Biden’s all-guns blazing foreign policy
Biden’s all-guns blazing foreign policy. Photo courtesy: Internet
TAMPA, FL: President Joe Biden’s foreign policy initiatives noticeably accelerated as his administration neared the 100 days marker, including most notably his decision to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan before 11 September 2021. That will be twenty years after they first led a coalition to remove the Taliban regime that had provided safe haven to al-Qaeda to launch spectacularly deadly attacks against the American homeland. Subsequently, Biden has informed that U.S. troops would be withdrawn from Afghanistan, beginning 1 May 2021.
AFGHANISTAN: SOME RELATED ISSUES
As a sequel of sorts to last week’s write-up, I wish to draw attention to a story put out by Reuters on India’s chief of defence staff Gen. Bipin Rawat’s expression of concern. As reported, Gen. Rawat, ‘India’s military czar’, told a security conference in New Delhi recently that India is concerned about a vacuum developing in Afghanistan following the proposed withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces. Rawat’s worry was that “disruptors” would step into the space created by the withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan. He however declined to name the countries that could act as spoilers. India’s big worry is that instability in Afghanistan could spill over into ‘occupied Kashmir’ where it has been fighting for three decades. It is also concerned that Pakistan will gain a bigger hand in Afghanistan because of its long-standing ties with the Taliban, expected to play a dominant role again, once the United States leaves. Reuter reminds that India invested $ 3 billion in Afghanistan in roads, power stations and even built its parliament following the ousting of the Taliban in 2001. Rawat assured India would be happy to provide more support for Afghanistan so long as peace can return. A number of other interesting dimensions to the big overarching story were revealed in a recent Dawn report, based on ‘agency reports’, including that Biden warned the Taliban that he would hold them accountable for its commitment not to allow any terrorists to threaten the U.S. or its allies from Afghan soil.
“We will hold the Taliban accountable for its commitment not to allow any terrorists to threaten the U.S. or its allies from Afghan soil. The Afghan government has made that commitment to us as well.” In a speech announcing the complete withdrawal of American forces before 11 September, he added: “We will ask other countries in the region to support Afghanistan, especially Pakistan as well as Russia, China, India and Turkey.” Notably, not mentioning Iran - an immediate neighbour of Afghanistan - Biden said that the countries in the region “have a significant stake in the stable future of Afghanistan.”
It may be noted that a Washington-backed Afghan peace conference in Turkey has been postponed over the Taliban’s decision not to participate. No new date has been agreed upon for its convocation. Earlier, the Taliban had called for all foreign troops to be withdrawn by 1 May – as it had agreed to with the Trump administration. Incidentally, cnbc.com had reported that U.S. Marine Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee at a hearing on 22 April: “My concern is the ability of the Afghanistan military to hold the ground that they’re on now without the support they have been used to for many years.” Noteworthy, too, is a suggestion in an opinion piece in the Dawn by former Pakistan Foreign Secretary Najmuddin A. Sheikh that “Pakistan must complete the fencing of its border with Afghanistan and insulate itself to the extent possible.” Clearly, he is apprehensive that Pakistan might once again be sucked into the vortex of Afghanistan’s instability. Though Nepal may not be directly involved in Afghanistan’s future, it would be sensible for policy makers to carefully monitor developments there, as it could once again become the nub of regional unrest given the inherent rivalries over the territory between the U.S./India bloc, on the one hand, and the Russia/Iran/ Pakistan/China grouping, on the other.
Despite Biden’s calculated snub to Iran, as noted above, Tehran recently demonstrated that her international standing is pretty good. This came through in Iran’s election for a four-year term to the U.N. Commission on Women’s Rights, which UN Watch described as the “principal global intergovernmental body exclusively dedicated to the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women.” As per the UN Watch report 21 April, the vote sparked outrage among human rights activists. “Electing the Islamic Republic of Iran to protect women’s rights is like making an arsonist into the town fire chief” said Hilel Neuer, executive director, UN Watch, the Geneva-based human rights group. Despite such admonitions, UN Watch said that though the ballot was secret, it has determined that at least four of the 15 EU and Western Group democracies on the UN’s Economic and Social Council voted for Iran. That speaks for itself.
TURKEY, GENOCIDE AND ALL THAT
Biden opened up another foreign policy front – with Turkey, this time - over the 1915 massacre of a very large, but undetermined, number of Armenians at the hands of the Ottomans. This, Biden achieved by publicly terming those gory events as “genocide.” While observers have interpreted that to suggest that Biden’s America is determined to be perceived as the key global leader fighting for human rights, it has prompted even some knowledgeable Western analysts to question whether it is legitimate to describe events that happened in 1915 during World War I with terminology first invented in 1945, during the Nuremberg Tribunal in the context of Nazi Germany’s crimes against the Jewish people during the Holocaust. As Phillipe Sands, Law Professor, University College, London, responded to Fareed Zakaria on his widelyviewed TV programme the other day, it is debatable whether ‘genocide’ is worse than ‘crimes against humanity’ though ‘crimes against humanity’ are supposedly not targeted against any one group. Sands argued it was difficult to justify the use of the word ‘genocide’ in one case and make out that the killings of hundreds of thousands, such by the Assad regime against opponents in Syria, as being less heinous. He also referred to the killings elsewhere in Africa involving hundreds of thousands if not millions – happenings that have not been referred to as ‘genocide’.
Sands said ‘the jury is still out’ on whether China’s treatment of Uighurs is tantamount to ‘genocide’ as the United States and some others would like it to be termed. Sands said such accusations were basically politically motivated. He also averred that if terms such as ‘genocide’ were used loosely they could be applied to past American policy with respect to American Indians, whose population today is but a tiny fraction of what it was in its heyday. In any case, Biden’s phone call to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, where he said he had used ‘genocide’ to describe the events of 1915, has understandably and naturally angered the latter. According to CNN reports, Erdogan rejected such nomenclature outright, with the Turkish Foreign Ministry calling it a “vulgar distortion of history.”
With U.S.-Turkish relations thus embittered, one may wonder – among other things – whether or how the Washingtonbacked international conference on Afghanistan in Istanbul will pan out, if it ever will!
Incidentally, President Biden’s tough stance against Russian President Vladimir Putin, aired in public not long ago, has brought about a stern warning from him, warning: “Don’t cross my ‘red lines’. If you do, prepare to face the dire consequences.”
Former Polish Foreign Minister Radeks Skorski, interviewed by Zakaria, agreed that Putin had been acting tough of late; that his regime had murdered their own, at home and abroad, but then pointed out that he had responded to Biden’s comment that he was a ‘killer’ by offering to talk.
Without saying so explicitly, Skorski thought that talks should replace angry rhetoric.
Once again one is thus confronted with the question: with a daunting domestic agenda to tackle effectively and urgently should Biden rush headlong, all foreign policy guns blazing?
INDIA’S COVID HELL
India is making waves around the world – but for the wrong reasons. There was the Economist whose latest issue came with two covers: one being ‘Putin’s next move’ and the second, ‘India’s Covid catastrophe’ which argues that India’s second wave is a disaster for it and the world.’
The BBC has a rash of stories on the Covid situation starkly headlined thus: ‘A person cannot die peacefully in Delhi’; ‘Patients suffer at home as Covid chokes hospitals;’ ‘Anger as India order Twitter to remove Covid posts’; and ‘A city where breathing has become a luxury.’
This is what the BBC had to say about the Twitter story: “Thousands across India are outraged after the government ordered social media platform Twitter to remove posts critical of its handling of the Covid-19 virus.” It added that one Twitter user accused the government of “finding it easier to take down tweets than ensure oxygen supply.”
A number of countries are sending aid to ease India’s oxygen emergency, including the U.S., the UK, and EU, as India has registered 3,50,000 fresh Covid infections and 2,767 deaths in a 24-hour period, as per the Indian Express. The newspaper had earlier reported that the list of countries banning flights to and from India continued to increase – presently they are the United States, the UK, the UAE, France, Australia, Singapore, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Oman. While the U.S. is lifting a ban on sending raw materials abroad, enabling India to make more of the AstraZeneca vaccine, as per BBC, a CNN report had it that the U.S. has not decided to ship India any quantity from the millions of ready-made doses of Astra Zenaca vaccine she presently holds. They have been stockpiled and not administered to people, as of now.
In America, people are being administered the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines while the Johnson and Johnson vaccine is now on hold following a few cases of blood clotting, in millions of vaccinations.
India’s Covid crisis also figured largely in Fareed Zakaria’s popular weekly programme which bluntly concluded that it was outof-control with the second wave sometimes being three times as much as it was during the first wave. The New Delhi correspondent of the Guardian, interviewed by Zakaria, predicted that the impact would be felt for years into the future. Acknowledging that the first wave was well managed, he queried: what happened? Two credible sounding reasons were forwarded: India’s supposed exceptionalism and complacency among government officials who believed the situation would spring back to normal soon.
Complacency in government quarters soon transformed into rank irresponsibility, whether it had to do with political rallies, without Covid precautions, or permitting rituals such as the Kumbh Mela in Haridwar where hundreds of thousands of devotees thronged in tight masses for days on end. The ruling BJP however denied any nexus between the two.
Quite apart from the impact from the gross mishandling of the pandemic in India, it would be interesting to see if at all it manifests itself on the overall political situation, including on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s standing as a political leader, and on his future.
IMPACT ON NEPAL
In view of the ghastly Covid situation in India just described, it is not difficult to discern a clear connection between that and the 15-day lockdown, beginning soon, in Kathmandu Valley.
While there does not seem to be any clarity yet in Nepal’s tangled political equation, one notes with satisfaction that the condition of former King Gyanendra and spouse, infected with the Covid-19 virus after their sojourn in Haridwar - and being treated at Norvik Hospital in Kathmandu - is stable and normal. Hopefully, the couple will be able to return to Nirmal Niwas soon, in sound health.