Will India become Ukraine?
The template for Ukraine's destruction is being played out in India. India better watch out.
The first victim of war is truth. The news, reports, tweets, and videos we see coming from Ukraine are ALL suspect. We must take all this information with a lot of skepticism, no matter which side it supports. But we can definitely analyze the facts that came out BEFORE the war. Therein are very consequential lessons FOR INDIA.
Learnings from Ukraine
The war was a culmination of various events that started with the independence of Ukraine. The crucial ones started even before Ukraine’s independence in 1991 but gained momentum since. I have distilled some of the events that happened in Ukraine into a strategy that seems eerily parallel to happenings in India.
Foreign interaction with Separatists: As the Soviet Union weakened, we find that the political parties within Ukraine developed relationships with foreign political parties and foreign governmental entities. While the goal was to further the cause for Ukraine’s freedom, what is important is the presence of network channels.
The proliferation of NGOs: After independence, we find western NGOs becoming very active. These NGOs, including those from George Soros, were ostensibly there for public service. But they did create documentation that is questionable. One of the roles was to identify prospective leaders who are sympathetic to western values. They often appear as “young leaders”, “leaders of tomorrow” etc.
Creation of social experts: The cadre comes from colleges and educational institutes almost all the time. The students are enticed by research grants, study loans, exchange programs, etc. The professors are given visibility internationally and the ideologically suited ones are branded as experts.
Creating the cadre: The “social experts” create a coterie of students around themselves. These students are groomed, tutored, and later used as the face of the campaign to share their views and opinions about lacunae in the present system. These are invariably from the social sciences. You will never find aeronautical experts, or nuclear scientists being promoted this way. If those are identified they are expatriated.
Co-opting the Press: Visiting dignitaries are used to channel favorable press cadre into stardom. Access is the currency of journalism. Those who have access become “eminent journalists”. This is the exact opposite of giving access to journalists. These “eminent journalists” get published everywhere in global media. Their brand name allows them to push an agenda that is neither factual nor pro-nation.
Leveraging the Think-tanks: Think tanks serve a very important function. They allow the social experts access to tools and global expertise to create research, books, articles, etc. that can be published globally to reinforce the “expertise”. Think tanks also help create the intellectual base for arguments against the
Connecting the network: The “eminent journalists” are then connected with newly branded “social experts” and “tomorrow’s leaders” using symposiums, seminars, and forums managed or sponsored by “think tanks”.
Pushing experts into decision-making: The “social experts” are then pushed as advisors to ministers or given ample clout to talk to ministers. If a change of government results in these experts losing their jobs, then they are accommodated in the Think Tanks.
Established politicians: Using a network of advisors, established politicians sympathetic to the agenda or at least malleable ones are identified and the ecosystem interacts with these. Using these politicians as mentors you can push the “young leaders” into the limelight.
Activating the ecosystem: The ecosystem is activated by visiting politicians and embassy staff. In the case of Ukraine, Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt were recorded planning the coup in Ukraine. The same Nuland was in India meeting the “next generation of thought leaders” in India. The system is then primed.
Flashpoint: The choice of flashpoint is critical. Ukraine had the Orange Revolution. In India, we had the CAA protest. Now a general ground-up protest (e.g. Railway protest recently) has a nub of policy trampling some legal or customary rights of the affected. The CAA protest had neither but yet it began one of the most disruptive movements in recent times. That brings me to the next issue.
Top-notch protest Organisation machinery: One of the important aspects of these protests is how organized they were. The Feb Maidan protest analysts were surprised at the presence of firewood, tents, food stalls, and other supplies in a “spontaneous” protest. In fact, even the citizen supporters of the protest were amazed at how well organized it was considering it was Ukrainian winter. Immediately, one can remember biryani kitchens, massage parlors, tents, and other infrastructure created during the CAA and Farm protests.
Protest amplification techniques: Protest branding (orange revolution, maidan uprising, umbrella movement, pink protest), is well evolved. Each protest has a rallying slogan that is evocative. CAA protest had “kagaz nahi dikhayenge”, JNU protest had “hume chahiye azaadi” and ladenge te Jitange” & “No Farmers No food” are examples. Poetry reading sessions, public addresses by ecosystem members, visits by foreign politicians, foreign office staff members, etc. are used to create headlines.
Protest Morphing: At some stage when conditions are right, there is a wider buy-in for the protest, the protest grounds are sensitive to the outbreak of violence and things can rapidly deteriorate, then the protest is accelerated. Either security forces are taunted or provoked or some loss of life happens and protests turn violent. They need to accelerate enough to result in regime change. The protest in Ukraine did flip over but protests in India did not. The JNU protests turned quite violent but subsided.
Latent Alternate Regime: An alternative regime is prearranged. This is what Nuland and Pyatt were doing in Ukraine. Once the current regime is dismantled, swiftly, this latent regime is placed in power. The regime is accepted as a temporary one by all other countries. Elections are promised and the new regime is cemented in place.
India better watchout
India has quite a few similarities with Ukraine. India borders a power that US and the West need to contain. We can envisage that, in the eyes of the West, what Ukraine is to Russia, India can be to China. Indian regime is not quite pro-West, though it has similar values as the West. India can also be termed as a future threat.
We see most of the ingredients of the “Ukraine” recipe already present and active in India. Some of the protests, the strategies in those protests, are remarkably similar. The presence of fact-averse journalists like Rana Ayub, Sadanand Dhume, Barkha Dutt, Nidhi Razdan, etc. Pseudo-intellectuals like Arundhati Roy, Amartya Sen, etc. The presence of Rahul Gandhi (less so), Kejriwal (very much more so), and Mamta is a challenge. We have Umar Khalid, Kanhaiya Kumar, and others in place.
I may seem paranoid but the presence of Nuland in India sort of shook me to the core. The expertise of regime change is quite person-specific, IMO. The first seeds of doubt were planted in my mind when the US was seeking to interact with the Indian state governments directly without the involvement of the central government.
Thankfully, India is also quite different from Ukraine in many aspects. India is a nuclear power with a huge landmass, deeper press, and constitutional machinery that is quite unwieldy even for Indians. It may seem unlikely that India may be at the receiving end of such strategies. But I suspect otherwise. Eternal vigilance is required to keep the nation we have just awakened to.