Tag Archives: United states of America

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 25th August 2024 - 10:51 am

United States

The Kamala Harris bandwagon continues to gather momentum. Going into this week’s Democratic National Convention “The Economist” poll tracker put her three points ahead nationally. The convention dividend should add another two to three points easily.

Kamala’s rapid rise, however, has less to do with her policies and more to do with vibes. Her main attributes are that she is younger than Joe Biden, pro-abortion and anti-Trump, which, for the Democrats, is more than enough.

In her 40-minute conference speech a few foreign policy hints slipped out. On the Middle East she supports Israel while sympathising and empathising with the Palestinians. On NATO she is pro-Alliance. As for Ukraine, she is anti-Putin and on China Kamala Harris remains a bit of a mystery.

Ms Harris’s recent speech in Philadelphia on Kamalanomics failed to impress the professionals. Her plans to end price gouging with federal regulations; raise child tax credits by $4,000 and hand-out $25,000 to first time home buyers, was derided by most economists as inflationary left-of-centre crowd-pleasing populism. It was not, however, as Trump claimed, communism.

Former prosecutor Kamala Harris is, however, proving adept at deflecting criticism; coming up with resonating slogans and landing punches. Two placards keep popping up at her rallies: “Freedom” and “We Will Not Go Back.”

The first encompasses a broad swathe of issues to include reproductive rights, racism, misogyny, health care, for the elderly, the electoral process, the rule of law, the constitution and democracy itself. All of which either have been, or are perceived to be, threatened by Donald Trump and his Republican acolytes.

“We Will Not Go Back” refers to the belief that Republicans want to turn the social clock back to the 1950s – perhaps even further – when Jim Crow ruled in the South and a woman’s place was in the home.

Trump is the master of the personal insult. Vice President Harris has fostered a unique method for countering them. She ignores them. Then she turns the debate on her opponent’s weaknesses. Project 2025, for instance, is a major embarrassment for the ex-president. He has repeatedly disavowed it. But Kamala Harris refuses to let it go.

Finally, there is the fact that Kamala Harris ticks almost every diversity box there is. She is a female, part-Asian, part-African all-American. Yet she rarely mentions her gender or mixed-race background. Perhaps it is time for Martin Luther King Jr’s dream. The dream that the day will come when a person will be judged not by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character.

China and the United States

China appreciates Donald Trump. It is too much they say they like him. His threatened tariffs and bellicose rhetoric would undoubtedly put a strain on Sino-American relations.

But at the same time, the ex-president has shown little inclination to defend Taiwan and Trump’s transactional diplomacy could simplify relations. Most of all, Donald J. Trump is a known quantity.

Kamala Harris, on the other hand, is an unwelcome mystery.

For a start, Beijing is unhappy with the end of the battle of the geriatrics that a Trump-Biden race represented. The Chinese have their own problems with a perceived gerontocracy and Kamala Harris presents an unflattering contrast with 71-year-old Xi Jinping. Since Ms Harris emerged as the Democratic nominee, all hints of a Biden-Xi comparison have been erased from the Chinese internet.

Then there is the problem of racism and misogyny. At least America’s problem as portrayed by the Chinese Communist Party. In May Beijing published a report on human rights in America which said racism is getting worse and gender discrimination is “rampant”. Kamala Harris – in case you missed it – is female and of mixed Asian-African heritage.

It is expected that Kamala Harris’s China policy will largely be a re-run of Joe Biden’s. She will likely leave in place the tariffs imposed by her mentor and continue the commitment to defend Taiwan and attack China’s human rights record.

The choice of Tim Walz as Harris’s running-mate adds an interesting wrinkle to Sino-American relations in a possible Harris administration. He taught in China and has visited the country dozens of times. In contrast, Ms Harris has made only the rare visit to Asia.

This indicates that Walz may break with vice-presidential tradition and have a role to play as the administration’s point man on China. Republicans are ready for it. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives have already launched an investigation into Walz’s “longstanding and cosy relationship with China”. Unfortunately for the conservatives they are unlikely to find skeleton’s in Walz’s Chinese wardrobe. His time in and out of Congress has been marked by repeated attack on Beijing’s human rights record, a fact that has not gone unnoticed by China’s state-controlled media.

Trump, on the other hand, is more concerned with trading rights than human rights. So, all things considered, Xi Jinping is likely to prefer Trump over Harris.

India

Last month Moscow. This week Kyiv. What is Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi up to?

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged china, donald trump, india, kamala harris and Narendra Modi | 1 Comment

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 11th August 2024 - 10:21 am

United States

Weird is the new catchword of the American presidential elections. It is weird that Donald Trump – a convicted felon – is the Republican nominee for the presidency of the United States.

It is weird that J.D. Vance – an anti-abortionist who claims that America is run by a miserable “bunch of childless cat ladies” – is the Republican nominee for the presidency of the United States.

It is weird because both those images sound totally “un-American” and thus unlikely to win the votes of the American electorate. So it is weird that those two men have been nominated for the two highest offices in America.

Not weird is that Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, has been chosen by Kamala Harris to be her running mate in the presidential elections. Governor Walz is – as they like to say – as American as apple pie.

For a start he is from the mid-West which is often viewed as the traditionally American part of America. He attended Nebraska State College where he met his wife Gwen. They have two children – very American.

He taught high school social studies and coached the football team. The team went on to win the state championships. That is very, very American story almost worthy of a based-on-a-true-story Netflix film.

Walz was in the National Guard for 24 years, and reached the rank of Master Sergeant. Military service is almost a requirement for American politicians.

He served six terms in Congress before being elected Governor of Minnesota in 2018. He was re-elected in 2022. It was while he was Governor that Republicans have veered away from his all-American roots and towards what they might regard as weirdness. Walz legalised marijuana, passed strict gun laws, affirmed abortion rights, introduced free school meals and free college tuition. The liberal democrats love him. Which could explain why he is also chair of the Democratic Governors Association.

Walz is also credited with coming up with the catchword “weird” to describe Trump and Vance. President Biden had been focused on Trump’s threat to democracy. Walz reckoned that threat talk was a bit of a stretch for most American voters. “Weird” is easier to understand.

Bangladesh

From Nobel prize-winning micro-banker to leader of Bangladesh is quite a leap. But at the tender age of 84 Professor Muhammad Yunus has made the jump.

He replaces Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed who has fled the country after an estimated 400 people died in student-led riots against her quota system for the civil service.

Yunus probably doesn’t need the headache of running a country of 170 million people. He already secured the Nobel Peace Prize for creating the micro-finance banking system which has lifted millions out of poverty.

Yunus’s Grameen Bank pioneered micro-credit which is acknowledged as one the factors that transformed Bangladesh from the world’s second poorest country to the 38^th wealthiest.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged bangladesh, tim walz and ukraine | 3 Comments

Observations of an Expat: Kamala v. Donald

By Tom Arms | Sat 27th July 2024 - 10:01 am

Three days, to coin a phrase, is a long time in today’s Tik Tok politics. This time last week wounded and bandaged Donald Trump was basking in what the New York Times called his “mythical status.” He appeared unbeatable. Liberal democrats around the world were in despair.

Then 81-year-old stumbling, crumbling President Joe Biden announced on Sunday that he was dropping out of the White House race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris.

She in turn surprised pundits with a rousing Milwaukee speech and 40,000 Americans registered to vote in one day this week – a 700 percent increase on the daily average. What looked like a Republican walk-over has been transformed in an instant to a to-close-to-call fight to the finish.

Up until this week the age factor had been the major political issue, especially after Biden’s painful to watch performance in his debate with Trump. But at 78 Trump is no spring chicken and is often guilty of stumbling over thoughts and words. The dementia shoe is now on the Republican foot.

Age, however, will only be one of several issues in the roughly 100 days before the election. More than ever, the contest is now between the American left and right. There is no doubt about Trump’s far-right credentials. The Republican hierarchy tried to push him as a unity candidate at the convention. His acceptance speech at the party convention started along those lines. But he quickly lapsed into his rambling, mean-spirited right-wing attack on opponents real and imagined.

One of the reasons Harris’ 2020 bid for the White House foundered so quickly is that she was perceived as a far-left candidate. If she is going to be successful in 2024 she has to shed that image and capture the centre ground of American politics.

Not helping her are the problems on America’s southern border. Immigration is a major political issue and early on his administration President Biden handed Harris the poisoned chalice of managing America’s southern border. She failed. In 2023 a record 2.3 million people crossed from Mexico into Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged donald trump and kamala harris | 11 Comments

Observations of an Expat: Special Relationship

By Tom Arms | Sat 13th July 2024 - 9:48 am

It’s time for the Special Relationship to be extracted from the diplomatic cupboard and dusted off.

Britain needs it. Europe needs it. And, although they are less keen to admit that they need help from any quarter, the US needs it to become the cornerstone of a new Transatlantic Alliance.

For years the UK shared the “Special Relationship” tag with France and Germany. In fact, after Brexit, Britain probably slipped into third place in Washington’s relationship arrangements.

But French President Emmanuel Macron has politically castrated himself with the recent political elections and the dull and dreary German Chancellor Olaf Scholz fails to inspire either the Germans or the wider world community

Britain may no longer be an EU power, but Sir Keir Starmer’s landslide victory gives him latitude at home and kudos abroad.

He is helped by a foreign secretary who has the potential to go down in history as one of the best in modern times. David Lammy wasted no time in stamping his image on British foreign policy. Almost before Sir Keir had finished his acceptance speech, Lammy was on the plane for Paris, Berlin, Warsaw and Kyiv. This week he was at the prime minister’s elbow for the NATO summit in Washington where Sir Keir was the only NATO leader awarded a tete a tete with President Joe Biden.

Lammy also has extensive American connections. The new foreign secretary has worked, studied and lived in the US. He has family in America and his father is buried in Texas.

But what if Donald Trump returns to the White House? A prospect which appears increasingly likely as Joe Biden ages with every passing day. Lammy is on record as labelling Trump a “woman-hating neo-Nazi sympathising sociopath” and a “profound threat to international order” as well as a racist and a fascist.

But both Sir Keir and Lammy have said that the transAtlantic relationship remains the “bedrock” of British foreign policy. And in a recent speech at the conservative US think tank the Hudson Institute, Lammy said that Trump’s comments on European security had been “misunderstood.” He has also gone out of his way recently to meet senior Trump foreign policy advisers.

Unfortunately, Trump’s negative policy towards Europe is based on good, sound politics. It is a reflection of a growing US isolationism which in turn is a reaction to series of foreign policy reversals. That feeling of being hard done by the rest of the world (especially its European allies) will continue regardless of whomever win the November election.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged david lammy, joe biden, keir starmer and NATO | 7 Comments

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 7th July 2024 - 10:45 am

United States

It’s official: The United States judicial system is no longer independent.

And by destroying its independence the Supreme Court has knocked away one of the main pillars of American democracy and left the constitution’s carefully structured and revered system of checks and balances heavily politicised and largely controlled by the executive.

Of course, the US judicial system was already heavily politicised. But the Supreme Court took its role as the top court seriously enough to avoid political judgements. No longer.

America’s legal system is based on English Common Law. Many of the structures were determined by the great 18th-century British jurist William …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged france, hungary and Viktor Orban | 11 Comments

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 30th June 2024 - 10:25 am

United States

Unedifying train crash. That is possibly the most charitable portray of President Joe Biden’s performance in Thursday night’s debate. The 81-year-old candidate had a simple task: Don’t look old and expose Trump as the convicted felon and serial liar that he is. He failed.

The result is that Joe Biden now faces a crushing tsunami of party and public opinion to perform his final act of public service: step aside and let a younger Democratic leader shoulder the job of preventing a dangerous demagogue from returning to the White House.

The problem is that there is no mechanism for allowing him to do so. The US constitution does not specify how presidential candidates are chosen. In fact, the founding fathers were dead set against the creation of political parties which they condemned as “factionalism.”

But human nature being what it is political parties quickly emerged and politicians hived off into camps labelled Republican, Democrat, Whig, Federalist, Nativists, Progressives…

From the early years of the 19^th century until relatively modern times, the party machinery in each state would select delegates to attend a national convention where a presidential candidate would emerge from a series of knock-out ballots.

The first state primaries were not held until 1901 when Florida broke ranks with convention. Between 1901 and 1968 only twelve states held primaries which pledged their convention delegates to a particular candidate. Then came the chaos of the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention with delegates deadlocked while anti-Vietnam War demonstrators rioted outside.

To avoid a repetition of this unedifying spectacle the Democratic Party leadership decided to extend the primary system. The Republican Party followed suit. By 1992 Democrats had primaries in 40 states and Republicans in 39 and presidential conventions had been converted from a week of back-room horse trading and multiple ballots to a coronation party.

If Biden steps aside then the Democratic Party will have to revert to the pre-1968 format at its convention in (ironically) Chicago, on 19-22 August. The problem is that there are few – if any – people alive today who attended an old style nominating convention. Old rule books will need to be pulled out or archives, dusted off and studied thoroughly.

They have just over a month to prepare, and that is if Biden decides to hand in his notice today. Presidential contenders have the same time frame to start securing delegates’ support. And then, assuming all goes well on the night in Chicago, the party has only three months to unite behind a new candidate and persuade the American electorate that their choice is better than a lying convicted felon.

France

French voters troop to the polls on Sunday for the first round of parliamentary elections that are likely to open the door to the country’s far-right.

The latest opinion polls put Marine Le Pen’s National Rally well ahead with 37 percent of the vote. Not enough for the absolute majority so it will probably need to form a coalition with the Gaullist Les Republicains (eight percent) and some of the smaller parties (five percent). President Macron’s centrist Ensemble Alliance Renaissance lags far behind at 19.6 percent.

But a huge fly in the French political ointment is the 29 percent who say they will vote for the far-left New Popular Front led by former Trotskyist Jean-Luc Melenchon. It appears that the unpalatable choice for French voters is between the extremes of left and right.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged brexit, france, iran and joe biden | 8 Comments

Observations of an Expat: Love, Hate and the International Criminal Court

By Tom Arms | Sat 25th May 2024 - 10:05 am

America has a love-hate relationship with the International Criminal Court (ICC). At the moment it is a virulent hate.

Ironically, Washington also claims to be the chief supporter of International law. “The United States does believe that international law matters,” said John Bellinger, the State Department’s chief Legal Adviser. “We help develop it, rely on it, abide by it.”

The problem is that you cannot cherry pick the law. To do so is to choose the road called hypocrisy which leads – eventually – to chaos.

It is the charge of hypocrisy that America risks in its relations with the ICC. It applauded seeing the world’s top criminal court send brutal African dictators to prison. It has celebrated the court’s warrants for the arrest of Vladimir Putin. But it has condemned as “outrageous” the decision of ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan to request warrants for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the Gaza War.

There are several reasons for American duplicity. Washington fears that the arrest warrants will only make the Israelis more intransigent. It also believes that it is important to be seen to be supporting an ally; and, finally there is the sovereignty issue. As a super power, Washington has difficulty with any international law or organisation which appears to supersede American law. The US, for instance, has failed to ratify the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and will almost certainly pull out of the climate change convention – again – if Donald Trump is elected.

Washington has had doubts about the ICC since before its founding by the Rome Statute in 1998. It refused to sign the treaty documents, although 123 other countries (including Britain) have. If a country is a signatory to the Rome Statute then they are obligated to detain and extradite anyone for whom the ICC has issued an arrest warrant. Being a non-signatory, does not protect a country’s citizens from investigation.

The problem for America was the activities of its soldiers and the CIA around the world. In August 2002 President George W. Bush signed the American Service Members Protection Act, aka “The Hague Invasion Act”. This gave the president the power to “use all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any US or Allied personnel being detained, or imprisoned, on behalf of, or at the request of, the International Criminal Court.” Effectively this meant that any country that carried out an ICC arrest warrant against an American citizen risked the wrath of Washington.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged international criminal court | 9 Comments

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 19th May 2024 - 10:09 am

Russia and China

It took Vladimir Putin just nine days for Putin to go from his inauguration in the Kremlin to Zhongnanhai – the seat of China’s political power and the home of President Xi Jinping.

At the end of the two-day visit the “partnership without limits” had been elevated to one in which there are now “no forbidden areas of cooperation.”

The two countries – and the two leaders – are united in their common goal of dismantling the liberal Western political order that has dominated the world since 1945. Democracy, they are convinced, has had its day. It is time now for Sino-Russian orchestrated autocracy.

The current pivot of the Beijing-Moscow axis is the Ukraine War. This war presents both problems and opportunities for China. On the one hand, Russian failure would be regarded as a disaster. On the other, Xi Jinping is conscious of the need to prevent Sino-American relations from deteriorating too quickly. China is not ready to step into American shoes.

So, Xi Jinping exploits Russia to poke, needle and goad Washington. He talks of “no forbidden areas of cooperation” but then urges Putin to row back on the nuclear rhetoric. China has yet to recognise the Russian annexation of Luhansk and Donetsk and – so far—has refused to supply Russia with obvious weaponry. It buys more oil from Russia but is playing hardball on the Russian request for a gas pipeline that would replace revenues that Gazprom has lost in Europe.

China, has however, ignored Western sanctions against Russia. In 2022 Russian imports of Chinese machine tools grew by 120 percent and in 2023 they rose another 170 percent.

Machine tools are just one industrial category which Secretary of State Antony Blinken has complained loudly about as helping the Russian war effort. This equipment either has a hidden defense element or it is categorised as dual-use, which means it can be used for civilian or military purposes.

Other similar categories of Chinese exports have grown exponentially since Russian tanks rolled across the Ukrainian border. Semi-conductor exports rose from $230 million in 2021 to £407 million in 2023. The machinery for making computer chips grew from $3.5 million to $180 million over the same period. Computer chips are essential for the conduct of high-tech 21^st century warfare.

Russian oil

Russian oil and gas are financing Putin’s Ukraine War. So, this week, the Russian president had good news and bad news about his war coffers.

Oil revenues are up. Gas revenues are down.

Gazprom – the state gas monopoly – lost $6.9 billion in 2023. Its first annual loss since the bad old days of Russian financial chaos 20 years ago. The reason for the drop is Western sanctions and the closure of the gas pipelines Nordstream 1 and 2. Russian gas sales to Europe were down 55.6 percent. They will be even lower next year.

The picture provided by Rosneft – the Russian oil equivalent – is much rosier. Its profits were up a record 13 percent to $14.07 billion. The reason for its financial success were India, Putin’s friends in OPEC and the end of the pandemic.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has completely ignored Western sanctions and exploited Putin’s difficulties by buying huge quantities of oil at discounted prices, India then reaps a nice profit by selling the processed oil to third countries via the world market.

The OPEC countries meanwhile, have obliged President Putin by keeping oil production down and prices up. At the same time demand for energy has grown as the world economy recovers from the Covid pandemic.

But what about the coming year. Gazprom’s revenues are unlikely to rise. It takes time to build alternative destination pipelines and storage facilities. As for oil prices, demand is starting to fall. India has reached the limits of how much oil it can process and world economic growth is expected to drop to 2.7 percent in 2024 compared to 5.5 percent in 2022.

So, what Putin needs is a first class money manager to ensure that the maximum efficiency is squeezed out of every rouble. That is why he has appointed economist Andre Belousov as his new Minister for Defense.

Putin is his own commander-in-chief. He already has a Chief of Staff in the form of General Valery Gerasimov. What he needs is someone who can organise a defense budget that is now 6.7 percent of the country’s GDP before oil prices start to go the way of gas prices.

United States

In 1923, the US Secretary of the Interior, Albert Fall, was hauled before the courts for accepting a $350,000 bribe that allowed an oil company to drill in protected reserves at Teapot Dome, Wyoming.

This is the crux of the Teapot Dome Scandal which was recognised as America’s biggest political scandal until Watergate and the resignation of Richard Nixon.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged china, russia and ukraine | 8 Comments

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 12th May 2024 - 9:26 am

Russia

It was a week of military parades, trumpets, nuclear sabre-rattling and an inauguration in Russia this week.

It started with another threat from President Vladimir Putin when he announced on Monday the start of military exercises involving non-strategic nuclear weapons. This was in response to America releasing its $61 billion aid package to Ukraine, and the repetition of French President Emmanuel Macron’s threat to consider sending French troops to Ukraine.

Then there was Putin’s inauguration as he started his fifth term in office with a long walk past applauding crowds lining the red-carpeted corridors of the Kremlin. Putin’s first inauguration in 2000 was hailed as Russia’s transition to democracy. This one followed an election in which he “won” 87.5 percent of the vote while all his political opponents were either dead, in exile or in prison.

On Thursday it was the Victory Day Parade to mark the end of what the Russians call “The Great Patriotic War.” May Day was the big parade in Soviet days. May 9, was important, but it was not even a public holiday until 1965. Putin, has revived the celebration and elevated it to a collective remembrance resembling a religion.

One of the highlights of the parade is the march of the “Immortal Regiment” in which relatives troop past the reviewing stand holding aloft pictures of family members who died in the war. The scene is reminiscent of icons being carried in Russian Orthodox Church services. The 60^th and 70^th anniversaries of the war’s end (in 2005 and 2015) were the biggest public holidays in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Meanwhile, in Ukraine, the inauguration and Victory Day were marked by increased Russian bombardments and missile attacks as Russian troops tried to gain the military upper hand before the latest batch of Western military aid arrived.

Palestine

The two main Palestinian factions – Hamas and Fatah – hate each other almost as much as they do the Netanyahu government.

They have barely spoken since 2007 when Hamas won elections in Gaza and booted Fatah and the Palestinian Authority out of the seaside strip.

That is why it is significant that representatives from the two factions met recently in Moscow and Beijing. The Chinese meeting was especially interesting because Beijing is keen to project itself as Middle East peace broker as opposed to its characterization of the US as Middle East war monger.

The Chinese have already successfully brokered the re-establishment of diplomatic relations between regional rivalries Iran and Saudi Arabia. Shortly after that success, foreign minister Wang Yi wrote to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offering to mediate in the decades-old Arab-Israel conflict. Netanyahu politely refused.

Brokering a rapprochement between Fatah and Hamas could be a diplomatic back door for Beijing to constructively inject itself into the Middle East conflict. It is generally agreed that the two-state solution is the logical solution to the conflict.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged china, donald trump, israel, palestine and russia | 3 Comments

Observations of an Expat: Campus Powder Keg

By Tom Arms | Sat 4th May 2024 - 10:22 am

America has for years been a polarised powder keg waiting for the spark to ignite the fuse. It has come in the form of student protests against American support for Israel.

Protesters, counter-protesters and rent-a-mob have violently coalesced around the conflicting fates of Palestinians and the State of Israel.

As of Friday demonstrations have broken out on 140 college campuses in 45 states. More than 2,000 students have been arrested by police storming barricaded encampments and university buildings with riot gear.

President Joe Biden is trying to thread his way through the oft conflicting principles of freedom of speech and the rule of law. “There’s the right to protest but not the right to cause chaos,” he said. At the same time he is standing firm on his support for Israel while privately bemoaning the fact that he is not being given sufficient credit for pressuring the government of Benjamin Netanyahu.

The political result could be a November victory for Donald Trump as young people continue their Gaza protest by boycotting the polls and the older generation vote for the strong man politics of Trump.

But what do the protesters want? It varies. Some what the total destruction of Israel. Others are focused on a ceasefire and the two-state solution. Still others have been drawn to the barricades by the issue of free speech. Counter-protesters fear that Israel and Jews in general are facing the problems of the 1930s. Rent-a-mob just sees an advantage in chaos.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged israel and joe biden | 13 Comments

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 28th April 2024 - 10:05 am

United States of America

Here’s the problem facing the US Supreme Court: Should US presidents – in and out of office – have total or partial immunity from criminal prosecution for acts they committed while in the Oval Office?

Or does the failure to provide this blanket immunity expose past presidents to political vendettas by their successors or other political opponents?

Or would Donald Trump’s appeal for blanket immunity – in the words of Justice Elena Kagan – “turn the Oval Office into a sea of criminality.”

This week the Justices heard oral arguments from lawyers representing Trump on one side and Special Prosecutor Jack Smith on the other. The latter is attempting to bring the former president to trial for his role in the 6 January Capitol Hill riots.

The Justices will now go away and ponder the arguments and issue a decision several weeks from now. Court-watchers are split on what the decision is likely to be. Quite often one can determine the outcome from the questions the Justices ask. Not so, this time as the Justices are painfully aware of the impact of their decision on the actions of future presidents as well as those of Donald Jesus Trump.

Many observers think the Supreme Court will issue a split decision. This would please the Trump team as it would mean referral back to the lower courts and delay, delay, delay.

As the Justices ponder, they may consider the words of pamphleteer Thomas Paine, whose 1776 “Common Sense” had a major impact on the American War of Independence and the constitution which the Justices are sworn to protect. “Where,” wrote Paine, “is the King of America? In America the law is king. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.”

United Kingdom and Rwanda

The British government has declared itself the final arbiter of reality. It has decreed that if it says that a country is safe then it is safe, regardless of whether it is or not.

Most everyone – except for the government of Rishi Sunak – agrees that Rwanda is not safe. Freedom House judges it as “not free”. Human Rights Watch says that protesting refugees have been fired on by Rwandan police. Others have simply disappeared. The Rwandan government is supporting the M23, a violent faction in the Democratic Republic of the Congo which has been accused of war crimes.

For all of these reasons – and others – the UK Supreme Court in November ruled that the Sunak’s plans to send asylum seekers to Rwanda was “unlawful” because Rwanda is not a safe country.

So the government passed a bill which decreed that Rwanda is safe and the UK Supreme Court cannot say otherwise if the UK government say it is. A clear blow to the traditional independence of the British judiciary and its much vaunted respect for the rule of law.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged rwanda, the maldives and united kingdom | 2 Comments

Observations of an Expat: War is Expensive

By Tom Arms | Sat 27th April 2024 - 10:01 am

The $61 billion in in military aid that the US Congress voted for Ukraine this week is in the nick of time. The Ukrainians were literally running out of bullets to hold back the Russian steamroller.

But war is expensive. How much bang can the Ukrainians get for their American bucks?

Let’s start with the workhorse of the battlefield – the humble 155 mm artillery shell and the Howitzers that fire them. For the past few months a steady stream of shells from North Korean and Russian munitions factories has meant that the Russians have been lobbing five times as many shells into the Ukrainian frontline than the Ukrainians have into the Russian.

It has been working. The Russians have gradually pushed forward all the way along the 620-mile front and have captured the town of Aadvika. But the release of the American aid means that the Ukrainians can now start firing back at an anticipated rate of 8,000 shells a day.

Each basic 155mm shell costs $3,000. The all-singing, all dancing precision-guided variety can set you back as much as $130,000 a shell. The Anglo-American built howitzer that fires them costs $4 million.

The howitzers have a range of up to 20 miles, which puts them near the front and in harm’s way. The popular HIMARS (the acronym for America’s High Mobility Artillery Rocket System) is deadly accurate up to 186 miles. This means its mobile launcher (cost $20 million each) can be fired from relative safety. But make each shot count. The missiles cost $434,000 each.

NATO has been reluctant to provide F-16 fighter jets (price $50 million plus approximately $4 million for each air-launched cruise missile). But the Americans have given the Ukrainians thousands of Avevex Phoenix ghost drones at $60,000 a drone. These can be used for reconnaissance or to carry a high explosive on suicide missions.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged ukraine | 12 Comments

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 21st April 2024 - 9:23 am

United States of America

Self-inflicted cracks are starting to appear in the MAGA edifice. The two Republicans wielding the sledgehammers are Alabama’s conspiracy theorist Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and, of course, Donald Trump himself.

The former president, has time and again, demonstrated a total disregard for the rule of law, or at least its application to his affairs. Next week the judge in his New York trial, Juan Merchan, will decide whether Trump is guilty of contempt of court for repeatedly breaching a gag order against his making comments about witnesses, jurors, the judge, the judge’s family or any court officials.

It is a legal courtesy for opposing legal teams to give a day or two’s advance notice of witnesses to give the lawyers time to prepare. The prosecution has asked the judge that they be allowed to withhold the information on the grounds that Trump is likely to issue intimidatory comments on his Truth Social platform. The judge has agreed.

Marjorie Taylor Greene – who has been dubbed “Vladimir Putin’s Envoy Extraordinaire to the US Congress” by Democrats and moderate Republicans – appears determined to totally destroy Republican credibility. Her main target is the $60 billion aid package for Ukraine which has been held up for months by far-right MAGA Republicans in the House of Representatives.

The package is expected to be approved this weekend. But Ms Greene is determined to make a last ditch effort to kill the aid bill with a series of outrageous amendments, including: No humanitarian aid for Gaza, withdrawal from NATO, no support for a two-state solution, and – best of all – a demand that any member of Congress who votes in favour of aid for Ukraine be conscripted into the Ukrainian army.

Ms Greene and the other members of the right-wing Freedom Caucus have managed to alienate moderate Republican congressman who are expected to cross the floor to vote with Democrats to pass the aid bill. Republican Congressman Derrick Van Orden said that he and his colleagues were “sick and tired” of being “bullied” and “blackmailed.”

Europe

America’s “cancel culture” came to Europe this week–and then cancelled itself.

Cancel culture, is a term used by mainly US conservatives to decry the efforts of liberals to block (or “cancel”) public appearances by right-wing speakers. The tactic has become especially popular American university campuses where left-wing student demonstrations have forced the cancellation of speeches by right-wingers.

Conservatives – quite rightly – see this as an attack on free speech.

This week the Edmund Burke Foundation, a conservative American think tank/pressure group, was hosting a conference of right-wing European luminaries in Brussels. Or at least, it was until it encountered the cancel culture of a series of Brussels mayors.

Trouble started the weekend before the event when one of the mayors of Brussels 19 districts decided that the Euro-sceptic foundation’s National Conservatism Conference would not be welcome in his district which included the EU institutions. He feared that the speakers’ anti-EU, anti-immigration and anti-LGBT views would attract violent counter demonstrations. So the venue was shifted to a building near the European Parliament where another district mayor turfed out the organisers.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged africa, europe and population | 5 Comments

Observations of an Expat: Tyranny of the Majority

By Tom Arms | Sat 13th April 2024 - 9:31 am

“Democracy,” Winston Churchill famously said, “is the worst form of government – except for all those other forms that have been tried.”

Then there is democracy unchained, or without the restraints of the rule of law and free speech. Also known as “the tyranny of the majority” or the “will of the people” or, perhaps, “democracy flawed.”

These are elected governments with political leaders who have harnessed to their own pursuit of power a perceived threat to the majority, or a growing, vociferous and politically motivated minority.

There are far too many examples to choose from but let’s focus on Hungary, Russia, Israel, India and the US for starters. In each of these countries, the leaders (or wannabe leader) have won the support of the majority of the population either through lies or by allying themselves with a social movement which promotes one section of society at the expense of another.

Technically speaking, Israel is a democracy with carefully monitored and oft-held elections. Its American supporters are keen to point out that it is the only democracy in the Middle East and this makes the Israelis their only rock-solid ally in the region.

Twenty percent of Israel’s voters are Arabs. As the occupying power, Israel is also responsible for two million Palestinians in Gaza and another two million on the West Bank – none of whom have a vote. Their rights and concerns are totally ignored by Benjamin Netanyahu because his political base is conservative Orthodox Jews. The Israeli Supreme Court has attempted to protect Arab rights. As a result, Netanyahu is beavering away at dismantling the court and its powers.

Vladimir Putin was recently re-elected President of Russia with 87.5 percent of the vote. Such a large figure is of course suspect, but most observers accept that Putin would have won regardless. He has successfully portrayed himself as the only possible leader of a nation under attack from wicked, grasping Western enemies. His answer is that the best defense is a good offense which means the pursuit of Russian imperial ambitions.

Viktor Orban has cast himself in the role of anti-immigrant, anti-Islamic saviour of ethnic Hungarians and European Judeo-Christian values. “We must state,” said Hungary’s right-wing prime minister, “that Hungarians do not want to be diverse and do not want to be mixed; we do not want our own colour, traditions and national culture to be mixed with that of others.”

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged hungary, india, israel and russia | 20 Comments

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 31st March 2024 - 9:36 am

Baltimore

The Baltimore Bridge disaster was more than a fatal human tragedy. It was a commercial and trading disaster which starts in Baltimore and ripples well beyond American shores.

But let’s start with Baltimore and its immediate environs. When the Singapore-flagged container ship Dali crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge it closed a major land and sea route in and out of a city which is one of America’s most important as well as one of its most socially-deprived.

The 1.6 mile long bridge crossed the Patapsco River which is the major sea channel in an out of the Port of Baltimore which in turn is a major exit and entry point for America’s vital car trade. That sea channel is now blocked. In 2023 the port handled 52.3 million tons worth $80 billion. It directly employed 15,000 people and indirectly supported another 139,000 jobs. This is in a city known as the heroin drug capital of America and where residents have a one and 20 chance of falling victim to violent crime. Powder keg Baltimore does not need thousands to be suddenly laid off work.

The bridge carried a major highway – Interstate 695 – as well as well as spanning the entrance to the port. I-295 is a major arterial road connecting New York, Washington DC, Baltimore and Philadelphia. Last year it carried nearly 12 million vehicles. As the Easter weekend descends on one of the most congested areas of America, hundreds of thousands of cars and trucks will be forced to travel hundreds of additional miles on roads ill-suited to carry the extra traffic.

The impact of the bridge disaster will be felt well beyond Baltimore. Eighty percent of the world’s trade moves by ship. It is called the “global supply chain” and when a link in that chain is broken it affects shipping movements across the world. And a major factor in the price of goods is the cost of transporting them.

In recent years the biggest impact on the global supply chain was caused by the covid pandemic. But other factors have been a drought which this month disrupted the Panama Canal; the six-day blockage in 2021 of the Suez Canal by the giant container ship Ever Given; naval battles in the Black Sea as a result of the Ukraine War and attacks by pro-Palestinian Houthis in the Red Sea.

The collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge is one of a growing number of breaks in the increasingly fragile global supply chain which pushes up prices for us all.

Russia

Tajiks have lots of reason to hate Putin’s Russia. Tajiks attached to Islamic State-Khorashan even more so. They don’t need the Ukrainians, the CIA or MI6 to egg them on.

That is why there is universal scepticism towards Vladimir Putin’s allegation that the four Tajik terrorists who gunned down 130 people in Moscow’s Crocus City Hall theatre were acting in league with Ukrainian, British and American intelligence. The assertion is made more ludicrous by IS-K’s instant claim of responsibility.

It is unclear whether the terrorists were drawn from the estimated two million Tajiks living in Russia or if they come from Tajikistan or if they originated from Afghanistan where the Persian-speaking Tajiks make up 25 percent of the population. It is known that they are Muslims and that would be enough to turn them against Vladimir Putin.

Putin climbed to power on the back of genocidal war against the Muslims of Chechnya. It made him popular with ethnic Russians but a hate figure for the Central Asian Muslims who were once part of the Soviet empire and the Tsarist Russian Empire before that.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged baltimore, israel and russia | 10 Comments

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 24th March 2024 - 9:42 am

United States

The Ukraine aid bill is starting to inch its way through the American House of Representatives. Up until this week the $60 billion much-needed package has been blocked by Speaker Mike Johnson’s refusal to allow Congress a vote on the issue.

He also tied the aid bill (which also includes money for Israel and Taiwan) to tougher laws on immigration.

This has clearly been done in collusion with Donald Trump who opposes aid to Ukraine and wants to delay any agreement on immigration so that he can make it his key election issue.

Senate Republicans have already passed the Ukraine aid bill and have been piling the pressure on Speaker Johnson to allow a vote. This week he agreed. But with several huge caveats. For a start, aid to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan will be voted on separately. Next, he wants to change the wording of the legislation from “aid” to “loan” or possibly “lend-lease.”

Johnson also wants to explore the possibility of applying the profits from $300 billion of frozen Russian assets to the aid that Ukraine needs. This would involve something called the REPO Act or, The Rebuilding Economic Prosperity and Opportunity for Ukraine Act which authorizes the President to seize Russian assets.

The problem with the REPO Act is that it specifies that the seized assets should be used for reconstruction. Ukraine needs money to fight. Reconstruction comes after the fighting.

There are other problems with Johnson’s apparent change of heart. To start with, separating out the different clauses and turning aid into a loan will seriously delay the bill. Next, because it is substantially changed the bill will have to go back to the Senate and, finally, both houses of Congress are about to start their 22-day Easter recess.

Mike Johnson’s change of heart may actually be a change of delaying tactics.

European Union

Meanwhile the Europeans are trying to fill the gap and smooth over their differences over Ukraine. The last few weeks have seen French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olof Scholz sniping at each other over who is more generous to the brave Ukrainians.

Macron talked about the possibility of sending troops to Ukraine and urged Scholz to provide Volodomyr Zelensky with long-range Taurus missiles. The more cautious Scholz delivered a firm “nein” to sending troops and ruled out the despatch of Taurus because German soldiers would be needed to operate the system. Scholz also pointed out that Germany was providing a lot more money than France and that if the French leader wanted to help Ukraine he should put his money where his mouth is.

Enter Donald Tusk, former European Commission president and current prime minister of Poland. He called a meeting of the leaders of the EU’s two biggest countries to smooth out difficulties that were threatening to derail EU support for Ukraine.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged european union, hong kong, russia, ukraine and vladimir putin | 5 Comments

Observations of an Expat: US Support for Israel Cracks

By Tom Arms | Sat 23rd March 2024 - 9:41 am

One of the rock solid, unwavering givens in the world’s diplomatic playbook has cracked – the 76-year-old bipartisan US support for Israel.

There will be repercussions for Israel, the United States, the Palestinians, Europe and the Middle East.

Since before 1948, support or opposition to Israel has been one of the world’s key political fault lines. Which side a government chose played a major role in determining their position on a host of other issues.

At the fulcrum of this fault line was support for successive Israeli governments from Republican and Democratic American administrations. More than $4 billion a year in military aid flows from Washington to Israel, and that is only the money that is known. Whenever Israel faced UN condemnation it could count on the American veto. And if it was attacked, America, supplied the latest weaponry. Israel was America’s only certain and democratic ally in the Middle East and Israel could not exist without America.

The public appearance of the crack was the Senate speech last week by Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. He called on Israelis to vote Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu out of office. And he implicitly warned that if the voters did not remove “Bibi” then American aid and political support was in jeopardy.

President Biden gave the Schumer speech the presidential seal of approval. It was, he said, “a good speech.” Republicans disagreed and the battle lines were drawn. Senate Minority leader accused Schumer of interfering in the democratic processes of a close ally. Donald Trump said that Jews who voted Democrat “hated Israel” and “hated their own religion.” Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said he would be inviting Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress. This event is unlikely to happen because it requires the support of Chuck Schumer.

In a post-speech interview with the New York Times, Senator Schumer, said his disillusionment did not start with the war on Gaza. The impetus for him was the bromance between Trump and Bibi and the Trump-organised Abraham Accords which established diplomatic relations between Israel and several Arab countries without any consideration for the Palestinians. Netanyahu, said Schumer, made the crack inevitable when he decided that his interests lay with Trump and the Republican Party at the expense of the Democrats.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged israel | 19 Comments

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 3rd March 2024 - 10:30 am

NATO

French President Emmanuel Macron set the cat among the NATO pigeons this week when he hinted that France just might – no stronger than might at this stage – send troops to Ukraine.

The suggestion was definitely on the table when 21 Western heads of state or government and six foreign ministers met in Paris this week. Polish President Andresz Duda confirmed it.

It was apparently raised by Macron and we know that the frontline Baltic states of Estonia and Lithuania backed it. We also know that the British, American and Germans vetoed it – for the time being. Everyone else is keeping their cards close to their chests.

On two things the allies were agreed: Russia is stepping up its cyber and disinformation attacks and that some time in the next few years, according to Macron, “we have to be prepared for Russia to attack the (NATO) countries.”

Immediately following the Paris summit, President Vladimir Putin delivered his annual state of the nation address in which he warned that any further NATO involvement in Ukraine “raises the real threat of a nuclear conflict that will mean the destruction of our civilisation.”

On a slightly less apocalyptic note, Putin said that he would be strengthening Russian forces on its Western flank which means recently annexed Eastern Ukraine, the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad and the Russian borders with the Baltic States and new NATO member Finland.

Ideally, NATO would avoid a head to head with Russia by providing Ukraine with the means to keep fighting. But Europe’s defense industries lack the capacity and America’s $60 billion military aid package is being blocked by MAGA Republicans.

One solution was voiced this week by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. She suggested using the $300 billion in frozen Russian assets to purchase weapons for Ukraine. The money had been earmarked for reconstruction purposes. But if Ukraine is defeated than there will be nothing to reconstruct.

Russia

Meanwhile, as of this writing, martyred Russian Opposition leader Alexei Navalny is being laid to rest in Moscow’s Borisovskoye Cemetery.

The funeral service was held in a Russian Orthodox Church near the Navalny home in southeast Moscow. A large crowd gathered outside the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God. As Navalny’s body was carried in and out of the church the crowd chanted “Navalny, Navalny” interspersed with “executioners, “executioners”

The church was surrounded by masked police guards who blocked several of Navalny’s closest allies still in Russia from entering the church. They also banned cameras and videos from the church, although Navalny’s supporters were able to broadcast much of the event on a You Tube channel which was watched by hundreds of thousands.

The state media did not report the funeral and the Kremlin, when asked to express condolences, refused to do so.

Navalny’s death is the most high profile and dramatic anti-dissident action by the Putin regime. But it is not the only one. This week 70-year-old Russian human rights activist Oleg Orlov was sentenced to two and a half years for criticising the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Orlov is best known as the co-chair of Memorial, a Russian human rights organisation which was one of three winners of the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize. In October he was fined $1,600 for an article in which the state said he “discredited” the army. Not enough, decreed Putin. So the verdict and sentence were cancelled and Orlov was this week placed on trial for the same crime and this time sent to prison.

Orlov and Navalny are only two of thousands of Russians who have dared to criticise Putin. Most of them have either joined Navalny in the grave or Orlov in prison.

United Kingdom

Islam is the new scapegoat of Europe. Actually, that is not accurate, fear of Islamisation has been around since before the Battle of Tours in 732.

But it appears to have reached a fresh apogee in Britain. And the rest of Europe’s far-right parties are no slouches in the Islamaphobic stakes.

Viktor Orban in Hungary, Marine Le Pen in France, Gert Wilders in the Netherlands, the Swedish Democrats in Sweden…. They have all helped to move the anti-Islam dial and, in doing so, have infected the mainstream political parties.

In Britain it stayed on the distant fringes of the far-right for a long time. Parties such as the British National Party and English Defence League were associated with football hooliganism as much as Islamaphobia.

That started to change with the rise of UKIP and its successor party Reform. They have been gradually chipping away at the right-wing of the Conservative party with the result that the Tories have started to steal some of their anti-Islamic clothes in order to keep their voters.

This became all too apparent this week when Conservative Party Chairman Lee Anderson told the right-wing news channel GB News that the Muslim Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan was controlled by Islamists and that he had given the city away “to his mates.”

For working purposes, the term “Islamists” is generally interpreted as either Islamic extremists or Islamic fundamentalists. I personally know Sadiq Khan. Before I joined Liberal Democrats I had a brief flirtation with the Labour Party and deputised for Sadiq on two occasions when he was my constituency MP. He is almost as far from being an Islamic extremist as the Pope.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged alexei navalny, donald trump, NATO, russia and united kingdom | 12 Comments

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 7th January 2024 - 8:32 am

Israel

“The Day After Gaza” – as the discussion about what to do after the fighting is called in Israel, is the number one topic in the Israeli cabinet.

Not surprisingly, the coalition government is hopelessly divided.

On the far-right side are the representatives of the Ultra-Orthodox parties led by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. They want to “encourage” the Palestinians to leave the Gaza and replace them with Jewish settlers.

A shade more reasonable is Defense Minister Yoav Gallant who wants Israel to retain overall security control while working with a multi-national force in Gaza. Palestinians would be free to manage day-to-day affairs as long as they did not “commit any hostile actions against Israel.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has yet to officially unveil his ideas in cabinet, but he has written an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. In it he said he had three goals – destroy Hamas everywhere; demilitarise the Gaza Strip and “deradicalise” Palestinians.

The first goal, presumably involves assassinating Hamas leaders in foreign countries. This has the potential of being construed by the host country as an act of war. It certainly would not help Israel’s image.

As for demilitarisation, Gaza is already officially demilitarised. Everyone can see how well that has worked.

The third is new and startling Netanyahu claims that at the root of current problems is a Hamas-controlled education system which has radicalised the Palestinians against Israel. He wants to re-educate or “de-radicalise” Palestinians through a revised educational system. This smacks of the re-education camps of China, the Soviet Union, Vietnam, Cambodia….

Taiwan and China

2024 will be a big election year. Four billion people in more than 70 countries will be trooping to the polls.

Some of the elections will be a sham. Russia is a prime example. I can predict now that Vladimir Putin will win.

Others are real and important. They include the US, UK, EU, India, South Korea and Mexico. One of the most important and potentially consequential elections occurs next Saturday in Taiwan. The result will determine if the 24million Taiwanese move away from or towards Mainland China.

The voters’ decision will have a major impact on the actions of Xi Jinping’s China, and this turn has the potential of dramatic consequences for the rest of the world.

The Taiwanese elections are both presidential and legislative. At the moment both the legislature and the presidency are controlled by the Democratic People’s Party (DPP). The President, Tsai Ing-wen has served two terms and is barred from standing for a third.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged china, donald trump, gaza, israel and taiwan | 6 Comments

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 17th December 2023 - 10:41 am

United States (1)

Rudy Guiliani is broke. Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss wish Trump’s top legal adviser wasn’t. A US court has ruled that Guiliani has ruined their lives when he publicly and falsely accused them of tampering with Georgia election ballots.

This Friday a jury of eight was considering whether or not to grant their request for $43 million in damages. An award, which will almost certainly be academic.

Three divorces, a lavish lifestyle and backing Donald Trump’s election lie has destroyed the 79-year-old’s fortune.

The former Mayor of New York was a presidential candidate in 2007. As such he had to reveal his assets. He said he was worth $18 million. Court accountants believe the figure was probably closer to $70 million. In 2017 he was earning $10 million a year in speaker’s fees alone, and had been doing so for more than 10 years.

He enjoyed the money. According to court documents, Rudy Guiliani in 2017 owned six homes, belonged to 11 country clubs and spent $12,000 a month on cigars.

The fall started with divorce from his wife Judith. She took a big chunk of his assets and alimony payments of $43,000 per month. But Giuliani’s biggest mistake was joining Donald Trump’s personal legal team in 2018.

By 2020 he was his top lawyer and closely connected with Trump’s election lie. This led to a $10 million defamation suit by an ex-employee and additional law suits from election computer manufacturers Smartamatic and Dominion Voting.

In 2022 the Internal Revenue Service took out a lien on his Florida condo because he had failed to pay $500,000 in taxes. In August of this year his own lawyers sued him $1.4 million in unpaid legal bills. His current net assets are $1 million. His known current liabilities (and there are more to come) are $1.9 million. He is bust. Backing Trump has a price.

United States (2)

Republicans may be shooting themselves in the foot over their planned impeachment of President Joe Biden.

There seems to be little doubt that the president’s son Hunter is guilty of a number of bad things. But despite months of deep digging by Republican congressmen, no one has been able to uncover a shred of hard evidence linking the president to his son’s business dealings.

Nevertheless, the Republican-dominated House of Representatives appears determined to start impeachment proceedings against President Biden.

Impeachment is a serious business. It takes a lot of time and effort. While an impeachment is in progress Congress is focused on little else. That means debates over government spending, immigration, Ukraine, Israel and climate change are all put on the legislative backburner.

These are all important issues for the American electorate. They will not thank Republican congressman for ignoring their interests to pursue a political vendetta without evidence to back it up.

Ukraine

It has been a bad week for Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky. In Washington he hit a brick wall in an attempt to release $61 billion in aid.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged COP28, israel, Myanmar and ukraine | 9 Comments

Observations of an Expat: Nikki Haley

By Tom Arms | Sat 16th December 2023 - 9:33 am

Presidential wannabe Nikki Haley is a charismatic, hard-headed woman who hides her ambition and political nous behind a veil of southern charm.

In 2016 candidate Donald Trump attacked her for suggesting he release his tax returns, the then Governor Haley, flashed an ironic smile and replied: “Bless your Heart.”

Trump simply smiled back. He did not realise that the phrase was Carolina code for “May you rot in Hell.”

The steel magnolia allure of Ms Haley has taken this daughter of Sikh immigrants from the South Carolina legislature to the state governor’s mansion, to the ambassador’s job at the UN and finally to the number two position in the race to win the Republican nomination for the US presidency.

She is yet to become a real threat to front-runner Trump, but she has emerged as the only outside chance.

Haley was a reluctant Trump supporter in 2016. She started off backing Marco Rubio and when he dropped out she switched Ted Cruz. Trump’s rhetoric, she warned, “would lead to violence.”

But in the end Party loyalty won out and one of the most powerful and popular Republican governors endorsed the Trump campaign. In 2017 she was rewarded with the job of US Ambassador to the United Nations.

At the UN former governor now Ambassador Haley agreed and disagreed with Trump. She agreed with him on withdrawal from the Paris Climate. The Iran Nuclear Accord and the UN Human Rights Council. She is – and still is – a big supporter of Israel. But Ambassador Haley opposed Trump’s, threats to NATO, the Muslim ban and his bromance with Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. “Instead of praising dictators,” she said, “we should have the backs of our allies.”

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged nikki haley | 2 Comments

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 10th December 2023 - 10:44 am

Ukraine

Remember Ukraine? A reminder: It is the East European country sandwiched between Russia and Poland which Russia invaded in February 2022.

You would be forgiven for letting it slip from your political consciousness. Six months ago it and its president Volodomyr Zelensky were being hailed as the “democratic shield” protecting the West from land-hungry autocratic Russia.

Now it has been pushed out of the headlines the corridors of concern by the war in Gaza and whichever crisis comes next.

The problem is that Ukraine cannot afford to slip off the front pages. It needs a successful PR campaign to stay in the war and keep the shield intact. Its armaments industry and its population are limited.

Russia’s manpower pool is four times the size of Ukraine’s. Its historic label is “steamroller.” Its armaments industry is ten times larger and was preparing years before the war started. It is also receiving weapons from Iran, North Korea and possibly China.

It is weapons that are particularly important at the moment, especially artillery shells which are used by both sides to hold the enemy at bay. Russia is estimated to have fired 22,000 rounds a day during the summer to stymie the Ukrainian counter-offensive. The Ukrainians fired 5,000 rounds.

European members of NATO promised Ukraine 1 million rounds of artillery shells by the end of 2023. It will fall well short of that target, although several European countries– including Germany, the Netherlands, Britain, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Finland and the Baltic states—have started to increase their armaments production. However, a lot of the increased production will go towards replacing depleted national stocks.

America, is, of course, the historic “arsenal of democracy.” But President Biden’s promised support is being held up by Republican congressmen who either want to divert money to Israel or feel that Ukraine is solely a European problem.

If the defense of Ukraine is left entirely to Europe then the hard-pressed European economies will have to increase armaments production even more. At the current rate, the million promised rounds is only enough to keep the Ukrainian guns firing for another six months.

UK and Rwanda

Britain’s Rwanda asylum issue is morphing into a constitutional crisis. At stake is the independence of the British judiciary, a long-established cornerstone of the country’s democratic foundations.

The UK Supreme Court recently threw out government plans to fly asylum seekers to the central African country of Rwanda. The basis of their decision was that the proposal was in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights, the UN Convention on Human Rights, the UN Convention on Refugees and three British acts of parliament relating to asylum seekers and refugees. Rwanda was not safe, ruled the court, because its government was likely to return asylum seekers to the country from which they had fled. This is known as refoulement.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged gaza, rwanda, uk and ukraine | 6 Comments

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 19th November 2023 - 9:15 am

China and USA

The Sino-American goalposts have changed. Two years ago, the Chinese economy was booming and the US was struggling to emerge from a damaging coronavirus pandemic.

But as Presidents Biden and XI met in San Francisco this week the American economy was booming at 4.7 percent. The Chinese economy was reeling from a burst property bubble and government crackdowns have led to a flight of foreign capital.

When the Chinese star was in the ascendant so were the sabre-rattling “Wolf Warriors”. But the changed circumstances has led to the dismissal of bellicose foreign minister Qin Gang and last month Xi replaced Defense Minister General Li Shangu who was under US sanctions for overseeing the sale of weapons to Russia.

Beijing cannot afford poor relations with Washington at the moment. And Washington – with the problems of Ukraine, Gaza and forthcoming presidential elections, doesn’t want to have to worry about China. All of which could explain why the leaders of the world’s most powerful countries managed a cordial meeting in San Francisco this week.

But will it hold and can they build on it? The question is still hanging. A week before the meeting US and Chinese diplomats held a meeting to discuss each other’s nuclear arsenals. It was the first such a meeting and a good sign.

Climate change is clearly a topic to build on. It is difficult for the two biggest economies to dispute the importance of saving the planet. There are differences on how to handle fossil fuels but agreement on methane gas emissions.

A big topic in the US is opioid abuse, in particular fentanyl. A sizeable chunk of the drug is produced in Chinese laboratories and shipped to America. Last year fentanyl was responsible for 75,000 American deaths. The two leaders agreed to discuss the issue further Xi stressed that the easiest way to stop the problem would be for Americans to stop buying the drug.

Touchiest topic is Taiwan. On that Biden-Xi agreed to disagree. But they did agree to resume communications between each other’s military establishments. These were suspended after the visit to Taiwan of US Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Both sides that it was vital for the opposing militaries to talk to one another to avoid accidents. As Xi put it: “Conflict and confrontation has unbearable consequences for both sides.”

Taiwan

The potential spanner in the Sino-American diplomatic thaw is January’s presidential and parliamentary elections in Taiwan.

At the moment the Democratic People’s Party (DPP) controls both the presidency and the parliament and opinion polls show them way ahead to stay in power.

This is not good news for either Washington or Beijing. This is because the DPP is moving Taiwan to declare itself an independent sovereign nation. This is opposed by Beijing because Taiwan would then be able to offer itself as a multi-party capitalist democratic alternative to the one-party autocracy on the mainland.

The US administration would be unhappy because an independent Taiwan would undermine its policy of “strategic ambiguity” which allows it bestow de jure diplomatic recognition on communist China while enjoying de facto relations with Taiwan.

The problem is an old one. It dates back to 1949 when the Nationalist Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan and claimed to represent all of China from the offshore island. Until 1979 successive American administrations agreed with him.

The unilateral independence route is not a foregone conclusion. The Kuomintang Party (KMT) is committed to watering down the independence demands and improving relations with Beijing. This week the party announced it was joining forces with the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) to fight the elections. The outcome could have far-reaching consequences.

Turkey and Germany

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged china, germany, taiwan, turkey and united kingdom | Leave a comment

Observations of an Expat: MAGA wins

By Tom Arms | Sat 28th October 2023 - 9:48 am

MAGA has won the Speakership of America’s House of Representatives.

It is difficult to be more MAGA-like than Louisiana Congressman Mike Johnson.

He is opposed to Ukraine; supports Israel; maintains that Trump won the 2020 election; is a born again evangelical Christian who quotes the Bible whenever possible; voted against the Biden budget; is a member of the right-wing Freedom caucus; is opposed to same-sex marriage; opposes abortion and has Trump’s endorsement.

Moderate Republicans – and just about everyone else – were terrified at the prospect of the election of right-wing “legislative terrorist” Jim Jordan. He seemed more intent on tearing down the political establishment then working with it. So they blocked him, again and again and again.

The moderates wanted Minnesota Congressman Tom Emmer wielding the Speaker’s gavel. They looked as if they might succeed. Then Donald Trump interceded – in a complete reversal of his previously stated neutrality, and in contravention of all political conventions – slammed Emmer for voting to certify Joe Biden’s election and endorsed Mike Johnson.

By this time the moderates had been worn to a frazzle by long nights, ruined weekends and endless rounds of votes. They risked being blamed for a government shutdown if a Speaker was not chosen soon as well as being accused of preventing vital aid reaching war-torn Israel and Ukraine. They voted for Johnson for an easy life.

They will most likely live to regret it. Moderate Republicans are telling themselves that the lesser of two evils has been elected. But the only real difference between Jim Jordan and Mike Johnson is the decibel levels at which they operate. Jordan’s reputation is as a loud-mouthed arch-conservative bully. Johnson is quieter. He has as worked more in the Capitol Hill shadows and he has not been in Washington as long as Jordan. But Johnson is every bit as uncompromisingly far-right as Jordan and just as ruthless in pursuit of his political agenda. The difference is style, not substance.

Posted in Op-eds | 7 Comments

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 22nd October 2023 - 9:51 am

Russia

Russian President Vladimir Putin must be delighted by the Gaza Crisis.

It ticks a number of Moscow’s foreign policy boxes. For a start, it distracts the world from his war crimes in Ukraine and allows him to point the blame finger at America’s absolute support for Israel.

Russia’s Middle East policy is complicated. It supports Bashar al-Assad in Syria, but Putin also has a close personal relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He has used that relationship to stop Israel from sending weapons to Ukraine.

Russia has also refused to go along with most of the rest of the world in branding …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged israel, joe biden, palestine, poland, russia and vladimir putin | 9 Comments

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 8th October 2023 - 10:46 am

United States

The ripple effects following the ejection of Kevin McCarthy from the Speaker’s chair in the US House of Representatives are severe and wide-reaching. The issues most affected are moderates in the Republican Party, Ukraine and the credibility of the United States.

The mainstream of the Republican Party – or at least the congressional caucus – is not as unreasonably far-right as it is portrayed. Out of the 221 Republican members of the lower house, only 40 are signed up members of the right-wing Freedom Caucus. And of those, only about 20 could be considered extreme right by American standards.

The problem is that the Freedom Caucus – especially the far-right 20 or so members – are really a separate political party using the broad coattails of the Republican establishment to pursue policies which are antithetical to their own party. They can succeed in their aims because the Republicans’ majority as a whole is so narrow that the Freedom Caucus holds the balance of power.

In practice this means that the next Speaker could easily be Congressman Jim Jordan, a rabid Trump supporter and founding member of the Freedom Caucus. He has already secured the ex-president’s endorsement.

It also means that Ukraine will find it difficult to secure the next tranche of US military aid it has been promised. For the Freedom Caucus and Donald Trump the issue of self-determination and respect for the rule of law comes after support for Vladimir Putin.

The ejection of McCarthy also makes a US government shutdown almost certain. It was McCarthy’s successful 11^th-hour deal to prevent a shutdown which provided the straw that broke the back of the caucus camel. Any future Speaker will be all too aware that he will suffer the same fate if he allows Biden’s budget through Congress.

All of the above bolsters the belief that political divisions are rendering the US ungovernable. This in turn undermines credibility at home and abroad. America is the recognised standard bearer of world democracy. Alternative systems—especially Russia, China and Iran—argue that if democracy can’t work in America… then it can’t work.

Ukraine

Support for Ukraine this week suffered a blow on the European side of the Atlantic as well as the American.

It came in the form of an election victory for the pro-Russian Slovakian politician Robert Fico and his Direction-Social Democracy (or SMER-SD) Party. Fico’s party failed to win an outright majority in parliament, but with 24 percent of the votes it is the largest single party and is currently in coalition talks with smaller pro-Russian parties.

They have until 16 October to form a government and in the interim period have announced an end to all aid to Ukraine; a block on Ukrainian membership of NATO and an end to Slovakian support for EU sanctions against Russia.

Unlike most of the current batch of European populist parties, SMER-SD is left as opposed to right-wing. This, however, has not prevented Hungary’s populist right-winger Viktor Orban from welcoming Fico’s victory. Clearly common ground on the populist positions on the EU, Russia, gay rights, woke culture, immigration, media restrictions, curbs on the judiciary, sanctions and the war in Ukraine trumps the political spectrum issue.

This is not Fico’s first run at Slovak prime minister. He was initially elected to the job in 2012 with a whopping 83-seat majority. He was forced into coalition after the 2016 election and shortly afterward ran unsuccessfully for the presidency. In 2018 he was forced to resign as prime minister after the murder of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak. He had been investigating the Slovakian mafia and police later linked Maria Troskova, Fico’s assistant, to the gangs.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged afghanistan, canada, european union, india, pakistan, slovakia and ukraine | 7 Comments

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 24th September 2023 - 9:51 am

Ukraine

Ukraine has approximately 30 days before the autumn/winter rains bring their counter-offensive to a muddy halt.

To date they appear to have broken through the first line of a three-line Russian defense in an area around Bakhmut and Zaporizhzhia. There is an outside possibility they can achieve a major breach, but that is highly unlikely.

There is more depressing news for Ukrainian troops. For a start the bromance between Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un will keep the Russian troops supplied with artillery shells to help keep the advancing Ukrainians at bay.

Then there are problems with Poland. Up until this week the Poles have been a driving force behind EU and NATO support for Ukraine. But Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki – with one eye on the farming vote and next month’s general election – has stopped military supplies to Ukraine because Ukrainian grain is driving down Polish wheat prices.

Poland has the support of Slovakia and Hungary and wants EU-wide restrictions on the import of Ukrainian grain. The Ukrainians, of course, are exporting their grain to EU countries because the Russian blockade makes it impossible for them to ship it to their usual customers in the Middle East and Africa.

The next problem is signs that US support is waning. This week Volodomyr Zelensky turned up in Washington to assure American lawmakers that Ukraine is slowly but surely winning. President Biden responded with a $325 million military aid package. Zelensky also has the support of the leadership in both the Senate and House of Representatives. But a group of far-right Republican Trump supporters are threatening to block a financial package which includes an extra $24 billion in aid to Ukraine.

And then, finally, there is the fact that Trump has pledged to stop military aid to Ukraine if he is elected in 2024.

France

It has taken seven years, but it looks as if the investigation of France’s right-wing leader Marine Le Pen may end up in court.

She and 23 members of Her Rassemblement National – including her father Jean-Marine Le Pen – are accused of misuse of EU funds. They allegedly used a total of about $620,000 of money which was meant to be spent on EU administration to fund party activities.

The accusation comes from the Paris Prosecutor’s office and still has to be confirmed by the prosecuting judges. But it seems highly likely that that is a formality.

If she is found guilty, Marine Le Pen faces the possibility of a $1 million fine, 10 years in jail, and a 10-year ban on holding public office. Her conviction would have a major impact on the French and European political landscape.

According to the Paris Prosecutor, Ms Le Pen spent $45,000 of EU funds to pay her personal bodyguard. On another occasion she is alleged to have diverted EU funds to pay for a meeting to discuss party activities and hung an EU flag outside the meeting room. When the meeting started she told party members “take that s**t down.”

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged china, france, ukraine and vietnam | 3 Comments

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 20th August 2023 - 10:01 am

Donald Trump

Donald Trump will never see the inside of a prison. Neither will he be fitted for an orange onesie.

Not because he is innocent. Based on the evidence I have read to date, he is guilty as Hell. And I am sure a lot more will come out during the numerous trials he faces.

No, he will remain a free man for several reasons. One is that his lawyers will use every trick in their legal library to delay, delay, delay. They will appeal against the Washington venue for the trial there. They will also claim that the Washington judge is biased. The same with New York.

Their objections will be dismissed. But justice requires that they be heard and that takes time.

Next, there is the jury selection. One recent trial took several months to select the jury because they went through over a thousand potential jurors. In the case of Trump, the difficult is in finding 12 people in politically polarised America who do not have an opinion of the man and his election lie.

Even if a jury is selected, a venue is agreed for all four trials and impartial judges are found, there is a reasonable chance that a dedicated MAGA supporter will find their way onto a jury and block a guilty verdict. Unanimous jury decisions are required in American trials. That is a high bar for the Trump prosecutors.

Let us suppose he is found guilty on a felony charge in a court by a jury somewhere in America. The verdict is then likely to outrage and activate his MAGA base to such an extent that Trump wins the 2024 election. If that happens he will simply pardon himself and his many co-conspirators. The case in Georgia will be more difficult because he can only give pardons for federal crimes and Georgia is a state crime. But his highly paid lawyers should be able to find a loophole.

If they don’t, there is the appeal process. If Trump is found guilty he will appeal. The appeal process can extend for years, possibly up to and beyond Donald Trump’s allotted time on this Earth.

Russian spies

Spies, spies, everywhere – especially the Russians. Which is not surprising. They had a huge spy network in Tsarist days. It was massive under the Soviets and, of course, Vladimir Putin was a KGB agent in East Germany.

There is also the fact that Russia is at war, oops, I mean conducting a “special military operation” (SMO) in Ukraine. The SMO means that Russia needs intelligence on who in NATO is supporting what, when, where, how and why in Ukraine. Also, who they can support to espouse the Russian cause, scatter seeds of division and discontent and maybe even overturn a government or two.

And finally, if the war escalates, how best to attack NATO.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged donald trump, russia and ukraine | 21 Comments

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 25th June 2023 - 12:15 pm

United States

Did Secretary of State Antony Blinken and President Joe Biden talk this week? On the surface it would seem they did not.

Blinken spent a constructive few days in Beijing repairing Sino-American relations, at least to the stage where the two sides were talking to each other even if they were failing to agree on very much.

Then, almost as soon as Blinken steps off the plane, his boss calls China’s President Xi Jinping a dictator. The Chinese foreign ministry immediately responded by attacking Biden’s comments as “blatant political provocation.”

The American president is well known for his foreign policy gaffes and when they occur the State Department jumps in to pour oil on troubled waters and restore diplomatic calm. Not this time.

The State Department spokesman said the following day: “We will continue to responsibly manage this relationship and maintain open lines of communications with the PRC. But that, of course, does not mean we will not be blunt about our differences.”

He added: “We have been very clear about the areas in which we disagree, including clear differences about the merits and demerits about democracies versus autocracies.”

It would appear that Blinken and Biden are playing a good cop, bad copy routine. This is partly for domestic consumption. US administrations aim for a bipartisan foreign policy, but that is difficult to achieve in the current polarised climate with China the whipping boy of the Republicans and an increasing number of Democrats.

Africa and Russia

Africa went to Moscow this week. It also went to Kyiv, but the most important and interesting leg of the trip was to Russia to meet with President Vladimir Putin.

Of course, it wasn’t all of Africa. It was the heads of government of Egypt, South Africa, Congo, Comoros and South Africa. The delegation was led by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa who has come under attack for refusing to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and allowing Vladimir Putin to visit South Africa in August despite a warrant for his arrest issued by the International Criminal Court.

The African leaders called the trip a “Peace Mission” and justified their involvement by the fact that their continent suffered a 30 million tonnes of grain shortfall in 2022 because of the war in Ukraine. They issued a ten-point plan which called for guaranteed grain supplies, an exchange of prisoners of war and the return of all children to their country of origin.

In Kyiv that had to run for air raid shelters during a missile attack and were told by President Zelensky that there could be no peace without Russian withdrawal.

In Moscow, President Putin told them that the grain deal could be cancelled altogether; that the “special military operation” would drag on and that the thousands of Ukrainian children taken to Russia were moved to protect them. In short, there was no joy for the Africans in either capital.

Back in South Africa, the trip has been branded a poorly conceived and badly executed effort to repair Ramaphosa’s tarnished image. The South Africans were especially humiliated when the plane carrying Ramaphosa, his advisers, journalists and 15 containers of weapons, was stopped at Warsaw Airport because it did not have the correct paperwork. The plane had to return to South Africa and start all over again.

Ukraine

Meanwhile, the Ukrainians are planning their own diplomatic offensive to back up their military counter-offensive.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged china, russia, south africa and ukraine | 1 Comment

Observations of an expat: India

By Tom Arms | Sat 24th June 2023 - 10:12 am

The Washington red carpet rolled out for Narendra Modi this week underscores India’s emergence as a cornerstone of America’s foreign policy.

Delhi is seen not only in military terms as a regional counterbalance to China, but increasingly as a major economic partner and a key to reducing Western dependence on Chinese factories.

But there are trip holes in the carpet of which all players need to be aware.

The biggest gaps are historical. India’s democratic institutions are the latest layer of centuries of political and cultural veneers that pre-date the Greco-Roman traditions that are the roots of American and European civilisation.

In many ways, India and China have more in common than the US and India. They are both Asian. They are both proud of their ancient histories, and they both endured the rigours and humiliation of colonialism. In fact, in the immediate aftermath of independence, this perceived commonality with China encouraged Jawaharlal Nehru to pursue a close relationship with Beijing. It foundered on the rocks of a disputed Himalayan border.

The two countries also have a common cause in that they both assert that the current legal structures that underpin the world order are disadvantageous to their interests and the interests of the wider developing world. They were written by Western countries for Western countries in the wake of World War Two. They need to be adapted to the 21st century. For a start, India wants a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.

Then there is Russia. Again, the relations between India and Moscow go back to the struggle against the British, when many members of the independence movement visited Russia and received training and support. When independence came, it was only natural that the links forged in the shadows emerged as public policy and Russia became India’s arsenal and a major aid supplier.

The US responded to the Russian presence by supporting India’s arch-enemy, Pakistan and then, from the 1970s until about 2010, China which also threw its weight behind Pakistan and launched a border war with India in the Himalayas.

The US is keen to wean India’s military off their Russian suppliers and is offering not only weaponry but defense technology to allow India to expand its own defense industry. This sits well with Modi’s “Make in India” policy. Moscow, however, still supplies 49 percent of India’s weaponry although it is down from 70 percent a few years ago. The US in 2022 supplied only 11 percent of India’s military needs.

India’s continuing attachment to Russia is evident in Modi’s refusal to condemn Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. His purchase of discounted Russia oil and gas has been a major factor in Moscow’s ability to finance its war machine. In fact, India has increased its purchases of Russian energy ten-fold.

India is unlikely to abandon Moscow for Washington and the Biden Administration appears to have reconciled itself to this political reality. China, it argues, is the bigger long term threat to American interests and is emphasising the anti-Chinese Quad Alliance of India, America, Australia and Japan.

The problem with the Quad is that India almost instinctively rebels against formal alliances. Delhi was one of the driving forces behind the 1961 creation of the Non-Aligned Movement (along with Yugoslavia, Egypt, Ghana and Indonesia). It is still a key member. Indian’s strong attachment to non-alignment is one of the reasons that the Quad is not a formal alliance like NATO, but rather a structure for security dialogue. In fact, its formal title is the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue.

India’s foreign policy is based more on relationships rather than formal alliances. It prefers a transactional form of mutual back scratching then strict commitments. As the world’s most populous country and the fifth largest – soon to be third – economy in the world, India is becoming increasingly aware of its diplomatic heft, and is acting accordingly.

It was during the Clinton Administration that the State Department first starting courting the emerging India. But the big breakthrough came during the George W. Bush years when in 2005 the two countries signed the US-India Civil Nuclear Agreement. India thus became the only nuclear weapons state that had not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty who was allowed to conduct nuclear commerce with other states.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged india | 5 Comments

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