An Honest Broker **Devious
With regard to the Maldives piece, this article is propaganda: ………………….. https://thegeopolitics.com/navigating-the-geopolitical-waters-india-maldives-relations-in-a-shifting-global-landscape/ You cannot expect it to remain unchallenged.
The article doesn’t contain a single piece of information that hasn’t been slanted in India’s favour, at the expense of China. The arguments presented here are “meritless, counter-productive and not based on facts”, as John Kirby would say. The intention is once again, as India always does, to smear China’s relations with countries in the South Asian region and reassert Indian hegemonic dominance. That’s why you can’t post a link without it being challenged.
The authors label Maldives-China relations as a threat and contend that benevolent Mother India has to rebuild trust with the Maldives and remind them that China is a nasty threat in the region and that peace can only be achieved through India’s benevolence over the region and that whenever a South Asian country develops a relationship with China, it poses a threat to the region.
This type of argument is not just dishonest, but counterproductive and based on lies and propaganda. There is a place for India relations with South Asian countries and a place for China relations with South Asian countries. They can coexist peacefully, but India can’t accept that and the unstated assumption in this article is that India is the threat to peace in South Asia, not China.
China is not setting out to exclude India from anywhere. It’s India that is trying to exclude China from everywhere using propaganda and misconceptions of China as being a threat.
The authors resort to the much-discredited China debt trap narrative as evidence of their China threat claim. It doesn’t matter how many times the China Debt trap narrative is debunked over the last five years, when one has no other argument, Indians still play it like a worn-out record. It’s pathetic.
The article is full of decorative emotional phrases like India has a “rich history” with South Asian countries (so does China). It tries to frame history in such a way that suggests India should have an exclusive role in the Maldives because historically it has been that way. This is called coercive diplomacy. It is not honest diplomacy on equal terms. It’s telling the Maldives that if you don’t play ball with India on our terms, we’ll fuck you up, to use a language idiom by the murdered journalist Gonzalo Lira.
The paragraph: “It needs to be understood that the Indian Ocean region is of major significance to India due to which India-Maldives relations hold considerable importance and the same can be ascertained through the doctrine of Security and Growth for All in the Region (also called SAGAR) initiated by India.”
Why would India, the US, UK, Japan and Australia object if this paragraph were written as follows,
It needs to be understood that the South China Sea region is of major significance to China…. and [peace] can be ascertained through the doctrine of Security and Growth for All in the Region (also called SAGAR) initiated by China.
Why would India and the US-Japan-Anglo-Saxon world accept that? And if that question can be answered, why should we accept it when India plays that card to assert its national interests over the entire Indian Ocean, which is far larger than the South China Sea?
It was recently argued in “The Australian” newspaper that the Red Sea is in Australia’s backyard. That’s some backyard. If it were to matter geopolitically, Australia would claim the North Pole and the White Sea in their backyard.
In the case of China, with so many US military bases surrounding China and with US aggression in the region, China has extended its sphere of influence in the South China Sea as part of a defensive system which is vital to China’s interests given the ever rising threat of war against China. That’s not happening in the Indian Ocean.
As early as 2000, a decision was taken in Canberra to form an Asian NATO- which later became Quad. In the same year, Australia and the US signed an agreement to develop a nuclear missile “defensive system” in Australia, against China. This was in 2000 ….. before 11/9. That’s how the West were thinking. So, there is a 25-year history to this game. China was aware of the plans before the agreements had been signed, and they warned Australia to not go down that path because it would create a security issue for China, but Australia ignored China’s security concerns. As usual. At that time, China didn’t have a navy, air force or military to speak of. It was underdeveloped and weak. But the decisions taken in Canberra in 2000 changed everything for China. This nuclear missile system built in Australia was not defensive as claimed, but offensive. It would allow the US to strike Beijing with nuclear missiles launched from Australia.
What did Australia and the US expect? Did they expect China to roll over? As a result of those aggressive actions taken by Australia, the US, India and Japan, China has responded by developing its military to become very powerful and to rapidly build more nuclear missiles which are now aimed at Australia. More recently, China is working with Russia, Iran and other states to counter Western aggression. It is strange to see the “good guys” (the West) become “the bad guys”.
Australia and the US have made China stronger by their actions and created the possibility, or even probability for war, which could have been avoided by not taking those decisions in Canberra in 2000.
Here’s a final thought to ponder. India may enjoy US support in containing China today, but if India’s economy was to become so strong as to rival/threaten the US, as this article would like to see occur, the US would quickly turn on India as they have turned on China and play an Indian threat narrative – the Indian debt trap narrative; and the US will build more military bases in South Asia, and nuclear missile systems to contain India. India cannot guarantee that it will enjoy US support in the future. As long as India’s economy remains as it is and doesn’t grow, they will continue to enjoy US support.
But India has ambitions to become a superpower and it wants to grow its economy greater than China’s. India has very different values to the West and its democracy is not so great. Whether India can become the No.1 economy in the world is uncertain, but if it did occur, then India will become a major threat to the US and the West as well. It is conceivable and indeed possible the US could switch sides at the stroke of a pen and join with China and Taiwan to contain India. After all, most people don’t know that in the 1940s, the US tried to get the KMT and the Chinese communists to stop fighting a civil war and to unite them so as to create a united US-China alliance against Russia. Had it succeeded, it would have been the biggest alliance in world history. You can be sure that if it was in the interests of the US to unite China and Taiwan in the future in order to contain India, the US would do it at the stroke of a pen. Their propaganda machinery and the Western media would play the game and support it. How would US propaganda play out in this eventuality? The US President would simply say: “As President of the United States, I am proud to have brought the great Chinese people together for the benefit of mankind.”
It is not beyond the realm of possibility that the US will reunify Taiwan with China before China can do it, just as the US tried to do in the 1940s. All things are possible.
Likewise, after 11/9 Al Qaeda was declared No. 1 Enemy by the US, but by 2012, Al Qaeda and the US became friends when the US started to work with Al Qaeda and to use them to wage war against Syria and Iran. That should give sufficient foreknowledge of how uncertain relationships and agreements are in this world, and that India may not always curry favour with Washington.
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** A Thuppahi Note
The title of this item is of Thuppahi Making. However, I refrained from my usual policy of highlighting significant segmens of the essay.
ALSO NOTE
Are there historical instances where devious propaganda played a pivotal role in shaping geopolitical outcomes? Greeting : Telkom University
Interesting question. The word “devious” implies “harmful intent” in using propaganda. One could argue propaganda is by its nature devious, but a better word to describe it is ‘insidious’, because most people can’t detect propaganda and fall for it like a chain-sawn tree mainly because they are lazy thinkers. Propaganda is insidious in the way it contains elements of truth mixed with lies, but the lies can’t be easily detected, and the brain just blindly accepts whatever is put in front of it. Propaganda uses lies to manipualte our thinking. That’s why propaganda has become such a major feature of the media.
There are many instances in which propaganda (irrespective of whether it is devious or not) has played a pivotal but harmful role in shaping our world. Propaganda is used to start wars. For instance, the war in Iraq in 2003 in which false stories of babies being torn off incubators by the Iraqis (a massive lie) was used to change public opinion in the US so that most Amercians supported the illegal invasion of Iraq. Then came the lies concerning WMDs presented by Colin Powell to the UN which triggered the war. The war in Vietnam was also started on a lie and propaganda was used to demonize the North Vietnamese. The so-called “dominos theory” was pure propaganda. It was part of the Cold War propaganda. We could go on like that with many examples. Governments and their proxy academics wouldn’t use propaganda if it wasn’t an extremely effective tool for shaping public opinion as well as geopolitical outcomes.
I oppose the use of propaganda for nefarious purposes. I prefer countries – irrespective of their political systems – to find ways to co-exist without tensions and fermenting ill-feeling based on lies which can be extremely harmful to the lives of ordinary people who lives are interconnected across many regions. So, a little honest brokering is important here, which is why I said India should be able to have good relations with the Maldives, but China should also have good relations with Maldives. Bi-lateral relations between two countries shouldn’t be sabotaged by a third country in order to gain a benefit out of it. It is disgusting to see it played out. That is why it is important to expose it when it rears its ugly head.