BY HABIT, the choreographed Indian crowd began to chant ‘Modi Modi’ at an event for the Indian prime minister’s two-day visit to China. The Chinese hosts, on the other hand, greeted him with a knowledgeable display of Indian classical music, something Indians would struggle to reciprocate if it ever came to that. There’s a trade deficit, and there’s evidently a cultural deficit too. Three sari-clad Chinese women performed Vande Mataram, an Indian nationalist favourite, in Rag Desh on the sitar and santoor as the third kept rhythm on the tabla. But there are more urgent reasons than China’s showcasing its soft power to woo a pro-America Narendra Modi, on an emotional rebound, to make a compelling case for BRICS. Dumping the Western capitalist model that has spawned wars and exploitative sanctions is a need that preceded the dismantling of the USSR.
Western perfidy targets friend and foe alike if business interests clash. The malaise is older than Donald Trump. Among my early observations in this regard was the West’s betrayal of Kuwait before Saddam Hussein was hustled into completing the job. The story goes back to the 1987 stock market crash when the Thatcher government was in the process of selling its remaining 31.5 per cent stake in BP. The crash threatened to derail this massive sale, potentially costing the treasury billions. The Kuwait Investment Office, the investment arm of the Kuwaiti sovereign wealth fund, stepped in to bail out the UK. It began purchasing BP shares on the open market. Initially, the UK government was pleased. The KIO’s buying provided crucial support to the BP share price, helping to ensure the success of the government’s own share sale. In a short time, the KIO had acquired a 21.6 per cent stake in BP, making it by far the largest shareholder. The UK government’s stake was now zero.
Suddenly, Margaret Thatcher’s government was uncomfortable with a controlling stake being held by a foreign government, even a friendly one. A 21.6 per cent stake gave Kuwait significant power and the idea of a major British icon falling under effective control of an OPEC member state was politically toxic, even for a pro-market government like Thatcher’s.
Thatcher formally instructed the KIO to reduce its holding. They were ordered to sell down their stake to no more than 9.9 per cent. The government made it clear that if Kuwait did not comply voluntarily, it would use its legal and regulatory powers to force the issue, potentially damaging diplomatic relations and Kuwait’s other investments in the UK. Kuwait, a close ally that relied on Western protection, ultimately complied to maintain good relations.
What happened with Pakistan’s prestigious BCCI bank was not entirely dissimilar. The CIA acknowledged using the major international bank as a conduit to secretly fund the Afghan mujahideen. The job done, the bank turned into an object of envy for the West. To quote Shakespeare, the West was mocking the very meat it had fed upon. BCCI was not the cleanest bank and lent itself to narratives of corruption, fraud, drug peddling and money laundering. But here’s the rub. Major Western banks have paid billions in penalties for knowingly laundering drug money. They never had to shut down.
A US Senate investigation found that a Western bank had systemically laundered at least $881 million for Mexican and Colombian drug cartels over years. The bank moved bulk cash from its Mexican subsidiary to the US, bypassing money laundering controls. The concerned bank avoided criminal prosecution and paid a $1.9 billion fine, a sum widely criticised as a ‘slap on the wrist’ given the scale of the crimes and the bank’s profits. In the 2008 financial crisis and mortgage-backed securities fraud, multiple American banks paid tens of billions in penalties for packaging and selling toxic mortgage-backed securities they knew were likely to fail, while simultaneously betting against them. This fraud triggered the global financial crisis. But they were politically protected unlike Pakistan’s bank. The BCCI had dared to challenge Western monopoly and suffered for it. BCCI was the first truly major global bank from the developing world. Its rapid growth, aggressive strategy and ability to woo clients away from traditional Western banks caused resentment and unease. This meant it had fewer powerful friends in the financial capitals of London and New York to defend it when trouble started.
In a similar vein, the ongoing targeting of Huawei and other prominent Chinese tech firms like ZTE, TikTok and Xiaomi is indeed a central piece of this pattern. Adding Huawei to the analysis of the Indian situation reveals a spectrum of tactics used by Western powers, primarily the US, when dealing with rising non-Western competitors.
The botched efforts that have been made to dismantle states like Russia, Venezuela and Iran to lay them open to Western carpetbaggers are well known. Much of the Middle East from Libya to Yemen has suffered for that and more.
Capitalism is driven by private profit and has congenital aversion to social welfare. India has 800 million on food dole, signalling the contradiction between its right-wing government shored up by big money and people’s priorities.
Gautam Adani and Mukesh Ambani, two leading Indian tycoons, are in trouble with the US, one for alleged bribery to woo American investors, the other for defying Donald Trump’s fiat against importing Russian oil. The two led the pack of Gujarati businessmen in 2013 to nominate Modi as their prime ministerial candidate for the 2014 elections. Modi thanked them and did what he does best.
He saw Uttar Pradesh burst into a communal frenzy on election eve to give himself an easy ride to power. The Adani-Ambani crony conundrums are serious issues and Indians should address them with political power rather than leaving them open to Western manipulation. BRICS is just the platform to gear up for the fight, preferably with fewer Modi chants.
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Dawn.com, September 2. Jawed Naqvi is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.
