Geopolitics quicksand

Geopolitics a big quicksand that is pulling down everyone at different rates

Of all the European leaders, Macron has been acting quite jittery lately. In the corridors of COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Macron held Maduro’s hand in a handshake for full one and a half minutes. This was embarrassing, after Macron had joined several western allies in calling Maduro an illegitimate ruler of Venezuela in 2019, and in staging the whole drama of making a setting in exile for his opponent, Juan Guaido as the legit one. Reason being, winters have come and Europe needs gas! President Joe Biden has made a similar U-turn by allowing Chevron to drill in Venezuela, all this after years of sanctions and bad-mouthing against Maduro.

What seems to have happened is that the Ukraine War triggered the gas shortage, and Qatar’s refusal to sell gas to Europe cornered them more. OPEC+1’s bold move of cutting down oil production amid a slowdown in the global economy infuriated the US, making them reciprocate by putting sanctions on Russian oil embargo and a price cap on their oil. To this, Russia played calm, as most of its oil was already going through shadow fleets that have learned to bypass international legalities. Meanwhile, India began posing as a hero that was going to buy Russian oil in the face of all the sanctions, not telling the world that it was actually going to pump all that oil back to Europe, who were on one face threatening Putin of the same sanctions day and night and on the other backstabbing Zelensky, the Ukraine President, like this. And now after all this, the EU and the US are leaning back to Venezuela, who by the way is also an OPEC member and is going to sell its oil on its own terms now.

In retrospect, one could say that all this wouldn’t have happened if there was no Ukraine War. But that was bound to happen with the embarrassing US withdrawal from Afghanistan that emboldened Russia to lay claim on its post-Soviet space that NATO and EU had been eating away in the last two decades — something that would not have happened if Russia had not lost the Cold War, but it did happen because it was trampled by the Mujahideen in Afghanistan.

So, geopolitics seems to be a single fabric that weaves in all states and their political tensions, yet one can pick the fabric from one point and find a set of correlations; while if one picks the same fabric from another point, one would find a different set, or rather, in today’s scenario, it’s a big quicksand that is pulling down everyone at different rates.

India is especially an interest because when Asia is struggling to build a new future of world dominance for itself, India has remained the last bastion of Western alliance in the continent. At a time when the Russia-China alliance, the worldwide Belt Road Initiative, and their headways into Arab Spring-affected states, were all promising a coming Asian Century, India took every step the US wanted it to take to mar its coming. India’s China-hate and duality-based Russia-love has alienated it more from Asian players; India was never invited in any of the Russian-led Afghan Peace Talks; and Iran, its long-held friend kicked it out of Chabahar when it stopped buying Iranian oil under US pressure in the 2020 US-China Trade War.

Yet India continues its set of bad choices, especially under the Hindu fundamentalist, died-in-the-saffron Modi policies. It continues offending China. Even after the Ladakh standoff when China came in and occupied thousands of square kilometers inside Ladakh, and is still sitting there in spite of over 16 rounds of talks. Interestingly, the standoff happened on May 5, 2020, just one day after India’s MEA said, “the entire Union Territories of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh, including the areas of Gilgit and Baltistan, are an integral part of India.” In June, it was clear in the high level talks that China was not ready to vacate the areas; and in August Pakistan announced its new map including Indian Occupied Kashmir.

Now after a stalemate of two years, India has started blowing the bellows of war again. Defense Minister Rajnath and the Militaries Chiefs are exchanging invitations to reach Skardu via Ghanchi. Why would India incite war when it is already unable to move China from Galwan, Hot Springs and Gogra. Is it RSS fanaticism under the axiom that two wars are better than one, or is there something deeper?

One should not disregard the bigger picture, especially in the aftermath of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, when US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin ill-augured that the US needs to prepare for future conflict that would bear little resemblance to ‘the old wars’ — hinting of high-precision fire-power, satellite-aided, non-contact theater wars, perhaps employing cyber, bio and hybrid features. Gen Mark Milley reiterated few months back that “potential for significant international conflict between great powers is increasing, not decreasing”. So, if the US, continuing its irresponsible behaviour with humanity at large, is planning for a greater conflict, India’s fetid hinting of attacking Pakistan, while already in conflict with China, may be a strategic one-paging with the US.

But that is not exactly how the global checkerboard works, one can plan how it will act, but how other factors will react and what the future will result into is totally unpredictable — because behind every reaction are human agents that have unique emergent behaviour of sorts with every new situation. This apprehension of undesired results keeps powers from making extreme moves of war, especially when the US has gone through a series of unwon wars after the single spectacle of winning the Gulf War.

Perhaps that is the reason why Macron just suggested giving security guarantees to Russia if it stops the war, which would obviously mean agreeing on not merging Ukraine in NATO or EU. Scholz, the German Chancellor, has reiterated the same, urging Russia’s Putin to come to a diplomatic solution as quickly as possible. Off course, Scholz can’t wait, because the EU had not prepared for a long-drawn conventional war, and because winter has come!

Published in The Express Tribune, December 9^th, 2022.

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