June 3, 2023

In previous blog ‘unwritten rules in politics – Part 3’, we saw two rules viz ‘Own Interest and Own Public Interest’, ‘Quid-Pro-Quo’. Now in this blog ‘Unwritten rules in Politics – Part 4’ we will see next 3 rules in politics. I have tried to simplify it through examples. This will be helpful for the youth studying history or politics. Do comment below to let me know how was the blog and any improvement or suggestion that you have. Very few times, some political relations are so strong that they forego any personal/social/economic interest. For example, Great Britain and the USA. With very minimal restrictions or minimal political profits they have become strong allies. India and Russia. With greater advantage to India and some important economic/social/strategic advantage to Russia, both the countries are strongly supporting each other. If they aren’t supporting, at least not opposing each other. Example, Russia Ukraine war. India is not supporting Russia but despite the global pressure is on, India is not condemning Russia either. India says, “war is not the solution. War can be stopped by having dialogues.” Of course, global pressure is one sided and not ethical many times. We will discuss the same in the coming blogs. Some of the best allies in the world are, NATO, UNO, IMF, World Bank etc. Though these are the strong allies, these are created with an intention e.g. NATO is North Atlantic Treaty Organisation created by countries near to north Atlantic ocean and some countries are from Europe. Over all 56 countries are part of it. It is created for smoothening the trade, defence, defence equipment sale etc. But main motto is to counter the attack from any giant country like Russia.  Because its article 5 defines that an attack on any of the member countries of NATO will be termed as an attack on all NATO countries. So, any or all the countries will collectively attack the attacking country. Now you can imagine, Poland is a NATO country. If it was not member of NATO, and someone attacks Poland, imagine that country cannot even survive for over 6 months’ time. So, with a view to survive and improve economic activities NATO becomes important for Poland. So, there is nothing like strong allies but are actually rules mentioned in the entire blog series. Allies are created for catering personal interests. Interests over, Allies may also get over. It is better to stay with allied countries than staying in isolation. Allies at lease boosts morale, economic activities, power etc. This is another unwritten rule many countries are using to preserve their own interest. While they are saving their personal or public interest, but will pressurize others for achieving their interest. Example, in Russia Ukraine war, Russia has upper hand and Russia is also enemy for many western world countries especially NATO. Now to save funding to fuel the war all western world, imposed hundreds of sanctions. And they were expecting the same from other parts of the world as well, especially from India and China. However, the western world only put pressure on India but did put the same on China. Why? Are they afraid? Do they feel India can be pressurized easily, not China? But at the same time, it was very easy to put pressure on India? Because India is largest democracy, oppositions are also anyway trying to put their own country down for any reason. May be oppositions are doing so because they were away from parliament chairs for one decade. Is western world taking advantage of the same to put pressure on India? Who is western world to pressurize the whole world? Biggest Irony is, EU, GB, USA all were buying the oil from Russia but using different routes, EU was straightway buying gas from Russia for winter. In Germany, people protested and government had to rethink and cancel the decision of not buying gas from Russia. All this is just in time of Russia Ukraine war. It is clearly like “if we are doing that’s fair, but if others are doing that’s unfair” I remember childhood fights looking at EU and other western world’s approach. Most of the world nowadays is two trunked Elephant. What does that mean? They will say something else but do something different. Meaning show piece will be master piece but sale piece will be defective/low quality. Take the same above example where western world was warning not to fuel the war.  Especially not to fund Russia by buying anything from them, not to provide arms and ammunitions etc. But the same western world was funding the same war by providing weapons to Ukraine, buying gas and oil products directly or indirectly from Russia. This is called ‘Two Trunked Elephant”. Same western world was putting pressure on India but same world was taking very good care of their own county’s interest. When India was serving the interest of the nation, suddenly world started calling India as “intolerant, Indian PM as ‘Tanashah’ (dictator)”. Suddenly corporate world started commenting on India’s economic collapse, how Indian companies doing frauds. How Indian government failed to monitor finance sector etc. Another Irony was that at the same time one US bank collapsed SVB (Silicon Valley Bank). Plus, Credit Suisse was about to collapse but UBS luckily took over CS. But no one greatly noticed it as western’s failure in monitoring financial sector. At the same time none of Indian bank or corporate was insolvent. That’s the beauty of this rule. Pressure others and gain significant interest or put weird comments on other nations. Pressure others to hide one’s failure. Show one face but beneath hide another face.