian leaderships have publicly called upon India to use its unique position to be a long-term mediator, but New Delhi has deliberately refrained from doing so.

    India has thus been consciously avoiding “prestige politics” by not taking on high-risk mediation initiatives beyond its immediate regional mandate. This stance replaces grandstanding with pragmatic, transactional arrangements, such as securing localised maritime safe passages for its commercial ships, rather than seeking to resolve deep-seated ideological wars.

    Process Diplomacy: Handling Multilateral Frictions

    The West Asia skirmishes have also tested India’s aspirations to lead the Global South, particularly in larger international platforms such as BRICS. The June 2026 BRICS foreign ministers meeting held in India exposed the limitations of consensus-based diplomacy.


    Iran and the UAE, the new members, joined the forum in the midst of a heated deadlock; Tehran insisted on a direct and explicit condemnation of the U.S. and Israel, while Abu Dhabi countered with a call for a formal condemnation of Iranian actions in the region.

    India used procedural diplomacy to recognise internal rifts without sweeping them away, avoiding the fracturing of the broader multilateral partnership over regional disputes, and thereby preserving its bilateral capital with both capitals- Abu Dhabi and Tehran.

    Conclusion: Is Calibrated Silence Sustainable?

    India’s strategic quiet is not an abnegation of responsibility. It is a conscious effort to protect its national interests from a volatile external crisis. In a remarkable blend of procedural diplomacy at forums like BRICS, refusal to be sucked into risky regional mediation, and pragmatic bilateral hedging, New Delhi has managed to avoid burning its bridges with either Tehran or the US-Israel-Gulf axis.

    At the same time, this crisis is a crucial test of New Delhi’s professed policy of strategic autonomy. As the country’s domestic oil reserves dwindle and external sanctions squeeze key assets such as the Chabahar Port, the economic repercussions may ultimately outweigh the benefits of diplomatic quietude. India’s challenge going forward will be to ensure that its calculated neutrality is flexible enough to change if the regional balance tips into an outright breakdown of the regional order from a managed crisis.

    Feature Image Credit: https://thewire.in

  • Flattery’s Limits: How Pandering to Trump Undermines Pakistan’s Mediation

    Flattery’s Limits: How Pandering to Trump Undermines Pakistan’s Mediation

    Flattery may open doors, but it cannot sustain trust in high-stakes diplomacy. Pakistan’s Trump-centric approach reveals the limits of personality-driven foreign policy.

    Pakistan’s recent foreign policy under a hybrid regime led by its Field Marshal Asif Munir and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif is heavily influenced by a personality-driven dynamic, particularly in its engagement with Donald Trump. As pointed out by Mehdi Hasan, a British-American journalist and political commentator, in an interview with NDTV, Pakistanis have “done a good job of sucking up to Trump,” underscoring a growing reliance on flattery and ego-boosting tactics to remain in Trump’s good books.

    When Flattery Becomes a Diplomatic Constraint

    From the early phase of Donald Trump’s second term, especially after developments like Operation Sindoor, Pakistan openly credited Trump for ceasefire efforts—something India refrained from doing. Islamabad went further by nominating Trump multiple times for the Nobel Peace Prize. At many international platforms, particularly during the Gaza Board of Peace meeting in Washington and earlier at the Gaza peace summit at Sharm el-Sheikh, Pakistan’s leadership left no stone unturned in praising Trump, with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif describing him as a “man of peace” and even a “saviour of South Asia.” Even during recent ceasefire extensions by Trump, Pakistan continued this pattern of excessive praise.

    This reflected a calculated strategy: to appeal to Trump’s personality, which is widely perceived as ego-driven and narcissistic. By consistently affirming his self-image and constantly putting messages into his psychological zone of acceptance. Pakistan managed to secure his attention and, to some extent, his favour. Of course, the United States has its own strategic calculations—particularly regarding Iran—but the personal dimension of Trump’s leadership style makes such flattery tactically useful in the short term.

    However, this approach is now showing clear limitations, especially in the context of reaching any peace deal with Iran. The very strategy that helped Pakistan gain proximity is now constraining its ability to act as a credible intermediary. Because Islamabad has focused primarily on sending positive, non-confrontational messages to Trump, it appears reluctant—or unable—to convey messages that might irritate or challenge him.

    This concern has been explicitly raised by Iranian voices. Iranian analysts and officials have questioned whether Pakistan is genuinely transmitting Tehran’s positions to Washington. One such voice, Iranian lawmaker Ebrahim Rezaei, pointed out that Pakistan is no longer seen as a neutral mediator. According to him, Islamabad selectively communicates, prioritising Trump’s preferences over balanced diplomacy. He stated that Pakistan “lacks the necessary credibility” and “always takes Trump’s ego into account and does not say a word against his wishes,” underscoring a growing perception that its role as an intermediary is increasingly compromised.

    Importantly, the United States now appears to be echoing similar concerns. A CNN report published on May 12, 2026, titled “Trump increasingly considers resuming large-scale military action against Iran,” stated that many Trump administration officials believed Pakistan had been sharing “a more positive version of the Iranian position with the US than what reflects reality,” while also questioning whether Islamabad was “aggressively conveying Trump’s displeasure” to Tehran. Significantly, an earlier CNN report published on May 6, 2026, titled “US and Iran closing in on memorandum aimed at ending war, source says,” had already hinted at scepticism inside the White House, noting that Pakistani mediators were presenting an optimistic assessment of Iranian flexibility that some US officials did not fully share.

    This is the core psychological flaw in a personality-centric foreign policy. When diplomacy is personalised to accommodate one man’s ego, it is bound to hinder strategic flexibility. Mediators must be in a position to deliver awkward truths and dissenting opinions. But when a state is afraid to upset a leader like Trump, it starts filtering messages, putting them into what can be called the ‘zone of psychological acceptance.’ Anything outside that zone is open to suppression.

    Erosion of Trust and Mediation Credibility

    As a result, trust erodes. Iran’s scepticism about Pakistan’s neutrality is not incidental—it is a direct consequence of this ego-management strategy. Even technical issues, such as disagreements over the scope of ceasefire agreements—for example, whether regions like Lebanon were included when the initial ceasefire between the United States and Iran was reached—became points of contention because communication was filtered, biased, and incomplete. This then became a major point of contention, with Iran maintaining that Lebanon formed part of the ceasefire framework, while the United States rejected this interpretation, deepening mistrust and reinforcing perceptions of inconsistency in how the agreement was conveyed. As Ebrahim Rezaei further said, “They are unwilling to tell the world that America first accepted Pakistan’s proposal but then went back on its word. They do not say that the Americans had commitments regarding Lebanon or the blocked assets, but that they failed to fulfil them. A mediator must be impartial, not always leaning to one side.”

    In the long run, such a policy is unsustainable. Personality-driven diplomacy may yield short-term visibility and tactical gains, but it weakens institutional credibility. Relationships built around individuals rather than enduring interests and institutions tend to fade with political transitions. When leadership changes in Washington, Pakistan may once again find itself marginalised, having invested too heavily in a single personality rather than in a broader strategic framework.

    As Pakistani security analyst and president of the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, Muhammad Amir Rana, warned in his February 1, 2026, article “Pakistan’s Trump Test” published in Dawn, “The post-Trump phase will test Pakistan’s diplomacy and political leadership,” while also questioning “how far the country can maintain its relevance” once Trump exits the political stage. Rana further argued that Pakistan’s current diplomatic positioning is too closely tied to a “Trump-endorsed defence equation” and cautioned that, without developing “alternative strategic options,” Islamabad could face increasing diplomatic marginalisation in the future. These concerns reinforce the broader perception that Pakistan’s recent diplomatic gains are heavily dependent on Trump-era political dynamics rather than on durable institutional and bipartisan foundations in Washington.

    Playing to a leader’s ego can open doors, but it also shrinks the space for honest diplomacy. Pakistan’s experience suggests that an over-reliance on psychological appeasement in foreign policy can compromise both credibility and effectiveness in complex negotiations. As also noted by American psychologist Michael Maccoby in his book, “The Productive Narcissist: The Promise and Peril of Visionary Leadership,” leaders with strong narcissistic traits may initially respond positively to admiration and validation. However, their effectiveness tends to decline over time as underlying behavioural patterns become more visible. In such contexts, strategies based on flattery and ego management may generate short-term gains but ultimately constrain credibility and weaken long-term influence.

  • Jeffrey D. Sachs: Briefing of the UN Security Council on Venezuela

    Jeffrey D. Sachs: Briefing of the UN Security Council on Venezuela

    Jeffrey D. Sachs: Briefing of the UN Security Council on Venezuela
    January 5, 2026

     

    Mr. President,
    Distinguished Members of the Security Council,

    The issue before the Council today is not the character of the government of Venezuela.

    The issue is whether any Member State—by force, coercion, or economic strangulation—has the right to determine Venezuela’s political future or to exercise control over its affairs.

    This question goes directly to Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter, which prohibits the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.

    The Council must decide whether that prohibition is to be upheld or abandoned.

    Abandoning it would carry consequences of the gravest kind.

    Background and context

    Since 1947,United States foreign policy has repeatedly employed force, covert action, and political manipulation to bring about regime change in other countries. This is a matter of carefully documented historical record. In her book Covert Regime Change (2018), political scientist Lindsey O’Rourke documents 70 attempted US regime-change operations between 1947 and 1989 alone.

    These practices did not end with the Cold War. Since 1989, major United States regime-change operations undertaken without authorization by the Security Council have included, among the most consequential: Iraq (2003), Libya (2011), Syria (from 2011), Honduras (2009), Ukraine (2014), and Venezuela (from 2002 onward).

    The methods employed are well established and well documented. They include open warfare; covert intelligence operations; instigation of unrest; support for armed groups; manipulation of mass and social media; bribery of military and civilian officials; targeted assassinations; false-flag operations; and economic warfare aimed at collapsing civilian life.

    These measures are illegal under the UN Charter, and they typically result is ongoing violence, lethal conflict, political instability, and deep suffering of the civilian population.

    The case of Venezuela

    The recent United States record with respect to Venezuela is clear.

    In April 2002, the United States knew of and approved an attempted coup against the Venezuelan government.

    In the 2010s, the United States funded civil society groups actively engaged in anti-government protests, notably in 2014. When the government cracked down on the protests, the US followed with a series of sanctions. In 2015, President Barrack Obama declared Venezuela to be “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”

    In 2017, at a dinner with Latin American leaders on the margins of the UN General Assembly, President Trump openly discussed the option of the US invading Venezuela to overthrow the government.

    During 2017 to 2020, the US imposed sweeping sanctions on the state oil company. Oil production fell by 75 percent from 2016 to 2020, and real GDP per capita (PPP) declined by 62 percent.

    The UN General Assembly has repeatedly voted overwhelmingly against such unilateral coercive measures. Under international law, only the Security Council has the authority to impose such sanctions.

    On 23 January 2019, the United States unilaterally recognized Juan Guaidó as “interim president” of Venezuela and on 28 January 2019 froze approximately $7 billion of Venezuelan sovereign assets held abroad and gave Guaidó authority over certain assets.

    These actions form part of a continuous United States regime-change effort spanning more than two decades.

    Recent United States global escalation

    In the past year, the United States has carried out bombing operations in seven countries, none of which were authorized by the Security Council and none of which were undertaken in lawful self-defense under the Charter. The targeted countries include Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, and now Venezuela.

    In the past month, President Trump has issued direct threats against at least six UN member states, including Colombia, Denmark, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria and of course Venezuela. These threats are summarized in Annex I to this statement.

    What is at stake today

    Members of the Council are not called upon to judge Nicolás Maduro.

    They are not called upon to assess whether the recent United States attack and ongoing naval quarantine of Venezuela result in freedom or in subjugation.

    Members of the Council are called upon to defend international law, and specifically the United Nations Charter.

    The realist school of international relations, articulated most brilliantly by John Mearsheimer, accurately describes the condition of international anarchy as “the tragedy of great power politics.” Realism is therefore a description of geopolitics, not a solution for peace. Its own conclusion is that international anarchy leads to tragedy.

    In the aftermath of World War I, the League of Nations was created to end the tragedy through the application of international law. Yet the world’s leading nations failed to defend international law in the 1930s, leading to renewed global war.

    The United Nations emerged from that catastrophe as humanity’s second great effort to place international law above anarchy. In the words of the Charter, the UN was created “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind.”

    Given that we are in the nuclear age, failure cannot be repeated. Humanity would perish. There would be no third chance.

    Measures required of the Security Council

    To fulfill its responsibilities under the Charter, the Security Council should immediately affirm the following actions:

    1. The United States shall immediately cease and desist from all explicit and implicit threats or use of force against Venezuela.
    2. The United States shall terminate its naval quarantine and all related coercive military measures undertaken in the absence of authorization by the Security Council.
    3. The United States shall immediately withdraw its military forces from within and along the perimeter of Venezuela, including intelligence, naval, air, and other forward-deployed assets positioned for coercive purposes.
    4. Venezuela shall adhere to the UN Charter and to the human rights protected in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
    5. The Secretary-General shall immediately appoint a Special Envoy, mandated to engage relevant Venezuelan and international stakeholders and to report back to the Security Council within fourteen days with recommendations consistent with the Charter of the United Nations, and the Security Council shall remain urgently seized of this matter.
    6. All Member States shall refrain from unilateral threats, coercive measures, or armed actions undertaken outside the authority of the Security Council, in strict conformity with the Charter.

    In Closing

    Mr. President, Distinguished Members,

    Peace and the survival of humanity depend on whether the United Nations Charter remains a living instrument of international law or is allowed to wither into irrelevance.

    That is the choice before this Council today.

    Thank you.

     

    Courtesy: commondreams.org