Comment by Riaz Haq on February 3, 2022 at 7:14am

#US @StateDept Spokesman Ned Price: “Pakistan is a strategic partner of the United States. We have an important relationship with the government in Islamabad, and it’s a relationship that we value across a number of fronts” #India #Pakistan #China https://indianexpress.com/article/world/china-pakistan-rahul-gandhi...

The United States does not endorse Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s comment that China and Pakistan are closer than ever due to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ineffective policies, US State Department spokesperson Ned Price said Thursday.

Price was answering a question about Gandhi’s comments in the Lok Sabha Wednesday.

Price was further asked if Pakistan and China have become closer because “they feel abandoned” by the US.

“We’ve made the point all along that it is not a requirement for any country around the world to choose between the United States and China. It is our intention to provide choices to countries when it comes to what the relationship with the United States looks like. And we think partnership with the United States conveys a series of advantages that countries typically would not find when it comes to the sorts of partnerships that – “partnerships” may be the wrong term; the sorts of relationships that the PRC has seeked to – has sought to have around the world,” he replied.

“Pakistan is a strategic partner of the United States. We have an important relationship with the government in Islamabad, and it’s a relationship that we value across a number of fronts,” added the spokesperson.

Pakistan’s alliance with China has grown considerably in the past few years, with China investing billions of dollars in the strategic Gwadar Port in Balochistan province. The two countries have also been among the few nations to call for international engagement with the Taliban government in Afghanistan following a botched US-led exit of Western forces from Kabul in August 2021.

Comment by Riaz Haq on February 24, 2022 at 8:17am

#Pakistan PM #ImranKhan holds over 3-hour-long meeting with #Russian President #Putin in #Moscow. The two leaders discussed #Islamophobia, #Afghanistan, bilateral, regional, and #SouthAsian issues, #economic cooperation, other "important matters". #gas https://www.geo.tv/latest/401228-putin-to-meet-imran-khan-in-three-...

Prime Minister Imran Khan Thursday held a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss wide-ranging matters.

The president and the prime minister's meeting lasted for more than three hours, during which they discussed Islamophobia, Afghanistan, bilateral, regional, and South Asian issues, among other "important matters", the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The joint statement of the meeting will be released shortly.

PM Imran Khan arrived in Moscow on a two-day official visit yesterday, where he was received at the airport by Russia's deputy foreign minister and presented with a guard of honour at the airport.

PM Imran Khan also had to discuss economic cooperation between the two countries, hours after a number of Western nations hit Russia with new sanctions for its military deployment into parts of eastern Ukraine.

The premier was set to push for the construction of a long-delayed, multi-billion-dollar gas pipeline to be built in collaboration with Russian companies, an official told Reuters.

The 1,100 km (683 miles)-long pipeline, also known as the North-South gas pipeline, was initially agreed to in 2015 and was to be financed by both Moscow and Islamabad, using a Russian company to construct it.

After the meeting with President Putin, PM Imran Khan met Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak.

In an interview ahead of his trip, PM Imran Khan had expressed concern about the situation in Ukraine and the possibility of new sanctions and their effect on Islamabad's budding cooperation with Moscow.

It is unclear how the latest sanctions will affect the project, which would deliver imported Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) from Karachi on the Arabian Sea coast to power plants in Punjab.

FM Qureshi meets Russian counterpart
Separately, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov discussed important regional and global issues amid the Moscow-Kyiv crisis.

During the meeting, Pakistan and Russia reaffirmed their commitment to further strengthen bilateral relations, with FM Qureshi assuring his counterpart that Islamabad gives importance to its relationship with Moscow.

"Pakistan attaches special importance to bilateral relations with Russia [...] relations between Pakistan and Russia have gradually strengthened," FM Qureshi said while speaking on the occasion.

The foreign minister said Pakistan is pursuing the agenda of promoting economic priorities and regional ties under the vision of PM Imran Khan.

The two leaders discussed important regional and global issues, including bilateral relations, enhancing cooperation in areas of mutual interest.

Later, Lavrov congratulated FM Qureshi and Pakistani leadership for successfully conducting the extraordinary Organisation of Islamic Cooperation's (OIC) Council of Foreign Ministers session on Afghanistan.

The Russian foreign minister also expressed best wishes regarding the upcoming meeting of the OIC Council of Foreign Ministers in Islamabad next month.

Comment by Riaz Haq on March 22, 2022 at 6:07pm

#US Undersecretary Victoria Nuland: ‘#Russia-#China axis not good for #India… US can help (India) with defense supplies’. #Modi #BJP #Nuland #Ukraine https://indianexpress.com/article/india/russia-china-axis-not-good-... via @IndianExpress

FRAMING the Russia-China alliance over Ukraine as a debate between democracies and autocracies, visiting US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland told The Indian Express Wednesday that US was ready to help India move away from dependence on Russia for defence supplies. Excerpts from an exclusive interview:

On the Russia-Ukraine crisis, how do you read India’s statements?

We had very broad and deep conversations (Nuland met External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and her counterpart Harsh Vardhan Shringla) about what’s in this war. Unfortunately, Indian students got trapped, and they were able to get out, but unfortunately one Indian lost his life which was very tragic.

The Chinese Vice Foreign minister drew a parallel between NATO’s eastward expansion in Europe and the Quad in the Indo-Pacific.

Obviously, China is trying to seek an advantage for itself in this conflict, as it always does. But again, what threatens China most: open and free societies who offer their people a different way of life than the Communist party of China offers for Chinese people.

So NATO is a defensive alliance, of voluntary alignment of countries who asked to join together to defend themselves. In the Indo-Pacific strategy, we are talking about the great democracies of the region, working together to protect themselves and to advance prosperity, and free and open commerce and navigation and all of these things. All of the things that the autocrats want to change, want to threaten. So I’m not surprised that the Chinese are trying to draw parallels here. Because, in both cases, we’re talking about trying to keep the world free for democratic governance.

Who is a bigger threat — Russia or China?

The worry now is that they intensify their efforts together. They learn from each other, whether it is how to coerce a neighbour economically, or militarily. Whether it’s about how to go in the UN system and undercut the rules of the road that the US, India and other democracies have built to favour freedom. Whether it is that they let each other off the hook by financing each other’s militaries.

All of these things are worrying. But I also think that this is an energizing moment for the democracies, because now we see very clearly what we are up against.

Comment by Riaz Haq on March 31, 2022 at 7:39pm

The #Hindu Right is turning against the #US. Until a few years ago, #Modi Bhakts were largely pro-US. Now, Joe #Biden is seen as antagonistic — if not to #India, then to the sort of India that Modi’s supporters want to create. #Hindutva #Islamophobia https://theprint.in/opinion/the-hindu-right-is-turning-against-the-...


By VIR SANGHVI


Even while the war in Ukraine rages, however, we should be asking ourselves deeper questions. A few days ago, at the ABP Ideas of India Summit in Mumbai, I interviewed Fareed Zakaria. Fareed’s view was that over the last decade or so, India has become so inward-looking and obsessed with its own issues and divisions that it has not spent enough time thinking about its place in the world, going forward.

While we have been obsessed with headscarves and caste arithmetic, the world has rearranged itself. No matter what happens in Ukraine, Russia will come out of the war damaged. If it makes peace, then some of the sanctions imposed on it by the West may be moderated but it seems unlikely that Putin’s Russia will become a full-fledged member of the global economy for a long time.

In that case, it will have no choice but to move into the Chinese sphere of influence. One scenario sees Russia as a classic vassal state of the Chinese, supplying energy and raw materials to feed the Chinese military machine and its industrial complex. Pakistan and China are longstanding allies, so we will probably see the emergence of a Russia-China-Pakistan alliance.

India will then have two choices. Either we agree to accept China’s suzerainty over the East. Or we look for other options.

Should we choose the second path (and I imagine we will have to), then there really is nowhere to go but the West. At present, the West understands how India is constrained by its dependence on Russian weaponry. But in the long run, it will expect a greater measure of alignment. Is that something we have considered? Or are we too blinded by the rhetoric about anti-Hindu America and hypocritical Washington?

Sooner, rather than later, we will have to rescue reality from the rhetoric.

Comment by Riaz Haq on April 1, 2022 at 7:43am

Arif Rafiq
@ArifCRafiq
The chairman of an Indian think tank affiliated with the RSS — the parent group of India’s ruling BJP — floats the possibility of an India-Russia-China axis:

https://twitter.com/ArifCRafiq/status/1509880440932478982?s=20&...
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Ukraine crisis: The war that is changing relations, rules
S Gurumurthy, Chairman, VIF



https://www.vifindia.org/article/2022/march/28/ukraine-crisis-the-w...

The Ukraine war seems to have dented the US global leadership in more than one sense. First, it has delivered the most telling message that the US can’t protect its own protégé. Next, that it had to solicit a virtual meeting between Biden and Xi Jinping (XJP) to get China to the US side or to end the war itself, exposed its weakness. Donald Trump would perhaps have handled Russia and Ukraine differently, not allowed China to be the proverbial monkey between two tigers, the US and Russia.

Anyway the two-hour talk Biden had with XJP did not go well for him. XJP reportedly snubbed Biden saying “those who tied the bell to the tiger must untie it,” clearly blaming NATO for the war. XJP used the talk to advance China’s claim to be equal to the US, saying they should jointly shoulder “international responsibilities” for world peace and tranquility. According to a Chinese report, XJP seems to have said that one hand cannot clap, suggesting that NATO should have a dialogue with Putin and address his security concerns, implying NATO expansion as the issue. XJP, of course, has also spoken in support of the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states. He seems to have insisted on bringing the China-US ties under turmoil over a host of issues, including Taiwan, Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Tibet, on “right track” — something completely beyond the agenda of Biden on that day.

The US media had reported that Biden threatened XJP. On the contrary, he seems to have got snubbed. Biden’s effort to wean China away from Russia has failed at the minimum. If this is what the US got from China, The Wall Street Journal reported that Saudi Arabia and the UAE declined calls from Biden to ease oil prices unless the US supported them in Yemen and elsewhere. Arab allies of the US have refused to toe its line. Israel did criticise the Russian attack but its stand was so nuanced as not to take the side of the West. Turkey’s position is identical to Israel’s.

Al-Jazeera even sees a strong alliance between Russia and UAE. Another collateral setback to the US is Syrian president Assad’s visit (after 11 years) to UAE about which the US could only lament that it was “disappointed and troubled”. Syria and Russia are close. On top of it all, Saudi Arabia, whose oil has been priced in US dollars for five decades, is considering pricing it in Yuan for sales to China. One more important development. The Chinese foreign minister was invited for the first time to the meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. These are not ordinary developments. The Ukraine war has undoubtedly eroded US influence over even its allies.

---------

China and India have had border clashes for the last two years. Surprisingly, its foreign minister Wang Yi is visiting Delhi on March 25 — a significant development. India’s independent position on Ukraine is itself a message to China that India would withstand US pressure. If it can lead to some trust and understanding between China and India on the borders, that can pave the way for an informal Russia-China-India axis for future. Naftali Bennett, the Prime Minister of Israel, a US ally, is making a four-day long visit to India in April first week at the invitation of “his friend” Indian Prime Minister Modi. India is boldly going ahead with the purchase of Russian oil amid US sanctions on Russia.

Comment by Riaz Haq on April 1, 2022 at 7:43am

Ukraine crisis: The war that is changing relations, rules
S Gurumurthy, Chairman, VIF



https://www.vifindia.org/article/2022/march/28/ukraine-crisis-the-w...

-----


Having pushed Ukraine into war, the US does not know how to save it. Having started it, Russia does not know where to end it. Having been pushed into the war, Ukraine does not know how to come out of it. It accuses its adversary Russia saying it is an invader and charges that its friends are betrayers. The UN Security Council keeps on meeting without any result. The global TV network for which the war is a reality show, a boon, keeps demonising Russia and valourising Ukraine. What the desperate Ukraine needs is a ceasefire. It is running from pillar to post — from India to Turkey to France, to Israel, to Japan — pleading with them to talk to Putin for a ceasefire. Everyone is talking to everyone else.


--------

Though India has not voted for Russia, it has taken a firm position on the discovery of a bio-weapon facility in Ukraine funded by America. And America, despite loosely calling India shaky on the Ukraine war, has not applied the CAATSA law to stop the sale of Russia’s missile system to India. Undoubtedly, the Ukraine war diplomacy has shown India’s rising stature. The greatest tribute to India’s policies came from the most unlikely of quarters, Pakistan. Praising India’s foreign policy as free and independent, Prime Minister Imran Khan said, “India is allied with America and is part of the Quad alliance and yet it is neutral on Ukraine, imports oil from Russia despite US sanctions, because its policy is oriented to the betterment of its own people.”

Shift away from the dollar?
The war’s collateral impact may be on the US dollar and the global financial order itself. With the dollar-based globalisation already under stress, the role of the greenback in the global financial system may decline. The dollar power enabled dominance of the financial economy over the real economy, particularly the commodity economy. The US sanctions which are bound to affect the Russian oil sale, may also affect the US dollar.

The strength of the US dollar depended, said two Harvard economists in 2006, not on the laws of economics but on the laws of physics, which said a dark matter sustains the universe. The dark matter which sustains the dollar value, they said, is the insurance that the US system and geopolitical power provides to the dollar. That insurance is what is under stress since 2008. With the rise of Asia and China, the US dollar cannot be said to continue to have the same insurance value. The share of USD in the global forex reserves has touched a 25-year low of about 59 percent.

If important nations shift to their own fiat currency based trade like the Rupee-Ruble arrangement between India and Russia and if an alternative to SWIFT can be found, the move away from dollar can accelerate. For instance, if India and China begin paying for their trade in their fiat currencies rated to the US dollar and at the year-end pay the net in terms of the dollar, the overall demand for the dollar will contract rapidly. It is the demand for the dollar that sustains its value. These kinds of developments post the Ukraine war can have a far reaching impact.

To end, in just weeks the needless Ukraine eruption has disrupted the world as if forever. Thanks to it, the post-cold war world already stands on its head — disrupting old relations, making new ones, undermining existing power centres, creating new, multiple influence centres. Its impact will keep unfolding for a long time.

Comment by Riaz Haq on May 22, 2022 at 7:07pm

Chinese views of the world at the time of the Russia-Ukraine war Evidence from a March 2022 public opinion survey

https://ceias.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/CN-poll-report-final_ma...

The Central European Institute of Asian Studies (CEIAS) is an independent think tank based in Bratislava (Slovakia), and with branches in Olomouc (Czech Republic), and Vienna (Austria).

--------------

Russia turned out to be the most positively perceived country by the Chinese respondents (see Figure 1). Asked to rate their feelings toward 25 countries on a scale of 0-100, 79.8% of respondents said they viewed Russia in a positive light while only 12% held negative views. It seems clear, then, that Chinese positive attitudes towards Russia were not disturbed by the Russia-Ukraine war. Quite the opposite, as Figure 2 shows, almost 80% of respondents reported that their views of Russia had improved over the last three years.8 This finding is broadly consistent with past survey results between 2008 and 2015, which found only around 50% of Chinese respondents held positive views of Russia.

-----------------

The other very positively perceived countries among Chinese respondents were Pakistan (73%), Singapore (66%), North Korea (62%), and Germany (61%). In turn, other very negatively perceived countries included India (56%), Japan (54%), Vietnam (48%), South Korea (47%) and Ukraine (46%). 15 Few if any previously published polls have asked Chinese respondents their views of Ukraine, but prior to Russia’s invasion, Ukrainian opinion appears to have been far more positive towards China than the reverse

---------------------

The US was the most negatively viewed country in China with slightly more than 60% of respondents perceiving it negatively and 31% holding positive attitudes. India was the second-most poorly evaluated country, with nearly 58% negative views, followed by Japan with 55%. Figure 3 also suggests that perceptions of the US have significantly deteriorated recently: almost 60% of the Chinese respondents stated their perception of the US had worsened over the past three years. Interestingly, in the case of Japan, about the same proportion of respondents (36% in both cases) reported that their views had improved and worsened over the same time period 

------------------

Russia also appeared to be one of the most recommended countries for pursuing higher education among the Chinese, behind only China itself (83%), Singapore (56%), and the United Kingdom (55%). More than 52% of respondents recommended university study in Russia (see Figure 11), while India and South Korea were the least recommended countries for university studies, with 63% and 42% of respondents not recommending them respectively

Comment by Riaz Haq on June 7, 2022 at 4:57pm

Handle the India-U.S. Relationship With Care
The world’s largest democracy often sees things very differently than America.

By Walter Russell Mead

https://www.wsj.com/articles/india-handle-with-care-modi-china-russ...


Superficially, the U.S.-India relationship looks like a success. With both countries focused on China, business ties steadily deepening, and U.S.-Pakistan relations in a deep freeze, many of the old obstacles to the relationship have disappeared.

But an intense week of meetings in Bangalore and Delhi with politicians, think tankers, religious leaders and journalists made clear that while Americans and Indians share strategic and economic interests, and we both value democracy, we remain divided by important differences in values and perceptions. Unless managed carefully, these differences could derail U.S.-India cooperation at a critical time.

Americans and Indians often see the same problem in very different ways. India, for example, does not see Russia’s attack on Ukraine as a threat to world order. While Americans have been disturbed by India’s continued willingness to buy oil from Russia, Indians resent the West’s attempt to rally global support for what many here see as a largely Western problem in Ukraine. Pointing out that Europeans scarcely noticed China’s attacks on Indian frontier posts in 2020, Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar told a conference in Bratislava, Slovakia, last week that “Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems.”

More generally, Indians bristle when they sense Americans and Europeans getting together to write global rules. The more that American Wilsonians talk about a values-based international order, the more that Indians worry about Western arrogance. Many Indians want a strong Russia and, within limits, a strong China precisely to help guard against the kind of world order President Biden and many of his advisers want to build.

This is more than the postcolonial suspicion of Western intentions that India has long shared with many other non-Western countries. The Hindu nationalist movement that has replaced the long-ruling Congress Party with a new political system built around the Bharatiya Janata Party and its charismatic leader, Narendra Modi, has brought a new dynamism to Indian foreign policy. This new nationalist India wants to increase and develop Indian power, not submerge Indian sovereignty in Western-designed international institutions.

The domestic agenda of the Hindu nationalist movement can also cause problems for the U.S.-India relationship. For Hindu nationalists, the rule of the Muslim Mughal emperors, some of whom destroyed ancient Hindu temples and built mosques on their ruins, was as much a disaster as British colonialism for Indian civilization. It is not enough to send the British packing; the liberation of India means placing Hindu civilization back at the center of Indian cultural and political life. Many BJP supporters want the Indian government to defend India’s Hindu civilization and culture from Islam, Christianity and Western secular liberalism.

This form of Hindu nationalism leads to controversial policy initiatives. Tough restrictions on the ability of foreign organizations to fund civil-society groups in India threaten to disrupt the activities of American charities ranging from the Ford Foundation to the Catholic Church. Anti-conversion laws put obstacles in the path of both Christian and Muslim missionary efforts, and Hindu women wishing to marry out of the faith sometimes face severe social and governmental pressures. Communal violence, a problem in India since the days of the British raj, has risen in recent years. Indian Muslims often express fears for their personal security.

Comment by Riaz Haq on June 12, 2022 at 7:28am

Opinion The best China strategy? Defeat Russia.

By Fareed Zakaria


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/09/biden-administra...


“We are now living in a totally new era,” said the 99-year-old Henry Kissinger, commenting on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In an op-ed last week, President Biden vividly outlined the stakes. “If Russia does not pay a heavy price for its actions,” he wrote, “it will send a message to other would-be aggressors that they too can seize territory and subjugate other countries. It will put the survival of other peaceful democracies at risk. And it could mark the end of the rules-based international order and open the door to aggression elsewhere, with catastrophic consequences the world over.”

In times like these, it seemed appropriate that Secretary of State Antony Blinken would deliver a major policy address, which he did late last month. Except that he chose to give the speech … on China. The talk itself contained nothing new; it was slightly more nuanced than the usual chest-thumping that passes for a China strategy these days. The real surprise was that, in the middle of the first major land war in Europe since 1945, with monumental consequences, Blinken chose not to lay out the strategy for victory but instead changed the subject. Washington’s foreign policy establishment is so wrapped up in its pre-crisis thinking that it cannot really digest the fact that the ground has shifted seismically under its feet.

Blinken declared that despite its aggression in Ukraine, Russia does not pose the greatest threat to the rules-based international order, instead giving that place to China. As Zachary Karabell suggests, this requires a willful blindness to decades of Russian aggression. Russia has invaded Georgia and Ukraine and effectively annexed parts of those countries. It brutally unleashed its air power in Syria, killing thousands of civilians. In responding to Chechnya’s desire for independence, it flattened large parts of the Russian republic, including its capital, with total civilians killed in that conflict estimated to be in the tens of thousands. Vladimir Putin has sent assassination squads to Western countries to kill his enemies, has used money and cyberattacks to disrupt Western democracies, and, most recently, has threatened the use of nuclear weapons. Does any other country even come close?

Comment by Riaz Haq on June 12, 2022 at 7:29am

Opinion The best China strategy? Defeat Russia.

By Fareed Zakaria


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/09/biden-administra...


Ironically, one of the people who attended Blinken’s speech was Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who during his presidential campaign in 2012 warned that Russia posed the single largest threat to the United States. Those, including myself, who dismissed his prognosis were wrong, because we looked only at Russia’s strength, which was not impressive. But Romney clearly understood that power in the international realm is measured by a mixture of capabilities and intentions. And though Russia is not a rising giant, it is determined to challenge and divide America and Europe and tear up the rules-based international system. Putin’s Russia is the world’s great spoiler.

This phenomenon of a declining power becoming the greatest danger to global peace is not unprecedented. In 1914, the country that triggered World War I was Austria-Hungary, an empire in broad decline, and yet one determined to use its military to show the world it still mattered and to teach a harsh lesson to Serbia, which it regarded as a minor, vassal state. Sound familiar?

America’s dominant priority must be to ensure that Russia does not prevail in its aggression against Ukraine. And right now, trends are moving in the wrong direction. Russian forces are consolidating their gains in eastern Ukraine. Sky-high oil prices have ensured that money continues to flow into Putin’s coffers. Europeans are beginning to talk about off-ramps. Moscow is offering developing nations a deal: Get the West to call off sanctions, it tells them, and it will help export all the grain from Ukraine and Russia and avert famine in many parts of the world. Ukraine’s leaders say it still does not have the weapons and training it needs to fight back effectively.

The best China strategy right now is to defeat Russia. Xi Jinping made a risky wager in backing Russia strongly on the eve of the invasion. If Russia comes out of this conflict a weak, marginalized country, that will be a serious blow to Xi, who is personally associated with the alliance with Putin. If, on the other hand, Putin survives and somehow manages to stage a comeback, Xi and China will learn an ominous lesson: that the West cannot uphold its rules-based system against a sustained assault.

Most of the people in top positions in the Biden administration were senior officials in the Obama administration in 2014, when Russia launched its first invasion of Ukraine, annexed Crimea and intervened in eastern Ukraine. They were not able to reverse Moscow’s aggression or even make Putin pay much of a price for it. Perhaps at the time, they saw the greatest threat to global order as the Islamic State, or they were focused on the “pivot” to Asia, or they didn’t prioritize Ukraine enough. Now they have a second chance, but it is likely to be the last.

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