#india china border issues

[uniqueeval]

The Hindu Morning Digest: August 30, 2024

People Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers and tanks during military disengagement along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) at the India-China border in Ladakh. | Photo Credit: AFP India, China hold 31st border affairs meeting to resolve standoff at LAC India and China had a “frank, constructive and forward-looking exchange of views” on the situation along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) to “narrow…

[writingwithcolor]

Conlanging Issues: A Compendium

NOTE: This question was submitted before the Nov 1, 2023 reopening and may not adhere to all rules and guidelines. The ask has been abridged for clarity. 

Most of my questions are about linguistics. […] One of the major locations in my story is a massive empire with cultural inspirations ranging from North Africa in the far south to Mongolia/Russia in the far north […] The middle region is where the capital is and is the main root of culture, from which Ive been taking inspiration from Southwest Asia […], but most notably southern regions of India. I've tried to stick to the way cities are named in Sanskrit-based languages but added the names of stars to the front (because the prevalent religion of this region worships the stars [...]). So Ive ended up with names like Pavoprayag, Alyanaga, Alkaiduru, Alcorpura, Cygnapete, etc. Is this a consistent naming system or should I alter it in some way? The empire itself is named the Arcana Empire since [...] each act of my story is named after a tarot card [...]. Another region in my story is based more on parts of South China and North Vietnam, so I've tried to stick to names with a Chinese origin for that. I understand the significance of family names in southwest [sic] Asia, so I wanted to double check [...]. They have only two short given names. Based on the birth order of the child, the first half of the name comes from the fathers family and the second half from the mothers family. It is seen as disrespectful not to use both names because using only one is seen as denouncing that side of your family. Thus I have names like Su Yin, Dai Jun, and Yi Wen for some of the characters from this region, and the city itself that they are from is named Bei Fen. On the other hand, Im having further trouble naming characters. […] Ive been trying to give my human characters names from real human cultures to distinguish them from the website-generated names of say, orcs, elves, dwarves, etc, but I think I should change many of the names Ive used to be more original and avoid fracturing real world cultures for the sake of my worldbuilding. […] Im still very weak in the linguistics area (even after four years of French, sigh) and am having trouble finding where to read about naming patterns so I can make new ones up. I read your naming guides but am still having trouble on where to start for specific languages. […] Im trying to look into Sanskrit, Turkish, and Persian specifically.

You're Going Too Broad

In my opinion, you’re casting too wide a net. You mentioned looking into Sanskrit, Turkish, and Persian to develop fantasy names. These languages are very different from one another, so unless you’re using them separately for very different parts of your world, it will be hard to draw inspiration from them in a way that makes sense. You’re taking on a huge amount of research in order to worldbuild cultures that span a massive geographical area (basically all of North Africa and Asia?) and have very little in common. Are you sure you want to take on that task?

I could see it being more manageable if most of your story is set in a small region of this world, which you will then research in depth to make sure you’re being as specific as possible.

Taking Persian as an example, you’ll have to decide whether you want to use Old Persian, Middle Persian, or Modern Persian. Each of these comes with a different alphabet and historical influences. They’re also associated with different periods of time and corresponding cultural and social markers. Once you’ve decided exactly when and where you want to start from, you can then expand the borders of your area of focus. For example, if you’ve decided to draw inspiration from Achaemenid Persia, you can then look at the languages that were spoken in the Achaemenid Empire. A quick Google search tells me that while Old Persian was the empire’s official language, they also used Aramaic, Akkadian, Median, Greek, and Elamite (among, I’m sure, many many others and many more regional variations). Further research into each of these will give you ethnic groups and bordering nations that you can draw more inspiration from to expand out your worldbuilding.

Don’t forget to make sure you’re staying within the same time period in order to keep things consistent. It’s a lot of work, and this is only for a small portion of the continent-spanning worldbuilding you’re trying to do.

You can get away with painting the rest of the continent in broad strokes without too much depth if the story doesn’t go there and you don’t have any main characters from those parts of the world. Otherwise, you’ll need to put this same level of detail into your worldbuilding for the area with Turkish-inspired names, and again for the area with Sanskrit-inspired names, and so on.

I know this isn’t what you were asking, but I honestly have a hard time helping you figure out where to start because your ask is so broad I don’t quite know where I would start myself. So, this is my advice: focus down on one region and time period and go from there. Feel free to write back once you’ve picked a narrower focus that we could help you with.

- Niki

So there’s logistical issues in regards to your naming system for southern China-coded regions. One issue is history: mainly on how there is not simply one language in China but multiple due to having a lot of ethnic groups and the size of China. South China in particular has different dialects and languages than the North as seen in this map of Chinese languages and dialects. There’s also how historically Mandarin was not the official language until 1913 in China and historical China saw vast changes in territory dependent on the dynasty. Before then, Mandarin was primarily a northern Chinese language based in Beijing while southern China had its own languages, dialects, and dynamics. Not to mention, historical China saw an evolution of language just like English has Old English, Middle English, Early Modern English, and Modern English. For instance, Vietnam was once part of China during the Tang Dynasty and at another point, it was not part of China.

-Mod Sci

If You’re Borrowing Whole Words or Elements, Research More

The other issue is inconsistency with the cultures you’re deriving this conlang from. In regards to “two given names,” the Chinese name I was given was one syllable and then I would have a last name that was also one syllable. There’s also how not every family is perfect. Not every marriage is sanctioned and some children may come from single parents. Some families may not cooperate with marriage and sometimes children may be abandoned with unknown parents. There does not seem to be contingencies for these names under this conlang system.

The main problem with conlangs is that one needs to truly understand the languages one is drawing from. Tolkein managed to create conlangs due to training in linguistics. Mandarin is already a difficult language with multiple tones, and trying to use it for conlangs without knowledge of how Mandarin works or a good foundation in linguistics is just a Sisyphean endeavor.

-Mod Sci

Four years of French wouldn’t have taught you about linguistics as a science or anything about the language families you’ve listed - Indo-Iranian, Sino-Tibetan, and Turkic, nor any Asian naming conventions. I agree with Niki that you need to narrow down your research.

Pur/pura means city in Sanskrit (ex: Gurdaspur, Hoshiarpur). Prayag is a place where pilgrimages are done. Naga isn’t a place name in Sanskrit (google says it means snake), nagar is and it means town. X Nagar is a very common name for places (Ex: Rajinder Nagar). Many cities in Karnataka have names ending in uru (Bengaluru, Mysuru, Mangaluru, Tumakuru, etc) but the language of Karnataka is Kannada - a Dravidian language and completely different family from Sanskrit (Indo-Aryan). I’m not sure where “pete” came from. “Bad” and “vaal” are common suffixes for places too (Ex: Faisalabad, Allahabad). A disclaimer that I do not speak Sanskrit, I speak Punjabi, which is a descendant of Sanskrit and in the same linguistic family (Indo-Aryan languages).

- SK

Also, This Is Not…Really Conlanging.

Hi OP. Linguistics refers to the science of studying how languages work, not the discipline of learning languages. And nothing shows that gap more than how you have thus far approached constructing fictional languages and toponyms. 

The reason why Sci and SK have a lot to say about your place names is because they don't resonate—you have borrowed whole words into your toponyms (place names) from a variety of languages—without an accurate understanding of what these words mean, how they’re pronounced, where they’re derived from—and expected them to work together. I suggest you read the links below on why conlanging is not as simple as choosing some languages and mashing their IRL words together: 

Why Using Random Languages Wholesale in your Fantasy is a Bad Idea 

Pitfalls of Mashing Countries and Languages in Coding

In your city names, for example, you’re using star names from multiple languages that use different sets of sounds represented by different sets of historical spelling rules. “Cygn-” and “Arcana” stick out like a sore thumb—the fact that one “c” is /s/ and one is /k/ is an obvious flag that they are Latin-derived English borrowings. This is because spelling rules were created in Middle English to make sense of the mix of “c” pronunciations across words of Indo-European origin due to a historical split called the Centum-Satem division. This is a phenomenon that is very specific to our world history, and to the history of English at that. Ironically, in your attempt to avoid stock fantasy names (which also often fall into the Latin-derived English pit), you are taking the exact same approach to naming.

Like Niki said, your selections are far too broad to code under a single umbrella. Do you expect that whatever language that city name came from runs the full gamut of sound inventory & spelling variety that spans multiple continents and hundreds of languages? Because that’s not how languages work. (And yes, I mean hundreds. Indigenous languages and linguistic diversity are a thing. See Niki’s note about just the languages in Persia. And nation-states bulldozing over those languages and pretending it’s just one language is a thing. See Sci’s note about China.) I haven't even talked about the variation in morphology (how words are formed) or syntax (sentence structure).

Please just read or re-read my guide on “naming conlangs” in this post and start from there.

~ Rina

PSA ON CONLANGING AND FANTASY NAMES:

For fantasy language asks submitted after Nov 1, 2023, the asker must indicate that they have read Mod Rina’s conlanging posts linked in FAQ 2 (Guides and Posts by Topic) of the Masterpost under the question “How do I make a fictional language for my story?” While this is an older ask, we are posting it as an example to our followers.

Per our new rules, any questions that can be directly answered in or extrapolated from the FAQs, or questions that indicate that the relevant resources haven’t been read, will be deleted with a note in the Deletion Log explaining why.

As always, if this post was helpful or educational to you, please consider tipping the relevant mods: SK, Niki, Sci, and Rina.

Edited for terminology errors

[lol-jackles]

Anon: but... but... the Gaza attack was due to 75 years of colonization......!

Me: Well gee, I guess the Armenian genocide ought to be considered in the context of…the previous 1500 years of Armenian Christianity’s existence, and 450 years of non-Muslim Armenians living peacefully under Ottoman rule and paying a special tax in order to do so. And while we're on that subject, I guess the Omagh bombing, which killed 29 people including non-Protestants and non-English people, should be considered in the context of 800 years of British political and military involvement in Ireland. And I suppose the Cambodian genocide has to be considered in the context of centuries, if not millennia, of class warfare which preceded it. Or something.

Fucking. Bull.  Shit.

And let's not forget an important fact, immediately after the U.N created the partition, Jordan annexed Palestine (Jordanians and Palestinians are the same people living in different locations). So Palestine never actually technically existed. It was only after the Jordanians got their asses kicked twice in wars they started with Israel that Jordan gave up and renounced the "Palestinians" citizenship. The terrorist Yasir Arafat, in a remarkably successful P.R. move then decided to create this new myth of a Palestinian People with Israel as its homeland.

This is the translated meme that gets passed around in the Arab nations mocking the gullible liberal Westerners like you for falling for Arafat lies.

Now Anon, try to imagine Mexicans get uppity over losing territory to United States of America and begin a campaign of terror against the USA. Mexico launches missiles across the border wall into San Diego, Tuscon, San Antonio and more. They dig tunnels under the border wall and generally make themselves a pain in the ass.

But this time they launched a full scale incursion, took over several border towns, massacred most of the population and took the rest as hostages back into Mexico. They post videos online of raped and tortured hostages, who only barely cling to life. Mexicans now say they will start killing hostages, unless USA abandons New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, California and Nevada and calls on the entire world to join in their crusade.

How do you think the USA would respond to that? Hmmmm?

You can switch countries if you want. Russia took land from Finland, China from Tibet, India and Pakistan have their antics, there’s the perpetual issue of Western Sahara and so on. Can you think of one example, only one example, where the response would be more restrained, if a militarily weaker force did that to a larger, stronger neighbor in such a manner? All it takes is one.

[dhaaruni]

Do you have any suggestions on sources to check out to understand American conservative ideology? I’m honestly trying to make a good faith attempt to understand it and why so many Republicans don’t seem to appreciate things that Democrats do for their income bracket (if they’re lower income) just bc of their stance on immigration? Like to me, Biden lowering bank overdraft fees matters more than immigration

Books, podcasts, articles, documentaries, anything!

I'll list out sources for you at another point but first of all, I think you're really misunderstanding how the conservative mindset works. You understand that people by and large vote on social issues and not economic issues right? That's why rich liberals vote for Democrats while poor conservatives vote for Republicans. The way it works is that the ethos of cultural conservatism is about preserving culture, and immigration changes the culture of a country and here's the key part, this applies even to people that aren't interacting with immigrants. They have to press 1 to get English sometimes when they call the pharmacy and that's enough to drive them up the wall! Moreover, the reality is that social liberalism is tied to education and also wealth, and the people who have less money are more likely to want to preserve what they do have, which in essence, is the "culture" of their nation.

Now, those people aren't going to vote Democrat anytime soon but the reality is that even during the peak of Stephen Miller putting kids in cages, Americans still didn't want to increase the amount of immigration, they just wanted the *visible* cruelty to stop, they're totally fine with welcoming asylum seekers into the country, giving them warm food and a hug, and sending them right back to where they came from. That's why Remain in Mexico helped Trump so much, Mexico did the dirty work of detaining and sending back migrants for the US like Turkey does it for the European Union, and the wealthier countries didn't have to get their hands dirty and their citizens often had no idea what was happening.

The issue that Democrats have right now with regards to immigration is that "elites," both Democrat and Republican, are more open to immigration than voters of either party although obviously Republicans are more opposed. Plus, liberals are opposed to high-skilled immigration from China and India in particular because Asian immigrants compete with them and their kids for education and jobs, like just look at how Democrats talk about how affirmative action negatively impacted Asian kids when it objectively did! Like, white women didn't benefit the most from affirmative action, that's a blatant lie.

The reality is that if only elites voted, the United States would be a center-left country but obviously it's not. Like, the huge negative reaction residents of blue cities are having to Republican (and Democratic!) shipping migrants up north is just so telling because it's very evident that Democrats don't want poor brown migrants who don't speak English around them, they just want to virtue signal about being pro-immigrant sanctuary cities without putting in the effort. That aside from the fact it's extremely obvious that most of the "asylum seekers" who show up at the southern border aren't qualified for asylum under international law, they're economic migrants, which is why people are demanding changes to asylum laws.

The reason that most non-white working class people still vote Democrat is because the Republican Party is extremely racist, with the exception of Black people and that's due to the history of slavery in this country. If Republicans toned down the racism even like 15% and stuck to racism against Black people and kept their mouths shut about Latinos and Asians, Republicans would get 40% of the Latino/Asian vote like Greg Abbott did in 2022 in Texas even if they likely wouldn't get to 60% like Ron DeSantis did in 2022 in Florida. And obviously, you understand as well as I do that if Republicans won 40% of the Asian and Latino vote nationwide, they'd get 400 electoral votes due to their also cleaning up among non-college white voters. Black people are 13% of the country and they can't carry Democrats without Dems winning over enough white voters and people are just allergic to admitting this fact.

All this in essence is why Democrats being reliant on rich liberals to pay for social programs they don't use is biting them in the ass. People with money, who are by and large college educated, simply don't want their taxes to go up, and to win non-college voters, Democrats have go right (on policy not just in terms of messaging) on cultural issues, primarily immigration, climate (no "green energy" or being mean to the oil/gas industry and fracking), and anything related to LGBT issues beyond "keep gay marriage legal" (even though nobody except like, Muslims in Michigan, is voting on LGBT issues one way or another). Abortion is the one "cultural" issue which helps Democrats but that's because kids are expensive and a huge undertaking especially if you don't want them, so it's still selfish and not really for the "greater good" that most people, including many Republicans, are pro-choice.

Moreover, Democratic donors and the "groups" (shadow network of activists, think tanks like the Center for American Progress, and Dem staffers who are well to the left of elected officials) don't want to move away from cultural liberalism since they skew wealthier than the general population and would rather talk about mincing the definitions of acronyms nobody uses and canceling student loans for the overeducated and downwardly mobile than public schools not letting kids take math classes and Medicaid negotiations because those issues don't impact them or any of their friends and families.

At the end of the day, the reason conservative ideology doesn't die out is because when push comes to shove, people prioritize their own self-interest. Obviously there are caveats and sometimes people opt to help others and society at large, but placing ourselves and our loved ones over the rest of the world is an intrinsic part of human nature and one that we need to understand if we're intent on changing society. Does that make sense?

[hindulivesmatter]

I absolutely agree about hindu jewish solidarity(and proudly India is one of the few countries who welcome jews with open arms - Bene Israeli, for example) and condemn Hamas. However, I feel that you should see about nakba and how Israel, along with Britain and the USA, expelled Palestinians from their own homes.

the government of Israel (along with hamas) and zionists are absolutely wrong. India absolutely has a right to complete Kashmir and China occupied territories, so why Palestinians shouldn't- when they were forcefully expelled from their own lands and homes? There are documented accounts as well. Hope you dig in further.

Love and peace.

I condemn both Hamas and the Israeli government. The Israeli government is handling the situation poorly, and the loss of life on both sides is heartbreaking. The issue is that Hamas actively calls for killing of all jews and an end to Israel. Zionism literally just means believing in a state of Israel. It could be a 2 state with Palestine. It doesn't matter. But just that Israel should exist. @freegazafromhamas Could you explain this a little better, please? You have the most knowledge on this subject, I think.

Edit (copied from @freegazafromhamas's reply): Zionism is the belief in a Jewish state in our homeland, in the land once called Judea before Roman colonizers changed the name 2000 years ago. What form that state takes or what borders that state has or how to treat Palestinians is an issue separate to Zionism on which Zionists hold a great diversity of opinions.

Edit (copied from @lettersfromthelevant's reply): If you read about the Nakba you will very quickly realize that the “expulsion” was not an expulsion. The Arabs *willingly* left after being told by the surrounding Arab nations that the Jews would all be killed in a few days. They were complicit in a genocide attempt against Jews literally three years after the Holocaust. Sucks that they didn’t get to return to their homes, but that is just what happens when you start a war and lose out of your extreme hatred for Jews.

Now, onto your next point. The king of Kashmir voluntarily gave the land to India. Until Pakistan decided they wanted it, and forcefully took over. There are countless terrorist attacks at the border, and in PoK, our soldiers are dying from bombs planted by terrorists, and civilians are caught in gunfire. The even more insane thing is that Pakistan just GAVE part of Kashmir to China, when it wasn't even theirs to begin with. Not to mention, Kashmir had a ton of Hindus, and all of them were murdered/driven out/converted in the 1990s. Pakistani terrorists are not the same as innocent Palestinian civilians.

[usafphantom2]

World War Two: When 600 US planes crashed in Himalayas

2 days ago

View of a US Army Air Transport Command cargo plane as it flies over the snow-capped, towering mountains of the Himalayas, along the borders of India, China, and Burma, January 1945, February 20, 1945.Getty Images

Pilots called the flight route "The Hump" - a nod to the treacherous heights of the eastern Himalayas

A newly opened museum in India houses the remains of American planes that crashed in the Himalayas during World War Two. The BBC's Soutik Biswas recounts an audaciously risky aerial operation that took place when the global war arrived in India.

Since 2009, Indian and American teams have scoured the mountains in India's north-eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, looking for the wreckage and remains of lost crews of hundreds of planes that crashed here over 80 years ago.

Some 600 American transport planes are estimated to have crashed in the remote region, killing at least 1,500 airmen and passengers during a remarkable and often-forgotten 42-month-long World War Two military operation in India. Among the casualties were American and Chinese pilots, radio operators and soldiers.

Has India's contribution to WW2 been ignored?

The operation sustained a vital air transport route from the Indian states of Assam and Bengal to support Chinese forces in Kunming and Chungking (now called Chongqing).

The war between Axis powers (Germany, Italy, Japan) and the Allies (France, Great Britain, the US, the Soviet Union, China) had reached the north-eastern part of British-ruled India. The air corridor became a lifeline following the Japanese advance to India's borders, which effectively closed the land route to China through northern Myanmar (then known as Burma).

The US military operation, initiated in April 1942, successfully transported 650,000 tonnes of war supplies across the route - an achievement that significantly bolstered the Allied victory.

This operation sustained a vital air transport route from India to support Chinese forces in Kunming and Chunking

Pilots dubbed the perilous flight route "The Hump", a nod to the treacherous heights of the eastern Himalayas, primarily in today's Arunachal Pradesh, that they had to navigate.

Over the past 14 years Indo-American teams comprising mountaineers, students, medics, forensic archaeologists and rescue experts have ploughed through dense tropical jungles and scaled altitudes reaching 15,000ft (4,572m) in Arunachal Pradesh, bordering Myanmar and China. They have included members of the US Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), the US agency that deals with soldiers missing in action.

The forgotten Indian soldiers of Dunkirk

With help from local tribespeople their month-long expeditions have reached crash sites, locating at least 20 planes and the remains of several missing-in-action airmen.

It is a challenging job - a six-day trek, preceded by a two-day road journey, led to the discovery of a single crash site. One mission was stranded in the mountains for three weeks after it was hit by a freak snowstorm.

"From flat alluvial plains to the mountains, it's a challenging terrain. Weather can be an issue and we have usually only the late fall and early winter to work in," says William Belcher, a forensic anthropologist involved in the expeditions.

A machine gun, pieces of debris, a camera: some of the recovered artefacts at the newly opened museum

Discoveries abound: oxygen tanks, machine guns, fuselage sections. Skulls, bones, shoes and watches have been found in the debris and DNA samples taken to identify the dead. A missing airman's initialled bracelet, a poignant relic, exchanged hands from a villager who recovered it in the wreckage. Some crash sites have been scavenged by local villagers over the years and the aluminium remains sold as scrap.

These and other artefacts and narratives related to these doomed planes now have a home in the newly opened The Hump Museum in Pasighat, a scenic town in Arunachal Pradesh nestled in the foothills of the Himalayas.

US Ambassador to India, Eric Garcetti, inaugurated the collection on 29 November, saying, "This is not just a gift to Arunachal Pradesh or the impacted families, but a gift to India and the world." Oken Tayeng, director of the museum, added: "This is also a recognition of all locals of Arunachal Pradesh who were and are still an integral part of this mission of respecting the memory of others".

The museum starkly highlights the dangers of flying this route. In his vivid memoirs of the operation, Maj Gen William H Tunner, a US Air Force pilot, remembers navigating his C-46 cargo plane over villages on steep slopes, broad valleys, deep gorges, narrow streams and dark brown rivers.

Wreckage of many planes has been found in the mountains in recent years

The flights, often navigated by young and freshly trained pilots, were turbulent. The weather on The Hump, according to Tunner, changed "from minute to minute, from mile to mile": one end was set in the low, steamy jungles of India; the other in the mile-high plateau of western China.

Heavily loaded transport planes, caught in a downdraft, might quickly descend 5,000ft, then swiftly rise at a similar speed. Tunner writes about a plane flipping onto its back after encountering a downdraft at 25,000ft.

Spring thunderstorms, with howling winds, sleet, and hail, posed the greatest challenge for controlling planes with rudimentary navigation tools. Theodore White, a journalist with Life magazine who flew the route five times for a story, wrote that the pilot of one plane carrying Chinese soldiers with no parachutes decided to crash-land after his plane got iced up.

The co-pilot and the radio operator managed to bail out and land on a "great tropical tree and wandered for 15 days before friendly natives found them". Local communities in remote villages often rescued and nursed wounded survivors of the crashes back to health. (It was later learnt that the plane had landed safely and no lives had been lost.)

Does Nolan's Dunkirk ignore the role of the Indian army?

Not surprisingly, the radio was filled with mayday calls. Planes were blown so far off course they crashed into mountains pilots did not even know were within 50 miles, Tunner remembered. One storm alone crashed nine planes, killing 27 crew and passengers. "In these clouds, over the entire route, turbulence would build up of a severity greater than I have seen anywhere in the world, before or since," he wrote.

Parents of missing airmen held out the hope that their children were still alive. "Where is my son? I'd love the world to know/Has his mission filled and left the earth below?/Is he up there in that fair land, drinking at the fountains, or is he still a wanderer in India's jungles and mountains?" wondered Pearl Dunaway, the mother of a missing airman, Joseph Dunaway, in a poem in 1945.

The China-bound US transport planes took off from airbases in India's Assam

The missing airmen are now the stuff of legend. "These Hump men fight the Japanese, the jungle, the mountains and the monsoons all day and all night, every day and every night the year round. The only world they know is planes. They never stop hearing them, flying them, patching them, cursing them. Yet they never get tired of watching the planes go out to China," recounted White.

The operation was indeed a daredevil feat of aerial logistics following the global war that reached India's doorstep. "The hills and people of Arunachal Pradesh were drawn into the drama, heroism and tragedies of the World War Two by the Hump operation," says Mr Tayeng. It's a story few know.

[pillarofawesome]

If you're like me in being, shall we say, skeptical of the NGSW program, what do you think would need to change about the XM7 to make it viable? I have a hard time thinking of any fixes that don't make it worse in some other area.

It's an expensive game of restless rifle syndrome, combined with another ammo debate. The US military has been chasing its tail since Korea.

30-06 gave way to .308 (actually the colder 7.62x51) which gave way to .223 (actually the hotter 5.56) because logistics matters more than lethality. You can't save money on a more engineered killshot if you still need 20,000 rounds of suppressing fire to get that killshot. The FBI made the same mistake with 10mm > .40 S&W > 9mm. Some highway patrols split the difference between .40 and 9mm and carry .357 SIG so they can "punch through car doors". I don't have the heart to tell them .22 lr will punch through a car door.

The XM7 is just a DMR with a 13-inch barrel. Not hating on DMRs. Right tool for the right job and all that. Would have been nice to not take Fallujah veterans with carbines, head-to-toe armor, and humvees and throw them into the mountains of Afghanistan. If you're gonna foreverwar, at least do it right.

India has the AK-203 replacing the INSAS for regular line infantry, and the SIG 716i Tread is being issued to mountaineer units. That makes sense. Proposing a standard issue battle rifle to replace the M4 demonstrates a level of ineptitude that borders on the imbecilic. We already had this talk with the FAL, G3, M14, and AR-10 (et. al.)

The rifle is the size, shape, and dimension of a Longshot Nerf Blaster on Viagra, so good luck getting in and out of a vehicle smoothly. Also, two charging handles?? Just keep the one that doesn't need a dust cover. What, were the attachments not heavy enough?

Speaking of attachments: the military deliberately overgasses their guns to fight through mud and blood, so have fun with the can on front pepperblasting the shooter with tasty carcinogens with every shot. Also, didn't you just tell me about gas pistons and suppressors being front heavy?

And the smart optic? Thousands of bucks per unit of scope is, I assume, supposed to replace thousands of bucks of ammo on the shooting range. The difference being practice can't be looted off of a dead troop, but a scope can (assuming Pvt Snafu didn't already break the damn thing).

All of this for a weapon system that may go the way of the G11, the XM8, the OICW, and whatever gun shot those flechette rounds. The legacy of the whole program will be an already-made video by Forgotten Weapons at best, and a bankrupting, grunt-killing quagmire at worst.

Overall, the military is too many chefs, the broth is fubar, and I'm glad they all suck at management and retention because the DOD's next target isn't Russia, China, Palestine, or whatever South American country the Washington Post is writing op-eds about. Their next target is American citizens.

Good luck everyone.

[fmet]

I think we as USAmericans vastly underestimate the way that our country being primarily composed of non-indigenous people influences our perception of race. As we cross regions and time our perception of race and what it entails about the characters of different people will naturally change, e.g., ethnic background of white people in Europe has a much larger bearing on their racial perception than in the U.S., USAmerican’s may simply consider a Chinese person by their nation while in China itself there is much larger emphasis placed on whether one is Han, Manchu, Uyghur, Yi, etc. The same holds for other nations, especially those that have been deliberately bordered to split and foster antagonism between different ethnic groups (e.g., SWAsian countries, Rwanda and the DRC, South Africa, India). An Irish person in the UK is going to have a vastly different experience due to their race than an 3rd gen Irish person in the US, because our overwhelming history of chattel slavery (which required much of the enslaved African population to develop a culture parallel, not directly derived, to their indigenous cultures) prioritizes delegation of race by color first and foremost, rather than country/ethnic origin. Not to say that the Black and white populations of the US are homogenous, and not to say that anti-blackness isn’t a global issue present in every country I just mentioned above. Much the opposite, especially taking regional differences and recency of immigration into account. But ethnicity (esp of white people) just isn’t as important in the USA as it is in other countries, which is, compared to global trends, kind of unusual

[warsofasoiaf]

Tibet sits atop several major rivers that feed into not only the rest of China but also India and Southeast Asia. Not to mention that from Tibet you can push directly into the Ganges plain or Chinese population centres like Sichuan, or into Xinjiang - the Himalayas are practically a second Great Wall keeping the Chinese inland secure. With the current borders China has no major overland enemies who can project power - losing Tibet would force a massive PRC redeployment

That really wasn't the original question though, which focused on international politics.

I am familiar with the SE Asia water issue. China has been impounding water flows into the Mekong Delta and severely impacting the countries there, and have been using it to pressure countries to force them to accommodate Chinese geopolitical wishes at the cost of severe ecological disruption and humanitarian suffering. And of course, Chinese insecurity and paranoia is no reason to allow the subjugation of a country. I always do find it funny that China and Russia believe that they are uniquely permitted to have buffer states, and are allowed to promote insecurity onto their neighbors to support their own.

Thanks for the contribution, Anon.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of hte King

[nulfaga]

i wanna hear more about the rampent orientalism and paper thin story please! (dos2 is my babygirl and beloved but i also have pages of corrections that i want for the story bc i'm just *confusion*)

Aww man i have thoughts on this that have been broiling for years. pandora's box etc etc.

the very short version is this. 1) re: orientalism, i take issue with the design cues attached to the lizards AND with the game's treatment of ifan. 2) re: the paper-thin story, i've turned this over in my mind and i don't think the issue is that no thought has been put into the plot; i think the game is just kind of bad at conveying that iceberg of lore to the player.

that's the tl;dr. as for the full version:

let's take these points in the same order again.

1) the ancient empire/the lizards. Here is a snippet from the dos2 artbook:

"oriental/arabian" kind of says it all: every visual we get of the ancient empire draws on this unspecific, fetishized mishmash of what the western imagination categorizes as eastern imagery. ie: sadha who is veiled and bejeweled; the fringed sedans and carriages of her entourage; the presence of elephants in drapes and gold. sadha's encampment inside the dreamscape is this dialed up to eleven: golden desert sands, rich drapes and carpeting, an ornate tent, carry on, carry on. the "forbidden city", the seat of the red prince, takes its name and concept from imperial china. elephants from india. curved weapons from moorish north africa. sedans from persia. the veil has a long and complex history: here it is used, with no further thought, to imply sex and mystery.

here's another bit from the artbook, a piece of alternate concept art for the lizards

here "Aboriginal" is treated the same way as "oriental", to wit: "this is the word we're using to describe all this completely unresearched visual spaghetti we're throwing at the lizards".

the "curved weapons" and "Arabian/oriental designs" of the ancient empire are directly contrasted with the "more recognizable" visual style of the humans.

that leaves us with an ancient empire whose design consists of a load of half-remembered "eastern" imagery, thrown together with no rhyme or reason except to evoke strangeness and otherness. i couldn't give you a better definition for "orientalism" if I tried.

there's more to be said here, ie about the textual orientalism (the ancient empire is isolationist and exceptionally depraved; they keep slaves; the house of war is renowned for its ruthlessness. The empire itself threatens the rest of rivellon by its existence. tropes on tropes on tropes about the terror of the alien east.) but I'll leave it at that for now

2) ifan. poor ifan ben-mezd.

the name "ben-mezd" itself is taken directly from the hebrew naming convention, "ben-x" meaning "son of x". (compare with the arabic "ibn".) there's also an in-game letter from one "acquillah bat-mezd", leaving no doubt about where the writers looked for inspiration ("bat", to my limited knowledge, is the female equivalent in hebrew of "ben", so: "ifan, son of Mezd" and "acquillah, daughter of Mezd").

remember how my last point was all about the writers mashing various middle eastern, south and east asian iconography together?

ifan's soul wolf is named afrit. an afrit is a mythological figure dating back to pre-islamic arabia. so is it hebrew or arabic we're supposed to look to for ifan?

reading up on Mezd itself is no help either. when it's described at all, it's in the same vague terms as the eastern empire. it's fucking... it's desert. it's sand. And it's in the east. It's the desert of the east. we're to infer it's inhabited mostly by humans—and maybe that it borders on the ancient empire?

here, from the graphic novel:

the red prince is exiled and taken just across the border to this generic eastern bazaar populated by humans, where he proceeds to harass this little aladdin-looking guy. this is my best guess for Mezd, although the city is not named in the comic.

and tying all this overwhelming use of mixed-up "oriental" imagery back to ifan, here's another bit from the artbook.

his "exotic origins". if it was possible to be vaguer than "oriental/arabic designs", then congratulations, they've done it!

here's my point. through the haze of smushed-together imagery and intentionally vague language, will you agree with me that ifan ben-mezd is coded as a brown arab man? (or, conservatively, a brown man of color?)

if so, then does it leave a sour taste in your mouth to see him compared to an animal (usually a wolf; a predator) almost constantly during his companion dialogue and romance scenes? does it feel a little off that one of his quest updates (after he learns the truth about his deathfog mission) describes him as a "suicide bomber"?

3) the thin plot. I don't have as much to say on this point, because i haven't played the other divinity games. maybe, all of them taken together, it's an intricate and masterful web without so much as a dropped stitch (tho I doubt it).

but as I see it:

the intro to the graphic novel mentions that the writers have gotten incredibly intimate with their world and characters during the process of building the game, to the point that they have countless "stories that will never be told".

that's all well and good, but i'm not convinced they knew how to lay all that out for the reader/player. for example, the comic hints at ifan's complex relationships with roost anlon, lucian and alexandar. but in-game when he interacts with these characters, we see next to none of that context, only lines that imply a shared history and leave the player foaming at the mouth for a scrap, just a scrap of lore please. the same goes for the other companions—except maybe the red prince, whose section in the graphic novel was word for word a rehash of his in-game dialogue and who may just be as shallow as he appears, lol.

but sebille, for instance: the shadow prince's greater network of handlers. the names and identities of sebille's kills. all things the comic hints at, and which the devs seem to know in detail, but they're so reluctant to share their insight with the player. ;_;

it also bothers me that there's no codified map of all the locations (at least in dos2, but maybe even across the series) and where they are relative to each other. once again, the devs know; we don't.

same thing for the calendar. we get sembten (ostensibly the equivalent to our september) and one other month (a january?), but nothing otherwise. we don't know how the timekeeping system works, by hours or seconds or minutes, how many months in a year, days in a week, etc etc.

those r my gripes. my bad for the messy post, i'm typing this up on my phone in a berlin hotel room lmao. thank you for asking <3

[blackswaneuroparedux]

كن التغير الذي تريد أن تراه في العالم. *

- Mahatma Gandhi

Be the change you want to see in the world.*

As an irate and highly Western educated Qatari business friend of mine put it she is so looking forward to watching the World Cup in the USA in 2026 then she can return the favour and moralise to white liberal Americans about their societal shortcomings.

As she put it since Americans love to moralise to the world it’s only fair to point out their sins: from genocide of its Indian natives to the evil of the slave trade as well as the killing 60 million babies in their mother’s wombs to the mutilating and cutting off body parts of little children just so they can delude themselves into believing that can be a boy or a girl (terms they can’t even define) based not on biology but feelings, and to their hatred and active break up of the nuclear family unit as the foundation of society.

Or that Obama authorised more strikes in his first year than Bush carried out during his entire presidency. A total of 563 strikes, largely by drones, targeted Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen during Obama’s two terms, compared to 57 strikes under Bush. Civilians killed in those countries resulted in the deaths of over 3797 people, including 542 civilians. Black Lives Matter but not so much non-American Muslim women and children slaughtered. Let’s not even talk about the history of American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And so on and so on.

But she won’t because she has manners and she understands she is a guest in a foreign country and has to respect its laws and customs, even those one might strongly disagree with.

As much as I could take issue with her arguments, and as much as I dislike the authoritarian nature of Qatar, it is a sovereign Islamic state like any other Islamic country in the Middle East and the other Muslim majority states in the world. Having said that it’s not in the same league as truly oppressive states like Putin’s Russia or Xi’s China. If it was then there would be no large Western and and even greater non-Western presence of people here (greater than the Qataris themselves), living and working quite happily for years.

As for labour abuse there is a case to answer for but it’s no different than any other country where labour are often screwed. All the contracts for buildings are done by Western and Chinese companies and they are meant to enforce strong labour laws - but inevitably they find ways around it or are too slow to do so. The Qataris are guilty for not cracking down on the abuse by these companies of labour laws it passed after intense outside pressure (and rightly so). Many of working migrants - mostly from India - have housing and food paid for them and they earn far more than they would back in their home countries. Of course there are documented cases of migrant labour abuse but not on the industrial scale that some Western media outlets are falsely reporting.

If you go to any stadium here in Qatar, you will inevitably hear a lot of people speaking in Hindi - which I speak too from my childhood in India. That’s because the Indian presence at this World Cup is very strong. The hyped up labour abuse of migrant workers hasn’t stopped Indians coming out to enjoy the World Cup. In fact, statistics published by the Qatar establishment show that Indians constitute 9% of the fans who have come for the World Cup. Saudi Arabia, which has a land border with Qatar, accounts for 11% and sits at the top. India is in the second position, and surprisingly followed by the US  who make up 7% of visitors.

For the droves of visiting Americans here they are truly shocked how futuristic, slick, and modern Qatar is in contrast to the urban decaying of their cities. The standard of living is higher than anything they are used to. They are also overwhelmed by the sincere and friendly hospitality of Arab people here.

The hand wringing and sheer nonsense written in some parts of the Western media about Qatar is embarrassingly untrue. It’s a caricature of the truth in the same way Qataris have a caricatured impression of the West only just obsessed with sex and alcohol. One is confronted here at the World Cup of genuine footballing fans from England, Wales, the US, and other European countries apologising to their Qatari hosts for the misinformed - sometimes bordering on outright racism - press articles on life in Qatar.

You can drink here - just not at the stadiums itself. Previous World Cups have done the same and no one kicked up a fuss. Most fans have said it made for a better and cosier atmopshere for opposing fans and for families especially. Opposing fans mingle freely and have a good laugh together in a safe and well run World Cup. There are well catered fan zones. Plenty of beer is on tap here in the bars and hotels, though it will set you back around £14 a pint.

You can have sex with whomever you want - just don’t do it in public. Laws are not targeted specifically to gays but equally to hetrosexuals e.g. no public displays of affection like kissing or holding hands. Whatever you decide to do in your hotel room is up to you.

In truth everyone looks the other way.

Is the World Cup corrupt. Of course it is. Every World Cup has been. FIFA has been shown to be corrupt from almost its inception. Qataris are not immune to corruption but as many Qataris have said to me the Qataris just learned everything from the West. They observed carefully how we do business in the West. Money and power talks. This is how the game is played.

But I will say this in FIFA’s defence that over the last twenty years, FIFA has demonstrated a commitment to open its product up to a wider audience and take its premier sporting contest, the World Cup, to new heartlands.


The USA saw the benefit of this initiative in 1994, before Japan and South Korea became both the first Asian nations and the first co-hosts for the historic competition in 2002. In 2010, the World Cup arrived at a fifth continent (Africa) and a new heartland was reached with the contest being taken to South Africa. In 2022, after a return to Brazil and a sojourn to Russia, the Islamic Middle East now becomes the next bright destination for the Modiale bandwagon, as Qatar benefits from the truly global game.

The Middle East region is among the fastest growing areas for football in the world and promises to be an endless stream of young, passionate football fans for years to come. And with football one hopes social progress follows. But if it happens it will be on their terms, and not ours.

[fromdusttosoil]

I always knew that there was a really big issue with antisemitism in the left, but ever since i started going out with my partner i am seeing just how bad it really is. My partner was born in israel and is jewish. They've spend most of their adult life analysing their surrounding and despite being raised by pretty terrible have come up with their own opinions.

Yet whenever i introduce them to any left space irl or online the reactions are vile. They get quizzed immidiately on Israel and their politics, people will just assume that their a terrible person. I've had people just call them a fascist or colonizer for being born in a country. They're expected to state that they wish the death of israel or they're deemed bad. I've had people straight up state that they think it's okay when israeli citizens die. I've talked to so many jewish people who cannot or will not go into these spaces at all because they don't think that destroying israel is a solution but are still fully for the right of palestinians to be free. They get threatened and alienated until they leave.

If you're left leaning and your first instinct when meeting a jewish person or an israeli person is to have them defend weither they're good or bad (in your opinion) that's antisemetic. Putting jewish people into groups of 'good jew' or 'bad jew' is antisemetic, and that's what you're doing doing when you do that. If your abolish all borders and countries speech specifically targets israel that's antisemetic. If you excuse fascism in China, the us, russia, india or any other country or you just don't care unless it's about israel, guess what. You're fucking antisemetic.

You can criticize Israel. And you should do that, by all means the country is slipping into fascism as we speak. But if you use this as an excuse to be hypercritical of jewish people and you go around policing what is an acceptable amount of association with israel or not then you're still fucking antisemetic. I'm fucking tired of it.

[pasalesabin]

Nepal

Nepal initially existed as a distributed power. Prithivi Narayan Shah played a pivotal role in unifying and forming Greater Nepal. Throughout this historical period, various Ranas held sway as leaders, while numerous Shahs ascended the throne as kings. Despite the passage of many dynasties, Nepal managed to remain isolated from the rest of the world.

During the British rule in India, Nepalis sought employment beyond their borders, particularly in regions like Darjeeling and Assam controlled by the British. Nepal exhibited a rent-seeking mentality, desiring external rule and guidance. Unfortunately, a pervasive attitude emerged where individuals were reluctant to instigate change, contributing significantly to our challenges. The issue of brain drain became prominent in 1815 and escalated rapidly in the 1850s. Initially, it was fields like Darjeeling in India that attracted Nepalis due to British influence. However, in contemporary times, destinations such as Australia, the USA, and Dubai have become magnets for Nepali migrants.

The historical pattern in Nepal reveals a recurring cycle of distributed power, followed by centralized rule under a king, then a shift to democracy. Interestingly, it appears that democracy has gained favor among the populace. Nevertheless, Nepal consistently finds itself positioned between two influential countries, China and India, both examples of distinct development models—one democratic and the other more isolated from the global arena.

In contemplating the cyclical nature of events, it's crucial to recognize that in times of war, it's the soldiers who bear the brunt, not the kings.

The key to progress lies in fostering a mindset geared towards improvement rather than a mere desire for change.

[thegoldenstar]

Everyone in Ladakh knows China has taken away our land: Rahul Gandhi

On Sunday last, Gandhi had claimed that Modi's statement that not an inch of the land in Ladakh has been taken over by China is not true.

KARGIL: Raking up the border issue, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday said every individual in Ladakh knows that China has “taken away our land” and claimed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s assertion that not an inch of land was taken away was “absolutely false.”

The former Congress president’s remarks come after Prime Minister Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping held a conversation on Wednesday on the sidelines of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) summit in Johannesburg.

The conversation was not a structured bilateral meeting and was an informal one.

“I visited the whole of Ladakh on my motorcycle over the past week. Ladakh is a strategic place and when I was at Pangong lake, one thing was clear that China had taken over thousands of kilometers of Indian land. Unfortunately, the prime minister during an opposition meeting makes a statement that not an inch of our land was taken away which is ‘absolutely false’,” he said addressing a public meeting here on the last day of his nine-day tour of Ladakh.

“Every individual of Ladakh knows that China has taken away our land and the prime minister is not speaking the truth,” he alleged.

This is the second time during his Ladakh tour that the Congress leader has raked up the border issue with China.

On Sunday last, Gandhi had claimed that Modi’s statement that not an inch of the land in Ladakh has been taken over by China is not true.

India’s Foreign Secretary Vinay Kwatra on Thursday said Modi conveyed to Xi India’s concerns on the “unresolved” issues along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh, underlining that maintenance of peace and tranquillity in border areas was essential for normalisation of India-China ties.

The ties between India and China came under severe strain following the eastern Ladakh border row that began in May, 2020.

The Indian and Chinese troops are locked in an over three-year confrontation in certain friction points in eastern Ladakh even as the two sides completed disengagement from several areas following extensive diplomatic and military talks.

During the public meeting, Gandhi also extending support to Leh-based Apex body and Kargil Democratic Alliance (KDA), which are fighting for full statehood and safeguards under sixth schedule of the Constitution, and said his party would not allow the BJP to hand over the resource-rich land of the union territory to its corporate friend.

The former Congress president said he was briefed by the people about their demand for political representation, safeguards for land, culture and language, unemployment, non-functional Kargil airport and the problem of cell phone coverage.

“I heard you and want to convey that the Congress is standing with you in your struggle, whether linked to the demand for safeguards or employment issues. All the people know that Ladakh is rich in natural resources. The 21st century is of solar energy and Ladakh has no dearth of it,” he said.

“The BJP knows and understands that if you will be given (political) representation, they cannot snatch your land,” he said and alleged that the “BJP wants to take your land for (industrialist Gautam) Adani and we will not allow this to happen”.

The two powerful bodies are jointly campaigning to press for their four-point demands, including full statehood, safeguards under sixth schedule of the Constitution, creation of two separate parliamentary constituencies for Leh and Kargil districts, recruitment and job reservation for the youth of Ladakh.

Both the Apex body and KDA, which is a separate amalgam of socio-religious, political and youth organisations of Leh and Kargil districts, were formed after the Centre abrogated the special status of Jammu and Kashmir and bifurcated it into Union territories of J-K and Ladakh.

The BJP Ladakh unit was also part of the Apex body but later distanced itself after it raised the demand for full statehood.

In an apparent reference to Modi’s ‘Mann Ki Baat’ radio broadcast, Gandhi said, “Some are speaking what is in their heart but I came here to know what is in your heart. One thing is clear that the ideology of Gandhi and Congress exists in the blood and DNA of the people of Ladakh.”

He said migrant labourers from different parts of the country, including Bihar, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand, told him that they feel that Ladakh is their second home as locals are lending a helping hand whenever they come forward to seek their support.

Referring to his Bharat Jodo Yatra from September 7, 2022 to January 30, 2023, he said the only goal of the foot march was to stand up against the “hatred and violence being spread by BJP and RSS” in the country and spread the message of love and brotherhood.

“The yatra was not supposed to end in Srinagar but in Ladakh. The administration did not allow us to continue the march due to harsh winter and we accepted it. My visit is in continuation of the Bharat Jodo Yatra. I visited every nook and corner of the region on the motorcycle and heard the people,” he said.

He also thanked the people of Kargil for always standing with the country during crisis and war, and said, “All the people in the country, irrespective of their religion, language and culture are equal for us and we all want to live together with love and respect.”

Gandhi described Ladakh as the most beautiful region of the country and assured the people that he will raise both their local and central issues during the next Parliament session.

After his over 15-minute long address, Gandhi walked past the security cover to interact with the gathering amid chants of ‘Jodo Jodo Bharat Jodo’.

Besides the working president of Ladakh Congress Asgar Ali Karbalai, National Conference leader and co-chairman of KDA Qamar Ali Akhnoon, AICC in-charge of J-K and Ladakh Rajni Patel were present at the public rally.

[theculturedmarxist]

The West’s attempt to recruit large swaths of the global community to enlist for the sanctions war has decidedly failed, notes ‘The American Conservative’. Outside of the U.S., E.U., and a few close allies (i.e., economic dependents and military protectorates) such as Canada and Japan, practically no other countries have joined in, preempting any economic dogpile sought by the self-proclaimed defenders of democracy. Increasingly, transatlantic policy seems to be having the exact opposite effect.

As of June 9, Pakistan is the latest country to begin accepting large shipments of discounted crude oil from Russia, as much as 100,000 barrels a day. “This is the first ever Russian oil cargo to Pakistan and the beginning of a new relationship between Pakistan and Russian Federation [sic],” announced Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.

In the present geopolitical landscape, such a move is perceived to be in direct defiance of Western efforts to obstruct Moscow’s revenues. The motive behind Islamabad’s shifted political and economic calculations is not difficult to decipher. Nor is it exceptional.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) reported that Moscow is now sending out 8.1 million barrels of oil a day, the highest number going back to April 2020. In January 2023, almost half of those shipments were destined for China and India, which have respectively increased as a proportion of Russia’s oil exports from 21 percent to 29 percent and 1 percent to 20 percent since January 2022.

Chinese oil imports alone jumped in May to the third highest level ever recorded. Beijing also recently issued a crude oil import quota of a whopping 62.28 million tons of allotments. This makes the total import quota amount issued by Chinese leadership 20 percent higher than that of the same time last year. At the same time, Beijing’s natural gas purchases continue to push upward, increasing 3.3 percent year-on-year in Quarter 1, with a 10.3 percent year-on-year increase in April of liquefied natural gas (LNG).

Just as important, if not more so, as the massive shifts in quantity and direction of the energy trade, however, are the size and scope of the joint initiatives—usually under the leadership of Moscow and Beijing — that continue to proliferate in opposition to Western-led international organizations.

The recent St. Petersburg International Economic Forum saw representatives of various economic groupings and cooperation organizations outside the Atlantic orbit meet to discuss greater interconnectivity, development collaboration, transportation corridors, as well as investment options for funding various cross border initiatives.

One of these groups is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which continues to focus on greater cooperation and integration with ASEAN nations. This year’s meeting included a notable presentation on the creation of a SCO investment bank to provide the capital necessary to facilitate such collaborative projects.

The BRICS organization featured prominently at the St. Petersburg forum as well. It also includes an important investment bank — the New Development Bank — that provides ready access to liquidity for its members, funds infrastructure projects, and facilitates increased industrial manufacturing. BRICS continues to grow in both clout and size.

A number of new countries applied for membership last year, including Iran and Argentina. 2023 has also seen membership bids from nineteen additional nations before an upcoming summit in Johannesburg this August. One of the most recent applications came from Egypt on June 14. Potential bids from important players in the energy market such as Venezuela (with direct support from Brazil’s President Lula) and the United Arab Emirates are also being discussed.

UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan traveled directly to the St. Petersburg forum in order to meet with Putin on June 16, where the two discussed their desire to build a closer relationship between the countries.

Gulf neighbor — and traditional U.S. ally — Saudi Arabia has to some degree also hedged its geopolitical bets. After refusing Biden’s phone calls in March of 2022 and denying his request to increase oil production to help lower international prices, Riyadh’s friendship with Washington has somewhat soured as of late. (Saudi Arabia also joined the SCO in March 2023, and is a potential candidate for BRICS membership.) In another move that will likely meet with the displeasure of its Western allies, Saudi Arabia additionally decided to move forward with further production cuts of 1 million barrels per day beginning in July.

Consider that, as discussed earlier, China alone has increased its trade with Russia by about 40 percent, and is set to reach a record $200 billion this year. Perhaps most importantly though, more than 70 percent of that trade has been settled in either yuan or the ruble, with the Russian central bank currently holding 40 percent of its reserves in yuan.

Pakistan has reportedly also paid for its new shipments of Moscow’s crude with Chinese yuan. Earlier in 2022, Saudi Arabia suggested the possibility of denominating its oil transactions with Beijing in the currency.

The present geopolitical system with all of its accompanying features is only made possible by the dollar reigning supreme as the world’s reserve currency. Champions of the present order faithfully hold that this system will be maintained indefinitely, guaranteed on the back of U.S. military might and Western economic dominance.

But the international environment is beginning to shift, as much due to the burgeoning economic alliances outside the confines of Western-backed international agencies as because of the policy decisions of those latter agencies and their U.S. patron. No recent move has acted as a greater accelerant to this shift than Washington’s decision to freeze and then seize the foreign currency reserves of the Russian Federation at the outset of the Ukraine war.

The weaponization of financial reserves has increased distrust in the present system to new heights. The end of dollar dominance may not be nigh, but it is a much more likely possibility than many in the West care to admit.

Russia has demonstrated that having an economy based on commodities and heavy industrial production matters more in today’s international environment than a narrow set of economic indicators such as annual GDP growth or per capita income. Should dollar dominance ever come to an end, this fact will be made painfully clear.

The United States and other Western countries have adopted an increasingly ideological perspective regarding the future course of economic development. Leaders choose to accept only information that aligns with their dogmatic beliefs.

A failure to remove its ideological blinders and comprehend political and economic conditions as they objectively exist will spell disaster for the Western bloc.

[mariacallous]

In 2001, Goldman Sachs banker Jim O’Neill created the acronym “BRIC” to refer to Brazil, Russia, India, and China—countries he predicted would soon have a significant impact on the global economy. In 2006, Goldman Sachs opened a BRIC investment fund pegged to growth in these four nations. The moniker captured the global excitement about emerging powers at the time and transformed into a political grouping in 2009, when leaders of the four countries held their first summit. South Africa joined a year later.

BRICS as a political body has faced countless critics and doubters from the start. Analysts in the Western press largely described the outfit as nonsensical and predicted its imminent demise. In 2011, the Financial Times’ Philip Stevens announced it was “time to bid farewell” to the “BRICS without mortar.” A year later, another columnist at the paper, Martin Wolf, asserted that BRICS was “not a group” and that its members had “nothing in common whatsoever.” BRICS has also been described as a “motley crew,” “odd grouping,” “random bunch,” and “disparate quartet.” In 2015, Goldman Sachs decided to close the BRIC fund (which never grew to include South Africa) due to its low returns.

BRICS member countries have numerous differences and disagreements. While Brazil and Russia are commodity exporters, China is a commodity importer. Brazil, India, and South Africa are democratic countries with vibrant civil societies, but China and Russia are autocratic regimes. Brazil and South Africa are nonnuclear powers, in contrast to China, India, and Russia, which boast nuclear arsenals. Perhaps most seriously, China and India face an ongoing border conflict.

And yet, despite their differences, not one BRICS leader has ever missed the group’s annual summits. (Meetings took place virtually during the COVID-19 pandemic.) Instead of unraveling, diplomatic and economic ties have strengthened, and BRICS membership has become a central element to each member’s foreign-policy identity. Even significant ideological shifts—including the election of right-wing populist leaders such as India’s Narendra Modi in 2014 and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro in 2018—have not significantly altered countries’ commitment to the club.

Yet as BRICS approaches its 15th summit in Johannesburg this August, the grouping is experiencing an unprecedented disagreement over enlargement. The outcome will be a test of BRICS identity in the face of rising Chinese influence.

Despite the many disagreements and tensions among them, BRICS members have more in common than Western analysts often appreciate. The strategic benefits the outfit produces for its participants still far exceed its costs. Four aspects stand out.

First, all BRICS members see the emergence of multipolarity as both inevitable and generally desirable—and identify the bloc as a means to play a more active role in shaping the post-Western global order. Member states share a deep-seated skepticism of U.S.-led unipolarity and believe that the BRICS nations increase their strategic autonomy and bargaining power when negotiating with Washington. As Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said in opening remarks at the BRICS foreign ministers’ meeting in Cape Town, South Africa, on June 1, the concentration of economic power—presumably in the West—“leaves too many nations at the mercy of too few.”

Second, the BRICS grouping also provides privileged access to China, a country that has become enormously relevant for all other members. Brazil and South Africa in particular, which had only limited ties to Beijing prior to the group’s founding, have benefited from BRICS as they adapt to a more China-centric world. It’s not just the summits attended by heads of state: Ministers and other officials frequently gather to discuss issues such as climate, defense, education, energy, and health. And, largely under the radar, the grouping has organized countless annual meetings—in some years more than 100—involving government officials, think tanks, universities, cultural entities, and legislators. BRICS membership also granted countries a founding stake in the Shanghai-based New Development Bank (NDB), created during the fifth BRICS summit in 2013.

Third, BRICS members have generally treated each other as all-weather friends. The group has created a powerful diplomatic life raft for member countries that temporarily face difficulties on the global stage: Fellow BRICS states protected Russian President Vladimir Putin from diplomatic isolation after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and stood by Bolsonaro when he found himself globally isolated after his close ally Donald Trump’s failed reelection bid for the U.S. presidency. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Putin could again rely on the other BRICS countries to provide him explicit diplomatic and economic support (China), help circumvent sanctions (India), participate in military exercises (South Africa), or embrace his narratives about the war (Brazil). Without BRICS support, Russia would find itself in a far more difficult situation today.

Finally, being a member of the BRICS creates considerable prestige, status, and legitimacy for Brazil, Russia, and South Africa, which for years have stagnated economically and are now anything but emerging powers. Even as Brazil has fallen behind in its share of global GDP, analysts continue to describe it as an emerging power—which facilitates investment and allows the government in Brasília, the capital, to punch above its weight diplomatically. That some 20 countries are now seeking membership in the group only confirms the notion that the BRICS seal remains powerful.

It is precisely on this last issue that the grouping is facing its biggest disagreement since its inception 14 years ago. Beijing, which does not need to preserve the grouping’s exclusivity to retain its global status, has for years aimed to integrate new members and slowly transform the bloc into a China-led alliance. Since 2017, when it presented the “BRICS Plus” concept—a mechanism to bring countries closer to the outfit before eventually granting them full membership—Beijing has sought to put expansion on the agenda. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, expansion has also been of interest to Moscow, as it could help create a Russia-sympathetic bloc to counter Western attempts to isolate the country.

Brazil and India, on the other hand, have long been wary of adding new members to BRICS, as they have less to gain from a diluted club that includes smaller powers. Both Brasília and New Delhi fear that expansion would entail a loss of Brazilian and Indian influence within the group. In their eyes, new members would join largely to gain easier access to Beijing, making BRICS positions more China-centric and potentially less moderate. This explains why Jaishankar recently cautioned that deliberations on expansion were still a “work in progress,” and Brazilian Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira said that “BRICS is a brand and an asset, so we have to take care of it, because it means and represents a lot.” South Africa, which traditionally has the least influence within BRICS, has sought to hedge its bets.

There is no formal application process—or specific criteria—to become a BRICS member. Some countries have simply been added to the list of potential future members after an informal expression of interest. But in last year’s BRICS summit declaration, member countries vowed to promote “discussions among BRICS members on BRICS expansion process” and stressed “the need to clarify the guiding principles, the standards, criteria and procedures.” The debate about BRICS expansion is not directly related to the NDB, which in 2021 added Bangladesh, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Uruguay as new members and announced that at least 30 percent of loans would be provided in the currencies of member states rather than the U.S. dollar.

In theory, each BRICS member has a veto over the group’s decisions, which explains why yearly summit declarations have often been vague. In practice, the grouping’s profound asymmetries—China’s GDP is larger than that of all other members combined—creates informal hierarchies. South Africa’s 2010 accession was led by China to bolster Beijing’s engagement on the African continent. It also made the IBSA grouping (of India, Brazil, and South Africa) superfluous. If killing IBSA was a desired side effect of South Africa’s BRICS membership—to show that three large democracies in the developing world discussing can’t discuss the future of the global south without China—Beijing succeeded: The 10th IBSA leaders’ summit, scheduled to take place in 2013, has been postponed indefinitely.

China and Russia may therefore succeed, despite Brazilian opposition and Indian skepticism, in adding new members to the club, particularly since Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva—to his advisors’ chagrin—recently expressed support for inviting Venezuela to BRICS during improvised remarks.

Disagreements over whether to expand BRICS are about more than exclusivity and status. Several potential accession candidates—such as Iran, Syria, and Venezuela—have largely pursued an anti-Western foreign policy. Their integration could complicate Brazil’s and India’s efforts to preserve a nonaligned strategy amid growing tensions between the West and the Beijing-Moscow axis.

The key to BRICS’ success since 2009 has been its capacity to circumvent internal disagreements and focus on unifying themes, such as the desire to build a more multipolar world and strengthen south-south relations. India-China ties are notoriously fraught and, despite New Delhi’s decision to help Moscow export its oil, India has systematically sought to reduce its dependence on Russian weapons and increased its arms purchases from Europe. The status quo may be the best BRICS can achieve without exposing its rifts. While Russia has long attempted to position the BRICS grouping as an anti-Western bloc, Brazil and India have steadily sought to prevent Moscow from doing so.

The uncertainty about how the South African government in Pretoria should handle hosting the upcoming BRICS summit in Johannesburg reflects the dilemmas it and Brasília currently face in the context of growing tensions between Moscow and the West. Since South Africa is a party to the Rome Statute, the founding charter of the International Criminal Court (ICC), it would be obligated to arrest Putin—whom the ICC has indicted—if he attends. For months, South Africans have debated how to handle the delicate situation. As former South African President Thabo Mbeki recently pointed out: “We can’t say to President Putin, please come to South Africa, and then arrest him. At the same time, we can’t say come to South Africa, and not arrest him—because we’re defying our own law—we can’t behave as a lawless government.”

While hosting Putin without arresting him would strain South Africa’s ties to the West, not hosting him—or organizing the summit elsewhere—would dilute BRICS’ commitment to being all-weather friends. The most likely scenario is that South Africa finds a legal loophole to host Putin without detaining him—representing a diplomatic triumph for the Russian president.

Still, it is largely a lose-lose dilemma for South Africa, and means that being part of BRICS has started to have a tangible cost for the country by negatively affecting its ties to the United States and Europe. Pretoria has already had a taste of this: After South Africa drew closer to Russia after its invasion of Ukraine—including by allegedly supplying Moscow with weapons—the G-7 decided not to invite it as a guest to a recent summit, for the first time since South African President Cyril Ramaphosa took office in 2018. Unless the Russia-Ukraine war ends soon, Brazil—which has also signed the Rome Statute and is slated to host the G-20 summit in 2024 and the BRICS summit in 2025 —will soon face the same problem.

For all its ongoing challenges, BRICS generates many benefits for its members and is here to stay. Yet if the group announces the inclusion of new members during the upcoming summit in Johannesburg, it would be simplistic to interpret it as a sign of strength. Rather, expansion should be read as a sign of China’s growing capacity to determine the bloc’s overall strategy—and may reflect the emergence not of a multipolar order, but of a bipolar one.