Two events in the last fortnight stood out in the general backdrop of the non-stop propaganda about the Ukraine war and the ‘values’ of the ‘rules-based, liberal international order’. They mostly exposed the first cracks in the make-believe woke world the American public and especially ‘intellectuals’ live in.
A third set of events in India (one of those periodic ‘million mutinies’, ie. rioting and attacks on Hindus) is quite likely related to the above, but that is beyond the scope of this essay.
The first event was the ‘sudden departure from the scene’ of US Deputy National Security Advisor Daleep Singh, who was the architect of the brutal sanctions imposed on Russia. Such an apt instance of a pithy phrase trademarked by a TV journalist named Karan Thapar about Narendra Modi: A Freudian slip that confirmed what we suspected was Thapar’s deep desire.
The second event is the God-awful keening and weeping by the lunatic-fringe-Left and Deep State over the proposed purchase of Twitter by Elon Musk. One would have thought that the heavens were, literally, falling. It’s merely that one rather popular social media site is being taken over by someone who claims he is fed up with their partisan censorship. Funny, these are the same people who ‘cancelled’ Julian Assange, Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning.
I must admit to a certain prejudice against Daleep Singh for his hatchet-job in India, where he threatened grave but unnamed “consequences” if India didn’t abjectly toe the US line on sanctions. In the event, in one of those “the dog it was that died” scenarios that show how Karma loves a good joke, it was Singh who lost his job, and the Russian rouble is at levels above where it was before his supposedly crippling sanctions were imposed.
I figure I am permitted schadenfreude for a moment about Singh, but then reality strikes. (In truth, you can’t blame him alone: There are tons of Indian-origin people in the US who work assiduously against India’s interests, such as Pramila Jayapal, Ro Khanna, Vijay Prashad, Biju Mathews, Sunitha Viswanathan, et al). But the real story is how badly his sanctions have fared.
Despite the coercive pressure on India to not buy Russian oil, which India has largely adhered to, at significant cost because the Russians are willing to give large discounts, it turns out that the US itself has bought more Russian oil than India since the war began. Not to speak of massive EU oil and gas purchases, and most recently Poland and Hungary agreed to pay in roubles. So the gamble has failed, but EU energy security has been damaged.
In fact, the entire gamut of Western actions could be seen as counter-productive. The only cohort that has benefited at all is the Deep State, especially the Military Industrial Complex in the US, which needs a good little war somewhere to support its raison d’etre and to make reliable profits. The $80 billion of arms left behind in Afghanistan is water under the bridge (the US taxpayer has already paid for it), and nobody cares where it ends up (probably in India).
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The sanctions on Russia are not quite so crippling because the EU needs Russian gas, if it is to keep the factories humming. For instance, the German economy may grind to a halt if the Russians turn off the taps. There is the irony that all the climate-change noise has eviscerated alternatives such as coal and nuclear, and there simply isn’t enough renewable energy available to compensate. This is what happens when you outsource policy to teen-aged Greta Thunberg.
But there are other, longer-term consequences for the US as well. The nascent rouble trade and even the declaration that the rouble will be backed by gold (although I am not sure how practicable that is) suggests that there will be a bifurcation of the global financial system, which has long dominated by the US dollar. For instance, China would just love it if more and more trade happened in the renminbi/yuan.
The threat of confiscation of national forex reserves held in the US is also non-trivial. The US recently did this with Afghanistan’s reserves, arbitrarily allocating a significant portion of it to the families of the victims of 9/11. India has the majority of its gold reserves (some 400 tons out of a total of 700) held in the UK and at the Bank of International Settlements. Are these safe?
Technical solutions may come to the rescue of the rouble which is now out of the SWIFT inter-bank transfer system. There was a news item that Russian banks have tied up with China’s UPI-like digital payments infrastructure. So why not with UPI, if the downside risks are judged worthwhile by the Indian government? It is possible to visualise a fragmented financial system, with increasing transaction costs, where the US dollar is only primus inter pares.
This may affect the US economy and the lifestyle of Americans. There are several issues: One is that the US has become the largest debtor nation in the world, and has been pretty much living beyond its means. For instance, China is sending its massive savings, along with its plethora of products, to the US, and this cannot go on forever. The effects of the deindustrialisation of America are being exacerbated by the war.
As Brahma Chellaney puts it, “For China, Biden’s coming to power has been the gift that keeps on giving. US pressure on it has eased. China’s trade surplus with the US jumped 21.5 per cent in 2021 over a year earlier to $396.6 billion, and now makes up 58.6 per cent of China’s total trade surplus.”
American reliability is also in question. Quoting the South China Morning Post, here’s Chellaney again: “Team Biden, even at the risk of leaving Taiwan vulnerable to a Chinese amphibious invasion, informs Taipei that the delivery of an important artillery system would be delayed until 2026 at the earliest. Biden has prioritised Ukraine over Taiwan’s defence.”
Moving on to the Twitter-Elon Musk tango, what is notable is the meltdown in Left/Deep State circles. The Economist has been particularly entertaining. After fulminating for days about how terrible the entire idea of a billionaire owning media is (ironic considering they are owned by the Rothschilds and the wealthy Agnelli family), they made a spectacularly inane comment: “If he really wants to convince users that he will be an impartial guardian of his ‘digital public square’, Elon Musk could implement his reforms — and then freeze his own account.”
In a few days, they, and the rest of the chatterati, have gone through all five stages of grief: Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally, a grudging acceptance.
The Biden administration’s riposte was truly Orwellian: As Tulsi Gabbard put it, “Every dictatorship has a propaganda arm — a ‘Ministry of Truth’.” The Biden Administration has now formally joined the ranks of such dictatorships with their creation of the so-called “Disinformation Governance Board.” ... Biden is just a front man. Obama, April 21: Social media censors “don’t go far enough”, so the government needs to step in to do the job. Six days later, Homeland Security rolls out the ‘Ministry of Truth’.
I nominate Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s dragon lady, for the role of Minister of Truth.
What we are seeing is censorship, and hidden actors behind the scenes. You, an average reader of social media, may hold any opinion, so long as it is approved. Other opinions will be cancelled. This is, of course, exactly what has happened in Big Tech-controlled media for some time (eg the Hunter Biden laptop story).
How does all this affect India? Twitter and other media in India have zealously suppressed any non-Leftist participants, for instance @TrueIndology who was hounded out and cancelled despite — nay, because of — his devastating quotes from original sources that blew up many a pious Leftist myth. See my perspective from 2020 that this was a watershed moment.
What we are seeing is truly “war by other means”: Military, economic, information, in other words ‘Unrestricted Warfare’ as in the 1999 book by two Chinese colonels. Sad to say, despite Big Tech and Hollywood and soft power, the US is not winning.
The writer has been a conservative columnist for over 25 years. His academic interest is innovation. Views expressed are personal.
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