📰 Centre promises law to check stubble burning
Not consulted, says Agriculture Ministry
•The Centre will bring in a law to address air pollution and check stubble burning in Delhi as well as the surrounding National Capital Region, the Supreme Court was informed on Monday.
•Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said a draft legislation would be ready this week.
•“The new law is for tackling air pollution in NCR and the adjoining areas. It’s an ordinance,” Secretary in the Ministry of Environment R.P. Gupta told The Hindu .
•However, no consultation seems to have been undertaken so far with the Ministry of Agriculture on this.
•With an increase in stubble burning — the burning of rice straw by farmers to clear fields for winter sowing in Punjab and Haryana — the Ministry has in recent years been tasked with funding the use of subsidised combine harvesters and machinery to dissuade the farmers.
•“The ordinance is coming from the Environment Ministry and so far no consultations have been held with Agriculture Ministry officials,” said a person in the Ministry.
BECA signing at 2+2 dialogue today; Ministers hold talks
•India and the U.S. will sign the last foundational agreement, Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement for Geo-Spatial cooperation (BECA) during the 2+2 ministerial dialogue on Tuesday, the Defence Ministry said in a statement on Monday.
•The 2+2 inter-ministerial talks are scheduled to be held on Tuesday morning.
•“The two Ministers expressed satisfaction that agreement of BECA will be signed during the visit,” the Defence Ministry said after bilateral talks between Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and U.S. Secretary of Defence Mark Esper.
•The two Ministers reviewed bilateral defence cooperation spanning “military-to-military cooperation, secure communication systems and information sharing, defence trade and industrial issues” and also discussed ways to take bilateral cooperation forward, the statement said.
•Mr. Esper and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrived in the national capital on Monday.
•External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and Mr. Pompeo held talks in the evening at Hyderabad House. The sources said both sides were “satisfied” that Indo-U.S. ties had grown in all spheres over the last four years of the Trump administration.
•The two Ministers also discussed “shared concerns and interests” over how best to ensure stability and security in Asia, said the sources, adding that specific issues would be discussed during the 2+2 talks that include Mr. Rajnath Singh and Mr. Esper. Mr. Pompeo and Mr. Jaishankar also discussed their government’s positions on Afghanistan.
•As reported by The Hindu last month, in the run-up to the 2+2, the U.S. was keen on India signing BECA and discussions continued to iron out the differences. One of the major differences was the issue of reciprocity in exchange of geo-spatial data.
•The Defence Ministry said the two Ministers “also discussed requirements of expanding deployment of liaison officers.” India has posted a liaison officer at the U.S. Navy Central Command in Bahrain recently and is also considering a U.S. request for posting liaison officers at the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and the U.S. Special Operations Command.
•A U.S. State department official said in Washington on Saturday that the talks will focus on regional security cooperation, defence information sharing, military-to-military interactions, and defence trade.
📰 Contesting neighbours, revised geopolitical playbooks
The engagement by India and China in the West Asia region is a good example of their metamorphosing approaches
•The year 2020 has been a watershed moment for relations between India and China following the most serious clashes between the two countries in the Galwan region of Ladakh since the 1962 war; relations between New Delhi and Beijing are at new lows. These events have had a cascading effect on the very thought process of foreign policy, not just for New Delhi with regard to its neighbourhood but also Beijing’s understanding of its own threat perceptions as well.
What dictates alignment now
•Strategic autonomy is today a term New Delhi’s power corridors are well-acquainted with. According to a former Foreign Secretary of India, Vijay Gokhale, the ideation of ‘strategic autonomy’ is much different from the Nehruvian era thinking of ‘non-alignment’. Speaking in January 2019, Mr. Gokhale said: “The alignment is issue based, and not ideological.”
•For Beijing and New Delhi, one region where both contesting neighbours have employed similar versions of ‘non-alignment’ thinking is in West Asia, and the ethos of equitable engagement with the three poles of power in Saudi Arabia, Iran and Israel, without stepping into the entanglements of the region’s multi-layered conflicts and political fissures. Such were the commonalities in thinking that at one point in time, suggestions were made to construct an ‘importers OPEC’ in order to put forward the interests of major oil importers, mostly developing Asian economies, against the producers’ cartel. However, the year 2020 and the tectonic geopolitical shifts it has brought in its wake, from deteriorating U.S.-China ties, to the COVID-19 pandemic that started in China, followed by the Ladakh crisis, is forcing a drastic change in the geopolitical playbooks of the two Asian giants, and, by association, global security architectures as well.
•Pre-dating 2020, India’s outreach to West Asia sharpened since 2014 with the coming of the Narendra Modi government. As the powerful and oil-rich Gulf states looked for investment alternatives away from the West to deepen their own strategic depth, persuaded by Mr. Modi’s centralised decision-making style, India doubled down on its relations with the likes of Abu Dhabi and Riyadh, giving open economic and political preference to the larger Gulf region. While engagements with Israel moved steadily forward, Iran lagged behind, bogged down by U.S. sanctions, which in turn significantly slowed the pace of India-Iran engagements.
Advantage Beijing
•Meanwhile, China’s overtures have been steadily more adventurous as it realises two major shifts that have taken place in West Asia. First, Beijing has tried to capitalise around the thinking in the Gulf that the American security safety net is not absolute, and they need to invest more in others. China, being second only to the U.S. in both economic and military terms today, is the obvious engagement. The fact that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) obtained Chinese Wing Loong drones in 2016 — a copy of U.S.’s infamous armed MQ-9 ‘Reaper’ drone that Washington refused to sell — offers a good example of the Gulf’s resolve of attaining military capabilities from wherever possible. Second, the Gulf economies such as Saudi Arabia, even though attempting a hard shift away from their addiction to the petro dollar, will still need growing markets to sell oil to in the coming decade as they reform their economic systems. The obvious two markets here are China and India.
Sharp contrasts
•However, Beijing’s recent plays in the region have not been subtle. A report in September shone light on a $400 billion, 25-year understanding between Iran and China, with Beijing taking advantage of U.S. President Donald Trump’s abandonment of the Iran nuclear deal. Scholars such as Scott J. Harr have pontificated that China is no longer happy with a passive role in West Asia, and through concepts such as “negative peace” and “peace through development”, in concert with tools such as the Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing is now ready to offer an alternative model for “investment and influence”. Over the past month, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi during an in-person meet with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif suggested the development of a “new forum” to address the region’s tensions — an alternative to the West-led ecosystems that have prevailed for decades. It remains to be seen, however, how China balances itself between the poles of power while backing one so aggressively.
•From India’s perspective, as it maintains its trapeze-wire balancing act of diplomacy in West Asia, the overt outreach to the Gulf and the ensuing announcements of multi-billion-dollar investments on Indian shores by entities from Saudi Arabia and the UAE is only New Delhi recognising the economic realities of the region. Despite entanglements in the Yemen war and general tensions between the Gulf states and Iran, the likes of Saudi Arabia, the UAE and so on have maintained relatively strong and stable economic progression. Israel’s recent peace accords with the UAE and Bahrain add much further weight towards a more stable Gulf region — the caveats withstanding that the operationalisation of the accords is smooth and long-lasting.
•The theory of interests superseding ideology in foreign policy is fast unravelling practically, both from the perspectives of India and China. While in the recent past, the Indo-Pacific, with the development of the Quad, has taken centre stage, other geographies such as West Asia have also started to showcase bolder examples of New Delhi and Beijing’s metamorphosing approaches towards the international arena.
📰 The shade of grey: On FATF's mandated tasks
Pakistan has little option but to complete its FATF mandated tasks in the next four months
•The decision by the Paris-based watchdog, the Financial Action Task Force, last week to retain Pakistan on its greylist has clearly disappointed the Imran Khan government. His cabinet had projected confidence that the country would be taken off the greylist — monitored jurisdictions on terror financing and money laundering activities — having been cleared on 21 of the 27 mandated action points. Pakistan will now face international strictures on its markets and on its ability to procure loans until the next FATF plenary in February 2021, by which time it is expected to complete the six pending issues. A bigger problem for Islamabad was that Turkey was the only other country in the 39-member FATF to push for Pakistan to be let off, by making a suggestion that the last six points be cleared by an “on-site” visit by an FATF team. The proposal was dropped when even other traditional backers of Pakistan such as China, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia did not support it. Clearly, Pakistan has little option but to complete its tasks in the next four months, which include: more action against UNSC-banned terrorists and terror groups, action against charitable organisations (Non-Profits) linked to these banned entities, tracing fugitive terrorists and pursuing convictions against them, revising the list of banned entities under the Anti-Terrorism Act to reflect all those banned by the UNSC, and cracking down on other channels of terror financing through narcotics and smuggling.
•For those in New Delhi watching the outcome of the FATF decision, there are some broader dividends to consider from this process. To begin with, the fact that the FATF has retained Pakistan on the greylist for the third time this year, and not automatically downgraded it to the blacklist (with Iran and North Korea) when its deadline for action ended in September 2019, has ensured the pressure has continued to make Pakistan accountable on terror. The Khan government has been forced to make a real legislative push to bring Pakistani anti-terror laws in line with international standards, while, at least for the interim, also ensuring sufficient pressure on groups such as the LeT and the JeM that target India, to refrain from public comments and publicly raising funds. Meanwhile, Pakistan’s support to the U.S.-led Afghan process and talks with the Taliban are crucial to the peace process, and the FATF process has made Islamabad more amenable to helping Afghanistan. It remains to be seen if the actions it takes will permanently change Pakistan’s course in supporting and sheltering cross-border terror groups. India’s eventual goal is not just in stopping attacks by these groups, but for Pakistan to fully dismantle the infrastructure of terror in the understanding that it is in Pakistan’s own interests to do so. It is hoped that the prolonged FATF process will enable this realisation in Islamabad.
