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The Economist cites a think tank that says about 600,000 young educated Kashmiri adults are jobless. Kashmiri religious and political leaders worry that their youngest followers might take up radical positions. The violent insurgency has so far subsided but is now replaced with stone pelting and hartals (strikes). The fear is that the influence of moderate leaders such as Mr Geelani, who is in his eighties, will be replaced with leaders who would reignite tensions and an insurgency. Dr Mushtaq Margoob, of the psychiatric hospital in Srinagar, talks about the throngs of patients with stress and anxiety, with the youngest the most damaged. He sees "a collective anger, a traumatized generation." A three man team, comprising 2 academics and a journalist, was sent by the central government to Kashmir to prepare a series of reports by talking to all sides in the conflict The team has proved ineffective as the members do not carry political weight to influence decisions. A Wahhabi organization, al Hadith is using Saudi funds to establish itself as a strong welfare, religious, and cultural force. The non-muslim minority in Kashmir sees al Hadith as bringing Saudi Islamization to a region long known for its Muslim's religious tolerance, building community centres, mosques, schools and clinics. Are there creative better ways to bring peace to Kashmir and redirect the resources India has to commit to the region, Pakistan has to commit to its border with India, and the U.S. has to commit to its ground war in Afghanistan. For now India is locked into a silence about Kashmir in international discussions, Pakistan is playing out its own "security objectives" in Afghanistan, and the U.S. is locked into its anti-terrorism objectives in Afghanistan. Only by connecting all these dots can peace and redirection of resources be achieved. The U.S., Pakistan and India, would come up with a creative solution only if each side finds itself pushed to the point where continued commitment of resources is no longer tenable because of economic crises, or the US and the Western alliance see the need to pull South Asia together to act as a balancing element in Asia in relation to China and Japan; and push for negotiations with an offer of stronger economic ties. ...

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Reidel argues in a new book on the Sino-Indian war of 1962 that Kennedy would have deepened relations with India following the 1962 war. Johnson continued Cold War policies from earlier administrations which sidelined the non aligned movement of Indian prime minister Nehru. However it is not clear how this would have happened. Kennedy, he says, saw China and India offering competing visions in Asia. Today India and Japan are coming closer and offering a different view of society and democracy than China.

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India agrees to an immediate ceasefire after a call from Pakistan's head of military operations for a ceasefire. The conflict started with attack on tourism that was reviving the Kashmir economy after three decades through a terrorist attack killing 26 tourists in Phalgam, Kashmir on  April 22, 2025 in the mountains near the Pir Panjal range. 24 million tourists visited Kashmir in 2024. Indian response was swift on May 7 early morning hours attacking 18 terrorist camps inside Pakistan occupied Kashmir and inside Pakistan. India called it a act of self-defense to Pakistan sponsored state terrorism going back to 1947. What is different in this brief 4 day war is that India made it economic with efforts at IMF to make terrorism an issue for loans to Pakistan, and ending the Indus Waters Treaty on water sharing. Pakistan economy is struggling with no debt relief from China, making it turn to the IMF, a politically split population with Opposition leader Imran Khan in jail, and continued domination by the military over civilian govenrment. On May 9 drone attacks were launched from Pakistan using Turkish made drones in large numbers on cities and towns in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab. Blackouts were placed in India by May 8 in all cities in the north and in Pakistan. India responded with its own drones and missile attacks on three military airbases as the war broadened to military targets on May 10. US mediated a ceasefire through Saudis and Turkey. Earlier Saudis and Iran were in New Delhi with whom India has good relations to get a ceasefire. Mr. Trump's efforts behind the scenes secured an agreement. VP Vance had cut short an Indian trip in Jaipur on April 22. India and the US are allies in the Indo-Pacific, and India and Russia have decades of friendly relations. China now uses Pakistan as a proxy state, but does not provide the economic aid it needs, for which it has turned to the IMF.    ...

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Biden sends Yellen and Blinken to Beijing in April 2024 to meet with premier Li Qiang and foreign minister Wang Yi to improve relations with China. Xi says China and the US can work through their differences including on Taiwan. As tensions increase in Europe with Ukraine and with another election cycle in the US, it is essential that the US, China, India and the EU work though differences on Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific, and plan ahead for a future peace settlement in Ukraine with the support of all nations, especially ones with which the US and EU, have a strong trading and economic relationship. China needs export markets as its construction industry stalls and increases investment in manufacturing. The US continuing strong investment in manufacturing in the US, continuing to trade with China on a level playing field. Both sides have economic interests, and interests of the world to advance peaceful cooperation. 

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Security is at the heart of India's foreign policy. S. Jaishankar points this out at Thiruvanathapuram. He says this was true of the effort at Balakot and even in the midst of Covid at the Line of Actual Control with China when India sent up enormous numbers of troops to defend the border. This is also behind the stand with China that security and LAC comes first in all relations with China. Trade and exchanges all come in the context of LAC, settle the LAC issues first then we can proceed with better bilateral relations, this is what India is telling China.  There are good reasons for this. India has a large border in the most formidable terrain of the Himalayas which is also close to the plains of India in the LAC with China. Any difficulties at the border would weaken India's secuerity and weaken development efforts in the same way that Japan sought to weaken Chinese development through invasion in the 1930's. Tibet looms out of the past. When China invaded Tibet Nehru's couple of pages in Discovery of India on China show that he had no idea of the China that had emerged with Mao and the CCP in its historical struggle against Japanese nationalists and imperialists. He had an idea of China that came from the Buddhist period and India's links from the past. The ruthless Japanese invasion that China confronted on its soil, and British colonial incursions before that, had already transformed the China of the past, which now under Mao in 1948 may have sought more defensible borders by extending them to Tibet as a buffer state. Historically the British had never tolerated Russian or other European or Japanese interference in the border states such as Tibet. There was also the question of capacity. By the time of the invasion of Tibet in the early 1950's China had already fought the Korean War with the US. India's army and defense forces were just coming out of partition and ill equipped for the task of defending the borders in Tibet region. Current governments in a more normal setting cannot change this part of history, yet can take full recognition of the facts that this has created. A strong defense has to be created for defending a border that extends for thousand of miles now that China has unlawfully occupied Tibet. On it also depends a strong and vigorous development effort that helps build the kind of modern defenses as the economy grows and absorbs new technologies rapidly. Both defense and development go together, one cannot have defense without rapid modernization and development, and one cannot have rapid modernization and development without defense. A weak defense would lead to distractions in development leading to the lack of rapid modernization and development as the intruding power interferes in insidious ways in the internal and external links of the country. This is the lesson of colonial interference of western powers in Asia. As Brendan Simms shows in his new book, Europe - Struggle for Supremacy 1500 to the Present, it is also the lesson of a different kind of colonialism inside Europe since 1500, where weaker states inside Europe fell behind with interference in turns by the imperial powers of France, UK, Austria-Hungary, Prussia and Russia. Poland, Finland, Czech Republic in the past and even Ukraine today are just some examples of what can happen when one loses sight of this principle. Poland and the Polish Commonwealth in the 19th century, Hungary right down to 1956, and China in the 1910-1930, India in the 18th and 19th century were weakened internally even after recognizing the problem, so that recognition of the problem is not an adequate condition to prevent countries from facing such foreign interference. ...

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The leaders of India and China, Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping will meet at a 2 day summit in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, China, on April 27, 2018.  The meeting is significant because for the first time the 2 leaders will meet on a one on one basis for a significant part of the time without aides to get a better understanding of each other, and a get a sense of how to establish a good relationship between the 2 countries. Ma Jiali of the China Reform Forum, a think tank affiliated with the Communist Party's Central Party School says a better relationship would serve China's interests for regional calm, so that China can focus on internal issues of tackling poverty in the interior of China, tackle economic issues arising from a difficult trading relationship with the U.S. including the tariffs of the Trump administration.  China's leadership have not anticipated the decisions made by president Trump and the Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to take a strong stand on correcting an imbalance in trade that leads to about $1 billion in trade deficit each day for the U.S. with China. Previous administrations in the U.S. have not taken action. Also at issue in the U.S. China relationship is for the first time transfer of technology for "Made in China 2025." China's earlier advances were made with a free flow of technology from the U.S. and Europe.  The last time the two leaders met was in 2014. This time the issues of border relations in the Himalayas, and the relations with China in the Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean region, the growing relationship between Australia, U.S., India and Japan, are seen in a different light with the strong disagreements on trade relations with the U.S.  China sees a need for improving relations with India. Prime Minister Modi faces new elections in 2019 and the need to focus on infrastructure and development to win a second term in office for the ruling BJP Party.  A reduction in tensions serves the interest of both countries and leaders.   ...

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DJT was asked if China's celebration of Victory Day with Russia recently in Tianjin had any message for the US. He said he did not see it that way, that US has good relations with China. In this context the Smithsonian Museum exhibit on military history of the US shows a real aspect of the World War II in loss of life- Russia 17 million dead, China 11 million dead, Germany 10 million dead, Poland 5 million dead, Japan 2.5 million dead, US 1 million dead, UK 800,000 dead. Russian and Chinese losses of 28 million dead are 15 times the losses of US and UK combined of 1.8 million dead. With the scale of losses of such magnitude Victory Day celebrations in Tianjin can be seen in the context of this shared history and major losses overcome as much of the world knows with US help. A sobering view is that the colonial powers Imperial Japanese Army, French and British policies caused famines in World War II leading to 6-7 million deaths in India, Indonesia and Vietnam which is 4 times the 1.7 million US and UK deaths. Views of China in the Context of the Ukraine War and Russia are very different in US than in France and Europe and are widening in differences in 2025. In the US as in this report in the WSJ China is seen as a trade partner and competitor with certain issues, many of China's university leaders and experts question the prospect of a long term alliance with Russia, and for DJT Russia is a nuclear power with which US seeks good relations and a political settlement of the Ukraine War. In France as shown in the article in Le Monde adjacent to this the European attitudes towards Russia throughout European history since 1700 of regional rivalry between France and Russia, Germany and Russia since 1900, Britain and Russia since 1700. FDR led the alliance with Russia against the Nazis and Imperial Japanese in the 1930's and 1940's. Herbert Hoover led the effort to bring relief supplies and aid to Russian in the period of the Civil War after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. With China America kept the government in China functioning as it retreated from the invasion by the Imperial Japanese Army in the 1930's and 1940's and the only hope with Gen. Joe Stilwell in China alongside Chinese leaders. ...

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Foreign policy of DJT Administration in 2025- asserting US interests, reviving the Monroe Doctrine for US policy in the western hemisphere, and rapprochement with Russia, China, Japan, EU, in international trade after tariffs against unfair trade. Mead says this has improved the US standing in world affairs and also has helped other nations in the world achieve their interests in their region. EU takes on a larger role in Ukraine freeing the US to assert itself in a much needed way to protect its borders and remove threat of drug and fentanyl trafficking from Venezuela and Mexico. Russia accepted as a Northern European power and NATO is pulled back as it should have been after the Soviet Union collapsed,  (it gets the "respect" it needs from the US so that it relinquishes efforts to disturb the peace in Latin America and the Middle East). It also frees up the US from other entanglements so that it can concentrate on both competition with China and negotiating win-win solutions on trade with China. US relations with Japan and South Korea are improved and both nations are taking a bigger role in their region with other partners India and Australia -so that the US frees up resources for tackling domestic and foreign problems that ensure US regains its position as a powerhouse for manufacturing, industry and world class infrastructure in the next decades to 2050. That is the surest way to a safer, better world for Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa. ...

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Shares of Adani Enterprises went up by 3000% over 5 years putting valuations at extreme levels, says this report in the WSJ. This has created a disconnect between valuations and fundamentals say some experts. Hindenburg Research is a American forensic financial research firm started in 2017 by Nathan Anderson in New York City with 5 employees. It has issued a critical report of the Adani Group companies leading to a loss of 18.5% of its valuation. Adani Group companies make up 5% of the Bombay Stock Exchange and are a big part of its renewable energy effort even though the company had major interests in coal in Australia. Adani is trying to make the switch to renewable solar and wind energy and at the same time meet India's continuing need for coal because of its large population. The situation is similar to China and is poorly understood in the US and Europe, the effort to make large investments in renewable energy even as the company provides energy from fossil fuels. Adani set up the Mundra port in Gujarat helping Gujarat become energy sufficient and making it the most industrialized part of India. The London based Financial Times took a look at the Adani Group long before Hindenburg Research in the last 2 years and concluded that Adani Group companies have grown rapidly because India's effort for industrialization requires aggressive investment and risk taking which none of the other companies including India's Tata and Reliance Group are able to do in infrastructure and energy in the same way that Adani has. Reliance Group has invested in 4G and 5G and setup Jio to create low cost access to fast internet in India. When it comes to roads, airports, coal and renewable energy Adani has invested aggressively. This has created the perception that the Adani Group has benefited from its relations with the government. As the Financial Times put it Adani Group was the only private investor willing to take up the challenge of super sized goals needed for India's rapid growth. In this sense a forensic research company based on short selling is up against a company that has already faced skepticism about its rapid emergence as a renewable energy focused company shifting from fossil fuels, a transition neither Exxon or Chevron in the US have been able to do. ...

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The Guardian gives this story of Khamanei's rule in Iran after 1989. He was made president in 1981 in a landslide win at that time just 2 years after the revolution in 1979 that toppled the Shah of Iran's monarchial regime. Khamanei comes from a the family of a modest cleric in the town of Mashaad who was immersed in the anticolonial writings coming out of Arab North Africa's liberation movements. His policy towards Israel and the US, difficult relations with Arab countries in the neighborhood, and pursuit of nuclear weapons technologies, led Iran to become isolated and face sanctions that hurt its economy and its oil industry for three decades. It created its own version of governing and in setting up proxy militias but this resulted in huge investments diverted from the economy of Iran, neglect of its oil industry and production under western sanctions, that led to economy collapsing and student protests every decade. This expanded in 2025 to broad sections of the population calling for a new direction. Protests were suppressed leading to a disconnect with the people by 2026. To truly understand Iran one has to step back to the 1900's ( as one must also do to understand China or India), as Iran was ruled by the Qajar dynasty at the time. The first Majlis parliament was set up in Iran in 1906 -with the help of "good" Britishers like the British agent in Rajkot who helped send Gandhi to London to study law- wished to see a constitutional setup similar to Britain and limit the powers of the monarchy so that reforms in agriculture and in the civil service could be made. It lasted until 1908. At the time other Britishers in the British Empire both in India and in London sought to maintain British influence and keep out Russian influence. It was not a coincidence that the Majlis lasted only till 1908. That year in 1908 the first discovery of oil in West Asia was made in Khozestan province by George Reynolds, with investor backing of William D'Arcy. The following year 1909 the Anglo-Persian Oil Company( later Anglo Iranian Oil Company and later British Petroleum) was formed. The oil concession was given by the Shah from Qajar dynasty. From that time on Iran became the scene of oil company interests, monarchial interests first under Qajar dynaasty and then under Pahlavis dynasty (which set itself up like Napoleon II in France from humble origins, after 1925 to replace the Qajar dynasty), and the emerging middle class lawyer and civil service, agricultural landowners class, all competing for power and influence in a Asian region with Shihite Islamic embedded in the fabric of the society. Power swung to different groups from 1925 onwards for 5 decades to the 1979 revolution that overthrew the Pahlavi temporary replacement monarchy that worked with British oil interests. West Asia became a meeting point for anticolonial writings emerging from Arab North Africa and other places that took the form of and led to a socialist style anticolonial Baathist influnce that overthrew a monarchy in Baghdad Iraq in the "Free Officers" coup of June 14, 1958 led by Karim Kassem. Out of that Pan Arabic Iraqi mood emerged S. Hussein who with weapons systems imported from the US and Europe initiated the war with Iran in 1980. The Iranian counterrevolutionary movement to Iraq began from that time with the leadership of Khomeni and Khameni from 1981. This is what one has seen swing back and forth in the West Asian region for about 5 decades to 2026, the regional Arab states mostly Sunni monarchies ranged against Iran with its Shiite and also modernizing population. US oil interests in Arab monarchies of the West Asian region from the time of FDR's meeting with Saudi's Faisal in the WWII period clashed with Iranian public interests competing with oil interests (US and British) allied to monarchial interests, and the emergence of Shiite Islamic authority in Iran in these clashes. Iranian public interests that started out with the Majlis and parliaments set up by the "good Britishers" never got a chance in Iran just as the modernizing effort of Sun Yat Sen in China in the 1900's never got a chance in the middle of the surviving monarchy in China by 1910, and the Japanese colonial interests in China from that time competing with the Nationalists Koumintang and the Communist Chinese workers movements emerging in the 1930's, all competing for influence during the Chinese civil war and in its aftermath the emergence of Mao and the CCP of China. This is the situation we in the world face today. ...

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The changes taking place in Saudi Arabia under Prince Mohamad Bin Salman are the subject of this article from Prof. Mohsin Khan of Jindal Global University. Similar changes were initiated earlier under MBZ Mohamad Bin Zayad in the UAE which inspired the changes in Saudi Arabia. The effects are easy to see for Upward Mobility, Diversity, the economy, the relations with the EU and the US and other countries, the shift away from oil to renewables, women's participation in the workplace, and education in science and technology. During the last 50 years the wars in the Middle East have wasted resources in unimaginable ways, human and in trillions of dollars that could have improved the quality of life and ease of living of people. The result is that like Britain in the nineteenth century the US in the 21st shows no interest in Afghanistan or regions of South Asia which have scattered its resources. The shift now is to the seas and the region that covers the west coast of Africa through the Indian Ocean to the Pacific past Indonesia to Japan and the Hawaiian islands, the western coast of the US- called the Indo-Pacific. With the US, India, Australia, and Japan committed to freedom of navigation and international law in the region. It is all about investment, new supply chains, trade and growth, science and technology. And the UAE, Saudi now fit in within this larger framework, along with the European Union, and other countries in this region. ...

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The Nixon Mao meeting of 1972 now seems a very long time ago. Little is mentioned here in this WSJ report on what was happening inside China in 1972. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution had severely divided the Communist Party. This was followed by the Lin Piao episode in which the defense minister clashed with Mao leading to a complete loss of confidence in the stability of the leadership. China sought the meeting and Chou-en-lai, premier and Mao's minister for foreign relations, was eager to seek a new relationship with the US. The period 1960-1970 had pushed China back 10-20 years in its effort to develop an industrial economy.  The event is presented as one in which the two countries were meeting at the same level after the Korean War, which was not the case. This report says it was the $3 trillion in US and foreign investment that helped an economy the size of India in 1972 to emerge into what it is today, much larger than India. This report goes on to cite Foreign Affairs and other authors who write that Mr. Kissinger and Mr Nixon saw this as a self-promotional event in contrast to the situation Chou-en-lai, the Chinese premier faced during that difficult time in China's history. ...

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This year 2025 is the 75th year since the invasion of Tibet by Communist China under Mao in 1950, and the 66th year since the uprising in Lhasa in 1959. The new book by Tibet Dalai Lama will be out in March 2025- Voice for the Voiceless: Over Seven Decades of Struggle With China for My Land and My People.  The Dalai Lama calls for preserving Tibet's Buddhist civilization and culture within China. Bringing China's borders to the borders of India was a serious mistake as the mountains of Tibet and Nepal acted as a buffer zone between China and India. The invasion was a result of seeing India as India under a colonial power the British and independent India still run in 1950 under a system modeled on Britain- what Mao fought against since the 1920's.  In 2025 India has emerged as distinctly Indian and China has emerged from the 1950's communist state into a market economy state. The old colonial period systems no longer exist and only a reversion to the old Buddhist periods since the 5th century in terms of borders makes sense. The Tibet invasion after millenium in which Tibet had relations with Nepal, China and India has created other issues in this region. In the centuries before the colonial powers entered Asia in the 15th century, the Portuguese, Dutch and the British, there was contact, commerce and other relations between India, Nepal, Tibet and China. The earliest contacts were with Bodhidharma prince from from India going to China through these Tibetan mountains to convert China to Buddhism in about the 6th century AD. China reverting to its Buddhist culture is a serious possibility because it is so intertwined with a sense of being Chinese and the culture of China. And with this the borders of times past.   ...

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Russia has 600 billion dollars in reserves and with oil prices above $100, with the Ukraine conflict lifting oil prices for Russian oil exports, there is little that the US and Europe have done to prepare for this situation. The Merkel years were essentially wasted in building a trade based relationship on cheap Russian gas supplies, and the wasted resources under Bush and Obama in two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan only distracted the US from the major issues relating to China and Europe that it now faces. 

The need is for a new overall structure to be built- for social structure supporting all aspects of infrastructure, and stronger supply chains with local manufacturing. And international structures that include India and other nations of Asia and Latin America, Africa, that would be a framework for the future- a broader framework for peaceful relations.

 

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It took 25 years for the US to recover from the 1929 stock market disaster and the Great Depression. It took Japan 25 years to recover from the 1989 stock market collapse and the lost decades since. It is finally emerging from that period with a healthier economy and business structures. China faces a situation today of a struggling economy after years of excessively rapid growth that hurt the environment and climate and health. And the uncertainty that faced Japan after 1989 also faces China in 2024- growth is never linear over very long periods and has pull backs that could stretch for decades much too familiar for Japan. For India there are lessons to be learned from Japan's and China's experience. In environment not to risk polluting the environment as China experienced with breakneck unchecked growth, to be mindful of bringing up all sectors and parts of the population, and to manage growth so that the basic instability that resulted from excessive shift to China of manufacturing and deindustrialization in US that led to worsening trade and people to people relations between US and China is not repeated. ...

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WSJ looks at the 75 years of the US Saudi Arabia relationship that started when US president Franklin Delano Roosevelt met Saudi king Ibn Saud at Bitter Creek, Egypt, on a US Navy destroyer ship in 1945. It has gone through many phases over this period and mainly involved the Saudi kingdom maintaining its supply of oil to the US and Western Europe. This relationship went through an oil embargo during tense periods of Israeli Palestine conflict as in 1983 with an oil embargo that pushed up oil prices. What is different this time is the situation in Yemen where Iranian supported Houthi rebels near the border with Saudi Arabia are engaged in a conflict with the Saudis. Democratic administrations under first Obama and Biden today support reaching a deal with Iran on nuclear weapons development and limit US military support for the war in Yemen. The Saudis for their part are not keen on a regional war and turned down efforts by president Trump to respond to attacks from Yemen. Mr. Biden's envoy has arranged for a deal to reduce tensions between the Houthis in Yemen and Saudis. The diplomatic impasse in relations stems from the Kashoggi incident and president Biden's concern for the human rights situation in Saudi Arabia. Other factors making relations difficult are the economic interests of the two countries diverging. The relationship Roosevelt started in 1945 has changed in its fundamental character. Oil supplies for imports into the US is no longer a factor for the US which was the original interest of president Roosevelt in Saudi Arabia. This changed by 2015 as the US fracking industry enabled US to become self sufficient in oil and able to supply LNG to western Europe. Instead of the US Saudi oil now goes to China. Russian oil also goes to China as its industry expanded with American investment. This has led to a new Saudi relationship with China which has changed the dynamic of the American Saudi relationship. Some of the new aspects of this can also be seen in Saudi relationship with South Asia. Saudi ties have increased with India and India in 2021 was the first country to provide vaccine supplies to Saudi Arabia. Saudis, Qatar, United Arab Emirates are building relationships with India as a close neighbor in the region. Relationships are in some ways improving in the Asian region compared to the period when oil was simply exchanged as a commodity for defense supplies from the US without regard to cultural, educational and other changes in Saudi society. In a sense US and Western Europe paid little attention to the huge democracy of over 1 billion people right in the middle of Asia and followed policies that led to major investments in China and little or no investment in India, and without realizing it followed a policy that the British had pursued in the British Empire of treating different communities and religions as separate as opposed to one community of people in South Asia that were engaged in modernizing, building infrastructure and changing centuries old ways of living. The British Empire was sustained by this kind of thinking, and as long as Indians were complacent and lacked the will to make their aspirations for a better life and infrastructure for modernization this kind of thinking prevailed. The economic crises in Asia have reinforced the idea that there is one community entirely focused on development and modernization in South Asia. The people in South Asia care most about the cost of living and the infrastructure and services for the quality of life they live and their children can aspire for- same in European Union that chose the Greens and chancellor Scholz, and same in the US that chose president Biden to invest infrastructure and people, the same in China and the same in India and the rest of Asia. This is the situation that the US and Britain, and the European Union are now beginning to learn and adapt to that is a constructive aspect of these changes to rebuild the connections and supply chains that were sorely neglected before now. ...

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On the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti here is the podcast of President Franklin Roosevelt's Secretary of State Cordell Hull's speech on July 23, 1942 that you can hear from the US National Archives.  Roosevelt in his letter of reply to Mohandas Gandhi's letter on July 1, 1942 one month before the launch of the Quit India Movement asking for help to achieve Hind Swaraj said- "I am enclosing a copy of an address of July 23 by the Secretary of State, made with my complete approval, which illustrates the attitude of this government.

Roosevelt wrote back to Gandhi that "I am sure that you will agree that the United States has consistently striven for an supported policies of fair dealing, of fair play, and of all related principles looking towards the creation of harmonious relations between nations."

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Bhutan is a small mountain kingdom in north eastern India, bordering Tibet. Historically close ties with Tibet continued after China's takeover of Tibet following the coming to power of China's Communist Party in 1949. This led to a friendship treaty with India in 1949. A narrow piece of terrritory with 34 square kilometres is part of the dispute between China and India. India opposed the move to build Chinese roads in the area leading to a standoff that is now over 50 days. This territory is significant because it connects India's central plains to the northeastern states. Bhutan opposes the Chinese road work but tries to maintain friendly relations with China. The close relationship between India and Bhutan is part of the situation that emerged after China's takeover of Tibet. The Royal Bhutan Army's salaries are paid by India, road construction is done by India, and subsidies for food and kerosene were provided by India. A parliamentary democracy with a monarch was established in Bhutan under king Jigme Wangchuk, and elections were held in 2008, 2013. This has led to more openness towards China, leading to concern in India.  Bhutan is a popular destination for Chinese tourists who pay $250 for a visa. Indians do not need a visa. ...

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With the change in U.S. position on climate change, carbon emissions, and the move to raise tariffs on China's exports to the U.S. China faces a new dimension in its global relationships. Against this background China is shifting to a long term view of its relationship with India. China's new foreign policy leaders after the recent party Congress, vice president Wang Qishan and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, now see the need for new partners in a multipolar global world for the long term as China and India countries with large populations and a need for stable world trade share common interests. Wang steers the Central Foreign Affairs Commission with Yang Jiechi as director. China now sees " a lot of shared interests, concerns and positions," in the words of China's Representative Lu, in the long term issues of globalisation, urbanization, pollution, and concern for achieving stable development with high growth rates.  China now takes the long view looking back at the unprecedented change of the last 100 years, as it maps out its plans for the future. The U.S. has challenged the ideas in the blueprint for development of "Made in China 2025," particularly as it relates to western transfer of technology to China. This has created a new situation for which China is still looking for answers, and ways to come up with new strategies for development without the nearly unrestricted access to western technology of the last 2 decades.  Shared positions on world trade with India and India's close relations with the U.S. add credibility in China's  negotiating positions with the U.S.                  ...

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As deflation takes hold in China, the lessons of US relations with China that were handled by business to maximize profits that caused climate change and destroyed the environment, and caused deindustrialization in the US show the need for a wiser approach on both sides. Consumer prices in China declined 0.8 of percentage point in January over previous year. People in Hong Kong cross the border to shop in city of Shenzen for lower priced goods. These are the first signs of deflation in China. This is the beginning of a repeat of Japan's experience of the last three decades. Rapid growth followed by unsustainable growth after 2000 in China created problems for the environment and climate change because the growth was compressed into a few years and China's size. The experience of Japan's growth in the 1980's was repeated but this time on a scale that reflects China's population of 1.4 billion people compared to 125 million for Japan. The result many American factories unable to compete with lower costs in China closed in 2000-2015 leading to a general decline in towns and communities across the US destroying livelihoods.The effect is magnified as the support services jobs and wages that go with factory jobs magnifies the effect on jobs by a factor of three or four. The result is a situation that did not have to happen this way hurting both the climate and supply chains, hurting both America and China as business interests in both countries made short sighted decisions. As America diversifies from concentration of supply chain in China, into India and Vietnam, the process needs to be such that it benefits both the American and Indian people not be allowed to be left to business alone to determine as happened with China. This is one of the lessons of this period. ...

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How is Ceylon or Sri Lanka faring for the economy and the standard of living after the collapse in 2022-2023? Krishna Srinivasan the IMF Director Asia Pacific and Peter Breuer in Feb 22, 2024 report say there is light at the end of the tunnel. It shows a graph of where tax revenues had fallen to 9% of GDP making it impossible for the government to function and for essential imports to be financed. "Corruption, tax exemptions, and non-competitive procurement and allocation practices imply higher taxes and costs for everyone, hitting the most vulnerable hardest." This is where PM Modi has made a huge, huge difference in India. It also calls for prevention- "Prevention also requires providing a safe space for public engagement in governance." The British American concept of governance through elections has to be modified with emphasis on as Srinivasan and Beuer state correctly -creating a safe space for public engagement in governance. Only when the public and the young people of the country understand the basics of the economy and an educated informed mindset in created -as is the goal of Lyrarc.com- can the conditions be created for this good governance. This is true for India and is true for its neighbors Ceylon or Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Indonesia, with whom India has a long history of the closest relations. The rest of the report goes on to call for an end to corruption and inefficiency.         ...

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Friedman in the NYT says China overreached especially since 2012 on trade, technology transfers, and in relations with American allies Australia, India, Japan, and America underperformed for its people by not investing in infrastructure, in workers incomes and in health and public services, education. Underinvestment in the very structure and backbone of American society while billions were wasted in foreign wars and in misallocation of investments by Silicon Valley and other investors. The coronavirus failure to get adequate warning through WHO and China's cooperation for American teams to be admitted immediately after January 10 request by the U.S. for Wuhan was a turning point.  

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Zeit Online shows in this article the continued efforts of the Russian government of president Putin to discredit Chancellor Merkel, following efforts to do this for Hillary Clinton in the U.S. presidential election.  During the Ukraine crisis and the settlement accords of 2014 Germany was seen as a partner by Russia, following sanctions, and renewal of these sanctions Russia no longer sees Germany as a partner. This report shows Russian efforts to discredit chancellor Merkel and the use of RT German channel, WikiLeaks reports of Chancellor Merkel and the TTIP agreement, for the same purpose. The refugee crisis following what is happening in Syria with Russian involvement, terrorism, financial crisis aftermath from 2008, are being used  says Zeit Online to support a movement for "order" as the state ideology now put forward from the Russian government. This could be an early indicator for the 2017 German federal elections, says Zeit Online. Merkel has said that she supports continuation of western sanctions on Russia. It is hard to see what Russia has gained in improving its economy and the standard of living of the people from this type of political action. Putin was able to achieve economic goals during 2005-2010 using good Germany- Russian relations as shown in LyrArc. This was the earlier period of Putin's terms in office, with a broad group of advisors, including finance minister Kudrin, who set forward a prudent economic course for Russia including foreign investment. The world and Russia are poorer from the departure from this earlier set of policies which would have enhanced Russia's economic growth. Kudrin was fired in September 2011, and the economic course has gradually drifted away from what is most prudent for the Russian economy and growth, and for the global economy. Nationalism was part of an earlier period before 1950, that led to frequent wars and economic catastrophes. A new course has been set since then, especially by American presidents Truman and Eisenhower, and people in India, China, the developing world, in Europe and in the U.S., would see little to gain from the politics of that earlier period in world relations.  ...

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There is a sense of cognitive dissonance in the states of former East Germany, known as the GDR or German Democratic Republic in the Soviet Union period from 1950's to 1990. The 5 states that formed the GDR continued to build close ties with Russia after the fall of the Berlin Wall, in the perception that this would build good long term relations. The crisis in Ukraine with border states of the Soviet Union opting in favor of close ties with the European Union and not Russia have disrupted the economic relations between the Federal Republic of Germany and Russia. As long as Russia needed the economic ties to build its economy and standard of living the political issues posed by NATO expansion and EU expansion were set aside by Putin and political parties within Russia. The very ties that were supposed to usher in an era of peace in Europe helped strengthen the Russian and Chinese economies. Leading to a point where these two economies were strong enough by 2021 in the midst of the waning pandemic to  assert themselves on political issues where serious differences existed such as expansion of NATO and Taiwan. When the economic relations such as making China a manufacturing powerhouse  was the path taken by American and European business in 1990's, business interests were focused on the declining quality and high wages demanded by unions and workers in the US and Germany. This could be personally witnessed at Apple's factory in Colorado Springs where quality was failing badly in the 1990's. Apple when Steve Jobs returned in 1997 adopted a China manufacturing strategy when its manufacturing operations in the US failed to deliver the quality and cost structure needed for it to expand. The high margins with low costs of manufacturing in China was the strategy adopted by Steve Jobs to compete with Microsoft and turbocharge its expansion. Soon other companies followed. A similar process happened in economic ties with Russia on a smaller scale. Two decades of such expansion whittled down American manufacturing, hurt American workers, hurt European manufacturing and European workers.  This process could not continue- yellow vest protests in France, the protest vote in US midwestern states in recent elections, the protest votes in German elections and fragmentation of parties, made this clear. The US imposed trade tariffs on Chinese products and moved to restrict flow of technologies to China under the Trump administration, accelerated by the Biden administration. President Xi was once of the view that China's ties with the US were important "thousand fold" in the period as late as 2010. Yet this lopsided trade relationship was not beneficial to American workers or American interests as a technologically advanced leader. It is true that American workers and engineers at Apple had failed to ensure American quality competitiveness in the 1980's into 1990's, yet no advanced country or its business can come up with a false narrative that cedes its manufacturing leadership and jobs for the working class of its country. That false narrative is being challenged today by Mr. Biden, Mr. Scholz, and all American and German political parties, and by Mr. Modi with Atman Nirbhar Bharat for local manufacturing. The integration one sees of the port of Hamburg as Chinese export hub with China's economy is one aspect of what has happened. A new leadership is taking its place in Europe and in America that sees clearly the false narrative. The visit of the new Danish prime minister to India is the beginning of the effort to set up a new logistics relationship with South and South East Asia, as Denmark's Maersk is a world leader in shipping logistics for exports and manufacturing. The planned Noida logistics center outside of New Delhi under Gati Shakti integrated development is part of the change happening today as a new supply chain is being built. The unwinding of the one sided trade relationship with China, and its related relationship on energy with Russia, led to the changing perception in Russia and China of the value of the relationship. Political relations superseded economic and cultural relations during Putin's second phase and Xi's second phase with assertive attitudes on NATO, and on Hong Kong, Taiwan under Xi and Putin 2.0. As could be expected Germany and the US were caught flat footed as leaders who were cast in the mold of Putin as a Soviet representative in Dresden, and Xi with his father leading the Communist struggle in the 1930's and 1940's against Chiangkaishek, acted in ways that reflected the Soviet period. Chiang left for Taiwan in 1948 when Mao-tse-tung setup the People's Republic of China. Taiwan and Hong Kong remained important in the perceptions of Xi 2.0, in the effort to build "China Dream" and erase last vestiges of what in Soviet times were seen as western colonialism. US and EU particularly Business and the new IT telecom Business failed to grasp these matters, and historical events such as the opium wars of the 1850's. Business and cultural interests lacked both the inclination to learn and the knowledge of these events in Chinese history and its relations with colonial powers Britain and Japan, and also Russia. In 1900 the Boxer rebellion against ceding Chinese ports to colonial powers Britain, Japan, Russia, ended with permanent colonial settlements in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tsingtao, other Chinese ports. Chinese rejuvenation in the mind of leaders such as Xi from the second generation of Communist leadership, means putting this behind, leading to the action taken in Hong Kong. In some ways as some observers have commented it is as much a problem of the sluggishness of American and European thinking, particularly business interests including in Taiwan, post British Hong Kong, and ignorance of recent Chinese history which was mistakenly thought not to exist or forgotten. This is as much of a problem as the action taken by Putin and moves by Xi Jinping. The great democracies such as India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, were ignored as American and European business interests integrated the American and German economies with China's. In terms of population the population of these regions and related parts of South East Asia such as Malaysia and Vietnam which have a shared cultural history is about 1.5 times the population of China. Travelling through the parts of India's largest state Uttar Pradesh, an Madhya Pradesh one finds how much American and European business interests have failed both their own interests, their own workers and failed the great democracies of the world, by not only not investing in the democracies of Asia, and also of Africa and Latin America and bought into a narrative of China which no longer holds true and may never have been true all along. This is starkly evident in a once in a century pandemic in these great democracies of the world. These democracies have been left to fend for themselves during the pandemic and their leaders facing false narratives in the media such as the BBC and American media outlets even on issues such as vaccination of the largest part of the world's people.           ...