Hari Sud’s International View

  Chinese Victory or Defeat at the LOC  The dye has been cast, there is no resolution of the border dispute at the LOC in Ladakh. The commanders met needlessly in an attempt to intimidate each other for the 16th time, but to no avail.  Just before the Commander’s met, Chinese staged a big exercise with long range artillery, attack helicopters and about 20,000 troops. This is the same type of exercise they staged in the spring 2020 when their forward troops kept moving forward and captured a few points past the LOC at the Galwan River valley, Pan-gong Lake Area, pasture grounds elsewhere.  Indian Army, although in strength in Ladakh was tricked into believing that it was a routine exercise. In fact Chinese had come to occupy land, not very useful land, but to deliver a message to India after they lost an argument for the Bhutan, India & China tri-junction two years back.  That is where India misread their intent. Soon there were face to face confrontation and...

  German Gas Supplies Germany should be mindful of mechanization from far off US which is running the Ukraine propaganda war and loosing it. The key criteria is that Germany and others in Europe are dependent on Russian oil and gas supplies. Nobody in US can make up that loss of supplies. Even the Arabs do not have arrangement large enough to make up the loss of gas if Russia shuts down. It is Biden war in Ukraine. Germany was cowed into it and so did others. It is Biden after loss of face in Afghanistan decided to reach the Russian border thru Ukraine’s plaines. It is mostly US war with Russia. Russians gave the warnings by shutting down the supplies under the pretext of pipeline maintenance. People in Germany threw up their hands in disgust for loosing supplies of gas for somebody who do not matter except US forced the issue on Europe. Now the Germans can relax. The flow in the pipeline has resumed. —————————- Chinese overbuilt in last 15 years Chinese overbuilt just to get a hea...

  Chinese invasion of Taiwan on hold Chinese in their enthusiasm to display power in the Pacific, had planned to cross the 80 miles of the China Sea and invade Taiwan this year. They had been building up power, right in the vicinity for about ten years. Several new islands had been built to serve as stationary aircraft carriers. In a dumbest demonstration of their missile power they staged a simulated attack on an American carrier with their DF-21missile to sink it. They also organized multi-sea landings exercise in the public view as a practice. Heavy missiles were prepared to attack Guam (the American base in the Pacific) to stop bombers and fighters from using it. In short, two-thirds of the Chinese power has been concentrated between north and south China Sea. On the other hand highly modernized Taiwan forces are ready to take on the attacking Chinese marines. American navy will be waiting to isolate the invading Chinese force by blocking their sea supply routes, just the wa...

 Leadership Crisis in Europe Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, resigned not because he was a bad leader but because he violated certain ethical standards. Angela Merkel of Germany quit a year back on account of not any wrong doings or bad policies, but she opened the gates to refugees from Syria etc., which angered the German Right. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, was narrowly re-elected. The next five-year mandate is expected to be tumultuous. Eastern Europe has a durable Vladimir Putin, who leads Russia against the assault of Western Europe to corner him by expanding NATO to the Russian border. He is not an iron-fisted leader like Joseph Stalin, but he does not have the resources to defeat the socialist social model of the last hundred years.  The free world leader, President Joe Biden of the USA, is a bureaucrat cum senator who by dint of his patience to stick around in Washington for the last 50 years, endeared himself to the Democratic Party ...

  Indian Economy The Indian economy is heading in the right direction with $5 trillion GDP (nominal) achievable about a year late in 2026 instead of 2025. Even the IMF has revised their previous estimates to reach the magic number from 2027 to 2026. The COVID-19 pandemic caused one year of delay. Why this big achievement and that too without a massive influx of FDI and technology, it can be attributed to the dumping of Nehruvian secularism, socialism, and adopting the free market principle as its key measure. India has also mended much of its earlier corrupt practices by replacing corruption with entrepreneurship and ease of doing business. This 8.5% GDP growth forecast for the current year (2022-23) will occur despite the global slowdown caused by war, high oil prices and high inflation. It looks as though India will overcome this induced economic storm. A gloomy picture painted in June by the Western and Indian economic analysts has been laid to rest by the timely arrival of rain...

 The West Asian QUAD and China  It is comprised of four countries: the United States, India, Israel and the United Arab Emirates. The name West Asian QUAD is poorly chosen. In fact, this is an International Forum on Economic Cooperation also known as I2U2. It has American blessings, but no formal declaration. Israel capitalized on the warming of relations with some Arab countries and with American blessings invited India, the great power of the region, to participate also. See the parallel of US policy of 1950s when US in West Asia and South East Asia created Baghdad Pact, later called Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) and South East Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO). They were military agreements to prevent a Soviet takeover of the countries of West, South and East Asia. Nothing like this happened and John Foster Dulles, the American master of these pacts, died in 1958 and later his ideas were abandoned. The new grouping is purely economic in nature and protects only the ec...