Newsletter: Week 5, 2023
Newsletter: Week 5, 2023
Adani and the BJP's crony nationalism, Australia to end equal shared parental responsibility in the family court, and the Czech Rep. seeks to normalise Taiwan's status
India’s Crony Nationalism
The past week has seen a spectacular reduction in wealth of one of India’s main industrialists, Gautam Adani. With his companies’ stocks falling dramatically due to accusations of accounting fraud and “brazen stock manipulation.” In response, Adani claimed that these accusations were a “calculated attack on India, the independence, integrity, and quality of Indian institutions, and the growth story and ambition of India.”
This defensive statement seeking to arouse nationalist sympathies reveals much about the relationship between India’s wealthy industrialists and the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). About how the BJP and its favoured businessmen like Adani see themselves as working in unison to construct and control the idea of India.
The distinct economic approach of nationalist parties like the BJP gets lost in the reductionist binary of “left and right” (useless terms I would advocate abandoning completely – although I acknowledge this will be unlikely). The conception of the BJP as “right-wing” and therefore “capitalist” misreads what kind of party they actually are. The BJP may not be suspicious of wealth, but they are highly suspicious of Adam Smith.
Smith’s most influential work – The Wealth of Nations – was a critique of the dominant mercantilism of the day. Smith’s observation was that a nation’s wealth flourished when states stopped trying to direct how wealth was created. Individuals and businesses were best placed to make decisions without consideration of any “national” sentiment or objectives.
To a party like the BJP this is a deeply confronting proposition. To the BJP control of the national narrative is everything. Companies that would make choices that could bring wealth to the country, but undermine the BJP’s ideas of what India should be, are dangerous. Market forces are unpredictable, and cannot be relied upon to deliver outcomes that enhance the BJP’s power. Economies therefore need to be guided in a direction that best suits the party’s interests.
To best aid in this approach the party needs a close cohort of key industrialists who will work in a symbiotic relationship with the party. These industrialists, like Adani and Murkesh Ambani, are allowed to develop fabulous wealth, but their key business decisions must be made within the parameters of what the BJP approves (this is often implicit). The concentration of industries in a few trusted hands best serves the BJP’s interests because it makes key economic decisions easier to control than the “spontaneous order” of liberal economies with their myriad of moving parts and economic incentives.
Of course, this is a back scratching arrangement. The direct financial support that people like Adani give the BJP comes with the expectation that the BJP will protect their market share from competition, and especially foreign competition. These industrialists themselves are also highly suspicious of Smith, who would be appalled at their concentration of wealth and their industrial holdings.
To Smith, strong economic competition wasn’t just about economic efficiency, it was a moral advocacy. A way to limit and disperse power within a society. To a party like the BJP that believes there should be no limits on its power this is an affront. When the BJP are described as “business-friendly” we should never confuse this with “market-friendly,” and we should also be very aware of exactly whose businesses it is friendly to, and whose it isn’t.
Australia Giving Rights Back To Children
There was some positive news concerning Australia’s family court system this past week, with the government releasing draft legislation that when passed into law will end the presumption of “equal shared parental responsibility” – a provision that has made it incredibly difficult to protect children from violent and abusive fathers. This presumption has also made a mockery of the term “responsibility,” with it often instead being interpreted as the equal “rights” of parents.
Parenthood is a privilege and an actual responsibility. It is not a right. In custody disputes rights should be held by children, and their primary right – which should not be balanced against anything else – is the right to safety.
Unfortunately, equal shared parental responsibility has made the court’s expectation of mothers one of facilitating contact with fathers, regardless of how dangerous they are. Any mother who tries to prioritise her children’s safety is often deemed to be obstructing the objective of the court. Equal shared parental responsibility has incentivised the court to ignore or minimise violence and abuse. Far too often mothers themselves have lost custody of their children as a punishment because they have insisted that their former partners posed a dangerous threat.
Equal shared parental responsibility has made the family court more concerned with the welfare of adult male egos than it has the welfare of children. This is not a phenomenon that is exclusive to the family court, our societies at large struggle to accept that men are capable of being responsible for their own actions. It is entrenched in our cultures that violence is an essential – or at least an unavoidable – aspect of masculinity and therefore men shouldn’t really face consequences for exerting it.
Instead of the high standards for parenthood that we should expect, equal shared parental responsibility lowered the bar for fatherhood to simply a matter of DNA. This has been deeply unfair to children at best, and incredibly dangerous for them at worst. The hope is that ending this presumption will start to shift the family court away from its current suspicion of mothers, indifference to children, and sympathy for abusive men.
Taipei Calls Prague, Prague Answers
The status of Taiwan remains one of the great diplomatic fictions. It is for all intents and purposes a separate country, and it is an island that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has never controlled. But due to the PRC’s belief that Taiwan is part of its territory, only 13 countries formally recognised this reality. Although to be fair to the PRC, the Republic of China (Taiwan’s official name) also claims all the territory currently governed by the PRC and therefore also only provides the option to recognise either itself or the PRC (However, given that the ROC previously did govern this territory from 1912 to 1949, its claim could be deemed more legitimate. Although, of course, sovereignty does not work this way. It is a game solely about what you can and cannot control).
Yet the absurdity of this diplomatic arrangement is becoming something that other countries are becoming less interested in playing along with. In 2021, Lithuania allowed Taiwan to open its de facto embassy in Vilnius under the name “Taiwanese Representative Office” rather than the standard “Taipei Economic and Cultural Office” – a name that Beijing finds more acceptable due to its less official connotations (even if the function of the office is diplomatic).
Adding to this, the new Czech president-elect, Petr Pavel accepted a phone call from Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen this week, something world leaders usually do not do. For the incoming Czech leader this calculation is quite simple – the Czech economy is highly complementary with the Taiwanese economy, with much of what it manufactures in cars, computers, and broadcasting equipment reliant on the microchips that Taiwan produces. In order to facilitate this it makes perfect sense for the Czech Republic and Taiwan to have relations at the highest levels of their respective leaderships.
While Beijing with bluster at this development, and may even impose economic and diplomatic sanctions against the Czech Rep. (as it did to Lithuania), this was no doubt factored into Pavel’s calculations on accepting the call. What also may be part of Pavel’s calculations is the Czech Rep. demonstrating the courage acknowledge reality will make it easier for other countries to follow suit in normalising Taiwan in the international community.
This Week’s Reading and Listening
Grant Wyeth - The Diplomat
“Yet for the 73 people still languishing in the detention centre on Nauru, this is clearly an unfair burden to carry. The purpose Canberra has assigned them has shifted from being used as a grim form of deterrence to now being pawns in a broader game of geopolitics. This is a further debasement of these people’s basic humanity.
Alongside this dehumanisation, there is now a glaring absurdity to this strategy. Australia’s policy of turning back to Indonesia any boats of asylum seekers is undermining its broader regional calculations. If the objective is now to keep Nauru financially afloat, then the logical conclusion would be that there needs to be a steady stream of asylum seekers to be sent to the island to be detained in order to justify the facility’s existence.
Australia has found itself caught. Who does Canberra wish to deter the most – asylum seekers or China?”
Wong’s Colonial History Lesson Was Actually A Geopolitical Play
Rory Medcalf – Australian Financial Review
“Understanding the past, she noted, helps nations “share the present and the future”.
Not only share, but shape. Nations that own up to their true histories have an advantage of credibility and reliability when it comes to engaging, adapting and enduring in a world of difference. And Australia’s region has an exceptional diversity of cultures, political systems, state sizes, development and historical experience.
So a narrow or triumphalist view of a national story is anathema to the Indo-Pacific solidarity that middle powers need to preserve peace and balance in the face of authoritarian ambition and geopolitical rivalry. This goes to the “strategic equilibrium” at the centre of an emerging Wong doctrine.”
The Narcissism Of The Angry Young Men
Tom Nichols - The Atlantic
“Narcissism is a common malady, but for the Lost Boys, it is the indispensable primer for a bomb whose core is an unstable mass of insecurities about masculine identity. This, of course, helps explain why such spectacular and ghastly acts are an almost entirely male phenomenon. Women, who are less prone to commit violence in general, are rarely the perpetrators of these kinds of senseless massacres. In general, they do not share the same juvenile fantasies of power and dominance that are common to adolescent boys. Nor do they tend to harbour the same resentments about sex and status that are common to all teenagers but that in the Lost Boys persist beyond adolescence and soon grow to volcanic levels.”
In Myanmar, Resistance Forces Pursue Home Rule
Emily Fishbein - Foreign Policy
“Thantlang’s trajectory reflects a transformation across much of Myanmar, as resistance forces manage to drive the military out of rural areas—despite weapons and funding shortages—and replace its administration with their own. In a paper published last June, independent researchers Naw Show Ei Ei Tun and Kim Jolliffe found that the military had “lost effective control of most of the country” and that resistance groups were able to take responsibility for critical governance functions even in areas where they hadn’t achieved decisive battlefield victory.
In some cases, ethnic armed organisations are expanding public services they already offered in their territories. In others, resistance groups are establishing services from the ground up, with varying degrees of support from the anti-coup National Unity Government, made up of ousted lawmakers, other leaders, and activists. These resistance-led administrations often function in areas of mass displacement and humanitarian need amid ongoing risks of military attacks. Their locally led design carries political significance: Replacing Myanmar’s centralised governance system with a federal model has become a rallying cry for the pro-democracy movement.”
Philip Patrick - Unherd
“At present, Japan has a unified military structure, the Japan Self-Defence Force (JSDF), founded in 1954. With nearly a quarter of a million personnel, its original purpose was domestic security, logistical (non-combat) support for international peacekeeping missions under the auspices of the UN, and reassuring the population that Japan wasn’t completely defenceless.
Japan was obliged, under Article 9 of the 1947 constitution, to renounce war as a “sovereign right of the nation” — the only country ever to do so. The exact wording stated that Japan would never again maintain “land sea or air forces”, but over time the JDSF has developed from its initial Dad’s Army-style and scale into a significant military force, with license to operate overseas, albeit in limited circumstances. The rearmament plan marks a significant step towards Article 9’s further reinterpretation, this time into virtual meaninglessness.”
Putin Has Paved The Way For Ukrainian Membership In NATO
Boris Johnson - The Washington Post
“We spent years telling Ukrainians that we have an “open door” policy in NATO, and that they have the right to “choose their own destiny,” and that Russia should not be able to exercise a veto.
And all that time we have overtly signaled to Moscow that Ukraine is never going to join the alliance — because so many NATO members will simply exercise their veto themselves.
In principle, yes; in practice, no. That has been the message.
And what is the result of all this sucking and blowing at once? What have we achieved by speaking softly out of both sides of our mouths?
The result is the worst war in Europe for 80 years. Russian President Vladimir Putin has destroyed countless lives, homes, hopes and dreams. He has also destroyed the slightest reason to sympathise with him or to humour him in his paranoia.”
The Long Twilight Of The Islamic Republic
Ali Vaez - Foreign Affairs
“The Iranian people have changed over the past 44 years. But the Islamic Republic has not kept up. It is incapable of admitting its mistakes and rectifying itself because it fears that conceding under pressure will only invite more pressure—both from the bottom up and from the outside. For its part, the exiled opposition admits that the struggle against the regime is likely to be a marathon, not a sprint. This opposition seeks a campaign of ultimate pressure and isolation in the hope of accelerating the regime’s demise. What all this pressure on the Iranian people—from above, by the regime, and from outside—will do to the fabric of the country’s society seems to be an afterthought to either side. There are also no obvious off-ramps from Iran’s deteriorating relations with the West, as both sides continue to climb the escalatory ladder: Iran by ratcheting up its nuclear program and assisting Russia in its war of aggression against Ukraine, and the West by tightening sanctions.”
Richard Haass on Where America Went Wrong (Audio)
Persuasion
“Richard Haass is a veteran American diplomat, statesman, and author. He is president of the Council on Foreign Relations, and served as Special Assistant to President George H. W. Bush and as Director of Policy Planning at the State Department in the administration of President George W. Bush.
In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Richard Haass discuss the structural challenges, missed opportunities, and poor choices of the last thirty years; the arc of American foreign policy from Vietnam to Iraq; and how civic-minded Americans can effect positive change at a moment of crisis.”
Megan Garber - The Atlantic
“Life in the metaverse brings an aching contradiction: We have never been able to share so much of ourselves. And, as study after study has shown, we have never felt more alone. Fictions, at their best, expand our ability to understand the world through other people’s eyes. But fiction can flatten, too. Recall how many Americans, in the grim depths of the pandemic, refused to understand the wearing of masks as anything but “virtue signalling”—the performance of a political view, rather than a genuine public-health measure. Note how many pundits have dismissed well-documented tragedies—children massacred at school, families separated by a callous state—as the work of “crisis actors.” In a functioning society, “I’m a real person” goes without saying. In ours, it is a desperate plea.
This could be how we lose the plot. This could be the somber finale of America: The Limited Series. Or perhaps it’s not too late for us to do what the denizens of the fictional dystopias could not: look up from the screens, seeing the world as it is and one another as we are. Be transported by our entertainment but not bound by it.”
Britain Is Much Worse Off Than It Understands
Simon Tilford – Foreign Policy
“The U.K.’s political class is loath to admit the scale of the problem because to do so would mean calling into question Brexit, which neither of the main political parties is willing to do—the Conservative Party because many of its politicians and a majority of its voters continue to believe in Brexit and the Labour Party because it fears losing the votes of Brexit supporters in close fought parliamentary seats in England’s midlands and north. This leads the country’s politicians to downplay the scale of the problems and ignore policies—such as rejoining the European Union’s single market—that could alleviate them.
The bigger the gap between the dominant narrative and reality experienced by most people, the greater the political risk. A government needs to be honest about the challenges a country faces and put in place long-term strategies to address them. Voters do not expect miracles, but they need to feel confident that things are moving in the right direction. If not, the way is open for social unrest, a loss of respect for political institutions, and growing ungovernability.”
Boomers And The Ultimate Failure Of Thatcherism
Sam Freedman - Comment Is Freed
“And this is where the moral failure of Thatcherism becomes apparent. The very group of people she enriched, by giving them property, increasing the value of it, helping them become shareholders, allowing them to keep more of their income, have not become vigorously self-reliant, leading to a resurgence in entrepreneurial spirit, dynamism, and charity. They have become spectacularly entitled.
This has snookered the Tories. To emulate Thatcher now would require boosting home ownership amongst younger people but that cannot be done without upsetting older voters who do not want greater density in their town, or by cutting house prices which can only happen, in a planned way, by taxing property more.
The additional funding required to run the state has to come from younger, working, people because pensions, and pensioner benefits are untouchable, and the vast capital gains on property cannot be taxed for fear of electoral rebellion. Yet this is turn pushes young people towards an extremely anti-Thatcherite way of thinking about fairness and aspiration, and further away from ever voting Tory.”
Helmut K. Anheier – Project Syndicate
“But Susanne Schröter, a professor studying the “anthropology of colonial and postcolonial orders” at Goethe University, identifies even deeper systemic failures that may be jeopardising the West’s future and emboldening autocrats like Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. A frequent critic of what she sees as Germany’s naive approach to political Islam and identity politics, she diagnoses a crude mixture of hubris and self-loathing in Germany and the broader West – problems that express themselves in an endless series of double standards and ambiguities regarding economic, environmental, and security policy.
The hubris that Schröter sees lies in the assumption that all other societies value individual freedom in the same way that Western countries do, and that all are equally attracted to democratic structures. The self-loathing represents the other side of the same coin. There is a growing strain of Western thought that blames the West for everything that is wrong with the world.
In her view, anti-Americanism, cancel culture, identity politics, intellectual narcissism, and a feigned tolerance of archaic Islamic practices (cultural relativism) are all expressions of the same underlying problem: the idea that the West is omnipotent in both good and evil. And as this narrative has taken hold in Western churches, the media, and civil society, it has also been readily taken up by the Global South.”
Labor’s Proposed Family Law Overhaul Makes Some Important Changes, But Omits Others
Camilla Nelson - The Conversation
“The bill makes some attempt to address litigation abuse, a widely documented phenomenon in which a perpetrator seeks to weaponise the legal system – sometimes launching multiple actions across a variety of legal jurisdictions – in order to intimidate, harm, inflict financial damage, threaten and harass a victim. The court will be given more power to throw out such cases than it has at present.
There are also changes designed to better protect sensitive information, to safeguard against situations in which perpetrators use subpoenas to gain access to a victim’s medical or therapeutic records in order to inflict harm.
Many parts of the bill seek to clarify existing arrangements, such as setting out the circumstances in which a parenting order can be changed.
This may have some impact on litigation abuse, but it is unlikely to assist victims who have agreed to unsafe children’s arrangements out of fear, or a lack of financial resources. It also does not help, for example, a self-represented litigant whose English-language skills are not at the level that a fast-paced adversarial legal action requires.”