Russia’s Lavrov warns EU becoming more militarised

RUSSIA’S top diplomat warned on Tuesday that the European Union “is becoming militarised at a record rate.”

Roger McKenzie, Morning Star, April 26, 2023

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told a news conference he has no doubts that there is now “very little difference” between the EU and Nato, following closer co-operation agreements between the political and military blocs.

Mr Lavrov said a recently signed joint declaration essentially states that the 31-member Nato military alliance will ensure the security of the 27-member EU.

The foreign minister was referring to a January 19 EU-Nato declaration on their “strategic partnership” which calls last year’s invasion of Ukraine by Russia “the gravest threat to Euro-Atlantic security in decades.”

The declaration calls the present moment “a key juncture for Euro-Atlantic security and stability” and urges closer EU-Nato co-operation to confront evolving security threats, saying this will contribute to strengthening security in Europe and beyond.

And it encourages the fullest possible involvement of Nato members that don’t belong to the EU and EU members that aren’t part of Nato.

Irish communists have warned that participation in military exercises under an EU umbrella has undermined their country’s longstanding neutrality and non-membership of Nato.

Ukraine is seeking EU membership but has been offered no firm timetable for talks on joining the organisation.

Mr Lavrov was asked whether the war in Ukraine was a miscalculation given the invasion prompted Finland to join, with Sweden next and Ukraine pushing for a roadmap to do so.

“Nato never had any intention of stopping,” Mr Lavrov replied.

He said that Sweden and Finland were “increasingly taking part in Nato military exercises and other actions that were meant to synchronise the military programmes of Nato members and neutral states.”

Matter and Mind

-- by Nasir Khan

Our material existence has also mental, psychological and occasionally psychic conditions. We think, imagine, visualize and fantasize. Our ways of looking at the world as sentient beings can include all such mental conditions and much more.

To be a materialist pertains to a philosophical view of looking at the world. Some thinkers have held such views since the ancient times, where matter (in all its various forms, including energy) is seen as the foundation on which everything rests.

Speaking only about human beings, their ideas, thoughts, feelings, etc., take place within their physical bodies. Without bodies, their thoughts and ideas cannot float as disembodied things in the air. In other words, without a living body, there is no mind or its activities. On our physical death, mind and its activities cease.

US Ambassador Blasts Hungary’s Call for Ceasefire in Ukraine as ‘Cynical’

by Kyle Anzalone, The Libertarian Institute, Apr 26, 2023 Ambassador David Pressman’s Introductory Remarks at the Hungary-Ukraine Relations Panel Discussion

The top American diplomat in Hungary attacked Budapest for insufficient commitment to the NATO proxy war against Russia, with the ambassador claiming that support for a ceasefire in Ukraine was “cynical.”

US Ambassador to Hungary David Pressman made the remarks during the opening of the Hungary-Ukraine Relations Panel on Wednesday. “It is cynical to call for a ceasefire when it is not your country that is almost 20 percent occupied by a foreign invading army,” he said. “The United States wants peace, one that is just and lasting. And that is precisely why we are standing shoulder to shoulder with the victims, with Ukraine.”

In February, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban called for a truce. “[Russia] cannot win because the entire Western world has lined up behind [Ukraine],” he tweeted, “At the same time, [Russia] is a nuclear power and a nuclear power cannot be cornered because they may trigger a nuclear war. We need a ceasefire and peace talks. The sooner the better.”

“[Ukraine] is fighting valiantly and they have our full sympathy. But the only thing that can save lives in the [Ukraine War] is a ceasefire,” the PM added.

Pressman went on to accuse Budapest of hindering dialogue between the North Atlantic alliance and Kiev. “Amidst a land war in Europe, consultations with our partner Ukraine are vitally important to our shared security as Allies, and Hungary’s policy of standing alone in an effort to block high-level meetings of the NATO-Ukraine Commission is untenable,” he said in his speech on Wednesday, adding that this “will no longer be accepted.”

Hungary has taken issue with Ukrainian language laws which impact the 150,000 Hungarians living in the country, even vowing to block Kiev’s bid to join NATO over the legislation. The NATO-Ukraine Commission has not met since 2019 because of Budapest’s objections.

Last month, NATO civilian head Jens Stoltenberg declared that the alliance would go through with another meeting despite Hungary’s protests. “This is an established framework. I have the mandate to convene it,” he said. “In respect for the issues that Hungary has raised I have not convened that for some time, but now I will continue to convene the meetings of the NATO-Ukraine Commission.”

About Kyle Anzalone Kyle Anzalone is news editor of the Libertarian Institute, opinion editor of Antiwar.com and co-host of Conflicts of Interest with Will Porter and Connor Freeman.

The World Is Changing, But Is Washington Finally Noticing?

by Ted Snider, The Libertarian Institute, Apr 26, 2023

Recent statements by two Biden administration officials hint that the United States is finally noticing that the world around them is changing.

On April 11, CIA Director William Burns spoke at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. In a somewhat stunning statement that has, perhaps, not been so clearly and publicly articulated before, Burns said that we are in one of “those times of transition that come along a couple of times a century. Today the United States still has a better hand to play than any of our rivals, but it is no longer the only big kid on the geopolitical bloc. And our position at the head of the table isn’t guaranteed.”

Burns’ classifying the transition that is now taking place as a “transition that come along a couple of times a century” echoes Chinese President Xi Jinping’s comment to Russian President Vladimir Putin last month that, “Together, we should push forward these changes that have not happened for 100 years” and recognizes the significance of the tectonic geopolitical shift that is occurring. The unipolar world is extinct and has been replaced by an evolving multipolar world in which the United States “is no longer the only big kid on the geopolitical bloc.” China’s diplomatic role in brokering an agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran demonstrated America’s “position at the head of the table isn’t guaranteed.”

The ever strengthening partnership between Russia and China has tilted the weight of the world toward a multipolar one. In March, Xi visited Putin in Moscow where they not only “reaffirm[ed] the special nature of the Russia-China partnership,” but “signed a statement on deepening the strategic partnership and bilateral ties which are entering a new era.”

But the Sino-Russian relationship in the new multipolar world isn’t just bilateral. Countries are lining up to join Chinese and Russian-led multipolar organizations like BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. From the call for multipolarity among the many African nations attending the Russia-Africa in a Multipolar World conference in Moscow in March, to Saudi Arabia’s assertion that “We do not believe in polarization or selecting between one partner and another,” to India’s continued diplomatic and economic cooperation with Russia and China, to Brazil’s promise to uphold and strengthen multilateralism, to France’s surprising call for Europe to become a “third pole,” countries around the world are leaving the U.S.-led unipolar world for neutrality in a multipolar world.

One of the mechanisms for multipolarity is emancipation from the monopoly of the U.S. dollar. Most international trade is conducted in dollars, and most foreign exchange reserves are held in dollars. As the United States has recently demonstrated in Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, and Russia, the position of the dollar allows it to be very powerfully and quickly weaponized.

Sanctions have not only accelerated the evolution of the multipolar world by creating a community of sanctioned countries that turn to each other, forming a second pole, but they have also weakened the U.S.-led unipolar world by weakening willingness to depend on the dollar.

In the second stunning statement by a U.S. official, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on April 16, “There is a risk when we use financial sanctions that are linked to the role of the dollar that over time it could undermine the hegemony of the dollar.” She explained, “Of course, it does create a desire on the part of China, of Russia, of Iran to find an alternative.”

>p>And find an alternative they have. Yellen’s statement suggests that the United States is beginning to recognize that escaping the monopoly of the U.S. dollar is gaining momentum as a mechanism for ending, not only the “hegemony of the dollar,” but of the United States itself.

Recent demonstrations of the American ability to cut off countries that challenge it has awoken opposition. Several countries and regions, including Russia, China, India, Iran, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, France, Latin America, BRICS, and the Eurasian Economic Union, have all expressed interest in and even made moves towards partially escaping the U.S. dollar.

Russia and China are now conducting 65% of their trade in their own currencies. China and Brazil are now conducting bilateral trade in their own currencies, as are China and Pakistan. Iran and Russia are now settling trade in rials and rubles instead of dollars and recently announced that they have circumvented the U.S. financial system by linking their banking systems as an alternative to SWIFT for trading with each other. Saudi Arabia has said that it sees “no issues” in trading oil in currencies other than the U.S. dollar. The Eurasian Economic Union has agreed on “a phased transition” from settling trade in “foreign currency” to “settlements in rubles.” Robert Rabil, Professor of political science at Florida Atlantic University, says that the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Israel have all made some movement away from the U.S. dollar.

Brazil has raised the idea of a Latin American currency. And Brazilian President Lula da Silva recently asked, “Why should every country have to be tied to the dollar for trade? Who decided the dollar would be the [world’s] currency?” “Why,” he suggested, “can’t a bank like the BRICS bank have a currency to finance trade between…BRICS countries?” BRICS and the SCO are both considering abandoning the dollar in favor of trade in the currencies of member states.

While American activity suggests a foreign policy that drives on, unaware of the new terrain its entered, the recent statements by Burns and Yellen suggest that at least some in the Biden administration are beginning to notice that the world is changing. U.S. hegemony, its “position at the head of the table,” is no longer “guaranteed.”

- About Ted Snider Ted Snider is a regular columnist on U.S. foreign policy and history at Antiwar.com and The Libertarian Institute. He is also a frequent contributor to Responsible Statecraft and The American Conservative as well as other outlets.

 

To All Who Care about Humanity’s and the Planet’s Future

International Just started this petition

Humanity has reached a tipping point. It is time for governments, international institutions and people everywhere to take stock and act with renewed urgency.

The Ukraine conflict is inflicting death, injury, displacement and destruction, exacerbating a global food crisis, driving Europe into recession, and creating shock waves across the world economy.

The Taiwan conflict is threatening to escalate into outright war that would devastate Taiwan and turn East Asia into a powder keg.

More troubling still is the toxic relationship between the United States on the one hand and China and Russia on the other. Here lies the key to both conflicts.

What we are seeing is the culmination of decades of gross mismanagement of global security. The United States has been unwilling to accept, let alone adapt to, the rise of China and the re-emergence of Russia. It remains unwilling to break with outdated notions of global dominance – a legacy of the Cold War and the triumphalism that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. 

A global power shift is taking place. The West-centric world, in which first Europe and then the United States held sway, is giving way to a multi-centric, multi-civilisational world in which other centres of power and influence are demanding to be heard.  

Failure to accept this new reality spells immense danger. A new Cold War is now in full swing, which can at any moment mutate into a hot war. In the words of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, “humanity is one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation”. 

Even if nuclear apocalypse is averted, discord between nuclear armed states inhibits cooperative problem-solving, the provision of global public goods and an effective and independent UN system.

To rise to the challenge we need a coherent, sustained and multifaceted response by governments and international institutions, inspired and driven by an ever watchful and engaged civil society. Several steps suggest themselves, some immediate, others longer term.

The first steps must aim to end the conflict in Ukraine and defuse the tensions over Taiwan. More substantial efforts are needed to foster a framework of cooperative coexistence between the United States, Russia and China – an essential building block for peace across both Europe and Asia. 

To this end, we believe the UN Secretary-General or a group of middle powers acting – ideally the two acting in concert – could set in train a multi-pronged initiative aimed at securing an effective and durable ceasefire in Ukraine and the relaxation of tensions over Taiwan.

In the case of Ukraine, the aim must be to secure the cessation of all combat by Russian and Ukrainian forces and separatist groups based in the Donbas region. This would be a ceasefire monitored by a United Nations team reporting regularly and directly to the UN Secretary-General. 

A ceasefire, however, is unlikely to hold for long without a durable settlement of the Ukraine-Russian conflict. This will in turn depend on bringing to an end the cynical use of the Ukraine war by great powers intent on pursing their geopolitical ambitions. Only then will it be possible to achieve:

·      the phased withdrawal of Russian military forces; 

·      an end to the delivery of lethal military aid to Ukraine;

·      a constitutionally enshrined policy of neutrality for Ukraine;

·      the resolution of jurisdictional issues, notably Crimea and the Donbas region, coupled with a process aimed at healing regional, ethnic and religious animosities within Ukraine.

·      All prisoners of war, refugees, and civilians in captivity to be returned to their respective countries and all their rights respected as provided by the Geneva Conventions.

These arrangements will need to be complemented by a wider agreement involving other interested parties, with a view to securing: an adequately funded international program to address the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine; international guarantees to safeguard Ukraine’s independence, neutrality and territorial integrity; and the removal of all sanctions placed against Russia and the restoration of normal trade relations. 

In the case of the Taiwan conflict, the first step must be to defuse the current level of tension. To this end, the international community should reaffirm the principles set out in the Shanghai communiqué of 1972, notably the ‘one China’ principle which now commands widespread international support. In line with this principle, the international community must use all means at its disposal to dissuade Taiwan from making any unilateral declaration of independence. The UN Secretary-General in tandem with ASEAN is well placed to spearhead such a course of action.

These relatively short-term initiatives must pave the way for a series of interlinked consultations, culminating in an international conference, whose primary purpose would be to frame a new global security architecture, sustained by appropriate reforms in global governance and designed to:  

1.     Stop the march to nuclear oblivion, and set in motion an ambitious program for nuclear disarmament, beginning with a series of arms control and disarmament agreements and leading within a specified timeframe to universal membership of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons;

2.     Reflect the reality of a multi-centric, multi-civilisational world which respects the independence and legitimate rights of all sovereign nations, and in which no actor seeks to exercise imperial or hegemonic ambitions. 

3.     Enshrine the principles of common, cooperative and comprehensive security, and translate these into effective regional arrangements, especially in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region;

4.     Initiate a series of measures that can reverse the militarisation of the international system, including limitations on the reach and scope of military alliances and overseas deployments of military forces, as well as a progressive reduction of national military budgets, thereby redirecting resources to areas of pressing social, economic and environmental need;

5.     Set in motion the far-reaching reform of international institutions, especially the UN system, so that they can more effectively mount the necessarily cooperative response to existential threats, notably climate change, biodiversity loss, and present and future pandemics.

None of this will happen without a massive global awakening of human wisdom and energy. Important as governments and international institutions are, the initiative for a coherent response to the challenges we face lies largely with the people, with civil society.

Leadership of various kinds is needed. Which is why this message is also addressed to intellectuals, artists, scientists, journalists, religious leaders, advocates and other engaged citizens.

Equally, we have in mind groups working on the rights of indigenous peoples, aid and development, conflict resolution, civil liberties and human rights, violence against women, refugees and asylum seekers, climate change and other threats to our environment, public health (not least Covid), justice for the poor and marginalised, and ethnic, religious and cultural diversity.  ALL are adversely affected by great power confrontation, oppressive security laws, rising military budgets and destructive military activities, not to mention the prospect of nuclear catastrophe. ALL have a crucial part to play.

Trade unions, professional networks (in education, law, medicine, nursing, media, communications), farmer organisations, religious bodies, human-centred think tanks and research centres have also much to contribute to the conversation for a habitable future.

It is time for people everywhere to take the initiative personally and collectively – to set in motion conversations, small and large, formal and informal, online and in person, using the written and spoken word, as well as the visual and performing arts. This is a moment for collective reflection on where we’re at, where we should be heading and the steps needed to get us there. 

The stakes are high. We need bold thinking that connects people and issues within and between countries. We must revive and reframe the global security conversation. There is not a moment to lose.

 

 

Prepared by

Richard Falk, Emeritus Professor of International Law, Princeton University; Chair of Global Law, Queen Mary University London; Research Associate UCSB

Joseph Camilleri, Professor Emeritus, La Trobe University, Melbourne; Fellow, Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia; President, Conversation at the Crossroads 

Chandra Muzaffar, Former Professor of Global Studies, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang; President of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST)

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐧𝐢𝐜 𝐜𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐟 𝐏𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐞

 -- Nasir Khan

What do we mean by the ethnic cleansing of Palestine? In my understanding, the notion of ethnic cleansing of Palestine covers all those major historic events and the policies that were used to take possession of the land of other people. What happened and how it happened at the hands of Zionists is part of the story historians call the ethnic cleansing of Palestine (e.g., Ilan Pappe, Richard Falk, etc.).

 

The Palestinians who opted to become citizens of Israel had no choice but to accept that a foreign power had taken over their land. If they didn’t like it, they could follow others who were forcibly driven out of historic Palestine and became refugees in neighbouring countries.

 

However, ethnic cleansing here does not imply that all Palestinians were physically eliminated. Some were killed. This is still going on in the occupied territories, as we saw in Gaza in the summer of 2014 and many times after. But this is part of the Israeli strategy to suppress any voice that stands for the restitution of the political rights of these people to their land by expropriating and confiscating more land that is still in the hands of Palestinians. This is an incremental Israeli expansion in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and keeping Gaza under siege. All this has been happening because of Western rulers' support of Israel and its expansionist policy, chiefly by the United States, Britain and their global allies.

.

Photo: Palestinian exodus from their homeland in 1948

 

 

 

Richard Falk: On Justice for Kashmir

Introductory Note: Prof. Richard Falk, a famous American expert on international law and human rights, highlights the deplorable situation of the occupied people of Kashmir when they were put under direct Indian rule by prime minister Modi in 2019 after he abrogated the semi-autonomous status of Kashmir which was enshrined in the Indian constitution. The exposition of the situation of the people of Kashmir by Prof. Falk is important for understanding the hopes, aspirations, and the struggle of the people of Kashmir for independence (Azadi) from the oppressive colonial rule of India.

 

 -

 

On Justice for Kashmir

by Richard Falk

Photograph Source: Steve Evans – CC BY 2.0

Among the self-determination struggles of our time, Kashmir is at risk of being forgotten by most of the world (except for Pakistan), while its people continue to endure the harsh crimes of India’s intensifying military occupation that has already lasted 75 years. In 2019, the Hindu nationalist government of the BJP, headed by the notorious autocrat, Narendra Modi, unilaterally and arbitrarily abrogated the special status arrangements for the governance of Kashmir that had been incorporated in Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, and although often violated in spirit and substance, at least gave the people of Kashmir some measure of protection.

1947 was a momentous year for South Asia as British colonial rule came to an end, followed by a partition of India that resulted in much bloodshed throughout the process of establishing the Muslim state of Pakistan alongside the secular Hindu majority state of India. At this time, Kashmir was one of 560 ‘princely states’ in India, governed by a Hindu Maharajah while having a population that was 77% Muslim. The partition agreement reached by India and Pakistan gave the peoples of these ‘states’ a partial right of self-determination in the form of a free choice as to whether to remain a part of India or join their destiny with that of Pakistan, and in either event retaining considerable independence by way of self-rule. It was widely assumed that these choices would favor India if their population was Hindu and to Pakistan if Muslim. In a confused and complicated set of circumstances that involved Kashmiris and others contesting the Maharahah’s leadership of Kashmir, India engaged in a variety of maneuvers including a large-scale military intervention to avoid the timely holding of the promised internationally supervised referendum, and by stages coercively treated Kashmir more and more as an integral part of India. This Indian betrayal of the partition settlement agreement gave rise to the first of several wars with Pakistan, and it resulted in a division of Kashmir in 1948 that was explicitly not an international boundary, but intended as a temporary ‘line-of-control’ to separate the opposed armed forces. It has ever since given rise to acute tension erupting in recurrent warfare between the two countries, and even now no international boundary exists between divided Kashmir. The leadership of Pakistan has always believed that Kashmir was a natural projection of itself, treating India’s behavior as occupying power as totally unacceptable and illegitimate as have the majority of Kashmiris.

The essence of India’s betrayal was to deny the people of Kashmir the opportunity to express their preference for accession to India or Pakistan, presumably correctly believing that it would lose out if a proper referendum were held. Back in 1947 the Indian secular, liberal leadership did itself make strong pledges to the effect that Kashmir would be allowed to determine its future affiliation in an internationally supervised referendum or plebiscite as soon as order could be there restored. The two governments even agreed to submit the issue to the UN, and the Security Council reaffirmed the right of Kashmir to the agreed process of self-determination, but India gradually took steps clearly designed to prevent this internationally supervised resolution of Kashmir’s future from ever happening. It appears that India sought control of Kashmir primarily for strategic and nationalist reasons associated especially with managing Kashmir’s borders with China and Pakistan, and in doing so converting Kashmir into a buffer state of India, giving it the security that supposedly accompanies strategic depth of a ‘Great Power.’ Unsurprisingly, Pakistan reacted belligerently to India’s failure to live up to its commitments, and the result for Kashmir was a second level of partition between India occupied Kashmir and a smaller Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir. In effect, India’s unilateralism poisoned relations between these two countries, later to become possessors of nuclear weapons, as well as producing a Kashmiri population that felt deprived of its fundamental rights with accompanying atrocities (including torture, forced disappearances, sexual violence, extrajudicial killing, excessive force, collective punishment, the panopoly of counterinsurgency crimes), which amount to Crimes Against Humanity, in a manner somewhat resembling the deprivations associated with Palestine and Western Sahara.

Part of the blame for this Kashmiri prolonged tragedy reflects the legacy of British colonialism, which characteristically left behind its colonies as shattered and factionalized political realities, an obvious consequence of a colonialist reliance on a divide and rule strategy in its execution of its policies of control and exploitation. Such a strategy understandably aggravated the internal relations of diverse ethnic, tribal, and religious communities. This Indian story is repeated in the various British decolonizing experiences of such diverse countries as Ireland, Cyprus, Malaysia, Rhodesia, and South Africa, as well as in the quasi-colonial mandate in Palestine, which Britain administered between the two world wars. In these cases, ethnic and religious diversity was manipulated by Britain to manage the overall subjugation of a colonized peoples so as to minimize its administrative challenges, which became increasing troublesome in the face surging national independence movements in the 20^th century.

Adding to the misery, these cleavages were left behind as open wounds by Britain during the decolonization process, with a crude display of irresponsibility toward the wellbeing of the previously dominated native populations. The historical outcome was dramatized by a variety of post-colonial unresolved political conflicts that resulted in prolonged strife, producing severe suffering for the population while addressing such post-colonial challenges. These adverse results were only avoided, ironically enough, in the few ‘success’ stories of settler colonialism—Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States. Such successes were achieved through reliance on genocidal tactics by settlers that overcame native resistance by eliminating or totally marginalized hostile indigenous populations. South Africa is a notable instance of the eventual failure of a settler colonial enterprise and Israel/Palestine is the sole important instance of an ambiguous, ongoing struggle that has not reached closure, but is now at a climactic stage.

Kashmir’s status, despite the denial of self-determination, had given the beleaguered country substantial autonomy rights, and despite many encroachments by India during the 75 years of occupation, chief of which was blocking the Kashmiri people from exercising their internationally endorsed right of self-determination. Nevertheless, what Modi did on August 5, 2019 definitely made matters worse. It ended Kashmir’s special status in the Indian Constitution and placed the territory under harsh direct Indian rule, accompanied by various religious cleansing policies and practices counterinsurgency pretexts designed to promote Hindu supremacy in an undisguised framework of domination, discrimination, highlighted by altered residence and land ownership laws in a pattern favoring the Hindu settlement and minority control. After taking journalistic notice of these events in a surprisingly non-judgmental fashion, the world, especially in the West, has fallen silent despite the crimes against the people of Kashmir continuing to mount on a daily basis, including the branding of all forms of Kashmiri opposition to Indian behavior as ‘terrorism’ giving the incredibly large occupying Indian forces of 700,000 or more a green light to use excessive force without accountability and impose repressive conditions on the entire population.

This outcome in Kashmir should not cause much perplexity. International reactions to human rights abuses rarely reflect their severity, but rather the play of geopolitics. Washington sheds many tears about alleged violations of human rights in Cuba or Venezuela while giving Egypt and Saudi Arabia a free pass. More reflective of the international politics governing the inter-governmental and UN discourse on human rights is the insulation of Israel’s apartheid regime from any kind of punitive response at the international level while screaming for action in the same institutional settings against China’s far milder abuse of the rights of the Uyghur people in Xinjiang. India like Israel is too valuable a strategic partner of the West to alienate the Modi leadership by objecting to its behavior however extreme and criminally unlawful. It is unfortunate that the best human rights defenders can hope for in such cases is silence.

India as a large country with a huge population and nuclear weapons which, under the best of circumstances, is hard to challenge with regard to policies that seem almost normalized by the passage of time within the domain of its territorial sovereignty, given the state-centric allocation of legal authority in the post-colonial world. Many important countries have ‘captive nations’ within their borders and are united in opposing internal self-determination claims. At the same time, the harshness and cruelty of India’s policies over time have given rise to an insurgent mood and movement on the part of Kashmiris who now seem themselves somewhat divided as between aspiring for accession to Pakistan or independent statehood. Despite the long period since partition, such a choice, however improperly delayed for decades, should be made available to the people of Kashmir if only the UN was in a position to implement its long ignored responsibility to organize and administer a referendum in Kashmir. Such a peaceful transition does not seem presently feasible given India’s recent further encroachment on Kashmir’s normal development.

Yet the situation is not as hopeless as it seems. The rights of the Kashmiris are as well established in law and morality as are the wrongs of India’s increasingly apartheid structure of domination, exploitation, and subjugation. The Kashmir struggle for justice enjoys the high ground when it comes to the legitimacy of its claims, and struggles of a similar sort since 1945 have shown that the political outcome is more likely to reflect the nationalist and insurgent goals of legitimate struggle than the imperial goals of foreign encroachment. In effect, anti-imperial struggles should be thought of as Legitimacy Wars in which the resistance of a repressed people backed by global solidarity initiatives are in the end more decisive and effective than weaponry or battlefield superiority. It is worth reflecting upon the startling fact that the major anti-colonial wars since 1945 were won by the weaker side militarily. At this preliminary stage, a liberation strategy for Kashmir needs to concentrate on raising global awareness of the criminal features of India’s treatment of the Kashmiri people. To achieve such awareness, it might even be helpful to grasp how Gandhi mobilized public opinion in support of India’s own struggle for independence and study of the brilliant tactics used by Vietnam in mobilizing global solidarity with its nationalist struggle and sacriice to neutralize the weight of the U.S. massive military intervention.

Richard Falk is Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University, Chair of Global law, Queen Mary University London, and Research Associate, Orfalea Center of Global

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https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/12/16/on-justice-for-kashmir/?fbclid=IwAR3XHht06ijpqLt8SGeVjgbzmZBpcppdKm0C9HOs8SRVTNC8kFmg-_o6zMo