Housing Affordability and Insecurity Before and During the Pandemic

Yixia Cai

Over the last two decades, the percentage of households that rent has risen as has the percentage of renter households who are burdened by housing costs. Today, most low-income renters and low-income homeowners spend more than half of their income on housing. Housing insecurity has increased since the beginning of the pandemic, particularly among Black and Hispanic households. Absent massive increases in the supply of affordable housing, including private and social housing, and direct financial assistance to struggling renters and homeowners, millions of strapped renters and homeowners will go deeper into debt, face more hardship and insecurity, and ultimately lose or be evicted from their homes.

More People in Renter Households

Between 2001 and 2018, both the percentage of households that rent and the percentage of people living in renter households has increased. As Table 1 shows, nearly 34 percent of the population lived in renter households in 2018, compared to 31.5 percent in 2001. The increase in the percentage and number of children living in renter households has been even greater.

Among racial and ethnic groups, only Black people are more likely to live in renter households today than in 2001 (54.6 percent rented in 2018, up nearly 4 percentage points compared to 2001, CEPR analysis of IPUMS ACS). By comparison, 24.6 percent of white people rented in 2018, about the same as in 2001; 39.4 percent of American Indian or Alaska Native people rented in 2018, down by nearly 3 percentage points since 2001; 35.1 percent of Asians rented in 2018, down by nearly 5 percentage points since 2001, and 48.9 percent of Hispanic people rented in 2018, down by about 2 percentage points since 2001. By income group, the largest increases in renter households have been among extremely low-income renters (defined as 30 percent or less of area median income, AMI) and higher-income renters (more than 120 percent of AMI).

Most Low-Income Households Have Burdensome Housing Costs

Most low-income renters and homeowners are housing-cost burdened, meaning they spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing. As Table 2 below shows, among households with incomes below $20,000, nearly nine-in-ten renters and three-in-four homeowners are housing-cost burdened. Among all renters with incomes below $50,000, over half are rent-burdened. In general, homeowners are less burdened by housing costs than renters, but this is due in part to a growing share of homeowner households that have paid off their mortgages.

Renter households with children are more likely than renter households without children to be housing-cost burdened. As Figure 1 below shows, 94 percent of the lowest-income renter households with children are rent-burdened.

 

Housing Insecurity Trends Before and During the Pandemic

As shown in Table 3, the share of renter households facing cost burdens has increased since 2001. Nearly one-in-four (24 percent) of renter households were severely rent burdened in 2017, compared to one-in-five (20 percent) in 2001.

Housing Insecurity During the Pandemic

As the preceding tables show, most low-income households, and many middle-income ones, struggled under heavy housing-cost burdens before the pandemic, despite improvements in the economy. During the pandemic, housing insecurity — concern about being able to pay next month’s rent or mortgage — has increased. On average, nearly one-in-three renters experienced housing insecurity each week from late April 2020 through July 2020 (see Figure 2). Among homeowners, about one-in-six were housing insecure. Most of the increase in housing insecurity (compared to 2017-2019) is due to increased housing insecurity among Black and Hispanic renters and homeowners.

Among households with children, racial and ethnic gaps in housing insecurity — between white and Black households, and white and Hispanic households — narrowed between 2017 and 2019. But this progress has been lost (see Figure 3). Roughly 44 to 45 percent of Hispanic and Black households with children were housing insecure each week between April and July 2020, and the racial and ethnic gaps in housing insecurity were wider than at any point in 2017 to 2019.

Black women have the highest probability of housing insecurity, while white men have the lowest (Figure 4). Black men were just behind Black women in terms of risk. Next were Asian women, and then, all with roughly similar risks, were Hispanic women, Hispanic men, and Asian men.

Households Behind on Rent and Mortgage Payments in September 2020

Among households who answered the housing questions in the most recent Census Household Pulse Survey (September 2–14, 2020), 17 percent of renter households reported being behind on rent and nearly 10 percent of homeowners with a mortgage were behind on their mortgage payments. Over 45 percent of the renter households who are not current on their rent said it was “very likely” or “somewhat likely” that they would have to leave their home because of eviction in the next two months. Among mortgage holders who are behind on their mortgage payments, about one-in-five said it was “very likely” or “somewhat likely” that they would be forced to leave their home because of foreclosure in the next two months. It is important to note that these estimates may be biased downwards because a substantial number of households responding to the Household Pulse Survey did not answer the housing questions, and those who did answer them were more likely to have attended college or had a Bachelor’s degree.

Proposed Legislative Measures

The CARES Act prohibited evictions from federally subsidized housing, but this provision expired on July 24. 2020. On September 4, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued an order halting most evictions for non-payment of rent, including in private housing, through December 31, 2020.  However, the CDC does not waive late fees or other related charges, and does not provide any new funding for rental assistance. Once the CDC order expires, landlords will be able evict millions of renters who have fallen behind on their rent since the beginning of the pandemic.

The People’s Housing Platform, a set of bills introduced in the House earlier this year, would address our immediate and longstanding housing challenges in a lasting way. Introduced by representatives Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), Jesus “Chuy” Garcia (D-IL), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ayana Pressley (D-MA), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), the platform: makes massive new investments in permanently affordable housing; guarantees that all renters who are eligible for federal rental assistance are able to receive it; revitalizes and expands public housing, combats gentrification, exclusionary zoning, segregation, and speculation; strengthens tenants’ rights; provides new grants to create community land trusts and land banks in disinvested communities; combats homelessness by increasing funding for services; and creates a monthly tax credit for renters and first-time homebuyers.

Housing is also a major issue in the presidential election. Joe Biden’s plan includes many of the planks in the People’s Housing Platform. By comparison, President Trump recently ended fair housing rules adopted during the Obama administration, and has yet to issue a housing plan. Whoever wins the election, addressing the housing crisis needs to be a priority in next year’s Congress.

Pakistan’s Mughal Syndrome

Liaquat Ali Khan

In recent years, India has begun to view the Mughals and other Muslim dynasties before them, not as natives but invaders and colonizers. Hindutva’s rise sees even Islam as a foreign religion and the Mughal monuments, including the Taj Mahal, as occupiers’ relics. The 1947 partition takes on new meaning as India reincarnates Hindu glories whitewashing the Muslim rule.

As Hindu India resentfully reevaluates the Muslim takeovers spanning over several centuries, Pakistan takes pride in calling itself a Muslim country though, oddly, without owning the invaders as forefathers. However, progressively, Pakistan is forming closer ties with the Central Asian states, Iran, and Turkey, where the invaders originated. The partition between India and Pakistan is deepening and will continue to do so as India and Pakistan reconnect to their different histories. Except for religion, Bangladesh shares a much more cultural and linguistic history with India than Pakistan. As such, the India-Bangladesh alliance is much more authentic than the Pakistan-Bangladesh partnership.

History

In the early 16^th century, the Muslim descendants of Tamerlane and Genghis Khan invaded the Indian subcontinent via Afghanistan and established the Mughal Empire that lasted over 300 years (1526-1857). The Muslim conquest of the subcontinent began in 711 BCE, when the Muslim Arabs landed in Pakistan (Sind), the year Muslim Arabs entered Spain. For 800 years before the Mughals arrived, Muslim dynasties had been fighting to control the subcontinent. For the first five centuries (711-1192), the invaders mostly remained in Pakistan. More and more, they began to conquer India’s eastern and northern portions. In 1206, Muslim invaders established what is known as the Delhi Sultanate (1206-1526), which lasted for more than three hundred years under various Afghan and Turkic dynasties until the establishment of the Mughal Empire.

The Mughals built upon the achievements of the earlier Muslim dynasties. Together, the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empire ruled Pakistan and various parts of India for over six hundred years (1206-1857). But since 711, Pakistan has been under constant invasions, occupation, ethnic depositing, and religious cleansing. Under the invasions pressures, the Hindus left Lahore and other cities. Thus partition was in slow but steady progression centuries before 1947.

Situated next to Iran, Afghanistan, Turkestan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan – the bastion of invaders– Pakistan has been the stepping stone for the Western adventurers, from Alexander the Great (180 BCE) to the Mughals. All roads to the invasion of the subcontinent passed through Pakistan. After repeated conquests for centuries, Pakistan fundamentally changed into a settlement territory for the invaders and their progeny. “Welcome but keep going East” became Pakistan’s mindset toward the new invaders.

In 1947, Pakistan partitioned off from India as a Muslim country, just as ripe fruit falls off the tree.

Even though Indians and Pakistanis understand each other through a common language called Hindi/Urdu, a language the Mughals launched. Yet, Hindu India is Sanskritization Hindi to separate it from Urdu (a language still alive among Indian Muslims). Being part of Pakistan, Bangladesh also resented Urdu’s imposition over its highly developed language, Bangla, the language of Rabindranath Tagore. (If Islam were not a dividing factor, Bangladesh and West Bengal are inseparable.) However, in the spirit the Mughals intended, Pakistan’s Urdu continues to grow across all provinces. The language of the Mughal Empire was Urdu, so is that of Pakistan, even though 90% of Pakistanis speak Urdu as a second or third language. Pakistan’s Urdu commitment is a connective tissue with the past, with the Mughals. However, Urdu, much like English, is wide open to accept and actively borrow foreign words from other dialects and languages.

In addition to the Urdu commitment, Pakistan seems to have begun relating to the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empire. The Pakistan army names the weapons after the Muslim dynasties. For example, a surface-to-surface ballistic missile is named after Ghauri, the Afghan invader who defeated and killed a Hindu prince and established the Delhi Sultanate in 1206. One short-range missile memorializes Ghaznavi, an Afghan invader who expelled the Hindu ruler from Peshawar. Three cruise missiles memorialize Babur, the Mughal dynasty founder. These names are deliberate attempts to connect Pakistan with Muslim conquerors. Afghanistan objects to these weapons naming on the theory that the named warriors were Afghans, not Pakistanis.

Neither Afghanistan nor Pakistan fully realizes that Pakistan has been a settler territory for the Afghan and Turkic invaders. Much more than India and Bangladesh, but as much as Afghanistan, Pakistan is related to the invaders through geography, culture, languages, religion, and gene pool. Indeed, the invaders’ children (Khans, Ghauris, Khiljis, Tughlaqs, Syeds, Lodis, Suris, and Mughals) have ethnically metamorphosed into Pakistan. Pakistan was born with the Arab invasion of Sind in 711 BCE. It matured and multiplied among the Afghan and Turkic conquests. Pakistan is the entity that the Muslim warriors have jointly manufactured. On the eve of the 1947 partition, Muslims who migrated to Pakistan are, for the most part, ethnically related to Afghan and Turkic dynasties and belong to Pakistan, making it ahistorical to call them muhajirs (immigrants).

Because of its focus on religion rather than history, Pakistan does not rationalize its existence as the continuation of the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empire that the British interrupted for nearly ninety years (1858-1947). Most Pakistanis have sparse knowledge of the Delhi Sultanate or Mughal history. They might not even know that Akbar, the greatest Mughal Emperor, and Emperor Shah Jahan, the builder of the Taj Mahal, were both born in Pakistan. Shahabuddin Ghauri, who established the Delhi Sultanate in 1206, is buried in Jhelum, Pakistan. A dozen or so Mughal and other dynastic architectural monuments exist in and around Lahore — a city that welcomes invaders with open arms– a favorite capital for the early invaders. Some monuments are degenerating into ruins through neglect. Very few Pakistanis express any ownership of these monuments, except the Badshahi Mosque.

Pakistan lives in a self-imposed historical vacuum. Under Islamic influence, Pakistanis, especially the ruling elites and mullahs, idealize the 7^th century Arabs, known as the Prophet’s companions, as their forefathers. However, the same Pakistanis would readily complain that the Pakistani rulers have no matching behaviors with the Islamic forefathers. Even the love for the Arabs, in general, is nonexistent. Pakistanis working in the Gulf States cast Arabs as discriminatory and arrogant. The 7^th century Arabs are indeed the founders of Islam and command respect among Muslims, but they are not Pakistan’s ancestors. Ironically, there is no public or academic embracing of the Muslim dynasties as Pakistan’s forefathers. Nevertheless, as if by genetic determination, Pakistan’s ruling elites display the Mughal syndrome, much more than they know or will likely admit.

The Mughal syndrome is the combined mindset of the Muslim dynasties that invaded the subcontinent, including the Mughals and the Delhi Sultanate’s five dynasties. The syndrome contains several distinct behaviors. Here I discuss three conducts that the Pakistani ruling elites share with the earlier dynastic rulers: (1) foreignization, (2) ayashi (eat, drink, and enjoy), and (3) takht ya takhta (throne or gallows). From Ayub Khan to Imran Khan, the Pakistani rulers have adopted these behaviors. By contrast, the Indian rulers rarely show any of these attitudes, making the Mughal syndrome even more relevant to Pakistan. Unfortunately, Pakistan simplifies history by focusing on Islam, ignoring the motives, violence, and psychology of conquering dynasties.

Foreignization

The Mughals, like prior Muslim dynasties, were indeed foreigners when they invaded India. What is most intriguing is the fact that they aspired to foreignize India. Consider cuisine. Not content with the Hindu vegetarian cuisines, the Mughals imported the Iranian and Central Asian recipes, which had a heavy reliance on rice and meats. Biryani, a concoction of rice, lamb, and spices, now an international food, was a classic Mughal invention. Samosas, chicken tikka, korma, nihari, haleem, and many other popular items sold in the “Indian restaurants” worldwide originated in the Mughal kitchens. While Hindu India is turning vegetarian again, Pakistan takes pride in crafting even more ” foreign” and “exotic” foods, borrowing recipes from Italy, China, and the U.S. fast foods.

Ignoring that India has more than a hundred actively spoken languages in diverse regions, the Mughals imported Persian and Arabic, two vital foreign languages. They planted these foreign languages into a brand new language, Urdu, which revolutionized ordinary conversations, philosophy, and literature. Urdu poetry and lyrics flourished. For decades, Bollywood produced unforgettable Urdu movies and songs. The movie culture might change as India turns inward and indigenous.

The Mughal foreignization was most manifest in the architecture. Even though the Hindu architecture employed in temples was exquisite and sophisticated, the Mughals were not interested. They embarked on building mosques, shrines, gardens, and forts drawing inspiration from the Iranian and Ottoman sources. The Taj Mahal stands out because it has little resemblance to native temples and palaces. Its beauty is nonlocal. The Hindus do have a point in not owning the Taj Mahal. (It is like Native Americans not owning the Mount Rushmore National Memorial).

In fighting for independence from the British Raj, the Hindu and Muslim leaders adopted markedly different styles. Jawaharlal Nehru, the founding father of India, though affluent and erudite, wore native clothing styles, kurta and chooridar pajama. Mahatma Gandhi bared his frail body to connect with the poor and the wretched. By contrast, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, hired an Englishman as chauffeur to drive his Bentley, an Irish man cooked his food, and Jinnah donned nearly 200 custom-made suits and silk ties. Jinnah, like his buddy, Winston Churchill, smoked a pipe. (The British imprisoned Nehru and Gandhi, but never Jinnah). Marketing his playboy fairytales, Imran Khan, the current prime minister, wears shalwar kameez and Peshawari chappel – the local wearings – but as a fashion statement.

Toeing foreignization a la Mughals, within a few years after coming into existence, Pakistan crafted a brand-new city, Islamabad, as its capital. Ayub Khan, the military leader, selected a Greek architect, Constantinos Apostolou Doxiadis, to design Islamabad and its spectacular buildings. This city in panache and layout shares little in common with other cities in Pakistan. Islamabad stands out as a foreign city in Pakistan. Not just Greece, Poland, too, had a hand in Pakistan. Władysław Turowicz, a Polish aristocrat and aviator, was summoned to lay the Pakistan air force academy’s groundwork and lead Pakistan’s space program.

More recently, the foreignization of Pakistan has taken on the Chinese contours. One province has decided to teach Mandarin to children in government schools. Pakistani women are marrying Chinese men. While India is fighting a border war with China, Pakistan is building a new port, Gwadar, on the Arabian Sea to facilitate Chinese trade. Pakistan touts China as its “iron brother for all seasons.” Pakistan’s prior love affair with the U.S has cooled off after receiving repeated rebuffs and sanctions. Still, civilian rulers, military generals, business communities, and bureaucrats dream of sending their children to England and America.

The love of the things foreign is a profound cultural pathos of Pakistan. This attitude is deeply ingrained in the Mughal dynamics that Pakistan inherited through its social veins.

Ayashi

Babur, the Mughal dynasty founder, wrote a line in Farsi, Babur b’aish kosh ka alam dobara niest (Babur live it up as you’d never see this world again), a line that many Pakistanis recite with vicarious joy, but the ruling elites translate it into real action. Muslim dynasties invaded the subcontinent to plunder wealth, just as the British colonizers did. They defeated each other just as the predators do. They taxed the people to upgrade their royal life. The welfare of the people was tangentially relevant only because an affluent populace can pay more taxes.

While some invaders were indeed pious Muslims, piety was no barrier to lavishness. Muslim empires in other parts of the world, the Umayyads, the Abbasids, the Ottoman, and others were mostly luxuriant. Babur, who portrayed himself as an Islamic warrior, loved to drink alcohol, though prohibited in Islam. “I am drunk, officer. But punish me when I am sober” was his favorite retort. Following the Ottoman sultans, Akbar and other Mughal Emperors established harems to house multiple wives and concubines. The jurists generously interpreted Islamic law to allow four wives and unlimited concubines, including Hindu women captured in battles.

For the mighty and the powerful, the law itself is a concubine.

The concept that you acquire the power to do good for the people, the so-called democratic ideal, was rarely part of the imperial mindset. Empires were overwhelmingly vulturine. The ruling elites had no guilt feelings if the people lived in wretched poverty or starved to death while the royal kitchens were crafting new recipes. Muslim empires were no exception to the imperial mindset. The Mughals were ruling a foreign people, and their guilty feelings were as low as would be of the Brits ruling the subcontinent.

Ayashi does not necessarily mean living a sinful life. Ayashi is an entitlement for rulers to use public funds for a luxurious lifestyle. Most importantly, ayashi means indifference as it separates the rulers from the people, undermining the moral paradigm that both must have roughly the same standard of living.

In the pursuit of ayashi, Pakistan’s ruling elites mimic the Mughals. Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who advocated Islamic socialism in the 1970s, belonged to an affluent family, lived like a nawab, and wore custom-made suits. Only ayashi mindset can integrate socialism with an extravagant personal lifestyle. Like Babur, Bhutto adored drinking. And yet, in the name of Islam, Bhutto declared in the Constitution a sizeable Pakistani population, known as Ahmadis, to be non-Muslims, opening the way for their persecution. In physics, Abdus Salam won a Nobel prize but had no recognition in Pakistan because he was an Ahmadi.

Talking repeatedly about the people’s welfare in his speeches, Bilawal Bhutto, Zulfikar’s grandson, lives in a newly built palace in Lahore, Punjab’s capital. In papers, the mansion is a gift that a real estate tycoon has given to the Bhutto dynasty. Frequently gifts legalize illegal money. Bilawal, who spent years in London and Oxford, is more fluent in English than Urdu, maintaining a delightful foreignness. Bilawal refreshes the Mughal syndrome under which foreignness is superior to native accents.

The Sharif dynasty has built their palace in Jati Umra, outside Lahore. One of the world’s wealthiest men, Nawaz Sharif, who has been the Prime Minister for three terms cut short for various reasons, now lives in exile in London in a multi-million dollar apartment. Sharing the Mughal syndrome, Sharif had a knack for building high-speed highways though most people cannot afford to buy even clunkers. After building the Lahore-Islamabad highway, it is rumored that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif would drive his Mercedes at a very high speed, singing with a friend hawa main urta jai mera lal dupatta mulmul ka (my red scarf is fluttering away in the wind). If accurate, this ecstasy, this romance, fit the notion of ayashi.

Prime Minister Imran Khan built his palace outside Islamabad with money he says his wife, an Anglo-French billionaire’s daughter, gifted him before the divorce. Imran, famous for his playboy lifestyle in England, now carries a tasbih, to repeat Allah’s names. While Khan is fond of delivering uneducated sermons on the Medina state and Sufism, another former wife accuses him of getting high on nonpharmaceutical drugs. If true, this duplicity is a classical element of ayashi.

The mansions in which the prime leaders live provide a shocking contrast to how ordinary people live in villages and crowded cities, without clean water, gas, and electricity. This appalling disparity, however, is entirely logical under the notion of ayashi. It is consistent with the Mughal syndrome.

The allure of ayashi trickles down to ministers, bureaucrats, law enforcement agencies, and other government officials. Ayashi breeds corruption, commissions, tax fraud, unlawful collaboration with the business community, as everybody in the government aspires for a lavish lifestyle by any means necessary.

Only the unwise would wonder why Islamabad carries the feel of a royal capital of an economically struggling country. The furniture, the chandeliers, the halls, the courtiers, the servants, the expensive infrastructure revive the Mughal style of lavishness and a clear separation from the people’s lifestyle. If you compare Pakistani rulers’ lifestyles with Indians and Bangladeshis, the contrast is even more astounding.

More than indulgence and material exhibitionism, ayashi is a state of mind embedded in duplicity, apathy, arrogance, and making things harder for ordinary people. Ayashi invites the rulers and their underlings to spend time and energy planning palace coups rather than developing solutions for the people’s social and economic problems. (Even the Pakistani media and prominent TV anchors spend most of their air time talking about real and possible palace coups.)

Takht ya Takhta

Get the throne or be killed.

Throughout India’s Muslim rule, the succession took place through rebellion, capture, exile, and murder. The transition from one king to the next within the same dynasty, or from one dynasty to the other, was frequently filled with violence. In fighting for the throne, Muslims did not hesitate to collaborate with Hindu princes. Takht (throne) ya (or) takhta (gallows) portrays the history of more than ten centuries of Muslim dynasties, including the Mughals.

For example, Babur defeated the Lodi Sultanate (1451-1526) and killed the ruler to change the dynastic rule. Khusru, the beloved son of Emperor Jahangir (1605-1627), rebelled against his father to usurp the throne. Jahangir did not kill the son but blinded him as punishment. When Emperor Shah Jahan (1628-1558), the Taj Mahal builder, fell ill, his sons fought for the throne, and the victor, Aurangzeb (1658-1707), imprisoned the father for nearly eight years until he died in prison.

The Mughals did not invent usurpation or the bloody transfer of power; they sanctified the syndrome. Before them, the various Muslim dynasties were no less violent in succession matters. For example, Razia Sultana (1236-1240), the first female Muslim ruler in the subcontinent, a descendant of the Mamluk dynasty (1206-1290), was popular among the people, but not among the Turkic ruling elites and provincial governors. When she began to assert her authority, such as riding on the elephant in the Delhi streets and demanding power in setting policies, the resentment grew among the nobles. First, she was accused of a nonmarital relationship. Eventually, the nobles overthrew Razia. As the guards deserted Razia, a Hindu mob killed her.

Exile was an essential feature of takht or takhta. The disfavored princes, crown princes, even Mughal Emperors went in exile to regroup or avoid imprisonment and death. Emperor Humayun (1530-1540) retreated to Iran when his brother revolted against him and forced him to exile. He returned to fight for the throne and ruled for a short second term (1555-1556). In 1858, the Brits exiled the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, to Myanmar (Burma), where he died writing sad poetry.

Following the Mughal syndrome, the Pakistani constitutional system has failed to streamline peaceful succession. Three different constitutions (1956, 1962, 1973) have been made, unmade, amended, unamended, and suspended with and without lawful authority. The elected prime ministers have been removed from office, exiled, and hanged. Within three years of independence, the first prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, was assassinated in broad daylight. This chaos looks abnormal only in the absence of historical context, but it is customary if viewed in light of the Muslim dynasties.

The Mughal syndrome, deeply rooted in Pakistan’s social psychology, does not allow a person from an ordinary family to acquire power. A chai-walla can never imagine being Pakistan’s prime minister. The system requires you to show some authentic or feigned “royalty” to claim the throne. You must be a dynasty member or have the dynasty’s blessings to be the chief minister or prime minister.

In the past seventy-three years of Pakistan, three dynasties have surfaced that compete for power: the Bhutto dynasty, the Sharif dynasty, and the military generals as an institutional dynasty.

The Sharif and Bhutto dynasties operate in the form of political parties. Millions of people are their workers and voters. They contest elections. They win and lose elections, though always complaining foul play. What makes them dynasties is that the ultimate decision-making power resides in a dynasty’s family member.

The Bhutto dynasty has survived its founder, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, hanged for the murder of a political opponent. His progeny carries on the Bhutto dynasty. Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, the first Muslim woman, was elected twice (1988-1990, 1993-1996) to the highest office in a Muslim country. In both terms, she received little support from the military dynasty. Furthermore, the Sharif dynasty bitterly opposed Benazir Bhutto and even conspired with the generals and judges to remove her from office.

In 2007, Benazir was assassinated in Islamabad in a suicide bomb attack during the General Musharraf rule. Her assassination was no different from that of Razia Sultana. Most notably, upon her death, a handwritten will surfaced in which she had bequeathed the party leadership to her husband, Asif Ali Zardari. “I would like my husband, Asif Ali Zardari, to lead you in this interim period until you and he decide what is best,” wrote Bhutto. Bilawal Bhutto, then nineteen years old, acquired co-chairmanship of the party with his father. Bilawal is now looking forward to being the prime minister. The Bhutto dynasty has ruled the province of Sindh for the last several decades.

Nawaz Sharif, the founder of the Sharif dynasty, has been elected Pakistan’s prime minister three times. Each time, he could not complete his term. He was either overthrown by the military dynasty or removed from office by the Supreme Court. Additionally, Nawaz Sharif has been imprisoned and exiled. However, he continues to dictate the dynasty in exile from London. Shahbaz Sharif, his brother, has ruled Punjab for decades and hopes to be the next prime minister. The children of the Sharif dynasty are also looking forward to assuming power in Lahore and Islamabad.

The military generals have consolidated the most effective dynasty that has ruled Pakistan for nearly thirty years. If a general takes over, the entire army establishment supports the general. The supportive generals are related to the usurper through the institution without any blood ties.

General Ayub Khan (1958-1969) overthrew the first civilian president and ruled Pakistan for more than ten years. General Zia-ul- Haq (1978-1988) overthrew the first Bhutto government. Much like Emperor Aurangzeb, General Haq launched Islamic fundamentalism, making life difficult for religious minorities. General Pervez Musharraf (1999-2008) overthrew the Sharif government and later detained the Supreme Court judges to suppress legal opposition to his regime. He also forced the Sharif family to leave Pakistan and made them sign an agreement of exile.

Sensing that military coups are no longer acceptable to the international community and that coups trigger economic and weapons sanctions, the military dynasty has found new ways to control the state machinery. The intelligence agencies under the control of the army manipulate politicians to do what they are told to do, including voting in the parliament. The anti-corruption agencies, also under the military thumb, launch corruption cases against out-of-line politicians. Divide and rule politicians work like a charm. The military dynasty even rigs elections to mount a prime minister of their choice. Imran Khan, for example, is the product of rigged elections. He is the first “elected” puppet prime minister that works on behalf of the military dynasty.

Unfortunately, the Supreme Court actively participates in shielding the Mughal syndrome. For most of its history, the Court appears to have aligned with the military dynasty. The Court has legitimized military coups with innovative legal theories, allowing the usurpers even to amend the Constitution. More recently, the Court removed two sitting Prime Ministers for almost frivolous legal reasons, one prime minister belonging to the Bhutto dynasty and the other to the Sharif dynasty. Some Chief Justices assume the executive powers and begin to run the government.

Takht ya takhta also applies to the judiciary. Judges who write opinions to challenge the military dynasty face corruption cases, just as politicians do. Judges are helpless in retrieving the people who disappear. They can offer little assistance when the journalists who expose the dynasties are abducted, imprisoned, or murdered. Judges are threatened with consequences and removed from office if they take on any dynasty. The freedom of the judiciary is subject to the supremacy of the dynasties.

Conclusion

India has reasons to disown the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empire because Muslim warriors occupied a Hindu homeland. However, whether it accepts it or not, Pakistan is the continuation of the Sultanate and the Mughal Empire. Like nature’s laws, the forces of history do not go away; they continue to shape and even determine nations’ dynamics and destiny. Indeed, Hindus converted to Islam, some voluntarily, some by compulsion. Predominantly, though, Pakistan is a land of the progenies of invaders–Greeks, Arabs, Afghans, and Turkic groups propagating for over thirteen centuries. Pakistan started to form in 711, not in 1947.

History demonstrates that the Muslim dynasties enjoyed regal lifestyles regardless of whether the people they govern were doing well. They resorted to mutiny, capture, exile, takeovers, and even murder to acquire the throne. Behind the veil of democracy, Pakistan is dynastic, a continuation of the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empire. The rule of law, peaceful succession, and the constitutional supremacy do not work when the ruling elites engage in ayashi and habitually gamble for takht ya takhta. Pakistan needs a profound self-analysis to counter the historical gravity of the Mughal syndrome.

How Ecuador’s Democracy is Being Suffocated

Vijay Prashad & Pilar Troya

A recent poll showed that if Andrés Arauz Galarza were allowed to run in Ecuador’s presidential election of 2021, he would win in the first round with 45.9 percent of the vote. The pollsters found that Arauz—who was the minister of knowledge and human talent from 2015 to 2017—wins across “all the social strata and regions of the country, with a slight weakness among the richest voters in the country.”

Andrés Arauz entered policymaking and government when Rafael Correa was the president of the country, from 2007 to 2017. A stint at the Central Bank led to a career in the planning department (SENPLADES), before Arauz became a minister in the last two turbulent years of Correa’s government. There was not a whiff of corruption or incompetence around Arauz in his decade of service; when Correa left office, Arauz went to Mexico to pursue a PhD at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

Far behind Arauz in the polls is Guillermo Lasso Mendoza, the candidate of the right. Lasso, who is a wealthy banker, had run against the current President Lenín Moreno in 2017 but lost. He is the consensus candidate of the right wing, which cannot seem to advance his standing in the polls. He sits frozen at 32 percent.

Those polled said that Arauz was by far the most attractive candidate. But, if the ruling bloc in Ecuador has its way, Arauz will not be sworn in as the next president of the country next year. They will use every means to suffocate democracy in their country.

Correa and Moreno

The government of Rafael Correa, who is now living in Belgium, attempted to move a broadly left agenda while in office from 2007 to 2017. The Citizens’ Revolution that Correa led passed a progressive constitution in 2008, which put the principle of good living (buen vivir in Spanish and sumak kawsay in Quechua) at its heart. Government investment to strengthen social and economic rights came alongside a crackdown on corporate (including multinational) corruption. Oil revenue was not parked in foreign banks, but used to invest in education, health care, roads, and other basic infrastructure. From Ecuador’s population of 17 million, nearly 2 million people were lifted out of poverty in the Correa years.

Correa’s government was anathema to the multinational firms—such as the U.S.-based oil company Chevron—and to the Ecuadorian oligarchy. Chevron’s dangerous case for compensation against Ecuador, brought before Correa took office, was nonetheless fiercely resisted by Correa’s government; the Dirty Hand (Mano Negra) campaign put enormous international pressure against Chevron. Chevron worked closely with the U.S. embassy in Quito and the U.S. government to undermine Correa and his campaign against the oil giant. Not only did they want him out, but they wanted the political tradition of the left—called Correistas by shorthand—out as well. Moreno, who was once close to Correa, switched sides and became the main instrument for the fragmentation of the Ecuadorian left.

In the election of 2017, Moreno defeated Guillermo Lasso, who is running again in 2021. But, within a short time, Moreno sharply moved rightward. He worked closely with Lasso in the National Assembly to undermine each advance made by the government of Correa. They defunded education and health care, withdrew labor rights and rights to housing, wanted to sell off Ecuador’s refinery, and deregulated parts of the financial system. A consequence of these policies has been Ecuador’s appalling response, including accusations of deliberate undercounting, to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Attack on the Correistas

Moreno and his right-wing allies needed to inoculate themselves from any criticism. They went on a frontal attack against the Correistas.

The first battleground was to fragment the Correista political organization and to deny the Correistas a political platform. A February 2018 referendum was barreled through the country that allowed the government to destroy the democratic structures of the Consejo Nacional Electoral (CNE), the Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court, the Judiciary Council, the attorney general, the comptroller general, and others. With the assistance of the CNE, Moreno divided and took control of Correa’s party, the Alianza Pais.

When the Correistas tried to regroup and form a party, the institutions of the state blocked them. They said that the proposed names were misleading or that the signatures collected were invalid. By 2019, the Correistas used the Fuerza Compromiso Social platform to run for local elections in 2019. This platform was then banned in 2020.

In Brazil, the oligarchy prevented former president Lula from contesting the 2018 election; that process resulted in a new concept, lawfare—using the law as a political instrument. The same sort of lawfare was used in Ecuador to ensnare Correa and to prevent him from running for office. Correa was accused of bribery—with the bizarre notion of “psychic influence” (influjo psíquico) at the root of the case. The eight-year sentence inflicted upon him prevented him from running for office in Ecuador; that he was in Belgium meant that he could not, however, be arrested and imprisoned.

Election of 2021

The Correistas, using their platform of Union for Hope (Unión por la Esperanza), made an alliance with the Movimiento Centro Democrático to be able to run a candidate for the presidential election of 2021. Arauz won the primaries and was nominated as the presidential candidate. The party decided to have two vice-presidential candidates—both Correa and Carlos Rabascall.

The CNE’s president Diana Atamaint indicated that the CNE would disqualify Correa from the ballot, and even suggested that Arauz’s candidacy is illegal as a consequence of having Correa as his running mate. Matters are at a stalemate, as lawyers scurry about trying to find a solution to this crisis. The CNE has until October 7 to fix the matter. The first round for the election is on February 7, 2021.

The Insanity of Sustainability

Peter Koenig

“Only the Dead Have Seen the End of War” – Plato.

This wisdom is as valid today as it was 2,500 years ago. Wars go on and on. They are exactly the anti-dote of sustainability. Though, they may be the only “sustainability” modern mankind knows – endless destruction, killing, shameless exploitation of Mother Earth and its sentient beings, including humans.

Yes, we are hellbent towards “sustainably”, destroying our planet and all its living beings, with wars and conflicts and shameless exploitation of Mother Earth – and the people who have peacefully inhabited her lands for thousands of years.

All for greed, and more greed. Greed and destruction are certainly “unsustainable” features of our western “civilization”. Not to worry, in the grand scheme of things, Mother Earth will survive. She will cleanse herself by shaking and shedding off the destroyers, the annihilators – mankind. Only the brave will survive. Indigenous people, who have abstained from abject consumerism and instead worshipped Mother Earth and expressed their gratitude to her daily gifts. There are not many such societies left on our planet.

In the meantime, we lie about the sustainability we live in. We lie to ourselves and to the public at large around us. We make believe sustainability is our cause – and we use the term freely and constantly. Most of us don’t even know what it is supposed to mean. “Sustainability” and “sustainable” anything and everything have become slogans; or household words.

Such buzz-words, repeated over and over again, are made for promoting ideas, and for bending people’s minds to believe in something that isn’t.

We pretend and say that we work sustainably, we develop – just about anything we touch – sustainably, and we project the future in a most sustainable way. That’s what we are made to believe by those who coined this most fabulously clever, but untrue term. It is the 101 of a psycho-factory.

As Voltaire so pointedly said, “Those who can make you believe absurdities; can make you commit atrocities.”

Sustainability. What does it mean? It has about as many interpretations as there are people who use the term – namely none specific. It sounds good. Because it has become – well, a household word, ever since the World Bank invented, or rather diverted the term for “sustainable development” in the 1990s, in connection, first, with Global Warming, then with Climate Change – and now back to both.

Imagine! – There was a time at the World Bank – and possibly other institutions, when every page of almost every report had to contain at least once the word “sustainable”, or “sustainability”. Yes, that’s the extent of insanity propagated then – and today, it follows on a global scale, more sophisticated – the corporate world, the mega-polluters make it their buzz-word – our business is sustainable, and we with our products promote sustainability – worldwide.

In fact, sustainable, sustainable growth, sustainable development, sustainable this and sustainable that – was originally coined by the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also known as the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit, the Rio Summit, the Rio Conference, and the Earth Summit – held in Rio de Janeiro from 3 to 14 June in 1992.

The summit is intimately linked to the subsequent drive on Global Warming and Climate Change. It exuded projections of sea level risings, of disappearing cities and land strips, like Florida and New York City, as well as parts of California and many coastal areas and towns in Africa and Asia. It painted endless disasters, droughts, floods and famine as their consequence, if we – mankind – didn’t act. This first of a series of UN environment / climate summits is also closely connected with the UN Agendas 2021 and 2030. The UN Agenda 2030 incorporates or uses as main vehicle – the 17 “Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)”.

In a special UN Conference in 2016, Bill Gates was able to introduce into the 16th SDG “Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels”, the 9th of the 12 sub-targets – “By 2030, provide legal identity for all, including birth registration.”

These 17 sustainable development goals, are all driving towards a Green Agenda, or as some prominent “left” US Democrat-political figures call it, the New Green Deal. It is nothing else but capitalism painted Green, at a horrendous cost for mankind and for the resources of the world. But it is sold under the label of creating a more sustainable world.

Never mind, the enormous amounts of hydrocarbons – the key polluter itself – that will be needed to convert our “black” economy into a Green economy. Simply because we have not developed effective and efficient alternative sources of energy. The main reasons for this are the strong and politically powerful hydrocarbon lobbies.

The energy cost (hydrocarbon-energy from oil and coal) of producing solar panels and windmills is astounding. So, today’s electric cars – Tesla and Co. – are still driven by hydrocarbon produced electricity – plus their batteries made from lithium destroy pristine landscapes, like huge natural salt flats in Bolivia, Argentina, China and elsewhere. The use of these sources of energy is everything but “sustainable”.

According to a study by the European Association for Battery Electric Vehicles commissioned by the European Commission (EC), “The ‘Well-to-Tank’ energy efficiency (from the primary energy source to the electrical plug), taking into account the energy consumed by the production and distribution of the electricity, is estimated at around 37%.“https://ec.europa.eu/transport/sites/transport/files/themes/strategies/
consultations/doc/2009_03_27_future_of_transport/20090408_
eabev_%28scientific_study%29.pdf.
See also Michael Moore’s film “Planet of the Humans” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk11vI-7czE&feature=emb_title .

Hydrogen power is promoted as the panacea of future energy resources. But is it really? Hydrocarbons or fossil fuels today amount to 80% of all energy used worldwide. This is non-renewable and highly polluting energy. Today to produce hydrogen is still mostly dependent on fossil fuels, similar to electricity.

As long as we have purely profit-fueled hydrocarbon lobbies that prevent governments collectively to invest in alternative energy research, like solar energy of the 2nd Generation, i.e. derived from photosynthesis (what plants do), hydrogen production uses more fossil fuels than using straight gas or petrol-derived fuels. Therefore hydrogen, say a hydrogen-driven car, maybe as much as 40% – 50% less efficient than would be a straight electric car. The burden on the environment can be considerably higher. Thus, not sustainable with today’s technology.

To enhance your belief in their slogans of “sustainability”, they put up some windmills or solar cells in the “backyard” of their land- and landscape devastating coal mines. They will be filmed for propaganda purposes along with their “sustainable” buzz-words.
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The World Economic Forum (WEF) and the IMF are fully committed to the idea of the New Green Deal. For them it is not unfettered neoliberal capitalism – and extreme consumerism emanating from it, that is the cause for the world’s environmental and societal breakdown, but the use of polluting energies, like hydrocarbons. They seem to ignore the enormous fossil fuel use to convert to a green energy-driven economy. Or, are they really not aware? Capitalism is OK, we just have to paint it green (see this https://www.globalresearch.ca/great-reset-revisited/5723573, and this https://www.globalresearch.ca/iwf-und-wef-vom-grosen-lockdown-zur-grosen-transformation-covid-19-und-die-folgen/5724357 .
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Let’s look at what else is “sustainable”- or not.

Water use and privatization – Coca Cola tells us their addictive and potentially diabetes-causing soft drinks are produced “sustainably”. They tout sustainability as their sales promotion all over the world. “Our business is sustainable from A to Z. Coco Cola follows a business culture of sustainability.”

They use enormous amounts of pristine clean drinking water – and so does Nestlé to further promote its number One business branch, bottled water. Nestlé has overtaken Coca Cola as the world number One in bottled water. They both use primarily subterranean sources of drinking water – least costly and often rich in minerals. Both of them have made or are about to sign agreements with Brazil’s President to exploit the world’s largest freshwater aquifer, the Guarani, underlaying Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. They both proclaim sustainability.

Both Coca Cola and Nestlé have horror stories in the Global South (i.e. India, Brazil, Mexico and others), as well as in the Global North. Nestlé is in a battle with the municipality of the tiny Osceola Township, in Michigan, where residents complain the Swiss company’s water extraction techniques are ruining the environment. Nestlé pays the State of Michigan US$ 200 to extract 130 million gallons of water per year (2018).

Through over-exploitation both in the Global South and the Global North, especially in the summer, the water table sinks to unattainable levels for the local populations – which are deprived of their water source. Protesting with their government or city officials is often in vain. Corruption is all overarching. – Nothing sustainable here.

These are just two examples of privatizing water for bottling purposes. Privatization of public water supply on a much larger scale is at the core of the issue, carried out mostly in developing countries (the Global South), mainly by French, British, Spanish and US water corporations.

Privatization of water is a socially most unsustainable feat, as it deprives the public, especially the poor, from access to their legitimate water resources. Water is a public good – and water is also a basic human right. On 28 July 2010, through Resolution 64/292, the United Nations General Assembly explicitly recognized the human right to water and sanitation and acknowledged that clean drinking water and sanitation are essential to the realization of all human rights.

The public water use of Nestlé and Coca Cola – and many others, mind you, doesn’t even take account of the trillions of used plastic bottles ending up as uncollected and non-recycled waste, in the sea, fields, forests and on the road sides. Worldwide less than 8% of plastic bottles are recycled. Therefore, nothing of what Nestlé and Coca Cola practice and profess is sustainable. It’s an outright lie.

Petrol industry – BP with its green business emblem, makes believe – visually, every time you pass a BP station – that they are green. PB proclaims that their oil exploration and exploitation is green and environmentally sustainable.

Let’s look at reality. The so far considered largest marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry, was the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. It was a giant industrial disaster that started on April 20, 2010 and lasted to 19 September 2010, in the Gulf of Mexico on the BP-operated Macondo Prospect, spilling about 780,000 cubic meter of raw petroleum over an area of up to 180,000 square kilometers. BP promised a full cleanup. By February 2015 they declared task completed. In reality, two thirds of the spilled oil still remains in the sea and as toxic tar junks along the sea shore and beaches; they have not been cleaned up – and may never be removed. – Where is the sustainability of their promise? Another outright lie.

BP and other oil corporations also have horrendous human rights records – just about everywhere they operate, mostly in Africa and the Middle East, but also in Asia. The abrogation of human rights is also an abrogation of sustainability.

In this essay BP is used as an example for the petrol industry. None of the petrol giants operate sustainably anywhere in the world, and least where water table-destructive fracking is practiced.

Sustainable mining – is another flagrant lie. But it sells well to the blinded people. And most of the civilized world is blinded. Unfortunately. They want to continue in their comfort zone which includes the use of copper, gold and other precious metals and stones, rare earths for ever more sophisticated electronic gear, gadgets and especially military electronically guided precision weaponry – as well as hydrocarbons in one way or another.

Sustainable mining of anything unrenewable is a Big Oxymoron. Anything you take from the earth that is non-renewable is by its nature not sustainable. It’s simply gone. Forever. In addition to the raw material not being renewable, the environmental damage caused by mining – especially gold and copper – is horrendous. Once a mine is exploited in a short 30- or 40-years’ concession, the mining company leaves mountains of contaminated waste, soil and water behind – that takes a thousand years or more to regenerate.

Yet, the industry’s palaver is “sustainability”, and the public buys it.

In fact, our civilization’s sustainability is zero. Aside from the pollution, poisoning and intoxication that we leave around us, our mostly western civilization has used natural resources at the rate of 3 to 4 times in excess of what Mother Earth so generally provides us with. We, the west, had passed the threshold of One in the mid-sixties. In Africa and most of Asia, the rate of depletion is still way below the factor of One, on average somewhere between 0.4 and 0.6.

“Sustainability” is a flash-word, has no meaning in our western civilization. It is pure deception – self-deception, so we may continue with our unsustainable ways of life. That’s what profit-bound capitalism does. It lives today with ever more consumerism, more luxury for the ever-fewer oligarchs – on the resources of tomorrow.

The sustainability of everything is not only a cheap slogan, it’s a ruinous self-deception. A Global Great Reset is indeed needed – but not according to the methods of the IMF and WEF. They would just shovel more resources and assets from the bottom 99.99% to the top few, painting the “new” capitalism a shiny bright green – and fooling the masses. We, The People, must take The Reset in our own hands, with consciousness and responsibility.
So, We the People, forget sustainable but act responsibly.

Troika of Imperialist Projects From NATO, Quad to D-10

Bhabani Shankar Nayak

The colonial and imperialist powers have imposed bipolar world order after the Second World War by establishing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The idea was to destroy every alternative like USSR experiments and establish capitalism as the only political and economic ideology. The hegemonic world politics emanating from it during 1945 to 1953 had created conditions for the growth of the Cold War from 1953 to 1962. The temporary peace during détente has ended with the renewed tension between Washington and Moscow. From the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 to the Euromissile crisis of late 1970s, the world has witnessed the imperialist manoeuvres to dominate political power and control economic resources of the newly independent countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The newly independent postcolonial countries were denied in their attempts to be free from these twin power blocks by following independent foreign policy under the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). The neo-colonial economic policies and imperialist military adventures by the European and American powers have destroyed the abilities of the NAM countries to pursue independent foreign and economic policies. The defeat of American imperialism in Vietnam was a temporary jolt to its imperialist missions. The American imperialism restarted its military engine under the leadership of President Ronald Reagan by establishing international arms race under the programme called ‘Strategic Defence Initiative’ (SDI) led by the NATO on 23 March 1983. The cold war ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 but the imperialist war machine did not stop. It was further strengthened by forming new imperialist alliances after the fall of Soviet Russia in 1991.

The US emerged as the dominant imperialist power after the fall of Soviet Russia. The US and European imperialism led by the NATO has produced deaths and destitutions in Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, Middle East and Latin America. The NATO continues to play a significant role in consolidating American imperialist hegemony till the rise of China as a formidable power, which can challenge the dominance of American imperialism today. The powers in Washington are recklessly on overdrive to reverse the conditions for a multipolar and democratic world order. The salvo of US imperialism is threatening world peace by reviving its anti-Asian imperialist projects by setting up regional and global formations against China. In this new age of imperialism, there is no competition among imperial powers for dominance. The collaborations have replaced competition among erstwhile imperialist and colonial powers. The NATO was the first major form of imperialist collaboration, which continue to exist and expands its military adventures to change political regimes in the name of democracy. In reality, the NATO prefers right wing and authoritarian client states and dictatorial governments. From Asia to Latin America, Middle East, the NATO has played a major role in the withering away of democracy. The groupings and regroupings of nation states by forming economic, political, religious and cultural blocks are shaping new forms of imperialist polyverse within fragile world order.

The imperialist and colonial collective called the NATO as an organisation should have been abandoned after the fall of Soviet Union. But NATO has started consolidating and expanding its based in different forms in the name of expanding free market democracy. From the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) to the creation of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the NATO has played a key role. The military campaign was not enough to defeat alternative forces fighting against the NATO. The anti-Communist Visegrad Group was also established by the NATO to implement its imperialist military ideology. The Central European Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA) was a product of this ideological narrative of the NATO within the framework of free market democracy to consolidate European and American capitalism. The social, economic and political perils of Europe today are products of its own making. The imperialist military-industrial and corporate alliances are destroying liberal democracies in Europe and diminishing its economic strengths by marginalising Europeans. The proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the European Union and the United States is a further consolidation of transatlantic capitalism, which will accelerate further marginalisation of working people in Europe.

The NATO and its ideological frameworks of capitalism, colonialism, imperialism and wars ideologies are deterritorial by nature. Its global ambitions cannot be confined within a territory.  It intends to dominate the world both in political, economic and cultural terms by expanding capitalism alias free market democracy with the brute force of military. It forms alliances with reactionary religious, cultural and political forces to dismantle and replace democracies with dictatorships and authoritarian regimes. The NATO’s wars for democracy are regime change by military means in reality. The wars and conflicts in Latin America, Africa, Middle East and Asia are part of the NATO’s design to establish friendly regimes concomitant with interests of American and European imperialism upholding the interests of the capitalist classes.

The NATO has established an informal strategic forum called the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) between the United States, Japan, Australia and India. The mission and vision of such a strategic forum was shaped by the NATO think tank called the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). The CSIS Alliances and American Leadership Program is pushing the Quad towards a formal military alliance like the NATO in Asia Pacific region. So, the Quad can be called ‘Asian NATO’. The CSIS calls such an alliance as diamond. Shinzo Abe has called it as an “Arc of Freedom and Prosperity”. It sounds exactly like the Charter of Paris for a New Europe based on the principles of the Helsinki Final Act, which proclaimed to ‘build, consolidate and strengthen democracy as the only system of government’. In reality, it accelerated the establishment of unfettered capitalism in Europe. In reality, the Quad (Asian NATO) is against Asia and interests of the Asian people in letter and spirit. The central idea is to contain and destroy Chinese model of economic development by fueling regional wars and conflicts between India and China. It against the peace and prosperity in Asia. It is against regional and world peace. It was informally created during the natural calamity like Tsunami and attempts are being made to formalise it during global health crisis. How does military exercises help in disaster relief and rehabilitation of people? The human tragedies are inseparable part of imperialist designs. The outcomes are not going to be different. If the dreams of the Quad become a reality, it would be a disaster; threatening peace in Asia and destroy prosperity in the world.

The Group of Seven (G7) countries; Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States are expanding their political, economic and regional base by formally adding South Korea, India, and Australia into the group. It is rebranded as new D-10; a group of ten leading democracies in the world. It is promoted by Washington and Westminster to isolate China and its role in world politics and economy. There are no political, economic and ideological coherence between these countries. The anti-Chinese, anti-socialist alternative and unfettered capitalism are three defining binding forces for such an alliance. It does not care about issues of people and their living conditions in these ten countries. The D-10 is an extension of American and European capitalism and its dominance. The countries like Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Poland are going to be occasional participants. Boris Johnson calls it as golden opportunity for ‘Global Britain’.

From NATO, Quad to D-10; the troika of imperialism in all its reincarnations follow its old maxim outlined by Hastings Ismay in 1949. The maxim was to “keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down,”. In 2020, the maxim is to check the rise of peace and prosperity in Asia by fueling conflict between China and India. The conflicts and wars in Asia will accelerate economic growth in America and Europe with the help of defence trade. The military industrial complex will be net beneficiaries at the cost of people, their lives and livelihoods. It will ruin both in their path towards economic and social progress. Historically, old and new imperialisms in all their reincarnations are against peace and human values of freedom and democracy. It is within this context; the world needs an anti-imperialist front to struggle against all forms of imperialism at home and abroad. India and China need to understand and realise these imperialist designs for the fall of Asia again. Therefore, Japan, India and China need to work together for peace by developing mutual trust among themselves and among their immediate neighbours to defeat these new imperialist designs. The regional peace and prosperity in Asia depend on Japan, India and China; whereas world peace depends on its international commitment to fight imperialism in all its forms.