The Peninsula Foundation

Category: Opinion/Commentary

  • The Great Chips War

    The Great Chips War

    The supply chain disruptions for semiconductor chips and the increasing sanctions imposed by the US on high-tech chips access to China and Russia has signalled the critical relevance of control over this technology and process for national security. Chip design and manufacture involve heavy capital investments and access to special machinery that is monopolised by very few American-controlled/influenced companies in Europe and East Asia. India, having missed the boat earlier due to poor investment decisions, has recognised chip manufacturing as a critical strategic industry and is investing efforts to establish significant capabilities. This could take years as challenges still remain.  – TPF Editorial Team

    Following the US Commerce Department’s announcement of severe new restrictions on sales of advanced semiconductors and other US high-tech goods to China, the Sino-American rivalry has entered an important new phase. Even under the best circumstances, China will have a difficult time adapting to its new reality.

    In addition to dealing with the fallout from open warfare in eastern Europe, the world is witnessing the start of a full-scale economic war between the United States and China over technology. This conflict will be highly consequential, and it is escalating rapidly. Earlier this month, the US Commerce Department introduced severe new restrictions on the sale of advanced semiconductors and other US high-tech goods to China. While Russia has used missiles to try to cripple Ukraine’s energy and heating infrastructure, the US is now using export restrictions to curtail China’s military, intelligence, and security services.

    The new chip war is a war for control of the future.

    Moreover, in late August, US President Joe Biden signed the CHIPS Act, which includes subsidies and other measures to bolster America’s domestic semiconductor industry. Semiconductors are and will remain, at the heart of the twenty-first-century economy. Without microchips, our smartphones would be dumb phones, our cars wouldn’t move, our communications networks wouldn’t function, any form of automation would be unthinkable, and the new era of artificial intelligence that we are entering would remain the stuff of sci-fi novels. Controlling the design, fabrication, and value chains that produce these increasingly important components of our lives is thus of the utmost importance. The new chip war is a war for control of the future.

    The semiconductor value chain is hyper-globalized, but the US and its closest allies control all the key nodes. Chip design is heavily concentrated in America, and production would not be possible without advanced equipment from Europe, and fabrication of the most advanced chips – including those that are critical for AI – is located exclusively in East Asia. The most important player by far is Taiwan, but South Korea is also in the picture.

    In its own pursuit of technological supremacy, China has become increasingly reliant on these chips, and its government has been at pains to boost domestic production and achieve “self-sufficiency.” In recent years, China has invested massively to build up its own semiconductor design and manufacturing capabilities. But while there has been some progress, it remains years behind the US; and, crucially, the most advanced chips are still beyond China’s reach.

    It has now been two years since the US banned all sales of advanced chips to the Chinese telecom giant Huawei, which was China’s global technology flagship at the time. The results have been dramatic. After losing 80% of its global market share for smartphones, Huawei was left with no choice but to sell off its smartphone unit, Honor, and reorient its corporate mission. With its latest move, the US is now aiming to do to all of China what it did to Huawei.

    This dramatic escalation of the technology war is bound to have equally dramatic economic and political consequences, some of which will be evident immediately, and some of which will take some time to materialize. China most likely has stocked up on chips and is already working to create sophisticated new networks to circumvent the sanctions. (After Huawei spun it off in late 2020, Honor quickly staged a comeback, selling phones that use chips from the US multinational Qualcomm.)

    Still, the new sanctions are so broad that, over time, they will almost certainly strike a heavy blow not only to China’s high-tech sector but also to many other parts of its economy. A European company that exports to China now must be doubly sure that its products contain no US-connected chips. And, owing to the global nature of the value chain, many chips from Taiwan or South Korea also will be off-limits.

    The official aim of the US policy is to keep advanced chips out of the Chinese military’s hands. But the real effect will be to curtail China’s development in the sectors that will be critical to national power in the decades ahead.

    The official aim of the US policy is to keep advanced chips out of the Chinese military’s hands. But the real effect will be to curtail China’s development in the sectors that will be critical to national power in the decades ahead. China will certainly respond with even stronger efforts to develop its own capabilities. But even under the best circumstances, and despite all the resources it will throw at the problem, any additional efforts will take time to bear fruit, especially now that US restrictions are depriving China of the inputs that it needs to achieve self-sufficiency.

    The new chips war eliminates any remaining doubt that we are witnessing a broader Sino-American decoupling. That development will have far-reaching implications – only some of them foreseeable – for the rest of the global economy.

    Ukraine is already repairing and restarting the power stations that have been hit by Russian missile barrages since the invasion began in February. But it will be much more difficult for China to overcome the loss of key technologies. As frightening as Russia’s twentieth-century-style war is, the real sources of power in the twenty-first century do not lie in territorial conquest. The most powerful countries will be those that master the economic, technological, and diplomatic domains.

    This article was published earlier in Project Syndicate.

    Images Credit: Globaltimes.cn

  • The Meaning of War in the 21st Century

    The Meaning of War in the 21st Century

    War is, as Clausewitz said, a continuation of politics…or to be precise it is part of geopolitical machinations.  The complexity of the conflict in Ukraine can be understood only if one examines the many dimensions at play in 21st-century wars.  French journalist and political scientist, Thierry Meyssan delivers some thoughts on the evolution of the human dimension of war. The end of industrial capitalism and the globalization of exchanges do not only transform our societies and our ways of thinking but the meaning of all our activities, including wars.                                          – TPF Editorial Team

     

     

     

    The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not part of any military strategy. Japan had already intended to surrender. The United States just wanted them not to surrender to the Soviets who were beginning to pour into Manchuria, but to themselves.

     

     

     

    Since the end of World War II 77 years ago, Europeans (except for the former Yugoslavs) have known peace on their soil. They have forgotten this distant memory and discovered war with horror in Ukraine. The Africans of the Great Lakes, the ex-Yugoslavs and the Muslims from Afghanistan to Libya, passing through the Horn of Africa, look at them with disgust: for many decades, the Europeans ignored their sufferings and accused them of being responsible for the misfortunes they were suffering.

    The war in Ukraine started with Nazism according to some, eight years ago according to others, but it is only two months old in the consciousness of Westerners. They see some of the sufferings it causes, but they do not yet perceive all its dimensions. Above all, they misinterpret it according to the experience of their great-grandparents and not according to their own experience.

    Wars only a Succession of Crimes

     As soon as it starts, war forbids nuances. It forces everyone to position themselves in one of the two camps. The two jaws of the beast immediately crush those who do not comply.
    The ban on nuances forces everyone to rewrite events. There are only “good guys”, us, and “bad guys”, those on the other side. War propaganda is so powerful that after a while, no one can distinguish the facts from the way they are described. We are all in the dark and no one knows how to turn on the light.
    War causes suffering and death without distinction. It doesn’t matter to which side you belong. It doesn’t matter if you are guilty or innocent. One suffers and dies not only from the blows of those on the other side, but also collaterally from those on one’s own side. War is not only suffering and death, but also injustice, which is much more difficult to bear.
    None of the rules of civilized nations remain. Many give in to madness and no longer behave like humans. There is no longer any authority to make people face the consequences of their actions. Most people can no longer be counted on. Man has become a wolf for man.

    Something fascinating is happening. If some people turn into cruel beasts, others become luminous and their eyes enlighten us.

    I spent a decade on the battlefields and never went home. Although I now flee from suffering and death, I am still irresistibly drawn to those looks. That is why I hate war and yet I miss it. Because in this tangle of horrors there is always a sublime form of humanity.

    The Wars of the 21st Century

    I would now like to offer you some thoughts that do not commit you to this or that conflict and even less to this or that side. I will just lift a veil and invite you to look at what it hides. What I am about to say may shock you, but we can only find peace by accepting reality.

    Wars are changing. I am not talking about weapons and military strategies, but about the reasons for conflicts, about their human dimension. Just as the transition from industrial capitalism to financial globalization is transforming our societies and pulverizing the principles that organized them, so this evolution is changing wars. The problem is that we are already incapable of adapting our societies to this structural change and therefore even less capable of thinking about the evolution of war.

     War always seeks to solve the problems that politics has failed to solve. It does not happen when we are ready for it, but when we have eliminated all other solutions.

    This is exactly what is happening today. The US Straussians have inexorably cornered Russia in Ukraine, leaving it no option but to go to war. If the Allies insist on pushing her back, they will provoke a World War.

    The periods between the two eras, when human relationships must be rethought, are conducive to this kind of disaster. Some people continue to reason according to principles that have proven their effectiveness but are no longer adapted to the world. They are nevertheless advancing and can provoke wars without wanting to.

     

     

     

    On the night of May 9, 1945, the US air force bombed Tokyo. In one night more than 100,000 people were killed and more than 1 million were left homeless. It was the largest massacre of civilians in history.

     

     

     

     

    If in peacetime, we distinguish between civilians and soldiers, this way of reasoning no longer makes sense in modern warfare. Democracies have swept away the organization of societies into castes or orders. Everyone can become a combatant. Mass mobilizations and total wars have blurred the lines. From now on, civilians are in charge of the military. They are no longer innocent victims but have become the first responsible for the general misfortune of which the militaries are only the executors.

    In the Western Middle Ages, war was the business of the nobles and of them alone. In no case did the population participate. The Catholic Church had enacted laws of war to limit the impact of conflicts on civilians. All this does not correspond anymore to what we live and is not based on anything.

    The equality between men and women has also reversed the paradigms. Not only are soldiers now women, but they can be civilian commanders too. Fanaticism is no longer the exclusive domain of the so-called stronger sex. Some women are more dangerous and cruel than some men.

    We are not aware of these changes. In any case, we do not draw any conclusions from them. This leads to bizarre positions such as the refusal of Westerners to repatriate the families of jihadists they have let go to the battlefields and to judge them. Everyone knows that many of these women are far more fanatical than their husbands were. Everyone knows that they represent a much greater danger. But nobody says so. They prefer to pay Kurdish mercenaries to keep them and their children in camps, as far away as possible.

    Only the Russians have repatriated the children, who were already contaminated by this ideology. They entrusted them to their grandparents, hoping that the latter would be able to love and care for them.

    For the past two months, we have been receiving Ukrainian civilians fleeing the fighting. They are only women and children who suffer. So we do not take any precautions. However, a third of these children have been trained in the summer camps of the Banderites. There they learned the handling of weapons and the admiration of the criminal against humanity, Stepan Bandera.

    The Geneva Conventions are only a vestige of the time when we reasoned as humans. They do not stick to any reality. Those who apply them do so not because they believe they are obliged to, but because they hope to remain human and not sink into a sea of crimes. The notion of “war crimes” is meaningless, since the purpose of war is to commit successive crimes in order to achieve the victory that could not be obtained by civilized means, and in a democracy, each voter is responsible.

    In the past, the Catholic Church forbade strategies directed against civilians, such as the siege of cities, on pain of ex-communication. Besides the fact that today there is no moral authority to enforce rules, no one is shocked by “economic sanctions” affecting entire peoples, even to the point of causing murderous famines, as was the case against North Korea.

    Given the time we need to draw conclusions from what we are doing, we continue to consider certain weapons as prohibited while using them ourselves. For example, President Barack Obama explained that the use of chemical or biological weapons is a red line that should not be crossed, but his Vice President Joe Biden has installed a large research system in Ukraine. The only people who have forbidden themselves any weapon of mass destruction are the Iranians since Imam Ruhollah Khomeini morally condemned them. Precisely, they are the ones we accuse of wanting to build an atomic bomb, as they do nothing of the kind.

     In the past, wars were declared in order to take over territories. In the end, a peace treaty was signed to modify the land register. In the age of social networks, the issue is less territorial and more ideological. The war can only end with the discrediting of a way of thinking. Although territories have changed hands, some recent wars have resulted in armistices, but none in a peace treaty and reparations.

    We can see that, despite the dominant discourse in the West, the war in Ukraine is not territorial, but ideological. President Volodymyr Zelensky is the first warlord in history to speak several times a day. He spends much more time talking than commanding his army. He writes his speeches around historical references. We react to the memories he evokes and ignore what we don’t understand. To the English, he speaks like Winston Churchill, they applaud him; to the French, he reminds them of Charles De Gaulle, and they applaud him; etc… To all, he concludes “Glory to Ukraine!”, they do not understand the allusion which they find pretty.

    Those who know the history of Ukraine recognize the war cry of the Banderites. The one they shouted while massacring 1.6 million of their fellow citizens, including at least 1 million Jews. But how could a Ukrainian call for the massacre of other Ukrainians and a Jew for the massacre of Jews?

    Our innocence makes us deaf and blind.

     

    For the first time in a conflict, one side censored the enemy media before the war started. RT and Sputnik were shut down in the European Union because they could have challenged what was to come. After the Russian media, opposition media are beginning to be censored. The Voltaire Network’s website, Voltairenet.org, has been censored in Poland for a month by decision of the National Security Council.

     

     

     

    War is no longer limited to the battlefield. It becomes essential to win over the spectators. During the war in Afghanistan, US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair considered destroying the satellite TV channel Al-Jazeera. It had no impact on the belligerents, but it gave pause to viewers in the Arab world.

    It is worth noting that after the 2003 war in Iraq, French researchers imagined that military warfare might turn into cognitive warfare. If the nonsense about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction only lasted a few months, the way in which the United States and the United Kingdom managed to get everyone to believe it was perfect. In the end, Nato added a sixth domain to its usual five (air, land, sea, space and cyber): the human brain. While the Alliance is currently avoiding confrontation with Russia in the first four domains, it is already at war in the last two.

    As the areas of intervention expand, the notion of a belligerent is fading. It is no longer men who confront each other, but systems of thought. War is thus becoming globalized. During the Syrian war, more than sixty states that had nothing to do with this conflict sent weapons to the country, and today, twenty states are sending weapons to Ukraine. As we do not understand the events live, but interpret them in the light of the old world, we believed that the Western weapons were used by the Syrian democratic opposition while they were going to the jihadists and we are convinced that they are going to the Ukrainian army and not to the Banderites.

    The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

     

    This article was published earlier in voltairenet.org and is republished under Creative Commons License 4.0.

    Feature Image Credit: Proxy Wars and 21st Century Merchants of Death.

     

  • The Great Game in Ukraine is Spinning out of Control

    The Great Game in Ukraine is Spinning out of Control

    Former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski famously described Ukraine as a “geopolitical pivot” of Eurasia, central to both US and Russian power.  Since Russia views its vital security interests to be at stake in the current conflict, the war in Ukraine is rapidly escalating to a nuclear showdown.  It’s urgent for both the US and Russia to exercise restraint before disaster hits.

    The current conflict is, in essence, the Second Crimean War.  This time, a US-led military alliance seeks to expand NATO to Ukraine and Georgia, so that five NATO members would encircle the Black Sea.

    Since the middle of the 19th Century, the West has competed with Russia over Crimea and more specifically, naval power in the Black Sea.  In the Crimean War (1853-6), Britain and France captured Sevastopol and temporarily banished Russia’s navy from the Black Sea.  The current conflict is, in essence, the Second Crimean War.  This time, a US-led military alliance seeks to expand NATO to Ukraine and Georgia, so that five NATO members would encircle the Black Sea.

    The US has long regarded any encroachment by great powers in the Western Hemisphere as a direct threat to US security, dating back to the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, which states: “We owe it, therefore, to candour and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those [European] powers to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety.”

    In 1961, the US invaded Cuba when Cuba’s revolutionary leader Fidel Castro looked to the Soviet Union for support.  The US was not much interested in Cuba’s “right” to align with whichever country it wanted – the claim the US asserts regarding Ukraine’s supposed right to join NATO.  The failed US invasion in 1961 led to the Soviet Union’s decision to place offensive nuclear weapons in Cuba in 1962, which in turn led to the Cuban Missile Crisis exactly 60 years ago this month.  That crisis brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.

    Yet America’s regard for its own security interests in the Americas has not stopped it from encroaching on Russia’s core security interests in Russia’s neighbourhood.  As the Soviet Union weakened, US policy leaders came to believe that the US military could operate as it pleases.  In 1991, Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz explained to General Wesley Clark that the US can deploy its military force in the Middle East “and the Soviet Union won’t stop us.” America’s national security officials decided to overthrow Middle East regimes allied to the Soviet Union and encroach on Russia’s security interests.

    In 1990, Germany and the US gave assurances to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that the Soviet Union could disband its own military alliance, the Warsaw Pact, without fear that NATO would enlarge eastward to replace the Soviet Union. It won Gorbachev’s assent to German reunification in 1990 on this basis.  Yet with the Soviet Union’s demise, President Bill Clinton reneged by supporting the eastward expansion of NATO.

    America’s dean of statecraft with Russia, George Kennan, declared that NATO expansion “is the beginning of a new cold war.”   

    Russian President Boris Yeltsin protested vociferously but could do nothing to stop it.  America’s dean of statecraft with Russia, George Kennan, declared that NATO expansion “is the beginning of a new cold war.”

    Under Clinton’s watch, NATO expanded to Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic in 1999.  Five years later, under President George W. Bush, Jr. NATO expanded to seven more countries: the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania), the Black Sea (Bulgaria and Romania), the Balkans (Slovenia), and Slovakia.  Under President Barack Obama, NATO expanded to Albania and Croatia in 2009, and under President Donald Trump, to Montenegro in 2019.

    Russia’s opposition to NATO enlargement intensified sharply in 1999 when NATO countries disregarded the UN, attacked Russia’s ally Serbia, and stiffened further in the 2000s with the US wars of choice in Iraq, Syria, and Libya. At the Munich Security Conference in 2007, President Putin declared that NATO enlargement represents a “serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust.”

    “And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended?  And what happened to the assurances [of no NATO enlargement] our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact?”  – Putin at the Munich Security Conference in 2007.

    Putin continued: “And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended?  And what happened to the assurances [of no NATO enlargement] our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact?” Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them. But I will allow myself to remind this audience of what was said. I would like to quote the speech of NATO General Secretary Mr Woerner in Brussels on 17 May 1990. He said at the time that: “the fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory gives the Soviet Union a firm security guarantee. Where are these guarantees?”

    In 2007, with the NATO admission of two Black Sea countries, Bulgaria and Romania, the US established the Black Sea Area Task Group (originally the Task Force East).  Then in 2008, the US raised the US-Russia tensions still further by declaring that NATO would expand to the very heart of the Black Sea, by incorporating Ukraine and Georgia, threatening Russia’s naval access to the Black Sea, Mediterranean, and the Middle East.

    Also in 2007, with the NATO admission of two Black Sea countries, Bulgaria and Romania, the US established the Black Sea Area Task Group (originally the Task Force East).  Then in 2008, the US raised the US-Russia tensions still further by declaring that NATO would expand to the very heart of the Black Sea, by incorporating Ukraine and Georgia, threatening Russia’s naval access to the Black Sea, Mediterranean, and the Middle East.  With Ukraine’s and Georgia’s entry, Russia would be surrounded by five NATO countries in the Black Sea: Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Turkey, and Ukraine.

    Russia was initially protected from NATO enlargement to Ukraine by Ukraine’s pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych, who led the Ukrainian parliament to declare Ukraine’s neutrality in 2010.  Yet in 2014, the US helped to overthrow Yanukovych and bring to power a staunchly anti-Russian government.  The Ukraine War broke out at that point, with Russia quickly reclaiming Crimea and supporting pro-Russian separatists in the Donbas, the region of Eastern Ukraine with a relatively high proportion of Russian population.  Ukraine’s parliament formally abandoned neutrality later in 2014.

    Ukraine and Russian-backed separatists in the Donbas have been fighting a brutal war for 8 years.  Attempts to end the war in the Donbas through the Minsk Agreements failed when Ukraine’s leaders decided not to honour the agreements, which called for autonomy for the Donbas.  After 2014, the US poured in massive armaments to Ukraine and helped to restructure Ukraine’s military to be interoperable with NATO, as evidenced in this year’s fighting.

    The Russian invasion in 2022 would likely have been averted had Biden agreed with Putin’s demand at the end of 2021 to end NATO’s eastward enlargement.  The war would likely have been ended in March 2022, when the governments of Ukraine and Russia exchanged a draft peace agreement based on Ukrainian neutrality.  Behind the scenes, the US and UK pushed Zelensky to reject any agreement with Putin and to fight on.  At that point, Ukraine walked away from the negotiations.

    The nuclear threat is not empty, but a measure of the Russian leadership’s perception of its security interests at stake. 

    Russia will escalate as necessary, possibly to nuclear weapons, to avoid military defeat and NATO’s further eastward enlargement.  The nuclear threat is not empty, but a measure of the Russian leadership’s perception of its security interests at stake.   Terrifyingly, the US was also prepared to use nuclear weapons in the Cuban Missile Crisis, and a senior Ukrainian official recently urged the US to launch nuclear strikes “as soon as Russia even thinks of carrying out nuclear strikes,” surely a recipe for World War III.  We are again on the brink of nuclear catastrophe.

    President John F. Kennedy learned about nuclear confrontation during the Cuban missile crisis.  He defused that crisis not by force of will or US military might, but by diplomacy and compromise, removing US nuclear missiles in Turkey in exchange for the Soviet Union removing its nuclear missiles in Cuba.  The following year, he pursued peace with the Soviet Union, signing the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

    In June 1963, Kennedy uttered the essential truth that can keep us alive today: “Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy–or of a collective death-wish for the world.”  

    It is urgent to return to the draft peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine of late March, based on the non-enlargement of NATO.  Today’s fraught situation can easily spin out of control, as the world has done on so many past occasions – yet this time with the possibility of nuclear catastrophe.  The world’s very survival depends on prudence, diplomacy, and compromise by all sides.

     

    This article is republished with the permission of the author. It was published earlier in www.other-news.info

    Image Credit: Scroll.in

  • The West’s False Narrative about Russia and China

    The West’s False Narrative about Russia and China

    The relentless Western narrative that the West is noble while Russia and China are evil is simple-minded and extraordinarily dangerous.

    The world is on the edge of nuclear catastrophe in no small part because of the failure of Western political leaders to be forthright about the causes of the escalating global conflicts.  The relentless Western narrative that the West is noble while Russia and China are evil is simple-minded and extraordinarily dangerous.  It is an attempt to manipulate public opinion, not to deal with very real and pressing diplomacy.

    The essential narrative of the West is built into US national security strategy.  The core US idea is that China and Russia are implacable foes that are “attempting to erode American security and prosperity.”  These countries are, according to the US, “determined to make economies less free and less fair, to grow their militaries, and to control information and data to repress their societies and expand their influence.”

    The irony is that since 1980 the US has been in at least 15 overseas wars of choice (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Panama, Serbia, Syria, and Yemen just to name a few), while China has been in none, and Russia only in one (Syria) beyond the former Soviet Union.  The US has military bases in 85 countries, China in 3, and Russia in 1 (Syria) beyond the former Soviet Union.

    US security strategy is not the work of any single US president but of the US security establishment, which is largely autonomous, and operates behind a wall of secrecy.  

    President Joe Biden has promoted this narrative, declaring that the greatest challenge of our time is the competition with the autocracies, which “seek to advance their own power, export and expand their influence around the world, and justify their repressive policies and practices as a more efficient way to address today’s challenges.”  US security strategy is not the work of any single US president but of the US security establishment, which is largely autonomous, and operates behind a wall of secrecy.

    The overwrought fear of China and Russia is sold to a Western public through manipulation of the facts.  A generation earlier George W. Bush, Jr. sold the public on the idea that America’s greatest threat was Islamic fundamentalism, without mentioning that it was the CIA, with Saudi Arabia and other countries, that had created, funded, and deployed the jihadists in Afghanistan, Syria, and elsewhere to fight America’s wars.

    Or consider the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1980, which was painted in the Western media as an act of unprovoked perfidy.  Years later, we learned that the Soviet invasion was actually preceded by a CIA operation designed to provoke the Soviet invasion! The same misinformation occurred vis-à-vis Syria.  The Western press is filled with recriminations against Putin’s military assistance to Syria’s Bashar al-Assad beginning in 2015, without mentioning that the US supported the overthrow of al-Assad beginning in 2011, with the CIA funding a major operation (Timber Sycamore) to overthrow Assad years before Russia arrived.

    Or more recently, when US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recklessly flew to Taiwan despite China’s warnings, no G7 foreign minister criticized Pelosi’s provocation, yet the G7 ministers together harshly criticized China’s “overreaction” to Pelosi’s trip.

    The Western narrative about the Ukraine war is that it is an unprovoked attack by Putin in the quest to recreate the Russian empire.  Yet the real history starts with the Western promise to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not enlarge to the East, followed by four waves of NATO aggrandizement: in 1999, incorporating three Central European countries; in 2004, incorporating 7 more, including in the Black Sea and the Baltic States; in 2008, committing to enlarge to Ukraine and Georgia; and in 2022, inviting four Asia-Pacific leaders to NATO to take aim at China.

    Nor do the Western media mention the US role in the 2014 overthrow of Ukraine’s pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych; the failure of the Governments of France and Germany, guarantors of the Minsk II agreement, to press Ukraine to carry out its commitments; the vast US armaments sent to Ukraine during the Trump and Biden Administrations in the lead-up to war; nor the refusal of the US to negotiate with Putin over NATO enlargement to Ukraine.

    Of course, NATO says that is purely defensive so that Putin should have nothing to fear.  In other words, Putin should take no notice of the CIA operations in Afghanistan and Syria; the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999; the NATO overthrow of Moammar Qaddafi in 2011; the NATO occupation of Afghanistan for 15 years; nor Biden’s “gaffe” calling for Putin’s ouster (which of course was no gaffe at all); nor US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin stating that the US war aim in Ukraine is the weakening of Russia.

    The US has a mere 4.2% of the world population, and now a mere 16% of world GDP (measured at international prices).  In fact, the combined GDP of the G7 is now less than that of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), while the G7 population is just 6 per cent of the world compared with 41 per cent in the BRICS. 

    At the core of all of this is the US’s attempt to remain the world’s hegemonic power, by augmenting military alliances around the world to contain or defeat China and Russia.  It’s a dangerous, delusional, and outmoded idea.  The US has a mere 4.2% of the world population, and now a mere 16% of world GDP (measured at international prices).  In fact, the combined GDP of the G7 is now less than that of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), while the G7 population is just 6 per cent of the world compared with 41 per cent in the BRICS.

    There is only one country whose self-declared fantasy is to be the world’s dominant power: the US.  It’s past time that the US recognized the true sources of security: internal social cohesion and responsible cooperation with the rest of the world, rather than the illusion of hegemony.  With such a revised foreign policy, the US and its allies would avoid war with China and Russia, and enable the world to face its myriad environment, energy, food and social crises.

    European leaders should pursue the true source of European security: not US hegemony, but European security arrangements that respect the legitimate security interests of all European nations

    Above all, at this time of extreme danger, European leaders should pursue the true source of European security: not US hegemony, but European security arrangements that respect the legitimate security interests of all European nations, certainly including Ukraine, but also including Russia, which continues to resist NATO enlargements into the Black Sea.  Europe should reflect on the fact that the non-enlargement of NATO and the implementation of the Minsk II agreements would have averted this awful war in Ukraine.  At this stage, diplomacy, not military escalation, is the true path to European and global security.

    Feature Image Credit: Big Stock

    This article was published earlier in Pearls and Irritations.

  • Xi is Not Mao

    Xi is Not Mao

    The ongoing conflicts and crises across the world, be it in Ukraine or in the South China Sea, reflect a serious flaw in the current international order and in the politics of relations amongst nations. The singular focus on the demonisation of leaders, aided by perception management through devious media control, reflects a significant danger to global safety and stability. The current hyper noise in US-China relations is driven by hyperbole about Xi and other leaders. It is time to take a step back and review the information holocaust.

    Rebecca E Karl’s perceptive article highlights the vagaries of flawed picture portrayals of China and Xi that can be very far from the truth. This article was published earlier in Dissent Magazine.

    – Editorial Team

    Mao and Xi’s historical projects couldn’t be more different, and it is high time to move beyond the bad history that conflates them.

    Commentary on China these days often presents lazy thinking that leads to some ridiculous historical statements. That President Xi Jinping is a would-be Mao Zedong or that China is facing a “new Cultural Revolution” are examples of this laziness. In a charitable light, such assertions stem from a broad misunderstanding of the logics of contemporary China and its role in the world today. In a less charitable light, they are driven by ideological fealty to some of the most outdated and frankly racist aspects of Cold War Western anti-communism. My premise in the following comments: China today is not Maoist, and Xi is not Mao redux. China today is also not communist in any genuine sense of that term, even though the Communist Party presides over the country with an increasingly iron grip.

    The difference between Mao and now could not be starker. Mao’s twentieth-century anti-capitalist and anti-feudal revolution in politics and culture sought to transform China’s domestic social relations by mobilizing masses of people against the systems of domination that constrained their everyday lives. He sought to demonstrate to the non-capitalist world the superiority of socialism as a mode of material and cultural production. Those experiments must be judged a failure on both counts. Xi’s twenty-first-century goal, by contrast, is to release economic forces from the burden of sustaining socialist relations in order to build China’s global wealth and power. To that end, he has pursued domestic stability and has repressed potentially insurgent political, social, and cultural impulses along with challenges from internal peripheries—all while enhancing the power and privileges of the Communist Party itself. To date, his efforts to redefine and defend capitalist logics in China seem to have found success.

    China today is not Maoist, and Xi is not Mao redux. China today is also not communist in any genuine sense of that term, even though the Communist Party presides over the country with an increasingly iron grip.

    Mao and Xi’s historical projects couldn’t be more different, and it is high time to move beyond the bad history that conflates them. We need to grapple with how the past several decades of social and political realignment, not just in China but around the world, are leading to a global future not yet foretold.

    The “new Cold War” rhetoric that permeates public discourse these days is dangerous, to be sure, yet it appeals to a version of the world that is long gone. Socialism has disappeared, and capitalism has prevailed. The fundamental antagonism between these two irreconcilable social and ideological systems—the antagonism that informed a struggle between two different cultural imaginings of the future—has not existed since at least the mid-1990s, when the post-1989 Chinese capitalist order came into full view and took material and ideological root in China and the world. (And, as anyone in Asia or Africa knows, the concept of the “cold” war was always of questionable utility in places that hosted a continuous series of hot wars.)

    Indeed, the huge dissension within the “West,” the United States included, about how to even specify these problems—or whether to specify them at all—gives the lie to the fiction of unified nation-states facing off across elemental ideological divides.

    We live in a capitalist world, but that doesn’t reduce the stakes of current conflicts. Will we blow each other up in militarized one-upmanship? Will we so pollute our environments that we destroy the natural world’s capacity to sustain life? Will we tear each other and ourselves apart in the attempt to come to human solutions to human-made problems? Will the speed of disease and pathology outstrip our ability to lock down and vaccinate, or will we look the other way as the necropolitical selection of those who live and die proceeds apace? These are apocalyptic stakes, but they do not break down analytically on fundamental lines of systemic antagonism. The definition of and solutions to these problems do not depend on such outmoded analytics as the “West” and the “rest,” or the United States and China. Indeed, the huge dissension within the “West,” the United States included, about how to even specify these problems—or whether to specify them at all—gives the lie to the fiction of unified nation-states facing off across elemental ideological divides.

    We need to confront the possibility that our leaders—whoever they may be, whether so-called democrats or so-called authoritarians, so-called liberals, leftists, or rightists—all are leading us into disaster.

    What we need to confront today is that our accustomed systems of analysis based in the imaginary unities of nation-states are exhausted. We need to confront the possibility that our leaders—whoever they may be, whether so-called democrats or so-called authoritarians, so-called liberals, leftists, or rightists—all are leading us into disaster. Those of us outside China must oppose attempts by our governments and ventriloquist media to create ever more unequal and violent capitalist relations that ratchet up tensions between peoples and nations. At the same time, we must try to support those within China who are opposing their own government’s and ventriloquist media’s commitments to suppressing the critical voices and anti-capitalist practices in their midst. The stakes are high, and now is the time to rise to the occasion of critical engagement rather than sink into facile historical analogies. What we face today are not conflicts between civilizations but conflicts over what kind of civilization we wish to inhabit moving forward. Neither the Chinese state nor Western ones have the kinds of answers that we need these days, but there are activist elements in all of our societies striving to find solutions. It is to such activists that we must look for hope.

    Feature Image Credit: Nikkei Asia

  • Economic Relevance of Quad as a Regional Strategic Forum

    Economic Relevance of Quad as a Regional Strategic Forum

    The QUAD, a grouping of the United States, Japan, India, and Australia, began as a “Tsunami Core Group,” an impromptu group formed in response to the devastating Boxing Day tsunami of 2004. This core group brought together the four nations to swiftly mobilise and coordinate multilateral disaster relief and humanitarian assistance operations. The first meeting of the initial QUAD took place in May 2007 during the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) meeting in Manila. The meeting was characterised as an “informal grouping” that discussed themes of mutual interest to the dialogue participants (Buchan & Rimland, 2020). The group was established to deal with the immediate challenges posed by the tsunami and was never intended to become permanent. However, early cooperative efforts sparked a debate about QUAD’s overarching goal. When Australia withdrew from the QUAD in 2008, it ceased to exist. It was revived in 2017 against the backdrop of an increasingly assertive Chinese posture, and the emergence of the idea of the Indo-Pacific as a single maritime zone.

    The first QUAD meeting, after its revival, happened on 12 November 2017, when the four ‘like-minded’ partners discussed seven key issues: the rules-based order in Asia; freedom of navigation and overflight in the maritime commons; respect for international law; enhancing connectivity; maritime security; the North Korean threat and non-proliferation; and terrorism (Jain, 2022). The QUAD aims to bring diverse perspectives together in a shared vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific, and it strives for a region that is free, open, inclusive, healthy, and anchored in democratic values.

    Economic Potential

    There are numerous reasons to increase economic engagement within the QUAD nations—the four countries, with a combined population of over 1.8 billion people, represent a quarter of the world’s population and over $30 trillion in GDP. In 2018, trade between the four countries totalled more than $440 billion, with nearly $6 trillion in trade with the rest of the world. QUAD intends to use both public and private resources to construct high-quality infrastructure in the Indo-Pacific region. According to the MEA’s website, since 2015, QUAD partners have invested more than $48 billion in regional infrastructure development. The commitment of the QUAD to regional infrastructure development can be strengthened by integrating India into the existing ‘Australia-Japan-US Trilateral Infrastructure Partnership’ and by broadening their reach into the Indo-Pacific region (“Fact Sheet: QUAD Leaders’ Summit,” n.d.). Except for India and the United States, the remaining two countries are also Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) members. This shows that, notwithstanding territorial and security differences, trade and commerce are still the primary focus (“Economic Dimension Key to QUAD Success”, 2021). Further, the Covid-19 pandemic has harmed the global economy, including the QUAD nations, in areas ranging from employment to investment. Thus, by bolstering their economic ties for greater freedom and cooperation, the group will facilitate a faster recovery from the pandemic’s effects.

    The Indian Ocean, not the Indo-Pacific, is central to India’s vision. In the short term, India’s engagement with the Indo-Pacific framework will be primarily diplomatic and economic and will be constrained by the Indian Ocean’s strategic primacy and constraints on its sea-power projection

    QUAD and the Indian Economy

    India’s strong economic ties with the QUAD economies are reflected in its bilateral trade volume with each member. During 2019-2020, these three economies accounted for 15% of India’s total trade. The United States contributes the most with 11%, followed by Japan and Australia, with 2.15 and 1.6 per cent, respectively. Further, India already has a free-trade agreement with Japan, which was implemented in 2011, and negotiations with Australia and the United States are ongoing. India can now use this critical multilateral forum to help facilitate trade negotiations and increase economic activity with member economies (“Economic Dimension Key to QUAD Success” 2021).

    According to Lunev and Shavlay (2018), the emergence of China, the expansion of India’s economic and strategic clout, and, most importantly, the growing importance of the Indian Ocean as a strategic trade route carrying nearly two-thirds of global oil shipments and a third of bulk cargo, have entailed a shift in the security architecture from the Asia-Pacific to the Indo-Pacific. These factors have contributed to the rise of regional stakeholders advocating for a free and open Indo-Pacific, resulting in the re-establishment of the QUAD. However, India’s maritime interests and strategies are at odds with those of the other QUAD members. The Indian Ocean, not the Indo-Pacific, is central to India’s vision. In the short term, India’s engagement with the Indo-Pacific framework will be primarily diplomatic and economic and will be constrained by the Indian Ocean’s strategic primacy and constraints on its sea-power projection.

    The South and East China Seas, the Western Pacific, and the Indian Ocean are of particular concern to the United States and Japan. Unless and until these disagreements are resolved, QUAD’s effectiveness as an entity will be called into question

    Tokyo Summit 

    The Tokyo Summit is the QUAD Leaders’ fourth interaction since their first virtual meeting in March 2021, in-person Summit in Washington DC in September 2021, and virtual meeting in March 2022. The Tokyo Summit took place against the backdrop of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict and its repercussions. The joint statement issued following the QUAD summit in Tokyo on May 24, 2022, is more comprehensive than the first three summits. It has attempted to clarify the broad framework for cooperation by outlining eight specific areas. These include Peace and Stability; Covid-19 and Global Health Security; Infrastructure; Climate; Cybersecurity; Critical and Emerging Technologies; QUAD Fellowship; Space; and Maritime Domain Awareness and Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) (Luthra, n.d.). A comprehensive QUAD joint statement and the launch of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) are key developments of the Tokyo summit. QUAD leaders also announced a maritime initiative to combat illegal fishing at the Tokyo summit, and a pledge to invest $50 billion in infrastructure in the Indo-Pacific to combat China’s growing power (“QUAD Joint Leaders’ Statement”, 2022).

    The QUAD has long been criticised for lacking a common purpose or a substantive agenda. Furthermore, none of the objectives cited as reasons for bringing the four states together are unique to the QUAD. Other actors and institutions in the region already exist for these purposes.  Thus, there is a need for QUAD partners to better articulate their distinct rationale for cooperation and collaborative efforts.

    India is a key player due to its naval power and strategic location, and should thus be an active participant. However, there are differences in areas of interest among the QUAD nations, complicating its effectiveness. The South and East China Seas, the Western Pacific, and the Indian Ocean are of particular concern to the United States and Japan. Unless and until these disagreements are resolved, QUAD’s effectiveness as an entity will be called into question. While India is frequently portrayed as the holdout — and has recently been the most vocal — objections have come from other countries as well. The potential impact on Sino-Australian relations continues to make some in Australia nervous. Beijing’s reaction has factored into American caution as well, as has the preference for a trilateral format (Madan, 2017).  

    India requires investment, attractive financing for infrastructure, technology, and access to key raw materials, particularly rare earth elements, among the QUAD nations. QUAD’s other members are looking for market access and dependable investment destinations. Broadening QUAD’s current strategic focus to strengthen economic ties under the partnership’s auspices would be a win-win situation for all countries involved in such a scenario.

    Bibliography

    Buchan, P., & Rimland, B. (2020). Defining the diamond: The past, present, and future of the quadrilateral security dialogue. Defining the Diamond: The Past, Present, and Future of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue | Center for Strategic and International Studies. Retrieved July 22, 2022, from https://www.csis.org/analysis/defining-diamond-past-present-and-future-quadrilateral-security-dialogue 

    “Economic Dimension Key to Quad Success.” 2021. The Statesman. February 23, 2021. https://www.thestatesman.com/opinion/economic-dimension-key-quad-success-1502953752.html.

    “Fact Sheet: Quad Leaders’ Summit.” n.d. Www.mea.gov.in. https://www.mea.gov.in/bilateral-documents.htm?dtl/34319/Fact+Sheet+Quad+Leaders+Summit.

    JAIN, Purnendra. 2022. “India’s Changing Approach to the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue.” East Asian Policy 14 (01): 56–70. https://doi.org/10.1142/s1793930522000046.

    Lunev, Sergey, and Ellina Shavlay. 2018. “Russia and India in the Indo-Pacific.” Asian Politics & Policy 10 (4): 713–31. https://doi.org/10.1111/aspp.12430.

    Luthra, Girish. n.d. “Forward from the Tokyo Quad Summit and IPEF.” ORF. https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/forward-from-the-tokyo-quad-summit-and-ipef/.

    Madan, Tanvi. 2017. “The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of the ‘Quad.’” War on the Rocks. November 16, 2017. https://warontherocks.com/2017/11/rise-fall-rebirth-quad/.

    “Quad Joint Leaders’ Statement.” 2022. The White House. May 24, 2022. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/05/24/quad-joint-leaders-statement/.

    Rahman, Mohammad Masudur, Chanwahn Kim, and Prabir De. 2020. “Indo-Pacific Cooperation: What Do Trade Simulations Indicate?” Journal of Economic Structures 9 (1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40008-020-00222-4.

    Feature Image Credits: Resilinc

  • Ukraine Crisis and India’s Rejection of Western Binary Construct

    Ukraine Crisis and India’s Rejection of Western Binary Construct

    “India has already chosen a side, its own, where it is happy, willing and most importantly capable of staying put”

    The current crisis in Ukraine has, or at least threatened to, shift the focus away from two equally urgent geopolitical conundrums – the Taliban usurping power in Afghanistan and China increasing its assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific and beyond. One almost gets the feeling that the timings of these events couldn’t have been better scripted. Needless to say, all three of them are intertwined in a complex web of events where the major world players are looking to outmanoeuvre each other. These events hold serious ramifications for India, a country which under Prime Minister Narendra Modi has looked to continuously raise its international profile as a major and responsible power in the region. Out of the three, India is a serious stakeholder in the Afghan equation and the Indo-Pacific construct, with even the Ukraine crisis putting the world’s focus on India.

    Derek Grossman, writing for the Foreign Policy magazine, observes that due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing crisis, “Modi’s multipolar Moment Has Arrived”. He even sees India as ‘the clear beneficiary of Russia’s war’. Grossman says that by not condemning Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and refusing to toe the Western line in sanctioning Moscow, India has in fact elevated its global stature. He suggests each of the major powers from the US to China to Russia has been vying to have India on its ‘side’. This assumption is not limited to just Grossman alone but many Western analysts assume that India is vying for a side. But this is exactly where Grossman fails to understand the basic objective of India’s foreign policy. India’s External Affairs Minister Dr. S. Jaishankar’s remarks at the recent GLOBESEC 2022 Bratislava Forum throw light on this ‘misunderstanding’ on the part of Grossman and analysts of his ilk. Jaishankar, to a question regarding the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict that in case India must pick a side, who India will side with – the US or China, quipped “I don’t accept that India has to join either the US axis or the China axis. We are one-fifth of the world’s population, the fifth or sixth-largest economy in the world, and India is entitled to have its own side and make her own choices devoid of cynical transactions but based on India’s values and interests.” In the same forum, he also remarked that India is not “sitting on the fence” on the Ukraine issue (a reference to Biden’s remark of India being ‘shaky’) and is in fact merely “sitting on its ground”. Jaishankar’s remarks emphasize India’s policy of strategic autonomy and of India not being a lackey of any power or axis. Meaning India has already chosen a side, its own, where it is happy, willing and most importantly capable of staying put.

    “Somewhere Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems, but the world’s problems are not Europe’s problems.”

    But what Grossman does get right is in his usage of the term ‘Multipolar’. India indeed views the world as multipolar today. Instead of clinging to either pole of the binary world order, India desires to be one of the poles itself. So, then what explains the West’s adamancy or incapability to understand India? Even this has been partly answered by Jaishankar himself as he says, “Somewhere Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems, but the world’s problems are not Europe’s problems.” And this is exactly why I mentioned Afghanistan and the Indo-Pacific at the very outset. It is not to say that an India desiring to be a globally recognised power shouldn’t be concerned about Ukraine, but to understand the fact that, for India, a “messy” US withdrawal from Afghanistan and an ever-aggressive China lurking large on its borders are far greater challenges that cannot be met by choosing sides, rather India has to meet those challenges on its own strength. India simply doesn’t have the luxury of joining Axis A against Axis B or vice versa. Among many other things, India needs Russia to balance out China and for its strategic interests in Afghanistan and Central Asia; India needs the US to cement its role in the Indo-Pacific and create a strong deterrence against China; while India also needs to partner with China and Russia in climate change politics as well as limit Western dominance over the global financial system.

    But it is also true that today, India’s strategic interests find greater convergence with that of the US, ranging from countering extremism in the Af-Pak region to checking China’s rise and securing a free and open Indo-Pacific with the help of “like-minded” nations in the region like Japan and Australia in the QUAD grouping. With regards to Russia, relations between the two traditional partners have cooled down a little especially because of Russia’s hobnobbing with Pakistan to secure its interests in Afghanistan and India’s growing ties to the US. Given the fact that Russia is speculated to become increasingly dependent on China as the war in Ukraine wages on, India’s manoeuvrability stands even more limited. Ever since the start of the war, India has tirelessly tried to explain to its Western counterparts the need to re-focus on the Indo-Pacific. Perhaps the bigger challenge for the democratic world is China’s unilateral attempts to change the status quo in the region. Russia’s threat is largely military in nature and is a headache majorly for its European neighbours. But the Chinese threat is global and all-encompassing ranging from economic to military to security to cultural. Additionally, for India, the Taliban in power next door doesn’t evoke any pleasant memories as anti-India forces might be on the loose given the Taliban’s proximity to Pakistan and its ties with anti-India forces.

    India must solidly guard against being labelled in any camp and should steadfastly pursue its own path. India’s recent actions of abstentions in the UN against Russian aggression at the same time as Prime Minister Modi making a whirlwind tour of Europe to calm Western nerves augur well for its strategic objectives. The signing of the US-led Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) in the recently held QUAD summit in Tokyo also serves India well vis-à-vis China. A recent visit of an Indian delegation to Afghanistan, ostensibly to oversee aid distribution, suggests that New Delhi may be willing to work with the Taliban regime, thus providing the latter with some legitimacy and the former some flexibility. To be recognised as a major global power, India should de-link from all geopolitical binaries and work towards becoming the Third Pole, maybe taking a cue from the Himalayas.

    Feature Image Credits: Economic Times

  • Is the sheen of overseas higher education still compelling?

    Is the sheen of overseas higher education still compelling?

    We may not have easy and clear answers as to when, why, and how Indian students began going abroad to study — particularly in the realm of higher education, but this process has been on for generations. It is essential to draw attention to the fact that ancient India has had at least two reputed ‘universities’, Nalanda and Taxila (the erstwhile Takshashila now located in Pakistan), which indeed attracted students from outside the subcontinent.

    Overseas education is a centuries-old phenomenon in India. Quality of education, variety of courses, and comparatively low fees are some of the influencing factors

    While during the ancient times the concept, as well as the content of education, was quite at variance and different from what evolved and spread widely during the modern period, the urge to seek knowledge has been ubiquitous and pervasive right from the time institutionalised form of imparting education emerged. However, we do have to recognise and acknowledge that ‘education’ in some form or the other has always been the sine qua non throughout the existence of Homo sapiens, howsoever family- or community-driven, and informal it may have been, and irrespective of the level of economic and socio-cultural development of a given society in any part of the world.

    The very first three ‘modern’ universities, namely Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras, got established in India during the colonial period in 1857, though some undergraduate degree colleges did precede the establishment of these universities in the three presidencies of Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras. For those aspiring for a higher degree, a kind of avenue existed, in general, in the British universities, because of the colonial scenario, though it was not uncommon for some to go to universities in the United States too.

    Thus, ‘studying abroad’ — that magic phrase in educational circles today — is not really a recent phenomenon; it has been an educational trajectory for at least some sections of students in India for at least 150 years.

    Those who could afford paid for these overseas ventures, and for the less privileged but talented scholarships came in handy. Today, however, it has become rather easy to obtain bank loans which many are able to pay back given the rise in the income of both the lower classes as well as the middle classes. Also, quite a few philanthropic organisations are coming forward to disburse scholarships as well as loans at really soft interest rates. This has strengthened many a student from the erstwhile underprivileged and minority groups, including women students, to benefit from such good deeds and opportunities.

    Unavailability of some courses, and the lack of appropriate ambience for higher education, in general, were indeed reasons for going abroad, at least during the very early period of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

    It is also true that a lot of prominence and significance has all through been attached to the better quality of education prevalent abroad. It was invariably held that degrees from a foreign university were superior to those from the home universities

    Though this argument was true given the state of higher education in India during the said period, there, nevertheless, prevailed a notion that anything associated with the colonial rulers and their country was qualitatively better than things (including academic degrees) that were homespun. It is not out of place to point out that in some circles in India — in the contemporary context too — this notion of the superiority of a foreign degree is still given quite a high level of leverage. Some of the recently-established private universities swear by and recruit only faculty with a foreign doctoral degree!

    The surveys that rank universities in different countries as per their ‘performance’ have emerged rather recently, but do seem, at least in the present context, to add to the long-existing bias that exists in India in favour of better quality of outcomes vis-à-vis overseas universities. True, that though Indian universities do not feature anywhere in the top echelons in the ranking of higher educational institutions, and many an academic, not just in India but elsewhere too, question the methodology adopted in these processes, the fact remains that going by the various criteria and parameters adopted, most Indian universities do not make the cut.

    This is because there exists a truly uneven range of quality across departments and centres. Reasons for such a state are many but nepotism and corruption in the recruitment of faculty is indeed a prime reason.

    I must hasten to add that many higher educational institutions in India do have departments and centres that have done exceedingly well, and are undoubtedly abodes of excellence in the central and state university spheres; so also some departments in private universities. What our higher educational institutions suffer from in terms of not measuring up in totality when all the departments and centres are weighed together at the pan-institutional level. This is because there exists a truly uneven range of quality across departments and centres. Reasons for such a state are many but nepotism and corruption in the recruitment of faculty is indeed a prime reason.

    We also need to examine the developments during the last few decades, particularly as regards students going abroad for medical education to China, the Philippines, Russia, Ukraine, and other East European countries, and do not get surprised, even Pakistan! It is clear that the much sought-after medical degrees come at a much cheaper cost, almost at a fraction of what they would have to pay in private Indian medical colleges.

    The beeline that is made to go abroad for a medical degree in this particular realm is out and out a cost-cutting mechanism.

    Those who are after such medical degrees are mainly students who fail to obtain a high ranking in the currently prevalent National Eligibility Entrance Test (NEET) for admission to the MBBS and BDS courses, in State-run medical and dental colleges where the fees are substantially low. The beeline that is made to go abroad for a medical degree in this particular realm is out and out a cost-cutting mechanism.

    However, students who obtain a medical degree from an overseas institution must clear the Foreign Medical Graduate Examination (FMGE) if they wish to practice in India. So much for a foreign degree.

    So, today the lure of foreign universities is not just due to the sheen or quality alone, which probably was so some time back, but currently, there are many other reasons as delineated above.

     

    This article was published earlier in moneycontrol.

    Feature Image Credit: The Free Press Journal

  • Does Facial Recognition Tech in Ukraine’s War Bring Killer Robots Nearer?

    Does Facial Recognition Tech in Ukraine’s War Bring Killer Robots Nearer?

    Clearview AI is offering its controversial tech to Ukraine for identifying enemy soldiers – while autonomous killing machines are on the rise

    Technology that can recognise the faces of enemy fighters is the latest thing to be deployed to the war theatre of Ukraine. This military use of artificial intelligence has all the markings of a further dystopian turn to what is already a brutal conflict.

    The US company Clearview AI has offered the Ukrainian government free use of its controversial facial recognition technology. It offered to uncover infiltrators – including Russian military personnel – combat misinformation, identify the dead and reunite refugees with their families.

    To date, media reports and statements from Ukrainian government officials have claimed that the use of Clearview’s tools has been limited to identifying dead Russian soldiers in order to inform their families as a courtesy. The Ukrainian military is also reportedly using Clearview to identify its own casualties.

    This contribution to the Ukrainian war effort should also afford the company a baptism of fire for its most important product. Battlefield deployment will offer the company the ultimate stress test and yield valuable data, instantly turning Clearview AI into a defence contractor – potentially a major one – and the tool into military technology.

    If the technology can be used to identify live as well as dead enemy soldiers, it could also be incorporated into systems that use automated decision-making to direct lethal force. This is not a remote possibility. Last year, the UN reported that an autonomous drone had killed people in Libya in 2020, and there are unconfirmed reports of autonomous weapons already being used in the Ukrainian theatre.

    Our concern is that hope that Ukraine will emerge victorious from what is a murderous war of aggression may cloud vision and judgement concerning the dangerous precedent set by the battlefield testing and refinement of facial-recognition technology, which could in the near future be integrated into autonomous killing machines.

    To be clear, this use is outside the remit of Clearview’s current support for the Ukrainian military; and to our knowledge Clearview has never expressed any intention for its technology to be used in such a manner. Nonetheless, we think there is real reason for concern when it comes to military and civilian use of privately owned facial-recognition technologies.

    Clearview insists that its tool should complement and not replace human decision-making. A good sentiment but a quaint one

    The promise of facial recognition in law enforcement and on the battlefield is to increase precision, lifting the proverbial fog of war with automated precise targeting, improving the efficiency of lethal force while sparing the lives of the ‘innocent’.

    But these systems bring their own problems. Misrecognition is an obvious one, and it remains a serious concern, including when identifying dead or wounded soldiers. Just as serious, though, is that lifting one fog makes another roll in. We worry that for the sake of efficiency, battlefield decisions with lethal consequences are likely to be increasingly ‘blackboxed’ – taken by a machine whose working and decisions are opaque even to its operator. If autonomous weapons systems incorporated privately owned technologies and databases, these decisions would inevitably be made, in part, by proprietary algorithms owned by the company.

    Clearview rightly insists that its tool should complement and not replace human decision-making. The company’s CEO also said in a statement shared with openDemocracy that everyone who has access to its technology “is trained on how to use it safely and responsibly”. A good sentiment but a quaint one. Prudence and safeguards such as this are bound to be quickly abandoned in the heat of battle.

    Clearview’s systems are already used by police and private security operations – they are common in US police departments, for instance. Criticism of such use has largely focused on bias and possible misidentification of targets, as well as over-reliance on the algorithm to make identifications – but the risk also runs the other way.

    The more precise the tool actually is, the more likely it will be incorporated into autonomous weapons systems that can be turned not only on invading armies but also on political opponents, members of specific ethnic groups, and so on. If anything, improving the reliability of the technology makes it all the more sinister and dangerous. This doesn’t just apply to privately owned technology, but also to efforts by states such as China to develop facial recognition tools for security use.

    Outside combat, too, the use of facial recognition AI in the Ukrainian war carries significant risks. When facial recognition is used in the EU for border control and migration purposes – and it is, widely – it is public authorities that are collecting the sensitive biomarker data essential to facial recognition, the data subject knows that it is happening and EU law strictly regulates the process. Clearview, by contrast, has already repeatedly fallen foul of the EU’s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and has been heavily sanctioned by data security agencies in Italy and France.

    If privately owned facial recognition technologies are used to identify Ukrainian citizens within the EU, or in border zones, to offer them some form of protective status, a grey area would be established between military and civilian use within the EU itself. Any such facial recognition system would have to be used on civilian populations within the EU. A company like Clearview could promise to keep its civil and military databases separate, but this would need further regulation – and even then would pose the question as to how a single company can be entrusted with civil data which it can easily repurpose for military use. That is in fact what Clearview is already offering the Ukrainian government: it is building its military frontline recognition operation on civil data harvested from Russian social media records.

    Then there is the question of state power. Once out of the box, facial recognition may prove simply too tempting for European security agencies to put back. This has already been reported in the US where the members of the New York Police Department are reported to have used Clearview’s tool to circumvent data protection and privacy rules within the department and to have installed Clearview’s app on private devices in violation of NYPD policy.

    This is a particular risk with relation to the roll-out and testing in Ukraine. If Ukrainian accession to the European Union is fast-tracked, as many are arguing it should be, it will carry into the EU the use of Clearview’s AI as an established practice for military and potentially civilian use, both initially conceived without malice or intention of misuse, but setting what we think is a worrying precedent.

    The Russian invasion of Ukraine is extraordinary in its magnitude and brutality. But throwing caution to the wind is not a legitimate doctrine for the laws of war or the rules of engagement; this is particularly so when it comes to potent new technology. The defence of Ukraine may well involve tools and methods that, if normalised, will ultimately undermine the peace and security of European citizens at home and on future fronts. EU politicians should be wary of this. The EU must use whatever tools are at its disposal to bring an end to the conflict in Ukraine and to Russian aggression, but it must do so ensuring the rule of law and the protection of citizens.

    This article was published earlier in openDemocracy, and is republished under Creative Commons Licence. 

    Feature Image Credit: www.businessinsider.in

  • Cryptos and CBDC: Is the RBI on the Right Track?

    Cryptos and CBDC: Is the RBI on the Right Track?

    “The history of money is entering a new chapter”. The RBI needs to heed this caution and not be defensive.

    Cryptocurrency will be discouraged by the government was the message from the FM during the budget discussion in parliament. There will be heavy taxation and no relief in capital gains for past losses. But, India has to contend with growing use of cryptos in these uncertain times. Russian kleptocrats are reportedly using cryptos to evade sanctions. Ukraine which has been a center for cryptos trading due to its lax rules is now using them to get funds.

    President Joe Biden recently signed an executive order requiring government agencies to assess use of digital currency and cryptos due to their growing importance. The Indian authorities have also been trying to bring legislation to deal with the issue since October 2021. Would the US clarifying its position help India also decide on cryptos?

    The SC has asked the government to clarify its position on the legality of cryptos. The FM in the Budget 2022-23 proposed taxing the capital gains and crypto transactions but did not declare them illegal. The RBI Governor was more expansive in February when he highlighted three things. First, “Private cryptocurrencies are a big threat to our financial and macroeconomic stability”. Second, investors are “investing at their own risk” and finally, “these cryptocurrencies have no underlying (asset)… not even a tulip”. Subsequently, a RBI Deputy Governor called cryptos worse than a Ponzi scheme and suggested that they not be “legitimized”. It is only recently that the RBI has announced that it will float Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC)

    Difficult to Declare Cryptos Illegal

    The governor calling cryptos as cryptocurrency has unintentionally identified them as a currency. His statements indicate RBI’s worry about its place in the economy’s financial system as cryptos proliferate and become more widely used. This threat emerges from the decentralized character of cryptos based on the Blockchain technology which the Central Banks cannot regulate and which enables enterprising private entities (like, Satoshi Nakamoto initiated Bitcoins in 2009) to float cryptos which can function as assets and money.

    The total valuation of cryptos recently was upward of $2 trillion – more than the value of gold held globally. Undoubtedly, this impacts the financial systems and sovereignty of nations. So, the RBI rather than be defensive needs to think through how to deal with cryptos.

    Cryptos which operate via the net can be banned only if all nations come together. Even then, tax havens may allow cryptos to function defying the global agreement. They have been facilitating flight of capital and illegality in spite of pressures from powerful nations.

    The genie is out of the bottle. The total valuation of cryptos recently was upward of $2 trillion – more than the value of gold held globally. Undoubtedly, this impacts the financial systems and sovereignty of nations. So, the RBI rather than be defensive needs to think through how to deal with cryptos.

    Cryptos as Currency

    Source: Crypto-current.co

    Will a CBDC help tackle the emerging problem? Indeed not, since it can only be a fiat currency and not a crypto. However, cryptos can function as money. This difference needs to be understood.

    A currency is a token used in market transactions. Historically, not only paper money but cows and copper coins have been used as tokens since they are useful in themselves. But paper currency is useless till the government declares it to be a fiat currency. Everyone by consensus then accepts it at the value printed on it.

    So, paper currency with little use value derives its value from state backing and not any underlying commodity. Cryptos are a string of numbers in a computer programme and are even more worthless. And, without state backing. So, how do they become acceptable as tokens for exchange?

    Their acceptability to the rich enables them to act as money. Paintings with little use value have high valuations because the collectivity of the rich agrees to it. Cryptos are like that.

    Bitcoin, the most prominent crypto, has been designed to become expensive. Its total number is limited to 21 million and progressively it requires more and more of computer power and energy to produce (called mining like, for gold). As the cost of producing the Bitcoin has risen, its price has increased. This has led to speculative investment which drives the price higher, attracting more people to join. So, since 2009, in spite of wildly fluctuating prices, they have yielded high returns making speculation successful.

    Unlike the Tulip Mania

    The statement that cryptos have no underlying asset, not even a tulip refers to the time when tulip prices rose dramatically before they collapsed. But, tulips could not be used as tokens, while cryptos can be used via the internet. Also, the supply of tulips could expand rapidly as its price went up but the number of Bitcoins is limited.

    So, cryptos acquire value and become an asset which can be transacted via the net. This enables them to function as money. True, transactions using Bitcoins are difficult due to their underlying protocol, but other simpler cryptos are available.

    The different degrees of difficulties underlying cryptos arises from the problem of `double spending’. Fiat currency whether in physical or electronic form has the property that once it is spent, it cannot be spent again, except fraudulently, because it is no more with the spender. But, a software on a computer can be repeatedly used.

    Blockchain and encryption solved the problem by devising protocols like, the `proof of work’ and `proof of stake’. They enable the use of cryptos for transactions. The former protocol is difficult. The latter is simpler but prone to hacking and fraud. Today, thousands of different kinds of cryptos exist – Bitcoin like cryptos, Alt coins and Stable coins. Some of them may be fraudulent and people have lost money.

    CBDC, Unlike Cryptos

    Source: cointelegraph.com

    Blockchain enables decentralization. That is, everyone on the crypto platform has a say. But, the Central Banks would not want that. Further, they would want a fiat currency to be exclusively issued and controlled by them. But the protocols mentioned above theoretically enable everyone to `mine’ and create currency. So, for CBDC to be in central control, solve the `double spending’ problem and be a crypto (not just a digital version of currency) seems impossible.

    A centralized CBDC will require RBI to validate each transaction – something it does not do presently. Once a currency note is issued, RBI does not keep track of its use in transactions. Keeping track will be horrendously complex which could make the crypto like CBDC unusable unless new secure protocols are designed. No wonder, according to IMF MD, “… around 100 countries are exploring CBDCs at one level or another. Some researching, some testing, and a few already distributing CBDC to the public. … the IMF is deeply involved in it ..”

    Conclusion

    Issuing CBDCs will not only be complicated but presently cannot be a substitute for cryptos which will eventually be used as money. This will impact the functioning of the Central Banks and commercial banks. Further, it is now too late to ban cryptos unless there is global coordination which seems unlikely. The rich who benefit from cryptos will oppose banning them. Can the US work out a solution? The IMF MD has said, “The history of money is entering a new chapter”. The RBI needs to heed this caution and not be defensive.

     

    Slightly shortened version of this article was published earlier in The Hindu.

    Feature Image Credit: doralfamilyjournal.com