Mr. Modi Comes to Washington
by schrodingers_cat
Indian Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi is in DC for a state visit complete with a state dinner. This is definitely a public relations coup for the PM and India’s foreign policy apparatus. PM’s party the BJP suffered a humiliating defeat in an important state level election and is defensive about the ongoing violence in the state of Manipur. There was also a railway accident which took the lives of several hundred so this international visit comes at politically opportune time for the PM and his party. However as an Indian American this does not make me happy. In fact it is one of the rare decisions by the Biden administration that I disagree with.
Ultimately dealing with the PM of India is up to Indian voters and not US President. But this visit does confer legitimacy to the oft repeated claim by the PM’s fanatical followers or bhakts(devotees) that their PM is a respected global leader. The PM and his party will face the voters in less than a year’s time in 2024. Hosting the PM of India at this juncture is like hosting Bolsanaro for a state dinner just before the Brazilian elections.
I am a staunch Biden supporter I voted for him both in the primaries and in the general election. I also recognize that Biden is an old foreign policy hand. During his senate career he served as the chair of foreign relations committee so he gets the benefit of doubt from me. I will wait before I pass judgment about whether this helps or hurts US interests.
If the BJP can repeat its performance in the last two elections and go on to form a government on its own strength we can say without a doubt that India as we know it would be in great danger. It would be a win for an extremely ugly authoritarian ideology which derives inspiration from some of the most disastrous ideologies of the 20th century, Nazism and fascism. In its 9 years in power the current ruling dispensation has been ripping and poking the delicate seams that hold India together trying to remake it into something that it has never been in its long history, a cultural monolith. I have written about some of those attempts after Modi’s re-election here, and here. They are unlikely to succeed at the task that has been attempted without success many a time in the subcontinent’s history but they can and will continue to inflict a lot of harm putting their ideology into action.
The damage will not just be to the minorities and the weakest sections of the society riven by differences of caste, class and language but also to the dominant castes that make up the base of the BJP. By damage I mean death and destruction on a scale that will eclipse the partition of India. It may seem like hyperbole to you, it does to me even as I read back what I have just written. But we have seen this movie before and not that long ago. The party’s core ideology is that of fascism wearing a saffron garb.
India is not covered well in the US media when it is covered at all. Its politics is complex given the diversity of the nation. I have a unique perspective that many in the US media lack, I can read and am fluent in two Indian languages and follow many sources in those languages and not just the English language media. Also, I grew up in an India that was not dominated by the BJP.
Let me show you what I see. These stories are from the recent past.
Indian wrestlers being manhandled by the police for protesting against a BJP elected Loksabha member and minister in the Union cabinet for sexual assault, Brij Bhushan Singh
The ongoing ethnic violence in the northeastern state of Manipur
And then you can tell me whether my sense of alarm is unnecessary. I remain hopeful that the opposition will be able to unite and good sense will prevail upon enough numbers of people by the time the 2024 general elections roll by. I want to bear witness to what the BJP-RSS is doing in my name. And I say this because they claim to speak for all Indians, including those in the diaspora especially if they are Hindu.
Follow along on my blog and on Twitter as I take you behind the scenes and give you a perspective about India its politics, history, past. India faces one of its most important elections next year. This story is so much bigger than a mere state dinner or Modi or even the BJP. It is the battle for the soul of India and what kind of India will we see in the next 75 years.
I am compiling a list of sources and the incidents in the last 9 years that has raised my sense of alarm regarding India under BJP rule.
Thanks to Balloon Juice for front paging this post.
Sunday Afternoon Open Thread
japa21
I will read the whole thing, but I just want to thank you for doing this. Even Mrs. Japa who is more of a normie is aware of some of what is going on in India and was not thrilled with the reception Modi received.
raven
I’ve read this and the editorial by Maya Jasanoff and I guess I feel about this like I do about Ukraine. It’s awful but there is little I can do.
H.E.Wolf
Thank you for writing this post. We are the richer for your perspective. I also appreciate both your alarm about Modi/BJP, and your reservation of judgment re: Biden. It’s a rare quality to be able to do that.
I hope that India will find its way through to a more peaceful and democratic future. (And I hope that for the USA too, and for all other countries afflicted with fascist movements.)
SpaceUnit
I suspect that Biden’s friendliness to Modi is mostly about trying to lure India into aligning itself with the West rather than with China and Russia. Basic geopolitics.
Elizabelle
Glad to see this, Ms. Cat. Gonna be out for a while, but will read and comment later.
Almost Retired
I’m trying to understand why he’s so immensely popular in India. I get that it’s partially rooted in (Hindu) nationalism, and the restoration of an imaginary world that never existed. But that mix is just fascism 101.
Is he also an extraordinarily effective communicator? I know he does Fireside Chat-like radio shows and is supposedly good on social media. It is so hard to gauge the appeal that when you don’t speak the language. Does he explicitly encourage violence against out-groups, or does he just shrug and basically say “what are you going to do?” Fascinating stuff.
zhena gogolia
@H.E.Wolf: Yes, this is a very balanced essay. Thanks, SC!
I’m into vol. two of The Raj Quartet, and although it’s by a Brit, it does a pretty good job of conveying the complexity.
I wish India were going in a better direction. It is such a fantastic country with so much complex culture and history.
MomSense
@SpaceUnit:
I think you are right. This has more to do with countering China and Russia.
I really appreciate your perspective, SC.
Thinking about India’s future given climate change and it is just so frustrating that Modi/BJP have decided to face the future by persecuting Muslims. I guess it all comes down to power and what fascists are willing to destroy to get it.
cain
I found this article to be quite interesting as it focuses on what the Indian constitution allows – and it definitely seems to be ok with authoritarianism and I think some of that is because at least in my opinion Hinduism allows for authoritarianism from what I read since at least one book I’ve read makes the argument that once you know Brahman you don’t need rules and that you’d know what to do – but I think that belies human nature which has never been exactly logical.
https://journalofdemocracy.org/articles/the-authoritarian-roots-of-indias-democracy/
Curious to know what others think.
Omnes Omnibus
@SpaceUnit: While probably true, it doesn’t make it any less frustrating.
Joy in FL
Thanks for this post, SC.
Geminid
Turkiye and India are very dufferent countries, but there are some similarities between Turkish President Erdogan and Modi. In Erdogan’s case, Westerners and Western governments were rooting for Erdogan’s rival, Mr. Kilicdoraglu in last month’s Presidential election. Turkish people could see this, and it may have helped consolidate Erdogan’s support.
cain
@MomSense: Persecution of muslims dates till the mughals. But you can bet the British did a wonderful job of antagonizing the relationship between the two groups.
I have a fairly complex view of India especially when it comes to Hindu vs Muslims. I believe that minorities should be given full rights and justice – especially for the unscheduled castes. Destruction of the caste system, and equality for all.
I have a lot of conflict within myself in this because 1) Hindus only have one homeland that they can worship as Hindus 2) A Muslim/Jew/Christian has many options where they have the freedom to worship as they wish.
The conflict comes from the fact that muslims, jews and christians those families are Indians – they were converted. So where is the line?
Hindu philosophy is wonderful, open and liberal. Hinduism as practiced by common people is at time shows the frailness of the human condition. I certainly prefer it from a spiritual perspective than Abrahamic religions.
In the end, I just want people to live and enjoy living and not worry about religious conflict.
HinTN
@cain: Hinduism, to be OVERLY simplistic, like other belief systems, focuses on how to explain and survive the miseries of the human condition. Relying on the tenets of a belief system to be the basis of governance inevitably leads to trouble.
@schroedingers cat – Thanks for this post. I try to pay attention to the world in a way our media cannot bring themselves to do but your intimate acquaintance with your country is very helpful
ETA
Could not agree more.
JPL
Thanks SC for the informative post and sometimes for geopolitical reasons, you have to sleep with the devil. It does disappointment me though.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@SpaceUnit: Yep – geopolitics realpolitik.
But I appreciate SC’s perspective – glad to see it here on the front page.
SpaceUnit
@Omnes Omnibus:
Agree. I think the hope is that a cultural and economic alignment with liberal democracies will over time begin to affect India’s overall disposition towards its own internal politics.
James E Powell
@SpaceUnit:
When has that ever worked?
Frank Wilhoit
Great men walked the Earth in the 20th Century — where “great” does not mean “admirable”, but rather the reverse. Say what you will of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, the point is that you need not say anything of them, because history has said it for you. Today we have only the tiniest, most pitiful, most ridiculous little gimcrack toy imitation dictators and dictator wannabees, invisible except under an electron microscope. History will have trouble finding anything to say about Trump, Putin, Xi, Modi, Qaddafi, Hussein, Assad (père ou fils), because it is so self-evident that none of them originated or really even influenced anything at all. They held titles, but the real power was exerted by propaganda. Then it will be necessary to document, not the lives and exaggerated actions of the title-holders, but the atrocities incited by the propaganda, and the populations and nationalities who — culpably — committed the atrocities under the sway of the propaganda. Quick, who was the nominal leader of Rwanda in the early 1990s? We do not even remember a name: we blame the people, and rightly so. So is it everywhere. Even where the figureheads have names, they have nothing else.
SpaceUnit
@James E Powell:
Ukraine. Japan. South Korea.
tokyokie
schroedingers cat
I greatly appreciate your insight into politics in India. For most Westerners like myself, Indian politics are as indecipherable as Bollywood movies, even those with subtitles. It strikes me that the country faces a situation similar to that seen in Italy a few years ago, when the Christian Democrats, the lead party in every governing coalition since World War II, finally collapsed under the weight of its corruption in 1994 after one too many car-bombing murders of Mafia prosecutors. But the resulting power vacuum was initially filled by Trump starter kit Silvio Berlesconi, and now the fascist-adjacent Brothers of Italy. Similarly, the BJP seems to have stepped into the void left by public disgust with the long-ruling and fundamentally corrupt Congress. Indians’ choices seem to mirror those Louisiana voters faced in 1991 when they had to choose between the corrupt former Gov. Edwin Edwards and KKK leader David Duke. Edwards’ supporters sported bumper stickers that read, “Vote for the crook. It’s important.” The crook won, was caught taking bribes, and wound up in federal prison, but it was still a better result than giving the white supremacist the office.
Yutsano
I tried to come up with some cogent comment but it just sounded patronising. It’s time for me to shut up and listen.
bjacques
@SpaceUnit: or recognition that nobody lives forever, and that India under Modi’s successor and the US under Biden’s have a hope of benefiting each other and global democracy in general. Biden does take the longer view and generally places his bets optimistically.
Thanks for posting this S_C. I read it on your blog since I didn’t know when it would appear here.
delphinium
Thank you SC for sharing your thoughts and perspective – it is much appreciated! Your sense of alarm seems well warranted to me. I really hope that next year’s elections will restore peace there.
@Almost Retired: I also have a hard time understanding the popularity of certain leaders and am really tired of the those who keep pushing to go back to a time/place that does not exist as an excuse for heinous policies.
SpaceUnit
@bjacques:
It’s like a game of Risk that you play with pop music and McDonalds franchises instead of armies.
Steeplejack
S_C,
Thanks for the post. Saved to read later.
eclare
Thank you for your insight. My knowledge of India is minimal.
Brachiator
@SpaceUnit:
I don’t see this happening. India and China have been antagonists in the past. And during the Cold War era, the US foolishly wasted opportunities to build a relationship with India because the nation insisted on non-alignment.
However, I don’t know if Modi and his toxic nationalism sees any potential for warm relations with Putin.
I also don’t know if Modi can continue to pursue his wretched policies against non Hindus without antagonizing Pakistan.
schrodingers_cat
@Almost Retired: He is not as popular as he is made out to be in the media.
This is not about one man but it is about a clash of ideas. BJP lost a state that was its southern bastion in May. The same state that has the outsourcing hub, Benagluru (Bangalore)
The Hindu right’s idea of what India should be is very different from the idea of India of its founding fathers, the ones who were active in the freedom struggle and were the architects of the Indian constitution.
cain
@HinTN: yes, but there is one weakness – it teaches you that if you are miserable that you have to accept it because of something you did in your last life or you broke dharma. I don’t believe in that.
Case in point, a woman went to a hindu priest and was telling how her spouse was in so much pain and so on. The hindu priest, essentially told her “life is pain” or something like that. I didn’t find anythign he said particularly comforting.
Princess
Thanks for this. I wonder if you know who Biden’s advisors on India are – who is the Fiona Hill in this administration? Who is the ambassador? How do they lean? These are rhetorical questions and don’t expect an answer but they’re things I find myself wondering about.
schrodingers_cat
What exactly are you referring to here? Can you be specific. Are you talking about Bofors or Anna Hazare’s agitation?
schrodingers_cat
@Princess: Good question how can we find out?
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: India is going to have warm relations with Russia because historically Russia backed India in its time of need. During its war with Pakistan and when Bangladesh was formed.
2. Because of oil.
No matter who rules in Delhi this is not going to change.
cain
i used to be a big fan of the BJP in the 90s because I felt tha they were more progressive even though they were more Hindu centric. On the other hand, Congress I, are a bunch of assholes who have taken over from the British in leaching wealth from India. The amount of corruption this party engaged in, in the 70s and 80s as a kid I used to read the papers every day in the 80s and 90s when I was there in the summers. The kind of nonsense that party engaged in.
I’m no sure what to think about today’s BJP. What I do know is that BJP’s support is driven by Indians sick of not getting the respect in the world that they think they deserve. If the U.S. says anything about India that is remotely critical – people go apeshit. My family gets really bent out of shape and they are the progressive ones. God knows what the others are thinking.
So Biden cozying up to Modi is good politics for the people in India as they want to see that respect. They absolutely do not want to be lectured about their internal politics. Given the U.S. roles in numerous countries and how they’ve toppled democratic govts, or interfered in negative ways – I am sympathetic but I think ultimately feel they are wrong – because without being able to redress your govt, you can’t improve govt or make it work for the people in manner it should – and removing tools to criticize govt is bad. (eg media blackouts, anti-crypto)
schrodingers_cat
@JPL: This devil will not be able to deliver what Biden wants.
SpaceUnit
@Brachiator:
I don’t claim to know anything about India’s internal politics, but the rise of rightwing / nationalist ideology around the globe is a real thing and a real threat to world peace.
We may well be in a new Cold War.
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat: It’s a really good question. Of course, most of us didn’t know about Fiona Hill until the impeachment.
Martin
@SpaceUnit: I don’t think so. India is big enough to aspire to be a US near-peer and be the entity that others align with. They have nukes, a space program, all the trapping of a major power.
In many ways, the US is trying to elevate India here because it’s probably better for the US that they NOT be on a China or Russia axis, but instead be on their own. It would be better if Russia aligned with India, than the other way around. We’d rather India be calling the shots than Russia.
But the US national defense doctrine is important here. If we hold to the 1-4-2-1 doctrine, that means defending the US, deterring hostilities in 4 regions, quickly defeating hostiles in 2 regions, and defeating one of those decisively. How nations organize influences how the US needs to prepare to achieve that doctrine. So an India-China axis is a MUCH bigger problem than India and China as near peers that are unlikely to coordinate against the US. We don’t even need them to align with the US, just be independent. And being independent, we can probably walk a democratic nation to the western alliance, so long as we recognize and affirm their independence (thats an aspirational expression, in case people were wondering).
But I think the bigger dynamic here is that the US has created a real economic problem for itself. We’re strongly anti-immigration, and strongly pro-economic growth, so much so that the US doesn’t remotely have the population or infrastructure needed to maintain its own economic ambitions at least such that our investor class is willing to pay for. So, we need an external labor pool to maintain our economic dominance, and being the 3rd most populous nation, that means we’re going to probably be relying on either the first or the second most populous nation to meet that need. That leaves us with China and India, and so we have to ask, if that is the only choice we have left ourselves (and it is by domestic policy) which one should we support? For all of Modi’s problems, he’s better than Xi (pretty low bar). The underlying politics of India are better than Chinas, the aspirations of Modi are better than those of Xis, and the implications of funneling US trade export dollars into India are better for the US than funneling them into China.
Our decision tree here is pretty simple – Joe Biden as the steward of the US executive branch, being constrained by a national demand for wealth and preventing an expansion of people of color, is shifting support from the nation that is and will continue to actively threaten defacto US allies to the nation that is not and appears to not aspire to threaten US allies. The end.
Of course Biden is concerned about Modi and the trajectory of Indian domestic policy, but that’s the lesser evil, and even lesser evils are unavailable to him to choose among. And if India has increased economic dependence on the US, maybe they will be more responsive to entreaties for human rights improvements (this doesn’t cut both ways, because it’s effectively impossible to pressure the US in this way).
Almost Retired
@Princess: Alas, the ambassador is our (Los Angeles) somewhat hapless former mayor, Eric Garcetti. His appointment was held up by Chuckles Grassley over allegations that Garcetti ignored the fact that a top aide was harassing other male staffers. The post was vacant for 26 months, until he was finally approved in March. That had to set the process of establishing a relationship between the Biden Administration and India back.
schrodingers_cat
RSS killed Gandhi. They are trying to erase Nehru out of the history books and now they want to destroy the India that Nehru, Ambedkar, Patel etc built.
A despotic India that is a fascist state that clamps on freedom of expression and religion is not going to deliver whatever it is that Biden wants.
If Modi wins a third term that is where we are headed
Obama realizes this BTW. See his interview with Amanpour.
This is what Assam’s CM (like the governor) had to say about Obama’s statement
SpaceUnit
@Martin:
I don’t necessarily disagree with anything you said, but are you suggesting that we are not on the cusp of a new Cold War?
I’m merely suggesting that world is in play right now and that traditional alliances and coalitions aren’t trustworthy forecasts of the future. Hell, who would have thought twenty years ago that the Republican Party would be swearing its fealty to Putin and Mother Russia?
schrodingers_cat
Obama has similar concerns
This is what BJP’s Assam chief minister (like a governor here) said in a tweet in response to Obama’s comments
Baud
Excellent piece, SC. Thank you for writing it.
schrodingers_cat
@cain: Really big fan of the BJP in the 90s? After they demolished Babri Masjid and killed hundreds in the path of their rath yatras?
Maxim
Thank you for this, SC.
Baud
Foreign policy usually doesn’t make a big difference in U.S. elections. Do you think Indian voters will be affected much by this state visit?
Dan B
@Almost Retired: I would like to know what is appealing about Modi. Is he just riding the BJP anti Muslim fear? Is he personally appealing? It is baffling.
tokyokie
@schrodingers_cat: I was under the impression that under various Gandhis, the Congress Party had become increasingly corrupt. But that’s just my impression, and your take is a lot more accurate than mine.
schrodingers_cat
Thank you all for your great questions. I am going to fisk Modi’s speech to the Congress. It is full of platitudes and dog whistles to his base. His base is upper caste Indians. He tells them what they want to hear and fluffs up their ego. Unfortunately the Sangh’s version of history is based on lies and half-truths. I hear the dog whistles because I have heard them all my life, I recognize them.
What the western media doesn’t get is what the RSS is doing is a civilizational project. They have waited for this opportunity for almost 100 years.
schrodingers_cat
@Dan B: I can do a Twitter Space about this and try to answer these questions.
Aussie Sheila
Thank you SC. I often wished you could do a front page on India and now you have!
I second your doubts about the approach of the US in spades when it comes to Australia. We, as usual, are also following the US lead in sucking up to Modi. I get he’s the leader of an important country and an ally, but his party’s links to the RSS is not widely understood and neither is the history and provenance of the movement.
Heaven help the Indian people if communal violence is seen as an acceptable foreign policy trade off to ‘balance’ against China, which is what this is all about.
Thank you again for your insights.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Thanks so much Baud. I appreciate it.
Dan B
My Indian friends are horrified by BJP / Modi. They’re also horrified by the many Madrassas that are funded by Saudi. They are teaching the most conservative version of Islam, Wahhabism.
Dan B
@schrodingers_cat: I read Tweets but do not have a Twitter account.
Baud
@Dan B:
Religious conservativism is a scourge everywhere these days.
Dan B
@Baud: Yes but at least there aren’t Drag Queens and trans preying on children in Church. /s
Baud
@Dan B:
It’s critically important that children be abused by the right sort of people.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: There are no two sides to this issue in India. Muslims do not enjoy institutional power that the Sangh’s saffron mouthpieces do.
schrodingers_cat
@Aussie Sheila: Thankyou for your thoughtful comment.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
I was speaking more about the international situation.
MisterDancer
Thanks for this, schrodingers_cat. I’m always…hesitant to jump too far into South Asian political discussions. Ironically, not out of sheer ignorance, but because studying, say, Chola era clothing and culture is not a great base to understand what the BJP do today, what the overall cultural shifts to fascism are based within.
(For reference, I have studied a LOT more on Ottoman culture, but that doesn’t make me an expert on how we get to Erdogan, exactly…)
But works like yours really help me grasp a least a piece of what I try to connect as a horrific culture shift. I can at least say that some of this is, I suspect, not just purely geopolitical, but also the pure direct economic impact of having so much of Tech work in the US coming from this region, remotely or via travel.
That’s not an excuse to fuel the kind of hate Biden has sworn to fight, says is the backbone of why he ran. It’s not useful to the millions of Muslims under real and direct attacks daily to hear that the US “has to” cut deals with people more than willing to treat them, AT BEST, like how my Parents were treated under Jim Crow.
And because the mapping of BJP’s actions aren’t one-to-one for how these issues tend to play out in The West, I suspect this fuels some of the Western media inattention. Even as the post 9/11 American fueled and Internet spread Islamophobia helped light this fuse you and yours are suffering under, today.
I don’t claim to know the nuance, here, and I’m grateful you have laid it out. But yeah, too much of this sadly rhymes.
Thanks, again.
SuzieC
@Dan B: same here.
Very interesting post SC and I have started reading your blog.
I have practiced yoga for a long time and I have recently begun taking a course delving into the classical roots of yoga, which are mostly intertwined with the Hindu religion. What has forcibly struck me about these studies is that students are taught that the ultimate goal of yoga is to achieve renunciation of the world and detachment from all worldly things. As a Westerner, this struck me as the ideal posture for an authoritarian government to want for its citizens. I have read that Modi is leading a revival of classical yoga in India. What should we think about this?
James E Powell
@Baud:
Agreed, but I’m hoping that your comment isn’t going to draw that “end religion!” person.
Omnes Omnibus
@James E Powell: Nah, he just hates one religion, so we are pretty safe here.
kalakal
Thank you for posting this SC. Very informative. My knowledge of contemporary India ( & Pakistan) mostly derives from friends in the UK with family connections in India and is both patchy and increasingly out of date. Your post is extremely helpful to me.
Such an important point, India has such a long, complex, and rich history, I cannot see how it can possibly be transformed into a uniform bloc.
As a grateful pedantic aside, and slightly off topic, thank you for making the distinction between Nazism and Fascism.
Omnes Omnibus
Thanks for writing this, s_c. And thanks for FPing it, WG. I don’t have a lot to say on the topic as it is far from any areas of expertise (real or imagined) that I might have, but I was glad to learn more about it.
Martin
@SpaceUnit: I am suggesting we are not on the cusp of a new Cold War.
The Cold War was mostly the result of a European and Asian power vacuum left in the wake of WWII that Stalin saw an opportunity to exploit and from there produced an imperialist, Russian-centric worldview which Putin is still mostly following to this day. To that, the US responded with NATO, the EU, and a bunch of other stuff – some of which was pretty horrible, and some of it was not.
The dynamics now are very different, but with some pretty familiar beats. We have nationalist authoritarians in Russia, China, India, and some lesser influential nations. And we have cycling nationalist authoritarians in places like Brazil, the US, and the UK, and in some lesser influential nations like Italy, Ukraine, etc.
To the extent that we have expansionist tendencies among these nations, that’s not so much of a problem. China is only marginally expansionist – having taking Hong Kong and having sights set on Taiwan. Russia is as well on Ukraine with pretty negative results. Though Russia retains occupation of much of Ukraine, I don’t think anyone can argue that Russia is stronger today as a result. They are much, much weaker. India does not appear expansionist, and the UK and Brazil were not under their authoritarian leadership – in fact the UK was isolationist, with pretty catastrophic consequences. The US was broadly mocked for wanting to cut a check for Greenland. I think we can dismiss the US as being expansionist even with that example.
Now, does that mean we don’t have an expanding palate of human rights problems? I don’t think we do, but we are backsliding in certain places despite making gains in others, and that can’t be dismissed. Do we have anti-democratic trends? Somewhat yes, but that too is a different thing. If a country internally falls apart, that unfortunate and work should be expended to avoid it, but it’s only a problem toward something like a new Cold War if that leads to an expansionist revolution in that country. I don’t see any evidence that’s going to happen.
And say what you will about Trump, he thankfully did little damage to the status quo, despite seeking love letters from the world’s dictators. Meanwhile, Biden appears to be building Japan into a new regional power to counter China, Ukraine and various EU members as new regional powers to counter Russia, and so on.
The path to the Cold War started before WWII with a global power structure built on colonialism and subjugation, not alliance building. The US was a regional power that sought to remain that way until thrown into the larger war. The war swept away (or seriously weakened) most of what remained of that colonial system, India being a perfect example. So post war, there was no functional alliance system, apart from the very loose ‘allies/axis/neutral’ one. Nations all over the place were grabbing the brass ring of independence from their European subjugators who were both too weak to enforce it and embracing a new realization that ‘oh, we’re a little bit like the Nazis here in the Congo, aren’t we? And yet, we really need tires.’ So when the USSR saw that opportunity, there wasn’t much in place to resist it. Enter the US as a new superpower being largely untouched by the war, and also not being imperial minded – pushes for the UN and alliance model of geopolitics.
So you can’t isolate the Cold War as being ‘these big authoritarian powers against these other big non-authoritarian powers’ without recognizing that the UN was just getting started, countries were throwing off their European shackles left and right, the obvious local nations that would have provided resistance to the USSR were in ruins, and we didn’t have a lot of global force projection as nukes and jets had just been invented, ICBMs and nuclear carriers and F-35s were some ways off yet.
But we enter the next phase with all of that firmly in place. India is showing off their carriers, China has theirs, Russia’s is probably on fire right now as it usually is. We have a dozen nuclear powers, some of which can be trusted better than others, but even the least trustworthy ones have behaved well. Expansionist policies are *really* hard to implement, because if they are of large enough scale, those nukes will come into play, and if they are of smaller scale, we can airlift a LOT of resistance pretty fast, and nobody has the opportunity to conceal their intentions. Satellites see all. If you roll bombers out of hangars, an analyst at Fort Meade is probably going to see it in a few hours.
I think the biggest threat right now are economic backlashes and the way those might metastasize, because that seems to be a pretty strong underlying driver in all of these places – though in different forms. Communist China has leveraged capitalism to grow and is now having an ideological struggle on where they should go from here and has fallen out of favor with western manufacturers. India has been famously protectionist and tolerant of central planning but is now also opening up to outside companies and is reaping the benefits of what’s happening in China. Russia’s economic problems are starting to metastasize into political ones. The US economic inequality is a strong component in our political problems, and so on. Capitalism was also a strong contributor to Brexit as Brits didn’t feel like they were getting out of the deal what they deserved. They blamed it on immigrants instead of billionaires, but it was the thing that pushed the narrative along, as it is in the US and elsewhere.
But I’m not sure how these similarities in economic problems manifest into geopolitical alliances unless we start seeing the solution to those problems being a new wave of violent expansionism, and so far there’s no sign of that apart from China’s very limited case and Russias almost completely failed one.
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: Thanks for your comment. If there are any questions I can answer let me know.
schrodingers_cat
It can’t, so they will fail but they can do a lot of damage in the interim.
SpaceUnit
@Martin:
Welp, everything you just described sounds sort of like a Cold War to me, only it’s liberalism vs authoritarianism this time, not capitalism vs communism, and a lot of countries are in play, including the United States. Countries like Turkiye and Hungary may be lost causes. Also Israel.
Gvg
The US should not be anti immigration. It is counter to our basic culture and our economic success. I don’t mind if we gain some more worker rights from too powerful management worship before we change back, but in the long run, our innovation requires we open back up. Also I am just sick and tired of people (suckers) blaming foreigners for taking their jobs, when that’s not why they aren’t prospering and they can’t make correct policy choices if they believe myths.
schrodingers_cat
@MisterDancer: Thanks for your thoughtful comment. I welcome your comments and questions.
Martin
Just to be clear, I take schrodingers_cat’s internal analysis of India at face value. I’m in no position to refute any of it, and honestly I think she’s not been as hair on fire about the situation as it probably warrants.
My point is that the domestic status and trajectory of a nation is rarely relevant to US (or anyone else’s, for that matter) foreign policy. Foreign policy is very, very detached ‘what in the best interest of this nations economic and defensive interests’. If we do inject human rights into the matter, it’s because it’s needed to appease the electorate (it’s a domestic issue in the US) or because we think that issue might trigger problems elsewhere that are in our interest.
The US allied with Stalin in WWII even though domestically we had sizable factions of support for Hitler, but to my knowledge none for Stalin. We allied with Stalin because the USSR was a hard place to our rock, and Hitler was between them. And that’s it. We did not give a shit how Stalin treated his people, what his economic motives were, or anything. We needed a shitload of corpses thrown on the eastern front to defeat Hitler and the USSR was wiling to throw them.
We support India not because of their internal problems but despite them. Of course we want something different to happen there, but more than that we want India to not be overly aligned with Russia or China. If that’s all we get out of this, it’s a success.
And in fairness, that’s sort of how the US should be inclined to see it. If the US really believes in self-governance as we routinely proclaim to, then we shouldn’t be proscribing how India sets up their society. That’s a matter for the Indian people. We can of course have opinions about that, and we can advocate that India protect that self-governance (from whatever weakened position given our own shall we say irregular support for that within the US) but the US shouldn’t want to say ‘yo, we’re not going to trade with you because your citizens voted to govern themselves this way’. That’s a kind of soft imperialism – saying that you should align to our system of values. And we should be wary of that because we get that wrong all the time.
gene108
@SpaceUnit: so
There’s no way in hell India’s going to align with China. China claims parts of India as Chinese land. The mountainous border is militarized, with each side having troops stationed at the border.
Russia is a different issue. India had close ties to the USSR, while the U.S. backed Pakistan. There’s still residual sentiment for the USSR’s assistance that’s transferred to Russia.
Edit: There have been talks about mutual cooperation between the U.S., India, Japan, and Australia to curb China.
Mai Naem mobileI
@Dan B: I think of Modi more like Hamid Karzai. He knows how to appeal to Western leaders and I think that spills over to the appeal to Indians. The other piece is that Modi is the beneficiary of overall Indian economic success and modernization which took years to create but happened to peak around when he came into power. Kind of TFG getting credit for 2017/2018 when Obama had laid the foundation. I hope Modi is just a point on a graph of ups and downs in Indian democracy and freedom, not anything permanent.
Mai Naem mobileI
@gene108: there’s probably people in the Indian government at different levels who’ve been educated for free in the Soviet Union. Chances are those people have positive views of Russia.
Pavlov'sMan
As someone originally from India, I cannot agree more strongly with what s_c has written.
I have very deep family connections to India, obviously culturally, but also by events related to its independence. My father was about the 10,000th person to join the Indian Army as an officer. He was interested in photography, was one of the photographers at Gandhi’s funeral. I have many unpublished pics that he took and/or processed in the darkroom. A civil engineer, he played very critical and key roles in two wars, 1962 and 1965. My parents were both staunchly for a secular India.
On the other hand, my maternal aunt’s husband, was very pro-RSS; the RSS has been described as ‘the militant arm of the BJP’. This was because his brother got fired from a Postal Service job for being a colleague of Nathruam Godse’s (Gandhi’s assassin) brother.
A Muslim relative of my best friend, who’s a Muslim, was instrumental in creation of the Indian flag.
But, even without these personal connections, any sensible person would be against Modi’s vision of Hindutva playing a key role in India’s future. He’s trying to erase India’s Muslim heritage, their contributions to making India what it is, and much more. He has gone so far as to try and launder Nehru’s name from his birthday, celebrated as Children’s Day.
No small surprise that the GOP started pandering to the pro-Hindu wing of the (South Asian) Indian diaspora. FWIW, I tried very hard in two elections, the 2012 and 2016, to persuade Democratic party officials in two different states to reach out to the community. I didn’t see any results. In fact, one delegate for Hillary told me that the Dems only came around for money at election times. The GOP made serious outreach efforts. Some may remember Trumps going to a temple in NJ.
Pisses me off no end – what Modi is doing. And how the GOP is successfully making inroads into the community of Americans of Indian origin. I’m ashamed that they’re becoming more Republican. (Because of increasing affluence, perhaps.)
Thanks for the great post, and I’m glad that I happened to look in today.
gene108
@Almost Retired:
When he was Chief Minister of Gujurat, he garnered a reputation for implementing policies that fostered economy growth in the state.
As PM, he has attempted policies to improve sanitation, curb black market use of cash, and other things to implement policy other than just pandering to religious sentiment. Some initiatives have worked better than others. Some garner support, others resulted in a backlash.
WaterGirl
@schrodingers_cat: I don’t recall an underscore in your nym – has that always been there? So i took the spelling from your blog, but I can correct that if you let me know.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@SpaceUnit:@Martin:
I have to agree. The far right everywhere are networking with and supporting each other. They echo each other’s media. They give speeches praising each other. This collaboration is nascent, but it is building.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Martin:
I agree with this.
Martin
@SpaceUnit: But it was never capitalism vs communism. That’s just how we sold it to the American public, and a lot of it was a straight up lie. Among other things, the USSR is generally regarded as state capitalism, not communism, because all agency lay with the state, not workers. But putting that aside, there were accepted levels of market capitalism throughout the 2nd world, especially in the satellite states farther from Moscow. In fact, the Soviet leadership relied on that as a way to enjoy western amenities – so they encouraged a certain amount of it. And not all of the first world was heavily invested in capitalism – with a fair bit of market and state socialism throughout it.
The crux of the Cold War was that, much like the GOP will instantly put aside their ideological call for limited government and law and order the second doing so consolidates power in their favor, the USSR was driven by expansionist control of the global order. The underlying economic system was at best secondary – pushing their view of communism only because it’s what they used and understood. Where the USSR was very centrally managed, other 2nd world states were not. That was okay so long as they could be counted on to project the USSRs interests.
The US build an alliance to counter those expansionist tendencies, similarly without a lot of investment in how those allies were organized politically or economically. So long as they could be relied on to resist the USSR, that was okay. Where things got spicier was when we would support deposing a democratically elected leader in favor of an authoritarian one because we wanted Exxon to be able to set up shop in the country. That didn’t make the country capitalist, it made it an economic vassal state in the interests of a certain world order. It belied the very thing we were telling the US public we were fighting for, which is why those of you who were paying attention became very disillusioned, because we were doing a bad thing that was arguably less bad than the bad thing we were doing it to stop.
Now, maybe if we saw a repeat of that kind of action, with instead of border expansionism we saw economic vassals – a hybrid of 19th century power maintained through resource exploitation of colonies, but without the use of force, then yeah, possibly. But I don’t really see that happening either. China took the money that flowed in via US and EU for their labor and grew into an independent power, arguably less aligned with Russia than they had been. And now we’re withdrawing that monetary flow and sending it to India, and I would guess the same will happen there – it will fund internal investment in the country, raise more people out of poverty (to the extent their caste system will permit) and the US and EU will grow nervous of their growing power and move that money yet again. Maybe by then the US will be more open to immigration.
Put another way, if there is to be another driver for such a new Cold War as the USSR was, it’ll be the US doing the driving, seeking to exploit the resources and labor of other nations. And that’s precisely what Trump said he wanted to do, but Biden is doing the exact opposite. We are tamping that down right now.
I’m not suggesting that things will be geopolitically stable – I think they’ll be very chaotic with a lot of shifting interests, but I think the consequences will be rather low stakes as opposed to the Cold War.
I also think that the economic trajectory that is coming off of climate change and the internet makes everything less resource dependent. It’s less and less the case that if we don’t get access to Saudi Arabia’s oil field, we’re all fucked. That said, the US continues to leverage dominance over the stuff that is ascendant – the internet is very US dominated, we’re filling orbits with US satellites, etc. We’ll see the extent that other nations feel they need to push back against that.
Pavlov'sMan
@Almost Retired: Why is so popular? He’s promising essential things, such as bathrooms for every Indian household, and addressing/fighting corruption.
schrodingers_cat
@Almost Retired: @gene108: Demonetization has been a disaster.
Don’t take my word for it, RBI’s ex-governor Raghuram Rajan and many other economists agree.
For those who don’t know. Mr. Modi decided on a whim to cancel legal tender, some Rs notes. This was the supposed “anti-corruption” move championed by Gurumurthy, a Sangh apparatchik.
That decimated the unorganized sector and over a 100 people died waiting in bank lines.
Our very own Satby was in India then. Ask her what happened.
What made Modi really popular is Godhra. People can watch the BBC documentary which actually pulls its punches
Human Rights Watch Report on Godhra here.
schrodingers_cat
@WaterGirl: I don’t have an underscore in my nym on my blog only on Balloon Juice. You don’t have to change anything. Thanks for asking.
SpaceUnit
@Martin:
Respectfully, I must disagree. Powerful economic interests in the US were absolutely terrified by communism and drove the RED SCARE to dominate American politics.
Pavlov'sMan
@schrodingers_cat:
I was in India immediately after demonetization. Chaos. This time it’s the 2,000 rupee notes, but it’s not as chaotic because of the long notice.
Yes to Godhra. Kinda reminiscent of what the Congress party did to Sikhs following Indira Gandhi’s assassination.
Torrey
Thank you for this essay. This is important background, and most Americans don’t have it, and probably don’t know that they should have it.
schrodingers_cat
BJP is the richest political party in the world, far from uprooting corruption they have cornered the market on it. They are selling government assets at fire sale prices to their cronies Ambani (who was at the state dinner) and Adani.
Here is the Bloomberg report on BJP’s riches.
When they don’t win elections they buy MLAs or slap fake cases on them.
schrodingers_cat
@delphinium: Thanks and I hope you are right.
Martin
@SpaceUnit: I’m not disagreeing with that. I’m just saying we didn’t engage in the Cold War because of communism.
I mean, good illustration of this came just a few years earlier when we aligned with Stalin against he clearly more capitalist-friendly Hitler. We didn’t fight WWII because of everyone’s economic systems, and we didn’t behave as we did in the Cold War because of everyone’s economic systems either.
We didn’t fight Japan because of the various ways that we could characterize and stereotype them, we fought Japan because they were a militaristic threat and then we characterized and stereotyped them as a way to propagandize the American public. So in the Cold War, that the USSR were communist was just a vehicle for us to propagandize against them, which of course the business community was in favor of because that contrast that the US was capitalist helped them immensely. But the idea that the Cold War was an ideological struggle between those things is just propaganda by America against Americans but also by the USSR against Soviets.
US corporations started opening factories in communist China a decade before the end of the Cold War. We only now are concerned about China because they’re building up enough military power to be a threat outside of their borders. Their communism has nothing to do with it. We get along pretty well with communist Vietnam as well and nobody is demanding they change their economic system.
Even if there is an ideological objection to communism, it’s not even strong enough to resist building a factory in their country. In fact, the first US factories were opening in China around the same time that Reagan was firing air traffic controllers and privatizing what was left in the US. It’s almost as though capitalism and communism are fine so long as they both produce profits for the right people.
cain
@schrodingers_cat: I wasn’t a big fan, if you looked at what I said I perceived them to be progressive and that was when I was like 19 to 20 years old. It was historical.
I was absolutely against the demolition of the Babri Mosque. It was heinous.
SpaceUnit
Right. Yeah, I think we might be just arguing past each other to some degree. Certainly the US and Soviet Union emerged from WW2 as geopolitical rivals in a fairly traditional sense, but the rivalry wasn’t limited to conventional objectives such as control of shipping lanes or access to oil fields, etc. There was absolutely an ideological side of it and quite a bit of paranoia.
I’ve enjoyed the dialogue very much, Martin.
Manyakitty
@Yutsano: planning to follow your wise example.
schrodingers_cat
@cain: It was indeed. They talk a good game! I too was fooled by Vajpayee for a bit.
Wombat Probability Cloud
@schrodingers_cat: Very grateful for your post. I’ve been focused on environmental battles (my wheelhouse), ways to influence U.S. elections, and the war in Ukraine, but will now add elections in India to my radar screen. My naive hope is that (as a previous commenter mentioned), there are quiet elements in the Biden admin. who are weighing in to change the trajectory of Modi’s policies.
WaterGirl
@Pavlov’sMan: You probably know that your comments always go into moderation because you have an apostrophe in your nym?
cliosfanboy
Thank you SC. I wish you were updating your blog again regularly
WaterGirl
@cliosfanboy: I think she said she plans to do that.
Gretchen
@schrodingers_cat: thanks for doing this. Having Indian family members now, I realize how very little I know. I’ve got a long way to go to catch up.
Pavlovs Man
@WaterGirl: Apologies. Got confused with space vs apostrophe.
WaterGirl
@Pavlovs Man: No apology necessary! I just wanted you to understand why it was happening.
rikyrah
I have never thought that your sense of alarm was out of place. I see that you are righteous in your anger. I am angry at the violence against peaceful protest. That always angers me. I am hoping that the fever will break and that Modi and his monsters will be fought back in the ballot box.
Thank you for your post👏🏾👏🏾
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: Thanks for your thoughtful comment.