Straws In The Wind: September Edition

US Political Leadership Comes More and More to Resemble the Soviets of the early 1980s

From the mid 1970s to the mid 1980s, the leadership of the Soviet Union came to resemble that of a retirement home for those of advanced age. The ageing Brezhnev, who had ruled since 1964, suffered rapidly deteriorating health from 1975 onwards but refused to give up his position as leader until his death in 1982 at the age of 76. He was followed by Andropov, who within 4 months of taking power suffered kidney failure and staggered on in a hospital bed until his death in 1984, at the age of 70. Then there was Chernenko, who only lasted a year until he died at the age of 73. Then of course in 1985 came the “youthful” 54-year old Gorbachev who wrecked everything.

That the Soviet leaders tended to expire in their 70s is quite possibly due to the gargantuan amounts of alcohol consumed in such times. In the US political leadership, a person in their 70s could even be considered to be sprightly! Joe Biden will be 81 in November, Donald Trump is 77, Chuck Schumer (Senate Majority Leader) is a sprightly 72, Mitch McConnel (Senate Minority Leader) a sprightly 81, Dianne Feinstein is 90 and in her 6^th senate term. As age progresses, the brain and body tend to deteriorate as we have witnessed in a number of cases. This is the Senate Majority Leader displaying his higher reasoning powers, analyzed by a neurologist:

Dianne Feinstein needing someone to explain to her how to vote during a hearing, she very recently died in office at the age of 90.

And then of course there is the cognitively brilliant US President:

He will be 82 in November 2024, and 86 in November 2028. If Donald Trump becomes the next president, he will be 78 when he takes the office and 82 when he leaves. Another parallel is the length of time senior members of the Congress have been in power given the lack of term limits; many have been there for decades. Joe Biden had been in the Senate since 1973 before becoming president in 2021. Many of the senior members of the Congress have been together as a team for as long as Brezhnev and his buddies ruled the USSR.

The other parallel is the open corruption of the elites; although the corrupt practices of the Soviet leadership pale in comparison to the magnificent scale of those in the US. The insider trading of politicians that deal with share price sensitive information is of course openly tolerated. At the same time, politicians swap political donations for political decisions advantageous to those providing the donations. Repeatedly, senior US politicians have been found to have broken the law with Democratic Senator Bob Menendez being one of the most recent and most blatant as he refuses to resign after his indictment. A search of his house found US$480,000 in cash and even gold bars, which he tried to explain as “emergency” money; perhaps “emergency flight” money? Of course, those actually indicted are simply the greedier, and less subtle and sophisticated of the operators. The washing of vast amounts of public money through the Military Industrial Complex and other boondoggles, repaid through donations, “consultancy” work, book deals and post-Congress board positions is an art practised by most if not all members of the US Congress. If members of Congress are not rich before they enter, they tend to be by the time they leave!

Who will be the “young” new leader to preside over the fall of the USSA? It seems that Kamala Harris’ name may be off the list, even though she seems to qualify via cognitive impairment already!

Whoever becomes president in 2028 may go down as the Gorbachev of the USSA.

US Shoots at China and Blows Off Its Own Foot

Ford recently stopped construction on a new EV battery plant in the US that it was building with the global leading EV battery company, CATL. This comes after increasing pressure from politicians for Ford to not work with Chinese EV battery suppliers. Given that the Chinese suppliers dominate the EV battery market, and are on the leading edge of the technology, the position taken by the US politicians is one of self-harming. Just as Europe self-harmed by cutting itself off from cheap Russian fossil fuel supplies, now the US is self-harming by cutting itself off from market dominating Chinese EV battery suppliers (CATL had a 36.6% global market share Jan-July 2023, BYD 16%, CALB 4.5%). The only other major EV battery makers are LG (South Korea 14.2%) and Panasonic (Japan 7.3%).

This is in addition to the export restrictions on US chip technology that has spurred Chinese companies and the state to develop their own fully Chinese chip technologies. One result has been the most recent Huawei phone that overcomes the US sanctions that hobbled its handset business a few years ago. This will be a major shock to the US Mafia-State, and we cannot expect even greater escalations against Huawei. But with China now becoming independent of Western chip technology it may retaliate against companies such as Apple that makes at least 20% of its profits in China. It will also be a major shock to the US company Qualcomm, who will now both lose major orders to Huawei and possibly face competition in the handset OEM market from the new Huawei chip; the US is creating its own competitors through the sanctions.

This issue will only get worse as time progresses, as the combination of massive private and state research funding combined with China’s colossal pool of technologists and its advanced manufacturing capabilities overcome one Western technology sector after another. It did not need to be this way, as Chinese companies were happy to buy Western technologies such as microchips rather than develop them themselves, but now the US has forced Chinese corporations into becoming competitors to US technology firms.

The Diaspora Problem for Canadian Foreign Policy

Prior to WW2 Ukrainian immigrants to Canada tended to be politically on the left, but this changed after the world war as Canada welcomed in increasing numbers of right-wing Ukrainian nationalists; including even thousands of outright Nazis who served in the Ukrainian Waffen SS. With the support of the Canadian state the right-wing Ukrainian nationalists have come to dominate Canadian-Ukrainian institutions. There are approximately 1.4 million Ukrainian Canadians, about 4% of the population. Their impact is greatly enhanced by their concentration in certain areas, such as around Edmonton, Alberta and Oakville, Ontario; giving them a decisive impact in certain parliamentary constituencies. It is in Edmonton and Oakville that monuments to the Waffen SS Galicia division can be found. The real background and war crimes of these ex-Waffen SS soldiers was whitewashed by a 1986 federal government inquiry, part of a history of such whitewashing by the Canadian state which has had a long relationship with the Ukrainian far right.

There are also 800,000 Sikhs in Canada, about 2% of the population, but again concentrated in certain areas such as Brampton (Ontario), Surrey (British Columbia), Calgary and Edmonton (Alberta). The Khalistan separatist movement is considered to be a terrorist outfit by the Indian government but has a significant representation within the Indian Sikh Canadian community, even though the separatists represent a small minority of the overall Indian Sikh population. Both the Canadian prime minister Trudeau, and the head of the NDP Jagmeet Singh (himself a Sikh) have links to the separatist group in Canada.

These two diasporas are having an outsized impact upon Canadian foreign policy, to the point that the Canadian government is harming Canadian foreign relations in its pandering to these two communities. The impact with respect to the Ukrainian conflict has been very obvious, with the grand-daughter of a Nazi-collaborator leading the charge against Russia from her position as finance minister. A man that she was very close to, and whose role with the Nazis she has never acknowledged. This reached its logical conclusion with the invitation of a Waffen SS war criminal to the Canadian parliamentary chamber to be applauded by Canadian MPs.

The Speaker of the House has now resigned over this, but can it really be believed that other members of the government did not have prior knowledge of this man’s past? Of course, support for Ukraine was still reiterated even though it is a fascist regime that celebrates the murderers of the OUN and its leader Stepan Bandera. The road to Babi Yar, the site of a massacre of Ukrainian Jews was even named after Bandera, and Ukrainian soldiers and citizens openly display Nazi symbols and talk about the ethnic cleansing of Eastern Ukraine. The Canadian government, and all of the Canadian political parties, are all in with their support for this fascist regime claiming they are fighting for “freedom” and “democracy”; Big Brother would have been proud of the rendering of such terms meaningless.

With respect to the Khalistan separatist movement, the Canadian government has deeply harmed its relationship with India by publicly claiming that Indian state forces murdered a Sikh Canadian in Canada, while housing wanted Khalistan separatists within Canada.

This is a very dangerous game even with respect to domestic politics as the Indian Hindu population is growing rapidly in Canada; recently surpassing that of the Sikh community. With the current very high levels of Canadian immigration (500,000+ per year) and the fact that India is the largest source of such immigrants (27% in 2022) the balance may rapidly shift in favour of Hindu Indians in future years. The Khalistan separatist movement may then become an important and divisive element in Canadian domestic politics. With respect to Canada’s international position, it is noticeable how much Canada’s allies are standing aside from this dispute.

The Indian Development Crisis

Earlier this year, the journal India Forum published an article that detailed the falling investment rate in manufacturing in the country and the stagnant share of manufacturing in the Indian economy for the past three decades (from 1991 when the Indian economy was liberalized, the end of the License Raj). From having a greater level of industrialization than other countries at the same GDP level in 1981, India is now an outlier to the downside within its GDP grouping. India has had growth without development, as the take-off of industrialization never happened; in great contrast to a China which became the workshop of the world with over double the share of manufacturing in its GDP. India’s neighbours of Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam are all ahead of it now in the race to industrialize.

In the second decade of the new century, India’s GDP growth rate decelerated toward 5% per annum, a rate far too low for a country as poor as India (US$2,389 at market exchange rates, US$8,379 at PPP). It has fallen far behind China (US$12,720 and US$21,476), Russia (US$15,345 and US$36,485), Malaysia (US$11,972 and US$33,434), Thailand (US$6,909 and US$20,672), Indonesia (US$4,788 and US$14,653) and Vietnam (US$4,164 and US$13,457). It is only marginally ahead of Bangladesh (US$2,688 and US$7,395) which has a booming textile industry to offset its shortage in arable land, and Pakistan (US$1,597 and US$6,437) which is beset with many problems.

Without the mass employment provided by manufacturing, which cannot be offset by the service export sector (e.g. IT and call centers), any increases in the efficiency of agriculture can only result in vast numbers of workless poor adding to city populations. “Cities of Slums” surrounding a small modern core as seen so much in Africa, rather than the increasingly wealthy cities that can now be seen across South East Asia. At the same time, the oligarchical, neoliberal, and extractive nature of the country’s ruling class does not provide the kind of development state that other nations have required for their successful development. In effect, India may be a giant in population but a giant with extremely limited manufacturing muscularity; a nation where growth does not equal development. To make matters worse, even the agricultural sector is struggling.

This lack of development creates a great chasm between the geopolitical visions of the Indian ruling class and the actual economic heft of the nation. The lack of manufacturing capability has also created a structural and growing dependence upon China, which is directly at odds with India’s foreign policy of independence; especially from what it sees as its main regional rival. The reality is that India has already lost the regional battle, but its ruling class cannot stomach the acceptance of such a reality. Instead of working with China to help develop India (as China did with US and other foreign corporations utilizing Exclusive Economic Zones), it clumsily balances between China, Russia and the US.

The threat to the world view of the Indian elite, an ontological challenge, is fundamental; making it very difficult for that elite to accept the reality. The ongoing role of India (and Bangladesh and Pakistan) as an island of the poor in a sea of increasing prosperity can only create severe tensions both within that island (exacerbated by the religious divide) and between it and its neighbouring countries. With Iran (US$15,300 and US$18,000) seeming to be in the process of re-entering world trade, allied with both Russia and China, it may also become another nation accelerating away from India. The come down for the Indian elites will be a severe one as they have to accept that they are not the great regional player that they think they are. During this process of the realignment of their world view with reality, India may prove to be somewhat prickly and problematic for its neighbours.

I have covered the longer-term development problems and their underlying causes in my essay Why India Will Not Repeat China’s Success. The latest economic data points to the possibility of deindustrialization taking hold in India, as its manufacturing has to deal with more and more competitive nations passing by; as most recently the case with Vietnam. Unlike the nations of South America, India cannot fall back on empty land masses and resources that are vast compared to local populations. Instead, it has a growing population of over 1.4 billion to feed and provide jobs for. If deindustrialization becomes a reality the probability of internal tensions, made worse by religious strife and extreme inequalities in wealth and income (and the impact of climate change), may greatly increase. The probability of violent conflict with neighbouring countries, especially Moslem Pakistan, may then also greatly increase. India may become not just the stunted man of Asia, but also a highly problematic neighbour.