Notes on the News

By Gwy dion M. Williams

Wars of the Chickenhawks

All Serious Chinese are Heirs of Mao

When Russia Went Wrong

Hindus Hard-Liners Do It Their Way

Snippets

The Aden War and the Houthi Rebels

Europe Unifying

Update on Benedict Arnold

Wars of the Chickenhawks

Both world wars were begun by leaders who felt a war was better than a compromise that could have avoided that war. Even Hitler only attacked Poland after Poland refused to allow ethnic-German Danzig to join the rest of Germany. In the case of WW1, the war could have been delayed by insisting that Serbia allow Austria-Hungary to investigate Serbian secret service involvement in the assassination of the Archduke. Britain’s rulers wanted a war, but not definitely then.

Germany might also have told the Austrians that the limited Serbian offer should be accepted.

Whatever else we think of those choices, all of them lost more than what they might have lost with even the nastiest available compromise.

All except Serbia: Serbia was after Bosnia; and for Britains they were ‘gallant little Serbia’ until history was suddenly re-written. Britain’s own commercialised Ministry of Truth switched, because Thatcher wanted to please Germany when Yugoslavia began coming apart. Along with the USA, they made the West absurdly biased in favour of a Croat state that was proud of its pro-Nazi past.

Not so different from Ukraine 2014. The respectable Orange Revolution of 2004 moved a bit too fast in squeezing ordinary people for the benefit of the rich. The very man they displaced in 2004 won an entirely democratic election in 2010. So in 2014, the USA brought in Ukrainians inspired by the pro-Nazi exiled whom they had kept safe in Canada for future use. And decided that their case was so overwhelmingly virtuous that there was no need to hold a new election before having an intimidated Parliament pass a range of viciously anti-Russian measures.

This was a gamble, but a small one for the US government. No one used armed force when Crimea’s democratically elected regional government seceded, and then asked Russia to annex them. Democratic Secession is normally rejected in principle by the United Nations, but mostly then tolerated and allowed to become a human reality, as with Northern Cyprus. And the USA had already broken that rule for Kosovo, and also required that the entire administrative region be separated from Serbia, including regions with an ethnic Serb majority.

The US elite probably didn’t believe the lies fed to the general public: they sneered at the Crimean referendum, but never suggested a second vote. They must have known that anti-Russian elements were a minority.

The USA might have seen it as Win-Win. If an anti-Russian Ukraine included Crimea – not part of the Soviet Republic of Ukraine until Khrushchev added it in 1954 – they would certainly squeeze the vital Russian naval base at Sevastopol. But if Putin moved to back the Democratic Secessionists, most of Europe could be persuaded that he was resuming Brezhnev’s policies of unlimited expansion into regions with no significant Russian-speaking populations.

Putin, put into power by Yeltsin after Yeltsin finally realised he was wrecking post-Soviet Russia by trusting Western advice, was initially careful. The Donbas might have been overrun by far-right militias who hated everything Russian and the entire Soviet heritage. I doubt that Putin cared much about the clear Donbas majority who had voted for anti- Orange political parties. But the want-to-be Nazis of Ukraine were little more than armed louts. They did die bravely, but achieved little when up against armed enemies.

There was even an agreement by Kiev to hold a vote on autonomy for the Donbas.[A] But Kiev reneged, with the full support of the ‘pro-democracy’ West.

When Putin invaded, he had every reason to fear that an army trained by the West would otherwise overrun the Donbas. Just as Croats overran and ethnically cleansed majority-Serb portions of the version of Croatia defined by Tito, who was half Slovene and half Croat. Who had left-wing Serbian supporters, but monarchist Serbs were his main rivals in the anti-German resistance.

Putin probably guessed that there would be no NATO response. Simply a bunch of cultural and economic sanctions that actually helped his quest to reduce a cultural dependence on Western values: a decay that had actually begun under Brezhnev. He most likely got assurances from both China and India that they would do no more than utter the empty words that almost all UN members prefer on such matters.

Lots of people worried that the tussle between Kiev and Moscow might escalate into a Third World War. I was always certain that it would not.

During the US wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, there were many jokes about Chickenhawks, Senior advisors who had dodged the Vietnam War when young, but were keen to deploy today’s young soldiers.

This magazine strongly criticized those wars when they were floated: you can find PDF copies at our Archive Site.[B]

I am glad they don’t have more warmongers like Colin Powell: people very willing to risk their own lives. I assume that the Chickenhawks would remain too chicken to start a process that might lead on to a World War. Even the bold ones are individuals who accepted danger in the hope of glorious careers from foreign wars. They could always be sure that their own families were safe, and that’s quite different from escalating conflict with a nuclear power.

Possibly they learned lessons from 20^th century wars, though I have never seen them say it.

The two World Wars were successes for those not involved at the start. The USA and the Bolsheviks in World War One, and ambitious nationalists like the Czechs and Poles. In World War Two, the USA again and World Leninism led by the Soviet Union. But it also created Leninist states that had liberated themselves and could disobey Moscow. Who were as much Nationalists as Leninists – but also Leninist enough to accept sensible limits and not expecting the world to agree with them.

The Vietnamese won their American War by fighting only in Indochina, just as they had previously won against the French. Americans knew that it would be over for them once they dumped their Indochinese allies.

Palestinians in the 1970s made a massive blunder by waging a globalised war. Spectacular aircraft hijackings that destabilised the existing Mixed Economy world order. Radicals at the time had not expected this semi-socialist system to be replaced by an enthusiasm for more capitalism: yet that was what happened.

Palestinians and others are finally doing what the Algerians had advised them to do back in the 1960s: fight a war just on land you claim as your own. Or your nearby seas, for Yemenis. But leave the rest alone, and hope to make the foe lose heart.

All Serious Chinese are Heirs of Mao

The Soviet Union denounced Stalin in 1956, and had a spiral of decline through to the 1980s.

Then in 1991 they rejected the entire Soviet heritage. Under Yeltsin they swallowed the nonsense of Neo-Liberal economics, and their wealth was plundered by corrupt oligarchs.[C] Shrank overall, and the refounded Russian Communists came close to winning the Presidency in 1997.[D]

China meantime took business advice from Japan and Singapore, both of which retained faith in the Mixed Economy.[E] And did not apologise for their own past:

“Socialism is a completely new cause in the history of humanity, and since China is carrying out socialist revolution and construction on an extremely backward basis, there is no ready-made experience to draw on, and it is difficult to completely avoid twists and turns and mistakes of one kind or another on the road ahead… It cannot be denied that Comrade Mao Zedong made detours in the exploration of the road of socialist construction, especially the serious mistake of launching and leading the ‘Cultural Revolution’. Our party has made a comprehensive appraisal of Comrade Mao Zedong’s historical merits and demerits, and his achievements are the first, his mistakes are second, and his mistakes are the mistakes made by a great revolutionary and a great Marxist.”[F]

China’s rise began in 1949.[G] Their official media now remind everyone of this:

“Li makes the oft-overlooked point that China’s poverty alleviation efforts have been a long-term process starting not with the initiation of Reform and Opening Up in the late 1970s but with the land reform and social welfare measures of the 1950s. This is consistent with research showing that, around the world, ‘redistributive land reform, starting with breaking up land concentration and land monopolies, maximises economic efficiency and social justice and helps to alleviate rural poverty.’

“By 1978, famine had been eradicated, feudal land ownership systems had been dismantled, and education and healthcare services were available throughout the country. This progress ‘provided an important basis for the high economic growth and massive poverty reduction that followed the reform and opening up.’ Further, ‘the 1978 reform and opening-up policy effectively utilised the material and human resource base laid down in the area of agricultural development prior to 1978 and became the second interface of China’s poverty reduction mechanism.’”[H]

This October, China will be celebrating its own survival:

“This year, we will celebrate the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. On the new journey ahead, we will be guided by Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for the New Era”.[I]

Russian Leninism was in power from November 1917 to August 1991; just under 74 years. And was moribund from the 1980s.

When Russia Went Wrong

Back in 1988, most of the world saw Gorbachev as a brilliant reformer. But I thought otherwise:

“Twenty years is one generation, and the generation of American and West European radicals who were young in 1968 have naturally chosen this year to remember their past. Dozens of programmes have been made about what it was like to be a student radical in Western Europe or the USA.

“But other things happened in 1968. It was also the year of the Tet offensive in Vietnam, which persuaded a majority of Americans that the war was unwinnable. And it was the year in which the ‘Prague Spring’ was crushed.

“History since 1968 has been dominated by the outcomes of these three events. America’s failure and final defeat in Vietnam, plus the student uprising, forced a big re-think and shift of values in the West. The crushing of the Prague Spring led to a freezing-up in Eastern Europe. What Gorbachev is promising to do in 1988 is far less radical that what Czechoslovakia was actually doing in 1968.

“During the 1970s, the left in Western Europe had an immense opportunity – and largely wasted it. Socialism was divided between ‘idealists’ who phrase-mongered about revolution and ‘pragmatists’ who were content to run the existing capitalist system, and in fact ran it rather badly. The middle ground – those who could devise practical reforms, and push them through – was too weak numerically to put its ideas into practice. In Britain, the best opportunity was Workers’ Control, in particular the Bullock proposals. But Workers’ Control was blocked by an alliance of Labour Left and Labour Right. This failure to do anything coherent with the massive trade union power of the 1970s tarnished the image of West European Socialism. Soviet-style Communism had lost the last of its credibility in 1968. Vietnam, dear to our hearts in the 1960s and early 1970s, got involved in an invasion of Kampuchea and a senseless border war with China. Thatcherism triumphed almost by default!”[J]

Thirty-six years on, it should be clear that the Neo-Liberal values that Gorbachev and Yeltsin trusted were an abysmal failure. But most people fail to see that the Soviet Union was a positive influence up until 1968.

Hindus Hard-Liners Do It Their Way

My morning viewing includes a rather good Indian news channel.[K] So I was well aware of the importance of the new Hindu temple at Ayodhya dedicated to Lord Ram.[L] A supernatural being whose best friend is a talking chariot-driving monkey. I had read it as a child as a charming legend with some nice moral values.

The Ramayana is one of two popular epics that also define Hindu deities. But the Mahabharata has ethical oddities. The Pandavas have a polyandrous marriage – probably an ancient Hindu custom, but long rejected. And Krishna is an unscrupulous trickster who somehow became a favourite. I am reminded of how the Greeks elevated Odysseus, Ulysses in Latin tradition: he somehow got his own epic. And celebrated his return home by a mass hanging of palace maids who had dared sleep with his enemies: but thankfully we do not try to take ethics from Odysseus.

The values of the Ramayana are unfamiliar, but also acceptable. Now hard-line Hindus are weaponising them against the Muslim minority.

The Hindu temple was built over a mosque that was probably built over a place sacred to Lord Ram. Over the place he was traditionally viewed as being born. Congress closed the mosque but left the site unused. Modi led the campaign to demolish the mosque and build the temple.

It comes at a time of overall economic success:

“In 2013, the year before Modi took power, India was identified by Morgan Stanley among a group of vulnerable emerging-market economies, dubbed the ‘Fragile Five’ for their reliance on foreign capital to fuel their economies and, in many cases, big current account deficits.

“Ten years later, Modi’s India is firmly in the sights of international investors, consultants and trading partners as one of the world’s fastest-growing big economies and a critical ‘China plus one’ destination for companies seeking to reduce their exposure to political currents in Beijing…

“During Modi’s two terms in office, India has on average been one of the fastest-growing large economies…

“But India’s growth rate was even higher from 2000 to 2010, at more than 6 per cent on average..”[M]

That’s incomplete: Modi now leads a party that also ruled from 1996 to 2001. Western economists mostly praise them for eroding an over-regulated ‘Licence Raj’.[N]M

My own view is that India had been rising from 1947. The raw data on economic growth supports that.[O] Deregulation may have done little beyond boosting the slice of the new wealth that went to the rich, just as has happened in Europe and the USA.

People who are there to tell unpleasant truths to business people can’t now deny that post-Soviet history didn’t go as expected:

“Donald Trump, Narendra Modi and Benjamin Netanyahu have all presided over growth…

“After a decade of Narendra Modi, India has the fifth-largest output in the world, up from 10th. It could dislodge Japan from third place before the 2020s are out. Given India’s potential in 2014, a different government might have achieved much the same performance. However, as with Trump, the point is that even if a boom was always due, Modi’s alleged authoritarianism didn’t stop it. As international watchdogs marked India down from ‘free’ to ‘partly free’, its economy soared.

“This is the liberal nightmare: not that populists abolish democracy to remain in power, but that they perform well enough not to have to.

“It is also intellectually confounding. Populism should be bad economics. It tends to set itself against things conducive to growth, such as immigrants (who expand the labour force), judges (who enforce contracts), technocrats (who set interest rates and competition rules) and free trade. Business professes to hate arbitrariness, the defining feature of strongman rule. Better a bad but consistent law than a leader’s personal caprice. The autocratic habit of feuding with independent central bank governors should on its own depress the animal spirits of investors.

“Yet here we are. Of the world’s most famous populist heads of government, how many have a defining economic failure on their record? …

“It was awkward enough that China enriched itself without democratising. If existing democracies become authoritarian without getting poorer, even the sunniest liberal will feel night closing in.”[P]

They resist the idea that the authoritarians succeed because modern liberalism is muddled.

That the liberal left flounder because they let liberal ideas squeeze out socialist viewpoints.

Liberals typically want to strip out national cultural specifics, but also demand conformity to a global culture that the West created. Things like skyscrapers. Or the meaningless steel spike that replaced the Nelson monument at the heart of Dublin, and which I’ve heard Irish complaints about.[Q]

The liberal view is that you are a Nowherelander, and where you are located should be a meaningless postcode. But you are expected to speak English and keep a modified version of Latin-Christian culture. A version gutted of the things that made it humanly attractive to many; yet it is also full of things that came from just our culture and are alien elsewhere.

China revives respect for the genuine heroics of Mao. India gets by with chariot-riding monkeys.

Sn ippets

The Aden War and the Houthi Rebels

As a teenager, my hopes for the future were boosted by the war in Aden and the rest of what was then South Yemen. Communist rebels briefly looked like changing all South Arabia. But failed, with most of the British left ignoring a war in which British troops played a large role.

They were rated as Maoist at the time, and Trotskyists show considerable malice to anyone who succeeds where they keep failing. But those Yemenis later switched to Moscow, and lost confidence when the Soviet Union collapsed. Accepted unification with North Yemen, which led on to the present mess.

But maybe some of that tradition lives on in radical Arab nationalism:

“How a Ragtag Militia in Yemen Became a Nimble U.S. Foe

“The Iran-backed Houthis perfected the tactics of irregular warfare during years of conflict against a Saudi-led coalition, military officials say.”[R]

Europe Unifying

Europe has damaged itself by going along with the US desire to get confrontational with Russia and China.

By being willing to ‘fight to the last Ukrainian’, along with volunteers from all over.

Discouraging them from accepting the secession of territories where a majority feel closer to Russia, when forced to choose.[S]

But not all is dark.

The combined effect of Brexit and the secession of the more Russophile parts of Ukraine has been to increase feelings of the European Union as a single entity. One that leaders quarrel over, but only a minority would consider loosening the ties.

Britain is visibly a failing economy. Horrible for us, but maybe good for the wider world.

Update on Benedict Arnold

I previously mentioned how he had a better case than most people know.[T]

But still a traitor. When the American rebels decided to go for independence and rejected a British offer that offered everything they had originally demanded, he could have quit the American forces. Maybe then joined the other side after a decent pause. Instead he remained in command, and tried to surrender West Point. Treachery.

Old newsnotes at the magazine websites. I also write regular blogs – https://www.quora.com/q/mrgwydionmwilliams

[A] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsk_agreements

[B] https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/

[C] https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/very-old-issues-images/magazines-037-to-048/magazine-039-not-yet-scanned/russia-the-incompetent-capitalist-revolution-in-1994/

[D] https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/m-articles-by-topic/m99-topic-menus-from-long-revolution-website/46-globalisation/1473-2/

[E] https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/problems-magazine-past-issues/the-mixed-economy-won-the-cold-war/

[F] https://socialistchina.org/2024/01/14/xi-jinping-speech-at-the-symposium-commemorating-the-130th-anniversary-of-the-birth-of-mao-zedong

[G] https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/recent-issues/2019-11-magazine/2019-11/

[H] https://socialistchina.org/2024/01/19/pro-poor-development-how-china-eradicated-poverty/

[I] https://www.mfa.gov.cn/eng/xwfw_665399/s2510_665401/202401/t20240102_11216007.html

[J] https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/very-old-issues-images/magazine-001-to-010/magazine-007-july-1988-2/the-1968-invasion-of-czechoslovakia-doomed-the-soviet-union/

[K] https://www.wionews.com/