Competing With Russia and China: the Shares are Rising!

Brian Cloughley

Very few US official figures are known for their sense of irony, least of all the Defence Secretary Ashton Carter, and it is unfortunate that he and others lacking appreciation of unintentional absurdity would be unable to find dark amusement in the contrast between two recent parallel events.

On February 25 the Defence Secretary and his uniformed glove puppet, Air Force General Breedlove, appeared in front of the House Appropriations Committee to provide justification for spending as much on military affairs as the next eight nations in the world. It is likely he chose Breedlove to accompany him rather than the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest ranking Pentagon officer, because Breedlove is the Supreme Allied Commander Europe — the man responsible for carrying out the policy of confrontation with Russia.

Carter is the man who declared last year that “the US military has helped to maintain peace and stability in [Asia] for 70 years,” having had a slight lapse of memory about the US war in Vietnam from 1955 to 1973 in which 58,220 members of its military forces lost their lives while hundreds of thousands of innocent people in Vietnam and its unfortunate neighbours died in merciless US bombing onslaughts.  Countless thousands of children were sentenced to infirmity and grotesque deformity by Washington’s use of hideous poisons intended to destroy trees other vegetation.

As for the glove puppet, Germany’s Der Spiegel recorded a year ago that “General Philip Breedlove, the top NATO commander in Europe, stepped before the press in Washington [andsaid] that Putin had once again ‘upped the ante’ in eastern Ukraine — with ‘well over a thousand combat vehicles, Russian combat forces, some of their most sophisticated air defence, battalions of artillery’ having been sent to Donbass. ‘What is clear,’ Breedlove said, ‘is that right now, it is not getting better.  It is getting worse every day.’   German leaders in Berlin were stunned. They didn’t understand what Breedlove was talking about. And it wasn’t the first time. Once again, the German government, supported by intelligence gathered by the BND, Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, did not share the view of NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander . . .”

This was not surprising — because there was not a word of truth in any of his wild assertions.

At the very time Carter and Breedlove were speaking to the ever-receptive “support our troops” Congressional Committee (“under your leadership, the men and women who serve in the US military answer the call time and again to leave their loved ones, put themselves in harm’s way, and execute challenging missions abroad”)  the count-down to test-firing a US Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) was under way.

The defence secretary told the American public that “It’s a competitive world out there. We compete with China, we compete with Russia, we compete with terrorists. And we have to win.”

Minuteman missiles have nuclear warheads and are manufactured by the Boeing Company which is proud that “the Minuteman program established Boeing as a leader in large-scale system integration. Today, the combined heritage of the Minuteman programs of Boeing and Autonetics continues as Boeing Strategic Missile Systems (SMS), supporting the Air Force with system evaluation, testing, training and modernization.”

The US arsenal of deployed nuclear weapons includes 450 Boeing ICBMs, each having an explosive power of 475 kilotons (Kt).  The US bombs that totally destroyed the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were about 20 Kt.

On February 25 Boeing’s shares opened at 116.35 and went to a high of 117.60.  Next day they reached 119.45.  By March 17 they had increased to 129.23.  It seems they’ve taken off with comparable velocity to Minuteman missiles, boosted by statements on the part of the military and their legions of supportive politicians that China and Russia are threatening the United States. (We should remember that Eisenhower, in the first draft of his speech warning us all about the military-industrial complex, wrote “the military-industrial-Congressional complex.”)

Washington fails to realise — simply refuses to understand — that the only thing wanted by Russia and China is that the United States should mind its own business and stay out of other nations’ affairs that do not concern it.  Secretary Carter states that militarily “We compete with China, we compete with Russia”  — but Russia and China don’t want to compete with the United States.  They just want to progress and develop economically and socially and stay in their own backyards, with secure borders, while trading with as many countries as possible.

Neither Russia nor China has 700 military bases in over 40 countries round the world.  Neither Russia not China attempts to vastly expand  military alliances specifically designed to threaten the United States.  Neither Russia nor China possess nuclear-armed Carrier Strike Groups or Amphibious Ready Groups of the type and strength that the US deploys threateningly around the coasts of sovereign nations who prefer to mind their own business.

The latest US move to threaten China is deployment to the South China Sea of the nuclear-armed aircraft carrier USS John C Stennis along with the guided-missile cruiser USS Mobile Bay and the guided missile destroyers USS Stockdale and USS Chung-Hoon. They and their many escort vessels arrived off China on 4 March to join the guided missile cruiser USS Antietam and its fleet of ancillary ships.

In another wonderfully ironic episode, just as this mighty US attack fleet was arriving to menace China (and North Korea), Defence Secretary Carter announced to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco that “China must not pursue militarization in the South China Sea.”  Mystically, he observed that “Specific actions will have specific consequences” and when asked what these might be, he “told reporters the US military was already increasing deployments to the Asia-Pacific region and would spend $425 million through 2020 to pay for more exercises and training with countries in the region that were affected by China’s actions.”

With good historical justification, China maintains that most of the islet chains and groups in the South China Sea are its sovereign territory, although some areas are claimed by Brunei, Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines. The United States has got nothing to do with these disputes.  Washington has no treaties with any of these nations that would require military intervention in the event of one of them having a disagreement with another country.

There has not been an instance of Chinese interference in passage of a merchant ship in the South China Sea, and there never will be.

The United States has no territory of its own closer than the Pacific island of Guam, where, according to the US Congressional Research Service, “Since 2000, the US military has been building up forward-deployed forces . . .  to increase US operational presence, deterrence, and power projection.”  In other words, the US build-up is intended to confront China, which is now, understandably, being forced to increase its own military forces to be prepared for what might happen as a result of US “power projection.”

Complementing the US muscle-flexing in the South China Sea, the indefatigable Breedlove explained why Washington is indulging in similar antics in Europe.  Ignoring the fact that the insurgency against Syria’s government was energetically supported by the US, in training and equipping what it absurdly called “moderate rebel forces,” thus contributing to massive destruction and creating a dire refugee problem, Breedlove told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the refugee crisis in Europe is all the fault of Russia.  “Together,” he declared, “Russia and the Assad regime are deliberately weaponizing migration . . .  to break European resolve.”

In a fit of fantasy Breedlove announced that Russia has “chosen to be an adversary and poses a long-term existential threat” to the United States and its allies, and emphasised that the Supreme Allied Command Europe, “is deterring Russia now and preparing to fight and win if necessary.”

The US is deliberately and most aggressively threatening China and Russia.  Its military representatives are making belligerent statements that are intended to implant fear in Moscow and Beijing.

But the immature bluster and bravado of such as Breedlove and Carter do not create fear in those they seek to intimidate.  In their target countries they create resolve to stand up to the menace presented by belligerent rhetoric and incessant deployment of military force against them.

This is exactly what is happening at the moment, and the US may be in for some nasty surprises.

But in the meantime, no doubt shares in Boeing and the other parts of the military-industrial complex will continue to go ballistic.

Perilous Unknowns: the Mental Health of Presidential Candidates

Barry Lando

It’s become normal for Americans to demand—and receive-a professional assessment of the physical health of the candidates for president—just as they expect updates on the medical state of the president himself. After all, there have been many infamous cases of presidents, from Franklin Roosevelt to Jack Kennedy, who secretly endured serious debilitating illnesses.

Thus, the current crop of presidential hopefuls has provided medical information—though not necessarily from the most objective sources. Hillary Clinton’s doctor, for instance, declared her “fit to serve as president”. Donald Trump’s physician, opined that Trump’s blood pressure and lab results were “astonishingly excellent”, his “physical strength and stamina are extraordinary.” He concluded, “If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.”

But what about Trump’s mental health?

Surely, we care if a candidate is mentally deranged. If we consider it reasonable that someone with severe psychiatric problems be prevented from purchasing a firearm, why go along with a system that might permit a similarly disturbed individual to gain control over the largest military arsenal the world has ever known?

Indeed, the power of an American president to declare war, to secretly dispatch special forces units to all corners of the globe, to okay the execution by drone or killer teams of anyone he deems a threat to the United States, that power has dangerously escalated over the past few years under Barrack Obama as Congress has refused to even debate Obama’s military actions abroad.

It’s O.K., we’re reassured: you can trust Obama. But what if he we were replaced by someone with a serious character disorder?

Such as, arguably, Donald Trump?

What character disorder? Recent articles from Vanity Fair to Time to Psychology today suggest that Trump is a textbook study of Narcissism. He’s a swaggering egotist; vain, self-centered, convinced of his own greatness, who (some theorize) unconsciously compensates for an underlying low self-esteem with bullying, blustering and braggadocchio.

“He’s so classic that I’m archiving video clips of him to use in workshops because there’s no better example of his characteristics,” clinical psychologist George Simon, who conducts lectures and seminars on manipulative behavior recently told Vanity Fair.“Otherwise, I would have had to hire actors and write vignettes. He’s like a dream come true.”

On the other hand, some of the world’s greatest political and business leaders have also been labeled narcissists, from Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle, to Bill Clinton, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Elon Musk, and George Soros. Though difficult to live and work with, they’ve proved extremely valuable and productive members of society. We wouldn’t want to be without them.

But, as the Harvard Business Review recently wrote, “The danger is that narcissism can turn unproductive when, lacking self-knowledge and restraining anchors, narcissists become unrealistic dreamers. They nurture grand schemes and harbor the illusion that only circumstances or enemies block their success…

Given the large number of narcissists at the helm of corporations today, the challenge facing organizations is to ensure that such leaders do not self-destruct or lead the company to disaster.”

“…the very adulation that the narcissist demands can have a corrosive effect. As he expands, he listens even less to words of caution and advice.…The result is sometimes flagrant risk taking that can lead to catastrophe.”

Dr. George Simon, an expert on personality disorders, explains, “Narcissism becomes particularly “malignant” (i.e. malevolent, dangerous, harmful, incurable) when it goes beyond mere vanity and excessive self-focus. Malignant narcissists not only see themselves as superior to others but believe in their superiority to the degree that they view others as relatively worthless, expendable, and justifiably exploitable.

“This type of narcissism is a defining characteristic of psychopathy/sociopathy and is rooted in an individual’s deficient capacity for empathy.  It’s almost impossible for a person with such shallow feelings and such haughtiness to really care about others or to form a conscience with any of the qualities we typically associate with a humane attitude, which is why most researchers and thinkers on the topic of psychopathy think of psychopaths as individuals without a conscience altogether.”

Extreme narcissists, we are told, lash out brutally at those who would dare question their talent or goals. They lie, cheat, change their story from one moment to the next; ignore anything that might challenge their view of the world or of themselves.

According to a recent cover story in Time about Donald Trump and Narcissism,  “Trump indeed appears to be emotionally incontinent, a man wholly without—you should pardon the expression—any psychic sphincter. The boundary most people draw between thought and speech, between emotion and action, does not appear to exist for Trump. He says what he wants to say, insults whom he wants to insult, and never, ever considers apology or retreat.”

“Make no mistake,” warns Dr. Simon, “no one is more dangerous than a person who sets him or herself above others to the point that he or she feels entitled to prey on those viewed as inferior

So, bottom line, in light of such warnings about how the dangers of malignant narcissists, after following the outrageous actions of Donald Trump on the campaign trail, why shouldn’t the American people demand assurances that Donald Trump–and all candidates for that matter—are mentally stable enough to become president of the United States.

More bluntly, why on earth should America’s leaders knowingly let a nut-case take over the White House?

At the very least, why not insist that that all the candidates undergo some kind of psychiatric examination?  That would of course include Trump’s main rival, Ted Cruz—seemingly another mentally–challenged figure.

The Devil and Hillary Clinton

Rob Urie

With all of the handwringing over neo-fascist buffoon and likely next President of the United States Donald Trump, very little of value is being written about the circumstances that are fueling his candidacy. America has long been the land of rich, white, racist, xenophobic cranks. They are even referred to on occasion as the Founding Fathers. In normal times, whatever that might mean, the constituency for explicit cranks like Mr. Trump is limited because people are busy with their lives. Following four decades of economic evisceration of the American middle and working classes through engineered competition with low-wage overseas labor, large numbers of likely voters don’t appear to have much of their former lives left to be busy with.

While it is wholly appropriate to call Mr. Trump and his minions out for their racism and xenophobia, the American political establishment has at least as much to answer for in this regard as Mr. Trump. A more nuanced explanation for ascendant xenophobia can be found in the economic competition that this establishment has inflicted from above. Sequential ‘free-trade’ agreements were intended to lower middle and working class wages. The predictable result is widespread economic disenfranchisement in former high wage countries. Mexican peasants displaced by NAFTA have been at least as victimized as displaced American workers, but this hardly finds the real malefactors in the American political establishment placing blame where it lies— with themselves.

Pitting the victims of imperial policies against one-another to preclude organized rebellion is as old as capitalism. It is important to note that Donald Trump isn’t talking about resurrecting a vibrant labor movement when he (correctly) argues that economic disenfranchisement explains much of the popular disillusion with the political establishment. His call for ‘better’ trade negotiators is to redirect exploitation, not to end it. Passage of NAFTA led to the hostile takeover of the indigenous Mexican economy by heavily subsidized U.S. based multi-nationals sending millions of economic refugees fleeing north— the entire program was cynical bullshit from the start. ‘Better’ cynical bullshit is the only thing that Donald Trump is offering.

Much has been made of the cover given the Clintons by the Black misleadership class for their punishingly racist and classist policies like ‘three strikes, you’re out,’ mandatory prison sentences for minor drug offenses, deregulating Wall Street to let it engage in predatory finance, welfare ‘reform’ and the wanton murder of hundreds of thousands of Brown children in Iraq through sanctions. Mr. Trump’s most potent xenophobic rhetoric comes via Hillary Clinton’s creation of around ten million refugees from Syria, Libya and Iraq— all wars directly or indirectly supported by Mrs. Clinton in her own right as a prominent American politician. Mrs. Clinton has hardly stepped forward to claim credit for this human destruction and misery. But the refugees exist to be demonized by Mr. Trump thanks to specific policies that are her handiwork.

One of the points made when Barack Obama refused to prosecute the (George W.) Bush administration’s war crimes was that ‘we,’ the humans that inhabit the planet, were only a few short years away from having someone else assume the role of President of the U.S. With Mr. Trump in ascendance, that particular chicken is coming home to roost. To be clear, Donald Trump needs a body count in the high hundreds of thousands to begin to compete with Mrs. Clinton in terms of creating human death and misery. Might it have been a good idea for Mr. Obama to have re-criminalized war crimes for humanity’s sake? And might it have been a good idea for him to have worried a bit more about the tens of millions of people being tossed onto the economic garbage heap and less about restoring the bankers who put them there?

The American politics of Immaculate Conception, of placing these carefully engineered economic and political outcomes in a distant past so that ideological differences can be put forward as substance, is central to the modern political process. The proverbial fly-in-the-ointment for this program is that now long displaced autoworkers in Detroit and furniture makers in North Carolina understood by the late 1980s that ‘free-trade’ was shorthand for policies to screw them to benefit their bosses and Wall Street. That it took mainstream economists (Krugman, Reich) until last week to understand what most moderately educated workers understood a quarter-of-a-century ago gets filed under the triumph of the obvious.

Related were the myriad ‘mortgage relief’ programs put forward by the Obama administration under the ‘you-people-are-too-stupid-to-know-that-you-are-being-screwed’ philosophy of public policy. “Foaming the runway” with twenty-seven million human lives (nine-million foreclosures X three family members affected by each) is good for engendering enthusiastic disillusion from those directly affected and their friends and extended families. While most foreclosures were resolved long ago in areas where housing has been successfully commodified, some of America’s less populated areas like Chicago, Detroit, Atlanta, Houston, Philadelphia, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Birmingham, Jackson, Buffalo, Baltimore, Washington, Bridgeport, Hartford, Springfield, Cincinnati, Cleveland and a few hundred other small and medium sized cities are still working through foreclosure nightmares in their city ‘cores.’

Related also is the point made by pundit Tavis Smiley that Black and Brown citizens have seen their lots diminished in both relative and absolute terms under America’s first Black President. The ‘setup,’ the broad policies that led to dispossession, preceded Mr. Obama. The question then is whether Mr. Obama used the tools at his disposal to benefit the people who perceive their lots to be more than tangentially related to his political ascendance. Here the economic fraud that the Clinton’s perpetrated against their nominal constituents comes to bear— Black conservatives across the South raise the issue of the national debt to explain Mr. Obama’s reluctance to better the circumstance of the poorer half of the country when no such constraint exists. As was demonstrated when the Federal government committed tens of trillions of dollars to save Wall Street, the money is always there— for the rich and connected.

A question for the erstwhile feminists who support Hillary Clinton is: which slice of the social ontology is the relevant consideration: class, gender or race? Through her pre-campaign support for the TPP and her husband’s passage of NAFTA, Mrs. Clinton is a dedicated imperialist. From her willingness to destroy entire nations on a whim, Mrs. Clinton is a dedicated militarist. From her campaign funds and personal fortune Mrs. Clinton is a very good friend of Wall Street. From her carceral policies Mrs. Clinton is a racial opportunist who used the lives of millions of Black and Brown people as so much detritus—as a political stepping stone, to benefit her own ‘career.’ A quick guess is that around half of Mrs. Clinton’s victims have been women.

Donald Trump is as frightening as his opinions are poorly considered. His life has been lived around people whose livelihoods depend on not telling him to shut the fuck up. His nominal constituency by-and-large has no context for this— what to them appears as ‘speaking truth to power’ is in fact a privileged bully enamored with the sound of his own voice. Mr. Trump was born into the class that establishment Democrats and Republicans have spent the last four decades making so wealthy that it separates them from the consequences of their socially destructive actions. Donald Trump is an inheritance-baby insider who plays an outsider on television. It is hardly an accident then that Mr. Trump and Hillary Clinton have been friends for over twenty years.

The Democratic establishment is in the process of shoving Bernie Sanders out of the way to put Hillary Clinton forward as the candidate to beat Donald Trump. The term too-clever-by-half comes to mind. The ‘missed opportunities’ of the last seven years are in the process of asserting themselves. Mrs. Clinton is a war-monger, free-trade-agreement loving friend of Wall Street at a time when a fair portion of the conscious public would just as soon burn the whole mess to the ground with Mr. Trump. The question for those who would vote for Mrs. Clinton to ‘stop’ Donald trump is: who are you going to vote for to stop Hillary Clinton? And to the bourgeois turd-ocracy channeling George H. W. Bush’s ‘why don’t the peasants go shopping;’ if things look alright where you are— if people have jobs, health care, enough food to eat and their teeth, you aren’t looking hard enough.

GMO And The Right To Know: But What's Hidden Beneath The Label?

Colin Todhunter

Rachel Parent’s campaign (Kids Right To Know) on GMO labelling has been the subject of a GM industry strategy aimed at countering her message. Despite this, in January 2016, Rachel Parent managed to get an invite to Monsanto’s annual shareholders’ meeting in St Louis (listen from 31:45). From the floor, she had the opportunity to address Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant directly and began by saying:

“One of your statements in your public report is that your success depends on public acceptance of your products. How do you expect the public to accept your GM crops if you make every effort to hide them?”

Parent offered the example of computer manufacturers providing the ‘intel inside’ label on their products because they are proud of their technology. She went on to state:

“If you truly believe that your technology is safe, if you truly believe that it has the potential to feed the world, then why are you treating it like a dirty little secret that can’t be shown on the label? Why, if it’s such a proven technology, are you fighting it [labelling] instead of promoting it? 64 countries around the world already require mandatory GMO labelling”

She gave the example of Campbell’s deciding to label GM ingredients on its product to promote transparency in response to consumer demand and continued:

“Even the New England Journal of Medicine in a recent post supported labelling and stated that it was essential for tracking novel food allergies and … [inaudible] effects of chemical herbicides applied to GM crops. Today, more than 70 bills have been introduced in over 30 states to require GMO labelling.”

Parent added that labelling bills were narrowly defeated in some other states as over $100 million was spent in misleading advertising campaigns, of which Monsanto was a major contributor:

“Fortunately, you weren’t able to mislead the people of Vermont, which now has a law that will go into effect July this year. So, instead, you tried to sue them. You spent millions every year lobbying politicians to prevent GMO labelling laws from coming into effect, including bills HR 1599, dubbed ‘the Dark Act’, aka ‘deny Americans the right to know’. You’ve spent millions on deceiving and misleading advertising, you’ve spent untold amounts paying so-called ‘independent scientists’, like Kevin Folta, to discredit people such as myself.”

Parent finished here three-minute slot by saying:

“The GMO labelling movement is growing and it’s not going to stop. Mr Grant, will you commit to stop wasting tens of their money - the shareholders’ money – on opposing consumers’ right to know? Will you commit to stop fighting transparency and freedom of choice? And will you commit to stop fighting democracy?”

In response, Hugh Grant argued that Monsanto has been in favour of voluntary labelling for many years and said Monsanto applauded Cheerio’s and Campbell’s for exerting their right to label GM (despite the industry spending millions to defeat such action). He continued by saying that Monsanto hoped some kind of federal voluntary labelling standard agreement could be reached that applies across the US (note the word ‘voluntary’).

According to Grant, Monsanto’s concern has been about the emergence of state by state labels which results in a patchwork approach, whereby it becomes difficult to know what is in food and moving food from state to state becomes complicated. Grant said he hoped and expected this would be taken up by the FDA.

That is very convenient seeing how the revolving door between Monsanto and the FDA operates. Monsanto can control the labelling issue better at federal state level. When individual states begin to pass regulations requiring labelling, or for that matter when anything has the potential to harm profits, the industry has access to considerable influence (see this, this and this) at the centre.

The anti-labelling stance is portrayed as being carried out with benign intent, of course: to prevent cross-state to state movement of food becoming difficult, or, as USDA Secretary and ardent Monsanto supporter Tom Vilsack implied, to prevent consumers from becoming confused (as labelling GM food would “send out the wrong impression.”

Time for a reality check. The CEO of a corporation has a legal obligation to maximise profit and market share. If the CEO doesn’t do it decides to do something that will benefit the population and not increase profit, he or she is not going to be CEO for long. They’ll be replaced by somebody who does do it. The bottom line is sales and profit maximisation. Profit trumps any notion of public good.

In 2014, Bloomberg ran a piece about Monsanto which stated that Hugh Grant is focused on selling more genetically modified seeds in Latin America to drive earnings growth outside the core US market. Sales of soybean seeds and genetic licenses climbed 16 percent, and revenue in the unit that makes glyphosate weed killer, sold as Roundup, rose 24 percent.

There is immense pressure to deliver profits regardless of the damage being done in Latin America and regardless of how much harm glyphosate is doing across the world or how carcinogenic it is and how much Monsanto knows it is.

Rachel Parent says Monsanto has spent millions on preventing GMO labelling and adds that this is a waste of shareholders’ money. However, given the commercial obligations of Hugh Grant as CEO, it must be assumed that this is not so much a ‘waste’ but an investment based on a careful calculation that more money would be lost to the company if labelling were to occur: consumers would then reject GM food in droves.

In response to Parent, Grant also stated that in 40 years’ time there would be two billion more people on the planet and it is going to be warmer, dustier and drier. He argued we would have to produce twice as much food and implied we should therefore not discount GM from having a role to play.

No doubt the implication is that we should let the bogus ‘free’ market decide on mix of options, despite GM itself being a flawed option. Given the financial and political clout transnational agribusiness companies wield, it would not be too long before GM became the overwhelming dominant option – regardless of what people actually desire: the industry has captured or at the very least seriously subverted or compromised governments and key policy and regulatory bodies in the US, Europe, India and, in fact, on a global level. Unfortunately, bribery, faking, smearing and the corruption of science have become commonplace.

At the same time, the industry employs self-serving rhetoric about ‘feeding the world’, while paying scant attention to the actual evidence pertaining the reasons why we have persistent poverty, food insecurity and hunger. And it offers its GMOs as a techno quick-fix solution to problems which it had a hand in making and benefits from.

Mandatory labelling would be a good idea. People should know what they are eating, But GMO has a serious credibility problem. No amount of labelling can hide that.

Forecast 2016: Opportunities and Challenges for Southeast Asia

Preet Malik

Southeast Asia has always been of considerable geo-strategic importance with its sea frontiers straddling important sea-lanes connecting the oil rich Indian Ocean region to the strategically important Asia Pacific region. Of considerable significance in this context are the Malacca and the Sunda Straits. The region is of increasing importance in today’s globalised world both on account of the significant position that it occupies in international trade and in terms of climate change and biodiversity. Its openness to trade and investment has made it a major contributor to the growth trends of the world economy. Its economy averaging over 5 per cent in GDP per annum has resulted in a rapidly expanding middle class with a rising consumption pattern of interest to the global manufacturers and exporters of consumption goods and services.

The important aspect is Southeast Asia being seen as China’s backyard - a definition that has gained greater significance in the post-Cold War world. This is largely due to the fact that China has come to dominate the region both in political and economic terms, creating in the process an environment of competing interests that involve not only the US but also Japan and increasingly India.

The US that during the Cold War period was seen as the main source of political and security comfort remains the strategic alternative to the expanding regional influence of China but creditability issues have from time to time created doubts over the sustainability of American commitment. The Asia Pacific ‘re-balancing’ policy of the US has not removed these doubts even though this policy emphasis has provided some relief to the ASEAN nations.

It would be worth recalling the historical and civilisational influence that India wielded in the region in contrast to its current presence in Southeast Asia that saw India as a peripheral player, which only recently has started gaining some importance and traction in the affairs of the region. Trade built on the maritime prowess of the Indian states of that time was the main driving force that ensured the expansion of Indian influence in the region. It remains to be seen if in today’s context India can regain its historical influence on the region.

ASEAN-China: Dependent Economic Relations and the Indian Alternative

With the ending of the Cold War there was a realisation that China was the country that would come to wield influence, particularly as its economy was increasingly developing the potential of becoming a major driver for the growth of the international economy. Hitherto the economic power that had made a contribution to the strengthening of the Southeast Asia’s Tiger economies was Japan, but China was becoming of greater interest as it could provide a larger market for the goods and services that the ASEAN region as a whole had on offer. However, unlike Japan, China also posed a potential security threat as it was expending large resources on the build-up of its military prowess, and there was the impact of the territorial disputes over island territories in the South and East China Seas.

In the eighties, ASEAN leaders like Mahathir Mohammed, the Prime Minister of Malaysia, coined the term ‘constructive engagement’ as the platform for engaging China and granting it a stake in the economic growth of the economies of the expanded ASEAN region that would make China a partner whose involvement would ensure that a stable Southeast Asia was of strategic importance to it.

This policy, till recently, has paid off as it ensured that China’s economic growth would involve the ASEAN region becoming an extremely important vendor, supplying key elements to the manufacturing hubs of China, and enabling it to increase its competitive outreach to global markets. The fact that a very large presence of the Chinese diaspora in these countries that held positions controlling large segments of the national economies contributed to the expansion of China’s economic presence, involving trade and investment,  which played a role in the growth of the economies of these countries.

However, the recessionary trends that have impacted global growth prospects and the negative impact these have had on the Chinese economy has created severe problems for the main ASEAN economies. According to many independent sources China’s economy has slowed down, with its GDP expanding only around 5 to 5.5 per cent in 2015. The slow-down has contributed to a dramatic reduction in commodity prices with countries like Indonesia and Malaysia being the ones in the region that have been seriously impacted. Interestingly, Myanmar is one of the ASEAN countries that may be benefitting the most from the changes that are taking place in the Chinese economy, with its low wages attracting labour-intensive manufacturing units that are being discarded by China and taken up in Myanmar, resulting in its GDP growing far above that of most other ASEAN countries.

Given the increasing fears over the Chinese economy suffering a ‘hard landing’ and that the global economy would continue to grow at a less than optimal rate of growth - where the Chinese economy accounts for approximately 15 per cent of global economic output - there are concerns over the economic growth prospects of the region unless it is able to find an alternative economy or economies to latch on to. For the region as a whole, the Indian economy therefore becomes an attractive alternative where both investments in infrastructure, manufacturing and trade-in-goods in the role of vendors to the 'make in India' programmes could become a major source for continuing rates of reasonable economic growth. They could also ride on the coattails of the investments that are being made by Japan and now by China in the Indian economy. In addition, Malaysia and Indonesia could see a greater rise in commodity imports by India as its economy grows at rates close to 8 per cent to 8.5 per cent per annum, which could help sustain these economies.

India too shall have to improve its capacity to absorb greater investment flows and to ensure that the actions it has taken to expand its relations with the ASEAN region with key nodes being offered in that context by countries like Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and Singapore are fully exploited to mutual benefit. This should be in keeping with the target-setting in that regard that should form a principal part of the Act East policy of the Narendra Modi dispensation. The examples so far of the contributions and participation by India have failed to meet either time lines or targets; these failures would have to be acted upon based on a more secure implementational basis.

Political Issues

This area has both external and domestic dimensions. The internal dimension in the ASEAN region comprises of democratic forms of governance, a monarchy, and communist regimes in Laos and Vietnam, with military rule existing in one form or the other in Myanmar and Thailand. Even the democratic structures have limitations imposed on them. For these countries, democracy of the open type prevailing in India is described as too much democracy that tends to put limitations on governance. ASEAN however does reflect unity in diversity and till recently it could be said that the entente built on constructive engagement had held. This has since come under pressure with the rise of China and the aggressive stance that it has adopted on not only territorial claims but also on the imposition that it is trying to place on freedom of navigation and on over-flights. The rise of China and the security threat that this is seen to pose to regional interests and the Asia Pacific region as a whole has brought about a greater involvement of the US in the region, resulting in a shifting of the balance that had held to some degree since the end of the Vietnam War.

The main issues that confront the ASEAN countries are worth recalling as they define the region and the challenges that it faces. The ambition of developing as a single market as the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) that would permit a boost to the flow of goods, services and investments as also serve to attract greater external investments has yet to really take off. This is mainly because of non-tariff barriers to protect domestic industries. The protectionist barriers put up by Indonesia, the largest regional economy, being a case in point. Non-compliance rather than compliance remains the main stumbling block to achieving the single market as defined under the AEC.

Another dominant factor pertains to the maritime domain. South China Sea and the territorial disputes are a major problem where China’s attitude and aggressive postures present a significant threat to a peaceful and fair resolution, with the added complications pertaining to freedom of navigation and freedom of the airways. ASEAN has had a problems in condemning China’s aggressive stance and has only been able to express "serious concerns over the on-going developments in the South China Sea, which has increased tensions in the area." They have been pushing for the "early conclusion of the Code of Conduct." The major development has been the endorsement of the Permanent Court of Arbitration of the right of the Philippines to file a case under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), "challenging the legality of the China claims in the South China Sea." However, China continues to refuse the jurisdiction of the Court. The stalemate in this case continues and a peaceful resolution seems to be out of reach. The challenge that the US poses to China’s claims appears to be the only factor that places some restraint on China and continues to throw up the element of vulnerability that Southeast Asia faces at it hands, where China is willing to pressurise its way to gaining its ends.

Finally, another factor that stands out is that the ASEAN Way is unlikely to find a path out of the impasse that the military poses to real democratic functioning in Myanmar, where even though the people have overwhelmingly voted in favour of Suu Kyi, the armed forces are staunchly standing in the way of her becoming the Chief Executive. The army is also unwilling to move away from controlling the real sinews of power as reflected in its constitutionally-backed control over Home, Defence and Border Security affairs. Again, whatever change does come about in the future by amending the military-imposed 2008 Constitution could only happen because of Western pressures and the degree to which the military would like to continue to balance Myanmar’s dependence on China.

All these factors only go to show that Southeast Asia has problems that would continue to leave it vulnerable to China and the countries of the region have to remain dependent on the US for solutions. India, Japan and Australia have a role to play but to a very large extent this would be in tandem with the positions and strategies adopted by the American administration.

To Steer the Stream of Time: The Crisis of Verge Powers

Vijay Shankar

The Crisis of Verge Powers 

A quarter of a century after the demise of the Soviet Union brought an end to the bi-polar confrontation of the Cold War, what is emerging today is a fluctuating plurality of on-the-verge-great powers. These powers are counselled at times and coerced at others, by one super power, the US. In this milieu, the US retains dominant influence over its European and Pacific allies, but finds itself in confrontation with China and Russia. Japan, Australia and India, also verge powers, politically find an intuitive affinity towards the democratic covey led by the US.

Superimposed on this emerging global construct is the crumbling of order in West Asia where interminable warfare and the stunning spread of radical Islam have exasperated the prospects of stability. Whether motivation for conflict lies in the quest for power or piety is a moot question, but how it affects the international system and how the verge powers respond is the crisis of our times. 

Tensions in the Maritime Domain 

The maritime domain has not been sequestered from the turmoil in West Asia, tumbling of oil prices, global contraction of economies (barring India and China) or the emergence of ‘verge powers’. A growing disregard for conventions and an urge towards establishing proprietary markets and trade routes appear to be the norm.

And, in what must be seen as a historical paradox, is the return of a new form of colonialism, engineered through favours, money, the creation of local elites, control of national resources of the lesser developed powers - which has sought to be imposed through the agency of manikin dispensations. Every verge power (whether it be China, Japan, Russia, Germany, Australia or indeed India) has, in varying degree, indulged in this practice with the difference that China not only seeks proprietary control over the instruments of growth, but also pursues change on its terms; while Russia’s militaristic involvement in simmering West Asia and Ukraine runs the hazard of sparking off a larger conflict. 

To get a deeper sense of the transformations that are occurring in contemporary global affairs one notes four tectonic shifts. First, the diminishing sheen in what was the dazzling two and a half decades of double digit growth that provided global impetus to economic activity and the military sway of China; as it shrinks, the danger it faces is a fractious populace that may not suffer an authoritarian dispensation without the enticement of unparalleled growth. 

Second, the fall and rise of Russia from a one time super power to that of ‘verge’ status attempting to salvage a little of its past with neither the economic clout nor the ideological resolve. This poses a prickly predicament, for within a period of a quarter of a century, to have been reduced to pariah status and then rise amongst the verge powers with little to bolster state power other than its creaking arms industry, vast resources of primary produce in its icy wastes and a rapidly ageing demography; can hardly make for impact on the international system. 

Third, the breaking out of Japan from its post World War II enforced pacifism as it finds out today that commercial dynamism and financial clout do not constitute a security shield in the contemporary anarchic world. After all, the deepest anxieties of Japan is of an over-extended US weakening in its resolve to uphold its Asian commitments at a time when China has announced its intentions to dominate the West Pacific and the trade routes of the Indian Ocean. All the while, looming to the north and west of Japan across the Sea of Okhotsk is a nervous Russia and a trigger happy North Korea. It is equally clear that for the US to bring about strategic rebalance in the region it cannot do so with a fettered Japan. 

And lastly, the sole super power, US, veering its strategic pivot in the wake of the centre of gravity of world economics shifting into the Indo-Pacific. This has underscored the importance to build a strategic entente in the region to counter-balance a possible revisionist thrust by a Sino-Russian combine. Mutuality in security matters will be the rule as it is clear that the cost of security will stretch the resources of the US. 

Transformatory Dynamic 

The four ‘tectonic shifts’ that have been noted are a part of a larger transformatory dynamic which has today become palpable as technological and economic changes collide with political systems, social structures and military power. In this setting the only certainty is that change will be increasingly more disruptive and unerringly more self-sustaining. While most of the verge powers have sought resolution and correctives within the framework of the existing international order, China, and to some extent, Russia, emerge as anomalies that have angled for and conspired to re-write the rule book. The primary challenge, however, emanates from China. 

A Period of Shengshi 

In the 18th century, China under the Qing dynasty enjoyed a golden age. It was a period ofshengshi. Currently, some Chinese nationalists say that thanks to the Communist Party, its economic prowess and energetic policies, another shengshi has arrived. 

China released its most recent Defence White Paper in May 2015. When read as a sequel to its earlier white papers, it announced the arrival of a self-confident China recognising its own growing economic and military muscle. The paper places a premium on wide area maritime combat preparedness, manoeuvre and a thrust to attain a first-rate cyber warfare capability. At the same time, criticality of containment of various internal fissures is on top of the agenda. The paper significantly points out that struggles for cornering strategic resources, dominating geographically vital areas and tenanting strategic locations have, in fact, intensified. In this context, West Asia’s oil reserves, critical location and economic opportunities provide the strategic canvas for the ‘one belt one road’ initiative. Control of  proprietary maritime routes backed by vast continental economic investments furnishes the framework within which resources of the region could be cornered. China has to satisfy its growing internal demands and eroding markets at a time of declining growth if it is to keep the illusion of shengshi alive among its increasingly edgy populace. 

The consequences of China activising artifices such as the Anti-Access Area Denial Strategy and geo-political manoeuvres to constitute proprietary sources of raw materials, their ports of dispatch and controlled routes, all euphemistically called the maritime silk route, and establishing the String of Pearls in the Indian Ocean Region evokes increasing strategic anxieties among players in the same strategic locale. Progressively, China appears to be challenging not just today’s economic orthodoxy and order, but the world’s political and security framework as well without bringing about a change within her own political morphology. China’s claim to sovereignty over the South China Sea; territorial aggressiveness; her handling of dissent within Tibet and Xinxiang; her proliferatory carousing with rogue states such as North Korea and Pakistan, does not inspire confidence in change occurring within without turbulence. The paradoxical effects of China’s actions are to undermine its own strategic standing, hasten counter-balancing alignments and catalyse a global logic of cooperative politics over imperial strategies.

Strategic Imperatives for IndiaThe first imperative for India is to bring about policy coherence between strategic sea space, growth and security interests. It begins by defining the geographical contours within which a strategy can be developed. The parameters of this definition must factor in the regions from where trade originates, energy lines run, sea lines of communication pass, the narrows contained therein which an inimical force would endeavour to secure and the geographic location of potential allies. In this context the sea space covered by the Indian Ocean and Western Pacific provides the theatre within which Indian maritime strategy will have to function. It accounts for over 70 per cent of global trade, 60 per cent of energy flow and is home to more than 50 per cent of the world’s population.                                                                                      

Indian strategy must seek to Contest, Discredit and Deny, the ability of regional or extra regional countries to unilaterally intervene. To ‘Contest and Discredit’ would suggest a clear understanding of where the centre of gravity of power projection lies. In China’s case, it is the triumvirate of the Aircraft Carrier; security of the narrows and of its ‘string of pearls’. The narrows provide strategic opportunity while the ‘Pearls’ that assure sustenance of forces and safety of hulls, characterise vulnerability. To achieve denial is by convincingly raising the cost of military intervention through the use or threat of use of methods that leverage opportunities while targeting vulnerabilities. ‘The cost of military intervention’ is a matter that resides in the mind of political leadership, yet there will always be a threshold, the edge of which is marked by diminishing benefits of intervention. 

India’s relationship with the US and her allies is robust. It upholds the status quo, yet invites change through democratic forces. India’s rise is not only welcomed but is seen as a harmonising happening that could counter-poise China. The next step would logically be to establish an Indo-US-Japan-Australia strategic framework if the challenges that obtain are to be contended with. 

To Steer the Stream of Time

Bismarck suggested that great powers travel on the “Stream of Time” which they can neither create nor direct but upon which they can “steer with more or less skill and experience.” How they emerge from that voyage depends to a large degree upon the wisdom of leadership. Bismarck’s pithy thoughts go back to the fundamental question: whether motivation for conflict lies in the turbulences of the Stream of Time or in the quest for power or piety is moot; but how they affect the international system and how verge powers respond is the crisis of this time. 

The international system over the last century has been a persistent history of warfare or at least preparation for conflict; and so it is with the current convulsions in West Asia and the emergence of verge powers. Whether China’s revisionist thrust, grandiose scheme to establish proprietary trade routes while seeking sovereignty over vast sea spaces; or a Russia, perceiving in an anarchic global system, strategic opportunity to regain some of its battered national prestige will lead to war is not at all certain. The presence of nuclear weapons with their intrinsic threat of mutually assured destruction may give strategic nuclear forces a restraining role to define and demarcate the limits within which conventional forces operate. Or, it may leave proxy wars as the future of conflicts as in West Asia today. Each of today’s ‘verge-powers’ are therefore left grappling with the crisis of reconciling their respective rise with the four ‘tectonic shifts’. 

Will China see its future in a militaristic surge aimed at securing survival of dispensation and the instruments of growth and at a time when change collides with politics? Will Russia accept its fall from great power status without militarily seeking opportunities to anaemically re-stake its claim? Will a Japan unleashed from the strictures of its post world war status transform from a successful Pacific trading state to that of a militarily strong partner that provides strategic balance in the West Pacific Ocean? And how successful will the US be in forging a strategic entente to enable an Indo-Pacific equilibrium? 

Or will the sagacity of leadership steer the ‘Stream of Time’ with skill?      

Manitoba aboriginal youth suicides exemplify systemic crisis

Carl Bronski

Leaders of the Pimicikamak Cree First Nation in Northern Manitoba declared a state of emergency on their Cross Lake reserve last week after the suicide of fourteen-year-old Finola Muswaggon.

Muswaggon was the sixth person in the community of 6,000 to kill themselves since December 12. Five of those who took their lives were teenagers. The sixth was a young mother of three children.

The community is in a state of shock, said Band Councilor Donnie McKay. In the previous weeks alone, the local nursing station had recorded 140 attempted suicides said McKay. Acting Chief Shirley Robinson told reporters that of the 1,200 students at the local high school, 170 are currently on suicide watch. “Our front-line workers that we have in our nation are all burnt out,” said Robinson. “The teachers are exhausted. The school counsellors are exhausted. The ministers are tired. The leadership is tired.”

The ongoing tragedy at Cross Lake follows on the heels of a much publicized school shooting at a Dene nation reserve at La Loche, Saskatchewan where a seventeen-year-old student killed his two cousins at home and then entered his high school, shot dead a teacher and a teachers’ assistant and wounded seven students before being apprehended. La Loche, a community of 3,000, and the surrounding region has the highest suicide rate in Saskatchewan—a rate five times the provincial average.

“This is the La Loche of northern Manitoba”, said Cree Grand Chief Sheila North Wilson, “except the shooter (at Cross Lake) is society.”

In point of fact, the “shooter” in the centuries-long string of tragedies that have afflicted aboriginal communities across the entire country is Canadian capitalism. The Canadian nation-state was consolidated through the subjugation and systematic dispossession of the native people. Those who survived were reduced to abject poverty, shunted onto reservations, and until 1960 denied basis citizenship rights, including the right to vote.

The statistics concerning mental health and suicide amongst Canada’s aboriginal people are a horrific tragedy and a searing indictment of the country’s economic and political elite.

Suicide is the leading cause of death for indigenous youth and adults up to 44 years of age. Aboriginal youth take their lives at a rate five or six times greater than their non-aboriginal counterparts, with suicides amongst First Nations children as young as ten-years-old not uncommon. Suicide rates amongst Inuit youth are among the highest in the world, at eleven times the national average. The scourge is not limited to populations on the economically isolated native reserves. More than one of every five natives living off-reserve has reported contemplating suicide.

Manitoba’s New Democratic Party (NDP) government has now dispatched several emergency mental health-care workers and counsellors to Cross Lake and the federal Liberal government has pledged to cover the costs for this intervention, but only for eight weeks. Prior to this temporary deployment, which was prompted by last week’s declaration of a state of emergency, Cross Lake had only one part-time federally funded mental health therapist.

In addition to emergency assistance, Pimicikamak band leaders have reiterated longstanding demands for funds to build a hospital and recreational facilities in the community and for assistance in creating ongoing employment opportunities.

Currently, eighty percent of the Cross Lake population is unemployed. There is a serious housing shortage and no community or recreational center. Many children are in the care of child welfare services.

Many of the social ills afflicting the community stem from a massive hydro-electric project that was initiated under a previous NDP government in the 1970s and implemented by its Conservative successor. As a result of changes to water-levels, flooding and diversions perpetrated by government-owned Manitoba Hydro, transportation routes and wild-life habitats in the Cross Lake area have been disrupted and often destroyed. Even now, decades after the project was completed, flooding routinely displaces people from their homes.

“The hydro project has contributed to mass unemployment and mass poverty for our people,” said Chief Catherine Merrick. “It has piled on top of the other difficulties we have faced.”

In 2014, after decades of appeals to provincial and federal officials for action to address the devastating impacts on the local economy caused by the hydro-electric project, members of the reserve occupied the Jenpeg generating station that sits at the edge of the reserve. Only after six weeks of occupation did NDP Premier Greg Selinger agree to come and offer a personal “apology” for the provincial government’s role in destroying the community’s traditional economic base. Government promises of revenue-sharing of Jenpeg profits, environmental cleanup, and relief from massive winter electricity bills have yet to be fulfilled.

In addition, many of the older people in Cross Lake are products of the Canadian state’s residential school program—a horrific, century-long practice of forcibly removing native children from their homes and incarcerating them in religious run schools cum work-camps, often hundreds of miles from their parents. Cross Lake was itself the site of one such school until 1969.

The Canadian government-appointed Truth and Reconciliation Commission concluded that the removal of one-third of all native children to these schools over generations met the definition of “cultural genocide” and is responsible for continued family dysfunction in many native communities.

Between 5,000 and 7,000 children died whilst in the custody of the residential schools from disease, malnutrition, fires, suicide and physical abuse. In some cases, healthy children were consciously placed in dormitories with children suffering from tuberculosis.

Discipline was harsh, with children systematically humiliated and physically abused by teachers who would berate them as “stupid Indians.” Children were often corporally punished for speaking their native language. Many were also sexually abused.

The social crisis engulfing Cross Lake arises from conditions common to aboriginal populations across the country. Life spans for native people fall far below the national average. Diseases such as tuberculosis are rampant in some communities. HIV and AIDS rates are higher on some western Canadian native reserves than in the most vulnerable of African countries.

More than half of all native children live in poverty. Education opportunities are deplorable—fewer than 50 percent of students on reserves graduate from high school. The federally-funded- schools on native reserves receive on average 30 percent less funding than other Canadian schools.

Numerous native communities don’t have access to potable water, with boil water advisories in effect, on average, at over a hundred of the 631 native reserves at any given time.

Overcrowding in dilapidated homes is endemic. Almost half of all residences on native reserves require urgent, major repairs.

Incarceration rates for aboriginals are nine times the national average. A native youth is more likely to go to prison than get a high school diploma. Although they make up just 4 percent of Canada’s population, 25 percent of those held in federal prisons are aboriginal.

Poverty conditions are not restricted to those living on reserves. Natives in urban centers, which comprise about half of the rapidly growing 1.2 million native population, have the country’s highest unemployment rates, second only to the rates for native reserves. Nationwide, about 50 percent of First Nations people and Inuit are unemployed.

The vast mineral deposits in the Canadian North and the drive to further expand oil and gas extraction, pipeline construction, and hydro-electric mega-projects continue to place aboriginal communities directly in the firing line of exploitation by governments and the giant corporations they represent. It has been estimated that over the next decade exploitation of these resources on or near First Nations’ lands will generate at least $600 billion for oil, mining, construction, and drilling corporations. Already, commodity extraction earns the provincial and federal governments some $30 billion annually in taxes and royalties alone. What little revenues that are distributed to First Nations seldom reach the general population.

Many native youth mobilized by the 2013 Idle No More protest movement have begun to investigate the full gamut of questions surrounding the endemic poverty and exploitation of the aboriginal peoples. But what is required is not a retreat into the dead-end of a native nationalism that seeks a “new deal” with the Canadian bourgeoisie, through expanding “native” political structures within the Canadian capitalist state and the development of small pockets of native entrepreneurs. Rather, a mass political movement of the working class, uniting native and non-native people, must be developed so as to challenge the very foundations of the profit system and bring about the socialist reorganization of economic life so as to provide the resources for decent jobs, living standards and social facilities—including education, health, and housing—to all, regardless of ethnic or national origin.