China, Russia and Trump

The President of the USA is due to arrive in China today. It has been much heralded as the first great occasion when the newly enhanced President Xi will be able to demonstrate his mastery of the regime and the magnificence of the show that can be put on for Mr Trump.

In the run up to this visit, Trump has been forced to recognise that there is a very longstanding and close alliance between Russia and China. He has admitted that any plan more tightly to contain North Korea depends almost equally on the two powers that have land borders with that 'rogue state'. While China has been the main supplier of essential imports to the Pyongyang regime, Russia has also been a friendly facilitator over many years.

There is little room for doubt that both China and Russia are sorry that North Korea has developed its nuclear capabilities so far that Kim can be bombastic to the USA: and, by implication, a major nuisance to Russia and to China. On the other hand, they have noted both Trump's reciprocal bombast towards Pyongyang and his deeply ambiguous situation in regard to Russia.

As Secretary of State and as a presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton took a high moral stand on Russia's adventurism in the Ukraine, both the Donbass region and Crimea: she was a major influence on the introduction of sanctions that have affected Russia's trade and the general standard of living of the population negatively and [in a few areas] dramatically. Hence, Russia used all the covert means at its disposal [which are vast] to ensure that Trump had the best chance possible in the general election one year ago. It is very doubtful whether the mass of Russian intervention in any way swayed the election result which, like the Brexit vote in the UK, reflected the despair of swathes of US voters at the failure of the economic and social systems to maintain the American Dream in the rustbucket. The sheer originality - which the literati dismiss as the absurdity - of Trump's approach was combined with a deeply instinctive populism to grab people's attention and stimulate the enthusiasm of the 'forgotten people' in pockets right across the USA. It is noteworthy that Bernie Saunders almost hit the same note from a different pitch, in enthusing the metropolitan young: against him Hillary Clinton displayed increasingly platitudinous arrogance, shouting instead of speaking and thus diminishing any impact that her actual sentences might have achieved.

Russia and China have doubtless agreed a common approach to Trump; based on flattery interspersed with spoonfulls of bitter realism. Mr Xi will spend the next couple of days honouring and further educating the US president. President Putin will be in the same room with them in the following days at the pan-Pacific  conference, and it is there, rather than Beijing, that any new understanding on how to deal with North Korea will be agreed.

At the end of the Gorbachev years I twice made the [supposedly] direct flight from Moscow to Beijing, which each time made a heavy - unannounced - landing in Novosibirsk. This was necessary because the old Illyushin aircraft could not carry enough fuel for a non-stop journey. Both times the most conspicuous cohort of passengers were people with massive bags full of empty bags; whose business was to buy up whatever consumer goods were available from the new workshop-factories in China and take them back to Moscow in their many bags. They had a hard time with Russian customs on the way home [doubtless lessened by cash handouts when the KGB turned a blind eye] but their trade was highly lucrative. Russia has never facilitated the sort of entrepreneurial activity that enabled China to build up its balance of payments surplus with the industrial west, and is still largely dependent on China to supply the everyday manufactured goods that middle England takes for granted [and which mostly come into Britain from the emergent economies, not least China]. In exchange for this mass of imports - which are no longer imported by individual chancers as they were in the 'nineties - Russia can pay in oil and other materials; and by allowing Chinese firms to become farming contractors, mostly in the far east where the supply of Russian labour and enterprise are most thinly stretched.

Russia and China are hugely and closely inter-dependent all along the longest international border in the world. This interdependence was slightly set back by the extremities of the Cultural Revolution in China, and then by the economic chaos that followed from the collapse of the USSR. But the long northern border of Russia with China - right to the very eastern point of the Asian mainland - remains, even though other former-soviet republics now border China to the west. The two economies are even more closely symbiotic than that of Canada with the USA, and there will be no room for doubt that the briefings given to President Trump will have emphasised the point. To general surprise, 'The Donald' appears to have been paying more attention to his briefings of late than he did in his early days in office. He is to be watched, closely, over both his days in Beijing and in the ensuing wider conference. Great-power politics could well be reshaped; with North Korea as the carcass to be picked over; rather than the existential threat that it appeared to be in White House demonology just a month ago.

Revolution and Reaction in Russia

It is a fascinating aspect of human society that in the year when the two Russian Revolutions of 1917 are being remembered there is also a furious lobby of individuals who oppose the screening of a film about the life of the last Tsar before he came to the throne. In rehashing a story that has been common knowledge since the events occurred, Tsarevitch Nicholas is show in the throes of a highly-sexed  relationship with a dancer from the St Petersburg opera. He was simply doing what many of the nobility did. The story has been made into a film, whose producers hope to cash in on releasing it to coincide with the centenary of the second revolution. Unluckily for the producers, since the collapse of communism the careless disposal of the imperial family's remains has been exposed, bones from most of them have been identified [with the help of DNA from the Duke of Edinburgh: a reminder that he is a very pukka royal prince] and the Orthodox church has deemed the Tsar to be a saint; if only because he died a 'martyr's death'. The consequence is that the film - though it tells [somewhat sensationally] a true story - has been condemned as blasphemous.

For me, this incident is a perfect vignette of what has happened in Russia in the past thirty years; when those decades are set against the grim background of the previous nearly-seven decades of increasingly bankrupt Marxist-Leninist dogma in conflict with the realities of twentieth-century existence.

The March Revolution saw the abdication of the Tsar and the establishment of a Provisional Government. This group of liberal-conservative democrats struggled in vain both to establish a viable political system and to continue to fight the Germans. By this third year of the First World War Russian losses where huge, the significant capacity of Russian industry and railways had been stretched too far for too long and the soldiers were fed up of fighting under incompetent command with insufficient supplies. Mutinies were commonplace, even without the added stimulus to revolution that was added by the communists. The Germans facilitated Lenin's return to Russia, the Provisional Government recognised him as a potent enemy of their nascent state, he was able to escape arrest and begin to work with Trotsky, Stalin, Molotov and others to foment his more fundamental revolution.

The Provisional Government wanted to create a genuinely democratic republic; building up from the parliamentary institutions that the Tsar had created in 2005. Lenin was out to crush capitalism [including farming by free peasants] and recognised that the destruction of democratic institutions was a necessary step towards that end. Thus he was set to overthrow the state, capture all power for his communists and for the local trades councils - the soviets - that could be manipulated and 'educated' in Leninist dogma, and establish a pseudo-state that was wholly under the control of the party. The country descended into a half-hearted civil war. The Japanese sent troops to the Russian far east, without any particular objective, and they were later recalled home. The British sent a force to Archangel in northern Russia, but they never found sufficiently organised Russian democratic forces to align with in restoring some sort of democracy and they, too, were withdrawn.

Lenin and his gang were left to make what they could of the vast Russian empire. I will carry on with this account for a few days: at least, it will be a relief from Brexit and the collapse of UK political institutions.

Tinkering With Time

During the First World War it was considered a masterstroke to create 'daylight saving': now known as 'summer time'. The idea was copied among the combatants, and during the second such war most countries adopted it, with several opting for a period of 'double summer time' to increase the effect of shifting the clocks forward during the northern summer.

This was in a horsepowered world, where almost all factories and homes were lit by gas, as were the streets and places like railway stations. The best force in the Second World War, the German Army, suffered in Russia particularly badly because it was still reliant heavily on horsepower, and as the horses died [often to feed the under-provisioned troops] the mobility of the army was massively diminished.

At the end of the Second World War it was simply taken for granted that the annual shift to summer time, by at least one hour, was economically [and thus militarily] efficient; and summer time was carried forward all over Europe. In the few years when the date that Britain [or some other country] opted for a different date from other countries' choice to change the clocks, massive chaos was ensured. So even though Britain's clocks are one hour behind those on the continent all year, the date on which they shift to summer time is mutually agreed.

There is now a growing lobby of those who argue that with a different technological environment there is no need to retain summer time. Poland has indicated that they may opt out of the shift to summer time as early as next year. There then follows the subsidiary argument, should a fixed all-year time be based upon the present winter time, or on one [or more] hours away from that?

The UK was able to impose the Greenwich meridian as the zero point for the global navigation system, and Greenwich mean time followed as a norm for the Empire [only after the failure of a huge push from the French for the Paris meridian to be adopted]. It seems obvious to Brits that if there is to be a standard all-year time frame it should be Greenwich: after all, the mornings are brighter for more of the year that way, and street lighting nowadays is sufficient for children to get safely home after school. Farmers point out that their animals do not understand the eccentricity of humans shifting clock-time, so they have to work by GMT all year anyway.

There will be no quick resolution of the issue, even after Brexit; but it would be a relatively low-cost way of the Brexiteers emphasising the difference that quitting the EU could make; regardless of what the Poles may do.

FOOTNOTES:

1. I was not at all surprised when the 'heroes' of the Catalan independence movement scuttled off to Belgium yesterday. Their stance always seemed to be a posture; but I did not think that they would cave in so completely. People who believed in them must be hugely disappointed, especially the young. As all the opinion polls show that the minority in favour of independence is shrinking, even without the unnecessary police violence in the recently aborted 'referendum', it seems that the election this December will settle the matter, at least for a generation. In this context, the flight of the leadership should be a major turning point.

2. Equally unsurprising is the gathering news that crooks and spivs joined the Trump bandwagon last year; and some are now being arraigned. The whole campaign was an ad hoc affair: populism necessarily depends on such eclectic coalitions, and Trump himself is not necessarily damaged by the present revelations.

China's Opportunity to Defuse Trump

China - the political masters of that country, to be precise - well understands that the North Koreans' unexpectedly rapid development of nuclear weapons capability is largely their fault; or, at the very least, their default.

The 'received wisdom' in foreign ministries around the world is that China is now locked in to a crisis that it has allowed to happen. China has limited [and 'interpreted'] UN sanctions in a way that has allowed the Kim regime to survive; most notably by allowing petroleum products to enter the country. This is said to be due to China's terror at what would happen if the regime collapsed. Starvation and anarchy would be very quick results of the collapse. There is said to be a fear that in such circumstances South Korea would step in to supply the people of the north, and thus be on the way to 'reunifying' the country on a capitalist basis: which would be anathema to China, and a great shame for the president who has begun to permit the media to liken him to the [still-sacrosanct] Chairman Mao.

More likely is the scenario that the regime would be able to tighten its grip even as the cessation of food and energy supplies [in a savage winter] picked off millions of already undernourished people. In such circumstances the rhetoric against the USA, as the perceived authors of the country's misfortunes [due to sanctions], would increase: and with it the prospect of nuclear adventurism from the Kim regime. The naive narcissist in the White House has recently had his image toned down by the largely-military cohort who now surround him. With the strong assistance of the Secretary of State, he can often appear reasonable; and this makes it unlikely that in the near future he could be declared unfit to continue in office. Thus the risk of a first strike by the US increases. The recent threat by the North Koreans to detonate a hydrogen bomb 'over the Pacific' has increased the probability of disaster greatly.

Were the US to deploy nuclear weapons against North Korea [and so far they are the only power to have done this in a real war] the fallout would certainly reach China, Russia and South Korea. This prospect is imminent.

There is an obvious solution. China has facilitated the North Korean weapons programme, and done nothing effective to tame the regime: or even its rhetoric. President Xi can stand tall as a statesman comparable with [and morally much superior to] Mao, by taking drastic, swift action. China should first seal the frontier with North Korea: then send in overwhelming forces to occupy the country. As it does so, it should call on the United Nations to send in a control team to supervise the neutralisation of the nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

As soon as those conditions are met, a joint command formed by - and led by - China, comprising the permanent members of the Security Council with the other 'brics' [India, Brazil and - perhaps - South Korea] should establish the preconditions for a reformation of the North Korean state. A safe haven could be offered to the dictator, perhaps in Switzerland which he knows from his schooldays: there is no reason to believe that he is mad, and assurances of personal security might be acceptable. Of course, for as long as lives, wherever he lives, victims of his regime and their children will [understandably] wish him harm: so he will never live in secure comfort.

Such a resolution would completely overcome Trump's posturing and rhetoric. It is arguably President Xi's duty to resolve the drastic dilemma that his country's hesitancy has fostered: and it can be the basis for real greatness.

North Korea: Utter Pointlessness

Stalin argued throughout his political career that all the privations that his regime placed on tens of millions of of people, and the punishments and penalties inflicted on millions, were all necessary impositions on the route towards creating a better society than humanity had ever provided in the past. It is impossible to know how much he believed it at the successive phases of his career, but there are many metres-length of the books in which his writings and speeches were recorded, still lying in the deeper stacks of many libraries. He spent a huge amount of his time giving massive speeches, writing for the press, and producing ideological tomes: and there is good reason to believe that most of this output is genuinely his own. He was obsessively concerned that the gulags and the torture chambers served a positive purpose: and  many intelligent and able people believed him; or, at least, were prepared to acquiesce in both his regime and his ideology.

No such motivation has been claimed for the North Korean dictator, who was pictured yesterday 'inspecting' what was said to be a hydrogen bomb that was capable of being fitted into an existing model of ballistic missile. Then, within hours, seismologists were announcing that there had been an earth tremor under North Korea that was consistent with a deeply buried nuclear weapon test.

The immense achievement in such a deprived country making such weaponry is quite extraordinary. It is built on three generations of enslaving the people both physically and mentally, while the regime has steadily built up its destructive capabilities. Russia and China are two of the countries that have land borders with North Korea, so there can be no doubt that the threat of nuclear attack can apply to them as well as to South Korea. Yet it is the USA, and to a much lesser extent Japan, that are most obviously threatened, along with South Korea.

Hereditary dictator Kim III has never pretended to any idealistic objective. No attempt is made to mitigate the appalling living conditions in which his half-starved subjects are made to conduct their lives. The Chinese have continued in broad terms to support his continuance in power, as have the Russians: President Xi and President Putin would probably very much rather not have this troublesome neighbour plaguing them, but they do nothing materially to weaken him.

Diplomats and experts on world affairs, in large numbers, assert that North Korea's weapons buildup is intended to force the US [and, by implication, its dependencies and allies] to enter into talks with the regime. The object of such talks would be blackmail: Kim would [so the peaceniks say] agree somehow to 'neutralise' his weapons in return for assurances that he, and presumably Kim IV and Kim V in due course, would continue to hold his power and access the west's luxury goods for himself and his courtiers. Perpetual immunity to enjoy power, and to oppress the millions of his subjects, is an utterly squalid objective. There is no idealistic pretence about it, as there was about the Chinese cultural revolution and even Hitler's gas chambers.

This is a new step towards a deeper hell than terror states have ever achieved before. It is highly dangerous. China presumably wishes that the rogue regime had been killed off a few decades ago, but the clock cannot be turned back. The Chinese are glad that the maniac's target is the USA and not the Han mainland, but given the instability of the situation in Pyongyang, Beijing must be more acutely worried by the nuisance neighbour as his destructive capability is developed. This is a world problem; but the world's institutions do not have any answer to it: and Mr Trump is on the front line.

Doctor Fox and Free Trade

A former medical practitioner, Liam Fox PC MP, the Secretary of State for Trade, is chafing at the bit He cannot begin any substantial work towards the task that he has supposedly been given - to arrange post-Brexit trade agreements with countries outside the European Union - until it is finally decided to what extent [if any] the United Kingdom will remain in the European Economic Area after 2020. It is beginning to dawn on Mrs May that a 'hard Brexit' will be calamitous for the British economy. Far from enabling the country to hold its head high among the major powers, solitary Britain would be seen for what it is: an ill-managed struggling economy with more legacy issues than thriving new world-class companies, with a huge and growing balance-of-payments deficit and massive external indebtedness.

Nevertheless, Dr Fox is apparently buoyed-up by the dogma that free trade is a universal 'good thing'; because that is what members of the Econocracy tell him. The professors who can no longer con their more intelligent students still hold sway with the headbanging Brexiteers who seem to control the present government; partly because the sorts of things that they say make the current policy ['no deal is better than a bad deal'] seem almost rational.


In the ever-narrowing intellectual universe that the professors inhabit, inconvenient facts can simply be ignored. So they chose not to notice that the eighteenth century, when Britain pursued protectionist policies, was a period of high economic growth during which the agricultural and industrial revolutions were accomplished. The period when so-called free trade was at its peak, 1848-1914, was the age of imperialism, when European monarchies led by Britain with its globally dominant navy and Russia with its serf army conquered all of northern Asia. The European empires controlled the world, with the exception of the United States.

For every free trade agreement that now exists between countries there are hundreds of inhibitions on free trade. Smoking, alcohol and mind-changing drugs are to varying degrees controlled by law, penal taxation and religious interdiction. Health and safety laws can easily be used to control imports when a government agency chooses to use such rules to restrain some trades. 'Free trade' in sex is increasingly subject to controls and bans. Point protectionism remains a powerful tool of government, when a country slaps a tax on a competitively-priced import on the grounds that the import is too disruptive to the market for competing products made in the country concerned.

Free trade is, and always was, a fantasy; and the more democratic a country may be - in the sense that the government has to respond the the demands of statistically-important minorities of its citizens - the less chance there is of that country implementing free trade arrangements that can do damage to the economic interests of such minorities. This, and no 'ideal' of free trade preached by Econocratic professors, is the reality of the trading world; and always will remain so.

All Quiet on the Eastern Front?

A North Korean ballistic missile was fired yesterday, whose trajectory went over the centre of Japan before it was ditched in the Pacific Ocean to the east of Japan. This was a hugely provocative act: yet the Japanese stock market was unaffected by the news: the main index fell by less than 100 points,and that can be attributed to a number of minor technical adjustments within the market. There is no reason to think that the news story had an impact on the market.

Japanese ministers again mentioned the possibility of reviewing defence policy, which has been constrained since 1945 by the terms of the treaties that followed the Japanese surrender at the end of the Second World War; but no immediate action was taken.

Commentators on the world's stock markets have felt the need to comment on this lack of any response in the level of stock and share prices to a significant demonstration of the rogue state's rapidly developing power to attack its neighbours, which is regarded as, a side-issue to its plan to develop the capability to attack the continental USA. The general view is that the main markets [in the the Americas, in Europe including the UK, and in Asia] are all in a euphoric condition, carried ever-forward by the massive creation of 'money' by the central banks over the past decade. The cautious withdrawal of the policies by which the capitalist system was 'saved' in 2008-9, by the US Federal Reserve over recent months has not affected that highly positive set of conditions for dealers and players in the global market.

Two other factors are in play. The first is, that if there were to be any direct action by the USA or by any other threatened power against North Korea the consequences would be calamitous and totally unpredictable. The possibilities of a thermonuclear response by North Korea to an attack by the US Air Force, using high explosives in an attempt to destroy buried facilities are so enormous that nobody can assess the effects that would ensue: so the possibility cannot be factored in to stock market price adjustments. The second factor is that governments in the region appear to assume that the Chinese have the power forcibly to 'discipline' North Korea, and would use it, if they judged that the situation really needed it.

Inevitably, it has already been announced that the United Nations Security Council will meet this afternoon, for another session of tut-tutting and to allow the main players to make their positions even clearer and for the North Koreans to say - as ever - that they do not care what the UN says or does.

North Korea has land borders with South Korea, China and Russia. North Korea was created by Stalin's USSR, before the Peoples' Republic of China was established. The position of Russia in relation to North Korea is no less important now than it was in 1950 at the time of the Korean War. Though Chinese troops rather than Soviet forces actually entered the land war, the supplies for the Communist side came from the USSR. It is inconceivable that Mr Putin is not hugely influential in Pyongyang, though the connection is downplayed in the public discussion of the matter; and lazy commentators have taken the view that the North Korean dictator pays little attention to Russia. It will be very important to take note of exactly what the Russian delegate says in the Security Council today: the nuance will matter. The state of US-Russian relations is important in what happens in North Korea, and pretty well the whole of the US political system is in a dangerously anti-Russian frame of mind at present. This does not play out in the calculations of the world's stock markets, but it is a factor not to be forgotten

Intellectual Property and Point Protection

Patents were invented in Europe, specifically in Monarchical France, and the concept was taken up enthusiastically around the continent. During the eighteenth century, France was way ahead of the UK in the number of patents registered; but by 1800 a clear difference was emerging: while most patents were never to make much money for their owners, some patents - notably British patents - were massively generative of wealth because they were fundamental to the change that was sweeping the United Kingdom into the predominant position in the process that was soon to be called 'the industrial revolution'. Then, into the nineteenth century, the process that led to the unification of Germany ran in parallel with the industrialisation of key areas in that territory; most notably in the Ruhr and Saxony, and around Hamburg and Bremen; and German industrialisation was accompanied by a flurry of patents that included an increasing proportion that were based on methodical research.

The United States developed as a group of former British and French colonies, with a significant proportion of German-speaking settlers helping to drive industrial growth in that vast continent. For a considerable period there was considerable piracy of European intellectual property in the emergent economy of the United States; and eventually the US legislature recognised the good sense of mutual protection of industrially valuable intellectual property [simply because, if the US stole from others, others could steal from them: and thus they could undermine each other]. But, even then, copyright in literature, drama and art seemed less important - especially in the context of US law which was designed to make the acquisition of information and education as cheap as possible - so such property was to be protected mutually much later; hence arose Charles Dickens' famous endeavours to get his new output into the hands of  American readers before all the revenue was lost to pirates.

There are pseudo-scientific explanations as to why the UK and Germany, in particular among European states, have been prolific in inventing useful things and processes; but those theories do not explain why the USA has been at least equal to the European leaders in invention and innovation. The Great Exhibition in London in 1851 was meant to show the British people and the rest of the world the range and brilliance of British industrial output, and [to a certain extent] it did: but it also shocked the British visitors to see how sophisticated and clever the French, German and American innovations were. Britain was still primarily an agricultural country in 1851, and most of the urban population had only recently moved into town and still had links to the countryside: so to a huge proportion of the million or so Brits who walked round the Exhibition the most amazing device on display was the McCormick Reaper from the USA. The great plains of the USA were beginning to be prepared to grow crops, and the sort of mechanisation that the reaper represented showed how the American farmers would be able to undercut labour-intensive European suppliers of the principal cereal crops without needing to wait for a mass of immigrant labourers. One of the bizarre side-issues to emerge from the conversations that were driven by the perceived shift in the balance of advantage from Europe to America [and, to a much lesser degree, to Australia] was that Russia remained a peasant economy: the development of that vast empire would have been utterly transformed if the same extensive mechanised farming were to be installed there as in the USA. Russian peasants were still enslaved as serfs in 1851, and the Cossacks roamed free over the future wheatlands. The potential short-cut to massive advancement and wealth was not taken up.

Over the decades since 1851, Britain, Germany and the USA have remained the global leaders in invention and innovation: France and the low countries have been in the league too, but the dominant three have remained in the lead. And now the UK is going through the throes of implementing the decision to leave the protectionism of the European Union; and there is frequent mention of the notion that Britain can 'go it alone' with a hotch-potch of free-trade agreements with other countries: notably China and India, and maybe Brazil, alongside the USA. As the strongly emerging economies develop their industrial capability, they know that the mutual protection of patents will become ever more important. Chinese goods can simply be frozen out of the US and the EU if they are produced in breach of patent: so it is in the interests of the Chinese economy that the state becomes more and more forthright in protecting foreign patents.

On quite different grounds, the major economic blocks can close their markets to specific Chinese exports - or slap punitive tariffs on them - if Chinese exporters try to 'dump' that output in export markets at less than the cost-price of making the equivalent in the receiving country. Raising such barriers is what I have called point protectionism. Big economies, or economic communities, can retaliate against each other if they believe that point protectionism is unfairly being applied against them. This is a powerful tool in the armoury of each major economy. An isolated Britain will not have adequate leverage to apply against the emerging mass economies that might infringe British patents or apply unfair point protectionism against the UK. This is the decisive reason why the crazy Tory Brexiteers must be exposed for what they are, now. The European Union stinks, from the Parliament to the Commission to the Court; the UK must get as far away from those institutions as is feasible; while remaining in the necessary protection of the economic community.

BRICS Ascendant

Readers of most Newspapers in the postindustrial economies, and the wider spectrum of society that half-notice news headlines on television and radio, have been left unaware of the fact that the last days of March produced major news in the field of Political Economy, from Delhi. A meeting of the Heads of Government of China, India, Brazil, Russia and South Africa disappointed US and EU delusionists who hoped that major areas of disagreement - and different perceptions of their national interests - would cause this group of countries [commonly called the BRICS] to come to no practically-useful agreements. They instead issued their Delhi Declaration summarising a developing shared view of the state of the global economy, an increasing frustration with the unfairness of the nineteen-forties institutions that regulate world affairs [insofar as such matters are regulated], and a shared determination to gain appropriate recognition for their group - and for its members individually - in global institutions.

Their importance in the global economy has already gained recognition as a fact, as more of the goods in a typical European or American hardware store are marked as having been made in some of those countries; and oil, crops, minerals and other 'primary products' from those sources are increasingly important. China has gained control of the global market in 'rare earths' as well as a massive market share in simple manufacturing. Indian firms control globally renowned brands of high-quality cars and have exported their software building and managing skills into the highest technology laboratories and factories worldwide. Brazil is increasingly gaining respect for the balance between sectors that is being achieved as it grown rapidly. Despite the threat to economic stability that is posed by Zimbabwe-style pressure to dispossess 'white' firms and farms that comes from the 'left' of the ruling party, South Africa has managed to display economic data that currently justify their membership of the club. Enemies stress the weaknesses of Russia - declining population, oligarchy, corruption, the failure to establish 'real democracy' and the dubiety of the rule of law - but the combination of military strength and natural resources that always provided the basis for Tsarist power is still enough to ensure the global significance of the biggest country on the planet.

The Delhi group asserted that half of the world economic growth that is forecast for the next few years will take place in those countries. When 'the west' was in the lead, its Economists and politicians extolled their role as 'the locomotive' for the world economy: the concept has quietly been forgotten now that the BRICS can claim to be the motive forces for the present era. The most influential of the post-war institutions, the International Monetary Fund [IMF], was structured to serve the victorious wartime allies and even after many revisions to reflect changes in the world [and much weakening of the role of the US dollar] the EU together has 36% of the votes, the US still has 17%, and the BRICS together have just 11%: while their turnover is 28% of the global economy [and rising quickly as the west stagnates]. The Delhi assembly criticised this, demanded a reorganisation of the United Nations, and especially of the permanent seats on the Security Council, to reflect the shift in power. The rigidity of the World Bank - and the probability that yet another American would become its chairman - led to the BRICS examining the possibility of creating a South-South Development Bank through which they could lend money to each other and their emergent-country clients.

If the old-world institutions do not open themselves to recognition of the shift in the basic facts of Global Political Economy, they will compel the BRICS to set up their own parallel institutions: and the potential of global institutions to foster Peace among the Nations, which was promised to the whole world by the victors of 1945 - which included China and Russia and Imperial India - will be vitiated. The BRICS have the resources and the ability to go their own way: within the first half of the present century the Chinese and Indian economies will both be larger than the American. If these powers are not welcomed with due respect into the global institutions, the postindustrial countries will be much the loosers.

Old Allies

The generally negative view that is taken of Queen Mary I of England - "Bloody Mary" [Tudor] - does not readily accommodate the range of her interests and activities. My own perspective on her reign was dramatically developed in the still-communist Moscow Kremlin when I saw a magnificent exhibit of English silver, diplomatic gifts from the Queen to the then obscure and isolated emergent state of Muscovy. English navigators had made their way to the northern port of Murmansk, then Russia's only outlet to the seas. Mary's sister and successor Elizabeth intermittently pursued trade and alliance with Russia; while ducking a marriage proposal from Ivan the Terrible. The travails of British politics in the first half of the seventeenth century weakened the political aspect of the interaction, but that did not inhibit the development of the 'English village' outside the walls of Moscow. The inhabitants of that settlement represented the first 'window to the west' that was accessible to the young prince, then co-Tsar Peter.

When Peter manoeuvred himself into the sole sovereignty, and had established his autocracy absolutely on the state, he travelled west to test the tales that he had heard of western society, civilisation and - above all - technology. He visited all the major west-European states, and spent long enough in each to gain an image of its military preparations and its specialist skills in science and manufacturing. In several cases he demanded to be put through a crash apprenticeship in a skill that appealed to him; in between talks with monarchs and challenging private seminars with such luminaries as Isaac Newton. Besides huge height and outrageously greedy manners [for experiences, food, drink and sex] he impressed everyone with his intelligence and his grasp of concepts.He returned to Russia stuffed with data, plans and the ambition to make Russia an advanced western power. Successful military action secured him a toehold on the Gulf of Finland, and there on a collection of sandy islands he set about building a great capital city. St Petersburg  was typically described as Peter's 'window to the west' but more importantly he saw it as the exemplar for what he hoped to make the whole of Russia. Right down to the Revolution of 1917, though it grew as a European city [albeit with an extreme climate and a restrictive police regime] of great distinction.

Trade and technology transfer with Britain, and west Europe generally, remained very important to imperial Russia; but a specific and unique role for Britain arose when Tsar Alexander I split from Napoleon's hegemonic European empire and reopened the Tudor route from Britain to the Russian northern ports. Wellington and Kutusov defeated the French and their satellites starting from two corners of Europe, and they eventually met in conquered Paris. The obvious synergy of Britain and Russia wore thin during the 'great game' when Russia advanced its frontier through central Asia towards Afghanistan, where the British Raj in India repeatedly failed to capture control. The absurd Crimean war was the only open conflict between the two and by 1900 Russia and Britain were moving towards an alliance to stem the perceived Napoleonic ambitions of the Kaiser, who was a first cousin both the the Tsar and King George V. The war undermined the monarchy and Russia passed into the purgatory of 'permanent revolution' which was interrupted by the second world war.

The old alliance of convenience [and necessity] was reactivated for the war period, then was quickly abandoned in the cold war. Since the collapse of communism Britain has been at best half-hearted in its attempts to develop effective links with the Russian Federation. Some British firms including  farm management companies have done very well in Russia, as have  relatively few providers of financial services: but the British government has been overcautious in its engagement with  the regime. This is stupid. Incidents where Russian agencies have acted in a pre-liberation manner against opponents of the regime on British soil have been outrageous and demand a powerful reaction: but not self-harming, po-faced  isolationism. Putin is going to win the forthcoming election, and it will be a genuine result from a flawed system. Whether he will thereafter undermine his position by megalomaniac self-advertisement, or learn to present himself in a more statesmanlike manner, will be more important to the British press than it should be to the Foreign Office.

It is worth reflecting that democracy has been economically disastrous for Britain; while Putin and his cronies have stabilised the chaos to which their predecessors had brought the country as Boris Yeltsin sank into alcoholic incomprehension.Western Economists had applied their naive models of markets to the crisis of the economy that Gorbachev had been unable to rescue. Privatisation was a disaster: at first. It enabled sharp elbowed fixers to become the 'oligarchs' who personally controlled huge industries and agglomerations of financial power. Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Putin worked out a unique route to controlling their firms in the public interest. To take the businesses back into soviet-style state control would be a disaster: the Gorbachev experience proved that. To nationalise them and re-sell them could either be a re-run of the Yeltsin disaster or hand the facilities over the foreign corporations. So it was preferable to make the oligarchs keep control - and responsibility - for huge industries; and lock them in to the state. Some have been required to serve as provincial governors, some in other state service; some have been allowed to live abroad provided their firms conform to government requirements; and the recalcitrant few who challenged the system have been deprived of their assets and in some conspicuous cases of their liberty.

It is not a pretty system; it is not democratic in the 'Anglo-Saxon' sense; but it serves its purpose. Russia can build nuclear power plant: by contrast Britain sold Westinghouse and refused a modest loan to Forgemasters. Russia can design and build military aircraft; Britain takes a diminishing role in precarious international projects and has destroyed the independent civil aviation sector. Russia can build warships and submarines: so can Britain - now - but that capability is under threat. Russia develops its plant in steel, aluminium and other sectors; alien owners are reducing the capacity of their shrunken British equivalents. Russian organisation and management are still crude and inefficient; but business education and management training are spreading rapidly. The educational system is conservative, but young adults are highly literate, articulate and numerate; as are graduates over the whole age spectrum. Pensions are modest, but pensioners are protected and caring interpersonal relationships predominate. Alcoholism is a national crisis and the low birth rate is a cause of alarm. Medical facilities need massive investment and the training of appropriate staff: but everything in slowly and patchily improving. Everybody knows what destruction communism wrought; and they also know how ruinous their crash-course in market capitalism was: they did not starve under post-war communism, but millions came close to that in 1991-2.

The British people is instinctively reluctant to surrender sovereignty to a 'Napoleonic' European Union. When asked 'what is the alternative to subjection in the EU?' there are several potential responses: a return to Commonwealth preference, maybe: or membership of an 'outer circle' of the European Common Market, around the core Union, with Norway, Switzerland, Russia: and maybe Turkey. That prospect is as promising as subjugation to the EU is unpalatable.