View from America

By M.R. Josse GAITHERSBURG, MD: According to clued-up political pundits here, more than 18 months into the Covid-19 pandemic, a bunch of rough economic challenges that directly confront voters represent political peril for President Joe Biden already facing dipping public approval ratings. Indeed, according to Washington Post reporters David J. Lynch and Rachel Siegel, rising prices, product shortages and labor market tumult are making for a surprisingly rocky economic recovery, testing the political skills of Biden more than a year before the midterm Congressional elections. Post columnist David Ignatius wonders whether Biden will become ‘another incredible shrinking president’ by which he hints at the possibility that the president may not be able to successfully grapple with the political challenges that confront him, including those presented by members of his own party in Congress – despite his landslide electoral victory over former president Donald Trump at the 2020 presidential polls. SHRINKING PRESIDENT?

American President Biden says, he is ready to change the new programme. Photo: Internet

As Ignatius phrased it, “The president got caught in the Washington political wringer. He seemed a captive of his own party, not to mention the Halloween goblins on the republican side. This acrimonious stalemate is part of what the nation detests about Washington, and it’s no wonder that Biden’s poll numbers have been in free fall since the summer. From a supposed master of the legislative process, the country expected more… “Biden got elected as a centrist. But he has been pulled left since Inauguration Day by the gravitational –and legislative – force of the progressives…Biden should be a stronger voice in the center.” Biden sounds most confident expounding on America’s leadership in the fight for human rights around the world. In a recent speech in Connecticut he averred: “We see human rights and democratic principles increasingly under assault, and we feel the same charge of history upon our shoulders to act.” Biden also made the seminal point that U.S. candor on its flaws is the key to her global clout. Post reporter Cleeve R. Wootson, Jr., adds: “Biden’s theory – that promoting democracy at home gives the United States credibility on the world stage – faces big tests in coming months. In December, he leads a summit ‘to defend democratic values’. “Before that, Biden travels to Rome later this month to participate in a meeting of the G-20 industrial nations, focusing in part on Covid-19, and then to Glasgow to join a global summit on global change. But both on the pandemic and climate change the United States has struggled to make significant headway. “Leading by example means not pretending that our history has been perfect, but demonstrating how strong nations speak honestly about the past and uphold the truth and strive to improve,” Biden said. No discussion on Biden’s political future or agenda can be complete without bringing former president Donald Trump into the picture. Trump has continued his campaign to dominate the GOP, while flogging the Big Lie that the 2020 election was ‘stolen’ from him. In the past week, he has threatened electoral defeat for Republicans who dismiss his electoral falsehood. He has also inserted himself into upcoming Virginia governor’s race – to the delight of Democrats. As Post reporters Josh Dawsey and Michael Scherer inform, that with more than a year to go before the midterm elections, the former president is leaving no corner of the party untouched as he moves to assert his dominance, both in public and behind the scenes. “His stepped up efforts create a conundrum for the party for many of the party’s strategists and lawmakers, who believe they could have a banner election year in 2022 if they keep the focus on President Biden and his agenda. “But Trump has repeatedly turned the focus back onto the 2020 election. He moved into new territory Wednesday (13 October) when he released a statement threatening the GOP with ballot-box repercussions if candidates do not embrace his false claims that the White House race was rigged.” FOREIGN POLICY DOMAIN To come back, however, to Biden and his global crusade on human rights, it will be recalled that China has been on his cross-hairs in that regard for some time, with increasing focus on Taiwan. Reflecting some of those concerns, the Post, in an editorial, 13 October, proclaimed that a “hegemonic” China would menace Japan, Australia, and the Philippines, destabilizing the entire Indo-Pacific. Bemoaning that “while China has been focused on Taiwan, the United States has been tending to wider geopolitical interests, especially in the Middle East”, he adds Taiwan has itself “neglected its own defense budget.” The editorial did not fail to applaud the Biden administration for “a geopolitical pivot to meet the China threat, which includes the recently announced sale of nuclear submarines to Australia, closer ties with Japan and India” even while making the pitch for more robust investment “in hard-power assets – especially naval forces – required to back up its commitments in East Asia.” I was therefore mightily stuck by a Post reader’s robust letter to the editor, 16 October, whose thrust was that no one wants war with China. Michael Sciulla, referred to an op-ed piece in the Post, 12 October, by Elaine Luria (D-VA) entitled ‘Congress must untie Biden’s hands on Tawian’ and reacted: “What does she think the president should do if the People’s Republic of China were to invade Taiwan? Is the United States really ready to go to war in a potential end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it conflict with a nuclear-armed China? I wonder what her constituents would say about such a prospect. “The steady drumbeat among the hawks and neo-cons to play chicken with the fate of the world and to expect such a conflict to end well is a reckless calculation. U.S. national security is not at stake, and the fate of humanity should not be gambled. “President George Washington warned us about entangling alliances. More than 160 years later, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us about the military-industrial complex. Fortunately, our current president has more foreign policy experience than any president since Eisenhower. Let’s pray he is a student of history.” There are two China-related stories that appeared in the Post that I believe do merit mention. One concerns the statement, 13 October, by International Olympic Committee (IOC) Vice President John Coates, reacting to human rights groups’ call for a boycott of the Beijing Winter Games in 2022. Coates, an Australian national, argued at a Sydney meeting: “The IOC’s remit is to ensure that there are no human rights abuses with respect to the conduct of the Games within the National Olympic Committees, or within the Olympic movement…We have no ability to go into a country and tell them what to do…We are not a world government.” Coates’s remarks, we are reminded, echo those by IOC chief Thomas Bach made at a news conference earlier this year when he retorted: “We are not a super world government where the IOC could solve or even address issues for which not the U.N. Security Council, not G-7, not G-20 has solutions.” The other narrative is that related to China launching a spacecraft bound for her unfinished space station – a mission that includes a woman, among its three-person crew. Regarding Biden’s other foreign policy priorities there has been a meeting between the U.S Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, with the foreign ministers of Israel and the United Arab Emirates commemorating the anniversary of the 2020 Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and the three Arab nations of the UAE, Bahrain and Sudan. (This was a Trump administration accomplishment.) On the other hand, the Biden administration hopes for a swift return to the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal have faded, with experts now saying that advances in Iran’s nuclear enrichment have put the country closer to nuclear weapons capability and may be reaching a point where they are irreversible. A virtual emergency summit on Afghanistan, 12 October, participated by Biden and hosted by Italy which holds the G-20 rotating chair for this month – but from which Russia and China were conspicuous by their absence - netted just one large pledge of U.S. $ 1.5 billion from the E.U., with individual nations making no similar pledges. U.N. Secretary-General Antony Guterres, told reporters that it was a “make or break moment” for Afghanistan, warning that there would be a heavy price to pay if other nations don’t help Afghanistan “weather this storm.” A Post report on the event quoted a Biden administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, saying that while not officially recognizing the government in Kabul, the United States has an interest in counter-terrorism, in ensuring safe exit for Americans and others who want to leave and in providing humanitarian aid. “We are going to have to engage with the Taliban,” the official significantly added. STRANGE BED-FELLOWS Of late, there has been a visible splurge in coverage of the dismal human rights situation in India, including of press freedom, at least in the Washington Post. That goes against the grain of the Biden administration’s championing human rights globally, including its harsh constant criticism of China, while working in intimate tandem with India, which, until the last few years, enjoyed an enviable human rights record. Not so now. In other words, the United States and India constitute an oddly-matched couple on the human-rights nuptial bed; they being on the same global geopolitical page is less surprising. Today’s Post, 18 October, has a lengthy story of the violent eviction of Muslims in the Indian state of Assam where police killing of a villager “sheds light on an organized campaign to drive ‘encroachers’ from government land.” Among its highlights: “The migrant issue has galvanized support for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party. Critics say the government has capitalized on its attempt to criminalize and reduce India’s 200 million Muslims into second-class citizens. Amit Shah, Modi’s close aide and the country’s home minister, has referred to such migrants as ‘termites’.” In the same prestigious newspaper, two days ago, there was a full-page story, with multiple color news photographs headlined, across five columns, thus: “Lethal clash galvanizes India’s protesting farmers”. The thrust of the story in question was: “Modi’s ruling party faces outpouring of anger after convoy carrying a government minister’s son rams into a group of marchers.”

The plight of Muslims in India. Photo: The Washington Post

Among other revelations in the news story are: “As negotiations over farm bills have dragged out over the past year, a cycle of acrimony between farmers and BJP officials has continued…For more than half a year, they have set up permanent encampments blockading highway lanes leading into the capital. BJP officials have hurled incendiary accusations likening the farmers to traitors and Sikh separatists.” Yesterday, there was another story – this one headlined “Deaths of minority civilians heighten fears in Kashmir” – with news photos including one captioned Indian “Security forces stand guard in Srinagar, a city in Muslim-majority Kashmir, on Friday. Kashmir has been the flashpoint between India and Pakistan for decades, and militants’ recent attacks on seven civilians, including Hindus and Sikhs, has bought worries of more violence.” APTLY PHRASED While one notes that back home the Dasain festivities are now well and finally over and that the droves that exited Kathmandu days ago have mostly returned, I savored the former King Gyanendra’s  Dasain greetings, particularly the epigrammatic punch line: “Democracy without monarchy and monarchy without democracy cannot be relevant in the Nepali context.” Not surprised one jot that former House speaker and NC honcho, Daman Nath Dhungana, was miffed particularly with those same very words. The tide is beginning to turn, Dhunganaji; the earlier the anti-monarchists realize it the better. They have had a plentitude of time to prove their case; they have miserably failed! Now, let’s see what the future births from her fertile womb.