Justin Trudeau’s Debacle In India Is A Disaster For Canada’s Already-Declining Geopolitical Standing

InsightSpencerFernando

The Prime Minister has further alienated the world’s largest democracy and has demonstrated a profoundly unserious mindset at a time when we can ill-afford such arrogance and ignorance.

To say that we are experiencing a profoundly serious moment in the world would be an understatement.

Both China and Russia are led by aging dictators who are desperate to reclaim what they see as the ‘glory days’ of their countries.

Xi Jinping and Mao Zedong

In China’s case, those ‘glory days’ are the days of Mao Zedong’s total dominance of China through brutal repression and a pervasive personality cult. Even in a 20th century drenched in blood, Mao stands out as the worst mass murderer of all time:

“From 1958 to 1962, his Great Leap Forward policy led to the deaths of up to 45 million people – easily making it the biggest episode of mass murder ever recorded.”

Following Mao, China adopted more of a collective leadership system. While not democratic whatsoever, the system moved away from a personality cult dominated by one individual to a somewhat more dispersed distribution of power. No one leader could control everything or dominate everyone, and there were different factions that needed to be heeded.

This system coincided with a more rational era of Chinese policymaking, as the country industrialized and became more integrated into the global economy.

Disturbingly however, Xi Jinping has sought to turn back the clock.

Rather than seeing the Maoist era as a warning, Xi seems to see it as an example.

He has built up a personality cult around himself, forced millions throughout the country to study ‘Xi Jinping Thought,’ and placed himself above the collective leadership structure as the ‘paramount leader’ of China.

Xi extended his term in power, and has increasingly cracked down on any quasi-independent power centres in the country.

Most ominously, rather than prioritizing economic growth – which requires a certain level of peace and accommodation with other nations, Xi is prioritizing ideological purity and blind obedience to the Communist Party State.

Anti-Western propaganda has been ramped up significantly, and China has embarked on a massive military build-up even as their economy stagnates. As noted by U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan, there is reason to believe China’s military budget is much larger than China admits:

“I think the Presiding Officer was there when we had a briefing from some of our top Intelligence Agency officials. It was a classified briefing, and I asked him if this number was classified. They told me no. They came out and said the real Chinese budget, in terms of the military, is probably close to about $700 billion. That is a big budget. As Senator COTTON mentioned, they are increasing in real terms 6, 7, 8 percent—cranking out ships, cranking out fifth-generation aircraft.”

This would mean China’s military spending is in the ballpark of U.S. military spending.

Not only is Xi ramping up China’s military spending, but he’s trying to downplay the importance of economic growth, and cast the West as too materialistic in a recent speech:

“Western-style modernization “pursues the maximization of capital interests instead of serving the interests of the vast majority of people,” Xi said.

“Today, Western countries are increasingly in trouble,” Xi said. “They cannot curb the greedy nature of capital and cannot solve chronic diseases such as materialism and spiritual poverty.””

This is quite ironic, given that China often ruthlessly suppresses religion and spirituality if it is deemed as not being pro-CCP, and given that China is one of the most materialistic societies on Earth. Until recently, the Chinese Communist Party had an implicit pact with the Chinese People, which is that material prosperity would be prioritized in return for people staying out of political matters.

The fact that Xi is reversing this is of significant concern.

His rhetoric is reminiscent of many dictators throughout history who – finding their regimes unable to outgrow or out innovate the Western democracies – cope by claiming the West is weaker in some sort of vaguely mystical and subjective way.

Combined with Xi’s massive military build-up, and it appears China is preparing for war.

Putin’s War

Similarly, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has long been working to rehabilitate the reputation of the most ruthless Soviet dictator – Joseph Stalin.

Like Mao, Stalin was a prolific mass murderer, something even the Soviet Union was once willing to admit as explained in this excerpt from a 1989 New York Times article:

“A Soviet weekly newspaper today published the most detailed accounting of Stalin’s victims yet presented to a mass audience here, indicating that about 20 million died in labor camps, forced collectivization, famine and executions.

The estimates, by the historian Roy Medvedev, were printed in the weekly tabloid Argumenti i Fakti, which has a circulation of more than 20 million.”

Putin – who has made no secret of his desire to restore the borders of the Soviet Union – has sought to rebuild the Stalin personality cult in order to build up his own personality cult.

As the world has now learned, this long-term effort was largely aimed at psychologically preparing the population for war, a war Putin launched in February of 2022.

Now, make no mistake here. While some on the left foolishly differentiate between China and Russia (supporting China while opposing Russia), and some on the right make the same foolish mistake in the opposite direction (supporting Russia while opposing China), both China and Russia are unified in their desire to weaken Western nations from within and without. Both China and Russia are led by dictators who want to see the restoration of a time in which Communism was competing with the Democratic Capitalism for world power.

So, it’s no surprise to see Russia making a deal with North Korea (itself largely a client state of China), for weapons to continue Putin’s war against Ukraine. North Korean Communist dictator Kim Jong Un is heading to Russia to meet with Putin:

“Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet his North Korean counterpart Kim Jong Un this week, the Kremlin confirmed Monday.

South Korean media reported Monday that a North Korean train, presumably carrying North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, had departed for Russia. The Kremlin had earlier denied a meeting would take place but then acknowledged it would do “in the coming days,” without giving further details.”

It is expected that Russia will ask for artillery ammunition – something North Korea has plenty of – while North Korea is expected to ask for submarine technology among other things.

This really isn’t surprising.

People across the political spectrum in the West must wake up and realize that we can’t really pick and choose between China, Russia, and North Korea. If all three of them are determined to make an all-out effort to weaken the Western world – and that is exactly what they are doing – then democratic nations need to work together to counter all of them at once.

This means building up our own militaries, fighting foreign influence from China and Russia, supporting Ukraine’s fight for freedom with the delivery of arms, working more closely with South Korea and Japan to counter North Korea and China, and doing everything we can to ensure that India sees it’s future more with the West.

India: A rising superpower

India is undoubtedly a rising superpower.

With China’s growth slowing substantially, India will be a key driver of the global economy going forward.

India has great demographics – a much younger average age than China – has a dynamic and entrepreneurial population, and is much more open to debate and experimentation than China is.

Understandably, India doesn’t fully align with the Western world. There are historical reasons for this, as the Soviet Union was often quite supportive of India at a time when countries like the United States were throwing their lot in with Pakistan.

For that reason, India has many deep economic and military ties with Russia. India is also rapidly lifting many people out of poverty (the country has made remarkable progress on that front), and is quite fed up with Western hypocrisy on climate issues. India rightfully notes that they should be allowed to go through the same industrialization process that wealthy Western countries did. While surging emissions from India and China make it foolish for Canada to impose a carbon tax on our own population, it is also foolish for us to lecture India or demand India cut their emissions (this is a key reason why technology rather than draconian economic cutbacks are how we will address climate change).

India is also a civilization unto itself.

While we talk about Western Civilization in regards to the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, India – like China – is a unique civilization with its own identity. Expecting India to align fully with the West is therefore unrealistic and counterproductive.

India slowly moves Westward

However, while India will not fully align with the West anytime soon, it is tilting more in that direction. India has not condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as vehemently as some may have wanted, but neither have they supported it.

In September of 2022, Modi shifted more towards a ‘Western’ take on Putin’s war against Ukraine, surprising many observers:

“At last week’s Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s remarks toward Russian President Vladimir Putin—upbraiding Russia’s war in Ukraine—surprised observers both in New Delhi and around the world. During their bilateral meeting last Friday, Modi said that “today’s era is not of war” and that Putin should “move onto a path of peace.” Within hours, New Delhi also voted in favor of a resolution to allow Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to virtually address the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

Both gestures marked a striking departure from the studiously neutral stance that India had previously adopted toward Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Of course, all nations act with a significant amount of self-interest in mind. India surely knows that Russia is going to remain economically isolated and military weakened for a very long time. Russia’s demographics are also brutal, with the population rapidly aging and shrinking – a process sped up by Russia’s heavy losses in Ukraine and the many who fled the country early in the war.

When it comes to trade, India has much more to gain from deepening ties with North America and Europe than they do from deepening ties with Russia.

India also recently ended their co-operation with Russia on a jointly-designed fifth-generation fighter, opting instead to focus on a made-in-India approach.

What does ‘multi-polar world’ mean?

We hear a lot about a shift to a multi-polar world in which U.S./Western power is diminished and the centre of power of the world shifts to the East.

However, people aren’t always saying the same thing when they talk about a ‘multi-polar world’, and this gets to the importance of the West strengthening ties with India.

When India talks about the multi-polar world, they generally are doing so in good faith. They are acknowledging that a world in which the United States, India, and China have a similar overall economic size will necessarily be a world in which global power is distributed and no one country can dictate everything.

But of course, by that definition the world has been multi-polar for quite a while.

The United States accounts for about the same percentage of global GDP as they did in the 1980s. The U.S. is already leaning more heavily on fellow democracies to counter China – as seen in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) which includes India, the United States, Japan, and Australia.

India also recognizes that the global order put in place largely by the United States following World War Two has been quite beneficial to India’s rise. Open shipping lanes, global trade, and relative peace are all highly desirable for an up-and-coming superpower, especially one with such deep ties to many nations and such a large and successful diaspora.

By contrast, when China and Russia talk about a ‘multi-polar world,’ they have something different in mind.

Both China and Russia think in terms of raw power and spheres of influence.

China wants to dominate Asia.

Russia want to dominate Eastern Europe.

The problem for both countries is that large portions of Asia and Europe have embraced democracy and value individual rights and freedoms, and are loath to be absorbed by a ruthless authoritarian state.

Obviously, both China and Russia want to see the United States weakened, because the United States tends to look poorly on communist dictators trying to rebuild communist empires. If the United States was out of the way, Russia would have an easier time trying to rebuild the Soviet Union, and China would have an easier time trying to take Taiwan.

When Russia and China talk about feeling ‘threatened’ by the West, what they really mean is that they are not ‘free’ to threaten and conquer their neighbours. Just as Germany in the 1930 and early 1940s demanded that the U.S. refrain from ‘interfering’ in ‘European affairs’ so they could more easily wipe out Europe’s sovereign nations, so too do China and Russia want the U.S. and the West to step back and allow the authoritarian states a free hand.

India wants a multi-polar world so they can take their rightful place as one of the world’s central nations and civilizations. Russia and China want a multi-polar world so they can be free to invade their neighbours and expand their oppressive regimes.

It’s a stark difference.

India is the key ‘swing vote’, and why BRICS doesn’t really matter

For all the talk of the BRICS taking over, there is really very little cohesion or coherence to the grouping.

For one, a common currency is a non-starter since India and China deeply oppose each other (consider China’s recent violent attacks against Indian troops on the border).

Further, Saudi Arabia is still desperate for U.S. support to counter the threat of Iran. South Africa has enough problems right now keeping the lights on to worry about reshaping the global order.

BRICS is not a military alliance, nor is it an economic alliance.

It is not even the G20 – which recently added the African Union.

Still, India’s ties to the global south, past close relationship with Russia, and deepening ties to the West all indicated that India will be the key ‘swing voter’ going forward in a geopolitical sense.

And this is where Justin Trudeau’s debacle in India comes in.

An unserious leader for a serious time

Justin Trudeau’s recent trip to India for the G20 meeting was an unmitigated disaster, and I’m not even talking about his plane getting stuck there.

In a few short days, Trudeau managed to alienate India, doing substantial damage to Canada’s geopolitical standing – a standing that has already weakened substantially as of late.

To get a sense of how bad things went, consider the following:

https://twitter.com/ryangerritsen/status/1701257291905827220

Clearly, Trudeau’s trip left a decidedly negative impression on India. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi was less than pleased with Trudeau’s lecture on foreign interference (interesting how Trudeau is so loathe to criticize China’s interference but had no problem antagonizing the democratically-elected Modi). Modi also pointed out the concern over the Khalistani movement.

The Times of India said relations between India and Canada “threaten to go into freefall” over what the paper called “unchecked Khalistani extremism in the North American country.”

When Modi mentioned this, Trudeau responded by saying Canada would defend freedom of expression and then brought up foreign interference.

Much of the media in India has criticized Trudeau’s hypocrisy, noting that he the Canadian PM has shown little interest in defending freedom of expression when it comes to Canadians protesting against vaccine mandates for example. You can see this hypocrisy discussed in the following segment that aired in India following Trudeau’s visit:

https://twitter.com/ContrarianTribe/status/1700961308940869660

And as if to further illustrate the concerns expressed by India, a large pro-Khalistan rally recently took place:

Praise China, antagonize India?

Let’s talk for a moment about how disturbing it is to see Trudeau’s willingness to claim India is interfering in Canada – something that would obviously antagonize Modi and weaken ties between Canada and India, and Trudeau’s unwillingness to confront the very real problem of Communist China’s interference in our democratic institutions.

As much as it would be great to be free of concern that Trudeau often acts in a way that benefits the Chinese Communist Party, his actions make it impossible to dismiss that concern. Yet again, Trudeau shows a deep level of support for China, and a hostility to a nation like India that has values much more in line with Canada.

Both Canada and India are democratic nations, made up of many different people, and which are constantly working – sometimes more successfully and sometimes less successfully – to integrate disparate faiths and perspectives and protect the rights of all citizens. By contrast, China is a ruthless Communist State where the government tells people what they are allowed to think and brooks no dissent.

Why pick this moment to push India further away?

Why try to obscure China’s interference in our country by throwing India into it in some sort of false equivalence?

And why – at a time when our country needs all the economic growth we can get – would we want to throw away the tremendous economic opportunity that India represents?

Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe appeared shocked – and rightfully so – that Trudeau would do something so damaging:

“Does Trudeau even understand the damage he is doing to our trade relationship with India – one of our most important trading partners?

Trade and Export Development Minister Jeremy Harrison wrote to the federal Trade Minister last Friday to explain it.”

Our allies don’t have endless patience

The absolute rank incompetence of Justin Trudeau comes at a time when our allies are losing patience with Canada:

We don’t pull our weight militarily.

We don’t utilize our natural resources to help displace Russian oil & gas.

We don’t think strategically in trying to deepen India’s relationship with the West.

We don’t take the threat of China’s interference seriously.

We don’t protect our northern territories from Russia’s arctic military expansion.

We expect all the benefits of our alliances, while being unwilling to bear any of the costs.

This cannot go on forever.

Our allies are losing patience with us, and rightfully so.

At a serious moment for the world, Justin Trudeau is a deeply unserious leader, someone who simply doesn’t have what it takes to lead this nation or enable us to achieve our full potential.

If anyone still doubted that was the case, Trudeau’s debacle in India should ensure that doubt is gone.

Spencer Fernando

Photo – Twitter

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