India’s kinetic test on the country’s boundary may take place by 2023, before the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. Although not much is being shared in public, indications are that PM Modi, EAM Jaishankar and Raksha Mantri Rajnath Singh are working energetically to ensure a favourable outcome in any such test, writes Prof. Madhav Nalapat
The alliance of the PRC and Russia, and the other partnership of the PRC and the Wahhabi International, are confident that the efforts they have been making since the past eleven years to hollow out the societal and political framework of the US by covert means are generating visible results. Even the US Supreme Court has become an instrument of division as a consequence of its Republican majority, a transformation that was put on steroids by President Donald J. Trump.
Within the US Congress, the implementation of policy under the two-party system has in effect broken down. Within the Democratic Party, the small number of DINOs (Democrats in Name Only) are ensuring that President Joe Biden’s essential reform measures get torpedoed, so that US society continues to fester as a consequence of societal inequalities in opportunity. Gun violence is multiplying, while law and order has broken down in a spreading number of locations, as has “living rough” and the opioid crisis that has been placed on a fast track by stimulants imported (or smuggled) from China.
The hesitancy of President Biden to go forward with steps essential to stability such as an expansion of the US Supreme Court to 15 from 9 or working for a successful primary challenge in 2022 to leading DINOs such as Senator Joe Manchin is proving deadly to the 46th President’s stint in the White House. On the reverse side of the Manchins, President Biden and Speaker Pelosi have fawned rather than frowned on the Wahhabi impulses of Ilhan Omar, who is marching to a beat different from that which is best for her country and party. She follows Wahhabi doctrine in seeking to create a binary of Islam versus all others, including through introducing a bill against Islamophobia when such legislation should outlaw manifestations of hate against any faith, including the rants of some of Representative Omar’s contacts against Jews, Christians and Hindus, not to mention the moderate majority within the Muslim community.
House Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Shumer have thus far imitated President Biden in lacking spine enough to ensure that hate against any religious group be subject to law, and not just a particular faith to the exclusion of others. Measures such as the Biden Social Justice bills are at risk of being torpedoed by the DINOs, although these are necessary in the context of the efforts at societal polarization and meltdown in the US. Small wonder that the external groups fuelling much of the toxins that are getting disseminated within the US polity and society consider themselves to be on the brink of success in Operation Meltdown. Their success in the US has to an extent lessened the disappointment they are experiencing at the failure thus far of engineering similar chaos in India, an operation that was put on steroids by the Sino-Wahhabi lobby after India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi signalled its determination during the 2017 Doklam crisis.
U.S. FIXATION ON EUROPE
For close to two years, these columns have pointed out that the Sino-Wahhabi lobby is working at speed in its efforts at harnessing social media in particular to engineer a meltdown by stealth of the societal fabric that holds India together. Whether for old times’ sake or as a hedge against getting hopelessly dominated by the Peoples Republic of China, the Russian Federation has not joined in the attack on the vitals of the world’s most populous democracy. In Asia during much of the 20th century, the US followed in the wake of the European powers and sought to suppress nationalist instincts in Asia, Africa and South America. In the process, the US and its European allies facilitated the mushrooming of collaborative autocracies, and replaced to a worrisome extent by religious or ethno-supremacist ideologies that caused societies to be torn apart or lapse into a moribund state, ultimately harming even the interests of the Atlantic alliance.
In the 21st century, the US is again the “dog” being wagged by the European “tail”, this time around in the matter of Russia. A country that during the first six years of the present century sought integration into European and Atlanticist structures has now perforce to serve as the junior partner in the Sino-Russian alliance, although Moscow has declined to follow the PRC lead and become a force multiplier for the Wahhabi International in the manner that China is, especially under CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping. Parallel to the exertions of the Sino-Wahhabi alliance to diminish US resilience in particular, the Sino-Russian alliance is attacking the vitals of American democracy, principally through infiltration into social media.
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Efforts, whether real or feigned, of major social media platforms within the Atlantic Alliance to remove sites that are purveyors of the toxins released by the twin alliance systems in which the PRC plays the dominant role have had very limited effect, except for generating publicity that such efforts are proving a success when they are not. Just as terror groups soon regroup under new labels should they come under scrutiny or international censure, social media influencers and platforms of influence that funnel into societies the toxins created within the infolabs of the CCP, the Russian counter-intel network and well-funded Wahhabi cutouts change their names and addresses at speed, thereby rendering efforts at blocking them ineffective.
SINO-RUSSIAN LOBBY VS U.S.
The principal targets of the Sino-Wahhabi lobby have been India and the US. In the latter, the Sino-Russian lobby is also active in Operation Meltdown, whereas in India, the activity of the Russian side is designed to (a) ensure that purchases of weapons systems from Russia by India continue as before, and (b) the US in particular be given a bad name within key elements of the policy community and the public in India, in both of which there have been successes for this lobby, but not enough to prevent PM Modi, assisted in this task by EAM Jaishankar and Raksha Mantri Rajnath Singh, to constantly strengthen the security relationship with the US and other key components in the Atlantic Alliance, such as France, the UK and Germany, less in word as in deed.
The accidental death of CDS General Bipin Rawat has been a shock but has not changed the upward trajectory of progress in securing the inner and outer defences of India against the Sino-Wahhabi alliance. In their actions against India, neither the Wahhabi International nor the PRC can count on the support of Iran and Russia, both of which maintain strong ties with India in contrast to their lack of rapport with the US.
INDIA CANNOT BE DERAILED
Although the Sino-Wahhabi lobby believes that a defeat of the BJP in UP would serve as a booster for their efforts, such a setback (in the event it takes place in a context were CM Adityanath has done very well on a number of fronts) would not be sufficient to upset the trajectory being followed by the central government in India. 2021 has been a much more innovative and productive year for the world’s most populous democracy, in large part because of the fact that PM Modi has relied more on his own instincts and on outside counsel to fashion and implement policy, as opposed to the 100% civil service, 0% civil society involvement that has caused so many policy missteps in India.
The IAS, IPS and IFS are an outstanding group of individuals, but in the complex world of the 21st century, all wisdom in domestic policy does not vest within the IAS, nor all wisdom in security policy with the IPS and all the knowledge of foreign policy with the IFS. Early in his term, Modi sought to bring in domain expertise into the administration in India, and this reform is expected to go on a fast track soon. In 2021, several initiatives have been taken by the Prime Minister to reduce the harrowing conditions for compliance that have been put in place by the bureaucracy over decades of efforts at micro-management and control of all elements of civil society.
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Minimum Government is finally emerging from the mists of a slogan into the sunshine of reality. Given the pressures on General Secretary Xi caused by his own rousing of the flames of exclusivist Han nationalism in China, it is more than probable that tensions will get created on the Sino-Indian border by a PLA that has been given freedom of action in a manner not seen since the Cultural Revolution of the Mao period, when Lin Biao was still the Defence Minister and Heir Apparent of the Great Helmsman. These will need to be met in a manner that is convincing, and a knetic test on the boundary is likely by 2023, before the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
Although not much is being shared in public, indications are that PM Modi, EAM Jaishankar and Raksha Mantri Rajnath Singh are working energetically to ensure a favourable outcome in any such test of will and capability of Indian arms, together with strengthening defences against cyber infiltration and dissemination of societal toxins through use of channels that have become ubiquitous in modernising India. Together with India, the US is the anchor of security in the Indo-Pacific, while a possible Indo-Russian alliance may in time ensure that the Eurasian continent not come under the domination of any country. Single country dominance has brought misery, and needs to be prevented in future, a viewpoint shared by PM Modi, President Biden and President Putin.
INDIA-U.S. TIES DEVELOP STRONGLY
Although on the surface matters seem to be going out of control in the US, even should Biden fail to get passed the transformative Biden Social Security Bills in the present US Congress, a primary upset over DINO Manchin and casting the 2022 midterm polls as a battle between Wall Street and Main Street should get the Democratic Party the majority needed to pass legislation before the 2024 polls. The visible (some would say risible) bias of the Roberts Court has made it a no brainer to begin even for a hesitant Biden to begin the process of expanding the bench strength of the US Supreme Court, and to ask for a verdict in the 2022 midterms that would ensure the passage of his agenda despite opposition from the Sino-Wahhabi and Sino-Russian lobbies and their covert manipulation through skewed algorithms in social media platforms. This has been a bad year for the US and for its principal security partner in the Indo-Pacific, India. However, New Delhi is visibly on an upward trajectory once again, and Washington is likely to follow, latest by 2023 after the Congressional midterms. President Biden is a political survivor, and these instincts ought to kick in to ensure that claims of the demise of democracy in the US are as premature as are similar claims being made by the same lobbies about that other very large democracy, the Republic of India.