The First World refers to the USA and its Western Allies opposed to the Soviet Union after WW2. Nations characterised by democracy, prosperity, stability and progress. Over the last 7 decades this bloc has called the shots and controlled the narrative. Developing and Third World countries like India have tacitly accepted their superiority, condescending attitude and sermons without question. As an emerging power now, it is high time we shed our colonial mind-set and see the world in starkly real terms.

The game-changing ideas and policies, innovations and inventions from these western countries are richly acknowledged and warmly celebrated. But it is time to show the mirror to capture the less known darker side also. This blog has been triggered by the American debacle in Afghanistan. Recommend that you please take it with A Fistful of Salt.

Geopolitics. Think about the chaotic retreat of the US from Afghanistan after 20 years of occupation. Leaving almost 40 million Afghans (half of them female) to the mercy of a cruel and regressive regime which harks back to the medieval ages. Leaving a huge cache of deadly weapons and armaments for their ready use. Ironically, the Taliban was created by the US and their partner Pakistan to oust the Soviet troops from Afghanistan. Mission accomplished in 1989. The land of the free and the brave sponsoring and promoting a terror outfit.  The monster comes back to drive them out in 2021. During these 20 years almost $3 trillion was spent with only a miniscule going to build hospitals, schools and much needed infrastructure.  Funds were splurged on state of the art weaponry and equipment- cheered on by the domestic military-industrial complex.  With generous cutbacks going to the defence contractors and their political patrons.

This super-power also exited Vietnam in ignominy in 1974. After dropping more bombs on Vietnam and Cambodia than in the entire second world war. Napalm was deployed to execute the scorched earth policy. Rivers were poisoned to kill civilians and livestock.  History is generally written by the winners. Here the loser cleverly covered up all the war crimes and misadventures.

Turn the clock back to the late 1930’s when Hitler’s Nazis started the most devastating war in human history-WW II. Italy, Spain played willing accomplices and second fiddle to the Fuhrer. Those long, dark, destructive days and the brutal genocide of 6 million Jews have been well documented. The War ended with the Americans dropping atomic bombs- Little Boy and Fat Man- on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.

All the hotspots in recent times have had the signature of the US and its Allies. That there were no WMD’s (Weapons of Mass Destruction) did not deter the old firm of Bush & Blair from toppling Saddam in Iraq with their eyes on the oil-fields.  Syria, Lebanon, Libya and the cursed land of Yemen- the tentacles go back to this Western bloc.  This is not to absolve Russia and the regional powers like Saudi Arabia and Iran who are equally complicit. But the First World nations have left these countries to a worse state and fate than when they first invaded. The geo-political chessboard has been played for ideology, hegemony, natural resources, trade routes and military bases. The Iron Curtain fell in 1989 but today the world is still a very divided and troubled place. The First World has not been the civilising influence it credits itself to be.

Colonial powers. UK, France, Spain, Portugal with vassal states across the world. The dream of an Empire has been a recurrent human theme throughout history. But the driving force was to exploit natural resources and wealth and cheap labour in the colonies and boast of a global footprint. “The Sun never sets on the British Empire.’ The plundering of minerals and crops, cruelty towards the native population and determined efforts to uproot local cultures and traditions are not even foot notes in the history books we read. It has all been white-washed.

Slave trade epitomises how the US, UK and other European empires manned their farms and mines and mansions. Even today statues of glorified and knighted slave merchants dot the United Kingdom. Some of the founding fathers of the US of A owned hundreds of slaves. Slaves were officially traded as cargo and even insured. Claims were paid for the goods lost at sea.  But the colonisers with their rich history are quick to lecture other nations on human rights. Smells of hypocrisy, right!!

Let’s turn back the page to August 1947 and the India-Pakistan independence story. PM Attlee announced in the House of Commons that the transfer of power would happen before June 1948. But Lord Mountbatten, wanted to have it done asap. The 3323 km border line was drawn by Radcliffe, a British lawyer, who had never been to the sub-continent and had no clue about the demography. The mammoth and complex task was completed by him and his team within 2 months in the cool environs of Shimla. IMAGINE!!! It does not take hindsight to see that the additional months would have been very valuable in communicating and planning for the inevitable cross-migration of 12-15 million people. Instead a million died in the panic and violence that erupted. The last Viceroy couldn’t care less. Nor did his political masters at the Whitehall.

The USA is deeply polarised country today. The Trump fan base of 30% voters are largely an alienated tribe who are at odds with their increasingly multicultural land. The main reason why the Brexiteers won was because Russian social media manipulators scared enough of the populace through images of immigrants flooding into their nation, from the hotspots of the Middle East, Africa and Asia.  France, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands (the cradle of liberalism) are sounding the bugle of a clash of civilisations and enacting restrictive laws and social measures. But all these happenings have not been a wake-up call for India and other developing nations . We continue with our mongrel behaviour of constantly putting ourselves down and lapping whatever criticism these elite western nations and their proxies throw at us.

The beacons of democracy. On the 6^th Jan 2021 the US Capitol was attacked by an angry, vicious mob goaded on by President Trump who had lost the election and could not take it. This would have been sneered at as” a banana republic episode” in a third world country. But in the US of A the TV pundits kept sagely saying that ‘this is not who we are’ and the Trumpians even dismissed the rampaging crowd as tourists at the Capitol. The Caribbean island of Puerto Rico has been a territory of the United States since 1898 and its current President is Joe Biden. But Puerto Ricans remain second class citizens and have no representation and voting rights in the US Congress.  Again, with the most funded and militarised police force in the world in place, automatic guns are available and sold over-the –counter across the nation as a fundamental right to defend oneself.

Across continents, the patronising First World has propped up and supported despots, brutal dictators and puppet rulers. From the Shah of Iran, Libya’s Gaddafi, the Pakistani Generals, Marcos of the Philippines and so on and on. Else, a coup was orchestrated as the one to remove Allende in Chile. The UK grappled with the Irish problem for 70 years. For nearly 25 of those it was a violent cauldron of bomb attacks and guerrilla warfare- ruthlessly dealt with by the British forces. But hey, shrug, shrug. This was an internal matter of the United Kingdom and the English could deal with it.

The fault-lines of racism are now very evident in the fractured societies of the US and Europe. But these have been glossed over for decades as the developing world has been lectured on how to be civilised people. The lid has always been kept on the rape and murder of thousands of indigenous people in Canada. But now corpses of hundreds of native children have been recovered from many Catholic school sites. How many news channels carried this tragic story which played over from the 1890’s to the late 1970’s?!! PM Trudeau merely called for the Pope to apologise. Of course, the State had no role to play. News reports from France state that more than 300000 children have been abused over the last few decades by priests of the Catholic Church. The powerful Church protected its clergy from the law and order arms of the State. On the other side of the world in Australia the aborigines got a taste of hell in their own land as the white settlers discovered their paradise.

Yes, the Industrial Revolution took off in England and the technological one in the Silicon Valley. The world has benefitted in many, many ways. But not in the humane way. Many big brands in the west sourced their material and parts through sweat shops in the poorer countries.  Cheap and exploitative labour was the way to big profit margins.  Why, even in North America today, Amazon runs boot-camps with the workers having little time to pee. “Show me the Money,”  is the corporate war cry. As a whistleblower has recently revealed, Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook allowed disturbing messages and images to trend on their platforms as it made them astronomical profits. So what, if it inflamed some racial hatred and divisions or drove more suicides or even put democracy at risk. A lot of good has been done by the charitable Gates foundation. But the halo of the ultimate billionaire do-gooder has paled off. Bill Gates batted to protect the turf of big pharma at the height of Covid. Disparaging suggestions for low-cost generic vaccines to help the world battling the pandemic. And his curious association with the late sex trafficker and power broker Epstein. Presumably to help him get the Nobel Peace Prize.

In the movie ‘Wall Street’ Gordon Gekko says the famous lines, “Greed is good.” Sure. The top 1% of the US rich pay tax at a lower rate than any other segment of the society. In the rush to cover-up the origins of Covid 19 were many top scientists from Europe and the USA.  The stakes were too high. Billions of dollars for the Gain of Function research which possibly led to the leak at the Wuhan Lab in China. The 2008 US financial meltdown featured a lot of Gordon Gekko characters. Banks, Insurers, Wall Street Finance companies, housing corporates, credit rating agencies and big name audit firms all collaborating and looking the other way as the sub-prime and derivatives  fuelled crises unravelled. “Too big to fail” and the Government bailed them out. Deregulation of the financial markets from the Reagan years and lack of oversight caused the global crises. And the CXO’s walked away with fat bonuses as millions across the globe lost their jobs and pensions and savings.

The Volkswagen emission cheating scandal represented an ethical breakdown and would have shut-down a lesser Company. The German Government stepped in to bail out this auto-giant which was poised at becoming the largest in the world. High-level talks with the Americans, some big penalties and back to business as usual. What also came out was the European Union’s somewhat lax attitude in applying emission norms to vehicle manufacturers on the Continent.

Let’s come to the Panama Papers and its latest edition called the Pandora Papers. Most of the attractive tax-havens are in the West. Of course, the scenic Switzerland heads the list which has South Dakota in the US, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Lichtenstein… It’s not only the Colombian and Mexican drug lords or Russian oligarchs or the Arab Sheikhs or super-rich Indians stashing away their money through shell companies. The First World had long earned this rite of passage. It is also not surprising that the UK is a preferred destination for financial scamsters. Perhaps, the tough extradition laws appeal to these criminal fugitives. And  staying with Colombia and Mexico which are derided for their Narcos cartels. Guess which are the most lucrative markets for the drug peddlers??

We can go on and on. The corruption at the highest levels of FIFA. The systematic doping on the Tour de France. Match fixing in football at the Serie A in Italy. These are all malaises associated with ‘those other countries.’

Human nature is what it is. Power and greed corrupts and no nation or peoples are immune to it. India is a work in progress. A huge and complex nation. We have a surfeit of venal politicians and problems of poverty, un-employment, education and public health. Community and regional divides and the scourges of corruption, and casteism.  But we are only 75 years old as a nation and progress is also being made. The young generation will signal the tipping point through its confidence and aspirations.

However, to really discover its own identity India will have to work to protect and serve its interests. That is Realpolitik. Absorb good initiatives and ideas and learn from the failures and blunders. There are positive takeaways from countries in Asia, Africa, Oceania, Middle East and South America. As an emerging power, strive to be a more responsible force both domestically and on the global stage.

The bottom-line is that ideas and philosophies and policies are revisited and revamped or fine-tuned or discarded when actually challenged by ground realities. The world is changing and the struggles and evolution of each nation needs more empathy and a better understanding. The only path towards achieving the Greater Good on the planet.