📰 Iran, Belarus to be newest SCO members
With the expansion, China and Russia are looking to frame the grouping as a counter to the West
•Iran and Belarus are likely to be the two newest additions to the China and Russia-backed Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) grouping, officials said on Friday.
•Expanding the group is among the issues that leaders of the grouping, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping are likely to discuss at the SCO summit in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, in September.
•The current SCO Secretary, General Zhang Ming, a veteran Chinese diplomat, told reporters on Friday the grouping hopes for an in-person summit in Uzbekistan, which could see Mr. Modi meet with Mr. Xi for the first time since 2019.
•“So far, all participating countries have confirmed the attendance of their leaders but the format of attendance is not finalised. All wish to switch to the traditional way of meeting which is more efficient,” said Mr. Zhang, who recently visited Samarkand and said the facilities for the summit would be constructed by the end of this month. “At the same time, the epidemic situation is changing and there are new variants emerging,” he said, adding a note of caution, with last year’s summit held virtually on account of COVID-19.
•China, Russia and four Central Asian states — Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan — were the founding members of the SCO, while India and Pakistan joined the grouping in 2017 in its first round of expansion. Last year’s summit in Dushanbe agreed for Iran to join, while Belarus has also begun the membership process.
•“In the Samarkand summit, we expect the leadership to adopt a document on the obligations Iran must fulfil to gain membership. The legal procedures of Belarus’s accession are also about to start. We need to build consensus on the acceptance of Belarus,” Mr. Zhang said. “The significance of this round of expansion is that it shows the SCO’s rising international influence and that the principles of the SCO charter are being widely accepted.”
Sharp contrast
•China and Russia are looking to frame the grouping as a counter to the West — particularly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — and Mr. Zhang sought to draw a sharp contrast between the SCO and NATO.
•“There has been discussion in the international arena that the trend of non-alignment is back,” he said. “The expansion of NATO is totally different as the SCO is a cooperative organisation based on non-alignment and not targeting a third party. NATO is based on Cold War thinking. The logic of NATO is creating new enemies to sustain its own existence.”
•He said the SCO “believes one should not build its safety at the expense of other countries”, a statement China has used previously to blame NATO for the Ukraine crisis. Mr. Zhang also hit out at “small circles” — a term China has used in the past to criticise the Quad — underlining India’s somewhat unique position in the SCO, whose two most important members, China and Russia, are increasingly positioning the grouping directly at odds with the West.
•India will host the SCO summit next year, and Varanasi has been selected as the SCO region’s first “Tourism and Cultural Capital”, Mr. Zhang said, a title it will hold next year coinciding with India chairing the grouping.
📰 Time for vigilance
Increased testing and building awareness, not stigmatisation, can stop spread of monkeypox
•India reported its first laboratory-confirmed, imported case of monkeypox virus when a 35-year-old man in Kerala’s capital tested positive. The diagnosis was easy as the individual informed health-care workers of his contact with an infected person in the United Arab Emirates. To cut the transmission chain, people who have come in contact with him in Kerala have been isolated. The first case of the virus outside Africa was first reported in the U.K. on May 6, 2022. Since then, the virus has spread to over 63 countries — Europe has reported 8,238 cases from 35 countries as of July 12, and the U.S., 1,470 cases as of July 14. Never before has the virus spread to more than a hundred people a year during any outbreak in endemic countries except Congo. In fact, sustained transmission beyond a few generations has been rare in Africa. In contrast, the rapid increase in cases and geographical spread have primarily been due to human-to-human transmission largely during sexual contact, especially among men who have sex with men (MSM). While a few rave parties in Spain and Belgium have turned out to be super-spreader events, WHO suspects that “undetected transmission for some unknown duration of time followed by recent amplifier events” to be responsible for cases being detected simultaneously in several countries outside Africa. With cases crossing the 10,000-mark in non-endemic countries, and a large number of cases in Spain (2,034), the U.K. (1,735), Germany (1,556) and the U.S. (1,470), the risk of the virus becoming established in some of these countries is becoming increasingly real.
•While the first human case was reported in 1970 in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the virus became endemic in 11 countries in Africa causing small outbreaks, no attempts were made to study it all these years. With the virus having a free run in non-endemic countries, scientists have now unveiled many discomforting facts: the virus appears to mutate at a much higher rate than what was assumed. And, based on genome sequences from the current outbreak, they have found the emergence of a novel clade of the virus in early March. A recent study has found monkeypox virus DNA in samples of semen, saliva, urine, rectal swabs and faeces, and at high viral loads; the infectious and disease potential of these body fluids was not studied. Whether the new clade by itself has a higher potential for human spread is not known. But surely, close sexual contact is providing the virus much opportunity to spread within the MSM community. With the sustained spread and a few cases already detected in women, the possibility of spread into the general community cannot be totally dismissed. Increased testing, contact tracing and building awareness, and not stigmatising the infected people can stop the spread.
The online trolling of the judiciary is a new low, highlighting a sustained and organised campaign of intimidation
•The recent ferocious attack on a judge of the Supreme Court of India by the IT cell of a prominent national political party has given the impression that there are a significant number of people opposed to the scathing judicial criticism of the former national spokesperson of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Nupur Sharma, for her remarks on the Prophet. Rather, it may well be that an overwhelming part of all religious communities would feel a sense of pride that a person of his standing would stand up to the tyranny of groups engaging in hate speech.
Pertinent questions
•The criticism delivered from the Bench for the first time showed that some judges indeed have a spine and are capable of speaking the truth to power. Particularly at this time when Government interference with the judiciary is at its height (with transfers and supersessions of independent-minded judges), the pungent and fully justified remarks of the judge were like a fresh wind blowing through the country and the judiciary, and boosted the confidence of judges to stand up to executive excesses.
•Equally important, the events of the past few days and the uncouth trolling of the judge raise very important questions relating to the ever-growing tendency by the Government to intimidate the judiciary. The questions that arise are: Who are these groups that attack democratic-minded individuals who speak out against injustice? Does the Government have an underground network which operates as an arm of the Government? And, are they financially supported and ideologically encouraged to engage in hate speech? Finally, what should the judiciary do to stamp out organised hate speech of this kind, whether it be against journalists, political opponents of the Government or the judiciary?
Growth, political support
•In her book, I am a Troll, Swati Chaturvedi describes Internet trolls as persons who sow discord through inflammatory comments on the Internet. She traces the growth of this network from the early 2000s and attributes its steep upward curve to the support it received from a senior political leader in Government. ‘Rightwing propaganda websites constantly peddle hate tweets and slander journalists. They are backed up by coordinated hashtag campaigns where anonymous Twitter handles retweet the same tweet continuously until trending begins’.
•She gives instances of tweets of ‘gory cow slaughter and imaginary instances of love jihad’. Some of them ‘mock women who face sexual abuse and harassment.’ They did not spare their own party leader, Maneka Gandhi, when she set up a helpline called ‘#IAmTrolledHelp’.
•A Twitter handle from this group engaged in sustained abuse of a well-known female broadcast journalist. Another hosted a photoshopped picture of a female actor when she joined the Aam Aadmi Party. One of this network asked for ‘execution of undertrials without due process saying that the State should not bother to arrest suspects but kill in cold blood’. An extreme episode was when a Congress spokesperson ‘was threatened with Nirbhaya-style rape by trolls’. In the context of pellet blinding in Kashmir, there were trolls who called for ‘mass murder of Kashmiris, and the dropping of a bomb on a funeral procession’.
•When journalist Gauri Lankesh was killed in Bengaluru in 2017, a Twitter handle followed by leaders of the party in power tweeted a message that had much profanity. Other journalists were also threatened that they were ‘going the Gauri Lankesh way’.
•The Wire reported that a network of 757 Twitter accounts was used to mount attacks against Mohammed Zubair (co-founder of fact-checking website Alt News) and the website, and that the recovery email id for the anonymous Twitter handle was that of a youth leader of the party in power. These accounts revealed sub accounts ‘which exhibited multiple characteristics associated with bot-like and inauthentic behaviour posting more than 500 times a day at all hours of the day’. The purpose was to manipulate public perception about the arrest of Mr. Zubair.
•Similar targeting processes were managed by ‘Tek Fog’ ( a ‘sophisticated app used by online operatives to hijack major social media and encrypted messaging platforms’); over eight lakh hostile replies were sent out to tweets by women journalists, of which over five lakh were classified as ‘offensive’. The Wire commented that the handlers of ‘Tek Fog’ are politically aligned and that is why ‘India’s political elite are silent’. One of the hashtags amplified by these operatives ‘reached an audience of around eight crore users’. Newslaundry has reported that this ‘well-oiled propaganda machine churned out fake videos and mass tweet links to gear up for Twitter storms’.
An ‘attack factory’ at work
•Online abuse has often led to actual violence as in the case of the attack on a prominent lawyer by persons who barged into his office. This is not surprising because, as reported by Ms. Chaturvedi, ‘office bearers of the party in power have publicly supported these trolls’.
•The IT cell of the Government has seen its activity expand with the induction of many volunteers and paid workers. Ms. Chaturvedi has reported that the party in power has ‘created a bank of thousands of dormant Twitter accounts’ to be used for ‘synchronized tweeting’ and ‘storms’. The party also has ‘bots created by the central IT Cell which tweets out identical messages simultaneously’ so that they ‘look like a real user’. These volunteers and employees ‘were given a hit list of mainstream journalists who needed to be constantly attacked’. One of the India’s most prominent and respected female journalists was attacked in ‘filthy terms’ and given ‘rape threats’. These volunteers and employees use virtual private networks (VPNs) to ‘hide the actual location of the user’.
•Going back to the incident of Nupur Sharma in the Supreme Court, it is imperative that the Court understands that the country stands with the judiciary. The hate speech tweets are manufactured by a factory of a political party that produces millions of hate speeches. A criminal investigation by an independent special investigation team of the police is called for. Prosecution must follow. This hate speech manufacturing network must be crushed. This is vital for democracy to survive and for the judiciary not to be intimidated.
📰 The Ukraine war and the return to Euro-centrism
The political and military aftermath of the conflict could set the stage for the return of a Euro-centric world order
•For centuries, Europe imagined itself to be the centre of the world — its order, politics and culture. Decolonisation, the emergence of the United States as the western world’s sole superpower, and the rise of the rest dramatically diminished the centuries old domination of the European states and their ability to shape the world in their own image. The contemporary international order is hardly Euro-centric: dominated by the U.S., and challenged by rising great powers or superpowers, it is moving toward a multipolar order wherein Europe’s system shaping capabilities have been rather limited. Or so it has been until now.
War and insecurity in Europe
•The political and military aftermath of Russia’s war on Ukraine could potentially tilt the current global balance and take us back to a Euro-centric world order, albeit far less powerful and dominating than its earlier avatars. For sure, the U.S. continues to dominate the trans-Atlantic security landscape and this is likely to remain so. And yet, the new security consciousness in Europe will reduce Washington’s ability to continue as the fulcrum of the trans-Atlantic strategic imagination.
•Second, if Donald Trump returns to the White House in 2024, the Europeans are likely to take their own security far more seriously. In any case, there is little doubt that Europe, going forward, will emerge as a major locus of trans-Atlantic security imagination. The process has clearly begun. If wars have the potential to shape international orders, it is Europe’s turn to shape the world, once again. The United States, fatigued from the Iraq and Afghan wars, does not appear to be keen on another round of wars and military engagements. But the mood in Europe seems to be changing; there is a shift in narrative from pacifism to insecurity-induced militarism. And that is where the shape of the international system could well be decided.
•The Russian aggression against Ukraine has led to an unmissable feeling of insecurity in Europe, particularly in Germany where this writer recently spent a week talking to officials, parliamentarians, journalists and members of the strategic community. It is as if Europe has been rudely woken up from its lazy slumber and sweet dreams about lasting peace and the virtues of pacifism. A pervasive sense of what some described as “existential insecurity” has brought about a renewed enthusiasm about the future of the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The European Union (EU) Commission in Brussels has backed Kyiv’s bid for EU candidature, and the 30-state military alliance, NATO, has two more members in its fold (Finland and Sweden) all thanks to what the Europeans call “Putin’s” war in Ukraine (they make a careful distinction between Russia and Vladimir Putin).
•This new military unity is not just words, but is backed with political commitment and financial resources from the world’s richest economies. Berlin, for instance, has decided to spend an additional €100 billion for defence over and above its €50 billion annual expenditure on defence. It is set to announce a new national security strategy early next year, and the hope of ‘changing Russia through trade’ is no longer popular amongst most German policy makers and thinkers. While there is a deep sense of insecurity and vulnerability in contemporary Europe, there is also the belief that NATO and the EU will see better days going forward. To that extent, many consider Mr. Putin’s Ukraine war as a blessing in disguise.
Impact on institutions
•Germany, the engine of this new security thinking in Europe, is coming out of its self-image of being a pacifist nation. In his address in late February to the German Parliament, Germany’s new Chancellor Olaf Scholz called the February 24 invasion of Ukraine a Zeitenwende (revolution) in the history of post-war Europe. A country that has for two decades spent no more than 1.3% on defence will now spend more than 2% to beef up its defence.
•Notably, there appears little faith in the United Nations or the UN Security Council anymore in Berlin, they have decided to put their faith in a revitalised EU and NATO. It is interesting to note how quickly Europe’s trust in democratic global institutions weakened in the face of a war that a non-EU/NATO member is fighting in its neighbourhood.
•European states are deeply worried about globalisation-induced vulnerability and this has set in a rethink about the inherent problems of indiscriminate globalisation. What this turn away from multilateralism in favour of ‘Europeanism’ will do is to further undercut global institutions.
•The combined effect of European re-militarisation (however modest it may be for now), its loss of faith in multilateral institutions, and the increased salience of the EU and NATO will be the unchecked emergence of Europe as an even stronger regulatory, norm/standard-setting superpower backed with military power. The EU already has a worryingly disproportionate ability to set standards for the rest of the world. Instruments such as the Digital Services Act and the Digital Assets Act or its human rights standards will be unilaterally adopted, and will be unavoidable by other parts of the world. While these instruments and standards may in themselves be progressive and unobjectionable for the most part, the problem is with the process which is unilateral and Euro-centric. There is an irrefutable ethical problem in a democratic Europe using non-democratic processes to adopt seemingly progressive measures for the rest of us.
Implications for the rest
•So, what does this mean for the rest of the world? The recent statements emanating from Europe that ‘democracies’ should come together to defeat a non-democratic aggressor is a taste of the things to come: a euro-centric worldview of ‘friends and enemies’ will define its engagement with the rest of the world. India is a friend, but its take on the Ukraine war is not friendly enough for Europe!
•Receding multilateralism and rising Euro-centrism would invariably mean that norm setting and system-shaping discussions are likely to be conducted by Europeans, among Europeans, for Europeans and non-Europeans, leading to fewer consultations and even lesser consensus with the rest of the international community. The EU will lead the way in setting standards for the rest of us and we will have little option but to follow that. For sure, Europe will seek partners around the world: to create a Euro-centric world order, not a truly global world order.
•This unilateral attempt to ‘shape the world’ in its image will also be portrayed as an attempt to counter Chinese attempts at global domination. When presented as such, countries such as India will face a clear dilemma: to politically and normatively oppose the setting of the global agenda by Europeans or to be practical about it and jump on the European bandwagon.
Seen as Europe’s war
•The key message from the European narratives about the Ukraine war is that European states would want to see their wars and conflicts as threatening international stability and the ‘rules-based’ global order. Needless to mention that there is little recognition in the West today that the global non-West’s political priorities are altogether different — from addressing abject poverty and underdevelopment to managing social cohesion and local conflicts. The genuine surprise in western capitals today at the lack of interest in other parts of the world about the Russian aggression in Europe, and the consequent unease about the lack of empathy from the rest of the world, is indicative of the inherent Euro-centric view of the European nations about the world.
