Justin Trudeau has stepped in it again

After a disgraceful plane stuck on the tarmac at an airport in India, Justin Trudeau returns home to Canada, awash in a sea of bad polls and declares India has assassinated a Sikh activist on Canadian soil. He is a disgrace as a leader, using a death as political misdirection.  Or trying to do so at least.

Justin Trudeau continues to make a clown of himself

To the surprise of absolutely no one, except maybe the man himself, Justin Trudeau makes a clown of himself yet again.

Is India the next China?

 First, Peter Zeihan's take on it:

He seems to predict a mixed bag but positive future for India.  The have labor in abundance, they have less land than appears on the surface due to the mountainous nature of much of the country.  They are not capital rich.  Those are the 3 classical factors of production.  The 4th, more modern component of production is entrepreneurship.  The latter factor boils down to the notion of maximizing what you do with the other 3 factors.  Because India still has one foot in the Soviet era Russia camp, their is less of an entrepreneurship than there could be.

Much of what vaulted China into its current economic zenith was Western investment.  A naive West pumped a lot into China in the mistaken notion that China would liberalize and a whole massive new market would be created and available for a new source of demand.  Now that this particular illusion is evaporating, India is one of the countries in a position to benefit.  For the United State the cheap labor option is clearly Mexico.  But there's Europe and Japan who will still need a low to middle range tech production option.  India is in a position to take advantage of this.  But so is Turkey, which does have a geographic locality advantage for Europe. There's also Vietnam as a potential competitor in that regard.  And Bangladesh for the really low tech industries like textiles.

I'm not sure India won't benefit from the new paradigm.  In fact I believe they will, but I don't know that they will benefit as much as they could potentially.  They are not a point politically where they  are seizing the opportunity and availing themselves to situation.  It's always hard to predict the future because things change, political decision impact the landscape, be they internal or external.  Nevertheless India has an opportunity, whether it does its best to seize that opportunity is the real unknown.

Dictator Watch - China vs. India, and other stories

China In Focus, an excellent source of news and analysis on the communist country, takes a look at why China is encroaching on India, and why it matters to America  (as well as a couple of other stories): 

We need an IPOTO to counter Imperialist Communist China

Indo-Pacific Oceanic Treaty Organization. IPOTO. That's my suggestion for a name for it.  Is it coming?  In order to counter Chinese territorial aggression, it should.  Let Europe increase it's spending and prove it's worth defending with NATO.

This video is from early 2019, but the idea still resonates:

India and Australia vs. China

China is not just a predatory nation with America:

President Trump's China containment strategy involves India

President Trump may seem like a loose cannon when it comes to geopolitics but if you look closely, he's doing a lot of things that precisely fit American national security and geopolitical interests.  Containment of China for example is being handled deftly.  Of course there is always an economic component to the Trump doctrine, and that is being handled through the trade deal negotiations.  But the communist Chinese government started getting very militarily aggressive during the Obama administration.  Military containment remains a priority.  To that end, American strategy includes a sort of ring fencing around China.  With Russia to the north, it is not possible to entirely encircle China to prevent aggression, but neither is it entirely necessary.  It's southern Asia where Chinese is attempting to expand it's influence.

While president Trump is attempting to draw down all American presence in Afghanistan, that does not mean he is not acutely aware of the China situation.  Evidence comes in the form of the recent military deal with India:

This is entirely consistent with the Trump doctrine: allies, with common interests, need to pay their fair share of the cost in confronting totalitarian regimes and geopolitical rivals. 

Climate activists are pawns - an economics lesson

The world is going to end, soon, unless we stop greenhouse gas emissions entirely, and soon. This is what climate activists are demanding. But those emissions primarily come from manufacturing and energy production.  Climate emissions have skyrocketed in China and India while having declined in the United States*.  That's not uncorrelated to offshoring of manufacturing jobs to Asia. They are pawns.

The establishment wealthy want to offshore jobs to countries where they can pay 70 cents a day instead of $100 a day.  They are the same ones arguing for free trade and against tariffs on China because they say it is bad for consumers.  True, prices would be higher but it does not matter to a consumer if  they don't have a job.  It's as hard to afford $10 for pants as $50 for pants when you are broke.

It's also true that free trade is a good thing for all parties.  Except what is being passed of as free trade really isn't free trade.  Market restrictions in China means that they have free access to our markets but we have highly restricted access to their markets. Further the companies have an easy way to move production and therefore jobs) to cheap labor countries, but you as a producer of labor do not have the same freedom of movement if you are willing to work for less.   Even smaller businesses do not have the same mobility of labor options.  A small dairy farmer or manufacturer can't just move production to China.  Free trade would be truly borderless for all (which is not entirely without it's pitfalls).

So these wealthy business owners have distinct advantages over their competitors and consumers.  They have created the situation where they continue to gain wealth at the expense of jobs and smaller, weaker competitors.  Why would they want that to change?  That's why so many wealthy support climate change activism.

If you are a climate activist, unless you are a billionaire producing items to sell in China and selling them in the Western world, you are a pawn and working against your own self interest.  It behooves you to investigate how global warming climate change activism began.  You'll find it's rooted in socialism (and it's attempt to destroy capitalism through whatever means possible) and married tightly to mega-corporations leveraging the marriage of free trade and climate activism to take advantage of a gullible public to enrich themselves.

*Energy production has already been changed from coal to natural gas and nuclear power in the United States in significant proportions.  This is a large part of why emissions have declined (the other being jobs disappearing).

Saturday Learning Series - Geography (India)

This is a particularly long geography episode but India has 1.3 billion people so it needs a bit more time.

Saturday Learning series - Geography (India)

Today, India in an extended video.

Mumbai Terror - Threat and Opportunity

Yet another terrorist attack, yet again not on US soil, and yet again evidence that vigilance is imperative. What will the Bush and/or Obama Administrations do as a result? So far President Bush has offered condolences, and may be, at least publicly reticent to do more, given the dwindling time in office and the self-righteous Obama "Office of the President Elect" being the real power center since the election. Obama has similarly condemned the attacks and indicated it would not destroy Indian democracy. But far more needs to be done. The horrible attacks represent both a threat and opportunity to the War on Terror.

The Bush Administration's approach to Afghanistan has been to work with Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan. While this may have spawned early success, it has clearly gone beyond the point of diminishing returns. With the increased level of unmanned aerial attacks, it's clear that the CIA, at least, has realized the limits of this approach and is exploring new ways of dealing with the problem of radical Muslim terrorism in the region.



With the terrible terrorist attacks on Mumbai, a new variable has been thrown into the equation. Some in India are angrily calling for war with Pakistan. Such a war would undoubtedly escalate into something larger, including the disputed Kashmir and Northern Areas.

This may be where the opportunity lies for the U.S. Of course no one outside the intelligence community is privy to the level of co-operation between the U.S. and India, but given that the focus has been a tactical alliance with Pakistan, my guess is that the connection with India has at a minimum been weakened. There are a myriad of opportunities available for the U.S. They could act as a peace broker between the two nations, fostering some goodwill in the process. They could take the opportunity to greatly strengthen ties with India. That would serve not only as a potential base of operations if Pakistan falters in it's support, but also, strengthened ties and a strengthened India (with respect to intelligence, trade, security, military and economically) would provide a regional counterbalance to the threat of an aggressive China. In the event of a war in the Kashmir and Northern Areas, supporting India might provide further opportunity to ferret out Bin Laden, in another area he could be in hiding.

Of course there a number of threats in these scenarios as well - a regional conflict may drag the Chinese into the Kashmir territory dispute. Another war front is simply unaffordable, especially during a recession. America may be forced to stand on the sidelines and the outcome would probably not be to their liking. Not gaining Indian support and losing support in Pakistan would severely impede operations in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is 1 1/2 times the size of Iraq, with 116% of Iraq's population, much less hospital terrain and about 20% of the amount of paved roads. Creating a stable Afghanistan has massive logistical problems as it is, losing a base of operations like Pakistan would pose incredible challenges. Even if India were to offer an opportunity along those lines, it would be exponentially more difficult logistically, given the distance between the base of operations and the area of operations. The remaining scenario is ramping up in Afghanistan to levels greater than in Iraq if the job is to get done properly. Given the geographic obstacles, the dangers to U.S. troops would be quite great.

If a regional conflict were to occur, Russian action might also be a possibility. It's a situation that could very quickly spiral out of control, and one where the U.S. is not in the best position to achieve it's regional objectives.

The United States is currently holding a weak hand at the table in many respects. It cannot finance further activity, it cannot rely on continued support from Pakistan in light of the Mumbai attacks, and recent comments from Pakistani military officials. Really negotiation and peace brokering are it's only options at this point, which are also weakened because the others at the table will know that the American 'big stick' isn't in play. The terror attacks in Mumbai are tragic, but they also represent a minefield that needs to be negotiated very skillfully if the United States wants to accomplish anything positive, or even avoid a possible flash point of a new threat to regional stability.