April 28 (EIRNS)—President Vladimir Putin personally informed Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi today that Russia will send equipment urgently-needed to care for Indians infected with COVID-19 to India, starting with flights today by the Russian Emergencies Ministry delivering over 22 tons of equipment, including 20 oxygen production units, 75 lung ventilators, 150 medical monitors and 200,000 packs of medicine. The two leaders spoke by telephone, with Putin assuring Modi of his support in this difficult period, and Modi “warmly thank[ing] the President of Russia for the assistance provided, which is largely high-tech and is in great demand in the country,” the Kremlin reported. They also discussed that Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine has also now been registered in India, and both are satisfied that the Russian Direct Investment Fund had reached an agreement with Indian companies to produce 850 million doses of Sputnik V, production of which is to begin in May.
Pandemic Gains the Upper Hand in India; Biden Looks the Other Way
April 25 (EIRNS) – India has reported over 300,000 new COVID infections per day for the last four days – a world record. That means that {one million} people are getting infected every three days in this nation of 1.3 billion. Chinese medical authorities are estimating that the daily rate could rise to 500,000 by June, and that the real numbers are likely much higher than recorded as many homeless people infected with the virus have not been included. The country now has recorded a total of 16.6 million cases, including 189,544 deaths. Worse still, the new strain reportedly directly attacks the lungs and typically causes significant damage before it is even detected.
While much of the international media remains focused on the sheer horror of the collapse of the Indian health system, the deadly lack of oxygen, and the open-air improvised crematoria, the true scandal is that the United States, and other western nations, are not only standing by, but have actually turned their backs on India and are – so far – refusing to send desperately needed vaccines and other medical supplies to India.
Delhi medical and government authorities have been pleading with the US to supply it with Astra Zeneca jabs that have been stockpiled by the Biden administration, as well as the raw materials needed to manufacture COVID vaccines in India. India’s former Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal told Sputnik: “The attitude of the Joe Biden administration is very self-centered and selfish. India has been very generous in exporting and donating vaccines to other countries during the COVID pandemic,” said Sibal, who was previously a deputy chief of India’s Embassy in the US.
“The US, on the other hand, wants to create a stockpile to buffer itself against the next wave. Millions are being affected in India due to the virus and the US is effectively ignoring the plight of Indians”, complained Sibal. “The US is sitting on 350 million doses of COVID vaccine which India could use urgently”, he stated.
The raw materials required to manufacture COVID vaccines include bio-reactor bags, cell culture media, and filters, among others. The Serum Institute of India (SII), the world’s largest vaccine manufacturing facility, this week tweeted out an appeal to President Biden urging him to lift the ban on the export of raw materials. The SII claims that its vaccine production has been cut by almost 50 percent due to a shortage of raw materials.
To date, the best the Biden administration has been able to do is send empty words to India: “Our hearts go out to the Indian people in the midst of the horrific Covid-19 outbreak,” Secretary of State Tony Blinken tweeted. “We are working closely with our partners in the Indian government, and will rapidly deploy additional support to the people of India and India’s health care heroes.”
India Helps Crush the Great Reset and `Green New Deal’
April 6 (EIRNS) – In a second “No”, India’s Energy Minister Raj Kumar Singh said at an IEA meeting on climate change that “net zero” carbon is “pie in the sky” no matter when you pledge it for. At a meeting supposed to be preparatory to the COP26 in Scotland in November, Singh said, “I would call it, and I’m sorry to say this, but it is just pie in the sky. What we hear is that … 2060 is far away and if the people emit at the rate they are emitting the world won’t survive, so what are you going to do in the next five years…. You have 800 million people who don’t have access to electricity. You can’t say that they have to go to net zero. They have the right to develop, they want to build skyscrapers and have a higher standard of living; you can’t stop it.”
China’s minister Zhang Jianhua also spoke at that IEA meeting, but when invited to a formal pre-meeting for COP26 – by the UK, remember, which is its host – China declined the invitation.
John Kerry, in Delhi for the same meeting, “happened to meet” Sergei Lavrov, who was in India on the world’s real business (see separate report). Kerry was perhaps trying to gauge whether Russia would attend Joe Biden’s April 22 “Earth” (or “dearth”) summit. But at the IEA meeting Kerry appeared to be criticizing long-term pledges to net zero carbon, like China’s 2060 pledge. “Avoid the happy talk and recognize that this challenge is global”, Kerry chided.
The real challenge is the power to develop, as Minister Singh made clear. The only power that can meet {that} global challenge is nuclear fission and, as soon as possible, fusion. (See BBC News article here.)
These are blows against the royal family’s “Green Deal” which can be amplified in the United States. Americans do have ‘plentiful” electricity but a steadily increasing share of it doesn’t work. In 2020 the percentage of companies which reported suffering blackout problems {every month} leaped from 20% in 2019 – already very high – to 44% in 2020. The FERC attributed this to the increasing share of “renewable” (interruptible) power sources.
This destroys an economy’s productivity, exactly as described in EIR Special Report and The LaRouche Organization’s mass pamphlet, Great Leap Backward: LaRouche Crushes “Green New Deal” Fraud.
In a sign of political pressure for nuclear rising, President Biden’s “climate advisor” Gina McCarthy told press on April 2 that nuclear energy will be included in the Administration’s so-called Clean Energy Standard, which is intended to be a requirement for electric power utilities and generators.
July 24 (EIRNS) — Moscow-based American foreign affairs expert Andrew Korybko writes on his blog on the website of the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC), that the ongoing settlement of the Afghanistan war is putting “geo-economics” ahead of the zero-sum game of geopolitics. He writes that “geo-economics” is at the center of the cooperation among the U.S., Russia, China and Pakistan in seeking an Afghan settlement and the creation of the so-called “Quad” of Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the United States which was created on July 16 at the connectivity conference in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. This latter, Korybko writes, “complements the prior such platform between the former two states, China and Tajikistan back in 2016 as well as the Pakistan-Afghanistan-Uzbekistan (PAKAFUZ) railway project that was agreed upon in February.”
Crucial to the development according to Korybko is Pakistan’s new “Geo-Economic Grand Strategy Is Multi-Alignment,” which was adopted during March’s inaugural Islamabad Security Dialogue, where it was announced that geo-economics will now constitute the basis for all policy formulation and not geopolitics. The first fruits of the policy was the creation of the so-called Quad platform among Pakistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and the U.S.
Korybko writes: “Pakistan is actively fulfilling its geostrategic destiny as the ‘Zipper of Eurasia’” by connecting a variety of stakeholders through their shared economic interests. “Islamabad is leveraging its influence in Afghanistan to advance the neighboring country’s peace process, which saw it facilitate Beijing and Moscow’s incipient ties with the Taliban. Upon these multipolar great powers establishing pragmatic political relations with the group, they were then able to seriously countenance the viability of trans-Afghan connectivity corridors. Russia is interested in reaching the Indian Ocean Region through PAKAFUZ (which can also unofficially be conceptualized as N-CPEC+), while China is pioneering the so-called “Persian Corridor” to Iran via Tajikistan and Afghanistan. The U.S., meanwhile, aims to use PAKAFUZ as a means for expanding its economic influence in the post-withdrawal Afghanistan and the Central Asian republics (CARs).”
As for India, it is finding itself left out of the process, he writes, because it is maintaining a geopolitical policy aimed at countering Pakistan. Nonetheless, he believes now India has begun to seriously reassess its policy away from geopolitical principles, which of course will require an improvement of relations with Pakistan. One option would be reversing the August 2019 abrogation of Article 370 which dismantled the autonomy of Jammu and Kashmir to bifurcate the region, which would admittedly be a very difficult political decision.
He concludes: “The very fact that the U.S., which is known for its geopolitically driven zero-sum policies, is joining together with Pakistan, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan in order to expand its economic influence in Central Asia speaks to just how dramatically everything is changing.”
June 21 (EIRNS) — Andrey Shushentsov, Program Director of the Valdai Discussion Club and Director of the Institute of International Studies at MGIMO University, argues in a short essay published on the Valdai Club website that a strategic dialogue among the United States, Russia, China and India is necessary to prevent the current state of affairs from devolving into open conflict. However, Shushentsov limits himself to the necessity of preventing the geopolitical confrontations now in play from turning into military conflict without ever mentioning the positive potential of those four powers to create a new world credit system as defined by Lyndon LaRouche in 2009.
“In a chaotic environment, the leading powers seek to secure themselves a privileged position in the international system and limit the opportunities for their key competitors,” Shushentsov writes. He notes in the first part of the essay that these four countries are the most powerful nuclear powers and have four of the world’s six largest economies. He notes further the strategic competition between America and Russia, between America and China–including the U.S. effort to rope India into the “Quad” vs China, and the positive relations between Russia and India. “Unprovoked crises or spontaneous episodes of conflict in relations within the Big Four nuclear powers can disrupt progressive global economic processes,” he writes further. “In this regard, these four powers should be mutually attentive and prudent, channeling their rivalry into a non-military area.”
Therefore, Shushentsov writes, “It is the responsibility of the expert community of the four countries to carefully study the train of thought of their competing partners in order to exclude the sudden development of a conflict. In this regard, it seems reasonable to create a permanent format for consultation among the high-level experts of Russia, the USA, China and India. To ensure that mutual deterrence does not lead to strategic disruptions and war, it is necessary to manage relations, emphasizing an interest in cooperation with respect to common areas, such as climate, the ecology, digital development, space, mining, demography, migration and counteracting natural disasters. The purpose of the high-level consultations is to prevent a shift from strategic containment to impulsive attempts to break the emerging status quo,”
He concludes. “The formation of a stable dialogue format for the four leading global powers in the 21st Century will make it possible to minimize the likelihood of an impulsive breakdown into open conflict, the potential for which remains a factor in global politics.”
