"The South China Sea is fast becoming a Chinese lake, given the density of PLAAF and PLAN military bases created within its waters." In the case of “Mao’s heir” Xi, although almost all such activity remains hidden from the outside world, criticism of the functioning of the Office of the General Secretary (OGS) has been growing inside the higher ranks of the CCP.

It was apparent from 1959 onwards that it would only be a question of “when” and not “whether” the Peoples Liberation Army 🇨🇳 would be unleashed on its counterpart in India 🇮🇳. If 1962 was the year in which Mao had decided to “teach India a lesson”, it made sense to ensure that a reliable and friendly partner, the Burmese military, took charge in Rangoon from a civilian government that was more independent of Beijing.

The US wanted to assist Tibetan resistance movements through supplies of weapons, but could not do so because Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru refused to permit such items from being transported through India. It was believed by Nehru that the blank cheque he handed over to Chairman Mao on Tibet in 1950 would be repaid by the latter’s formal acceptance of the McMahon Line as the frontier between India and China.

The higher an individual has progressed within the CCP, the more has been his or her awareness of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union General Secretary who presided over the demise of the USSR. Not as someone to emulate, but as an example to avoid. Unlike in the case of the US and the USSR, where almost all the concessions made went one way, from the USSR to the very country eager to witness its demise, the PRC has been at the receiving end of concessions from Washington that have boosted its technology and the economy.

President Donald J. Trump has had more than a few successes during his term, and Benjamin Netanyahu behaved with gratitude and courtesy in thanking him for some of them, which included the welcome escape of Israel from the diplomatic quarantine of so many Arab states. In the case of that often ignored democracy, Taiwan, Trump has done more to secure that country from a PLA takeover than any of his predecessors since Jimmy Carter initiated the pro-PRC tilt.

The Supreme Court of India deserves gratitude from those who believe in the values of freedom and democracy. That “jail is the exception and bail is the rule” has been repeated endless times, yet it appears to many in India that jail is the norm and bail the exception. So far as the media is concerned, over the years dozens of journalists have been sent to jail in states across the country. Some have been silenced in a more permanent way.

Russian as well as western tradition defines war in kinetic terms: guns, bombs, troops. The Chinese do not. They (Chinese) believe in achieving their objectives through chipping away and reducing the physical, psychological, economic and technological advantages of the adversary. Such “victory through stealth” suppresses the ability of the rival power to respond effectively... .

Depending on the results of the Bihar Assembly polls, either the Congress Party or the BJP will claim that the election was not a referendum on the central leadership of the losing party, but was based on state-specific issues having scant relation to the national level. In India as well as in the US and elsewhere, the calculation of the proponents of the “lockdown theory” is that millions of lives were saved as a consequence of restrictions that were applied.

The inability of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to prevent the global spread of the pandemic has resulted in a fall in its goodwill that has wiped out decades of effort by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to build bridges with populations in every continent. In countries across the world, politicians regarded as being close to the CCP are facing blowback from publics angered at the effects of the pandemic. Which explains why Donald J. Trump is seeking to portray Joe Biden as a “panda hugger”... .

Chanakya elaborated on the concept of the “Vish Kanya” (Poison Girl), a girl weaned on poison who killed with a kiss those who succumbed to her charms. There could also have been a “Vish Purush” (Poison Man), who kills a target through the poison he carried with him or within him It was no female “Vish Kanya”, but males (“Vish Purush”) who attempted to take away the lives of Sergei and Yulia Skripal and Alexei Navalny in the UK and Russia through the nerve agent Novichok.

❝Those in the US and India who seek to “prevent war” seem to be unaware that the conflict has already started, and will end only with the defeat of one side over the other.❞

Xi gambles on Mission Meltdown in U.S. & India i.mdnalapat.com/tsg200920 For Xi, as for his idol Mao Zedong, what counts is raw power and its exercise. He is clearly a believer in the adage that if an opponent is in a weaker position, it is irrelevant where that person’s heart and mind is, for he will be forced into doing what is wanted of him.

India becoming the leader of the non-aligned movement was regarded by Nehru as a historic achievement. Fifteen years later, Marshal Lin Biao got the nod from Chairman Mao and ordered PLA soldiers to pour across the Tibetan border with India. There was no “non-aligned” country willing to come out in support of India and against China during the conflict.

Next year is the centenary of the founding of 🇨🇳 CPC, & the leadership needs a military triumph to cover up the problems being faced on the economic side. The possible locations for an effort to generate such a victory would be the Himalayas, South China Sea or the Taiwan Strait. Should the Indian economy continue on a downward trajectory and a new Biden administration backpedal on the Obama-Trump offer of a military partnership with India, the PLA may judge that their time to move forward in Kashmir, Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh has arrived.

Israel and Arab countries both gain from better ties 🇮🇱🇦🇪

i.mdnalapat.com/tsg060920

@MoFAICUAE
@IsraelMFA
@UAEembassyIndia
@IsraelinIndia @AJCGlobal @jinsadc .@jaredkushner made sure that the White House backed MBS and his anti-Wahhabi policies rather than go along with the worldwide campaign backed by the Wahhabi International to severely discredit and finally depose the Al Saud reformer.

❝Cold War 2.0 calls for the Indo-Pacific Alliance, and to believe that either China or Russia or any of the powers linked to it (such as Pakistan) can form part of this alliance is to allow Nehruvian daydreams to once again fashion policy.❞

i.mdnalapat.com/tsg090820 During Cold War 1.0, despite occasional sounds and pirouettes by the MEA and the PMO at the time, “non-alignment” in effect meant a tilt to the USSR. In the context of the present, a policy of non-alignment by any other name would work to the interests of China.

Characteristic of those steeped in the culture of the Lutyens Zone is to fasten themselves to whichever party and whoever leader is dominant at the period,discarding the old in the manner that lionesses forget an ageing lion that heads a pride who gets chased away by a competitor Should another change occur, [...] causing the new masters to infuse into their govt enough elements of the old so as to ensure continuity in the policies that have kept much of the population of the country poorly compensated, inadequately educated and badly housed.

Even after the 1962 Oct-Nov border war with India and Mao’s order for the PLA to return to pre-combat positions, since the Hu Jintao period, that entity has repeatedly flouted what may be termed as the “Chairman Mao LAC” by moving further and further into Indian territory... . Just as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Balakot strike ended the confidence within GHQ Rawalpindi that India’s leaders would not permit any expansion of the low intensity terror and border conflict with Pakistan into territory under the control of the Pakistan military...

During the 2016 polls, had there been a stark choice between Trump and Bernie Sanders, enough voters may have tilted towards the latter to get him elected as the first self-declared socialist ever to hold the world’s most high-profile leader. Joe Biden, who had early on been identified by this columnist as a Clinton surrogate, seems to have locked in the nomination, denying it to Bernie Sanders or to either Warren or Harris.

Now that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has shown the way, agencies in India will need to identify other apps where the servers are in PRC control, despite the apps technically originating in another country. The Modi app ban will compress Chinese company valuations further, which will fall more & more with every new entry into the app ban bandwagon. Who remembers tech giants of the past such as AOL or MySpace? The ban may result in current PRC champions heading in the same direction.

From the start of his interaction with Hitler, Chamberlain’s obsession was to save the British from another world war, and to keep the hope for this alive, he lost opportunity after opportunity to prevent Hitler from plunging Europe into conflict by defeating his forces... . More and more, not just ordinary people but the middle class and finally a growing section of Whitehall believed that Churchill was right in warning about Hitler and pointing to the need to stop him in his tracks, if needed by force.

What took place on land at Galwan may happen again,this time on China Seas or in air over Taiwan straits. India sitting out rather than participating in such a confrontation between 🇨🇳🇷🇺 alliance & countries such as 🇯🇵🇦🇺🇫🇷🇬🇧 is no longer as certain as was case before 15 Jun 2020. Being tied to both the US and the PRC is becoming untenable, as a worried Australia is finding out. That country, unlike Italy or Germany, seems to have read the tea leaves and has begun the process of de-coupling from China.