Week 38: London Calling

A week returning to an Alpha++ city, and the complex geopolitical strain of India and Canada.

Walkway, Kings Cross St. Pancras

I’m currently in London, a city I lived in for a couple of years in my early-20s and still the place where I feel most at home. Having been desperate to get out of Australia in my youth, London was a revelation, and, somewhere I felt immediately comfortable. Well, aside from the fact that the city was swarming with Australians. I didn’t realise at the time that London wasn’t really the city to be in if you were trying to avoid Australia. At the time I suggested the collective noun for Australians in London was “a plague”.

As I’ve matured my desperation to avoid Australia has waned a little. Australia is ok. It’s a pleasant enough place to live. But it still does feel very far from the great works of human endeavour – and, I feel, lacks the requisite ambition – and awareness – to strive for them (aside from Australian Rules Football, the world’s best sport). I remain a parochial Melburnian (is there any other type?), but I’m keenly aware that the city is not the centre of the world. London has a scale, not just of people or economy, but of ideas, that is leagues ahead (even if, the UK itself is in decline). It feels important. Even though online we can now virtually exist in any country or city we like (and I still gravitate towards the British media), physical presence remains essential to truly being part of a culture.

The past few days have reignited some of my emotional pain of no longer living here. Yet something else struck me. Having lived here as a very young man with almost no capabilities (and no idea what I wanted to do with myself), I didn’t grasp the opportunities that London could provide. Being here now – with some skills, cognition and focus – the city’s abundance of options are now far clearer to me. I’m fretting that being here only a week I won’t have the time to take advantage of them all (although next week’s newsletter should have some interesting things to report).

The Delicate Balance Of India

The big story in international relations this week has been Canada accusing India of murdering a Khalistani separatist in British Columbia. If the accusation proves to be correct it has a huge implications for not just the relationship between India and Canada, but it ripples out to all countries with significant Indian diaspora. And how they approach their relationship with India (something most Western countries are very keen to improve). I will write something for The Diplomat this forthcoming week from an Australian perspective.

However, surveying social media – I know, not a great idea – there seems to be a lack of understanding about how such accusations materialise in Western countries like Canada. A Canadian prime minister would not make such an accusation without substantial evidence. To do so would send the country’s intelligence and security services – as well as the departments of foreign affairs and defence – into panicked meltdown. Accusations like this originate from the intelligence and security services who are by their very nature incredibly cautious (and this looks to have been coordinated via the Five Eyes network). They wouldn’t bring such an accusation to the government without being very sure of the evidence they have. Knowing the implications, the vetting would have been intense before the words got to Trudeau’s mouth.

The handling of the matter is another thing though. The Indian press have reported that this is part of Canada “vote bank” politics, with a large Sikh population who are geographically concentrated in a number of seats. There is some truth to this. Given that the Liberal Party is currently given confidence and supply by the New Democratic Party led by Jagmeet Singh, who is coy about his position on Khalistan, but could be deemed Khalistan-adjacent, adds a further layer of intrigue. Being loud about this issue – where being quiet and using diplomatic channels with India was probably more sensible – may have some domestic political advantages for Trudeau.

On a personal note, I am quite close to this issue, having written about related topics previously. I am also very fond of Sikhs and have an enormous amount of respect for Sikhism, which has a code of ethics that I have serious appreciation for. One of the great experiences of my life has been visiting the Golden Temple in Amritsar, which I’ve done twice (I recommend going at night time for a better atmosphere).

I believe we should all be deeply sympathetic to what Sikhs lost during the partition of India. In making the choice that India, rather than Pakistan, would be the state that would best protect their interests, Sikhs were disconnected from three of their four holiest sites, as well as their cultural (and former political) capital of Lahore. This has been an immense sacrifice. India may not have lived up to its promise (under any political party), but undoubtedly Pakistan would have been worse (the poor treatment of Hindus in Pakistan is evidence of this). Yet the viability of Khalistan lacks realism, and would create a geopolitical nightmare in what is already a tense area of the Subcontinent – with Kashmir just to the north, and competing territorial claims between India, Pakistan and China. Given that the Khalistani movement is stronger in the diaspora than in Punjab there is an indication that those actually on the ground in the proposed territory are aware of this reality.

India is a massive experiment in internal complexity like no other country. Working towards its success is not just in India’s interests, but the whole world’s. Seeking its failure has untold ramifications. And I would add to this India’s own actions in its own defence need to be far more sophisticated.

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This Week’s Reading:

The Voice Is A Test Of Enlightened Democracy

Patrick Dodson – The Saturday Paper

“It is my abiding regret that politics has overwhelmed the approach to the Voice referendum and that debate has sunk into a maelstrom.

This is not about Anthony Albanese who has, to his great credit, held steadfast; it is about the vote of the Australian people to whom the Uluru Statement from the Heart was addressed six years and four months ago and in whose goodness its authors placed their faith. It is about a matter of principle. Parliament will sort out the detail. The Constitution is for principle. Parliament relies on those principles to pass valid laws. The High Court is the forum to decide the validity of any law passed by parliament. This is entirely normal.

The consequences of our vote in the referendum will give us some insight into the meaning of that concept of a fair go that we proudly proclaim. It will test the idea that we are an enlightened, modern democracy. I remain confident in the goodness of the Australian people.

If you don’t know what this referendum is about, it is your bounden duty to find out.”

Can India and Pakistan’s Historic Water Pact Endure?

Betsy Joles - Foreign Policy

“Since 1960, a treaty brokered by the World Bank has prevented a water war between pugnacious neighbors India and Pakistan—even as the two countries have gone to war three times over other issues. The Indus Waters Treaty outlines the usage rights of the Indus River and its five tributaries, which snake through the two countries. It allocates control of the three eastern rivers to India and the three western rivers to Pakistan, which is downstream. China and Afghanistan also utilize water from the Indus Basin.

The Indus Waters Treaty has held up during periods of intense diplomatic strain and withstood multiple disagreements of interpretation, including an ongoing dispute over Indian hydroelectric dam projects. But India and Pakistan’s relationship has been contentious for decades. Within this context, negotiating the details of a water-sharing agreement is a delicate task, made more so by the climate extremes that are altering the rivers it governs.

While both countries compete for increasingly needed water, the rivers that make up the Indus Basin are steadily changing as rainfall patterns shift and extreme weather events become more common. Water extremes have intensified with increasing glacial melt, changing monsoons, and worsening heat waves—leaving rivers at times bone dry and at others swelling their banks. “These rivers were already known for their variability,” said Zia Hashmi, director of research at the Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources. “Climate change has actually increased this variability.”

China’s Language Police

Gina Anne Tam – Foreign Affairs

“The Chinese state has long been interested in suppressing the diversity of languages spoken in the mainland and, more recently, its special administrative regions. Through state policy, it elevates Mandarin as the sole national language and devalues all other languages, from those spoken by China’s minority ethnicities, such as Tibetan and Uyghur, to other local Chinese languages, the most well-known one being Cantonese. As I observed in Foreign Affairs in 2016, the state language policies that produce this hierarchy are undergirded by the philosophy that Chinese identity, including the language that represents it, should be unified, homogenous, and intrinsically tied to the Chinese state. Such a philosophy sees expressions of Chinese identity that are different or diverse—including the celebration or equal treatment of any language besides the Chinese national language—as unimportant at best, and threatening at worst. In recent years, however, the Chinese state has taken an even more uncompromising line. Its policies of the mid-2010s seem mild by comparison to its attempts today to flatten the complexity of Chinese identity and extend the untrammeled hegemony of Mandarin.”

The Nimble New Minilaterals

C. Raja Mohan – Foreign Policy

“In less than three years, the Biden administration has made minilaterals an integral part of the Asian order. On the security front, these minilaterals have begun to complicate Beijing’s security calculus by enhancing the deterrent capabilities of its neighbours. On the economic front, the minilaterals are restructuring the China-centred Asian integration that has emerged in the 21st century. By encouraging the shift of industrial supply chains out of China and building new technology coalitions—including the Quad and the “Chip 4” semiconductor alliance (made up of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the United States), the Biden administration is challenging Beijing’s economic domination.

In Asia, the rise of an overly ambitious regional hegemon, the new political will of a distant superpower to counter it, and the presence of large and capable regional powers have created propitious conditions for minilateralism. But minilaterals are becoming part of the institutional landscape in other regions as well. In Europe, the heart of both alliances and multilateralism, smaller coalitions are emerging to press forward on issues where other partners are still applying the brakes. In defense, for example, the Lublin Triangle (Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine) and the Nordic Defence Cooperation (among the five Nordic countries) are pushing the envelope of strategic and military integration. The countries of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf are increasingly cooperating, as is the emerging triad of Azerbaijan, Pakistan, and Turkey. Each is a response to the failure of old-style multilateralism and traditional alliances to resolve conflict and promote integration, making it likely that the minilateral format is here to stay.”

Is Single Parenthood the Problem?

Annie Lowrey – The Atlantic

“Women are going it alone—not because they want to, but because they feel that they have no choice. In straight couplings, women tend to like to date men who earn more than them and men tend to like to date women who earn less; thus, women’s thriving and men’s flailing have left a “marriageability gap.” In surveys, women overwhelmingly say that they want to get married. (That includes young people: In one poll released this week by the Knot Worldwide, just 8 percent of Gen Zers described marriage as “outdated.”) But they report struggling to find someone with a steady job, someone to match their sensibility and ambition. So they have kids on their own.

The real elephant in the room, I think, is that the United States doesn’t want to contemplate, let alone create, a policy infrastructure that supports single parenthood. It doesn’t want to make sure that kids thrive with a single earner in the home. It won’t do this even though it seems obvious that a large share of children are going to grow up with one parent going forward, and even though we aren’t realistically going to increase the marriage rate among lower-income Americans. We don’t want to build a society where children are seen as a collective gift and a collective responsibility. It’s not single parenthood that’s failing these kids. We all are.”

This article makes the good point that children, undoubtedly, do better in a two parent household. What is left unaddressed though is the damage created from a violent household. If we start from the position that it is essential for children to have a two parent household it incentivises us to downplay or ignore violence. The key has to be two kind, loving, caring and responsible parents.

The Birthrate Is Levelling Off in Europe’s Most Fertile Region

Lisa Abend – News Lines Magazine

“Certainly, policy has helped support the Faeroe Islands’ larger families. Parents receive a year of paid leave with each child, and daycare and kindergartens are heavily subsidised — Bjarnadottir Vinther and her husband pay 3,000 kroner ($450) per month for the first child and nothing for the rest. Pregnant women who live on parts of the archipelago that aren’t connected by bridge or tunnel to Streymoy island, where the capital and National Hospital are located, are housed free in nearby apartments starting two weeks before their due dates. There’s even a tax break for seven-seater cars. But many of these benefits are comparable to those offered in Denmark and Sweden, which have much lower fertility. In its exceptionalism, then, the Faeroe Islands has long held out the tantalizing possibility of other explanations. 

Strong social networks are one of them, creating an amalgamation of best practices in modern-day family-friendly public policy and the old adage about taking a village to raise a child. Investment in public projects like the long underwater tunnel that connects the island of Vagar — home to the country’s international airport and some of the archipelago’s most spectacular scenery — with Streymoy has also helped. “Here extended families live in close proximity to each other,” says Holm Johannesen, “unlike in other places where parents live in one city, their adult kids in another. And the infrastructure in Faeroes has really improved so the distance between villages is down dramatically. Today, several villages can function more like a single city.” 

Rory Stewart Still Doesn’t Know Who He Is

Will Lloyd – The New Statesman

“Stewart was only a “romantic” in the sense that he had a dream that failed him. Would life ever be as good to him as it was on some sunny June evening walking along the Eton Road in his tails, when his possibilities were endless? His experiences in politics had scratched something out of him. He had played a terrible trick on himself, and was now paying the price for it. The heroic vision of the world he once had, when he recited verses from Chapman’s Homer to himself, was gone.

He insisted that he no longer saw reality in those terms and sometimes I believed him. Rory Stewart was leaving a long hallucination behind, but he was still struggling to reconcile what he imagined he might have been with what he had become.”

As an avid listener to The Rest Is Politics, Stewart is a fascinating figure. This is an excellent portrait of a man who has an enormous sense of belief (and I suspect class entitlement) yet doesn’t know exactly where to direct it. And, I suspect, feels perplexed that he hasn’t simply been able to walk into the prime ministership.

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There is no playlist this week. However, over on my music blog Lunch Hour Pops I look at a couple of weirdo early-1980s tracks dug up by the Amsterdam label Music From Memory.

Also, my friends Prue and Zac – aka Popular Music – have just released a new single this week titled Sad Songs. Check it out below.