THIS August 6, 80 years after the first use of the atom bomb against a section of humanity, reminds us all of the inhumanity of nuclear weapons and the threat to all human lives. But this year, we have to address two new questions. Does the dominant section of the US strategic establishment under President Trump believe that the nuclear weapons are usable and a nuclear war can be won?

THE US tech war on China continues, banning Chinese equipment from its network, and asking its 5-Eyes partners and NATO allies to follow suit. It is a market and a technology denial regime that seeks to win back the market that the US and European countries have lost to China.International trade assumed that goods and equipment could be sourced from any part of the world. The first breach in this scheme was the earlier round of US sanctions on Huawei last year, that any company that used 25 per cent or more of US content has to obey the US sanctions rules.

TRUMP’s decision to withdraw from WHO is a continuation of his wielding a wrecking ball to the international framework of treaties and organisations. Whether it is arms control treaties, climate change, trade and now WHO, the US sees these agreements and institutions as fetters on its hegemonic powers to shape the world. Trump may express this pathology in its most ugly form, but the disease runs far deeper.Trump’s excuse for withdrawing from WHO is that it did not do its job well on the Covid-19 epidemic and was soft on China.

AS part of the Rs 20 lakh crore economic stimulus package announced by the government supposedly to boost the Covid-impacted economy, the finance minister declared that all sectors of the economy would henceforth be open for the private sector, and that public sector undertakings (PSUs) would work mainly in strategic sectors and would be privatised in others.

WITH more than 3.5 lakhs infected with Covid-19, India is already among the top four countries in the world affected by the pandemic. But that is not all. When we look at a pandemic, we need to look at not just the total infected, but the speed with which the infections are spreading.  India now has the third highest number of daily deaths and new cases, again confirming the speed at which the Covid-19 pandemic is moving in the country. This is unlike other countries, where lockdowns flattened the curve, and then brought down the number of new infections.