The Intensifying Conflict With China Is Not WWIII

The Intensifying Conflict With China Is Not WWIII

The bravery and skill of the Bihar Regiment has transformed the Indian military, diplomatic and political relationship with China.  The battle at Galwan on the night of 15^th June, has accomplished what dozens of rounds of  negotiation and many political summit meetings could not.

In one night of primeval hand-to- hand combat, the sophistries and brute stone- walling of decades has been trashed. Our soldiers have unilaterally converted the Line of Actual Control (LoAC), all 4,000 odd kilometres of it, into a hard border.

We now view the Peoples’ Republic of China (PRC), not as a trading partner and sometime adversary, but a hostile neighbour. China’s malevolent intent cannot be ignored. Nothing more is ever going to be lost in translation.

India’s own global acceptance is rising.  It may also soon be part of an enhanced G-7, even as permanent membership in the UNSC may have to wait till China is expelled for breaches of the UN Charter on multiple counts.  Recently announced Russian support for India’s permanent membership in the UNSC is welcome.

On its own, India has a long to-do list. It must drop support for China’s One China Policy, recognise Taiwan as an independent country and establish full diplomatic relations with it. India, like the US, should declare for the independence of Tibet. India needs to support democracy in Hong Kong that was actually meant to be guaranteed for 50 years when Britain handed it over to China.

India must make common cause against Chinese belligerence with a host of countries around the South China Sea, Australia, Japan and the US.  It must assert that international waterways cannot be taken over in line with the ICJ ruling.

For the long haul, India is better placed to protect its hard border, now increasingly served by roads and necessary infrastructure. It is also close to populated areas. China has to haul all its personnel and equipment from far away because a lot of the area on its side is empty high altitude desert.

Russia’s professed neutrality between China and India, despite a long standing defence pact with India, is disappointing. But as long as India buys Russian arms and enters into military joint ventures, we will have to live with it. Some of the collaboration, such as the joint development of the Brahmos missiles, has been highly advantageous.  

But we need to move faster on  new roads to alternate military joint venture and supply chains from countries such as South Korea, the US and France. This, even as we develop our own armaments industry.

We must speed up overt, reciprocal and closer defence ties with the Quad in the Asia Pacific and the Indian Ocean. And offer closer defence cooperation bilaterally with the US. We cannot afford splendid isolation in the prevailing situation.

However, we can proceed covertly in some instances and piece-meal in others, to deflect reactionary subversion from India’s fifth column.

We are already, post 15^th June, in the process of stopping and reversing all Chinese investments in India. Imports are being restricted as we seek to develop either our own sources or alternative supply chains.

The ambivalence is over. India will henceforth confront China militarily with firepower when threatened, including use of the Indian Air Force. To underline its resolve, India is proceeding urgently with border roads, rail and infrastructure development for rapid deployment. Chinese objections and protests are no longer a consideration. No future Chinese intrusion will go unpunished.

In all probability, a border clash in the Ladakh theatre could happen very soon and may even be desirable. China remains reluctant to withdraw as per the latest military disengagement talks post 15^th June. China will have to demonstrate its fighting prowess. Can it, even now, be allowed to retreat unscathed? Its immense treachery and the future threat militate against letting it go Scott free.

India will not seek to restore thousands of kilometres of stolen territory in the Ladakh just yet. But it will reclaim PoK and Gilgit Baltistan at the first opportunity. This is necessary as a follow through and push back against the China-Pakistan axis. That China is active on a mission to addle most of India’s neighbours, is another good reason to deflate its ambitions.

Some long standing ideas can always be trundled out to serve. They can be included amongst reportage, analysis and commentary as the China-India-Pakistan war cloud builds. Some, including interested international observers, are casting it in terms of a pathway of escalation towards a nuclear holocaust. Could it actually be a clandestine show of support for Chinese aggression? Or is it casting a racial slur on all the dramatis personae?  It is true that the flames and magma of Armageddon make for a terrifying image. But why the scaremongering when no one possesses a nuclear advantage?

A rich man does not court certain ruin. China is a nouveau riche nation. It has crackling new notes and brand new guns it has hardly ever fired in battle. When it  periodically took on the Indians after 1962, or the Vietnamese in 1979, it was always the Chinese who lost.

Deng Xiao Ping, the chain-smoking architect of China’s great rise to prosperity, never forgot the virtues of humility and patience. But Xi Jinping, a born-again Mao Zedong, wants nothing less than world domination. Perhaps, before it is too late, he should remember Mao murdered 30 million of his own people.  

Xi Jinping’s China is at the crossroads of prosperity and imperialism. The initial salvos were unequal treaties with weak, insolvent countries, in return for territory when they could not pay for the infrastructure.  Then it was expenditure on its own military, ramped up in competition with America. This is what ruined the USSR, but history seems to be repeating itself.

Then it was trade imbalances hugely against the very hands that feed, such as America and Western Europe. An elderly Nixon wondered if he had not created a Frankenstein monster.

And now it appears to be time to buy up assets and companies when their prices are beaten down due to the Wuhan Virus.  The territorial push into India, Taiwan, Nepal, the South China Sea, the Japanese islands, are all attempts to strike while the virus rages. But everywhere, Xi Jinping’s China is meeting with resistance. So why has it chosen this moment to clamp down on democracy and civil liberties in Hong Kong?

China will probably fail even before it gets started on its military adventures. The PLA, peopled by only sons of China’s One Child Policy, apparently cannot fight. This despite all the armaments it possesses. India may have exposed this fatal weakness already.

Besides, China is immensely isolated, with only Pakistan to fight from its corner. And Pakistan too has an army that has used terrorists to do its fighting and dying for it. Its officers stay well away from the front-lines, its pilots crash in panic, and its soldiers routinely abandon their posts.   

Xi Jinping has mistaken surreptitious land grabs over the years as conquest. And now  after the thrashing his forces received at Galwan, he has jeopardised even this past thievery.  China has brought focus on thousands of kilometres stolen in Akshai Chin, parts of the Siachin glacier, the Karakoram Pass, and what has become the Karakoram Highway. Mao set the precedent by grabbing Tibet, nominally a Qing dynasty protectorate, that peacefully bordered India for centuries.

China, spoiling for a fight, has a lot of glass in its windows. It has built a great deal of impressive infrastructure that could vanish overnight.

The US, in all its military might, is ranged against President Xi Jinping’s unwarranted belligerence. Red China has territorial claims against 24 countries, even though it shares borders with just 14.  It has defied America on trade matters to the point of collapse.  Economic scores are being settled by other countries of the broad Western alliance as well. How long therefore before a military spark is lit?

Will Iran and Russia join in on China’s side?  What will they gain by doing so?  North Korea is already fighting shy.

Red China is teetering on the brink of the age old seduction that has destroyed empires. A well gained peace and prosperity is pawned for a pointless lust for more territory. Any power is soon over-extended doing this. Decline and fall is always the result.

(1,390 words)

For : The Sunday Guardian

June 24^th, 2020

Gautam Mukherjee

War With China & Pakistan Will Propel India's Rise

War With China & Pakistan Will Propel India’s Rise

The barbaric clash at Galwan, has put paid to the myth of “peace and tranquillity” on the Indian borders with China. It was a myth because while neither side was shooting, China was encroaching on Indian territory in strength. It was coming up behind innocuous but probing foot patrols, and creating infrastructure every summer. India was too intimidated to do anything about it for decades, and the governments of the day covered it up.

There is also a fifth column operative in India that favours the Chinese point of view. It is still active, but far less influential than it used to be. China has taken the trouble to put considerable monetary resources to create an ecosystem that cheers its positions, spies for it, spreads misinformation, hacks into secrets, and subverts officials and politicians. This is not just in India and the US, but in various parts of Western Europe as well.

Negotiations are on presently to restore order and a seemly disengagement from Eastern Ladakh. This might happen in some measure, but there is a perception that the Chinese will not actually leave, unless they are forced out of Indian territory. The perception is bolstered by the fact that satellite pictures show a considerable and growing build up of fighting men, armaments, heavy construction equipment and materials on the Chinese side of the LaC, behind the various flash points, including the Galwan River Valley.

To build Indian clarity of purpose on the LaC, all treaties and agreements since 1962, and indeed the Panchsheel Declaration  in the fifties, have to be mentally consigned to the dustbin. India must take a page out of the Red Chinese playbook, wherein it never lets its strategic interest suffer because of a signature on a piece of paper.

India clearly thinks it is a strategic necessity to take back what China has stolen over the years or surrender to Chinese hegemony. Thanks to a foolhardy General Shu Keling, imported from the Xinjiang theatre just days before the night of June 15^th  ;

China has overplayed its salami slicing hand.

Thereby, it has provided the perfect opportunity to India to set things to rights. This, despite Chinese vainglory about claiming territory that is not, and never did, belong to it. And outright lies about who started the fight that left it humiliated.

There were clashes before this also, over the month of May, and always featured sticks, stones, clubs. For the first time, these have been brought to the match as a subversion of the intent behind not using firearms. There were no such “non-weapons” in Doklam.

In addition, alongside the US, there are new Indian moves to call for an independent Tibet. A radio service, the Tibetan World Service, has been launched from under the All India Radio (AIR) umbrella.

India is also declaring the daily weather report in PoK and Gilgit-Baltistan and include the territories prominently on our maps.

The Tibetan president-in-exile is now a regular feature on Indian, and occasionally, international TV channels. He lives in India, with his government, in addition to the popular Dalai Lama and many Tibetan refugees.

The next clash with China, wherever it comes, will probably spark a limited border war, unless China decides to meekly take its licks without an attempt to retaliate. It may not be very sure anymore of winning the battle. Nor of being able to sell their side of the story internationally.  The list of countries China is presently confronting on various issues is quite long. They may be too tired to rise to the challenge.

And if they lose, men, equipment and territory,  it will mean an upheaval in Xi Jinping’s fortunes, and the credibility of the People’s  Liberation Ar4my ( PLA), as well as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

India is busy provisioning and war-gaming towards this probability that seems more or less inevitable. The choice is between retaliation and possible war, or loss of territory. India has declared it is not willing to give up territory.  An all-party meeting has been called for the 19^th of June to build political consensus on this position.

China has revealed its weakness in a real fight, taking 60 casualties, as per an American think-tank, to India’s 20 at Galwan. This, despite the superior numbers it brought to the premeditated clash. The PLA is not an army that has dealt with people who can fight back. The Indians were expected to run away after their CO was killed.

Galwan was fought thug fashion, hand- to-hand. The Chinese came to it with billy clubs, iron rods wrapped in barbed wire, stones. The Indians seem to have snatched  away some of their weapons, and ended up beating, or hurling 60 Chinese to their deaths down the cliffs.

Battle hardened Indian troops around the country, mirror the public anger at this Chinese treachery.  Soldiers in the forward areas, are determined to avenge their fallen brethren at the first opportunity.

India has overnight started cutting trade ties, cancelling infrastructure contracts, barring Chinese access to the Indian market, disallowing and rolling back all Chinese investments, putting stiff tariffs on imports from China. All this will decimate China’s $ 75 billion trade surplus with India.

There will be no more hand- holding summits of the leadership in the foreseeable future.

The strategic thinking in India has changed overnight. The moment is fast approaching to push back hard, not only in Ladakh and along the nearly 4,000 Km border with China. This is a matter of survival. But to make it stick India must also take back PoK and Gilgit-Baltistan and hold it. This will post a decisive blow to the two-front challenge from China and Pakistan. A more opportune time may not come again.

International support for India is growing. It has just been inducted into the UNSC with an overwhelming number of positive votes, for a two-year term, during which it will helm the UNSC in August 2021.

The support this time is not just in terms of statements from India’s Western allies, particularly the US, calling out China’s latest border intrusions in Ladakh.

The US and others have their own bone to pick with China as well. They are moving like a wall to put China under considerable pressure economically and militarily. Everyone has had enough of China’s duplicity and expansionism, except for some of its highly beholden satellites. And of course, the paid for Indian fifth column.

America has recently transferred three of its nuclear powered aircraft carrier groups to the Pacific and off the Red Chinese coast.

It has issued military warning with regard to the South China Sea, and Taiwan. It has decided to impose sanctions on the Chinese treatment of Uighurs. It has frowned on the Chinese intent to curb democratic freedoms in Hong Kong and warned of consequences.

China however seems to be pressing on regardless in Hong Kong, and with its menacing of Taiwan. It has deployed its own much smaller aircraft carrier to intimidate Taiwan. Those keeping count, say that Red Chinese fighters have flown into Taiwan’s air space, or very close to it, over a half a dozen times lately.

Japan, Australia and India have deployed their navies in support of the US effort. Choke points such as the Malacca Straits are under observation.

The trade war has intensified between China and the US. The latter has threatened the cutting off of all trade ties with China. There have been trade related tiffs with Canada as well. Britain has been warned and threatened by China, both on trade, on the rejection of Huawei’s  5G bid in the UK, as it was in Canada, and its attitude of support towards Hong Kong.

Chinese factories have started up, but there are no orders. Xi Jinping and the parts of the CCP and PLA loyal to him are grappling with rising unemployment, falling revenues, simmering public resentment.

The Wuhan Virus and the devastation it is still causing has radically changed the mood and soured international relations with China.

Most countries are not willing to stomach Chinese belligerence and imperialism any more. China’s misguided Wolf Warrior diplomacy has back-fired. It has already consolidated the US, India, Britain, Canada, Australia, into a resistance group. Others, in Europe, such as Germany, Italy and France are following suit. Israel can be counted on, despite its lucrative trade with China. Russia may try to sit on the fence and even play both sides to its advantage.

China as hegemon will, it appears, be definitely checked. America will once again step into the resultant power vacuum, NATO allies in tow. It will be assisted by India, a key Asian player on the front lines.

India has already signed most of the protocols for a close defence partnership with the US, and this is reflected in its increased access to the best US weapons systems.

Chinese has land boundary disputes with practically all its neighbours, and claims to most of the South China Sea. This is particularly irksome to the Western powers, as well as countries around it, such as Vietnam. It is also in violation of the International Court of Justice ( ICJ) verdicts on international waterways.

Regardless of this, China has built artificial islands, placed missiles, communications apparatus, stationed fighters, built air fields.

The Americans are now also keeping an eye also on the Chinese Naval base at Hainan which houses its nuclear submarines.

A skirmish therefore could break out any time there.

For India, looking at the long term, the Uttar Pradesh Defence Corridor and connecting highways have not come a day too soon. India cannot be a top level power by economic growth alone. It must make weapon systems that are world-beaters in their class and function.

Others who have been in this position, have taken liberally from what has gone before. Nobody has wasted time and money reinventing the wheel. But after that there is need for speed and innovation. There is need for further design improvements, performance enhancement, localisation. The arms manufacturers must adapt weapons to varieties of terrain, weather, ambient conditions, altitudes, temperatures.

India fortunately has no shortage of meritorious personnel, products of a very good higher education system. And it has made some progress on a collaborative model.  

India already makes quite a few things. Items include bullet proof vests, rifles, machine guns, howitzers, armoured vehicles, tanks, missiles of various classes, frigates, patrol boats, submarines including nuclear powered submarines, aircraft carriers, fighter planes, drones, radar systems, surveillance satellites.

It also assembles a large array of weapons and makes components  in the private sector for military and civilian application. Today, when the hardware of a weapon system is accompanied by a lot of bought out items and software, India should not have an insurmountable problem playing catch-up.

Under the Modi dispensation there has been an attitudinal shift away from imported weapons wherever possible. Over the last six years, the government owned Defence Reasearch and Development Organisation (DRDO), long mocked and derided, have produced radars, howitzers, and other weapons that have been inducted into the Indian Armed Forces. 

Similarly, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), is well on its way to meet the acute shortfall in fighter aircraft. It is also producing helicopters. The Indian Space Research Organisation ( ISRO), is helping with satellites for the military.

India will henceforth make almost all its ammunition as well. It has created a strategic oil reserve underground. The private sector is integrating into the military manufacturing effort is  a force multiplier and efficiency catalyst.

The cutting edge is yet to emerge. And when it does, India will become a great power.

(1,934 words)

For: Sirfnews

June 19^th, 2020

Gautam Mukherjee

China Is Learning The Limitations Of Its Will To Power

China Is Learning The Limitations Of  Its Will To Power

China’s worst fears are materialising on the banks of the Pangong Lake. As they try to brazen it out between fingers 4 and 8 alongside top brass negotiations with India, the de facto situation is already lost.

The Chinese cannot get what they came for. Not even with an ill advised fight. They did divert 5,000 soldiers from a military exercise in the high altitude plateaux of Tibet in a surprise move. But the more enduring surprise and loss of face is now going to their own account.

China’s intrusion with heavy equipment, armoured vehicles and troops behind their border patrol is reprehensible, but fairly typical of their land- grabbing ways. But this one is provoked by an existential fear about the fate of their CPEC project and India’s knife at its jugular.

The Peooples Liberation Army (PLA), occupied a sliver of Indian land between fingers 4 to 8, and a few other places as decoys. If they could have kept this land it would push India away from its own borders. But now, it is militarily threatened by the Indians from higher ground, in this terrain of mountain spurs and valleys.

India found a new patrolling route to finger 8 and beyond from its own positions at finger 4 and quickly fortified it. This outflanks the Chinese encamped below, and exposes them to a clear line of Indian fire. India has  also effected several intrusions of its own into Chinese territory.

The PLA can see the Indians working on the last part of the over 250 km of roads to the Daulat Beg Oldi (DBO) airstrip at 16,700 feet. It is being relentlessly black-topped, even as the two sides are dug in facing each other.  Over 30 bridges along this road have been built to make it an all weather artery.  Subsidiary roads to supply points in the region are also being given their finishing touches.

India has, most reasonably, pointed out the considerable infrastructure on the Chinese side at various points along the LaC, without any objections raised from India.   

To underline its determination, there is a strong military build-up of Indian armed forces and weaponry, designed to more than match the Chinese troops.  

The problem for the Chinese ultimately, is that Ladakh, and indeed all parts of the LaC , are a very long way from Beijing. And Tibet is a vast province. The Chinese compensate for this with a slew of roads, airports, but over 500 km apart, railway routes. But Tibet is high altitude, cold, inaccessible for part of the year, sparsely populated, with the local Tibetans not at all happy with Han Chinese treatment.

Ladakh more properly borders the “autonomous” region of Tibet, once called the Roof of the World. The thinking now is that Tibet should be restored to its independence over the centuries. The US is also veering around to the same conclusion.

Ladakh is not very far, particularly by air, from the Indian armed forces based at the plains of Chandigarh.

India will henceforth overlook the Karakoram Pass with greater ease than ever before. It too is Indian territory, encroached upon by China. The Karakoram Pass led, in the days of the ancient Silk Route, from Leh to Yarkand.

The Daulat Beg Oldi (DBO) airstrip is a mere 10 km away from the Karakoram Pass. The other side of the pass now leads into Xinjiang. The Khunjerab Pass, used by the Karakoram Highway to enter Indian occupied Gilgit-Baltistan from Xinkiang, is about 259 km away.

Still, it is easy to see why China feels challenged, given that both passes are seconds away by air or missile from DBO.

DBO and Ladakh, a Union Territory now, is also well poised to attend to Chinese occupied Akshai Chin and the strategic Siachen glacier.

India is also upgrading a road into an airstrip in South Kashmir simultaneously. The preparations for any future operations in PoK and Gilgit-Baltistan are clearly underway.

Intimidation, a long used Chinese tactic against several other countries near and far, is no longer working with India. It may, in fact, have provoked greater resentment against China internationally, particularly in the wake of the economic and human costs imposed by the spread of the Wuhan Virus . There is no reason why India should not benefit from this.

Other roads, bridges, tunnels and railways, at points along the LaC such as near Munshiyari in Uttarakhand, are also going on full tilt. This will assist in preventing future Chinese intrusions in Himachal and Uttarakhand. This is in addition to considerable upgradation of access and facilities in Arunachal Pradesh.

Indian armed forces have, in addition, taken up defensive positions all along the long LaC to match and better the Chinese build up on their side.

Throughout history, those who have built empires via conquest have come to a point when their reach finally exceeds their grasp. The prime movers of ambition themselves start to falter and make mistakes. That they do so when all is not well with their internal hold on power, is not surprising. 

And without these prime movers in fine fettle, the great leaders that win constantly, such enterprises cannot endure. They never have. There is no easy succession plan to would-be world dominion. 

China needs to re-examine its penchant to insult all and sundry and ride rough-shod over international norms and treaties. Otherwise, it may be headed for a rude awakening. Even the Nazi admired philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s “Superman” in Thus Spake Zarathustra, came up against the limitations of  his “Will to Power”.

(923 words)

For: WIONEWS

June 13^th, 2020

Gautam Mukherjee

No Equivalence Between US Riots & Hong Kongers

No Equivalence Between US Riots & Hong Kongers

We didn’t land on Plymouth Rock, my brothers and sisters-Plymouth Rock landed on us Malcolm X, American Black Power Activist

President Xi Jinping, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and its state controlled media have pounced upon the billowing conflagration of the American riots. They see it as a great opportunity to turn the tables. Well they might. Some say the Red Chinese have used their fifth columns built over 40 years of partnership with America, to instigate the mobs.

The Red Chinese are trolling the Americans on the very Social Media platforms they have banned in China. They are calling the riots “beautiful”, even as the looters  steal Louis Vuitton luggage and Flat TVs. 

The CCP or its media organs however should not be the ones to talk.  They praise themselves as the good Chinese. Bad Chinese to them are the Hong Kongers, the Uigurs, the Taiwanese, all dissidents, Chinese Muslims, Christians. Common or garden critics - Chinese or otherwise, at home, or abroad. Chinese media and diplomacy is in a frenzy of finger-wagging at present.

They destroy Churches, defile Crosses, defrock priests, tear up Bibles - but let’s save that for another day. For now, let us focus on the province of Xinjiang that borders the occupied Indian territory of Gilgit- Baltistan and PoK . There, the CCP and its Han cohorts have interned uncounted Chinese Muslims, without incurring a murmur of protest from over 150 Muslim nations.

The CCP has shaved their beards and banned their worship, destroyed Mosques and Korans, harvested their body parts, raped and carried away Uigur women.

China welcomes the American riots at this time to try and get off the hook. It wants to strike an equivalence between them and its own iron-fisted power grab in Hong Kong.

The Hong Kongers, local and expatriate, are also at the receiving end of police batons, tear gas, mace, arrests. The Red Chinese are inventively spraying protestors on the streets with blue dye so that there is no evading arrest.

Hong Kongers want “universal suffrage”. They say they are willing to die for it. It is a throwback to similar struggles in Europe and America. The CCP however is not interested. It is afraid of the implications. Still, this David versus Goliath fight probably has an eventual transformation embedded in its heart’s blood.

The CCP is on a deliberate and planned mission. It wants to subjugate and destroy Hong Kong. It has worked hard to replace it with Shanghai in anticipation.  So it is unperturbed about the loss of Hong Kong’s special status. It is fine with the destruction of its financial markets, its real estate, the flight of its talented and wealthy people.

Crushing Hong Kong’s insubordination is paramount to the CCP. Taiwan, it has indicated, in its presently maniacal way, will be next. Except, this plan would have gone better before Covid-19 hit the world. The international community may no longer agree to tamely do business with Shanghai at all. But with the Chinese economy falling apart, playing this game of strength for the domestic gallery is crucial.

The young people of Hong Kong who have nowhere to go will stay on. But they won’t give up on autonomy, democracy, even independence.  Red China’s brute force won’t stop them. Fiercely independent Taiwan, Britain, its erstwhile ruler and inspiration, America and its other allies, will help them.

Red China cannot draw a legitimate and credible equivalence. It purveys a spurious equality and illusory rule of the proletariat. It is red in tooth and claw from the mass oppression of its own people. This ruthlessness is embedded in its Communist DNA. More than 30 million Chinese were murdered in Mao Zedong’s time . This mirrors the now vanished USSR, where Stalin cold-bloodedly despatched a similar number.   

Stung by universal global condemnation for  its insane tip-over into bio warfare, Red China  is hurtling towards self destruction instead of repentance .Its predatory diplomatic and military imperialism, thieving of data, unfair trade practices, refusal to adhere to international treaties, are legion. It is blatantly trying to extend its land borders and seize international waterways.

Red China is determined to crush the Hong Kongers that have protested for much too long. The goal of preserving the rule of the CCP at any cost is everything. But it is indeed perplexing. Red China was born in 1949, just 71 years ago. It has only been prosperous for twenty years.   

The American riots are like a periodic purging of anger. It has already gone on for eight days and nights as I write this piece. It all began in Minneapolis, before rapidly spreading all over the country. There are demonstrations, arson, looting, shootings, arrests in their thousands. Shocked police forces around the country are bending their knee in mea culpa. Millions of Americans have condemned what happened.  

The rage is enormous. Fire-bombing mobs outside the White House were so menacing that the Secret Service whisked President Trump and his family into the fortified bunkers under the building.

Unemployment, the ravages of  the pandemic, recession, poor health and nutrition, co-morbidities, lack of money, bleak prospects, crime, gangsters, routine police bullying, existential frustrations, ghettoisation, being locked down - all contributed. It was so much gunpowder waiting for a match. 

Police stations and patrol cars have been torched. Shops and businesses destroyed. In some places, The National Guard has been called in. The US Army could be next.

Such US riots have come with sickening regularity over the years. The African American has been abused and oppressed for 400 years. This riot however is only partly spontaneous. It is reportedly instigated and financed by left wing forces funded by Jewish billionaire George Soros, including one called ANTIFA.

George Soros was a major contributor to the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, and now backs former Vice President Joe Biden. Biden himself quipped: you are not Black if you don’t vote for me.

White Supremacists, supporters of President Trump, and the Christian Right, are also said to be afoot.  Many of the demonstrators are indeed white.  Others are clearly non Black Muslims. America is 14% Black, and just over 3% Muslim.

President Trump is undaunted. Anarchy will not be permitted. Twitter and Facebook have been hauled up for facilitating the promotion of jihad. George Soros, who declared against “Nationalists” at Davos recently, part-financed the recent North Delhi riots too.  The powerful Jewish lobby in America and the Times of Israel denies his involvement, calling it a right wing slur. Trump has already banned ANTIFA as a terrorist organisation.

Have these various additional forces hijacked the African American outrage over the Minneapolis murder? Some of what has gone on is clearly anarchist in tenor and  seeks to make America ungovernable.

The George Floyd murderer has been booked  for third degree murder and 2^nd degree manslaughter. His three companion policemen have been sacked along with him. But is this enough?

It is undeniable that the wounds of slavery, apartheid, lynchings, poverty, criminality, bias, are seemingly never allowed to heal in America. And every time something like this happens, Black America is brought up short to look in the mirror afresh.

 Abraham Lincoln- a Republican, John and Robert Kennedy - Democrats, Christian Preacher and Civil Rights activist Dr.Martin Luther King,  Muslim preacher and Black Power Activist Malcolm X, were all assassinated trying to change this shameful trajectory.

The Minneapolis Police have triggered this fresh paroxym. But let us remember, every nation state in the melding has committed similar and worse crimes. The United States is not only a democracy, but a new nation as well. It may be the richest and most powerful on earth, but it is still very much a work in progress.

America will still be a democracy, when these fires burn down. A democracy, committed to the French revolutionary values of liberty, equality and the pursuit of happiness. It will still strive to be “the home of the free, and the land of the brave ”.

Many patriotic Black Americans have died fighting for their country. Even as ironically, a majority of Blacks fill its prisons. 

The Minneapolis murder and others during the riots that have followed go much beyond the outrage of the Black Lives Matter  hashtag.  That it should have happened yet again in 2020 is shameful, and indicative of a national psychosis that must be cured.

 (1, 393 words)

For: The Sunday Guardian

June 3^rd, 2020

Gautam Mukherjee