RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/india-is-a-natural-u-s-ally-in-the-new-cold-war-11590600011?mod=opinion_featst_pos1

It’s been an interesting week in India. A heat wave took temperatures up to 117 degrees in the sweltering north. An earthquake shook the northeastern state of Manipur as a massive cyclone slammed into coastal Odisha. Swarms of locusts have descended on cities and farms across the northwest. Record numbers of new cases were reported in India’s rapidly escalating Covid-19 epidemic. Meanwhile, villagers in Kashmir spotted and captured a “spy pigeon” with a coded message attached to a ring on its leg. As the code has not yet been broken, the pigeon’s mission remains unknown. Despite both a costly lockdown and a continuing surge in new Covid cases, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi continues to dominate the political scene, with approval ratings of 80% or more in recent polls.

With the emerging cold war between the U.S. and China threatening to become the new central axis of world politics, the subcontinent has been pulled into the storm. Chinese and Indian troops have clashed this spring and the standoff continues. Pakistan is among the largest recipients of Chinese Belt and Road Initiative investments. Swallowing whatever qualms the Islamists among Pakistan’s leadership have about the plight of the Uighurs, the country has turned increasingly to China for aid, trade and diplomatic support. That is hardly surprising. With a population of 212 million and a gross domestic product of $325 billion, Pakistan can only maintain its rivalry with India (population 1.35 billion, GDP $2.7 trillion) with the help of a great-power ally.

American strategists, meanwhile, are anxiously—and correctly—keeping a close watch on India’s development. A wealthy, powerful and democratic India would help frustrate China’s hegemonic ambitions and substantially offset Chinese influence in Central Asia, Southeast Asia and Africa. The stronger India becomes the less the U.S. must contribute to a balancing coalition of India, Japan, Australia and Vietnam that keeps Chinese ambitions in check.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/a-china-india-border-clash-as-beijing-aims-for-regional-hegemony/

Surrounded on all sides by foes, Xi Jinping faces mounting obstacles to his goal of ‘national rejuvenation.’

As China reopens its economy after months of lockdowns, the country’s leadership has initiated a broad offensive to expand its influence at home and abroad. A new Hong Kong security law that attemps to stamp out dissent in the autonomous region sparked another round of anti-Mainland protests. Meanwhile, China has scaled up military exercises in the Yellow Sea, which will extend into the South China Sea this summer. Now a standoff between forces on the Sino–Indian border has opened a new front in Beijing’s offensive. This latest development in a decades-old dispute between the world’s two most populous countries underscores the myriad obstacles that Chinese president Xi Jinping faces in his goal of “national rejuvenation.”

Over the past month, China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has reportedly moved at least 5,000 troops to the “Line of Actual Control,” which demarcates the border between China and India. The mobilization of troops to the Galwan River valley, on the westernmost border between the two countries, led to a clash on May 5, when Chinese and Indian forces engaged in fisticuffs and stone-throwing. In keeping with Sino–Indian border protocols, both sides were unarmed, but the skirmish — and another in the Naku La region near Tibet on May 12 — left several troops injured.

http://www.settimananews.it/politica/italy-and-its-productive-or-parasitic-new-left-thinking/

Perhaps there is a broader and deeper theoretical design behind the daily havoc caused by the ruling coalition in Italy, made up of the M5S (Five Star Movement) and the PD (Democratic Party): the effort to rebuild a new left.

In fact, with the end of the Cold War, the idea of an overall change to the production system that would abolish capitalism disappeared. From here, the drive of Western social-democratic groups that had asked for and obtained a part of redistribution of income also gradually slowed down.

In the past, on the one hand, the social-democratic groups had freed “the proletarian masses” from the lure of the communist sirens. On the other, they increased the standard of living of the middle class, which had become the backbone of the West.

The end of the communist alternative also weakened the pressure on Western business classes to redistribute wealth. The social divide has deepened, and the search for continuous uninterrupted economic growth is the only task entrusted to politicians. Once growth stops, the temporary social pact between voters and a political leader is broken, and other politicians are voted in.

These are the themes dear to a neo-Marxist like Thomas Piketty but also to the Church and to the great religions that almost institutionally care about the poor masses.

Perhaps this is the opinion of PD guru Goffredo Bettini, who is also fascinated by and a scholar of the experience of the neo-populist party of Thaksin Shinawatra in Thailand. Clinging to the populism of the M5S, strengthening it in the PD, and transforming it into popular thought can be an interesting strategic idea. It would seek to embolden and expand an endangered middle class.