Indian Journal of Politics and International Relations Vol 11 (2018)
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ISSN 0973-5011 Vol. 11 No. 1 & 2 2018 Indian Journal of Politics and International Relations IJPAIR Indian Journal of Politics and International Relations Vol. 11 No. 1 & 2 January-December 2018 Vice Chancellor Sabu Thomas General Editor A.M. Thomas Editor K.M. Seethi Board of Associate Editors Raju K. Thadikkaran A.K. Ramakrishnan R. Girish Kumar C. Vinodan M.V. Bijulal Lirar P. Board of Advisory Editors Immanuel Wallerstein (Yale University) Francis Boyle (University of Illinois College of Law) Prabhat Patnaik (Jawaharlal Nehru University) Sabina Lautensach (University of Auckland and Human Security Institute) Neera Chandhoke (Delhi University) Rajen Harshe (South Asian University) Alexander Lautensach (University of Northern British Colombia) Jayadeva Uyangoda (University of Colombo) Valerian Rodrigues (Jawaharlal Nehru University) T.V. Paul (Mcgill University) Editorial Office School of International Relations and Politics Mahatma Gandhi University Priyadarshini Hills P.O., Kottayam, Kerala India PIN- 686560 e-mail: [email protected] Printed in India at Print Solutions, Kottayam, Kerala, India Indian Journal of Politics and International Relations Vol. 11 No.1 & 2 January-December 2018 Contents Twenty-First-Century Geopolitics: Fluidity Everywhere 5 Immanuel Wallerstein US Empire: Global Imperialism and Internal Colonialism 8 James Petras Trump versus the Rest 13 Prabhat Patnaik Indo-Pacific and India’s Emerging Role 17 K. M. Seethi Revisiting Sovereignty through Ancient Indian Notions of Dharma 23 Manish Kumar Mapping Indo-Afghan Relations in Post-Taliban Period 38 Mohd. Usman Bhatti South Korea in the Middle East: Bilateral Relations with Israel 55 Angana Guha Roy Muhammad Abduh on Religious Revival and Secularism 65 Priyanka Chandra Man, Nature and Politics: A Marxist Perspective 80 Rengupta, M. The Delirium of Appearance 93 Abhilash G Nath The Promise of ‘Naya’ Pakistan 108 Shiraz Sheikh Trail-blazers in International Relations: Samir Amin and Robert Cox 126 K. M. Seethi Xi Government’s Global Policy Rhetoric: A Reality Appraisal in 2018 135 Rajeev Kunwar About the Authors 147 Twenty-First-Century Geopolitics: Fluidity Everywhere Immanuel Wallerstein The most fluid arena in the modern world-system, which is in structural crisis, is arguably the geopolitical arena. No country comes even near to dominating this arena. The last hegemonic power, the United States, has long acted like a helpless giant. It is able to destroy but not to control the situation. It still proclaims rules that others are expected to follow, but it can be and is ignored. There is now a long list of countries that act as they deem fit despite pressures from other countries to perform in specified ways. A look around the globe will readily confirm the inability of the United States to get its way. The two countries other than the United States that have the strongest military power are Russia and China. Once, they had to move carefully to avoid the reprimand of the United States. The cold-war rhetoric described two competing geopolitical camps. Reality was different. The rhetoric simply masked the relative effectiveness of U.S. hegemony. Now it is virtually the other way around. The United States has to move carefully vis-à-vis Russia and China to avoid losing all ability to obtain their co- operation on the geopolitical priorities of the United States. Look next at the so-called strongest allies of the United States. We can quibble about which one is the “closest” ally, or had been for a long while. Take your pick between Great Britain and Israel or even, some would say, Saudi Arabia. Or make a list of erstwhile reliable partners of the United States, such as Japan and South Korea, Canada, Brazil, and Germany. Call them “number two’s.” Now look at the behaviour of all these countries in the last twenty years. I say “twenty” because the new reality predates the regime of Donald Trump, although he has undoubtedly worsened the ability of the United States to get its way. Take the situation on the Korean peninsula. The United States wants North Korea to renounce nuclear weapons. This is a regularly repeated objective of the United States. This was true when Bush and Obama were president. It has 5 IJPAIR continued to be true with Trump. The difference is the mode of seeking to achieve this objective. Previously, U.S. actions utilized a degree of diplomacy in addition to sanctions. This reflected the understanding that too many U.S. public threats were self-defeating. Trump believes the opposite. He sees the public threats as the basic weapon in his armoury. However, Trump has different days. On day one he menaces North Korea with devastation. But on day two he makes his primary target Japan and South Korea. Vol. 11 No. 1 & 2 2018 Trump says they are providing insufficient financial support for the costs deriving from a continuing armed U.S. presence there. So, in the to and fro between the two U.S. positions, neither Japan nor South Korea have the sense that they are sure to be protected. Japan and South Korea have dealt with their fears and uncertainty in opposite ways. The current Japanese regime seeks to secure U.S. guarantees by offering total public support of the (shifting) U.S. tactics. It hopes thereby to please the United States sufficiently that Japan will receive the guarantees it wants to have. The current South Korean regime is using a quite different tactic. It is pursuing very openly closer diplomatic relations with North Korea, very much against U.S. wishes. It hopes thereby to please the North Korean regime sufficiently that North Korea will respond by agreeing not to escalate the conflict. Whether either of these tactical approaches will stabilize the U.S. position is totally unsure. What is sure is that the United States is not in command. Both Japan and South Korea are quietly pursuing nuclear armaments to strengthen their position since they cannot know what the next day will bring on the U.S. front. The fluidity of the U.S. position weakens further U.S. power because of the reactions it generates. Or take the even more knotty situation in the so-called Islamic world going from the Maghreb to Indonesia, and particularly in Syria. Each major power in the region (or dealing with the region) has a different prime “enemy” (or enemies). For Saudi Arabia and Israel, it is at the moment Iran. For Iran it is the United States. For Egypt it is the Muslim Brotherhood. For Turkey it is the Kurds. For the Iraqi regime, it is the Sunnis. For Italy, it is Al Qaeda, which is making it impossible to control the flow of migrants. And so on. How about for the United States? Who knows? That is the nub of fear for everyone else. The United States seems at the moment to have two quite different priorities. On day one, it is North Korean acquiescence with U.S. imperatives. On day two it is ending U.S. involvement in the East Asian region, or at least reducing its financial outlays. As a result, it is increasingly ignored. We could draw similar pictures for other regions or sub-regions of the world. The key lesson to draw is that the decline of the United States has not been followed 6 Twenty-First-Century Geopolitics by another hegemon. It has simply folded into the overall chaotic zigzagging, the fluidity of which we spoke. This of course is the great danger. Nuclear accidents, or mistakes, or folly suddenly become what is on top of everyone’s mind, and especially that of the world’s armed forces. How to deal with this danger is the most meaningful short- term geopolitical debate. (c) Immanuel Wallerstein Courtesy: Agence Global Immanuel Wallerstein 7 US Empire: Global Imperialism and Internal Colonialism James Petras Introduction The dynamic of contemporary US imperialism is built around two structural features: the drive toward global military expansion, conquest and occupation backed by the intensification of exploitation of domestic labour and pillage of the domestic economy. In this paper we will challenge the notion that overseas economic exploitation has transferred income to ‘buy-off’ the domestic working and middle classes, in the course of consolidating imperial hegemony. We will argue that the empire is no longer based on robust overseas growth but rather the empire today is a costly and declining proposition. We will proceed to outline the costs of militarised imperialism and the relative economic decline of the empire. We will then turn to analysing how the US imperial state has resorted to financing the empire though its regressive tax, regulator and budgetary policies. We will conclude by refuting the notion that the US turn to protectionism will revive the US economic empire. Empire: Past and Present From the end of WW II to the end of the Cold War, the US empire was driven by the wealth and power of the multi-national corporations to extract and transfer profits to the domestic economy and sustain a ‘trickle’ down effect on a partially unionized labour force, and to fund its military guardians of global capital. The US dominated world trade, and led global investments, as well as acting as the leading force creating the international financial institutions (World Bank, the IMF). Free trade and neoliberal doctrine flowed from the ‘Washington Consensus’ designed to induce the denationalization and privatization of targeted national economies around the world. US empire further ensured global ascendance with the demise of the USSR, the absorption of the ex-Soviet client states and the pillage of the Russian economy. 8 US Empire Washington declared that the world had become a ‘unipolar state’, in which the US was the sole dominant power, free to invade, conquer and exploit any rival.