Opinion

Asia’s GDP expected to grow 4.5 pct in 2023: report

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The weighted real GDP growth rate of Asia in 2023 is estimated to be 4.5 percent, an increase from 4.2 percent in 2022, according to a report released by the Boao Forum for Asia Tuesday.

As a major engine of the world economy, Asian economies are accelerating the pace in overall economic recovery in 2023, making it a standout performer in view of the global economic slowdown, said the report titled “Asian Economic Outlook and Integration Progress.”

According to the report, China and India would contribute half of the world’s growth this year, citing data from the International Monetary Fund.

Despite a deteriorating global labor market in 2023, the employment situation in Asia, particularly in East Asia, may turn out better than expected, according to the report.

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What’s the Best Way Out from the War in Ukraine?

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In view of the recent geopolitical upheavals, and particularly the war in Ukraine, it does not make sense (and does not promise much success) to build a new global security architecture based on the logic of a bipolar confrontation for several reasons…

Firstly, a principal prerequisite for success of a confrontational “conflict strategy”—a far-reaching identity of interests with politically aligned conceptions—is not given in the Western, democratic camp.

As long as the USA is deeply divided, it is difficult for the European partners to fully rely on it. And despite the rapid joint reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian war of aggression, the cohesion of the EU is by no means assured.

Differing levels of concern and different opinions as to what action to take with regard to economic consequences of the war—as well as the large-scale energy crisis in Europe illustrate the potential for conflict rather than agreement within Europe.

Secondly, a lasting “conflict strategy” is inherently dangerous because of its potential for military escalation. Even the use of nuclear weapons has become a real risk as a result of Putin’s threats and increasing American involvement in the conflict.

And finally, coping with climate change (which will pose an existential threat to many people) and significantly reducing global poverty (which will increase in the coming years as a result of climate change and war) are much more difficult problems to solve in a confrontational bipolar environment.

Cornerstones of a Modern Policy of Détente

Instead of global confrontation (now often said to be underway between the world’s democracies and authoritarian regimes), it is important to develop an alternative international policy that, on the one hand, counters the new military threats, and on the other hand, enables a new quality of global cooperation to combat climate change, global poverty and the expected large-scale famines.

The détente policy of Willy Brandt and Egon Bahr is by no means outdated in this context. On the contrary, it offers important lessons learned for the new policy of global cooperation that needs to be developed.

The policy of détente which overcame a system of confrontation was never based on a naïve belief—such as those embedded in Democratic Peace Theory—that mutual benefits of economic cooperation would create interdependencies that would make it pointless for the states involved to wage wars against one another.

The policy of detente was not based on a belief in the peaceful nature of the Soviet Union. Rather, détente required a realistic picture of the interests of the states involved.

At the same time, it was anchored in an age of nuclear weapons, and the assessment, because of that, that a war between the Communist and Democratic systems could have no winner and must be prevented at all costs.

This was linked to efforts to enshrine the maintenance of the territorial integrity of all states in international law. The strength of the law would replace the ancient view that, as Thucydides wrote, “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”

International organizations such as the UN or the OSCE were given central importance. Militarily, the policy of détente was based on sufficient deterrence capabilities and the need for mutual arms control and disarmament agreement to be binding.

This was based on the realization that security can only be guaranteed in the long term if we work with rather than against each-other, as Bahr noted in the Palme Report 1982: ‘Doctrine of Common Security.’

Economic cooperation between the two blocs, which intensified over time, served to strengthen the mutual benefits of working together. The policy of détente did not develop its effectiveness overnight, but was able to assert itself in a lengthy diplomatic process.

Incidentally, the starting point was the Cuban Missile Crisis, which was the result of a previous phase of confrontational politics between the USA and the Soviet Union, and which led the world to the nuclear abyss. These elements were joined in the 1980s by the concept of comprehensive security. This was based on the simple realization that lasting peace can only be achieved if important causes of conflict such as environmental damage and hunger are fought at the same time.

Certainly, in today’s multipolar world, it will be more difficult to conceive a modern policy of detente in detail. In addition, there are no undisputed hegemonic powers in their respective camps today; on the contrary, there is a dispute over global hegemony between the USA and China.

But solving these conflicts requires taking into account the changes of the international community in the last few decades, even if these are not yet underpinned by adequate political implementation strategies.

With the adoption of the Paris climate agreement, the international community recognized that climate change can only be stopped if all states give climate protection a top priority. And the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN, which are repeatedly emphasized, also show that development must benefit everyone.

Current Fields of Action

In relation to the current situation, this results in the following fields of action from my point of view:

Certainly, military, political and economic support for Ukraine will have to continue. However, it must be ensured that neither the EU states nor NATO become a war party.

That sets limits on arms deliveries.

It is also important that parallel diplomatic initiatives are repeatedly taken in order to avoid devastating escalations of the war, to make humanitarian aid possible and to achieve a ceasefire as a starting point for peace negotiations. The negotiations on grain exports and the efforts to ensure the safety of the nuclear power plant in Zaporizhia show that diplomacy can be successful.

And at the last UN General Assembly in December, important countries in the world community such as China and India spoke out in favor of diplomatic initiatives to end the war.

The decision to significantly improve the defense capabilities of the European nations is another step in the right direction.

However, this must not be the beginning of a permanent spiral of military rearmament. Abstract stipulations that the defense budget of the NATO countries should permanently be two percent of GDP are nonsense, especially since the European NATO countries already spend three times as much money on armaments as Russia.

Attempts that the European states should also engage militarily in the Indo-Pacific region should also be rejected.

And efforts must be stepped up today to reach international agreements on disarmament and arms control both in Europe and globally.

All steps in this context should be taken in close consultation within the EU.

It is self-evident that Germany, as the largest and economically strongest EU member state, is of particular importance. Above all, however, this means that Germany must take the initiative.

However, this should not be confused with a German leadership role that some people are calling for. In the EU, for the foreseeable future there cannot and will not be leading countries on the one hand and being-led countries on the other.

The EU must not limit its engagement to the European continent. As a major civil and economic power, the EU is destined to play a prominent role in creating a multilateral order of justice that should focus on combating climate change and combating poverty and famine worldwide.

In light of the serious destabilization caused by the Russian war of aggression, such a modern policy of detente cannot in the short term lead to a new, stable peace order, neither in Europe nor globally.

Detente requires a systematic step-by-step, while possible setbacks will have to be coped with by efforts to de-escalate and solve the conflict even if there are no blueprints for steps to be taken. However, these steps should apply the lessons learned from détente rather than pursuing a policy of confrontation that may look simpler but would ultimately be devastating.

This article is distributed by Globetrotter in partnership with the American Committee for U.S.-Russia Accord (ACURA).

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Sabotage of Nord Stream won’t go unpunished

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Next Monday, an uneasy anniversary arrives. It will be 20 years since the invasion of Iraq by the United States. Britain was a pillar of the US-led ‘coalition of the willing.’ The Guardian columnist John Harris wrote on Sunday that it was “the greatest political and humanitarian disaster the UK had been involved in since the second world war… when the supposed political centre ground suddenly lurched somewhere reckless and catastrophic.” 

The Iraq War caused endless violence and huge levels of death. Ironically, it was Seymour Hersh who exposed that horrific chronicle of torture in the Abu Ghraib by the US troops that shocked the world.

Harris made a debatable point that Iraq War had “profound effects” on the UK. He listed, amongst them, “a sense that politics and power had lurched away from the public, and left a huge and very uneasy gap.” Maybe he is right, but for the wrong reasons. As time passed, Iraq War made Britain’s party politics look farcical.

Britain today has a UniParty — the party of government, which seems to consist of the same people as the party of the opposition. Britain has reached where the US has been for quite some time  — a cabal of political elites hijacking the country, operating its own agenda, regardless of which political party is formally in power — and the people at large having lost control of their government. That is why crimes like Abu Ghraib and Nord Stream go unpunished.

On March 3, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had a top secret one-on-one with Biden in the Oval Office in what appears to have been an attempt, among other things, to reach a consensus on how to handle Hersh’s explosive report on the sabotage of Nord Stream. (Read my blog Ukraine: A war to end all wars in Europe.)

Look at the sequence of events: Four days after Scholz met Biden, New York Times carried a sensational media leak regarding Nord Stream, attributing the sabotage to a “pro-Ukrainian group” consisting of five men and one woman who used a yacht rented in Poland. 

The vessel was later found by German investigators — also a media leak in Berlin — and turned out to be the Andromeda, a Bavaria C50 sailing boat. The group reportedly embarked on their mission from Rostock on September 6, 2022. The equipment for the secret operation was allegedly transported to the port in a truck. 

Germany’s Die Zeit backed the Times narrative in real time. But the narrative itself is riddled with discrepancies. Questions are galore: How could a 15-meter chartered yacht have possibly carried an estimated 1,500-2,000 kilograms of explosives required for the sabotage? How could Andromeda, which doesn’t have a crane, hoist  such massive quantities of explosives safely into the water? 

A Russian analysis points out that “the site of the explosion, the Baltic Sea, is about 80 meters deep, which requires special diving equipment, including air tanks with a helium-oxygen mixture and pure oxygen. All in all, one would need 30 litres of a special gas mixture for one dive alone, which means there must have been dozens of bottles on board. In addition, there should have been a decompression chamber for the divers, something that the yacht is not fit for. Furthermore, it would have taken several dives and a few days to lay the explosives on the pipelines. It’s hard to imagine that these activities would have gone completely unnoticed.” 

The Times news desk evidently didn’t do any fact check. But on March 10, the chair of the Bundestag’s intelligence oversight committee, Konstantin von Notz from the Green Party, told Die Zeit that what happened was likely a “state-backed act of terrorism” and was likely conducted by a “state or quasi-state actor.” 

Scholz is skating on thin ice. He heads a coalition of Atlanticists. But Germany is not yet a UniParty country. Besides, unlike in the US or the UK, in the German political system, the public prosecutor who is investigating the Nord Stream sabotage is an autonomous entity who can’t be ordered around by politicians in power.  

The German defence minister Boris Pistorius’ reaction to the Times report shows it — that Germans don’t yet know whether this was a Ukrainian commando that acted with the knowledge of the Ukrainian government, a pro-Ukrainian group that acted without their knowledge, or whether it might have been a false flag operation. Berlin apparently doesn’t exclude official Ukrainian involvement. 

Scapegoating comes handy for Washington in such situations as an exit strategy. A report in Politico on Sunday distanced the Biden Administration from the Ukrainian regime of Zelensky, and Nord Stream sabotage is mentioned there as one of three reasons for the “growing differences behind the scenes” between Washington and Kiev. 

For the present, though, there seems to be a tacit understanding between Biden and Scholz that they will not tear each other up over this matter. As for Zelensky, he probably has no option but to play the role of a scapegoat when necessary.

By mentioning Nord Stream as a matter of discord between Washington and Kiev, the Politico report seems to hint to Zelensky that this is a high stakes game affecting transatlantic unity and scapegoat may become necessary. 

Meanwhile, instead of pointing finger at Washington, the Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev  was non-committal  on Sunday, saying, “I emphasise that any accusations that are not supported by the results of an impartial investigation cannot be trusted. Therefore, Moscow insists on an objective investigation with the participation of Russia and other interested countries. Without this, voicing one-sided subjective versions of the terrorist attack does not explain anything.” 

Patrushev has virtually challenged the Biden-Scholz tandem. To be sure, an impartial investigation will have political consequences. For one thing, German public opinion is relatively fickle on the issue of weapons deliveries. Second, Scholz cannot afford a perception that he is in collusion with Biden.

Of course, if it is established that a Ukrainian commando unit or an American outfit was responsible for the sabotage, the political consequences will be massive. German public may demand stoppage of arms supplies to Ukraine. On the other hand, if the US is responsible, the current renaissance in German-American ties will simply wither away.

Scholz is yet to understand that Transatlanticism is not the defining characteristic of the Democratic Party. His fate may turn out to be the same as Tony Blair’s. Harris wrote that the effects of Blair’s deceptions rippled on all the way to Brexit.

To quote him, “Iraq hideously sullied Blair and [Gordon] Brown’s domestic record and marked the end of the New Labour vision of Britain as a young, confident country. It reduced the fantasies of “liberal interventionism” to ash, and deepened the disaffection and unease that would lead to our exit from Europe.”

Handelsblatt newspaper in a report last Thursday pointed out that the investigation on Nord Stream may play politically into the hands of the far-left and the far-right in German politics. Can Scholz survive the deception over Nord Stream sabotage? If Ukraine is implicated, there is no going back for Germany.

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Corrupt Politicians Are Known to Be Shameless but Now Fearless Too

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The respect  and public esteem that politicians commanded in India was at the highest level , when they were fighting for the freedom of the country from British rule under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi. The freedom  for India was attained in 1947.  At that time, ethics and morals were considered as cardinal principles of politics.

Many stalwarts  with high level of personal integrity  and  lofty  principles and commitment to national cause such as Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Vallabhai Patel, C. Rajagopalachari and so many others   were on the scene ,  who were respected  even by the Britishers and even as the  Britishers  harassed  them and put them in jail for their freedom struggle.

After independence in 1947, for around 15 years or so  ,  reasonably high level of standards were maintained in the Indian politics . However, with the passing away of the freedom fighters one by one who were replaced by next generation politicians , standards of politics started declining in the country.

The deterioration steadily became more  severe by the  year 1980  and beyond  when  corruption level amongst politicians  reached  alarming level and  became the order of the   day. People started losing faith and started thinking    that politicians remaining honest  would be an exception rather than a rule in India. 

In the year 2014 national elections, Mr. Modi campaigned strongly and promised to root out corruption in India in every sphere. As people were desperately looking for such  commitment from a political leader, people responded and Mr. Modi became the Prime Minister of India.

Again in the year 2019, Mr. Modi was elected  as Prime Minister of India ,  as people continued to believe that Mr. Modi could be the political leader who can root out corruption in India.  While Mr. Modi’s Prime Ministership is being applauded or criticised for several reasons, the ground reality is that most people are   impressed about the personal integrity of Mr. Modi and his success in leading the central government without any charges of corruption or nepotism against anyone of his ministers.

Mr. Modi is attempting to checkmate corruption by promoting transparency in administration , digitalisation of transactions, direct transfer  of subsidies to poor people  etc. But, corruption continues to prevail in India today.

Certainly, in the coming 2024 national election, by and large , people would evaluate Mr. Modi’s performance  based on his efforts to root out corruption in India.

Corruption free India nowhere looks   like emerging in the near future, inspite of the dent that Mr. Mod has made  in  the corruption climate in the country to some extent.  The challenge for Mr. Modi in  fighting corruption is  in reforming the calibre of  politicians in India . 

The problem is that majority of  politicians in India today are shameless  and do not think that indulging in corruption is anything wrong.  Now, further deterioration is seen  that these corrupt politicians are not only shameless but are  also becoming fearless.  Some of them seem to think that going to jail on corruption charges would  not be a bad idea , as they seem to think that they could gain  people’s sympathy and get their  votes. What sort of mindset is this?

Everyone of the politician who have indulged in corruption which are very obvious  , call  the investigation against their misdeeds  as  vendetta , when  enforcement agencies catch them on some solid ground. Instead of feeling disturbed and shameful  for being investigated against and the charges against them certainly credible , the corrupt politicians  challenge the government and call the actions against them  as vindictive  and motivated.   With money power at their disposal , they are able to organise demonstration and protest  meetings  and issue false narratives  to mislead the gullible public.  Media is full of stories about corrupt politicians being hauled up and these corrupt politicians defending themselves and with no sense of shame or fear.

It remains to be seen how Mr. Modi would deal with such shameless and fearless corrupt politicians . Putting them down is a pre condition to ensure near corruption free in India.

The challenge before Mr. Modi is grim and he has to  live upto his reputation a s a crusader against corruption, before the forthcoming 2024 national election.

Obviously, Mr. Modi  has to be ruthless in dealing with the corrupt politicians, whether they  belong  to the  opposition political parties  or his own political party. One may think that  in the type of political climate in India today, where corruption  has become a rule rather an exception  and where corruption is no more confined to politics alone but also have trickled to all sorts of business activities at different level, Mr. Modi’s ruthless approach against corrupt politicians would   be met with fierce resistance.

The task is really daunting, as   several political parties are now  really controlled by dynastic   persons (family members ) ,  who  adopt all sort of strategies to amass wealth  by foul means and to protect their family interests  . In such conditions,  it has become necessary not only to catch the corrupt politicians but also their family members.

It remains to be seen as to whether  such anti corruption efforts would lead to a situation, where  Mr. Modi  would go down  by failing or go up by succeeding

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The devastation of war and the G-20 summit

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The last world war brought the world to the brink of destruction. At that time, the world leadership of the time came forward to return to the path of peace. Today, that responsibility has fallen on world leaders. Everyone has to play an active role in making the world peaceful, prosperous and safe. This is what is needed most at the moment. Due to the conflict in Ukraine, climate change and the global crisis of the Covid pandemic, supply systems around the world are on the brink of collapse. There are shortages of daily necessities around the world. All around moaning. The plight of the poor in every country is dire. Especially poor countries are under threat. Daily life has become difficult for them. Undoubtedly, multilateral institutions like the United Nations have failed to deal with this crisis.

All have failed in the necessary reforms. Because of that, the expectations of the world’s people towards the G20 leadership have increased. In the last conference, Indonesian President Joko Yudodo called for unity and said, we have no other way. Saving the world requires cooperation. The G20 should act as a catalyst for economic recovery. It is not right to divide the world into different parts. We cannot walk down the path of being embroiled in another “age war”. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi said at the G-20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, that everyone should find a way to end the war in Ukraine. That responsibility is on everyone today. This is not a time for war. Everyone should try to find ways to get back on the diplomatic track. Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine on February 24, 2022 against the US-led imperialist war alliance NATO’s continued expansion into Eastern Europe and Ukraine’s complicity in that plot. And this is where the global recession began.

Developed Western countries including America, Britain, Germany, France have been helping Ukraine with weapons, technology and other necessary aspects since the beginning. According to Russia, the goal of the imperialist camp was to put Ukraine on the path to conflict and seize Russia’s vast natural resources. Just like in the past, the Americans recklessly attacked Arab countries like Iraq and Libya. During the discussion at the UN, India’s representative also pointed out the limitations of the proposal. He said, the proposal is not compatible with New Delhi’s desired solution to end the war that has been going on for more than a year and for a far-reaching peace. In fact, Russia also knows that occupying Ukraine is no longer possible. And anti-Russian Western countries also need to understand that overthrowing Putin is not so simple. If Putin is cornered, the whole world, including Ukraine, may become more miserable in the future. China is on Putin’s side. This relationship between the President of China and Putin is not a personal matter. It should be seen from the perspective of international politics. Now in this situation the G-20 conference was held in India. In the first week of March, the meeting of the foreign ministers of the G20 member countries was held. Bangladesh also got special importance there as a special invited country. The main reason for Bangladesh’s importance is its geo-strategic position. At the same time, financial and social progress of Bangladesh in this subcontinent and good relations with India. The heads of state of the Western countries, including US President Joe Biden, who have visited Kiev, now have only one goal to provide more weapons to Ukraine.

Even European countries like Switzerland and Sweden, which were the pioneers of the peace process, have now joined the ranks of these arms suppliers. There is no disagreement that what Russia is doing under the leadership of Vladimir Putin is wrong. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Putin and publicly urged him to stop the war. He did not support this war. But does continuing to arm Ukraine and fuel the conflict bear a message of peace? A year has passed since the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The destruction still continues. The damage is only increasing every moment. This Russian attack is not only destroying Ukraine’s economy, but also damaging the world’s prospects for recovery in the post-Covid era.

Protracted war can take dire shape at any moment. It is necessary for all countries to take initiative to stop the war immediately. But do we see that initiative as much as it needs? Meanwhile, India did not vote again on the resolution brought to the United Nations regarding the Russia-Ukraine war. Out of the 193 member states of the General Assembly, 141 countries voted in favor of the resolution. Seven countries voted against. And a total of 32 countries including India, China, Bangladesh abstained from voting. Now abstaining from this vote does not mean that India and Bangladesh are supporting this Russian aggression. Whatever India is doing in terms of its foreign policy, it is doing it in dialogue with Bangladesh, in consultation with Bangladesh. In this regard, the anti-war foreign policy of India and Bangladesh seems to be quite compatible.

Another recent sign of this diplomacy is that the nuclear power equipment of Bangladesh, which has been delayed for a long time, was not arriving in Bangladesh, which was supposed to come to Bangladesh from Russia and was stopped midway, in opposition to NATO, openly opposed by the United States. Now it appears that it is reaching Bangladesh. And reaching through India. That is, India is also doing a diplomatic mission in this regard and India has made arrangements to deliver the equipment due to Bangladesh. Therefore, equipment for Rooppur nuclear power plant is coming from Russia via India. As previously discussed, it was later stalled for some time due to US pressure. But India managed to uncomplicate it through diplomatic missions. As a result, the relationship between India and Bangladesh is getting stronger. This situation has further progressed at the G-20 summit in Delhi. Recently National Security Advisor Ajit Doval went to Russia. He met with Putin and Russian representatives. The most important fact is that despite being Russia’s friend, China has also taken a new initiative to stop this war. China has started a mission in this regard. China’s statement is that this time Russia should also follow the path of peace. A discussion should be started, so that different states go on the path of discussion like this. Why is China taking this initiative? This is because China also understands that if this war is not allowed to stop, the situation will worsen. The situation of China’s terrible conflict with America will become more complicated. And anyway, China is not ready for any war. Not for World War III. Narendra Modi has also started a track two dialogue with China. The discussion also suggested that Russia should stop the war in Ukraine and that Russia should not be targeted again by Ukraine. Modi has also created an environment for talks with China’s Xi Jinping to build that understanding with the western countries as well. There is a possibility that this peace message will be created around the summit of G-20.

Discussions have even started in India’s diplomatic circles about the solution formula to stop the Modi-Xi Jinping war. However, the G20 is the forum of the world’s major developed and developing economies. The forum is a platform for discussion on various global issues such as global economy as well as climate change mitigation and sustainable development. G20 countries control about 85 percent of global GDP. Members of this group also control more than 75 percent of global trade. Besides, this alliance is also full of human resources. About two-thirds of the world’s total population are members of this group. The Group of Twenty or G-20 was formed in 1999 in the wake of the global economic crisis. It was basically a meeting of finance ministers of various states and central bank governors. The aim of the meeting was to formulate effective policies to solve the global economic and financial crisis. At present, the summits of this forum are attended by the heads of state, finance ministers, foreign ministers and senior government officials of each member country. Therefore, there has been a lot of discussion in this conference to establish world peace. Russia-Ukraine war, Sino-US tensions, rising inflation, threat of recession in global economy, nuclear threat from North Korea and the most alarming thing is rising global temperature.

But the G-20 alliance must play an influential role in ending the war. The next generation cannot be pushed into another Cold War. A 16-page conference resolution said most members strongly condemned the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia. It also states that the war is causing immense human suffering and putting a strain on the global economy. Keeping these considerations in mind, all the leaders coming to the G-20 conference this year will be active in solving the crisis through discussion instead of war – this is the expectation of the people of the world.

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Sri Lanka: Taxing Times

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“…we emphasise that we won’t hesitate at all to unite with all health workers and take tough measures which can paralyse the entire hospital system against this unfair wage cut.”

Statement by the GMOA (23.2.2023)

Sri Lanka’s poorest of the poor, their lives devastated by economic collapse, may face a killer blow soon: a crippling of the public health system.

That GMOA is planning to ‘paralyse the entire hospital system’ in protest against a government decision to institute a ‘wage cut’. Needless to say, ‘the hospital system’ they are planning to paralyse is the public one, used by those Lankans who constitute the bottommost layers of the income totem pole. The fee-levying private health care system, used by middle and upper layers of society, including politicians, will function smoothly. The very doctors who refuse to treat patients in government hospitals will attend to their private practices with usual assiduity.

Hippocrates and our own physician-king Buddhadasa, who, according to legend, stopped a royal progress to treat a sick cobra, would turn in their graves at the conduct of these medical merchants.

We excoriate politicians, and rightly so, for their unconscionable and irresponsible conduct, for their greed and their willingness to risk the safety and wellbeing of citizens who sustain them. Are the doctors, who threaten to hold the poorest of the poor hostage to win a wage demand, any better?  

The UNP president and the SLPP government will probably condemn the doctors’ strike because they are in power. Had they been in opposition, they wouldn’t have.

Will the SJB, the JVP, and sundry opposition parties have the moral and political courage to ask the doctors not to penalise the already pulverised poor in order to win a wage demand? Will Sajith Premadasa, Anura Kumara Dissanayake or Dulles Alahapperuma possess the decency to tell the doctors to find another weapon to attack the government with?

The doctors’ demand may be just. But their tactic is supremely unjust. Weaponizing poor patients is heartless and malicious at any time, doubly so in the midst of a calamitous economic crisis. The strike won’t hurt politicians. It will hurt the fiscally impoverished 36% of the population who are missing meals and missing school, the 600,000 families who might lose access to power thanks to the recent electricity hike. The very people, who through indirect taxes, helped fund the medical education of these doctors. 

When President Gotabaya and PM Mahinda Rajapaksa reduced health expenditure in the midst of a pandemic, the GMOA doctors remained mute. They were too busy enjoying the rich fruits of Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s 2019 tax cut, the first step in Sri Lanka’s fast-track to bankruptcy. The GMOA bosses were probably among those who whispered sweet lies about tax cuts and instant growth into the ignorant ears of the former Lt. Colonel.

In Sri Lanka’s avoidable tragedy, the only bad guys are not the politicians. The rot in the political class is a reflection of a widespread and deep-going societal malaise. The politicians are the most culpable. But none of us voting age citizens are completely innocent. If any solution is to work, if any change is to be effective, it must move beyond the simplistic formula of bad politicians and good everyone-else and confront special and vested interests, from monks and military to professionals and privileged trade unions.

Are there other predators apart from politicians?

According to the latest IHP survey, while no political leader has a net favourability rating, in a general election, the NPP/JVP and the SJB will win a plurality.

Stirring oratory and pie-in-the-sky promises apart, how will a NPP/JVP or SJB government apportion the economic and social costs of recovery? The answer will depend mostly on how the tax burden is distributed. And on this seminal matter, the SJB and the NPP/JVP fudges at best. The SJB talks about reducing direct taxes for the uppermost bracket, while remaining silent about which income segment/s will have to pick the extra tab for that tax break. The NPP/JVP criticises the current imbalance between direct and indirect taxes, promises to correct it, but says nothing about how.

The reason is obvious. Neither party wants to anger those professional groups who are demanding tax cuts for themselves.

The demonstrating professionals are not saying they don’t want to pay higher taxes to fund such government waste as the silly Janaraja Perahara or the huge stable of cabinet, deputy, and state ministers. The government – any government – must be held to account about how public funds are used. But that is not what the protesting professionals are doing. They don’t want to pay higher taxes, period; irrespective of the identity of the president or the hue of the government. Their reasons have nothing to do with how government borrow and spend and everything to do with how they themselves have lived beyond their means. They too, like successive governments, have borrowed heavily to sustain an unsustainable lifestyle. They want to continue that lifestyle, even as the poorest of the poor are starving. That is the burden of their tax-song. And their tax song will remain unchanged irrespective of who sits in the president’s chair and who forms the government. What is Ranil’s headache today could be Sajith’s or Anura’s headache tomorrrow, if either leader achieves his presidential ambitions.

The Australian TV channel, ABC News did a feature on Finland’s education system. Arguably the best in the world, it is completely free. Not just the teaching, but also lunches, books, and excursions. Teachers are highly paid; teaching is one of the most sought after professions, and one of the hardest to get into. As a school principal told the interviewer, “Schools can’t raise private funds or to charge fees from parents. All schools are equitably funded from taxation” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xCe2m0kiSg).

Finland has one of the highest direct tax rates in the world. And this high rate came into being not after the country became developed but before. From 1945 to 1951, when Finland was dirt-poor and war-devastated, about one third of public revenue was generated through income and wealth taxes. (https://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10224/3553/pihkala26-47.pdf?sequence=1). That money was used to build free health and education systems of the highest quality, which in turn helped the country to escape poverty without falling into the debt trap.

Taxation, argues Thomas Picketty, in Capital and Ideology, played the leading role in West’s economic triumph over the East. Based on a wealth of data, he points out that by the end of the 15th Century Oriental and Occidental powers were evenly balanced. The West took its great leaps upwards firstly from 1500 to 1800 and secondly from 1930 to 1980. Both were enabled by increases in tax income. Chinese and Ottoman empires declined because their tax revenues remained low. Japan was the only exception, Prof Picketty points out, with higher taxes being a major pillar of its Meiji reforms.

Taxation is not the only issue. The recent electricity hike which disproportionately burdens the poor was caused not only by political corruption but also by the wasteful way in which the CEB was run for decades. Wages for excess workers, bonuses despite huge annual losses, and other privileges all added up to push the unit cost of electricity sky high. Now more than half a million poor families might be pushed back into the kuppi lamp era in consequence.

State owned enterprises (SOEs) were supposed to rescue consumers from exploitative practices of private entrepreneurs. But in Sri Lanka, SOE officials and trade unions have themselves turned predator, preying on citizens. Several recent directives provide examples of how these groups battened themselves on public funds. One ended the practice of top government officials taking their official vehicles home at retirement. Another prevented officials from holding their retirement parties at state expense. A third directed all officials to travel economy class and not business. Are these unearned and unjust privileges only the tip of the iceberg? How come no trade union screamed about these high-way-robbery type practices? Is their silence indicative of a mutually beneficial understanding of the plunder-and-let-plunder variety?

 ]          When rulers are hegemonic, they transplant their own values and beliefs on to the society they rule; and by doing so successfully, they manage to maintain their moments of hegemony longer. From an addiction to unearned privileges to tax phobia, from anti-compassion to indecency, we are still Rajapaksa children.

During a recent parliamentary debate, when MP Rohini Wijeratne was speaking, a parliamentarian was heard scolding her in filth. The Speaker remained silent, during and after. Not a single opposition parliamentarian intervened to defend their colleague. This is what the Rajapaksas have brought the country down to. Unless the President orders the miscreant to apologise publicly (and removes him from his ministry if he happens to be the education minister), unless the opposition in one voice demands such action, then, even if the last member of the Rajapaksa clan departs politics, Sri Lanka will remain a Rajapaksa land.

Why elections?

Mahinda Rajapaksa is correct, for once. The real reason President Wickremesinghe scuttled the local government election was not economics but politics.

In 2020, the timing of the general election became a bone of contention between the Rajapaksa government and the Opposition. The government, knowing it was on a winning streak, wanted to hold elections as soon as possible, despite the pandemic. The Opposition, citing the pandemic, wanted the election to be postponed. The Opposition’s argument was more factual; having an election in the midst of a pandemic was risky. But the real reason the Opposition wanted a postponement was the fear of losing.

Now the opposition wants an immediate local government election because it believes it is ahead politically. The wisdom of spending so much money on an LG election in the midst of an economic devastation is not even considered. In truth, their much shouted fidelity to democracy is but a cover for power. If the SJB was clearly ahead and the NPP/JVP trailing way behind, the latter wouldn’t have been so averse to a postponement and vice versa. And Ranil Wickremesinghe would have found the money for the election somehow, if he thought the UNP could come first. This is how real priorities are decided. This is why Sri Lanka is unlikely to do better in the future than it did in the past.

Elections are necessary for democratic health. But democratic health cannot be reduced to periodic elections. Moreover, if there are powerful groups with vested interests who claim that they have the ultimate right in deciding how a country is run, a democracy’s health becomes precarious, with or without periodic elections. In many countries, it is the military which arrogates unto itself such political veto powers. In Sri Lanka, so far, it is the Buddhist clergy.

During their anti-devolution demonstration outside parliament, several monks argued that the president should not implement the 13th Amendment in full because the chief prelates are opposed to it. In a subsequent interview with a You Tube channel, two leading political monks, Ulapane Sumangala thero and Akmeemana Dayaratne thero reiterated the argument. The former said, “Even if the entire parliament agrees we won’t allow the 13th to be implemented. If 13th is given the country will become a lake of blood.”

Sri Lanka’s bloated military might become a threat to democracy in the future (especially if politicians continue their constant bickering, making an exhausted public turn to the Uniformed Man for salvation). The Buddhist clergy is an actual threat to democracy now. They insist on having the final say in every matter, from how much devolution Tamils should be given to how much sex education children should be taught. (The answer to both is none; no devolution, no sex-education, we are Sinhala Buddhists). The monks obviously think Sri Lanka is a Sinhala-Buddhist Iran and they are the Sinhala-Buddhist ayatollahs. If every measure needs saffron sanction, why bother with elections or parliaments? Why not save a lot of money by asking the chief prelates to run the show?

Given the key role political monks played in Ceylon/Sri Lanka’s downward trajectory right up to the re-election of the Rajapaksas in 2019 and 2020, their undiminished determination to interfere in governance poses a real danger to the prospects of recovery. If political and societal leaders lack the courage to stand up to rampaging monks and other vested interests (civilian and military), what hope for the future, irrespective of which party comes to office and which politicians hold power?

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Is Lip Sympathy Enough for Harassed Women in Afghanistan and Iran?

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Both men and women are children  of God  and obviously,  God has created men and women to compliment each other. The fact is that men need women and women need men and why  should men  think that they are superior to women in any way.

In all religions including  Islam,  nowhere it has been  said that  women should be subjected to any particular restriction by men.

While  practices of  denying liberty to women  by men were there all over the world in earlier days, most religions  and most countries have changed such approach over the years and reformed themselves.  Unfortunately, this is yet to happen  adequately in a few Islamic countries.

Holy Quran in several observations and guidelines have stressed the importance of women’s role and  insisted how women should be respected and their liberty should be ensured.

Due to inadequate understanding of the essential sayings  of Holy Quran and consequent misinterpretation, some Islamic countries , particularly Iran and Afghanistan have imposed extreme  restrictions on women even today.  Leadership of such countries are certainly acting against the tenets of Holy Quran.

Today, dress restriction for women is prevalent in several Islamic countries and muslim women are not allowed to pray in mosque where men offer prayers. The practice of muslim  man marrying several women   is prevalent  in several Islamic countries. Even in  secular countries like  India  , this practice is followed to some extent . In such countries, if muslim women were to defy   defy such   stressful conditions and insist on  their liberty to live as per their choice like the  other women in developed  countries , they could be harassed by muslim men in some cases . Such liberty craving muslim women would  be accused of violating the practices of Islam  , which is not true.

The recent protest by muslim women in Iran refusing to wear Hijab was put down   with force by the Iranian government. It appears that  such protesting muslim women have now been forced to go silent  by the authorities.

In the case of Afghanistan, the Taliban government is insisting that women should not go for higher education and   even insist that women should not go to the male doctor for medical treatment whatever may be the severity of the illness. Are not all these practices obnoxious?  While in Afghanistan too there are some protests by muslim women against such restrictions, it appears that the protests of the muslim women have been silenced now by  the strong arm of the government.

The question is whether they would be any relief for such muslim women at all in these countries at any time in future.

Unfortunately,  so far,  only lip sympathy have been shown by rest of the world for these suffering muslim women. As usual , world body United Nations Organisation has passed some non binding condemnation about the harassment of  muslim women  in some countries and some women  associations  across the world have passed resolutions condemning the harassment of muslim women. These steps have not resulted in any tangible and real benefits to the suffering muslim women in   some Islamic countries.  In other words, the world opinion is virtually impotent  and the views expressed are nothing more than mere scrap of paper on which they are printed.

This is a very unfortunate situation today, where the leadership of the government in countries , where women are put to such harassment,  do not care for world opinion.  In this process , the fair name of the Islam religion in getting internationally  tarnished. 

To defend the liberty of the muslim women,  war is not an option against such countries under the control of merciless people with extreme views on the principles of Islam. 

At least, sort of strong international economic sanctions can  be imposed on such countries to make the government behave.  This has not been done in any meaningful way.

The muslim men  across the world who understand that Islam advocates respect for womenhood and not harassment of women and who value the reputation of Islam as a progressive religion , should voice their protest strongly against the harassment of muslim women in Afghanistan and Iran. . The silence of such progressive muslim men is evident and their protest is conspicuous by absence. It is high time that the world wide movement to restore the dignity of muslim women should be launched by progressive muslim men, that will have full support of the civilized world and would enjoy the grateful gratitude of harassed muslim women.

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Younger generation bears future of S. Korea-China relations

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by Kwon Ki-sik

As recorded in The Analects of Confucius, “At thirty, I planted my feet firm upon the ground.” Last year marked the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between South Korea and China. The past 30 years have witnessed leapfrog development of bilateral exchanges in politics, economy, culture and other fields, although there have been some setbacks.

Looking into the future, South Korea and China need to promote bilateral relations towards a more mature and stable direction, and people-to-people exchanges, particularly between the youths, are expected to play an indispensable role in bolstering bilateral exchanges.

South Korea and China are neighbours with a long history of friendly exchanges. Over the past 30 years, exchanges and cooperation in various fields have deepened, with two-way trade hitting new records, and the annual mutual visits above 10 million before the pandemic.

Nowadays, you can find Chinese street food in Daelim-dong, a district in western Seoul, where young people eat skewers of meat and drink Tsingtao beer. Meanwhile, in the far away Korean restaurants in the Wangjing area in east Beijing, young Chinese people also enjoy Korean barbecue bulgogi and alcohol Soju. This is a clear manifestation of friendly relations between our two countries since the establishment of diplomatic ties.

Standing at a new historical starting point, South Korea-China relations are faced with both new opportunities and challenges. I believe that both our two countries are within the East Asian cultural sphere, enjoy a long history of friendly exchanges, and bilateral relations feature strong resilience and great potential. We should take a long-term and far-sighted view, as well as give priority to friendly cooperation to develop our relations and bring our people closer to each other.

 Generally, exchanges between local governments or public institutions of different countries are a supplement to communication between central governments, and serve as a bridge to strengthen local cooperation and enhance mutual understanding and friendship. South Korea and China should also step up public diplomacy and people-to-people dialogue, which will greatly help boost bilateral exchanges and bring our people closer.

I would like to stress that the young generation, in their prime, bears the future of South Korea-China relations and shoulders the responsibility of carrying forward our traditional friendship and opening a new chapter of cooperation.

More exchange platforms and communication channels need to be provided for our young people, including Generation MZ, roughly those born from the 1980s into the 2010s. I hope that our young people, with mutual understanding, tolerance and appreciation, will focus on friendly cooperation between our two countries and make more positive contributions to a win-win situation.

With both real and fake news spreading across social media, I believe that face-to-face communication between young people is an effective way for them to learn to distinguish truth from falsity and think objectively, instead of being blinded by false and one-sided reports, which may affect bilateral relations.

The past three decades have proved that economic and trade cooperation act as a ballast for the growth of bilateral relations. Given that economic complementarity between our two countries has presented huge potential for cooperation, pursuing mutually beneficial cooperation and exploring cooperation in new areas is the right path for our two countries to jointly seek prosperity and achieve success.

Developing South Korea-China relations requires efforts lasting for generations. I believe that as long as we respect each other’s core interests, bilateral relations will make greater progress in the next three decades.

Editor’s note: Kwon Ki-sik is the head of the Korea-China City Friendship Association and was a visiting scholar at Peking University of China in 2022.

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The True Test of a Civilisation Is the Absence of Anxiety About Health

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A few years ago, a minor medical problem took me to the Hospital Alemán-Nicaragüense in Nicaragua’s capital, Managua. While I was being treated, I asked the doctor, a kindly older man, if the hospital had been built in association with a German missionary organisation, given its name (in Spanish, alemán means ‘German’). No, he said: this hospital used to be called the Carlos Marx Hospital, and it was built in collaboration with the German Democratic Republic (DDR), or East Germany, in the 1980s. The DDR worked with Nicaragua’s Sandinista government to build the hospital in the working-class area of Xolotlán, where three hundred thousand people lived without access to health care. A massive solidarity campaign in the DDR helped raise funds for the project, and East German medical professionals travelled to Xolotlán to set up a camp of provisional medical tents before beginning construction. The brick-and-mortar hospital opened on 23 July 1985.

When the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) took power in 1979, the revolutionaries inherited a country where infant mortality rates had skyrocketed to 82 per thousand live births (which would be the highest rate in the world today) and where health care was a privilege restricted to a small minority of the population. Besides, by the time the FSLN rode into Managua, whatever health care apparatus had been built by the regime of the Somoza family during their 43-year rule had been shattered: the 1972 earthquake destroyed 70% of the city’s buildings, including the military and Baptist hospitals and most of its health care facilities. The Carlos Marx Hospital was an act of immense solidarity by the socialists, built in Managua on the ruins of a society brutalised by the country’s oligarchy and by their enablers in Washington (as US President Franklin D. Roosevelt said in 1939 of the dictator at the time, ‘Somoza may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch’). Socialist internationalism, from the DDR’s assistance to the efforts of Cuban medical personnel, along with the development of the Sandinista health campaigns, markedly improved the lives of Nicaraguans.

I was reminded of the Carlos Marx Hospital by the newest edition in our series Studies on the DDR, jointly produced by Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and the Internationale Forschungsstelle DDR (IFDDR) and entitled ‘Socialism Is the Best Prophylaxis’: The German Democratic Republic’s Health Care System. The information about the Carlos Marx Hospital comes from a brief section in the study on the DDR’s international medical solidarity, which also included, among many other examples, building a hospital in Vietnam during the US war on that country and training thousands of doctors from across the Third World in the DDR. But the study is not focused on medical solidarity, which was a part of the DDR’s wider socialist internationalism that will be taken up in a later edition in the series.

The study is about the DDR’s attempt to create a humane and just health care system in a country devastated by World War II, with few resources available (and a population one-third the size of West Germany’s). The title of the study, ‘Socialism Is the Best Prophylaxis’, comes from a statement made by Dr. Maxim Zetkin (1883–1965), the son of the communist and international women’s rights activist Clara Zetkin (1857–1933). Zetkin’s words became a widely propagated slogan in the DDR and the leitmotif for the public health care system that the DDR sought to build with and for its population, emphasising that health care must be preventative, or prophylactic, and not reactive, or merely concerned with treating illness and injury after they occur. Truly preventative care did not reduce health to medical treatment but focused on the general well-being of the population by continuously improving living and working conditions. The DDR recognised that health must be understood as a social responsibility and a priority in all policies, from workplace safety to women’s universal access to reproductive care, nutrition and check-ups in kindergarten and school, and the need to guarantee holidays for the working class. But Zetkin’s quote also highlights how preventive care can only be realised by a system that eliminates the profit motive, which inevitably results in the exploitation of care workers, inflated prices, patents on life-saving medication, and artificial scarcity.

The DDR created a network of medical institutions that worked to improve diet and lifestyle as well as to identify and treat ailments early on rather than wait for them to develop into more severe illnesses. All of this had to be built in a heavily sanctioned country where the physical infrastructure had been destroyed by the war and where many doctors fled to the West (largely because roughly 45 percent of German physicians had been Nazi Party members, and they knew that they would be treated leniently in the West while they would likely be prosecuted in the DDR and in the Soviet Union).

The DDR’s commitment to comprehensive health care was based on the idea of social medicine (Sozialhygiene), developed by the founder of modern pathology Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902) to examine the socio-political determinants of health, and on the Soviet Semashko ‘single payer’ health care system, developed by Nikolai Semashko, People’s Commissar for Health in the Soviet Union from 1918 to 1930.

Among the key aspects of the DDR’s health care system detailed in our study are polyclinics and the community nurse system. When a person in the DDR felt sick, that person would go to a polyclinic, which would be located within their neighbourhood or workplace. Any person could walk into the polyclinic, inform the staff of their ailment, and see a doctor, who would, in turn, direct them to one of the clinic’s many specialist departments (such as internal medicine, oral medicine, gynaecology, surgery, paediatrics, and general medicine). Medical professionals were publicly employed and remunerated and could thus focus on healing the patient rather than on prescribing unnecessary tests and medicines simply to overbill insurance companies or the patients. The different medical professionals and specialists who worked in a single polyclinic consulted each other to find the best course of treatment. Furthermore, on average, 18 to 19 doctors worked in each clinic, allowing for extended hours of operations.

The DDR was not the only place to build a health care system based on this kind of socialist polyclinic format: two years ago, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research published dossier no. 25 on the polyclinics run by communists in the Telugu-speaking regions of India, entitled People’s Polyclinics: The Initiative of the Telugu Communist Movement. The most vital aspect of these polyclinics for our time is that no money was exchanged for care (which is particularly notable in India, where there are extraordinarily high out-of-pocket expenses for health care).

One paragraph in our study stopped me in my tracks:

In order to extend preventive care to rural areas and scattered villages, rural outpatient centres were built and staffed with up to three doctors, with the number of these facilities rising from 250 in 1953 to 433 by 1989. In many towns, physicians worked in public medical practices or temporarily staffed field offices to provide residents with consultation hours and home visits, while mobile dental clinics visited remote villages to provide all children with preventive care. In addition, the profession of the community nurse was developed in the early 1950s to alleviate the initial shortage of doctors in the countryside, with the number of community nurses expanding from 3,571 in 1953 to 5,585 by 1989. This extensive rural infrastructure helped to provide less densely populated regions with medical services comparable to what was available in urban areas.

In 2015, the International Labour Organisation published a report that found that 56 per cent of rural population worldwide lacks health coverage, with the highest deficit found in Africa, followed by Latin America and Asia. Meanwhile, in the DDR – which lasted a mere forty-one years, from 1949 to 1990 – the socialist project built a rural health care system that linked every resident to the polyclinics in nearby towns through the Gemeindeschwester (community nurse) system. The nurse would get to know every one of the residents in the village, give preliminary diagnoses, and either offer treatments or await the weekly visit of a doctor to each village. When the DDR was dismantled and absorbed into unified Germany in 1990, the community nurse system was disbanded, all 5,585 community nurses were laid off, and rural health care in the country collapsed.

We hope you will join us in an online panel discussion on February 28 to discuss how socialist systems of the past and present have transformed health care to serve the needs of the people rather than profit.

Northwest of Managua, in the city of León, lived the poet Alfonso Cortés (1893–1969), who had been declared ‘mad’ at the age of 34 and chained in his bedroom. Another of Nicaragua’s great poets, Ernesto Cardenal (1925–2020), grew up not far from the home of Cortés. As a child, Cardenal said he used to walk by the Cortés home from the Christian Brothers School and once he saw the ‘poeta loco’ in his chains. A lack of health care condemned Cortés to this humiliation. On one occasion, on his way to see a doctor in Managua, Cortés was driven past a thousand-year-old Genízaro tree in Nagarote, a tree to whom the ‘poeta loco’ wrote a beautiful poem of hope:

I love you, old tree, because at all hours,
you generate mysteries and destinies
in the voice of the afternoon winds
or the birds at dawn.

You who the public plaza decorate,
thinking thoughts more divine
than those of man, indicating the paths
with your proud and sonorous branches.

Genízaro, your old scars
where, like an in an old book, it is written

what time does in its constant falling;

But your leaves are fresh and happy
and you make your treetop tremble into infinity
while humankind goes forward.

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The Case for Diplomacy in Ukraine

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As 2023 unfolds, we fear that American policy will continue to be characterized by both mission creep and the absence of any sort of diplomatic engagement with Russia.

Throughout the course of the war, the Biden administration has slowly, steadily, even stealthily increased America’s involvement. Calls from Kiev for more and more weapons have, at every turn, been met with President Biden’s acquiescence. Meantime, Congress has continued in its decades-long abdication of its constitutional responsibilities, opting instead to act as a rubber stamp on ever-increasing amounts of financial and military assistance to Ukraine. All the while, Kiev’s appetite has grown larger with the eating.

First went the Javelin anti-tank missiles, sent to Ukraine by President Donald Trump. Then came the Russian invasion and demands for M777 Howitzers; and Bradley fighting vehicles; and Patriot missiles; and HIMARS; and NSAMS; and M1 Abrams tanks; and long-range GLSDBs.

Kiev is now demanding the delivery of F-16s fighter jets.

Will we soon see the demand for American ground troops? If so, will we witness any political will in Washington to refuse such a request?

Whatever the case, it is worth keeping in mind that the true beneficiaries of Washington’s spending bonanza have been executives in the C-suites of Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, as well as those companies that are part of the network of what we might term “soft-power for-profits.”

Withal, there remains an alternative path the Biden administration might take as the year unfolds.

Writing in 1947, at the beginning of the first Cold War, the journalist and grand strategist Walter Lippmann observed that, “The history of diplomacy is the history of relations among rival powers, which did not enjoy political intimacy, and did not respond to appeals to common purposes. Nevertheless, there have been settlements.”

American diplomacy has too often been an exercise in strong-arming our friends (should they dare question Washington’s prerogatives) or toppling (either covertly or overtly) our perceived enemies, under Mr. Biden and his immediate predecessors, the practice of American diplomacy has been discounted and marginalized; even, thanks to the effects of the largely contrived Russiagate scandal, criminalized.

And while it is true that the ultimate responsibility for the war in Ukraine falls on the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, it is painful to recall that Mr. Biden and his predecessors were presented with numerous opportunities to avoid the current catastrophe.

Yet when presented with such opportunities, to back the Minsk peace process for instance, Washington has unfailingly demurred. When presented with a mainly reasonable draft treaty by the Russians in December of 2021, the Biden administration refused to even consider it. When presented with peace plans after the war began, Washington and its allies channeled the spirit of Melville’s Bartleby and declared that they would “prefer not to.”

At this juncture, with Russia at the start of a new offensive, we believe diplomatic engagement is the only moral and realistic policy available to President Biden and his advisors.

We hope they pursue it.

Source: Independent Media Institute

Credit Line: This article is distributed by Globetrotter in partnership with ACURA. 

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