| Sreemoy Talukdar brings you the essential cheat sheet on foreign affairs covering India and the world |  | | Globetrotter has been erratic of late, and the blame for it lies entirely on the shoulders of its author. Continuing ill health prevented me from publishing the last edition. Normal service resumes and hopefully there won't be health-related misses in the future. We kick off this edition with the devastating tragedy in Turkey (AP pic above) and Syria, track the balloon saga involving China and the US, analyse the explosive report by Seymour Hersh on Nord Stream blasts, cover Doval's Moscow visit and round off with Pakistan-IMF talks. | | TOP FIVE NEWS UPDATES | | As Turkey-Syria earthquake toll crosses 21000, India's 'Operation Dost' is making a big impact | | The death toll from the two devastating earthquakes in Turkey and Syria continues to soar, with hopes of finding survivors dimming by the minute. As on Thursday, official figures released by Turkish and Syrian authorities put the toll above 21000 (17,674 + 3,377) and climbing. That means the casualty figures in Turkey have already crossed the toll of the 1999 earthquake. Wall Street Journal reports that "traffic on the way to Adana, Turkey, was filled with hearses carrying the dead to cemeteries full of mourners… The demand for burial was so high that gravediggers started using excavators instead of digging by hand, working from 7 a.m. until past sunset," says the report. But it wasn't all dark. There were glimmers of hope and slivers of lives amid the rubble. In Samandag district of Turkey's Hatay province, several people were rescued from the rubble of buildings during the night, including a 10-year-old boy along with his mother after 90 hours of the disaster, reports Reuters. Also in Hatay, a seven-year-old girl was rescued after 95 hours and taken to hospital. And it's not just about the dead. Survivors of the earthquake, rendered homeless, are gripped by bitter cold, hunger and despair. Reuters says many people, desperate for food, water and heat, have set up crude shelters in supermarket car parks, mosques, roadsides or amid the ruins. International aid is pouring in, and prominent among aid-givers is India, one of the quickest responders to the humanitarian crisis. Under 'Operation Dost', an initiative driven by the prime minister's office, within a few hours after receiving a request of assistance from Turkey following Monday's twin earthquakes, the first Search and Rescue flight left for Turkey from New Delhi, reports News18. Since then, India has been able to send more than 250 personnel, specialised equipment and other relief material amounting to more than 135 tonnes to Turkey on six C-17 IAF aircraft. The Indian Army has set up a 30 bedded Field Hospital at Iskenderun in Hatay province in Türkiye," said the report. External affairs minister S Jaishankar posted in tweet on Thursday that "The army field hospital in Iskenderun, Hatay, Türkiye has started functioning with running Medical, Surgical & Emergency Wards; X-Ray Lab & Medical Store. @adgpi team will work 24 x 7 to provide relief to the affected people." India Today says rescuers on Thursday "pulled out a 6-year-old girl who was stuck inside the debris for over three days in Turkey. The girl, identified as Nasreen, was shifted to 16 Parafield hospital of the Indian Army." Turkey's envoy to India, Firat Sunel, has said 'Operation Dost' shows the friendship between India and Turkey and friends always help each other. Meanwhile, in a royal snub to Pakistan, Turkey has refused to host Pakistan PM Shehbaz Sharif and his delegation. Sharif and Pakistan foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto were headed to Turkey to 'show solidarity' but Ankara cited earthquake relief operations to postpone the visit, according to reports. | | US reveals more damning data about Chinese spy balloon as angry US senators grill Pentagon officials | | The Chinese spy balloon saga is further endangering an already fraught US-China relation and spawning a new diplomatic crisis. On Thursday, angry US lawmakers "grilled four US defense department officials about when the military learned of the balloon and why they waited a week to shoot it down. Officials said the balloon first entered US airspace off Alaska on January 28, where it was immediately detected by NORAD, the joint US-Canadian air defense system. Republican senator Lisa Murkowski from Alaska said, "As an Alaskan, I am so angry… Alaska is the first line of defense for America... It's like this administration doesn't think that Alaska is any part of the rest of the country!" she shouted. The witnesses defended the Pentagon's decision to let the high-altitude balloon float across the United States, arguing that the balloon's primary value to the US military lay in what could be learned from its flight course and its debris." In a closed-door briefing on Thursday, Biden administration officials told US lawmakers on Capitol Hill that the balloon "had western-made components with English-language writing on them." While the balloon was eventually shot down by a US military fighter jet off the coast of South Carolina on Saturday, a week after it first entered US airspace, the lawmakers' reactions show how the balloon saga may deepen bilateral tensions. China maintains that the US had overreacted to a balloon meant for meteorological research that went off course, Biden administration officials disclosed new information on Thursday about the capabilities of the suspected Chinese surveillance balloon. "A senior US State Department official said Thursday that the balloon 'was capable of conducting signals intelligence collection operations' and was part of a fleet that had flown over 'more than 40 countries across five continents.' The Biden administration has determined that the Chinese balloon was operating with electronic surveillance technology capable of monitoring US communications," reports CNN. New York Times, quoting US State Department officials, reports that the balloon's "visible equipment, which included antennas, 'was clearly for intelligence surveillance and inconsistent with the equipment on board weather balloons,' the State Department said — a rebuttal to the Chinese government's assertion that the balloon was a civilian meteorological machine that had strayed off course." | | Doval meets Putin on sidelines of Moscow meet on Afghanistan; discusses bilateral and regional issues | | In a rare diplomatic occurrence, Russian president Vladimir Putin has met Indian NSA Ajit Doval and both sides have agreed to continue work towards strengthening India-Russia strategic partnership. According to former Indian foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal, this was significant meeting. "This is very significant. Putin has never met our NSAs before. He does not meet our EAMs either except as far as I know when I organised Natwar Singh to call on him while I was ambassador. Clearly, NSA carried an important message from Modi," posted Sibal on Twitter. Indian embassy in Russia posted on Twitter that "NSA Ajit Doval called on HE President Putin. Wide-ranging discussion on bilateral and regional issues. Agreed to continue work towards implementing the India-Russia strategic partnership." According to a report in The Times of India, "on Wednesday, Doval attended the fifth multilateral meeting of Secretaries of Security Councils/NSAs on Afghanistan which was hosted by Russia. Doval in his address said no country should be allowed to use Afghan territory to export terrorism and asserted that India will never abandon people of Afghanistan in their time of need." A report in The Hindu says Doval highlighted "India's 'historical and special relationship' with Afghanistan and said that the 'well-being and humanitarian needs of the people of Afghanistan' would 'continue to guide' India's policy towards Kabul. He highlighted the heightened threat of terrorism because of the presence of terror groups like Daesh, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed in the Af-Pak region and sought security cooperation between the member states in the dialogue. He emphasised that Afghan territory should not be used for terrorism and that the natural resources of Afghanistan should be utilised 'first for the welfare of Afghanistan'." "Besides Russia and India, the meeting was attended by representatives from Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Doval's visit to Moscow also took place ahead of the G-20 foreign ministers' meeting in New Delhi. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is expected to travel to India to attend the meeting on March 1-2," reports Indian Express. | | Nord Stream pipelines blast under Baltic Sea was carried out by US, says Pulitzer-prize winning scribe | | Seymour Hersh, a Pulitzer-prize winning investigative journalist who has previously worked with the New York Times and The New Yorker, has claimed in a report that it is the United States who took out the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines by employing divers who planted remotely controlled explosive devices that were later detonated to blast the pipelines under the Baltic Sea last September. "Hersh is a renowned investigative journalist who exposed the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War. He had also been instrumental in bringing to light the Watergate scandal and the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse," reads a report in The Week. Hersh's findings were published in his post on Substack. He writes, "Last June, the Navy divers, operating under the cover of a widely publicized mid-summer NATO exercise known as BALTOPS 22, planted the remotely triggered explosives that, three months later, destroyed three of the four Nord Stream pipelines, according to a source with direct knowledge of the operational planning… Biden's decision to sabotage the pipelines came after more than nine months of highly secret back and forth debate inside Washington's national security community about how to best achieve that goal. For much of that time, the issue was not whether to do the mission, but how to get it done with no overt clue as to who was responsible." The post predictably garnered global attention and triggered a furious reaction from Moscow. The Kremlin said on Thursday the world should know the truth about who sabotaged the Nord Stream gas pipelines and that those responsible should be punished. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said "The world must find out the truth about who carried out this act of sabotage… This is a very dangerous precedent: if someone did it once, they can do it again anywhere in the world." Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov told reporters in Moscow on Thursday that "our assumption was that the US and several NATO allies were involved in this disgusting crime." The Biden administration has denied any links with the operation, and on Wednesday dismissed Hersh's report as "utterly false and complete fiction." Norway's foreign ministry said the allegations were "nonsense". | | Pakistan, IMF talks fail on crucial bailout funds, but 'virtual discussion' to continue | | Pakistan is in dire need of bailout funds to the tune of $1.1 billion from the IMF to stave off bankruptcy, but a crucial discussion between both sides failed to result in an agreement on disbursal of funds. According to a report in Pakistani newspaper The Express Tribune, "Pakistan and the IMF on Thursday failed to reach a staff level agreement within the stipulated time to revive the stalled $6.5 billion bailout package. However, both the sides agreed on a set of measures that can still help clinch the deal to avoid a looming default. The Pakistani authorities had hoped that they would convince the IMF about its good intentions regarding implementation of all outstanding conditions in a gradual manner. But the hopes dashed during the 10-day visit by the IMF mission, which ended on Thursday without a staff level agreement." The BBC adds, "although there was no financial lifeboat, both sides tried to paint the meeting positively. Pakistan's finance minister told a news conference the country had been given a detailed roadmap. He talked of 'painful but necessary' reforms — the IMF wants to see action and commitments from Pakistan before it commits to lending more money… The IMF team, which left Islamabad on Friday, said 'considerable progress' had been made after 10 days of talks. 'Virtual discussions will continue in the coming days,' the head of the IMF mission Nathan Porter said in a statement." Reuters reports that the "so-called staff-level agreement, which then needs to be approved by the IMF's head office in Washington, must be reached before the funds are disbursed. In addition to the stalled tranche, another $1.4 billion remain of the $6.5 billion bailout programme, which is due to end in June. The conditions set by the IMF include a return to a market-based exchange rate and higher fuel prices, measures that Pakistan recently implemented and that have already sent inflation to a record high — 27.5% year-on-year in January — and created shortages in some imported goods." | | | | | | | | | | TOP ANALYSES OF THE WEEK | | Aid to Turkey, Syria is demonstration of India's soft power | | Indian assistance to Turkey and Syria following earthquakes is part of the country's tradition of providing humanitarian assistance without expecting returns or following a quid-pro-quo policy., writes Seshadri Chari in The Print. | | India is striking a maximalist geopolitical pose | | India seems to be evolving a proactively maximalist, as opposed to a benign neutral, approach in dealing with the challenges posed by a state of extended global crisis and insecurity, argues Pranab Dhal Samanta in Economic Times. | | Time India is tied strongly to G-7 framework | | Tying India more strongly to the G-7 by including it in the group would lend the West greater influence and legitimacy with the global south. India is the key to breaking the old East-West and North-South divides, writes C Raja Mohan of Asia Society Policy Institute in Foreign Policy. | | ICET could be a game-changer in US-India tech cooperation | | The US-India Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies (iCET) could become a "game changer" in catalysing Indo-US technology cooperation by persuading the US to lift existing export control restrictions, and encouraging the private sector of both countries to cooperate in sensitive sectors, writes former Indian naval chief Arun Prakash in Indian Express. | | India, France ties primed for further collaboration | | India's partnership with France is built on common values and goals, both understand each other's interests and dependencies — be it in relation to China or Russia — and there is much ground ahead for further collaboration, argue professor Harsh V Pant of King's College, London and Ankita Dutta of ORF in The Hindu. | | China's spy balloon may spur an American awakening | | China's spy balloon is precisely the kind of odd event that could prompt a shift in wider American perceptions of the salience of the China challenge… it may even spur a broad American awakening, writes Richard Fontaine of the Center for a New American Security in Foreign Policy. | | China's view of multilateral world order is vertical | | China is willing to take over the reins of control of the international system by all means possible, as it believes its time has come. The Chinese view of the existing multilateral world order is vertical instead of being horizontal, writes professor Sriparna Pathak of OP Jindal Global University in Hindustan Times. | | China's economic woes denting CCP's credibility | | The worsening economic situation and steadily burgeoning unemployment are causing Xi and the Politburo considerable concern as they dent the Chinese Communist Party's credentials to lead the country, writes analyst Jayadeva Ranade of Centre for China Analysis and Strategy in The Tribune. | | South Korea faces difficult choices on nukes | | South Korea faces difficult choices amid an objectively worsening threat environment, but a drastic shift away from the status quo of robust conventional deterrence backstopped by US nuclear guarantees in pursuit of an independent nuclear deterrent will not solve South Korea's security challenges, argues Ankit Panda of Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in War on the Rocks. | | Japan PM Kishida is repeating Abe's mistakes | | Abe Shinzo learned the hard way: Voters don't care about foreign policy achievements if the economy is struggling, writes professor Carlos Ramirez in The Diplomat. | | PODCAST | | India's place in changing world | | In this edition of the Foreign Affairs podcast, host Daniel Kurtz-Phelan speaks to former Indian NSA Shivshankar Menon on Ukraine, India's place in this changing world, and what order could emerge from today's great-power competition. | | | | Copyright © 2023.Firstpost - All Rights Reserved. | |
