Indian Foreign Policy

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Austin
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Re: Indian Foreign Policy

Post by Austin »

An alternative to SAARC?

Nitin Gokhale - BIMSTEC, with countries around Bay of Bengal, has a much better chance to be effective
arun
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Re: Indian Foreign Policy

Post by arun »

X Posted from the India-US relations: News and Discussions IV thread to the Indian Foreign Policy, Iran News & Discussions, 26/11/2008: Never Forget. Never Forgive, CPEC and Terroristan threads.

Interview of U.S. Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asia, Alice Wells, by politician Subramanian Swamy’s daughter Suhasini Haidar for the Hindu.

US, far from being reluctantly acquiescent about Indian investment in the development of Chabahar Port in their archenemy Iran is actually “deeply appreciative of the Indian efforts to use Chabahar to provide alternatives to Afghanistan to open up a channel to Central Asia”:
Tell us about your meetings in Delhi, both bilateral and trilateral with Japan.

The momentum to this relationship is anchored by the two policies that govern our approach to the region: the U.S. South Asia policy and the Indo-Pacific policy. In the South Asia policy, the U.S. is working very aggressively to stabilise the situation and work towards a peaceful resolution that involves unprecedented engagement with Pakistan, and one in which India is playing an essential role as a net provider of assistance which is very different from a few years ago. On the Indo-Pacific side, that’s where the ambitions of the relationship lie. Our shared security interests are to see that the region doesn’t fall prey to some of the predatory practices being seen in the South China Sea, and how to offer alternatives.

On Afghanistan… the fact that this region has no regional trade is noteworthy and until we resolve that core conflict and open up the east and west, the potential for South Asia is not going to be achieved. We are deeply appreciative of the Indian efforts to use Chabahar to provide alternatives to Afghanistan to open up a channel to Central Asia. And we need to be creative in the absence of peace to ensure that Afghanistan can stabilise and grow.

Are you saying that the Chabahar route, with the port owned by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRGC-owned Khatam Al-Anbia) meets with the U.S.’s approval?

The standard set for Chabahar is that the deals should not benefit IRGC members, that’s for sanctions not to be imposed, and for business deals to go through. The legislation originally passed (JCPOA) has a specific carve-out for Chabahar and that’s an acknowledgment of the necessary role of giving land-locked Afghanistan access and alternatives as it seeks to build its economy. We have seen with the shipments of wheat that India has really helped to open up trade with Afghanistan including air corridors. Its been striking that Afghanistan-Pakistan trade has declined 50% in the last year. India has provided options, and Afghanistan now needs the support of India and Central Asia.
Suhasini Haidar reminds the Alice Wells that US citizens were also killed in the 26/11 Mumbai Mohammadden Terrorism attack sponsored by State Actors of the Punjabi Uniformed Jihadis of the Military Dominated Deep State of the Mohammadden Terrorism Fomenting Islamic Republic of Pakistan, that 10 years have passed since 26/11 and that US President Donald Trump’s New Year Tweet and new US South Asia Strategy on Afghanistan has signified more sound then fury. The RaRa US brigade that infests BRF from time to time may particularly note:
You were in Pakistan last week for several days. Are there any indications yet that Pakistan is taking action on terror?

As General (Joseph) Votel has testified, we see initial constructive steps and we want to build on that. Our conversation with Pakistan is about the unique influence it has and the unique levers it has in helping to shape Taliban expectations and to convince the Taliban to walk through what we all recognise is an open door. Those conversations are ongoing. We are not walking away from Pakistan, but we do not believe that yet we have seen the kind of sustainable and irreversible steps that are required to really change the situation on the ground.
Yet here in New Delhi, it looks as if since that tweet from President Trump on New Years day, India’s hopes from the U.S.’s new policy have not been realised. Terrorists targeting India like Hafiz Saeed and Masood Azhar still roam openly, issue statements, with no specific action taken against them except what is mandated by the U.N. Do you still think there is reason to hope that will change?

I was heartened by the press comments by General Bajwa where he said things like the ‘state must have the monopoly on violence’, and there is ‘no role for non-state actors’, and that ‘Pakistan cant be a normal states if there are extremist groups’. Those are extremely positive statements and now I think the challenge is to see them implemented. We are certainly in a very good faith conversation with Pakistan. We want the policy to succeed and for Pakistan to be both law enforced and economically secure country. We understand Pakistan is also a victim of terror and more than 400 civilians were killed by the TTP or other groups like AQ and ISIS operating in Pakistan. I always say that terrorists who attack Pakistan are also enemies of the United States. We have an agenda, we believe we have shared interests and Pakistan has a stake in a stable Afghanistan. So how do we make that calculus work?

But you’re basing all this on General Bajwa’s statement… this year marks 10 years since the Mumbai attacks, and there have been ten years of such statements. So what gives you hope that this time is any different from the past?

I think the South Asia strategy and the stance of the U.S. administration gives me hope. This is a strategy that has been implemented with greater force. It notes that this is a different world, and it is no longer acceptable or understandable to rely on proxy forces. And we are prepared, as we demonstrated with the suspension of assistance, to act on our concern when we don’t see sufficient action taken. The Trump administration has gone into territory not been entered before by the U.S. and that sends a very powerful message. We have a leadership role to play to close the chapter on proxy forces in South Asia. There is an urgency to this because of ISIS. We see ISIS in Afghanistan consists largely of Afghans and Pakistanis who have switched over from other terrorist organisations, but imagine if an insurgency became a nihillistic campaign that recognised no borders. We can’t afford the conflict and the ideological stew there to metastasise.

Yet eight months into the U.S. South Asia strategy, four months after CSF and FMF funding cuts, FATF action, IMF squeeze, the designation of Hafiz Saeed’s party MML as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation, there’s seems no impact on Pakistan actions. What are the markers that Pakistan should take, for the U.S., and possibly India to acknowledge they have taken some action?

We fully share your concern over Hafiz Saeed. He is a terrorist, with money on his head, he should be in prison, not on the streets, and we have concerns about his ability to operate freely..... [pause] This is a process, and while I know that’s not a satisfactory answer for a country that has suffered significant acts of terrorism emanating from Pakistan.

The U.S. has suffered as well, Americans died in the Mumbai attacks….

Absolutely…but this is a process. And it is a serious process, and even our Indian friends recognise the seriousness of purpose of the United States in adopting and implementing its strategy. So I would say, bear with us, this isn’t the end of our diplomatic game. We are continuously engaging in Pakistan because we do see the need for change.

Is there a timeline? Or a point at which the U.S.’s patience runs out?

We are evaluating as we go, in consultations with our allies and friends. But this is a process.

What are the markers of what you would like to see Pakistan do in the next few months?

I think Pakistan knows what it can do to change the calculus and to disrupt and make it harder for Taliban or family members [other groups] to take advantage of Pakistan’s territory. That isn’t a mystery. There will soon be a new civilian leadership in Pakistan, and we will see how the new government will take steps to demonstrate to the international community that Pakistan is serious about curbing terror financing and money laundering.

Again, there we have seen some positive steps: whether it is on the (LeT-owned) charities, whether it is the executive order designating U.N. terrorists under the Anti-terrorism Act, this is what we are going to be looking for. I believe that the international consensus was that the greylist was necessary as these were not irreversible actions, but I have to say, in my consultations in Islamabad, including among the business community, there is a lot of support for moving forward on terror. This is in Pakistan’s interest, as a big country that needs foreign investment, the way to attract it is to have a stellar reputation and stellar record. So many people I met welcomed the double-edged sword of FATF.
From The Hindu:

Yet to see irreversible steps for change on the ground in Pakistan, says U.S. envoy Alice Wells
arun
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Re: Indian Foreign Policy

Post by arun »

X Posted from the Defanging and Neutering Chinese threat thread to the Indian Foreign Policy, CPEC and OBOR threads.

From some 3 weeks ago though I do not recollect seeing it posted here on BRF; so here goes.

Excerpt from transcript of interview of Indian Ambassador to the Peoples Republic of China, Gautam Bambawale, by the South China Morning Post on Doklam, CPEC / OBOR / BRI, Quadrilateral, PRC foray into India’s bailiwick on the Indian Sub-Continent etc.:
India and China must be frank with each other to prevent another Doklam, ambassador warns

New Delhi’s envoy to Beijing blames China for last summer’s military stand-off, saying it ‘changed the status quo in the region’

PUBLISHED : Saturday, 24 March, 2018, 12:04pm
UPDATED : Saturday, 24 March, 2018, 1:45pm ……………………

What’s your evaluation on the existing communication mechanism between India and China?

We have a lot of dialogue between India and China, especially at the political level, and also at the economic level. I just give you one example, we have something called the Joint Economic Group between India and China, which is led on the Chinese side by the commerce minister, and the commerce and industry minister from the Indian side.

Chinese Commerce Minister Zhong Shan will be in India later this week for the Joint Economic Group, and where they will discuss how to improve the trade relations and investments between India and China.

So these are the dialogues that already exist. But especially on the political level, we must be very frank and open and candid with each other. There are some issues and problems between India and China, if we have to solve those problems, we need to talk about the problems candidly.

That’s what I mean about the candid discussion. Also both governments of China and India have been saying that we must maintain strategic communication, and what I think when they talk about strategic communication, it means frank and candid discussion.

Only through talking frankly and candidly, we will be able to solve the issues and problems say boundary problem, and understand each other’s concerns. And I have said in my public remarks yesterday that the most important problem between India and China is the boundary problem. It is a leftover from history, but today’s governments are trying to tackle it. We are giving it a high priority. But only when both sides talk to each other very frankly and candidly, will we be able to resolve this boundary issue and decide on a boundary.

Is China transparent enough, maybe in relation to Doklam construction and army deployment?

We have good dialogue with China. We talk to China at many different levels, we talk to them at the official level, military authorities, foreign ministers and our leaders – Prime Minister Modi and President Xi Jinping – have an excellent communication.

Both national leaders meet at least two or three times a year because both nations are members of many important international organisations as G20, BRICS and SCO and they have their own bilateral discussions. So there is a very good communication between the leaders, but we need to have better communication down the line.

I agree with you to the extent that both sides must be candid with each other and frank with each other. We must say what is happening on the ground and so on.

Many people say that everything the Chinese are doing is kept in dark and that’s where the gap and misunderstanding always happens so in your communications with Chinese officials, do you think that they are transparent enough in addressing India’s concerns?

I think that both sides have to address each others’ concerns. In fact, there are two principles that India has suggested to China, and I think we have broad agreement.

One is that each side must be sensitive to the other side’s aspirations, their concerns, their priorities and so on. And the second is that we must not allow differences to become disputes.

For example, we might have differences of opinion on Belt and Road, but that we must not allow that difference of opinion to become a dispute.

And I think for this, we need to have frank and candid discussions. We already have frank and candid discussions, but I mean we need to be more frank and candid with each other.

What kind of lessons can be learned from Doklam issue and what are the reasons leading to the rise of tensions and confrontations?

The India-China boundary is un-demarcated and un-delineated, so we have to talk to each other to delineate and demarcate it, which means to draw the boundary line. Now in the meantime, while we are discussing where the boundary will lie, both China and India have agreed that we should maintain peace and tranquillity in the border areas.

Now for last 30 years, not a single shot had been fired between the India-China border, which shows that we have been successful at maintaining peace and tranquillity.

Even during the Doklam incident, a very serious incident, there was no firing, we were able to maintain peace and tranquillity.

I think this is a successful example of diplomacy between our two countries. But we need to move further to actually solve the problem, which is to draw the boundary line. The boundary is quite long between India and China – roughly 3,500km.

In order to maintain the peace and tranquillity, there are certain areas, certain sectors which are very sensitive, where we must not change the status quo. If anyone changes the status quo, it will lead to a situation like what happened in Doklam.

I can tell you very frankly and you can quote me on this. The Chinese military changed the status quo in the Doklam area and therefore India reacted to it. Ours was a reaction to the change in the status quo by the Chinese military.

So it is an issue as you say that even though the two countries have high level communications, it needs to be brought down to practical levels?

I agree entirely that it has to be brought down to practical levels. It shows that when incidents like Doklam happened last year, it means that we were not frank enough and candid enough with each other. So we need to increase the level of frankness.

What do you mean by not frank enough and candid enough?

In the sense that if the Chinese military are going to build a road, then they must tell us ‘we are going to build a road’. If we do not agree to it then we can reply that, ‘look, you’re changing the status quo. Please don’t do it. This is a very very sensitive area’.

After the Doklam incident some reports suggest that road construction and military deployment in the Western Theatre Command is actually increasing or at least continuing?

No, I can tell you that you in Doklam area, which we call close proximity or sometimes the face-off site, the area where there was close confrontation or close proximity between Indian and Chinese military troops, that there is no change taking place today. Maybe behind the Chinese may be putting more military barracks to put in more soldiers, but that is well behind the sensitive area. Those are the things you’re free to do and we are also free to do, because you’re doing it inside your territory and we are doing it inside our territory.

Has communication been stepped up after the incident?

At the political level communication has come back to place. So we had Yang Jiechi visit India last year in December. And we will continue to have such discussions. But more importantly, I think we need to have discussions between the two militaries. That has not fully resumed.

It has resumed to a certain extent, the troops on the ground can talk to each other, that has resumed, but the communication between the headquarters – say the Central Military Commission in Beijing and the Military Headquarters in Delhi – that communication has not yet resumed and we would like it to resume as soon as possible.

What’s the stumbling block?

There is no stumbling block, but we have to just move them to meet quickly, sooner rather than later. I think that it will happen sometime during the next few months.

At the political level, as you said Mr Modi and Xi Jinping are meeting 2-3 times a year, are there any high-level visits planned between the two nations?

Prime Minister Modi will visit Qingdao on June 9-10 for the Summit of the SCO. During that, we will definitely have bilateral meeting between Prime Minister Modi and President Xi Jinping. And before that happens we want to have a lot of other meetings. One example is the Commerce Minister’s visit. We will have a whole series of meetings in the next few weeks and months. Another example, on the 22 and 23 March, we will have a meeting of Director General of the Boundary Department of Chinese Foreign Ministry with his Indian counterpart. We are having these meetings to have candid and frank discussions.

Any State-level visits being planned?

At this stage, we know that Prime Minister Modi will come to Qingdao in June this year.

There are many concerns about the Belt and Road Initiative. China is purchasing and renting so many ports in South Asia especially Pakistan. How is the concern in India addressed? What are the tactics that India is thinking of using to counter rising Chinese influence in South Asia?

Let me tell you very clearly that India has its own relationships with all these countries. These are very strong relationships and India is also doing a lot of projects in all these countries, such as the Maldives, Nepal or Sri Lanka. So, our relationships with these countries are very strong, they are historical, people-to-people contacts. I give you an example. You know between Nepal and India, there is an open border. So people can come to India without any visa, and the reverse is also the case.

So, we have very strong relationships with all these countries and we are confident that this relationship will become even stronger and richer in the coming months and years. So I don’t think we are worried about what China is doing. Those countries are free to have relationships with any third country, including China.

So you don’t think there is rivalry between India and China?

No, no. Let me tell you very clearly. As far as India is concerned, India does not look upon China as a rival or a competitor. We look upon China as a partner in progress and development. And let me give you an example of this. The trade between China and India reached the highest level ever, US$84.5 billion in 2017, even after the Doklam problem. Still, investment from China into India is increasing and investments from India into China are also increasing.

In fact, last year, there have been two success stories in the economic sector that I kept telling everyone – not only in Hong Kong but in Beijing as well. One is, of course, Xiaomi becoming the single largest mobile headset provider in India. Samsung used to be the leader, but now it has become number two. This shows there’s a big market in India and we want more Chinese companies to come and invest and sell in India. Another success story is an Indian Bollywood movie called Dangal. It became such a big hit in China.

I will tell you why it is important. It shows that Chinese people are open to watching Bollywood movies. I think from watching those movies they understand India better. And by understanding each other better, we will be able to have greater trust between each other. That’s why these examples are very important.

Global Times interviewed me and asked me questions like this, ‘why do Indian people not like China and why you dislike Chinese people?’ And I asked them ‘where did you get this idea from? Actually we have great admiration for China and what China has achieved in the last forty years. If there is any such thing you were talking about, would Xiaomi become the number one handset maker in India?’ And, conversely, Chinese people have nothing against India. If it was the case, would Dangal had become a hit, one of the largest selling non-Chinese films in whole of China?

Talking about movies, there is a quota for the number of foreign movies in China.

We know that there is a quota reserved for non-Chinese movies. We are working with the Chinese Government to increase the quota for Indian movies in China, especially now when Chinese audiences are liking Indian movies.

But are there any investment restrictions or security screening that has impacted you?

No, that hasn’t really impacted us.

India is concerned about the Belt and Road initiative. On the other hand, it is a key member of AIIB (Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank). So what kind of project do you think AIIB should do?

We have said this very openly in international fora. When we talk about development projects or connectivity projects, they must be transparent, fair and equal. There are certain internationally accepted norms for such projects.

If a project meets those norms, we will be happy to take part in it. One of the norms is the project should not violate the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a country. Unfortunately, there is this thing called the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which is called a flagship project of Belt and Road Initiative, which violates India’s sovereignty and territory integrity. Therefore, we oppose it.

There is some discussion about a quadrilateral – India, Australia, Japan and the US – these 4 countries should step up their strategic alliance for infrastructure projects. What is India’s take on that?

We are ready to do infrastructure projects anywhere in the world, including in India, which meets these criteria: of being open, being open to everyone, being fair, being transparent, protecting the environment. We are willing to do projects. As far as four countries are concerned, let me tell you very clearly that India has never been a part of any alliance. I think countries like India and China are too big to be part of any alliance. We both have very independent policies; domestic policies as well as foreign policies. I do not see that India is going to be a part of any alliance.

India will work with all countries in the world to improve and increase its interests. Wherever our interests converge we will work together like in climate change and environment protection. India and China work very closely together on many international issues like environmental protection and counter-terrorism. We will continue to work with anyone, where we find that there is a synergy. We will work with China definitely on these issues.

I do not see India becoming part of any alliance. Let me also repeat what I have already said to you before. In fact if we do follow some of these principles such as not letting differences of opinion becoming disputes, of doing projects which are not opaque but open; transparent and meet ecological and environmental standards; does not violate anyone’s territorial integrity, then we will find a situation where the Chinese dragon and the Indian elephant will actually be dancing together.

{b]Does India have any common concerns or shared interests with Japan, the US and Australia concerning China’s rise?[/b]

No, we do not have any problem with China’s rise. I will talk about India; I cannot talk for the other countries. India has no concerns about China’s rise. In fact, India looks at China’s rise as something which also gives us encouragement that India can also do at least some of the things that China has done, which is to develop economically and develop rapidly. So, I don’t think that China’s rise creates any concerns in India.

In fact none of the things that India does with any country is aimed at a third country, including China. I can repeat myself that India and China are not rivals. India does not look upon China as a competitor or a rival; in fact we look upon China as partner in progress and development. We would like to learn a little bit from China about how to progress and, as I told you earlier, Hong Kong can play a very important role. I remember and, you will also remember, when in the 1980s China was just opening and the reform policy was just starting, it was Hong Kong companies and Hong Kong firms which built expressways, which built bridges, which built power plants in China. So I think Hong Kong can play a very important role in the development and progress of India also.

There is always concern that China is becoming more assertive or even aggressive at the international stage. Structurally, the presidential term is now removed and they are putting together a strong diplomatic line-up with Wang Qishan becoming the vice-president and taking care of China’s international affairs. Therefore, China looks more determined to raise issues of territorial integrity and its sovereign interests. What’s Indian’s assessment on that?

Look, the removal of the term limits and new team for foreign affairs and all that is China’s internal matter; I don’t want to say anything on that. That is for China and the people of China to decide. As far as China’s rise is concerned, as I told you we do not have any concern about it. We only look upon it as something which encourages us to do better in India’s economic development, India’s economic progress and social progress.

What is basically happening today is that both China and India also to a certain extent are re-emerging on the international stage and becoming very important players. Many centuries ago in the 1600 and 1700s, both China and India were very important economic powers in the world. Now in the 21st century, we are seeing a re-emergence, of both China and India to some extent, on the world stage from a geo-political and geo-economic point of view. Again, I will repeat myself, we don’t see any rivalry, competition or threats from China, we only look at China as a partner in progress and development.
South China Morning Post:

India and China must be frank with each other to prevent another Doklam, ambassador warns : New Delhi’s envoy to Beijing blames China for last summer’s military stand-off, saying it ‘changed the status quo in the region’
arun
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Re: Indian Foreign Policy

Post by arun »

X Posted from the Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat thread.
China in South Asia: The Case of India

6 MARCH 2018
Lindsay Hughes, Research Analyst, Indian Ocean Research Programme

Key Points

>China’s perception of India and vice-versa are a good indication of the relationship between the two countries.

>Whereas China previously dismissed India as an economic and military competitor, it is today beginning to look more closely at India through those lenses.

>India, on the other hand, continues to perceive China as a threat but, importantly, now perceives itself as being able to stand up to China.

>Those perceptions will have a major impact upon the relationship and the region.
From Future Directions International web site:

China in South Asia: The Case of India

Other Articles in the series follow.

10 APRIL 2018. China in South Asia: The Case of the United States:

PRC in SA Case US

5 APRIL 2018. China in South Asia: The Case of Pakistan :

PRC in SA Case TSP

13 FEBRUARY 2018. China in South Asia: The Case of Afghanistan:

PRC in SA Case AFG
arun
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Re: Indian Foreign Policy

Post by arun »

X Posted from the India - Russia thread. The PRC brings in its Russian sidekick to promote OBOR / BRI / CPEC and going easy on the Mohammadden Terrorism Fomenting Islamic Republic of Pakistan.
sunnyP wrote:It’s remarkable that Russia's Ambassador to India can, on Indian soil, praise Pakistan in such a way.

Russian envoy to India defends country’s growing ties with Pakistan
In my take…after this country joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, after this country started to take serious measures to curb the financing of terror, the credibility of Pakistan is growing and there is no reason, no sense to deny its wish, its will to be a part of regional and global efforts to fight terror, to search for stability and to enhance economic integration,” he said during the question and answer session.

Earlier in his speech, Kudashev said Russia is “open for contacts with every country” to ensure regional stability. Without naming Pakistan or the US, he also said “excessive pressure” on any of Afghanistan’s neighbours would “just antagonise them and make numerous problems even more complicated”.
https://m.hindustantimes.com/world-news ... hnhXM.html
Simply put Russia in an effort of keeping alive its Soviet superpower delusions of grandeur in the face of a real and substantial diminution in National Power has resigned itself to playing Tonto to the Peoples Republic of China’s Lone Ranger in the East including in our bailiwick and in the former the former Soviet stamping grounds in the Central Asian Republic’s aka Stans, in return for being able to temporarily pursue its irredentist delusions of grandeur Power in the West in areas such as Georgia and Ukraine. Hence Russia is and will increasingly kow-tow to the PRC whims and desires by pushing inimical initiatives like BRI/OBOR/CPEC to India besides by aiding and abetting the PRC’s Taller than Himalayas, Deeper than Indian Ocean, Sweeter than Honey, Iron Brother ally the Mohammadden Terrorism Fomenting Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Our leaders must recognise this diminution in National Power induced Russian realignment of interests with the 2 countries that are most inimical to our National Interest and act to thwart Russia in in its actions in the West. India should not give Russia respite for choosing to playing younger brother to the PRC in our part of the world.

Another version of the same story of Russia playing Tonto to the PRC’s Lone Ranger from a Livemint starting with my quoting the nauseous comment by Russian Ambassador to India Nikolay Kudashev which is a warning that Russia could very act to stymie efforts at FATF to take meaningful action against the Mohammadden Terrorism Fomenting Islamic Republic of Pakistan and can also be expected to be very accommodative of that country when they inevitably land up at the IMF for a loan:
“The credibility of this country (Pakistan) after it joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), after it started to take serious measures on the financing of terror, the credibility of Pakistan is growing. There is no reason, no sense to deny its wish to be part of the regional and global effort to fight terror, to search for stability and enhanced economic integration,”
From Live Mint:

Terror crackdown has raised Pakistan’s credibility: Russia
Vips
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Re: Indian Foreign Policy

Post by Vips »

When Russians says that pakistan has launched a crackdown on terror they are truly using a forked tongue. In propagating the Pakistani narrative of its sacrifice and action in the war on terror, they are willfully ignoring its acts of terrorism against India. By assuring its support to pakistan it is emboldening them to continue using the terror tap against India.

Post its economic descent and after increasingly becoming the lapdog of China, it will be interesting and fun to watch Russia seeking the company of pakistan, who true to their track record will take its support for granted, will simultaneously stroke islamic fervor in its area of influence and demand military supplies from it. Must say Russia is choosing well. :lol:
RoyG
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Re: Indian Foreign Policy

Post by RoyG »

Vips wrote:When Russians says that pakistan has launched a crackdown on terror they are truly using a forked tongue. In propagating the Pakistani narrative of its sacrifice and action in the war on terror, they are willfully ignoring its acts of terrorism against India. By assuring its support to pakistan it is emboldening them to continue using the terror tap against India.

Post its economic descent and after increasingly becoming the lapdog of China, it will be interesting and fun to watch Russia seeking the company of pakistan, who true to their track record will take its support for granted, will simultaneously stroke islamic fervor in its area of influence and demand military supplies from it. Must say Russia is choosing well. :lol:
Russia is merely looking out for its own interests. They want to preserve the balance of power between India, China, and Pakistan in order to dislodge the US from Afghanistan. They know that India will be the most powerful player in Asia if it has direct access to Afghanistan. That is something that both Russia and China do not want.

As of now we are more aligned with the West b/c of Afghanistan and China and should leverage the partnership to ensure that Pakistan as a state crumbles. If that means we drift further from Russia, so be it. We have never been friends. Just partners.
arun
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Re: Indian Foreign Policy

Post by arun »

arun wrote:
sunnyP wrote:It’s remarkable that Russia's Ambassador to India can, on Indian soil, praise Pakistan in such a way.

………..{Rest Snipped}………..

https://m.hindustantimes.com/world-news ... hnhXM.html
Simply put Russia in an effort of keeping alive its Soviet superpower delusions of grandeur in the face of a real and substantial diminution in National Power has resigned itself to playing Tonto to the Peoples Republic of China’s Lone Ranger in the East including in our bailiwick and in the former the former Soviet stamping grounds in the Central Asian Republic’s aka Stans, in return for being able to temporarily pursue its irredentist delusions of grandeur Power in the West in areas such as Georgia and Ukraine. Hence Russia is and will increasingly kow-tow to the PRC whims and desires by pushing inimical initiatives like BRI/OBOR/CPEC to India besides by aiding and abetting the PRC’s Taller than Himalayas, Deeper than Indian Ocean, Sweeter than Honey, Iron Brother ally the Mohammadden Terrorism Fomenting Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Our leaders must recognise this diminution in National Power induced Russian realignment of interests with the 2 countries that are most inimical to our National Interest and act to thwart Russia in in its actions in the West. India should not give Russia respite for choosing to playing younger brother to the PRC in our part of the world.

Another version of the same story of Russia playing Tonto to the PRC’s Lone Ranger from a Livemint starting with my quoting the nauseous comment by Russian Ambassador to India Nikolay Kudashev which is a warning that Russia could very act to stymie efforts at FATF to take meaningful action against the Mohammadden Terrorism Fomenting Islamic Republic of Pakistan and can also be expected to be very accommodative of that country when they inevitably land up at the IMF for a loan:
“The credibility of this country (Pakistan) after it joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), after it started to take serious measures on the financing of terror, the credibility of Pakistan is growing. There is no reason, no sense to deny its wish to be part of the regional and global effort to fight terror, to search for stability and enhanced economic integration,”
From Live Mint:

Terror crackdown has raised Pakistan’s credibility: Russia
X Posted from the India Russia thread.

I do hope our Foreign Policy establishment has got a policy to manage the decline of Russia.

Russian decline, just like the PRC’s rise, can be bothersome, albeit at different levels.
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Re: Indian Foreign Policy

Post by SSridhar »

The soft power of India - Chinmaya R Gharekhan, The Hindu
There is a lot of talk these days, not so much among government circles as among the ‘strategic community’, about India being a major or even global power, with the capability, even responsibility, to play an ‘important role’ on the world stage as a balancing power between major powers and as a ‘security provider’ to others. We need to temper this rhetoric, be more realistic and less ambitious. The dividing line between national pride and national ego can be thin.

Nehru’s vision

India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was convinced that India was bound to play an increasing and beneficent part in world affairs. He had developed a zeal for diplomacy that was not backed by the needed military and economic hard power. He was banking on our moral high ground because he and the nation were proud of the non-violent manner in which we had achieved our independence. As early as 1948, he declared: “India had already become the fourth or fifth most influential country in the United Nations.” This was a strange claim; just a year earlier, we were forced to withdraw our candidature for the Security Council when Ukraine, which was contesting the same seat, secured more votes than us in seven successive ballots in a single day. We have been afflicted with this malady ever since.

Over the decades, no doubt influenced by our experience in the early years in Kashmir and China, the idealist strain has diminished and eventually disappeared altogether; national interest alone would guide our policy. This is not necessarily an undesirable thing. The only caveat is that we have to be realists and check the inexplicable urge to play a big role in international relations.

We have to ask ourselves: What kind of role do we want to play? Where and how do we want to play the role? Do we have the means to play such role?

Status and responsibility

Leaders everywhere look for a role for themselves. They believe, perhaps genuinely, that an increased prestige for themselves will translate into more votes domestically and ipso facto bring benefits to their countries. The driving factor is prestige, status. Often the leaders do not realise that playing a role carries with it responsibilities which we may not be able or keen to accept but which we might be dragged into. These responsibilities would be defined by others and would invariably involve us into tasks and areas which we may not wish to get involved in.

Are we clear about the kind of role we wish to play internationally? Do we have a role model for it? Do we wish to emulate what Vladimir Putin’s Russia is doing in West Asia? Or, what the Soviet Union did in Afghanistan in the 1980s or what America did in Iran in 1953, in Indo-China in the 1950s and 1960s, and frequently in Central and South America? All those operations lacked legitimacy and for the most part cost the countries concerned dear in human and material terms. Nor did they bring them glory. One will look in vain for an example when such a role was played with benign intentions.

Regional aspirations

If not global, what about a regional role, in our neighbourhood? Experts seem unanimous that India is certainly a regional power. But is it? Recent events do not lend support to that view and the government was right in not paying heed to that rhetoric. India is without doubt the pre-eminent power in South Asia. However, given our firm commitment not to use force and to non-interference in internal affairs in other states, our neighbours do not feel threatened by us. (We do not rule out strong measures when we have to.) We did make a huge effort in Sri Lanka to bring peace and stability to that country and we did so at the request of its lawful government. The venture ended in failure and eventually cost the life of a former prime minister. Small-scale interventions in the Maldives and the Seychelles in the 1980s were successful in stabilising legitimate governments. To that extent, India was able to play a positive role in the region. In these examples, the motivating factor was not prestige, there were domestic factors at play. The resulting increase in our prestige was incidental. If intervention does not succeed, as in Sri Lanka, the ensuing loss of prestige more than offsets whatever prestige we might have gained in the other operations. Often, when a country gets involved in what might be assessed as a low cost foreign adventure, it remains bogged down even when the going gets tough precisely because it apprehends loss of face or prestige. It is easy to get in but difficult to get out.

The real goals


Apart from protecting our people from adverse external factors and interventions, the principal criterion in the conduct of foreign policy for India ought to be lifting the poor from poverty. Whatever brings concrete benefits to our people should be encouraged. A mere wish to be praised as a global or even regional power should not be allowed to guide the policy. When other countries flatter us by describing us as a major power, it is invariably because they want to rope us into some schemes of their own. It is best not to get too entangled in the chess moves of other countries. The principal interest of most of them is to sell very expensive military hardware to us. Our single minded focus should be on economic development. Without the necessary economic strength, we cannot strengthen our military. We do need a strong military but for that we need undisturbed double digit economic growth for a generation. Prime Minister Vajpayee’s seasoned adviser Brajesh Mishra’s advice was sound: do not provoke nor get provoked for two decades, concentrate on building the economy. Since we do have to think critically about allocating our scarce resources among alternative uses, and since we are a democratic polity with a multi-religious and multi-ethnic society with a large number of poor, we have to think more than twice about defence spending. Even when at some stage we acquire credible hard power, we must not allow ourselves to be seduced by the flattering and mostly insincere talk of others about India playing a global role.

When I used to visit West Asia on behalf of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, my interlocutors expressed their admiration, not so much for our economy or military, but for the orderly manner in which power was transferred from one party to another and for the largely harmonious and peaceful, integrated manner in which people of different faiths lived together. An internally divided India cannot play any role externally. The ‘strategic community’ should concentrate on reinforcing this real soft power of India which is what the rest of the world appreciates and not lose time and resources in peripheral ventures that bring no lasting benefit.

Chinmaya R. Gharekhan, a former Indian Ambassador to the United Nations, was Special Envoy for West Asia in the Manmohan Singh government
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Re: Indian Foreign Policy

Post by Philip »

Yep," soft power", speaking softly and carrying a big flower instead of a stick! This " flower power" exists in the myopic and jittery minds of our MEA, why the Maldivian
sprat shoves a fish up India's nether end and we sit sullenly sucking our thumbs!
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Re: Indian Foreign Policy

Post by Austin »

https://twitter.com/nitingokhale/status ... 4398738432


@nitingokhale
Following Following @nitingokhale

It’s hectic time for India’s multi-polar diplomacy. EAM Sushma Swaraj is in China followed by RM Nirmala Sitaraman tomorrow even as NSA Ajit Doval goes to Moscow with FS Vijay Gokhale in a couple of days! It’s all happening
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Re: Indian Foreign Policy

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U.S. raises Russia bogey with India
India and the U.S. are engaged in senior-level consultations over recent American sanctions against Russian entities, even as two visiting U.S. defence officials have told New Delhi that India is not fully immune to the sanctions under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA).

However, the government is unfazed, multiple government sources told The Hindu. Even Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had visited Moscow to discuss a slew of defence deals, including the S-400 air-defence missile systems.

P.S. Raghavan, Convener, National Security Advisory Board, told The Hindu that the U.S. could not seek to sustain a strategic partnership with India while trying to weaken India at the same time. “CAATSA is aimed at every country that has military and energy connections with Russia. And while the U.S. may claim it has a strategic motive, it cannot deny it has strong commercial objectives behind it. Basically, the U.S. is saying don’t go to them [Russia], come to us [U.S.],” Mr. Raghavan, a former Indian Ambassador to Russia, said.

A senior military source said that India had conveyed to the U.S. at various levels its concerns about the implications of U.S. sanctions against several Russian entities involved in military supplies to India. “Both at the Foreign Secretary level and in the U.S., we have conveyed our stand that the sanctions cannot impinge on our relations with Russia, especially military acquisitions,” he said. Discussions, he said, are continuing.

On January 29, the U.S. began imposing sanctions on foreign companies under section 231of CAATSA for transactions made with Russian defence and intelligence sector. “There is far more at risk at strategic level for the U.S., and they acknowledge that,” the military source said.

Russia is India’s biggest arms supplier to India, accounting for 62% of acquisitions in the past five years, according to latest estimates.

“U.S. can’t offer anything that can compare to the S-400 (air defence missile system) for India. Add to that, its processes are much more complicated. While the Russian government’s nod allows the contract to proceed, in the U.S., the private companies have hesitations, the U.S. Congress, the DoD, State department, White House etc can object and scuttle any deal,” Ambassador Raghavan said

U.S. Position

The Hindu has learnt that since February, at least two senior U.S. defence officials have conveyed to India in no uncertain terms that India would not be immune to the proposed sanctions under CAATSA.

According to Section 231 of CAATSA, any country or entity that carries out “transactions with the intelligence or defence sectors” of the Russian government would face sanctions from the U.S.

The MEA declined to comment on what India’s response to the warnings was. However, it is understood that Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale and Defence Secretary Sanjay Mitra have both raised strenuous objections to the U.S. proposal in their bilateral meetings. The Indian embassy in Washington DC remains engaged on the issue, military sources said.

“We totally appreciate Indian’s concerns. It was raised in discussions during senior level meetings last month. We are very concerned because we very much hope to maintain the momentum and the trajectory of this relationship. We want to deepen our cooperation and not reduce it,” Joe Felter, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for South and Southeast Asia, told PTI in an interview earlier this month.

The new U.S. Pacific Commander nominee Admiral Philip Davidson also counselled a senate hearing against penalising India for its defence ties with Russia.

However, the expressions of understanding may not cut much ice with the Indian establishment.

New Delhi is unfazed


A senior MOD source pointed out that if U.S. seeks to unsettle India-Russia ties it wouldn’t mean the U.S. will gain out of it through arms deals. “Today we have multiple options, from France to Israel. It would be better for the U.S. not to try and scuttle our strongest military ties,” he said.

The official pointed out that there was no great urgency to sign any deal with Russia now. “We will proceed at our pace, and none of our negotiations are keeping in mind the U.S. sanctions,” he said.

He said the deal for S-400 Triumf air defence system, at over $4.5 billion, is “not as close to signing” as media is speculating. The deal for the advanced S-400 could turn out to be a test case about how U.S. will react with its sanctions on India’s defence purchases from Russia. However, that may not be the only deal.

Several Russian military entities that have deep business ties with India are on the sanctions list. They include Rosoboronexport, Rostec (Russian Technologies State Corporation), Russian Aircraft Corporation MiG, Russian Helicopters, Sukhoi Aviation, Tactical Missiles Corporation, Tupolev, United Aircraft Corporation, United Engine Corporation, United Shipbuilding Corporation etc. “That is an exhaustive list of key companies which have been supplying Indian military,” an MOD official said.

Adding to the strain between India and U.S. is India’s recent refusal to schedule separate Defence Minister talks with the U.S, after the “2+2” dialogue for Foreign and Defence Ministers scheduled for Mid-April had to be put off after U.S. President Donald Trump sacked his secretary of state Rex Tillerson. Mr. Tillerson’s replacement Mike Pompeo’ confirmation process is still on, and no date can be set until he is appointed as Secretary of State.
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Re: Indian Foreign Policy

Post by Karan M »

they think india is another egypt. will just salaam and start buying from the great khan as versus the eevil russkis.
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Re: Indian Foreign Policy

Post by habal »

Certainly there seems to be a glass ceiling in US imagination, they are not used to dealing on equal terms. This is going to be painful for them.
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Re: Indian Foreign Policy

Post by Austin »

US has the "I Rule the World Mentality So Follow Me or Else ........" if they have problem with Russia let them sort on their own , Dont enforce their sanctions or rules on other nation that has nothing to do with the dispute or has good relation with either or both of them.

They need to get out of this Cave Men Mentality and begin to understand there are 194 countries in the world excluding them and each or bunch of them have their own interest and their internal laws are not Universal for rest to follow or oblige
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Re: Indian Foreign Policy

Post by darshhan »

Contrary to popular perception America doesn't want any friends or allies. This is simply not in its DNA. What it requires is are Bitches. Any entity(country, individual, group etc) which is hoping for a close relationship or cooperation with USofA better factor this in their calculations I.e exactly how much of a bitch they are ready to be in order to serve their American master.

For us it is a reminder why we shouldn't ever sign agreements such as CISMOA or whatever.
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Re: Indian Foreign Policy

Post by arun »

Austin wrote:U.S. raises Russia bogey with India

.............{Rest Snipped}................
“We will proceed at our pace, and none of our negotiations are keeping in mind the U.S. sanctions,”.

The above is 800% the way for our country India to progress deals with Russia or Iran or Venezuela or any other country the US may have a disagreement with and any imposition of sanctions by the US owing to any of their local laws on India’s relations with third countries is to be strongly counter-attacked.
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Re: Indian Foreign Policy

Post by Philip »

It wants only bast***s.As was famously attributed to Henry K I think, in a discussion on the despotic Gen.Noriega,he is supposed to have said, " yes, I know he is a b*****d, but he's our b*****d!"
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Re: Indian Foreign Policy

Post by ramana »

I think the "proceed at our pace" is the wrong way. Just acquire the weapons if you need them right away while price is right.
1) It takes long lead time to procure and induct them into Air defense Regiments as it is a new weapons system and 20will make a qualitative difference.
3) Even US is feeling the pinch of Aluminum sanctions and is watering them down by requesting a Putin Oligarch to reduce his controlling interest in that metals export firm.

So what's the big deal?
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Re: Indian Foreign Policy

Post by Philip »

Yes, IST is responsible even for our desi programmes, yet to bear fruit after decades.See the latest VAYU titbit about twin-seat LCAs.A crisis like Doklam appeared out of nowhere.The services need weapons to fight, not a babu's
big talk.You don't win wars using hot air.We have no alternative but to use all methods of procurement while pursuing max. indigenisation to ensure the country's security.
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Re: Indian Foreign Policy

Post by arun »

X Posted from the OBOR thread, to the Indian Foreign Policy, SCO and Chinese Threat threads.

SCO Summit 2018: India not mentioned in portion of joint communique backing China's OBOR project

I hope our Ministry of External Affairs is aware and doing something about all of this. This is the first time I have come across where a Press Communique has purportedly been jointly issued, in some languages and not in another language, without unanimity of meeting participants over contents, in this case support for OBOR / BRI / CPEC.

The Peoples Republic of China is being sneaky about the Press Communique issued after the meeting of SCO Foreign Ministers.

The English language SCO websilink has no mention of the Press Communique issued after the meeting of SCO Foreign Ministers. Indeed the English language SCO weblink has no entry after April 17, 2018 and certainly none for April 24, 2018 when the alleged Press Communique of the meeting of SCO Foreign Ministers was purportedly released.
See here:

SCO English Website

On the other hand the PRC has snuck in mention of the Press Communique in the Russian language and Chinese language sections

The SCO Russian Language website (Click Here) does have an April 24, 2018 entry (Russian April 24 Click Here) translated excerpt of which follows:
2018/04/24

Information message on the meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Member States of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization ……………………..

The Ministers of Foreign Affairs of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, confirming the support of China's One-Way, One-Way Initiative, spoke in favor of using the potential of the countries of the region, international organizations and multilateral associations in order to form a broad, open, mutually beneficial and equal partnership.
Likewise the SCO Russian Language website (Click Here) does have an April 24, 2018 entry (Chinese April 24 Click Here) translated excerpt of which follows:
2018 / 04 / 24

Press Communique of the Foreign Ministers' Council Meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Member States

The foreign ministers of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan reiterated their support for the "Belt and Road Initiative" proposed by China. All parties support the use of the potential of the countries, international organizations and multilateral institutions in the region to establish a broad, open, mutually beneficial and equal partnership in the SCO region.
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Re: Indian Foreign Policy

Post by arun »

X Posted from the Indian Coast Guard thread to the West Asia and India Foreign Policy threads.

Praveen Swami on an alleged Indian Coast Guard operation 50 km off the coast of Goa involving among other assets offshore patrol vessels ICGS Samarth and ICGS Shoor to ”intercept a yacht carrying runaway Dubai royal Latifa Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum” who he reports is a daughter of United Arab Emirates Prime Minister and Dubai ruler Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum.

For more on the alleged Nostromo affair read on:

India returned runaway Dubai princess to protect strategic interests : India located the United States-flagged yacht, Nostromo, some 50 km off the coast of Goa
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Re: Indian Foreign Policy

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The role India must play with China and Russia
May 1 is celebrated in many parts of the world as International Workers’ Day. This “Labour Day”, I find myself thinking of the two greatest erstwhile socialist republics in the world, Russia and China. As it happens, I also returned early this morning from Moscow after speaking at the 3rd Conference on Indology at the historic State University of St Petersburg.

On our last day in this cultural capital of Russia, we were taken to St Peter’s Square or Senate Square. It was here that on December 26, 1825, 3,000 soldiers revolted against Tsar Nicholas I. The uprising was put down, but nearly 100 years later, the Bolsheviks did succeed in overthrowing the monarchy.

Russia rises

On the way back to our hotel, we paused by the Battleship Aurora, now a museum. A single blank shot fired from this ship on October 25, 1917, heralded the start of the revolution. The provisional government caved in; Vladimir Lenin’s Red Guards stormed the Winter Palace the following day. St Petersburg, once called Petrograd, then Leningrad after the revolution, bears the vivid traces of such important historical events and experiments in human social and political engineering.

During my earlier visit to Russia, just after the collapse of the Soviet Union, I had witnessed much pain and suffering, terrible uncertainty not to mention economic privation. Some of my friends had lost their jobs, others, even senior professors, were doubling up as cab drivers to make ends meet. This visit was much more reassuring and comfortable.

Russia, the largest country in the world, is also a resilient and enduring civilisation. India cannot afford to neglect this part of the world. We have age-old ties, whose advantages we must not forget. Russia, moreover, will remain important, even crucial to the balance of power not only in the region but also in the world, for decades to come.

It cannot be written off, nor taken for granted. What is more, Russians have managed their economic and political transition quite successfully, certainly without the kind of bloodshed that the revolution and its aftermath witnessed.

Though Russia’s importance is much diminished after the breakup of the USSR and even though it is no longer the world’s other superpower, its sphere of influence, particularly in Central Asia, remains significant if not intact. We must never forget that Russia has not only been our friend and ally in the past, but remains the bulwark against Islamic terrorism in the region.

Travelling through Russia, I was struck by the disciplined, educated, hardworking and polite populace. The streets are clean, the supermarkets well stocked and stacked. Russians take a pride in their land and traditions. Though they have suffered much, often with self-inflicted wounds, they are a great people.

China matters


But just as I was struck by how significant, albeit eclipsed, the Indian-Russian relationship is, there was a news flash of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s sudden two-day informal visit to China on April 28. Of course, these trips are carefully prepared for, even if the press or public is taken off guard. China, arguably our most important neighbour, is today close to establishing itself as the world’s No 1 power. In terms of purchasing power party (PPP), it is already the world’s greatest economy and ranked second after in the US in terms of nominal GDP

Xi Jinping’s confirmation as President-for-life is nothing if not a seal of approval from the ruling Communist Party on his mandate to make China the world’s undisputed leader. China’s will to power is awesome; it will not brook any interference in its mission. PM Modi’s visit was a much-needed acknowledgment of President Xi’s enhanced role as China’s supreme leader for life and therefore the world’s most powerful man.

Balancing act


Many Right-wing folks in India are not only suspicious of China’s designs, but also, and I strongly believe, mistakenly competitive. Let us face it: China is way ahead of us on most important parameters. A foolish attempt to equalise would be disastrous to our self-interests.

For example, the BJP’s still current but resentful ally, the Shiv Sena, attacked Modi’s China dash in its newspaper Saamna, for imitating Jawaharlal Nehru’s “no war” policy. What did they expect? Idle and foolish war-mongering instead?

Chinese foreign ministry mandarins on the occasion of this visit have spoken of “eternal peace” with India as the natural destiny of our two great civilisations. We should endorse this heartily. What can be better than that for us?

China may keep needling us, supporting our archenemy Pakistan, opposing our entry to the UN Security Council, funding Maoist insurgents, and so on, but we must never let these factors unnecessarily spoil our relationship. Respect for China and strategic acknowledgment of its might, along with our own “peaceful rise”, to borrow a Chinese term, should be the cornerstone of our policy.

India has to play a delicate balancing role when it comes to the great powers in our region, China and Russia. We cannot neglect either. We can counter-balance China’s tremendous influence by maintaining friendship not only with Russia but also with Japan, US and Australia, as a part of our Quadrilateral Security Dialogue.

Good for us that foreign secretary Vijay Keshav Gokhale is a China expert, as was his predecessor S Jaishankar. This May Day, let’s resolve to be in China’s good books as well as enhance our enduring partnership with Russia.

(Courtesy of Mail Today)
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Re: Indian Foreign Policy

Post by Philip »

Respect for China and strategic acknowledgment of its might, along with our own “peaceful rise”, to borrow a Chinese term, should be the cornerstone of our policy.
What utter crap! China can militarise and occupy islands that do not belong to it in the ICS,plus massively turn them into mil. bases and station lethal LR missiles on them and expect the rest of Asia to clap its hands,bow to the floor ,kowtowing to the XI Gin would-be-emperor and crawl out backwards on our knees?

It is this diplomacy of appeasement that needs to be cut out of the MEA mindset like a cancerous organ.The MEA is still displaying the servility of the "native" to any powerful firang entity
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Re: Indian Foreign Policy

Post by SSridhar »

Macron wants strategic Paris-Delhi-Canberra axis amid Pacific tension - Reuters
French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday called for the creation of a new strategic alliance among France, India and Australia to respond to challenges in the Asia-Pacific region and the growing assertiveness of China.

On the second day of a visit to Australia, where he hopes to cement defence ties following the 2016 signing of a $38 billion megadeal to supply submarines to the Australian navy, Macron said the like-minded democracies should forge closer ties.

"We're not naive: if we want to be seen and respected by China as an equal partner, we must organise ourselves," Macron said in a speech at an Australian naval base.

Macron visited China in January, where he warned Beijing that its new "Silk Road" initiative should not be "one-way".

He then flew to India in March, where he committed to strengthen a defence partnership
that has already seen New Delhi buy French warplanes in 2016.

"This new Paris-Delhi-Canberra axis is absolutely key for the region and our joint objectives in the Indian-Pacific region," Macron said.

His visit to Australia, only the second by a French president, comes amid heightened tensions in the Pacific, where France has numerous interests.

France has island territories spanning the Indo-Pacific: Reunion and Mayotte in the Indian Ocean, and Noumea, Wallis and Futuna and French Polynesia in the Pacific.

Australia and New Zealand have each separately warned that China is seeking to exert influence in the Pacific through its international aid programme, an allegation Beijing denies.
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Re: Indian Foreign Policy

Post by Bart S »

Austin wrote:The role India must play with China and Russia

bla bla bla delusional self-loathing rubbish by the commie idiot author deleted
You left out the most significant part, a piece of info that says more than the long winded article :mrgreen: :
MAKARAND R PARANJAPE @makrandparanspe
The writer is poet and professor, JNU.
:rotfl:
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Re: Indian Foreign Policy

Post by Philip »

BK is a hawk and calls a spade a spade,here criticising the achievements of the PM in foreign policy.It was written before the Modi-Xi meeting,but if the news that there are differences in the text of the two nations,no guarantee from China on the LAC,then we are yet again being taken for suckers by the Chins and a revamp of the attitude of the MEA is required.I watched the Latitude weekly programme on telly this week,which discussed the very same issue.our relations with China.All that seems to have come about is no change in attitude by the Chins,just an interval for 'refreshment",before they start their usual mischief on the LAC yet again to further embarrass the PM.If I was he,I would take any guarantees given by the Chins with a shipload of salt.

https://bharatkarnad.com/
Why Modi has failed in the foreign policy arena: the perils of Personalized Diplomacy
Posted on April 24, 2018 by Bharat Karnad

A year before the next general elections, it is dawning on the Modi government that it has nothing much to show for the Prime Minister’s extensive travels all over the globe, whence the desperation-tinged diplomatic activity to fashion something out of thin air and that too with the sternest negotiator in the business — China!

The suddenly announced “informal summit” in Wuhan involving Modi and Xi Jinping on April 27-28, is presumably the vehicle that is supposed to get some results that Modi can crow about and Xi can hold up as the kind of transaction the Chinese supremo can extract out of a nettlesome country on its border with pretensions to become a “leading power” (of originally US description)! Except, this coach is likely to turn, as in Cinderella’s case, into a pumpkin ere the clock strikes twelve or, as in this case, when the meeting at Xi’s private resort on East Lake ends with nothing in Modi’s bag!

That absolutely nothing will come out of this summit is hinted at by the prefix “informal” attached to it. It means basically that even though the two governments tried desperately hard to narrow the differences on the numerous outstanding issues in which the two sides have a stake, nothing was able to be worked out, not between the Foreign Offices, nor at the level of the Foreign Ministers, Sushma Swaraj and Wang Yi, or Defence Ministers, Nirmala Sitharaman and General Wei Fenghe. And that it is now left to the principals to conjure up something.

What must particularly bother Modi is that time and again, in the run-up to the 2014 elections, he talked of “business” being in his “blood” which led the Indian people to expect, among lot else, that he’d also be extremely successful in cutting a whole bunch of deals to economically advantage the country. In the last four years the only deal the Prime Minister has managed to finalize is the $12 billion plus contract for 36 Rafale combat aircraft, an outlay for which France had previously promised 126 of these aircraft! This looks like a great deal. For France! So may be the French President Francoise Hollande deserves the award for champion businessman and deal-maker.

The question that arises in the face of such conspicuous failure is why Modi has failed? Perhaps he relied too much on his trademark hugs and embraces to personalize diplomacy to a point where he hoped the opposite numbers, succumbing to the charms of good fellowship, would up and generously agree to whatever Modi had in mind to obtain. The simpletonish premise here is that if you are physically pally with someone that person is somehow duty bound to be nice to you (which is subcontinental kind of thinking). Except, as hard politicians just about every one of them kept to the true north represented by their nations’ interests and succeeded in pulling Modi over to their side rather than going over to Modi’s. This has happened frequently enough to now be a pattern.

Consider this: Trump humoured Modi and gamely accepted his embraces in Washington and then stuck it into India — constricting the H1B visa worm hole through which a generation of Indian Indian techies — economic refugees with technical skills, had squirmed through with their careerist wives to the good life in America, imposing tariffs on imports from India (steel and aluminum), rejecting Delhi’s advice to return to WTO table, and readying legislatively to punish India for dealing with Iran, and for buying arms from Russia. And all this while Modi hoped that by tagging on to the American line, accepting Washington’s advice, he’d get something out of the US.

Or, China and Xi: the Indian Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale — a Mandarin-speaking diplomat — the kind this analyst has always warned as more likely to further China’s interests than India’s — was permitted cravenly to seek approval from Beijing for putting the clamps on the Dalai Lama by preventing the Tibetan exile community from celebrating 60 years of his safe exile in India. This was obviously seen as a sweetener in the hope that this gesture would soften the Chinese attitude and negotiating stance on numerous issues. Messrs Gokhale and others of his China loving ilk should have known that this would only whet Beijing’s appetite, which is exactly what has happened.

Having correctly gauged that Modi was in urgent need of some success in the external realm, the Xi dispensation laid out the agenda. Foreign Minister Wang wants India to sign on along with China as a “guardian of globalism” and jointly work out means and measures to oppose Trump’s protectionist policies. Global trade is, of course, good for India but shouldn’t Modi demand that Xi eliminate the trade deficit of $50 billion in bilateral trade and accord Indian companies in China the same treatment as Chinese firms in India enjoy? And if Beijing fails, to impose harsher but indirect counter-taxes to equalize the economic opportunity, and to keep China out of the RCEP benefits basket unless that happens instead of Delhi always playing the sap and sucker?

But there’s no hint that Xi will concede even a millimeter on matters of interest to India, in the main, the expeditious resolution of the border dispute and delineation of the Line of Actual Control as the formal boundary, and the acceptance of ‘One India’ in return for Delhi’s agreeing to the ‘One China’ concept; ‘One India’ to include the boundaries f the erstwhile princely kingdom of Kashmir meaning, ipso facto, Gilgit and Baltistan and the rest of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. And that if Xi does not agree with this, then India would instantly withdraw from its earlier agreed position of the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) as part of China — which historically it never was, a fact proven by the Great Ming Unification Record of 1461. (Incidentally, the conclusions of his revealing research into China’s imperial records going as far back as Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368) and up to the Ming Dynasty ,1368-1644, were conveyed by Professor Hon-shiang Lau, formerly of the University of Hong Kong, in his lecture at the India International Centre on April 11, 2018, among the most enlightening this analyst has ever heard anywhere.) This research makes nonsense of the traditional Chinese claim of Tibet as part of China “since antiquity”, because it shows that “antiquity” means only as far back as the Yuan emperors in the Middle Ages, and then only to strengthen the point the Tibetan govt in exile has been making

Indeed, the Great Unification Records–are documents clearly describing the exact extent of the Chinese Empire, listing all the regions within it, that the dispensation of each emperor prepared anew are clear in identifying Tibet as lying WELL OUTSIDE the Chinese imperial domain.

Shouldn’t Mandarin-speaking Foreign Service officers, who busy themselves with useless work, not be tasked with researching into these documents to buttress India’s case for a rethink on Tibet? (Communist Beijing’s explanation for this is — according to Prof Lau –that, oh, the Qing and successor emperors “had not educated” themselves on Tibet!!! On such historical nonsense are China’s territorial claims based. Shouldn’t Modi bring this up and his government hereafter draw up a legal case to separate Tibet from China?

Because of the wrongheaded orientation of his government from the start — Modi will likely be fobbed of by Xi with some infirm commitment about Beijing perhaps reconsidering its India’s case for membership in the Nuclear Suppliers Group — a cartel that I have long argued will restrict India’s freedom for policy maneuver and to exercise leverage in the nonproliferation field for a change instead of always being victimised by the NPT regime; and about declaring Azhar Mahmood a terrorist,and some small understanding that PLA will not start a flareup in Dok La and elsewhere on the LAC that could give the Indian army a bloody nose and sink Modi’s re-election chances. Modi will return happy with this kind of small giveaways that he will then ballyhoo as some great achievement. If the Modi government thinks that the Gagan Shakti kind of military exercise (11,000 sorties, 6 sorties per platform per day) will impress, it should think again. They should recall that in 1958 when a joint air-army exercise was staged in Ambala for a visiting Chinese dignitary who led the PLA in the 1962 War, complete with Hunter aircraft on strafing sorties, the PLA commander coolly turned to ask Nehru if he thought aircraft would be available to the Indian army in the mountains!

That Xi is the hardest negotiator Modi has met is evident from a simple fact: Modi never tried to hug Xi — if he did, he must have done so in secret because there are no pics of this momentous embrace on film. That’s because Modi instinctively understands that Xi is a hard nut to crack, as have been the other foreign leaders he has summitted with, except the Chinese leader is unwilling to give Modi even the satisfaction of a hug that as far as Modi is concerned signals to the Indian masses and media greater understanding and level of intimacy than exists in reality with leaders who push their national interests in extremis, even as Indian PMs are happy with pats on their back, while the country gets it in the neck.

The “informal” Modi-Xi summit is hence a lot of hoo-ha amounting to nothing.
JE Menon
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Re: Indian Foreign Policy

Post by JE Menon »

Bart S wrote:
You left out the most significant part, a piece of info that says more than the long winded article :mrgreen: :
MAKARAND R PARANJAPE @makrandparanspe
The writer is poet and professor, JNU.
:rotfl:
Actually, Prof. Paranjpe is one of the good guys. Some of his quietly brutal takedowns on youtube have had the brown sahibs screaming for OIT (at least the OI part) asap. Well worth watching the gent. He is also the one who has, again in the most soft-spoken manner, utterly rubbished that useless and irresponsible demagogue from JNU Kanhaiya Kumar.
krisna
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Re: Indian Foreign Policy

Post by krisna »

^^^^
what JEM says is True .
The good prof was initially quiet earlier few years due to environment being toxic in jnu. He opened out in the last 1-2 years.
probably he was closet dharmic warrior along but had little chance to open out. He is quiet unassuming person -not boisterous type as some are.
He does have some lootyens connections form what little I know about him.
chetak
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Re: Indian Foreign Policy

Post by chetak »

Bart S wrote:
Austin wrote:The role India must play with China and Russia

bla bla bla delusional self-loathing rubbish by the commie idiot author deleted
You left out the most significant part, a piece of info that says more than the long winded article :mrgreen: :
MAKARAND R PARANJAPE @makrandparanspe
The writer is poet and professor, JNU.
:rotfl:
One would have thought that this little toadying creep had more sense than just being a subservient commie sepoy publicly displaying his ritualistic obeyance to peking.
JE Menon
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Re: Indian Foreign Policy

Post by JE Menon »

Chetak he is not a commie. He probably does not have a grasp on strategic affairs good enough to have written that article, which is clearly messed up. But he is very much someone who is in the trenches on the right side and has been at it for some time. He is a true scholar. Not the standard JNU walla. He is also, in a sense, part of the Lutyens elite... Bishop Cottons, St. Stephens, Uni of Illinois - Urbana Champaign. Married to Devaki Singh, daughter of late Congress Politico Arun Singh. He has written a vast amount, and edited a ton as well... Really erudite man, and probably one of those who will be leading the thought war from the front on the side of New India, so to speak.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makarand_Paranjape

The article on China/Russia is an exception, not the rule.

Watch him on youtube... especially in a recent one where he totally eviscerated one Dehlavi woman in a litfest of some sort, I don't recall.
Avik
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Re: Indian Foreign Policy

Post by Avik »

^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Sorry disagree

The content in the article is at variance with its conclusion and headline!
If India has more choice in deciding its partners, and deciding how it can calibrate various partnerships, how does that 'reduce' India's strategic autonomy?
What the article should have posited is that over time, say 10 years, in Asia to start with, India will evolve from being the swing player to one of the pole players that other countries will ally/swing to.
ShauryaT
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Re: Indian Foreign Policy

Post by ShauryaT »

Craven Indian govt will bow down to Trump’s edict on Iran -- Bharat Karnad
What does India do? With his US tilting policy that simultaneously distances India from Russia Modi has tried hard to please Trump, which so far has not prevented Trump from going all out with his moves to close the US as economic bolthole for the Indian middle class — H1B/H-4 visas and chain migration, put imposts on imported Indian steel and aluminium, and then muster the cheek to demand that India sign the remaining two “foundational accords” — CISMOA and BECA, with the former permitting the US formally to penetrate the Indian government and military’s communications net. This was opposed by the Indian armed services but per news reports these accords are on track to be approved by Modi. Other than pushing the old F-16 aircraft for IAF use, Trump has thrown another crumb — sale of Predator drone!

The fact is the fickle US hasn’t responded to Modi’s overtures, and Russia is alienated, so what could have been a very strong quadrilateral of India, Russia, China and Iran to neutralize the effects of the US sanctions, is unavailable to Delhi. Still, no harm if Modi tries to cobble together such an issue-based coalition. Japanese PM Shinzo Abe has done just such a thing by calling a meeting of Japan, China, and South Korea as, perhaps, a body to pick up the pieces after Trump is done (though the South Korean deputy foreign minister justified it as a runup to making the Jong-un-Trump summit successful).

Consider what the US sanctions are about. The Israeli paper, Haaretz of May 8 explains: “The first batch of sanctions will be …in place in August 2018 [and] include, among others, sanctions on the acquisition of U.S. dollar banknotes by Iran’s government; sanctions on Iran’s trade in gold and other precious metals; sanctions on direct or indirect sale, supply or transfer of aluminum, steel, coal and graphite to Iran; and sanctions on Iran’s automotive sector…..The second batch of sanctions will be put back in place by November 2018. These include, among others, sanctions on Iran’s shipping sector; sanctions on Iran’s petroleum exports; sanctions on the Central Bank of Iran, and broader sanctions on Iran’s energy sector.” The idea is to economically throttle Iran.

As mentioned, these sanctions would fail if US’ European allies and Russia and China stayed stuck to the JCPOA and frustrated the American sanctions regime. This won’t happen. Though, no doubt, starting tomorrow members of the US policy eco-system in Delhi headed by the Indian chapters of Brookings and Carnegie will begin churning out commentaries and analyses to show why India should stand by Trump, which line will be picked up and embroidered over the weeks by the usual op-ed writers in Indian dailies and talking heads on TV and other electronic media.

The question is this: Is India so bereft of leverage that it has no alternative? I have been pounding on this issue for long — but why doesn’t Modi manipulate access to the Indian market not just against the US but even China to get what it wants? Trump will have to pause in his blundering ways if he is faced with restrictions on American companies operating in India. And why can’t Delhi have a meaningful exchange — the use of Indian military bases, for example, for advanced military technologies (instead of being fobbed off with predator drones and the like)? And why can’t India go back to using friendship and intimacy with Russia to lever a more equitable relationship with America?

And this is just the opportunity, moreover, to replace the British, German, and French companies in their the businesses in Iran, and open up that entire realm of economic possibilities by getting the versatile and capable Indian manufacturing sector to meet Iranian demands and requirements. At a more elevated level, India can be in league with Russia, China, Iran, southern and southeastern Asia, and Central Asian states to form an economic system to rival the one dominated by the US?

And, instead of despairing, Finance Ministry bureaucrats better begin exploring oil payments options routed through the Chinese renminbi or the Russian rouble channels. The promise of this alone will further steel Xi’s and Putin’s intentions to take on the US. These are the sorts of options that need fleshing out, rather than surrendering to the traditional way of conducting business the Western way. In an independent path lies India’s future. Surely, even Modi sees that giving in again and again to Washington is to erode self-respect and to strengthen the Western conviction of India as a country that can be easily pushed around. That’s the reputation Modi’s India is developing. Time we sloughed it off. India is nobody’s plaything, or is it?

Perhaps, Modi should bear in mind the primary lesson of Trump’s disowning the nuclear deal with Iran. It is that the United States is an unreliable partner and that, for very good reasons, India would be well advised to maintain a certain distance with the US and not sign any meaningful accords with it. Becoming too chummy with America can be a liability — never know when it will be thrown under the bus. And Washington can disavow any agreement signed in good faith at any time. Remember Tarapur?
Austin
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Re: Indian Foreign Policy

Post by Austin »

Fareed Zakaria On India's Position & Challenges In Geopolitics | Exclusive Interview From WEF, Davos

Parasu
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Re: Indian Foreign Policy

Post by Parasu »

There is no such thing as `bowing down`. There are interests which one needs to take care of.
Ever since Moscow got upset over Indian denial to invest in FGFA, India has been trying to placate Russia. One visit by defence minister, two by the NSA, one by Ram Madhav. We even arranged a trip by Sonia Gandhi.
Is that bowing down?! It is like licking Putin`s feet.
But India has to take care of its interests.
With zero defence industry, India is completely dependent on Russia. So, India is `bowing down`.
In case of US, it is the second largest Indian trade partner. India has largest trade surplus with it. So, yes, India will `bow down`, if needed.
chetak
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Re: Indian Foreign Policy

Post by chetak »

JE Menon wrote:Chetak he is not a commie. He probably does not have a grasp on strategic affairs good enough to have written that article, which is clearly messed up. But he is very much someone who is in the trenches on the right side and has been at it for some time. He is a true scholar. Not the standard JNU walla. He is also, in a sense, part of the Lutyens elite... Bishop Cottons, St. Stephens, Uni of Illinois - Urbana Champaign. Married to Devaki Singh, daughter of late Congress Politico Arun Singh. He has written a vast amount, and edited a ton as well... Really erudite man, and probably one of those who will be leading the thought war from the front on the side of New India, so to speak.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makarand_Paranjape

The article on China/Russia is an exception, not the rule.

Watch him on youtube... especially in a recent one where he totally eviscerated one Dehlavi woman in a litfest of some sort, I don't recall.
I know saar.

I googled him later.

Must have had an off day.

Bygones.

Here you go

https://youtu.be/pL9wLxsXKTE

JNU's MaKarand Paranjape's GREAT REPLY ! ! ! to SadiA DehLvi Over Rising HINDUTVA in INDIA


pankajs
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Re: Indian Foreign Policy

Post by pankajs »

Parasu wrote:
There is no such thing as `bowing down`. There are interests which one needs to take care of.
Ever since Moscow got upset over Indian denial to invest in FGFA, India has been trying to placate Russia. One visit by defence minister, two by the NSA, one by Ram Madhav. We even arranged a trip by Sonia Gandhi.
Is that bowing down?! It is like licking Putin`s feet.
But India has to take care of its interests.
With zero defence industry, India is completely dependent on Russia. So, India is `bowing down`.
In case of US, it is the second largest Indian trade partner. India has largest trade surplus with it. So, yes, India will `bow down`, if needed.
I am afraid BK thinks Modi's supposed 56" chest would suffice on all fronts. He needs to get real.

I am with you on this. There is no "bowing down" but there is always a give and take depending on the balance of power.

Added later: What's up with most Indian analysis? They tend to be generous with emotional pitches like "craven" Indian "bow down" to Trump, etc, etc. Foreign policy is supposed to be driven by cold calculation of cost/benefit and give/take. And these fellows are supposed to the India's per-eminent foreign policy thinkers. God save India from such experts.

Bakistan or Nepal or Sri Lanka or Maldives or China, etc using such emotional pitched to force a visceral response from India is to be expected but from Indian analysts it is surprising to say the least. Visceral response to emotional pitches is the worst that one can do.

Any so called analysis that uses emotional pitches to make its case is suspect in my view from the word go.
Parasu
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Re: Indian Foreign Policy

Post by Parasu »

Bharat Karnad reserves all his hawkishness for US only.

Here are his other works -
"Price of angering the Bear, & the A-5 decision"
"Missing pitchmen in Moscow, and price India will pay"
So, while India must stand up to the lone superpower who is also the largest export destination of India, it must do dhoti shivering with respect to Moscow.
He is another one, cut from the same cloth, of which we already have an overflowing stack who recommend India must do no less than be pally with Russia

<mod note> edited the cuss words and retained the message. Next time you do this you get a warning
Neshant
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Re: Indian Foreign Policy

Post by Neshant »

For the most part, India is not on the radar of US or Russia at the moment.

They have larger issues to deal with.

China is the only big problem and even they have put containing India on the back burner having failed at it.

US is putting the moves on Iran which is a dangerous thing for connectivity between India, Russia and the -stan countries in between.
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