Indian government seizes on Kashmir attack to ratchet up tensions with Pakistan

Deepal Jayasekera

India has responded to a suicide-bombing Thursday in Indian-held Kashmir, which killed 40 Indian security personnel, with denunciations and blood-curdling threats—all but announcing an impending military strike on Pakistan.

Speaking yesterday, Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister and the head of the Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janatha Party (BJP), held Pakistan responsible for the attack. He then vowed that India will make “the terror outfits and those aiding and abetting them …. pay a heavy price.”

“Let me assure the nation,” Modi continued, “those behind this attack, the perpetrators of this attack will be punished.” He said his government has given India’s security forces “complete freedom of action.”

Modi has repeatedly boasted that the cross-border military strikes he ordered on Pakistan in September 2016 in retaliation for a terror attack on an Indian army camp in Jammu and Kashmir, had freed India from the shackles of “strategic restraint.”

Seeking to whip up war-fever, Modi declared: “The blood of the people is boiling... Our neighbouring country, which has been isolated internationally, is in a state of illusion, [and] thinks such terror attacks can destabilise us, but their plans will not materialise.”

At least 40 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) para-militaries were killed and several more injured on Thursday afternoon when a suicide-bomber rammed an SUV packed with explosives into a CRPF bus traveling on the Srinagar-Jammu highway in the Pulwama district of Jammu and Kashmir. The bus was part of a convoy of 78 vehicles that was returning more than 2,500 soldiers, most of whom had been on holiday, to active duty in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir’s largest city.

Indian authorities blamed the success of the attack—the single biggest loss of Indian security forces in three decades—on intelligence and security lapses.

Citing a claim of responsibility for the attack from the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), an Islamist pro-Kashmir separatist group, New Delhi immediately declared Pakistan was to blame.

Yesterday, New Delhi delivered Pakistan what was termed a sternly-worded diplomatic demarche, recalled its ambassador from Islamabad, and announced it was canceling Pakistan’s most-favoured nation trade status .

Everything suggests that Modi and his BJP intend to exploit Thursday’s attack to the hilt to whip up bellicose nationalism with a view to deflecting mounting social anger, and mobilising its reactionary Hindu communalist base. All opposition will be branded as a threat to the “national unity” needed to confront arch-rival Pakistan.

In recent months, the Modi government has been shaken by growing worker and farmer protests—including a two-day nationwide general strike in January in which tens of millions participated.

Moreover, the BJP has suffered electoral defeats in December in three Hindi-heartland states that hitherto were among its strongest bastions. This has placed a large question mark over whether the BJP will prevail in the national elections to be held in multiple phases this April and May.

The BJP and its Hindu extremist allies have organised protests in several cities, including New Delhi, at which demands for military action against Pakistan were raised.

A crucial factor in the BJP’s ability to exploit the Kashmir events to stoke reactionary communalism is the role of the so-called opposition parties. Whatever their tactical differences and criticisms of the ruling BJP, they all support aggressively pursuing New Delhi’s geo-political interests in the region against Pakistan.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi, the dynastic head of the party, denounced the incident as “an attack on India’s soul” and assured the BJP government that his party, as well as the entire opposition, was fully supportive of the government and the military. “I want to make it very clear that the aim of terrorism is to divide this country and we are not going to be divided for even one second, no matter how hard people try,” he said.

All the opposition parties led by Congress supported Modi’s “surgical strikes” in September 2016 and hailed the Indian army for carrying them out. On behalf of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPM, chief minister of southern Indian state of Kerala, Pianrayi Vijayan, then passed a resolution in the state assembly praising “surgical strikes.”

The Stalinists have issued only tepid criticisms of the BJP government’s brutal crackdown on opposition in Kashmir, India’s only Muslim majority state, and its refusal to enter into high-level discussions with Pakistan, until it demonstrates it has ended all logistical support for insurgent groups in Indian-administered Kashmir.

The CPM Polit Bureau has immediately issued a statement that “strongly condemns the terrorist attack mounted on a CRPF convoy in Pulwama in Jammu & Kashmir.” It reiterated its support for the Indian military, declaring: “The Polit Bureau of the CPI (M) conveys its heartfelt condolences to the bereaved families of the personnel who laid down their lives in the line of duty.”

Thursday’s suicide bombing was reportedly carried out by 20-year-old Adil Ahmed Dar, a Kashmir labourer, who apparently lived a few kilometres from the site of bomb blast. According to his parents, Dar was radicalised following the police arrest and torture of him and his friends three years ago while they were returning from school.

Pakistan’s reaction to Thursday’s attack and India’s bellicose reaction has been so far subdued and limited to a denial that it had any role in the incident. In previous cases, Islamabad has made its own blood-curdling threats of military retaliation in response to any Indian attack. It appears that Pakistan has been shaken by statements issued by several countries, including the US, condemning the attack and in support of India.

The Kashmir dispute and broader Indo-Pakistani rivalry have their roots in the reactionary communal partition of the subcontinent in 1947 into a Muslim Pakistan and a Hindu-dominated India by the British colonial rulers with the assistance of both sections of Indian national bourgeoisie.

Kashmir was also divided into the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir and the Pakistani province of Kashmir, called Azad Kashmir. In pursuit of their geo-political ambitions, the Indian and Pakistan ruling elites have both abused and ridden roughshod over the rights of the Kashmiri people.

For decades, New Delhi manipulated elections and arbitrarily unseated governments in Jammu and Kashmir. When faced with mass political unrest in the late 1980s, it resorted to widespread violence. For its part, Pakistan manipulated the opposition within Jammu and Kashmir and promoted Islamist insurgent groups in a bid to undermine rival India.

The danger is that events could spin out of control between the rival nuclear-armed powers after last Thursday’s attack. Following India’s so-called surgical strikes on Pakistan in September 2016, the two countries teetered for months on the brink of all-out war. Shelling occurred on almost a daily basis, killing dozens of military personnel and civilians on both sides.

Adding to the explosiveness of the situation is the US drive to harness India in its strategic confrontation. As a result, the Indo-Pakistan conflict has become increasingly enmeshed with rising US-China tensions, with New Delhi allied with Washington and Beijing with Islamabad.

New Zealand housing crisis intensifies under Labour government

John Braddock

Fifteen months into the New Zealand Labour Party-led government’s term in office, the country’s housing crisis is worsening, affecting wide sections of the population.

Last month Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was forced to admit that initial targets for her government’s flagship KiwiBuild housing program could not be met, with just 47 of 1,000 homes promised by July built so far.

Housing minister Phil Twyford said there would be a “recalibration” of the policy, but he expects to have 300 new homes built under the scheme by July.

After four decades of market liberalisation under successive Labour and National Party-led governments, and a deepening assault on jobs and living standards, tens of thousands of people are being denied the basic social right to decent, affordable housing.

According to the latest Demographia International housing affordability survey, New Zealand house prices rank among the most unaffordable in the world. Auckland, the country’s main city, has the world’s seventh most expensive houses and all other NZ cities are defined as “severely unaffordable.” Property is priced out of reach for a greater percentage of the population than in the United States, Britain and Australia, with only Hong Kong less affordable than New Zealand.

The problem has worsened under Labour. The annual report, which compared median house prices with median incomes across cities in seven wealthy countries and Hong Kong, found that New Zealand’s median house price last year was 6.5 times the median income, up from 5.8 a year earlier.

Auckland house prices have almost doubled since 2009 amid the global frenzy of property speculation following the 2008 international financial crisis. In December 2015, Auckland, a city of just 1.6 million people, had 62 suburbs, a third of the total, where houses cost more than $NZ1 million on average, including the $2 million suburb of Herne Bay.

Meanwhile, according to figures based on the 2013 census, around 40,000 people, or nearly 1 percent of the population, live without adequate housing. A 2017 Yale University study found this was the highest level of homelessness in the OECD.

Private sector investors have driven housing costs to grotesquely unaffordable levels for the vast majority of workers, as wages have fallen and living standards deteriorated. Home ownership has become impossible for many workers and rents have skyrocketed, fueling widespread social distress. Young couples are unable to purchase homes and many families live in garages, vehicles and unhealthy overcrowded conditions.

The crisis of unaffordable housing has become a factor in driving workers’ struggles, including a wave of strikes over the past 12 months.

According to a housing stocktake commissioned by the government last year, rents for a three-bedroom house rose 25 percent between 2012 and 2017, while wages rose just 14 percent. In the capital city, Wellington, property values in working-class suburbs leapt more than 50 percent in the past three years.

Students needing accommodation have been hard hit in Wellington, where 30,000 students are competing with young professionals and families priced out of the property market. The median asking rent for a Wellington house increased 8.2 percent in the past year, reaching $565 a week in January 2019. Labour’s increase in student allowances and the amount students can borrow for living costs—amounting to just $50 extra per week—prompted many landlords to immediately hike rents by the same amount.

Labour’s 2017 election manifesto heavily promoted KiwiBuild as a policy that would tackle the housing crisis by working with private developers to build 100,000 “affordable” homes in 10 years. The houses were purportedly designed for first-time home buyers who earn below $120,000 for singles and $180,000 for couples. Workers earn nothing close to those incomes.

The promise was always a hollow fraud. Far from being a public housing program backed and organised by government, KiwiBuild is based on the assumption that the “market” will provide the solution. There is no state subsidy for families to buy KiwiBuild houses. The government simply acts as a guarantor to facilitate properties built by the private sector. Local governments have been pressured to open up new tracts of land while regulatory measures have been eased.

Even the government’s latest much-reduced goal remains doubtful. The country is half a million housing units short of demand. The gap between housing demand and completed new builds has grown every year since 2013. Shamubeel Eaqub, a housing economist, said the scale of the problem is such that it would take decades to fix, regardless of whether the government could accelerate KiwiBuild.

Many of the KiwiBuild homes are already languishing on the market, with working class people finding $525,000 for a two-bedroom home unaffordable. The Demographia survey classes a house as affordable if the median price is up to three times the median wage—making KiwiBuild houses “severely unaffordable” for most.

Housing Minister Twyford told reporters: “No government in the last 40 years has seriously tried what we are trying to do, and that’s change a failed market.” In fact, Labour has no intention of “changing the market.” As Shamubeel Equab explained: “It is not profitable to build houses for poor people… The government is telling builders to use exactly the same processes we have in place now, but build cheaper houses.” This is why “very few” builders have participated in the scheme.

Twyford claims that the government has built 1,000 new public housing units, separate from the KiwiBuild initiative, to cater for poor people. These have, however, housed only 1,800 low income tenants, while more than 11,600 people and families still languish on public housing waiting lists.

Like governments in the US, Europe, Australia and throughout the world, the Labour-led coalition meanwhile is seeking to divert working class anger over social inequality, including the lack of affordable housing, into the most reactionary channels.

Last August, in a policy aimed particularly at Chinese investors, the government, which includes the Green Party and NZ First, banned purchases of houses by non-citizens and non-residents. Finance Minister David Parker declared that New Zealanders “should not be tenants in our own land.” House prices should be “set by local buyers, not by the wealthy 1 percent from international markets.” Foreign buyers in fact account for only around 4 percent of house sales.

The KiwiBuild fraud is a further demonstration that the working class cannot give any credence to Labour’s rhetoric of “transformation” and “kindness.” There is an urgent need to spend billions of dollars to create genuinely affordable housing. The fight must be taken up, in opposition to the Labour Party and its allies, for high-quality housing for all as a fundamental social right. This requires the reorganisation of society along socialist lines, including the nationalisation of the banks and investment giants that have profited from the housing boom.

Sri Lankan president denounces opponents of the death penalty

Vijith Samarasinghe

Addressing parliament on February 6, Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena reiterated his commitment to ending the country’s 43-year moratorium on the death penalty. He warned the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka (HRCSL) and other human rights groups not to hinder his efforts.

Sirisena told parliament that although death row prisoners had filed appeals against their convictions since he began calling for the reinstatement of executions, “we would be able to implement the death penalty in one to two months. Whatever opposition would be raised against it, I have taken a firm decision to implement it.”

Citing the death penalty in India, the US and Singapore, he cynically declared: “We need stringent laws to make a law abiding and spiritual society.”

During his visit last month to the Philippines, Sirisena hailed President Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs”—the extrajudicial killing of thousands of alleged drug dealers—as an “example to the whole world” and vowed to reinstitute the death penalty in Sri Lanka.

Sirisena’s campaign for executions and his praise of Duterte drew immediate criticism from human rights groups in Sri Lanka and internationally.

Sirisena responded by telling parliament that any invocation of human rights in relationship to the drug trafficking underworld was “wrong” and demanded human rights organisations “not object” to his death penalty campaign.

Sirisena singled out the toothless, government-appointed HRCSL for attack and referred to the brutal beating of prisoners in Angunakolapelessa jail last November by Special Task Force (STF) officers and prison staff. A secretly recorded video of the incident drew wide criticism of the government.

Sirisena criticised the HRCSL chief for daring to ask the STF commandant who had given the order to send in the STF.

“The human rights commission, which was appointed by us, should have defended us,” the president told parliament. “Instead, it is questioning the STF chief.” He also condemned the HRCSL for vetting Sri Lankan military officers for human rights violations before they were sent abroad on so-called UN peace keeping assignments.

HRCSL chairperson Dr. Deepika Udagama responded in writing to Sirisena’s allegations, saying these actions were “in accordance with human rights law” and not “an attempt by the Commission to protect criminals.”

Sirisena’s broadside in parliament has only one meaning. He will not tolerate any opposition to the reinstitution of the death penalty or any government violation of basic democratic rights. Sirisena is sending a clear message to the police, and its notorious STF, and the military, that he will back them in all circumstances.

Sirisena’s defence of the military is indicative. Between 1983 and 2009, it conducted a vicious communal war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The bloody conflict was a culmination of the communalist policies pursued by the ruling elite since 1948 to suppress and divide the working class along ethnic and religious lines.

Sirisena, like his predecessors, is committed to shielding the political leaders of successive governments and the military hierarchy responsible for all the war crimes committed since 1983.

While officially there have been no official executions since 1976, the Sri Lankan state has a horrifying record of eliminating its political opponents, workers and young people through extra-judicial killings.

Military and associated paramilitary death squads abducted and executed, without trial, tens of thousands of people during the war against the LTTE and in crushing the youth insurgencies of 1987–89 in Sri Lanka’s south.

The Constitutional Council (CC) was another target of Sirisena’s speech to parliament.

Established by the 19th amendment to the constitution in 2015 under the Sirisena presidency, the CC is supposed to ensure the “independence” of the judiciary and the government service. Consisting of representatives of the president and the parliamentary parties, and headed by the parliamentary speaker, it is not independent in any sense.

Sirisena complained that the CC had not approved his nominees for judges and the chief justice. “They are yet to inform me the reasons for turning down those names,” he declared.

The president is not alone in his provocative and authoritarian outbursts. His views are endorsed by the entire political establishment, including Prime Minister Wickremesinghe’s ruling United National Party (UNP), which is working hand in glove to tighten up the instruments of state repression. Last week, Justice Minister Thalatha Athukorala announced that the “administrative procedures for the execution of five drug convicts had been completed.”

Every faction of the ruling elite is turning toward police-state forms of rule. For about two months last year, these factions were engaged in open political warfare. Sirisena unconstitutionally sacked Wickremesinghe, replacing him with his arch-rival, former President Mahinda Rajapakse, and then dissolved the parliament after Rajapakse was unable to gain a parliamentary majority.

The plot failed because the US was hostile to Rajapakse, whom Washington considers sympathetic to Beijing, and the Supreme Court overruled Sirisena, compelling him to reinstate Wickremesinghe.

Behind the ongoing infighting within the political elite is the eruption of plantation and other workers’ struggles as part of an international working-class upsurge.

Two days before Sirisena’s death penalty address to parliament, he made an unprecedented Independence Day speech in which he hailed the military and declared that governments had failed to resolve the country’s democratic and social questions.

The death penalty is a cruel and inhumane punishment, with most of its victims around world coming from the most oppressed layers of society. Sirisena’s call for the speedy restoration of this barbaric practice, endorsed by all the major parliamentary parties, is a clear indication that the capitalist class is lurching toward dictatorial forms of rule.

In a signal that the Sirisena government is pushing ahead with its reactionary agenda, the government-owned Daily News newspaper ran a grotesque advertisement on February 11 for people to apply to become the official hangmen. The two people who will be employed to carry out state killings must be males aged between 18 and 45 and possess “mental strength.” They will reportedly be paid 36,410 rupees, or $203, a month to hang other human beings.

Wealth concentration increases in US and globally

Nick Beams

The latest research on wealth inequality by University of California economics professor Gabriel Zucman underscores one of the key social and economic trends since the global financial crisis of 2008. Those at the very top of society, who benefited directly from the orgy of speculation that led to the crash, have seen their wealth accumulate at an even faster rate, while the mass of the population has suffered a major decline.

This trend is most apparent in the United States but is revealed in the data for other countries included in research published by Zucman last month. According to his analysis, the top 1 percent in the US now owns about 40 percent of total household wealth, increasing its share by at least 10 percentage points since 1989. Over the same period “the share of wealth owned by the bottom 90 percent has collapsed in similar proportions.”

The acceleration is even more marked in the highest income levels. The share of wealth owned by the top 0.00025 percent (roughly the 400 richest Americans, according to Forbes Magazine data), rose from 1 percent in the early 1980s to over 3 percent in recent years. A similar tripling of wealth is seen in the top 0.01 percent.

The trend is reflected globally. The proportion of wealth held by the top 1 percent in China, Europe and the US combined has increased from 28 percent in 1980 to around 33 percent today.

As documented in previous studies by Zucman, Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, wealth concentration in the US has followed a U-shape during the past century. The share of the top 0.1 percent peaked at close to 25 percent in 1929, fell sharply with the onset of the Great Depression in the 1930s and continued to decline into the late 1940s, then stabilised in the 1950s and 1960s. It reached its lowest point in the 1970s, before rising to close to 20 percent in recent years to “levels last seen in the Roaring Twenties.”

This pattern follows the broad curve of economic developments and the class struggle. The 1930s fall in wealth concentration was the outcome of both the financial crisis and the impact of the New Deal measures introduced by President Franklin Roosevelt in order, as he acknowledged, to avert social revolution in the US.

During the 1950s and 1960s and the development of the post-war economic boom, when it was said that a “rising tide lifts all boats,” wealth concentration remained relatively stable. The ongoing increase in wealth concentration since the 1980s is the outcome of two interconnected factors: the rise of financialisation in the US economy, and consequent changes in the accumulation of profit, coupled with the decades-long organised suppression of the class struggle by the trade union bureaucracy.

One of the indicators of the role of finance in boosting the wealth of the ultra-wealthy is that in 1980 the top 0.01 of interest earners had 2.6 percent of all taxable interest, whereas by 2012 this had increased ten-fold to 27.3 percent.

Zucman’s paper details the increase in global wealth inequality. In the US, China and Europe combined, the top 10 percent owns more than 70 percent of the total wealth, the bottom 50 percent less than 2 percent and the middle 40 percent less than 30 percent.

The higher up the income scale, the faster the rate of wealth accumulation. In the US, Europe and China, from 1987 to 2017 the average wealth of the top 1 percent rose by 3.5 percent per year, the top 0.1 percent by 4.4 percent per year, and the top 0.01 percent by 5.6 percent per year.

The trend has been most marked in Russia, following the privatisation of state assets as a result of the dissolution of the Soviet Union by the Stalinist regime. “In Russia, wealth concentration boomed after the transition to capitalism, and inequality appears to be extremely high, on a par or even higher than in the United States,” the report notes.

A parallel development can be seen in the restoration of capitalism in China. In both countries “the available evidence suggests a high increase in wealth inequality over the last two decades.” The top 1 percent wealth share has almost doubled, rising in China from just over 15 percent in 1995 to 30 percent in 2015 and in Russia from below 22 percent to around 43 percent.

Zucman notes that as wealth inequality increases, it is becoming more difficult to measure, because of the development of a “large offshore wealth management industry” that makes some forms of wealth, particularly financial portfolios, harder to track.

The problem is revealed in the widely varying estimates of how much wealth is held offshore. Zucman has calculated that 8 percent of the world’s individual wealth—the equivalent of 10 percent of global gross domestic product or $5.6 trillion—was held offshore on the eve of the global financial crisis in 2007. He cites other analyses that put the figure much higher. According to one study, the global rich held around $12 trillion of the wealth in tax havens in 2007, with another putting the figure at between $21 and $32 trillion.

This means that the existing studies on wealth concentration, which Zucman and others have carried out using self-reported survey and tax return data, are inadequate to grasp its real extent.

“Because the wealthy have access to many opportunities for tax avoidance and tax evasion— and because the available evidence suggests that the tax planning industry has grown since the 1980s as it became globalized—traditional data sources may underestimate inequality,” Zucman states.

Zucman is well aware of the political consequences of the rise in social inequality that he and others have documented. He notes that “for the rich, wealth begets power” and wealth concentration “may help explain the lack of redistributive responses to the rise of inequality observed since the 1980s.”

Zucman’s latest findings will no doubt be used by Democratic presidential hopefuls such as Elizabeth Warren and the newly-elected Democratic Socialists of America Congress member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as they seek to give the Democratic Party a “left” face by calling for increased taxes on the wealthy.

But the data produced by Zucman and others refute the assertion that social inequality can or will be rectified by legislative changes. This is because the concentration of wealth—though aided and abetted by successive administrations, both Democrat and Republican—in the final analysis is rooted in vast changes in the very structure of American and global capitalism, arising from its deepening historical crisis.

In other words, it is the outcome of a process of capital accumulation, based on financialisation, that has institutionalised the siphoning of wealth up the income scale.

This cannot be overcome through appeals to the financial oligarchy to change course but only by a frontal assault against its rule, that is, the development of a mass struggle for socialism by the American and international working class. The conditions for this fight are emerging as a result of the resurgence of the class struggle being driven forward by the consequences of deepening social inequality. The aim of Warren, Ocasio-Cortez et al, is try to divert this movement and bring it under the wing of the Democratic Party.

Munich Security Conference overshadowed by rising great power conflicts

Peter Schwarz

The 55th Munich Security Conference, which begins today, has been overshadowed by rising great power conflicts. The conference will be dominated by the preparations of the United States and its allies for war with Russia and China, but it will also be impacted by escalating tensions between the Western allies.

The Munich Security Report 2019, published by the conference’s organisers at the beginning of the week, is a terrifying document. It assumes that a clash between the major nuclear-armed powers is all but inevitable. It is less concerned with the question of how to avoid this catastrophe, focusing instead on how best to prepare for such a clash and who will pick up the pieces.

In the debates over the origins of World War I, it has been repeatedly claimed that the great powers were sleepwalkers who stumbled into the catastrophe. This is an incredible trivialisation of the imperialist powers’ responsibility for the war. However, if one compares the prelude to the First World War to the current conflicts between the major powers, they are not stumbling, but running with eyes wide open towards the abyss.

The Munich Security Report 2019 conveys the impression of a ruling elite that has lost control of political events, and is responding by rearming and preparing for criminal wars that will call into question the survival of humanity.

Already in the foreword to the report, Wolfgang Ischinger, the head of the Munich Security Conference, writes, “A new era of great power competition is unfolding between the United States, China, and Russia, accompanied by a certain leadership vacuum in what has become known as the liberal international order. While no one can tell what the future order will look like, it is becoming obvious that new management tools are needed to prevent a situation in which not much may be left to pick up.”

As the document goes on to show, these management tools are chiefly weaponry and military firepower to intimidate and destroy rival states.

The first chapter, “The Great Puzzle: Who Will Pick Up the Pieces?” cites from the new National Security Strategy of the United States, which declares: “…we are heading into an era of sustained big power competition for which the West, collectively, is underprepared.” Washington views China and Russia as its main rivals: “US strategic documents have singled out China and Russia as the two most important challengers, and many key administration officials have emphasized this threat perception in public speeches.”

The sense that China has become “the most dynamic and formidable competitor in modern history” is now widely shared in Washington, continues the Munich Security Report. As evidence, the report cites US Vice President Mike Pence, who accused China “of attempting to erode America’s military advantage on land, at sea, in the air, and in space,” and warned: “We will not be intimidated, and we will not stand down.” The Munich Security Report 2019 concluded, “Many read Pence’s speech as the announcement of a new cold war.”

Under the subheading “From Pax to Crux Americana,” the report goes on to discuss in detail what Europe must do to enforce its own interests in a conflict involving the major powers. “The European Union is particularly ill-prepared for a new era of great power competition,” states the report. “Nonetheless, increasing uncertainty about the future role of the United States has led to a renewed discussion of Europe’s ‘strategic autonomy.’”

Five years ago, the German government used the Munich Security Conference to announce an end to military restraint. “Germany must be ready to engage in foreign and security policy earlier, more decisively and more substantially,” Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said at the time. “Germany is too big just to comment on world politics from the sidelines.”

Since then, Germany and other European countries have rearmed and significantly increased their military spending. But this, according to the Munich Security Conference report, is nowhere near enough to achieve strategic autonomy and pursue global great power interests independently of the United States.

“There is still a long way to go to reach what Jean-Claude Juncker called ‘Weltpolitikfähigkeit’ at last year’s Munich Security Conference,” states the report. “And ‘Weltpolitikfähigkeit’, or the ability to play a meaningful role in world politics, is badly needed. Although most strategic thinkers in Europe agree that a strong transatlantic partnership will remain the best security guarantee for Europe, this preferred option may not be available in the future.”

The report makes an urgent appeal for the European powers to massively increase their military spending once again: “Given the rapid pace of change, European policymakers need to come up with long-term strategic approaches and make available the necessary resources if Europe is to be more than just ‘a theater of serious strategic competition’ for other actors.”

The Middle East Conference, which took place in Warsaw a day prior to the beginning of the Munich Security Conference, underscored how sharp the conflict between the United States and Europe, and Germany in particular, has already become. The German media denounced the conference as a deliberate attempt to divide Europe. “[US Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo exploited the deep-seated hostility of Poland and Hungary towards Brussels, as well as the frictions between these countries and Germany, to drive a wedge into the EU,” complained the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Conflicts within the EU are intensifying. After months of sniping between Paris and Rome, France recalled its ambassador for the first time since World War II from Italy, a founding member of the EU and NATO. French President Emmanuel Macron also called off a joint appearance with German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the Munich Security Conference. Although he justified his decision with reference to domestic political obligations, the relationship between Berlin and Paris has cooled markedly over recent months.

The European powers are responding to these mounting conflicts by accelerating their rearmament drive. British Defence Minister Gavin Williamson, who will open the conference with his German counterpart Ursula Von der Leyen, delivered a bloodthirsty speech on Monday in which he called for a major intensification of British militarism following Brexit. Britain must be ready to “employ military force to defend our global interests,” he said.

The Munich Security Conference is the largest meeting of politicians, military personnel, arms industry representatives, and military experts in the world. This year, more than 500 international guests are expected to attend, including 35 heads of state and government, 50 foreign ministers, and 30 defence ministers.

The US is represented by the largest delegation, which alongside Vice President Pence also includes House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, President Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner. Chancellor Merkel and six other ministers are participating from Germany.

Other registered guests include Ukrainian President Petro Poroschenko, Egyptian dictator Abd al-Fattah as-Sisi, Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani, Bangladeshi Prime Minister Hasina Wajed and the Emir of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Federica Mogherini, IMF head Christine Lagarde, and interim World Bank chief Kristalina Georgieva are also in Munich.

This high-ranking meeting will spend three days discussing how to prepare future wars that will mean misery and death for millions of people. This is sufficient evidence to confirm that it is impossible to prevent such conflicts with appeals to the reason and conscience of the ruling class.

The Munich Security Report 2019 contains the result of an interesting poll. Asked which country’s power and influence they thought represented the greatest danger to their country, 49 percent of Germans said the United States, compared to 30 percent who said Russia and 33 percent who chose China. The result was similar in France. Asked who they thought would do the right thing in world affairs, 10 percent of Germans named Trump, compared to 35 percent who said Putin, and 30 percent who chose Xi Jinping. Even in the United States, only 48 percent of respondents named Trump, compared to 39 percent for Xi and 21 percent for Putin, who is incessantly demonised by the media.

These results hardly indicate sympathy for the Russian and Chinese presidents, but express the vehement opposition among the population in Germany, France, and the US to the war-mongering policies of their own governments. This widespread opposition to war requires an orientation and a political perspective. It can only be successful if it bases itself on the international working class, and advocates a socialist programme to overthrow the capitalist system, the origin of militarism and war.

War summit in Warsaw

Bill Van Auken

The conference jointly hosted by the US and Polish governments in Warsaw this week under the phony banner of working to “Promote a Future of Peace and Security in the Middle East” has laid bare the immense and imminent threat that US imperialism is preparing to drag humanity into another and potentially world catastrophic war.

On the eve of the conference, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the only prominent head of government to fly to Poland for the event, gave an interview in Warsaw in which he declared the importance of the conference was that it involved “an open meeting with representatives of leading Arab countries that are sitting down together with Israel in order to advance the common interest of war with Iran.”

The text of this bellicose statement was then posted on the Israeli prime minister’s twitter account. Subsequently, apparently as a result of political pressure from the event’s US and Polish sponsors, the tweet was changed to read “in order to advance the common interest of combating Iran.”

Much of the media treated Netanyahu’s original statement as a gaffe. It was nothing of the kind. The Israeli prime minister was describing the real aims of the conference in Warsaw in blunt terms because it suited his own political interests as he confronts an election in two months amid mounting corruption scandals and is anxious to rally his right-wing base.

Israel and the reactionary monarchical dictatorships of the Persian Gulf, which were well represented at the Warsaw gathering, constitute the two pillars of the anti-Iranian axis being forged by the Trump administration.

The attempts by US and Polish officials to mask the genuine purpose of the conference with talk about “peace” and “security” were farcical. Polish officials insisted that the meeting did not concern any one country, but rather “horizontal issues” confronting the region, such as weapons proliferation, terrorism, war, etc. As it turned out, however, Iran was found to be at the root of each and every one of these problems.

US Vice President Mike Pence delivered a sanctimonious sermon in which he denounced Tehran for threatening a “another Holocaust” and attempting to recreate the Persian Empire by opening up a “corridor of influence” through Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

Pence, who peppered his speech with Biblical references and claimed that faith and God would deliver peace to the Middle East, described Iran as “the leading state sponsor of terrorism, and that state which sows the greatest harm and greatest discord across the region about which we gather here today.”

This phrase “leading state sponsor of terrorism” has been repeated ad nauseum by US officials, with no attempt to substantiate the allegation with facts or evidence. This from a government that poured billions of dollars into funding terrorist wars by Al Qaeda-linked militias in the quest for regime-change in both Libya and Syria.

Even as the Warsaw conference was taking place, a terrorist suicide bombing in Iran claimed the lives of at least 27 members of the country’s Revolutionary Guard coming home from deployment on the country’s border with Pakistan. A shadowy Al Qaeda-connected group with ties to Washington’s main ally in the Arab world, Saudi Arabia, claimed responsibility for the attack.

As for the “state which sows the greatest harm and greatest discord,” can anyone claim with a straight face that Washington, which has waged a quarter-century of unending and ruinous wars in the region, razing entire societies to the ground and leaving millions dead, maimed and displaced, has any close competition for this title?

The most jarring element of Pence’s speech, however, was directed against Washington’s erstwhile NATO allies for failing to toe the US line in relation to Iran. The US vice president demanded that Germany, France and the UK, all signatories to the 2015 Iran nuclear accord, follow Washington’s lead in tearing up the agreement and imposing an economic blockade that is tantamount to an act of war.

Outside of the UK, none of the European powers sent so much as a foreign minister to the Warsaw gathering, which was seen accurately as a US-sponsored rally for war against Iran. The EU's foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, who participated in the negotiation of the Iran nuclear accord, also declined to attend.

Pence accused “some of our leading European partners” of trying “to break American sanctions against Iran’s murderous revolutionary regime.” He was referring to a financial mechanism introduced by the UK, Germany and France to allow the barter of goods between European companies and Iran without direct financial transactions or the use of the US dollar in order to evade sweeping US extraterritorial sanctions. The measure was taken in an attempt to prop up the Iran nuclear deal and prevent Tehran from renouncing it in the face of the wiping out of all of the sanctions relief that it was supposed to entail.

The US vice president demanded that the European powers “stand with us” by killing the nuclear accord and, presumably, preparing for war with Iran. Acknowledging that Iran was in compliance with the nuclear accord, Pence declared that the issue was not compliance, but the undesirability of the deal itself.

US imperialism has never forgiven the masses of Iranian workers and poor for their 1979 revolution that overthrew the US-backed dictatorship of the Shah, the linchpin of US domination of the region. While that revolution was usurped by the bourgeois-theocratic regime established under Ayatollah Khomeini, Washington has refused to settle for anything less than regime-change and the re-imposition of a US puppet dictatorship.

Pence warned in his Warsaw speech that any attempt to evade the US sanctions regime would “create still more distance between Europe and the US.”

In the run-up in 2003 to the US invasion of Iraq, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ridiculed the opposition of Germany and France to the criminal war of aggression by referring to these countries as “old Europe” and extolling the support for US imperialism from a “new Europe,” consisting of the Eastern European regimes and, principally, Poland.

The sponsorship of the Iran war conference by Poland, which has not played a particularly decisive role in the affairs of the Middle East, resurrects this earlier bid to pit “new” against “old” Europe.

Warsaw’s support for the anti-Iranian crusade is bound up with its right-wing government’s own bid to secure a permanent US military presence in Poland as a supposed bulwark against any threat from Russia. In September of last year, Polish President Andrzej Duda proclaimed at a White House press conference his government’s desire for the erection of a “Fort Trump” on Polish soil.

The virulent anti-Iranian rhetoric spouted at the Warsaw conference for “peace” and “security” was matched by a diatribe against Russia delivered by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who combined his attendance at the conference with an appearance with troops on maneuvers in Poland.

Pompeo invoked his military career as a tank officer in Germany during the Cold War. He declared that while at that time Germany’s Fulda Gap was seen as the point of confrontation with a hypothetical Soviet invasion of Western Europe, Poland now occupied a similar position because of “Russian aggression.”

Today, Washington’s bid to play off the right-wing regimes of “new Europe” against its erstwhile allies in “old Europe” is bound up not only with a potential bloodbath in Iran, but with the preparations for a new world war. US imperialism is determined to assert its hegemony over Iran, the Middle East, Central Asia and Venezuela in order to establish its unchallenged control over all of the world’s energy reserves, giving it the ability to deny access to its principal global rival, China.

The Warsaw conference, for all of its farcical aspects and overheated rhetoric, has a deadly serious content. It constitutes a nodal point in the drive towards a third world war between the world’s major nuclear powers.

IMU Graduate Research Assistantships in Developing Countries (GRAID) Program 2019

Application Deadline: 15th March, 2019.

Eligible Countries: Developing Countries


About the Award: The Program provides research assistantships to graduate – PhD and Master – students of emerging research groups working in a developing country listed in Priority 1 or 2 of the IMU CDC Definition of Developing Countries. It provides modest support for emerging research groups, making it possible for them to fund their most talented students as graduate research assistants, thereby fostering the growth of a mathematics community.
It is assumed that the emerging research group has an ongoing collaboration with an international mathematician. The students will receive a monthly stipend to study full-time and pursue a Master or PhD graduate degree in mathematics and they will be supported additionally by linking their research with an international mathematician.

Field of Study: Mathematics and related fields

Type: Masters, PhD

Eligibility: The Principal Investigator should be a university professor in mathematics holding a PhD and live and work in a university or research center in a developing country listed in Priority 1 or 2 of the IMU CDC Definition of Developing Countries, and who is already training mathematics Master’s or PhD students, and who is part of a research group.
(B.) The International Partner should be a mathematician working in a university or research center not based in any of the countries listed in Priority 1 or 2 of the IMU CDC Definition of Developing Countries.
The International Partner and Principal Investigator should be in regular contact, for instance using modern communication technology. At the time of application there should be an active and ongoing collaboration between the International Partner and Principal Investigator.

The Principal Investigator will be responsible for ensuring smooth sustained communication in the Team between:

• the graduate research assistants,
• the International Partner, and
• the GRAID Committee.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: The amount of the stipend per graduate research assistant should not exceed USD 3,500 per year. The exact amount will be decided by the GRAID Committee on a case-by-case basis depending on the local cost of living. One Team can apply for up to 3 graduate research assistantships.
The following costs can be covered by the stipend:

• Accommodation expenses of the graduate research assistant
• Basic living expenses

Duration of Program: 

• For PhD students the stipend will typically cover 4 years depending on satisfactory progress based on annual reports. Extensions for up to 6 months will be decided at the discretion of the GRAID Committee.
• Master students will typically be funded for 1 year. Extensions for up to 6 months will be decided at the discretion of the GRAID Committee

How to Apply: We invite applications from Teams consisting of:

1. the Principal Investigator (PI) plus his or her research group, and
2. the International Partner.

Apply Here


Visit the Program Webpage for Details

IMU Breakout Graduate Fellowship Program 2019 for Developing Countries

Application Deadline: 31st May 2019 09:00 AM Central European Time (CET, Berlin).

Eligible Countries: Developing countries


To be taken at (country): Developing countries

About the Award: The IMU Breakout Graduate Fellowships offers a limited number of grants for excellent students from developing countries.

Type: Postgraduate

Eligibility:
Conditions for the Nominator (Professional Mathematician)

• Professional mathematicians (including those who have superannuated, but continue to mentor young students). It is preferable that the nominator has been mentoring the nominee.

Conditions for the Nominee (Student)

1. The student must be A) resident AND B) a citizen of a developing country which must be contained in the list above.
2. The student must either
   • A) be pre-accepted to join a doctoral program in the first academic year after the time of selection in a university or research institution which is based on a developing country from the list above. OR
   • B) already be enrolled in a doctoral program in a university or research institution which is based on a developing country from the list above .
3. There is no age limit for the student.

Nomination for women students is strongly encouraged.

Number of Awards: Limited

Value of Award: The fellowship can cover the entire period of the doctoral program up to four years of the student (nominee). The following costs up to a maximum of USD 10.000 per year can be covered by the grant.

1. Full tuition fee
2. Accommodation expenses 
3. Travel expenses to the host institution (if different from the home country)
4. Basic living expenses that will depend on the cost of the living of the country in which the student will study his/ her doctoral program

Duration of Programme: 4 years

How to Apply: The nomination has to be filled out and submitted online by the nominator. The online nomination form can be found here.
Online Nomination form
To access the online nomination form, please register in IMU website and log in.
If you have previously registered in IMU website you can use the same credentials.

• It is important to go through all application requirements on the Programme Webpage see link below) before applying

Visit Programme Webpage for Details

Pakistan: How to Change Political Culture of Corruption and Rebuild the Future?

Mahboob A. Khawaja

Towards Understanding the Current Affairs

Prime Minister Imran Khan impressed the constituents to imagine the phenomenon of “change” as a driving force for future-making.  Was the political power a motivating factor to influence the curious minds of the masses or was it an exercise in self-propagated approach to gain success at a critical juncture of Pakistan’s contemporary history? For too long Pakistanis experienced the nuisance of corrupt politics. Reality has its checks and balances based on the consequences. PM Khan is no stranger to the much charged and corrupt culture of politics. Pakistan had witnessed many critical moments of historical developments in its search for identity, unity and future-making. Often dismayed and unimpressed are the people of young and educated generation who find no place to participate in the movement and struggle for change and reformation of the decades old corrupted  and degenerated system of obsolete systems of political governance. At a time, Imran Khan – a comparatively young, reasonable and open-minded politician enticed the young generation to be hopeful for change but it is questionable if there is rational substance to be optimistic about “rebuilding” the nation. In an age of reason, it is important to know and determine where Pakistan is and how to go forward with a planned Action Plan. Imran Khan having a moral and intellectual outlook as head of a progressive political organization should have imagined and prepared a Proactive Plan for New Thinking and a Plan for Action once he assumed the office.  To learn from the tragic tensions of history, all of the previous self-styled leaders including the unwelcomed four General of coups  and their  byproducts – Bhuttos, Sharfis, Zardari and Musharaf were all dead-ended entries to the essence and freedom movement of Pakistan. They stole billions and billions from the national treasury and stabbed the nation. Could Mr. Khan realize what went wrong and how they consumed precious time and resources of the nation and derailed its prospects for future-making as a viable democratic nation in Southwest Asia?  If Pakistan had a continuous culture of political change and educated and learning leadership, the country should not be interdependent on foreign aid and a subservient to the US or Western political interests. There appears to be conflicting time zones and culture of thinking between the masses and the ruling elite confined to comfortable quarters of Islamabad. Leaders come and go but nothing changes on the ground for the public good. The endless self-repeating delusions flow for even more the same at this juncture. PM Khan is either not connected to the dots or he is surrounded by the same set of individualistic absolutism prevalent at the beginning but most often is ridiculed as it progresses and ends-up in disastrous consequences for the nation. Words and statements alone do not change an unproductive culture of political nuisance. There is nothing new on the ground to substantiate any new visionary approach to rebuild the nation. Those who are part of the problem cannot be part of the solution. Mr. Khan should analyze critically what is operational and what is dysfunction within the compound of central government. He should be open to voices of reason and enlightenment. There seems to be too much centralized boxed functions in Islamabad and not much decentralized presence of the federal governance at major provincial centers of activities. This should be reorganized to serve the interest of the masses and proved services across many divergent zones. Pakistan desperately needs new and young educated and honest people to embrace the challenges of the present and future-making. Pakistanis living abroad are the asset to be counted to enhance the planned cause of political reformation and nation-building.

Know Yourself in Time and Challenges, Your Strength and Weaknesses

Great spoken symbols do not require immeasurable importance. All egoistic politicians assert such slogans to maintain irrational balance between the reality consequential developments. At this stage, the nation is receptive to see how and what Imran Khan could deliver to change the engrossed misfortunes of the nation. All responsible leaders defy the urge to make flamboyant expressions of political ambitions which negate realism and national interest.  To a visionary and effective leader, it is incumbent to know your strengths and weaknesses and the people around your immediate circle. If you have a vision of the future, explain it and connect it to the known aspirations of the masses that were denied the rightful thought and place in the past.  If imperatives of change and reformation for nation-rebuilding were of utmost vitality, should Mr. Khan not enlist the educated people of knowledge, wisdom and global experience to plan the political change and enhance the priorities of “nation-rebuilding” as part of an Action Plan?  Pakistani nation has a delicate echo-system of social, moral, political and intellectual diversities and sensitivities. Those dealing with the phenomenon of change, must know and understand how to acquire an inner understanding of such distinctions and inequalities to bridge the unity of nation. Reason has many enemies if Pakistani political culture is closed but reasoned discussion could lead to rebuild the trust across many divides. If Imran Khan thought that his symbolic opinions will bear fruit without any efforts, it would be unthinkable to imagine a destiny out of inaccessible communication to the masses. Destiny is always new and young, not obsolete or incapacitated. Mr. Khan should motivate the official circles with sense of responsibility, services and honest role model. If the leadership statements are unexcitable shadows of illusion without truth and strength, the new leadership will go nowhere except consuming time and precious energies as it happened before for almost 50 years. Pakistan is a victim of failed and disgraced leadership.

Collective Focused Mind is More Powerful than Individualistic Agenda

To reshape and rebuild the destiny of deprived masses, Mr. Khan should articulate a focused approach to deal with some of the urgent issues. The issue of fair and equal services to the people, legal justice, security of the country, unity of diverse provincial cultures and integration, reformed systems of political governance, sustainable economic and technological productivity, educational system and health services could be prioritized for the first year of the Development Plan, if there is such an official instrument at this time. Mr. Khan wanted to hold the corrupt political accountable for their criminal atrocities and stolen wealth. He must set up a high power legal body with competent judges to hold the trials and punish the political thugs and criminals. How come Zardari, Sharif and Musharaf are roaming around freely?

None of them were alone but had hundreds and thousands of culprits to rob the nation. If the intent and resolve is clear, what are they waiting for to prosecute the indicted criminals? This must be done in few months, not a year if all concerned are honest and true to their commitments. Pakistan should not be held hostage for change by the criminals. If the stolen wealth is returned to the national treasury, Pakistan will not ask the IMF or Saudis for new loans. Does Imran Khan have any compassion for the indicted criminals? This must assume a priority for action.

Towards Change and National Unity for Future-building

The focal issue appears to be –how to change a dreadful and unproductive political culture into a promising future?  It requires ingenuity, vision and workable plan to ensure positive outcomes for the best of people. To awaken the consciousness of political accountability, PM Khan would need to move fast based on well chalked out plan for change and reformation of the political systems. Time is critical and offers a historic opportunity to all concerned. Defying cynicism and hoping to be optimistic, Mr. Khan and his colleagues better do a soul searching as to where they are and how to move forward?  Otherwise, they cannot go from nowhere to nowhere. It is a cumbersome challenge but must be encountered otherwise, time and opportunities will be lost with disastrous consequences for the present and future generations of Pakistanis.

The new Pakistani administration must detach itself from the delusional glimmers of American policies and practices in Afghanistan and the region. American drone attacks on Northwest Pakistan and its entanglement in Afghanistan must end on its own record of failure. America is a big game player in Pakistan and its security apparatus. The aid gimmick has kept Pakistan interdependent on the policy making of the US administration and a nation being viewed more liability than an asset to the American geo-political interests in that region. All that can go wrong have gone wrong with the system of Pakistani political governance. Any realistic observer taking dispassionate survey of the current picture of Pakistan would agree that time and essence of history call for planned change to produce a sustainable and productive culture of new thinking and actions for the security and future-making of a new Pakistan.

Means of Control: Russia’s Attempt to Hive Off the Internet

Binoy Kampmark

Such measures were always going to come on the heels, and heavily so, of the utopians.  Where there is Internet Utopia, Dystopia follows with dedicated cynicism.  Where there are untrammelled means of searching, there will be efforts to erect signposts, usually of a warning nature.  Like the librarian ever worried of her reader finding something inappropriate, material will be kept in a different section of the library, forever filed, concealed and kept from overly curious eyes.  The library, however, will never close.

Like many of President Vladimir Putin’s projects, tackling the internet has all the elements of the improbable, the boastful and the grand quixotic.  It also has a certain Icarus, waxwing quality to it, and may end up melting when approaching its sunny objective.  Be that as it may, the Russian Internet Isolation Bill is simply another one for the books, another project in authority’s efforts to control, in the name of security, the way the world wide web works.  It seeks to impose further restrictions on traffic and data, routing it through state-controlled points to be registered with Roskomnadzor, the federal communications regulator. To this will be added a national Domain Name System, enabling the internet to function even if severed from foreign links.

The obvious and sensible point here shared by all states with an interest in using, exploiting and controlling the internet is how best to preserve an information web function that is sovereign and resistant to attack.  The Russian suggestion here is somewhat bolder than others: to hive off and keep RuNet (the state’s internet infrastructure) safe from any cyber mauling. This would effectively link the Russian segment to a switch.  Even after an attack, the internet within the country might still function in its provision of online services, minimising internal chaos.

Critics of this Russian venture would do well to note the differing tactics of states towards the internet.  The functionaries in Moscow have never made any secret of the fact that control is the order of the day.  Ditto China, which remains all focused on maintaining its Great Fire Wall, barrier to deemed ills.  Other countries supposedly interested in freer flowing tributaries of information have the same suspicions and paranoias; they merely choose to manifest them in less heavy handed and, in some instances, underhanded ways.

As a June 2018 piece from those sinister chaps at Stratfor observes with some accuracy, all governments wish to exploit the internet.  They are junkies for control.  “Administrations even in liberal countries such as the United States have attempted to direct online discourse and to sway public opinion toward some outlets and away from others.”  Ever mindful of future solicitations for its services, Stratfor insists that four countries “merit special attention for their efforts to break Western hegemony on the internet and, by extension, to challenge the free internet model.”  Delightfully slanted in selecting Iran, China, Turkey and Russia, the assessment ignores the obvious point: the free internet model is tat and show.

In the United States, where freedom of speech remains, at least in some form, relevant, the National Security Agency remains dedicated, not so much to controlling the net but conducting surveillance of it.  If you can’t beat it, spy on it.  The point was made with amply devastating effect by whistleblower Edward Snowden: “I, sitting at my desk, could wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email.”

The lower house of Russia’s parliament, the State Duma, allowed passage of the bill on February 12 as the first of three votes.  Amendments are bound to follow, but the work is formidable.  A working group of industry figures established to implement the directives of the ensuing legislation insists that various tests and simulations will have to be done by telecommunication companies to test the effect of disconnection.  Its head, Natalya Kaspersky, might well have praised the goals of the legislation, but she was frank enough about the draft law to suggest that implementing it “raises many questions”.

Critics are, rightly, concerned that such bills have a rather nasty effect on how the Russian segment of the internet will work, which is precisely the point.  The Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs is suspicious that this is a grand act of self-harm.  The Communists are sceptical.  Vladimir Zhirinovksy of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia will not back it.

The issues of cost and capabilities in creating the necessary equipment to implement such a regime of strategic isolation have also niggled legislators.  As LDPR lawmaker Sergei Ivanov bitterly mused in debate, “Russia does not produce any IT hardware, only cables, which some people better hang themselves on.”  Strange things tend to be suggested in the name of preservation.

The broader response by onlookers stretching from those in Freedomland to more autocratic outposts is to simply keep Russia in the cybernews.  Cyberwarfare and cyber activities have lifted Russia into the permanent news cycle, and endless churning and turning in the domestic affairs of the United States and Europe.  Spot the hack, spot the Russian. Lose an election, blame it on the Kremlin’s hacking and electoral interference.  If only it were that simple.

For all the fears, coupled with the boast and bark from the Kremlin, this controlling effort, given the constant evolution of networks, may well collapse.  State regulators such as Roskomnadzor have already shown how they bungle when attempting to limit or stop various apps from working.  Last year’s effort to bar the encrypted communications app Telegram in 2018, for instance, disrupted associated IP addresses (15.8 million, in fact), precipitating havoc on Google and Amazon’s cloud-hosting platforms.  Networks will do that to you.

Notwithstanding that object lesson in what happens when swathes of the internet are blocked to target one undesirable gremlin, the utopians of government control are still in full voice. German Klimenko, who had a rough time of it as Putin’s grand wizard on internet affairs last year, may well be yet another name to add to that list, holding the belief that such complex interconnected systems can be protected by a merely “push” of a button without calamitous consequences.

In its ambition to control the internet, Russia is simply another state addicted to yet paranoid about the nature of the internet.  All states, by definition, want control over the highways, the lanes and the alleys of a system that has its origins in survivability in catastrophic conflict.  Paradoxically, it also has the means to inflict it.  That way, a state’s own infrastructure can be spared at some cost, allowing the censor of unwanted ideas to keep it company, rummaging through materials deemed appropriate for consumers.  That’s what you get for believing in utopia.