View from America

By M. R. Josse GAITERSBURG, MD: President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda – anchored on a big bipartisan infrastructure bill and the potentially much bigger package of social policy programmes, besides climate initiatives – appears to falter on the altar of divisions between the moderates and progressives within his own party. In the meantime, public attention has been distracted somewhat by the unveiling of the titillating details revealed in the so-called Pandora Papers the first in an important series published in the Washington Post today, 4 October 2021, and other international news outlets. ROGUES’ GALLERY As explained by Sally Buzbee, the Post’s Executive Editor, the revelations are a product of nearly a year of reporting at the Post “focused on the vast trove of documents that expose a secretive financial universe that benefits the wealthy and powerful.” The project, known as the Pandora Papers, she discloses, was “conceived and organized by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists,( in Washington, D.C.), which obtained the records and shared them with the Post and other partners. “The documents – more than 11.9 million records from 14 offshore entities, including law and wealth-management firms – illuminate a hidden world that has allowed government leaders, a monarch, billionaires and criminals to shield their assets.” Today’s Post, which has devoted to it about six full pages of reporting along with photographs, sketches and diagrams, highlights a veritable rouges’ gallery that include, among others, as “players of note in the Pandora Papers”, the following: King Abdullah of Jordan; Luis Abinader, President of the Dominican Republic; Patrick Achi, Prime Minister of Ivory Coast; Andrej Babis, Prime Minister of the Czech Republic; Milo Djukanovic, President of Montenegro; Uhuru Kenyatta, President of Kenya; Guillermo Lasso, President of Ecuador; C.Y. Leung, former chief executive of Hong Kong; Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, Ruler of Dubai and prime minister of the United Arab Emirates; Sebastian Pinera, President of Chile; Nirupama Rajapaksa, Former minister in Sri Lanka and Volodymyr Zelensky, President of Ukraine. While pride of place – if they may be so described – in the disclosures made public today goes to King Abdullah, Russia President Vladimir Putin also figures massively in the reportage, with accompanying photographs and a major story headlined: “Secret cash, a swanky view and a Monte Carlo mystery” with a second-deck header titled, “Documents tie woman allegedly in clandestine, years-long relationship with Putin to luxury Monaco apartment.” Understandably, with such a stratospheric cast of characters, a plethora of lesser “players” has escaped notice, at least in this first installment of the promised series. I will not be surprised to learn, subsequently, that a bunch of Nepali tai-pans, too, figure in the Pandora Papers. Would you? Will any action be taken against them by the authorities back home - if allegations of malfeasance, fraud or tax evasion are proven to be accurate? And what about our gang of “rags-to-riches” politicians who live high on the hog, not to mention members of our former royalty? Thus far, despite all persistent propaganda by anti-monarchists, the latter have not been identified as members of such elusive, exclusive clubs. DOMESTIC SCENE To turn to the domestic American scene, let me start by noting that the popular NBC late night comedy show, Saturday Night Live, is back – with a ‘new’ President Biden, played by actor James Austin Johnson, looking, appropriately enough, to unite the split Democrats. “What’s cookin’, what’s good?” Johnson’s Biden said, kicking off the premiere. “How was everybody’s summer? Mine was bad.” Johnson’s Biden added that, on the bright side, he “went the entire summer without falling down the stairs again.” And so on. More seriously speaking, though, over 700,000 lives have been lost to Covid-19, as this is being drafted, with fully 200,000 of them having succumbed since vaccines have become available to almost everyone in the country. According to CNN, quoting public health officials, as the rate of inoculations proceeds tens of millions of unvaccinated Americans remain at a “higher risk” for Covid-19 infection. Meanwhile, people are now debating whether to get the Covid-19 ‘booster’ shot – like President Biden and his spouse Jill did this past week. Not one bit surprisingly, unvaccinated people make up the majority of people who are hospitalized and dying from the virus. Another important highlight of the past week was Congressional hearings of the Pentagon brass, in which they disclosed that they had predicted that the Kabul government and the military would “collapse” after the United States’ departure, even as they agreed that the haphazard exit was a “strategic failure.” Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, confessed: “It (Afghanistan) wasn’t lost in the last 20 days or even 20 months. There’s a cumulative effect to a series of strategic decisions that go way back.” He cited multiple examples, including the United States’ decision to shift focus and resources from Afghanistan to Iraq, and never effectively dealing with Pakistan, where throughout the war key U.S. adversaries found a haven. Shifting gear, permit me, now, to provide some telling excerpts culled from recent issues of the Post. Here goes: Reflecting on the strategic failures during 20 years of war, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) lampooned: “We can’t get one-third of Americans to take a Covid vaccine or accept the results of a presidential election. Do we really think we can transform the culture of another nation?”  NAVAL POWER ETC The $25 billion down payment on military adequacy was instigated by Virginia’s second-term Democratic Rep. Elaine Luria, a Naval Academy graduate and a 20-year Navy officer, whose district includes the world’s largest naval base, at Norfolk, the Post’s celebrated columnist, George F. Will, informs. “With a soft voice and steel spine, she worries that the Navy’s protracted mission of force-projection in support of Iraq and Afghanistan operations caused the atrophying of some skill sets germane to discouraging China’s lawlessness in the South China Sea.” There, she says, “every day they are on their home field, so the tyranny of distance is on their side.” Luria questions the adequacy of the U.S. Navy spending $ 22.2 billion for nine nuclear-powered attack submarines, and advocates that the current administration “should expand today’s 297-ship Navy as persistently as Ronald Reagan advocated for a 600-ship Navy (it reached 597.)” In 2010, she says, “the U.S. Navy had 68 ships more than China’s navy, today it has 63 fewer.” Incidentally, in his 3 October column – referring to the recent AUKUS nuclear submarine deal between , Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, Will was at his sarcastic best: “A U.S. spokesman deserves an Oscar for saying, straight-faced, that AUKUS ‘is not aimed at or about any one country’.’’ Unstated was that every kid on the block knows it is directed unambiguously against China! Though AUKUS and Quad have by now more or less evaporated from public memory here, some notable comments/thoughts around them did emerge during Fareed Zakaria’ 3 October TV interview with three prominent foreign affairs commentators: Richard N. Haass, Ian Bremmer and Anne-Marie Slaughter. To summarize or paraphrase them:  the Quad is pivoting to Asia by moving away from Europe, which is not a smart idea; already Europeans are feeling left out on U.S. global strategy.  Slaughter thought that the U.S. pivot to Asia should have been through Europe. She reminded that France is the third largest military arms exporter – the U.S. being the first – and, in any case, has a significant presence in the South Pacific. The British, too, she reminded, have still considerable military capability. Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group, thought it made no sense to pivot to Asia without first cutting appropriate trade deals. Currently, both Quad and AUKUS are merely geopolitical groupings, sans any meaningful economic/trade base, he argues. Both he and Haass believed that Europe still “doesn’t have the strength to project power globally – especially after German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s impending departure.” Incidentally, referring to Europe feeling being left out of the U.S. loop, one is reminded by a 29 September news story in the Post by Rick Noack, with this six-column header: Macron urges Europe to assert independence from U.S., stop being ‘naïve’. Speaking alongside the Greek prime minister 28 September at a news conference in Paris to unveil a major Franco-Greek defense deal, Macron said the Europeans should make themselves “respected”. “For a bit over 10 years now, the United States has been very focused on itself and has strategic interests that are being oriented towards China and the Pacific,” he said. “It’s is their right to do so,” he continued, but “we would be naïve, or rather we would make a terrible mistake, to not want to draw the consequences.” Macron maintained that a “greater European emphasis on its own defense would be complementary and not constitute an ‘alternative’ to our alliance with the United States” adding that it would happen “within the framework of NATO.” Incidentally, one is reminded that France will assume the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union, one of the bloc’s most powerful decision-making bodies, early next year. Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis backed Macron’s vision, saying their deal “opens the door to Europe of tomorrow that is strong and autonomous.” CHERRY-PICKING In a tough editorial 1 October entitled ‘Pursue Khashoggi’s dream’, marking the third anniversary of the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who contributed columns to the Post, the paper blasted the Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), who it charged was continuing his “ruthless ways,  throwing dissidents and activists in prison.” The editorial bemoaned that “President Biden decided not to hold him accountable (for the murder of the journalist) and the United States continues to do business with the kingdom, including a recent visit by national security adviser Jake Sullivan to meet MBS in Riyadh.” Declaring that there has been no justice for Khashoggi, the Post argued that the U.S. turning a blind eye to Saudi complicity in the murder of Khashoggi, “will confront Mr. Biden when he convenes a summit for democracy in December” and that “it is going to take more than speeches and sanctions to turn the tide.” The Post, the following day, published a cri de coeur by Hatice Cengiz, Khashoggi’s fiancé, in which she lamented, inter alia: “Just last week, leaders stood at the U.N. General Assembly and spoke of human rights and democracy, but none stood up for the Saudi activists and writers languishing in prisons for having the courage to stand up to the autocratic regime…MBS is succeeding – he knows that in the halls of power at the United Nations, the White House and elsewhere – no one will dare challenge his criminal acts.” Incidentally, India, which usually gets a free pass in the Western press as a vibrant democracy and robust defender of human rights, has been starkly exposed as a danger to academic freedom and the principles of freedom of expression in the 4 October issue of the Post, via a story by Niha Masih, datelined New Delhi. In a lengthy half-page story – under a banner headline entitled ‘U.S.-based scholars fear Hindu nationalism is a threat to academic freedom’ – there is a chilling wealth of information about how even U.S.-based Indian scholars have been threatened, even by warnings of rape and death, if they write or discuss the rise of Hindu nationalism. Rohit Chopra, a professor of communications at Santa Clara University, has been quoted as saying: “We are at a tipping point. It’s about the principles of freedom of expression, academic freedom and of a university being a space where people can speak for the most vulnerable.” The story makes for scary reading. It is, in any case, another eye-opener to Western foreign policy targeting China and Iran for their alleged human rights abuses, for instance, while turning the Nelson’s Eye when it comes to reporting/criticizing India’s and/or Saudi Arabia’s alleged excesses in that very same policy domain. Such selective cherry-picking must be exposed and condemned!