China-India rapprochement makes sense [feedly]

China-India rapprochement makes sense
http://www.atimes.com/china-india-rapprochement-makes-sense/

ndia made a U-turn on its relations with China in April when Prime Minister Narendra Modi met with Chinese President Xi Jinping to reset ties. He met with Xi again on the matter of rapprochement on the sidelines of the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) Summit in May.

China-India rapprochement has taken the world, the US in particular, by surprise. Less than a year ago, the two countries were on the verge of a military conflict over a host of issues: the Doklam border dispute, China helping Pakistan (India's nemesis) build the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) in a section of the Kashmir region claimed by India, China moving into the Indian Ocean, which India considered its "back yard" or sphere of influence, and others.

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On top of these conflicts, India has never forgiven China for defeating it in a 1962 border war, culminating in calls for revenge by some nationalists to this day. India has spent large sums of money on importing weapons, seeking "like-minded allies" and joining the "diamond of democracies" or "quad" – the US, Australia, Japan and India – to counter China.

This raises the question: Why has Modi decided to mend fences with China, since none of these issues have been addressed or gone away?

Speculations on the question abound. Some attribute it to the coming election in India, with Modi wanting tangible actions that could boost his "Make in India" industrial policy. But whatever the motive(s) behind his decision, it serves both countries' economic and geopolitical interests.

Economic benefits of rapprochement

Some Indian nationalists might disagree, but China is perhaps best equipped to boost the "Make in India" policy's chances of making the country an economic and geopolitical powerhouse by 2025. The Chinese government has the authority and resources to invest in India's infrastructures and establishing an industrial foundation. Perhaps more important, having India on side would enhance the success of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Western and Japanese investors are largely interested in short-term rates of return, explaining why they are shying away from the Indian market. Business media have reported that Western and Japanese firms are not only reneging on commitments but also pulling back investments they made when Modi launched his "Make in India" policy.

Modi launched "Make in India" in New Delhi with much fanfare on September 25, 2014, vowing to create 100 million new jobs by 2022 and making manufacturing worth 25% of gross domestic product by 2025. The World Bank and other international organizations, however, have reported that the Modi government produced fewer than 650,000 new jobs and manufacturing barely accounted for 16% of the economy in the 2017-18 financial year.

Year-on-year economic growth slowe  in the first quarter of 2018, from 7.1% recorded a year earlier to 5.7%, according to World Bank statistics.

Media such as Business Standard, Reuters and Bloomberg as well as the World Bank have offered many reasons that the "Make in India" policy failed to take off, including inadequate infrastructure, harsh labor laws, and demonetization of large banknotes.

According to a January 9, 2017, Business Standard report, demonetization alone might have been responsible for a 50% drop in agricultural prices and 35% of job losses in the "informal sectors," industries consisting of small businesses, which account for 80% of the Indian economy. The main reason was said to be the elimination of large banknotes, which hit the sector hard because transactions are largely if not solely based on cash.

However, most Western and Japanese businesses and governments were not to be seen in India's "moment of need." Thus forging a cooperative relationship with China is economically desirable and necessary for both countries. India would gain from Chinese infrastructure investment, enhancing the country's economic growth. China would benefit from an expansion of its BRI.

Rapprochement makes geopolitical sense

Since the 1962 China-India border war, the relationship between the two countries has been "complicated," if not hostile. Neither side is willing to compromise on its territorial claims. What's more, India is wary of China's rise, viewing its as a national-security threat, thereby prompting it to spend huge sums of money on weapons acquisition.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), India is the world's largest weapons importer, accounting for 13% of arms purchases each year. Much of that expenditure is meant to deter "Chinese aggression." Rapprochement would ease that threat, enabling the government to channel more funds for economic development and poverty reduction.

Would rapprochement be sustainable?

Rapprochement should and would likely work if both nations took a deep breath and thought through the consequences of continuous conflict. According to the International Monetary Fund, India and China are the world's biggest, fastest-growing, and most populous developing countries, accounting for more than a third of the global population and more than 20% of its gross domestic product.

They are also nuclear powers capable of wiping each other off the map, or at least incurring irreparable damage and loss of human lives.

India's recent reaching out to China suggests that Prime Minister Modi, many in the Indian business and political establishments and the majority of the population are probably well aware of the dire consequences of confrontation.

However, a workable and sustainable rapprochement requires that both nations bury the past of mistrust and suspicion fueled by territorial disputes, culminating in the border war in 1962.

Territorial dispute

India inherited the McMahon Line (ML) as the border between it and China when gained independence from Britain in 1947. According to Western scholars such as Alastair Lamb, British territory was west of the ML, along the the plains of Assam, which the colonial power conquered in 1826, known as the Inner Line.

But in a May 20, 2015,  article for The Wire, Imphal Free Press editor Pradip Phanjoubam wrote that British India's foreign secretary, Henry McMahon, arbitrarily drew a line inside Tibet as the border between India and Tibet at the Simla Conference  in 1914.

Since gaining independence, India has considered the ML the Line of Actual Control (LAC). However, China never ceded the territory and considered Tibet as part of China, but was too weak to defend it. India reinforced its claim in light of the Chinese absence, arguing that Tibet was never a part of China.

The 1962 border war

Which country was responsible for the brief 1962 border war depends on which version of history one believes. India claimed that Chinese troops unexpectedly occupied Aksai Chin, located on the Indian side of the LAC or ML, forcing it to fight back. But Indian scholar Arun Kumar stated at the Indian Defense Forum held in Washington on January 28, 2007, that declassified US Central Intelligence Agency reports blamed India for the war.

Kumar, citing the CIA reports, argued that Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru did not want to negotiate with China and demanded that the ML be the border between the two countries. The CIA reports showed that Nehru sent external affairs secretary general R K Nehru to China demanding total Chinese withdrawal from Aksai Chin.

The CIA also reported that India established military outposts along the LAC, forcing China to take military action although it could ill afford it at the time.

China had just emerged from the hugely damaging Great Leap Forward at the time. Its economy was in ruins, with millions of people starving to death. There was also factional fighting between the "reformers" and "radicalists," the former wanting to abandon class struggle while the latter demanding that it continue.

It might have been because of China's hard times that India decided to insist on the ML as the boundary between the two countries and was unwilling to negotiate a settlement with China.

However, India has a very different version of history, insisting that China invaded India without any warning.

Readers can believe whatever version of history they want, but the fact of the matter is neither country is able or willing to go to war over the issue.

One cannot undo what has occurred. Indeed, the primary reason for studying history is to avoid repeating past mistakes. Or as the Chinese put it, "Develop the future with history as the mirror."

Image what China and India can accomplish and contribute to the world if they work together instead of against each other.

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

Greece after the bailout: Lessons for the left [feedly]

I post this piece from the UK CP magazine (Morning Star, reposted in Peoples World) as a fairly generic Left criticism of "the Greek Problem". The Greek Problem may be restated  thus: "Due to the profligacy of previous mostly right wing, 'conservative' Greek governments and their international lenders, Greece was unable to pay its debts. The lenders -- principally EU banks, especially Germany - refused to forgive the debt, despite the relative 'militancy' of the Syriza government toward the EU and against the austerity that would be the inevitable harsh and deeply unpopular consequence. Then, as now in this piece, many on the Left railed against 'neoliberal austerity'. But Greece submitted. They could find no partner to bail them out -- China or Russia, and an all out showdown with the EU, would have been the only options even in theory, and neither would have stopped a sharp decline in living standards regardless.  Some, like Yanos, the former Finance Minister, and the CP of Greece with its "Stalin  Operetta" political line, railed against the "sell-outs". "Smash the state." "Who needs the EU." Then, as now, in this article, the same advice is offered: "Be More Militant".

But guess what -- 70 years after the Bolsheviks cancelled their foreign debt, they still had to pay it back.

You be the judge whether that advice has any legs...

Greece after the bailout: Lessons for the left
http://www.peoplesworld.org/article/greece-after-the-bailout-lessons-for-the-left/

It had been planned to be a lavish celebration on the Pnyx hill next to the Acropolis in Athens, a place where the citizenry would hold popular assemblies in the ancient democratic period.

The angry aftermath of the forest fires last month put paid to Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras hosting EU and other luminaries in such a way to mark the formal end of the country's subordination to the austerity memorandums.

Instead, he made a more low key broadcast to the nation from the island of Ithaka on Monday.

He proclaimed, in an overly extended image, that Greece had ended its painful Odyssey of eight years of crisis, against the backdrop of the harbor to which Odysseus is held to have returned after a decade of tortuous voyage. Few in Greece were taken in by the theatrics and self-identification of Tsipras as Homeric hero. Some recalled a previous Greek prime minister declaring a new dawn for the country from a remote island.

It was at the onset of the crushing austerity period in 2010 that the social democratic PASOK party's Prime Minister George Papandreou said pretty much that from the island of Kastelorizo off the Turkish coast. He informed the country that he was going to sign up to the first memorandum with the troika of the European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund.

"Despite the cheap communications tricks in sheltered harbors, the truth cannot be concealed," quipped a sharp-witted politician of the left. His name was Alexis Tsipras.

No hiding the truth

Eight years on and the truth cannot, indeed, be hidden. The imposition of neoliberal solutions on Greece has been a catastrophe. The economy has shrunk by about a quarter and average living standards by a third. The resulting social dislocation and suffering is enormous.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras delivers a speech from the western Greek island of Ithaca, legendary home of the ancient mariner Odysseus, hero of Homer's Odyssey epic, on Tuesday, Aug. 21. Greece remains shackled to the austerity demands of its former creditors even though it officially entered its post-bailout era Tuesday. | Andrea Bonetti / Greek Prime Minister's Office via AP

Several business commentators have hailed a slight fall in overall unemployment figures to possibly under 20 percent (youth unemployment is double that). But few point out that one in 10 of the working age population of Greece has left the country in the crisis years.

That is the principal reason why the figures are not higher still. Those who have left show no indication of returning to the country. A basic measure of civilization, the capacity to provide for the wellbeing of a stable or expanding population, has not been met.

The enforced economic exile of a tenth of the population is not "free movement." It is the involuntary sacrifice of people to the dictates of corporate capitalism.

For the bailouts had nothing to do with alleviating the economic condition of the mass of Greek people. They were to save the zombie European banking system. The first was to rescue the mainly French and German banks exposed to defaulting Greek debt.

The second bailed out the private Greek banks. The third, the one Tsipras signed up to, aimed ruthlessly at driving through the privatizations, welfare cuts, assaults on workers' rights, and "modernization" of the economy that the first two pledged but had not accomplished.

All of this was driven by the troika imposing—with willing cooperation from the Greek elites and their old political parties—an economic dogma whose predictions of a return to growth were refuted year after year.

Those congratulating themselves on the "success" of Greece need to be reminded that the neoliberal economists' forecast of a return to growth after two years turned out to be six.

It also meant a severe truncation of democracy and of national sovereignty. One EU official after another bluntly stated that to stay in the bloc and the single currency meant that democratic expressions of the mass of people—elections and referendums—had to be put aside.

Tsipras averred to this in his Homeric address on Monday as he took aim at his predecessors from 2009 to 2015 for sinking the country.

He criticized a system in which "bankers become politicians and politicians become bankers." It was a thinly veiled reference to the ECB banker Lucas Papademos, who became an unelected prime minister in 2011, and to the former finance minister Yannis Stournaras, who became governor of the Greek central bank—in reality a branch office of the ECB—in 2014.

The conservatives of the New Democracy opposition party and the business press squealed that a Greek prime minister was taking political pot shots—which otherwise has never happened, of course.

With elections due within the next year, they would like everyone to forget their responsibility both for the imposition of the memorandums and for the oligarchic model of capitalism that preceded it.

But Tsirpas's point begged the question. If that was the old capitalist cronyism linking Greece's political class, its 1 percent and the mafia dons of the European capitalist institutions, then why on Earth did he, in his first acts in government, pledge confidence in the governor of the central bank, assure the military of continued arms spending and an expansionist foreign policy, and commit to staying in the euro straitjacket come what may?

Here, light-minded explanations based upon personal failure or a narrative of betrayal will not do.

Questions for left strategy

For anyone serious about breaking from this failing phase of capitalism, the Greek experience raises some fundamental questions of strategy for the working class movements and the left.

The Syriza government was essentially a social democratic evolution out of Greek communism, which had been for most of the 20th century the main expression of working class and radical politics in the country.

Its strategy for escaping the murderous austerity memorandums was to rest on two things. First, obtaining a majority position in parliament. Second, to deploy rigorously developed economic arguments with the EU and creditors as to why the austerity had to be lifted.

The problem was twofold. As attested by various participants, including former Syriza Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis in his memoir, a majority in parliament did not mean control of the levers of the state.

That was especially so, as for two years before coming to office Syriza had gone out of its way to reassure those permanent state mechanisms that it would not be disrupting their power and the continuity of capitalist interests it was exercised for.

The mantra was "we are a government in waiting." So from senior police officers to the central bank and the permanent bureaucracy of the finance ministry, the government was undermined from day one.

The second was a naïve faith in the power of a logical argument against those bound by a thousand golden threads to refusing to accept it.

Everyone could see that austerity and the economics behind it were not delivering the promised recovery in Greece. At the same time the European elites and their politicians could not admit the truth.

If Greek debt was unsustainable, then so was that of Spain, Italy, and elsewhere. If, seven years into the crisis, it had to be admitted that the emperor had no clothes in Greece, then it meant telling people from Indiana to Ireland, Britain to Bulgaria that their suffering in the crisis years had been for naught also.

A seemingly modest shift to a more rational organization of the economy entailed the most profound political risk. So they didn't do it.

Propping up a failed god

Unemployed Greeks wait in a long line at a state labor office to collect benefit checks, in Athens, Oct. 24, 2011. Greece has one of the highest unemployment rates in the eurozone and is also mired in a youth unemployment crisis. More than 10 percent of the workforce has left the country; if they were included, unemployment rates would be even higher. | Thanassis Stavrakis / AP

And that logic persists. Bridges are falling down in Italy and hundreds more are in a parlous state in Germany, despite it having the biggest trade surplus in the world.

The editorial writers of the international business paper The Financial Times make a persuasive case for a large boost to infrastructure spending. But no major government is listening.

Greece is out of the formal memorandum period but is still constrained by quarterly inspections to make sure the failed god of neoliberal capitalism is being propitiated.

The prospect of a return to borrowing from the global markets looks more and more remote as the Turkish currency crisis and the impact of rising interest rates on emerging economies such as Brazil and South Africa risks another credit crunch.

Throughout all of this, the working class movement in Greece has managed to sustain opposition, despite demoralization, ebbs, and flows.

That, and the intervention of that part of the left who took seriously this strategic dilemma, has meant that predictions of a massive fascist resurgence out of the failure of Syriza in office have not been realized.

That danger is far from over. It will not be met by pre-election orations from the island of Ithaka.

It's going to require more of the kinds of things that are being posed elsewhere in Europe and in Britain. Popular and militant opposition to austerity. A much more serious strategy for radical change than just positing a government in waiting.

And a popular anti-racist movement whose horizons go beyond some conventional politics of occupying a ministerial position.

The neoliberal nostrums failed in their purported aims in Greece. But failed too was a timid, commonsense strategy of the left.

The journey hasn't ended. The ship is still in treacherous seas.

Morning Star

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

Socialism in one country [feedly]

Socialism in one country
http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2018/08/socialism-in-one-country.html

SOCIALISM IN ONE COUNTRY

When I tweeted the other day that the crisis of capitalism consists of a decade-long stagnation in productivity (which has given us falling wages), a wise man replied that this is true only in one country. Which set me wondering: might there be a case for socialism in one country?

Yes, I know the phrase has unhappy connotations. But what I mean is simply that (some form of*) capitalism suits some countries better than others. And perhaps the UK is not one of these.

We can think of this from two different perspectives.

One is the Smithian one, as suggested by Jesse Norman. This says that a healthy capitalism requires particular norms and culture. For example, a society in which there are norms against tax-dodging, rent-seeking or egregious exploitation will have a healthier capitalism than ones in which such norms are weak or absent. Also, for cultural and historical reasons some nations might have a bigger pool of managerial talent or greater entrepreneurial spirit than others. They too will be more suited to capitalism.

Where these conditions are lacking, however, (some form of) socialism might be needed. If some businesses cannot be regulated effectively by self-restraint, market forces or regulation (such as banks or utilities), nationalization might be an option. Where management is bad, worker democracy is needed. And where entrepreneurship is weak, the state must do more (pdf) of the job.

A nation whose ruling class produces people like Johnson, Farage, Cameron or Rees-Mogg is more in need of revolution than one whose ruling class produces better men.

The other is the Marxian perspective. He saw that capitalism was an immense force for economic progress. But, he wrote:

At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. 

Some countries have not yet reached this stage of development. In these – such as China – capitalism is a progressive force. The fact that the UK has suffered a decade of stagnation, however, suggests we might have reached that stage and that we need some changes in property relations if we are to generate further progress. These changes might be in a socialistic direction**.

The appropriate modes of economic organization vary from country to country. In saying this, I'm following Edmund Burke, who wrote:

Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing colour and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.

These considerations mean it is perfectly coherent to argue that the UK needs more socialism whilst Venezuela needs more capitalism.

Why, then, do so few do this? The answer might lie in a distinction made by Burke as described (pdf) by Jesse. He distinguished between "embodied" reason – which proceeds from concrete actually-existing conditions – and abstract reason which began from theory. Those who give blanket, worldwide support to either capitalism or socialism are perhaps too prone to abstract reason and too little to embodied reason.

* In practice of course most countries are some mixtures of capitalism and socialism (and even feudalism). I'm thinking here of a spectrum between capitalism and socialism, not a sharp distinction.

** In fact, many intelligent free marketeers agree with this. Many of these favour relaxing planning laws to permit more housebuilding or less strict copyright laws. Both are, in effect, curbs on some people's property rights.

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

Many Schools Still Facing Funding Challenges as New Year Starts [feedly]

Many Schools Still Facing Funding Challenges as New Year Starts
https://www.cbpp.org/blog/many-schools-still-facing-funding-challenges-as-new-year-starts

School funding has been in the news a lot this year, as teachers in several states went on strike this winter and spring to protest low pay and inadequate state support. Nationally, combined state and local funding for K-12 schools has finally recovered from deep cuts made during the Great Recession, but some states still haven't restored funding. With children now returning to school around the country, here's a quick reminder of the funding challenges many schools face.

• Some 47 percent of school funding comes from states, and in many states it hasn't kept up with rising enrollment and inflation. At least 12 states have cut "general" or "formula" funding — the primary form of state support for elementary and secondary schools — by 7 percent or more per student since 2008, before the recession took hold. Seven of these states have also cut income taxes over the last decade, making it particularly hard for them to raise revenue needed for their schools. (They are Arizona, Idaho, Kansas, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Oklahoma.)
• Some 45 percent of school funding comes from localities, and that's down in many states as well. Local funding per student fell in 19 states between the 2008 and 2016 school years (the last year for which we have these data), after adjusting for inflation.
• Federal funding, which covers the rest of school budgets, is also being squeezed. The largest federal education program, "Title I" funding for high-poverty schools, is 5 percent below its 2008 level, after adjusting for inflation.
• Funding for school construction and other school capital projects fell by 26 percent or nearly $21 billion between 2008 and 2016, after adjusting for inflation. States and localities raised capital spending after 2014 but not by nearly enough to offset the earlier cuts. (The federal government doesn't directly fund school capital projects.)
• The number of school workers — including teachers, librarians, nurses, and other staff — has fallen by about 158,000 since 2008, even as the number of enrolled children has risen by about 1.4 million (see graph).

So, even as education becomes increasingly important for success in today's skill-based, global economy, many schools this year will have to serve more students with fewer resources.

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

The Peace Dividends of Energy Infrastructure – North Korea, Iran and Beyond [feedly]

The Peace Dividends of Energy Infrastructure – North Korea, Iran and Beyond
https://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/23/08/2018/peace-dividends-energy-infrastructure-north-korea-iran-and-beyond

Morgan D. Bazilian and Saleem H. Ali explore the possibilities of using pipelines, or other energy infrastructure, as a basis for peace.

The compelling possibilities of using pipelines, or other energy infrastructure, as a basis for peace has emerged again, this time on the Korean peninsula. The lucrative energy market of South Korea has become increasingly important to the United States as it becomes a major producer of liquefied natural gas (LNG). However, it would be much more economical for South Korea to also consider gas from its regional neighbors, particularly Russia. Only three days after the historic summit between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Russian gas giant Gazprom announced that it was revitalizing talks of a pipeline to South Korea.  It is also interesting to consider the recent high level engagement between North Korea on Iran as the US continues a paradoxical deescalation of conflict with the former and an escalation of belligerence with the latter. In the case of Iran, energy infrastructure is adding an additional wrinkle in U.S.-Turkey relations as well since Turkey has an established pipeline with Iran. Yet the prospect for peace dividends in this fraught case was also evident when President Trump granted an Iran sanctions waiver to a Caspian gas pipeline project to Turkey and Europe in which Iran's national oil company has a 10% stake.

Gas pipelines and security were clearly on President Trump's mind at the NATO summit in late July where he brought up gas dependence of Germany on Russia, albeit in ambivalent terms when compared with his rapprochement rhetoric in the summit with President Putin. It could be tempting for the US to see this as a zero sum game with yet another issue of Russian rivalry and competition but there is ample demand in South Korea and other major economies for resilient multiple sources of energy to use this as an opportunity for diplomatic engagement. The realities of an increasingly interconnected world make this paradigm even more attractive, both at the State level, but also for sub-national or local levels of engagement. Indeed, pipelines are also an important dynamic of the regional geopolitics of Iran and could provide an opening for conversations beyond the U.S. withdrawal from the nuclear deal.

The Infrastructure Bargain

Many of the world's most conflict-ridden borders may benefit from beginning to lay the foundations for peace through the somewhat mundane exercise of shared infrastructure; roads, water lines, gas and oil pipelines, or wires for electricity. This infrastructure holds the potential to provide a useful win-win to both parties in terms of trade, security, and the initial phases of building trust. It is also often overlooked at a useful tool for diplomacy; either because it is seen as too technocratic an approach, or too large a hurdle in terms of legal or regulatory frameworks that both parties can agree. Still, the borders of: Pakistan and India; South Sudan and Sudan; Iraq and Kurdistan; North and South Korea; and Palestine and Israel offer five pressing examples where various infrastructure has been previously built, considered, or analysed.

As a recent example, in February of 2018, the TAPI natural gas pipeline began construction with the stated purpose of becoming a foundation for peace between the countries of Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. Still, it runs through highly conflict-ridden areas, with very different views of the rule of law, religion, and markets. There is also a proposed power line project passing through Afghanistan, and providing transit fees to the poor country, is the proposed high-voltage power cable, the CASA 1000. The power line is supposed to support regional power needs in Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Enormous challenges remain to the financial success of these projects, let alone their impact on inter-state relations.

From Grid-lock to Smart Grids

New ideas about large-scale shared power transmission has recently gained backing in the form of the Chinese-backed GEIDCO initiative. The idea of initially regional, then global, electricity interconnection is to help support sustainable development in the connected countries and regions. Transboundary dams and energy sharing arrangements are not new by any means. Examples of gargantuan hydroelectric energy sharing such as the Itaipu between Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina; or the Kariba dam between Zambia and Zimbabawe, have existed for decades. However, the strategic use of such electricity grid infrastructure for regional green growth and cooperation deserves greater attention and upscaling.

There is still massive potential worldwide for harnessing and trading energy and reaping peace dividends in return. For example, Nepal has exploited less than 1% of its hydro potential, even though brownouts and blackouts are a regular feature of life in the country.  Rather than importing some of its power from India, it has tremendous potential for exporting energy to its southern neighbor.  Bhutan too sits high in the mountains of Asia, and knows well the art of living with a big neighbor. The export of hydroelectricity to India constitutes 40% of Bhutan's national income. Many big hydro projects are now under construction with Indian assistance, and will likely be commissioned by 2018-19. The electricity export to India will then triple. For India, it is an excellent source of reliable, economical and clean energy. Such energy trade bodes well for a South Asian regional grid system that had previously been championed by USAID under the South Asian Regional Energy Initiative (SARI).

Resilient Peace?

Energy infrastructure also has the potential for creating greater resilience against disruptions in post-conflict contexts. One successful post-conflict example comes from the small, wet, island of Ireland. Despite energy not being part of the Peace Agreement between the Catholic South and protestant North, the "All-Island market" has become a symbol of political success, and a foundation for strong economies. After the electricity market, and all-island gas market and network was pulled together. There are likely lessons in these exercise—a technical issue able to be successfully transacted below the radar of religion and politics—for other borders.

Detractors of the energy-for-peace approach may point towards the Ukranian predicament of energy dependence which have left it vulnerable to Russian designs for the region. However, it may also be argued that the energy infrastructure provided a moderating influence over an escalating conflict which could have been far worse had their not been reciprocal incentives to keep the gas flowing between Russia and Ukraine. The same is true for the relationship between Turkey and Russia which has gone through a series of tumultuous turns in 2017. However, the Black Sea pipelines have kept both countries engaged with each other despite their disagreements over the war in Syria.

Ultimately, the potential peace dividends of energy infrastructure will require more international coordination for optimal realization. Institutions such as the Energy Charter Treaty have tepidly considered transit protocols for pipelines and the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) is building capacity for greater cooperation, particularly for solar and wind energy infrastructure. The organization has also achieved greater political prominence recently by launching a new Global Commission on the Geopolitics of Energy Transformation. The Korean Peninsula should be considered as an important test case of how energy transformations can ben enabled through geopolitical initiatives towards peacebuilding and the consequent potential for energy for building trust and preventing reemergence of conflict.

However, these efforts are still largely marginal to high politics of war and peace. The U.S-North Korea summit provides an opportunity to consider a more integrated strategy for post-conflict energy diplomacy which transcends competitive posturing. The redevelopment of North Korea will require major energy infrastructure investment as the ageing infrastructure in the country from the Cold War era is highly inefficient and unreliable. The fabled "Six Parties" who have been involved in the peace process for the past several decades should also consider how they could have an energy delivery strategy for the country which is both ecologically and economically efficient. Such a concerted effort at providing energy, which is the most fundamental condition for development, can build positive interdependence that can ultimately provide a more resilient peace.

 

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

Elizabeth Warren’s #EndCorruptionNow Blitz [feedly]

Elizabeth Warren's reforms are all worth of consideration. Corruption is a powerful block to fuller democratic participation by ordinary Americans. Where 'Pay-to-Play' political regimes flourish, disenfranchisement, decay and injustice follows. But fixing corruption, which prevails to varying degrees in every country, is closely linked to a) the levels of social class and income inequality; b) whether it has an effective method of collecting progressive INCOME taxes; c) the levels of professionalism, or conversely patronage,  of its civil  service, and d) the level of public trust in the courts ("Shall we sue?, Pay off the Judge? or get out the guns?"). One way to think about it: Keep everything the same except reduce the highest income to no more than 5 times the lowest, and most 'corruption' will evaporate no matter what laws are in effect. But -- I like Elizabeth Warren's reforms. One minor political challenge:  you have to politically overwhelm the 'corrupt' to get any of this passed

Elizabeth Warren's #EndCorruptionNow Blitz
http://prospect.org/article/elizabeth-warrens-endcorruptionnow-blitz

(Michael Brochstein/Sipa USA via AP Images)

Senator Elizabeth Warren speaks about her proposed Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act at the National Press Club on August 21, 2018.

Senator Elizabeth Warren made a powerful case for her new Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act Tuesday at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Her cheeks flushed as she launched into a full-throated condemnation of deep-seated corruption in government, especially under President Donald Trump. At one point, she lost her voice and had to stop for a sip of water, saying, "I get a little wound up on this."

"This" is what she called the "most ambitious" anti-corruption legislation since Watergate. Her proposal would make ethics—instead of profits—the guiding principle of the corporate world, a move that would drastically alter the relationship between government officials and business chieftains. Anticipating criticisms that the plan is naïve, over-optimistic, and unattainable, Warren said that she was "not giving in to cynicism."

Key features of the legislation:

• "Padlock the revolving door" that turns government officials into corporate players, and corporate players into government officials who, under Trump have eagerly dismantled regulations that once affected their sectors. Federal government officials would be subject to specific rules on transitioning into the corporate world after leaving an agency.
• "End lobbying as we know it" by devising stricter registration criteria for lobbyists, including registering anyone who uses money to influence the government. The legislation also proposes to make all lobbying activities (documents, meetings, bills, etc.) public and to tax excessive lobbying. Most importantly, Warren's legislation would place lifetime prohibitions on all lobbying activities by presidents, vice presidents, members of Congress, and cabinet secretaries once they leave government.
• "End corporate capture" by clarifying the identity of entities that have written, funded, and contributed to research submitted to agencies. An Office of the Public Advocate would be established to make sure that public interests of citizens—not just corporate interests—are considered before agencies act.
• "Restore faith in courts" by creating stricter codes of conduct for all federal judges (including Supreme Court justices) and making courts more open and transparent for individuals and small businesses.
• "Stop self-dealing by public officials" by requiring all public officials and candidates to disclose their tax records and financial interests. The proposed legislation would also ban government officials from owning or trading company stocks while in office, and require them to utilize "conflict-free" investments (like mutual funds), so that policy decisions are not tainted by personal interests.
• "Strengthen enforcement" by creating an Office of Public Integrity, a new anti-corruption agency (Warren called it a "new sheriff") that would enforce these ethics reforms.

Warren described corruption as a "cancer" that has "infected" American government, "eat[ing] away at the heart of our democracy." She added that lobbying has been a longstanding problem that favors the wealthy and the well-connected, "kicking dirt in everyone else's faces," but recent excesses have culminated in the "nakedly corrupt" Trump presidency. Although she did target Republicans like Mick Mulvaney, the Office of Management and Budget director, and Gary Cohn, a one-time economic adviser who left in March, she indicated that she hoped her plan of "treatment" would attract "nonpartisan" support.

Warren's rhetoric, including a "willingness to fight for real change" recalled themes from Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. She had an Obama-like optimism that change was possible, acknowledging that government can be a "powerful force for good." Her words echoed those of Franklin Roosevelt: When FDR introduced the New Deal, he called it a "battle" and a "crusade to restore America to its own people." American democracy, she said, is "worth fighting for." As the Prospect's Harold Meyerson has suggested, Warren 's proposals are tantamount to a second New Deal.

She emphasized that this "moment" in American needs to be named in order to harness the power of the American people to make change. The senator's anti-corruption legislation is the latest act in her #EndCorruptionNow drama, after last week's introduction of her Accountable Capitalism Act legislation and regular tweets about corruption.

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Krugman: Partisanship, Parasites, and Polarization [feedly]

Why the Trumpers like snake oil along with their swastikas

Partisanship, Parasites, and Polarization
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/21/opinion/partisanship-parasites-and-polarization.html

Parasites are a huge force in the natural world. For the most part they simply feed on their hosts. But there are a number of cases in which they exert a more insidious influence: they actually change their hosts' behavior, in ways that benefit the parasites but damage and perhaps eventually kill their victims.

And lately I've been wondering if that's what's happening to America. How much of our political sickness is the result of a parasitic infection? What I have in mind specifically is an infestation of direct-marketing scams that exploit and reinforce political partisanship, largely on the right, basically to sell merchandise.

If this sounds absurd to you, bear with me a bit. I'm not the first person to make this suggestion – Rick Perlstein, our leading historian of modern conservatism, made basically the same argument (without the biological analogy) back in 2012, and as I'll explain, a lot of things have happened since then to reinforce his point.What set me on this trail initially was learning that Ben Shapiro, the Young Conservative Intellectual du jour, is using his talk-show presence to market dietary supplements:

I'll come back to that. First, some notes on political economy.

When I try to understand political behavior, I, like many others, often find myself thinking about Mancur Olson's classic The Logic of Collective Action. Olson's simple yet profound insight was that political action on behalf of a group is, from the point of view of members of that group, a public good.

What do we mean by that? A public good is something that, if provided, benefits many people – but whoever provides it has no way to limit the benefits to himself or herself, and hence no way to cash in on the good's provision. The classic example is a lighthouse that steers everyone away from shoals, whether or not they've paid the fee; public health measures that limit disease are in the same category. As a result, the fact that a public good is worth providing from society's point of view is no guarantee that it will actually be provided; it has to be worth some individual'swhile.

As Olson pointed out, the same goes for political action. Just because a political candidate's victory would be good for, say, farmers doesn't mean that farmers will give him or her money; each individual farmer will have an incentive to free ride on everyone else's contributions. So political action is normally undertaken by individuals or small, organized groups that stand to benefit directly. Either that, or it's a byproduct of other activities that are advantageous for their own reasons and can also be harnessed for political action, like memberships in trade associations or unions.

But don't rich people give money to support the interests of their class? Actually, a lot of the money we see in politics ends up being money spent in the givers' own, personal interests. For example, you can think of the Koch brothers' political spending as an investment in themselves: they have benefited immensely from the recent tax cut, with a payoff that far exceeds the amount they spent promoting it.

So a lot of political action is driven by people trying to shape policy in a way that benefits them personally. But what the Shapiro/brain pills story drives home to me is that there's another important factor in our current political scene: the use of political action as a marketing ploy, by people out to make a buck selling stuff that has little to do with politics per se. 

As I said, Rick Perlstein has already written the basic text here. As he documents, right-wing websites largely act as marketing centers for stuff like this:

Dear Reader, I'm going to tell you something, but you must promise to keep it quiet. You have to understand that the "elite" would not be at all happy with me if they knew what I was about to tell you. That's why we have to tread carefully. You see, while most people are paying attention to the stock market, the banks, brokerages and big institutions have their money somewhere else . . . [in] what I call the hidden money mountain . . . All you have to know is the insider's code (which I'll tell you) and you could make an extra $6,000 every single month.

And some of the most influential voices on the right haven't just sold advertising space to purveyors of snake oil, they've gotten directly into the snake-oil business themselves.

Thus:

• Glenn Beck in his heyday juiced up his viewers by telling them that Obama was going to unleash hyperinflation any day now; he personally cashed in by hawking overpriced gold coins.

• Alex Jones makes a splash by claiming that school massacres are fake news, and the victims are really actors. But he makes his money by selling diet supplements.

• Ben Shapiro writes critiques of liberal academics that conservatives consider erudite (remember Ezra Klein's lineabout a stupid person's idea of what a thoughtful person sounds like?), but makes his money the same way Alex Jones does.

Why should marketing scams be linked to political extremism? It's all about affinity fraud: once you establish a persona that appeals to angry, aging white guys, you can sell them stuff that will supposedly protect their virility, their waistline, and their wealth.

And at a grander level, isn't that what Fox News is really about? Consider it not as an ideological organization per se but as a business: it offers cheap programming (because there isn't much reporting) that appeals to the prejudices of angry old white guyswho like to sit on the couch and rant at their TV, and uses its viewership to help advertisers selling weight-loss plans.

Now, normally we think of individuals' views and interests as the forces driving politics, including the ugly polarization increasingly dominating the scene. The commercial exploitation of that polarization, if we mention it at all, is treated as a sort of surface phenomenon that feeds off the fundamental dynamic.

But are we sure that's right? The Alex Joneses, Ben Shapiros, and Fox Newses of the world couldn't profit from extremism unless there were some underlying predisposition of angry old white guys to listen to this stuff. But maybe the commercial exploitation of political anger is what has concentrated and weaponized that anger. In other words, going back to where I started this essay, maybe the reason we're in a political nightmare is that our political behavior has, in effect, been parasitized by marketing algorithms.

I know I'm not the only one thinking along these lines. Charlie Stross argues that "paperclip maximizers" – not people, but social systems and algorithms that try to maximize profits, market share, or whatever – have increasingly been directing the direction of society, in ways that hurt humanity. He's mostly focused on corporate influence over policy, as opposed to mobilization of angry people in the service of direct-order scams, but both could be operating.

Anyway, I think it's really important to realize the extent to which peddling political snake oil, whether it's about the economy, race, the effects of immigration, or whatever, is to an important extent a way to peddle actual snake oil: magic pills that will let you lose weight without ever feeling hungry and restore your youthful manhood.

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Paul Krugman has been an Opinion columnist since 2000 and is also a Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center. He won the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on international trade and economic geography.

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