The Iranian President’s Visit to India

The Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, visited India on February 15-17, and talked with the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. The visit is noteworthy for a number of reasons, the most important of which is the fact that it took place at all.

For it was a significant foreign policy initiative, taken by one of the two ‘pariah states’ which, along with ‘revisionist states’ were seen, until recently, as the source of the main national security threats facing the ‘leading global superpower’.

Iran’s leadership was not intimidated by that attitude, or pressurized into keeping a low profile. In fact, Iran has achieved something very significant, and not just anywhere, but in a country that the ‘global leader’ considers to be almost an ally in its rivalry with China, one of the two ‘revisionist states’.

The key word being ‘almost’: while India’s government has clearly, and quite understandably, sought to develop its strategic relationship with Washington, it has not accepted any enforceable obligations that would tie it to America. At least, not yet. India has therefore never completely broken off its relations (although they were ‘frozen’ for a while) either with Iran or with the other ‘pariah state’ named by the USA- North Korea.

It can be confidently stated that, however mutual relations between the USA, China and India develop, India will not break off its relations with Iran. That is despite the fact that, just four or five years ago, Washington’s threats were a barrier to any improvement in those relations.

Similar threats were heard when Narendra Modi announced that he would travel to Teheran in 2016, (a visit which Hassan Rouhani returned when he travelled to India this month). The then US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, Nisha Desai Biswal, said that the USA had been ‘very clear with the Indians (about) continuing restrictions on activities with respect to Iran.

But the leadership of the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party, headed by Narendra Modi, was already aware of its status on the international stage. It therefore ignored the new warning from Washington, and the Indian premier, who was visiting Teheran at the time, signed an agreement that was highly important for both parties and which turned out to be an important move in the political game being played out in the Indian and Pacific Ocean regions.

In a Memorandum of Understanding India agreed to extend $500,000,000 credit to Iran for the development of the Chabahar port facility, located on the Gulf of Oman, 100 km from Iran’s border with Pakistan. A 600 km section of railway between Chabahar and Zahedan,currently under construction, will link the port facility with Afghanistan’s transport infrastructure. That railway, by the way, is another joint project with India.

India is thus achieving a very important strategic goal: an access route to Afghanistan (starting with a sea crossing from Mumbai to Chabahar) that bypasses Pakistan.

India’s desire for a certain amount of say in relation to the situation in Afghanistan is not solely due to its understandable wish to oppose the partnership of China and Pakistan: it also reflects a widespread sense among India’s political elite that their country is the heir to ‘British India’. If it continues to develop at its current rate, then maybe it is not too far-fetched to imagine that one day India will be able to call itself the ‘heir to the British Empire’- something Britain is very far from being able to do.

In their comments on the Indo-Iranian Chabahar port project, experts often suggest that it may become as important for India as the port of Gwadar (also 100 km away from Iran’s border with Pakistan, but on the Pakistani side) is for China. Construction of that port facility, largely funded by China, has been under way for the past 15-20 years.

As for Afghanistan itself, just as it was 100 or 200 years ago, it is again in the center of a “Great Game’ for control over Central and South Asia- but this time it is not being played by London and Moscow, but by a new group of countries. Finding itself caught in the cross fire of their rivalries, the Kabul government, trying to find its own way in an arena of competing forces, is more or less openly siding with India.

The complex Chabahar port project is therefore particularly important for Kabul, as well. That is why, in May 2016, the president of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani, participated in the Trilateral Agreement on the creation of a ‘transit corridor’ linking Chabahar with Afghanistan’s transport infrastructure. That last project was confirmed in a separate article of the India – Iran Joint Statement which was signed in May 2016, during Narendra Modi’s visit to Teheran.

The project will enable Afghanistan to have access to the sea through ‘friendly’ Iran, bypassing Pakistan, a country with which its relations, as Kabul puts it officially, ‘leave much to be desired’.

As for the Joint Statement adopted during Hassan Rouhani’s visit to India, it is noteworthy, like the Joint Statement issued two years ago, because of the reference to the ‘cordial atmosphere’ in which ‘wide-ranging and constructive discussions on bilateral, regional and multilateral issues were held’. The Statement also expresses satisfaction with the progress in various aspects of the cooperation between the two countries which was initiated during Narendra Modi’s visit to Tehran two years ago.

The document also refers to the completion of the first phase of the modernization of Chabahar port in December 2017, the ratification of the above-mentioned Trilateral Agreement by all of its parties, and the completed delivery of ‘the first shipment of Indian wheat’ to Afghanistan through the new infrastructure.

The joint declaration reiterates India’s and Iran’s participation in the creation of an ‘International North- South Transport Corridor’, with its end points in Saint-Petersburg and Mumbai.

The document covers almost all aspects of international relations, but the section on ‘Security and Defense Cooperation’ is particularly noteworthy. It is not long (just three short articles) but it serves to highlight once again the international context in which it appeared, which is conditioned on Iran’s being effectively declared an enemy by India’s main potential ally.

Specifically, it states that ‘both leaders welcomed the growing interaction between their National Security Councils and agreed to enhance regular and institutionalized consultations between them.’

This success in establishing close links with one of the leading countries in the Greater Middle East region is particularly important for India just now, when China is strengthening its position in countries such as Myanmar, Nepal, Sri-Lanka, and the Maldives, not to mention Pakistan.

In their commentaries, Indian experts have highlighted not only the clear benefits that India could obtain from developing its relationship with Iran, but also the hidden challenges it might face. Those challenges are connected with the complexities of the political and economic situation in Iranian society, and also with problems related to the ‘cleavages existing in the Greater Middle East’, a process Iran is directly involved in.

For example, Iran is now on the edge of a direct military conflict with Israel, a country that India has long had mutually beneficial relations with (for example, it has bought state-of-the-art military hardware from Israel). These relations were confirmed during the recent visit of the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to New Delhi.

One more serious challenge for New Delhi is Iran’s worsening relationship with Saudi Arabia and the USA.

It seems clear, however, that all the possible risks connected with the rapprochement between the two countries are well understood in both New Delhi and Teheran.

The most important thing is that, as we have already stated, those risks should not prevent the leaders of both countries from increasing their cooperation on a broad range of issues, which in turn will become an important element in the complex political puzzle throughout the Indian and Pacific Ocean regions.

Vladimir Terekhov, expert on issues relating to the Asia-Pacific region, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”

 

Political Сrisis in the Maldives

It seems as if the political temperature in the Indian Ocean region is not going to ‘settle down’, as we predicted a week ago, but has already started to rise. That is demonstrated by the worsening situation in the Maldives, which is taking on the character of an internal political crisis, although in this case there has been an external element in this crisis right from the beginning.

The external element in question is the increasing competition between India and China (the two main regional powers) in the Indian Ocean region as a whole. Incidentally, ‘on the horizon’ of the events in the Maldives we can also see the leading world power- the USA- and there is little doubt whose side it is on.

The reason the Maldives have attracted so much attention is clear. This country, which has been independent since 1965 and has a population of approximately 400, 000 and which is made up of several hundred coral islands spread out from North to South over a thousand kilometers, is located right in the path of one of the main global transport arteries.

Control over that transport route is vitally important to both China and India (and also to Japan, a potential ally of the former). This is because the route provides these countries with hydrocarbons – the ‘life blood’ of any modern economy. Whoever controls the Maldives has their finger on the pulse of hydrocarbon transport, and, if necessary, can exert pressure on their geopolitical opponent.

That is why it is inevitable that two camps have developed in the very modest political arena of the Republic of the Maldives. One of these, the ‘Pro-Chinese’ camp, is led by the current president, Abdulla Yameen, who has been in office since September 2013. The other one, the ‘Pro-Indian’ camp, is led by Mohamed Nasheed, the president from 2008-2012.

In October this year the next presidential elections are due to take place, and, according to certain forecasts, Mohamed Nasheed has a good chance of winning. It looks as if that why the current president has decided to take ‘preventative’ measures. On February 6 a number of Mohamed Nasheed’s supporters were arrested, including the senior judge of the Supreme Court and his deputy, and the Supreme Court itself was disbanded.

These steps were a response to the Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling of February 1, which invalidated certain earlier repressive measures directed against Mohamed Nasheed’s supporters.

In the Maldivian capital, Malé, protests broke out against Abdulla Yameen, who declared a ‘state of emergency’ for two weeks.

On the same day, February 6, India’s Foreign Minister issued a press-release, ’Situation in Maldives’, stating that the Indian Government was ‘disturbed’ by the arrests and by the ‘State of Emergency’ in the Maldives. It also stated that the Indian Government continued ‘to carefully monitor the situation’.

At the same time as the press release, reports appeared of preparations by India for an intervention in the Maldives, involving some 1500 special forces. In response to these reports, the Chinese ‘Global Times’ published an editorial with the headline ‘India must stop intervening in Malé’.

In the editorial, the ‘Global Times’ speculated, among other things, that New-Delhi’s concern was due to the rapid development of economic links between China and the Maldives, as evidenced by a bilateral Free Trade Agreement between the two countries and President Abdulla Yameen’s declared interest in joining China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ initiative. It also claimed that the current government of the Maldives had a ‘friendly attitude to China, without being unfriendly to India’.

As if in confirmation of that remark, Abdulla Yameen sent a special envoy to Beijing, and proposed to Narendra Modi, the Indian Prime Minister that he would send his Foreign Minister to India in the same capacity. The Maldivian special envoy arrived in Beijing, but, New Delhi declared that it is not yet ready to receive such an envoy.

On February 8, in a press conference the official representative of the Chinese Foreign Ministry once more declared that the crisis in the Maldives was an internal matter and that it was essential that the ‘international community play a constructive role’ in resolving it.

The situation in the Maldives was also discussed by Narendra Modi and Donald Trump in a telephone conversation on February 9. They decided to include the matter on the agenda of the next ‘2+2’ format meeting between the two countries’ foreign ministers and ministers of defense.

As for the rhetoric used by China and India in their statements on the Maldives crisis, the phrases ‘another conflict zone’ and ‘New Doklam’ are worrying. Readers will remember that several months ago the two Asian giants were on the brink of conflict because a standoff in the Doklam plateau region of the Himalayas.

The use of phrases referring to the recent dangerous standoff in connection with the current situation in the Maldives brings home the complexity of the relations between Beijing and New Delhi, despite the determined efforts by both countries to decrease tensions.

It unlikely that India will commit itself to military action in the Maldives on its own. First and foremost, because this would result in unacceptable damage to its international reputation. But what will be the results of the upcoming ‘2+2’ meetings between the US and India?

At the beginning of January these meetings were scheduled for this April. Will they be rescheduled because of the events in the Maldives?

Vladimir Terekhov, expert on issues relating to the Asia-Pacific region, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”

 

India in the Race for Military Bases

In late January 2018, the media reported that India is finalizing a document with France (apparently it would become official in early March during a visit by French President E. Macron to Delhi) on military logistics similar to the USA of August 2016, according to which the Indian fleet can use military installations in both Diego Garcia and Guam, as well as other bases in different regions of the world. It was signed after 10 years of difficult negotiations. And it seems to be contagious – the agreements with Paris will also open doors of French bases to the Navy ships of the Republic, especially in the Indian Ocean.

But admittedly, this decision of the French side is not so genuine. A few months after the signing of the agreement between Washington and Delhi in April 2017, India received a similar proposal from Australia, which even presented a draft of a future document and has an accumulated long-term experience of implementing such agreement with the United States. Today, this step was prompted by the growing concern over the marked intensification of the Chinese fleet in the Pacific and Indian oceans, especially at their junction, and in waters near the fifth continent.

Thus, the Executive Director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) Peter Jennings drew the attention of experts to the appearance of not individual Chinese diesel submarines, but several flotillas with different types of military vessels. This fact was confirmed by air photographs taken on January 2, 2017. And the senior analyst of the same institute, E. Berger, noted that the Chinese, having opened a first full-scale overseas base in Djibouti in August 2017, intends to create the same near the modernized port of Gwadar soon, which can also be easily transformed into a military base that is logical in connection with the objectives of the “One Belt, One Road Initiative”.

Controversy is evoked concerning active collection of intelligence on the possibilities of participants in various sea maneuvers (e.g. RIMPAC), which is carried out not only by Chinese warships but also by the research vessels. The latter are increasingly dispatched by Beijing to study the bottom of Antarctica as well. And this could mean the close coordination of the Chinese military with the State Oceanic Administration, as well as their greater involvement in the Antarctic, a seemingly peaceful program.

Apparently, a lengthy discussion, not devoid of slyness, about whether or not to have foreign bases concluded in Beijing. Since 2015, large-scale plans to find new firm bases and ports that the Chinese would like to “develop” appear regularly in the Defense departments. Specifically, Chongjin (North Korea), Port Moresby (Papua – New Guinea), Sihanoukville (Cambodia), Koh Lanta port (Thailand), Sittwe (Myanmar), Dhaka (Bangladesh), Lagos (Nigeria), Mombasa (Kenya), Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), Luanda (Angola), Walvis (Namibia), Maldives, Seychelles, etc. Later it expanded and can also be pointed at Laem Chabang in Thailand, Batam in Indonesia and others (more than 18 zones in the Indian Ocean area alone).

By the end of 2015, the establishment of port networks between 10 Chinese and 5 Malaysian ports was announced. Several more are planned next in line to its connection -Kuantan, Melaka, Kedawang, etc. The ports of Australia- Williamstown, Langbridge (near Darwin), Kunavara, Townsville and others were not neglected, in which Chinese investment companies actively rebuilding the infrastructure, thus preparing a platform for strategic needs including for Maritime Silk Road (MSR) etc. As a rule, they are all located near military bases or facilities of Commonwealth of Australia or the USA. According to the estimation of a well-known specialist B. Hertz, Beijing in total intends to implement the «One Belt, One Way» project along the maritime and land lines- an extensive program of construction of military bases on the territories of more than 60 states of Asia, Europe and Africa.

In response to the appeal of the Australian authorities to strengthen “military-to-military” relationship through the proposed LEMOA pact. In the face of Beijing’s activism and certain aggression in the region, India said that it will refrain from the final decision for the time being since it would like to reach an operational level of such an agreement with Washington initially, and then raise the question of adopting other documents of this kind with other partners.

With regard to the logistics agreement with Paris, it will allow India to gain access to the base of Réunion, not far from Madagascar, as well as to the French military facilities in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa, i.e. in important areas on the western flank of the Indo-oceanic zone. Almost simultaneously with the development of the agreement with France in New Delhi, the possibilities of projects for the creation of bases in Oman and the Seychelles were taken into consideration. In fact, on January 29, 2018, India established an agreement with the Seychelles authorities on the construction of military infrastructure (pier for warships and a runway for large aircraft, but without nuclear weapons on their sides) on Assumption Island and access to their use in the future.

On the east flank of the Indian Ocean, during the November 2017 meeting of the “Dialogue of Defense ministers”, India successfully signed an agreement with Singapore on expanding bilateral cooperation at sea, in particular the deployment of floating platforms and access to local military facilities (especially the Charjee Base) for a longer term, as well as joint maneuvers and extensive maritime observation missions of the Navy and the Indian Air Force in the South Korean and Andaman Seas. India’s new capabilities in its strategy of strengthening its position under the slogan “Indian Ocean should be Indian” will significantly expand the network of strong points and bases that were built earlier: an interception station in Madagascar linked to similar ones in Kochi and Mumbai; GME in Farkhor or Ayni (Tajikistan); access right to Vietnamese ports and certain military facilities; Radar installations on all 26 Maldives atolls associated with Indian radar systems. In addition, it is necessary to take into account the developing of extensive military and technical ties with Mozambique, Qatar, the construction of a satellite tracking centre in southern Vietnam, the protection of EEZ of island states, counter-terrorism measures, arms shipments to Nepal, Bhutan and other countries.

Undoubtedly, it is necessary to completely understand the difference between full-scaled military bases and strong points or separate military constructions, whose access or own construction is being targeted by the two Asian giant rivals. However, we cannot fail to acknowledge the increasingly harsh nature of this rivalry. A vivid example of their confrontation is the unpredictable situation in the Gulf of Oman around modernized ports of Chahbahar (India) and Gwadar (China). In January 2018, news broke out about Beijing negotiations with Karachi on the construction of a second foreign base in Jiwani on the border with Iran, which is 85 km from Gwadar.

Evidently, this paradox testifies not only to the raging “race for bases” in the Indo-oceanic zone, but also the apparent attempt by the Chinese military to copy the well-known Pentagon strategy “Pax Americana” to protect free trade and support global stability with the help of military bases located along strategically important lines of communication (SLOCs). According to the opinion of some experts, the Chinese model should probably be named as “Pax Sinica”.

It can be assume with great certainty that India will give its adequate response – approve an agreement with France in March 2018 on LEMOA and will continue to look for new strong points and the next candidate for a similar agreement. For instance, the UK, which by the way, in late August 2017, signed a memorandum of understanding with Oman on the access to military facilities in the Duqm port building a base for supporting joint logistics. This will be a strategic factor for the London restored course “to East of Suez” outside the Persian Gulf, as well as for joint maneuvers including SAIFSAREEA-3 in 2018. New and previous strategic opportunities of Britain in the region are at the mercy of India.

And whether there will be a winner in the next round of “race for bases” or the search for other partners in LEMOA, only time will tell.

Nina Lebedeva, a leading researcher at the Center for Indian Studies at Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook“.

Can India Offer its Neighbors an Alternative to China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’?

As China continues to develop its ‘One Belt, One Road’ Initiative (OBOR), its main competitor in the region, India, is working on its own international infrastructure projects. These are aimed at strengthening India’s influence in the region and providing an alternative to OBOR, which India does not wish to be a part of.

India is not currently able to afford a global project on the scale of OBOR, and its main goal is to set up lasting transport and economic links with its closest neighbors in South and South East Asia. However, this will require considerable effort on India’s part as China’s influence in all these countries is steadily increasing.

Among India’s significant achievements in this field, we can highlight the BBIN Motor Vehicles Agreement, known in the English-language press as the BBIN MVA. The BBIN initiative (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal) is an agreement between its members to enable the discussion of questions that affect them all, and the adoption of joint policies. It covers matters such as cooperation on the use of water resources, electric power and transport infrastructure.

India initially intended the Motor Vehicles Agreement to include more countries. In November 2014 it proposed the Agreement at the 18th Summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), which includes Afghanistan, the Maldives, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, as well as the BBIN countries. However, Pakistan, India’s long-term adversary, objected to the proposal and therefore the Agreement was not adopted by SAARC. India then decided to promote the Agreement at the BBIN level.

A meeting of the BBIN Transport Ministers took place in Thimphu, the capital of Bhutan, in June 2015, where they signed the MVA. This Agreement allows motor vehicles (including cars, goods vehicles, buses etc.) from one of the member countries to enter another member country once it has obtained the necessary electronic permit and gone through border control. This is an important step forward in the ongoing process of integration between the four countries. Thanks to the BBIN MVA, goods being transported from one of the BBIN countries to another no longer need to be unloaded and then loaded onto a new vehicle at the border. This makes transporting goods both faster and cheaper. It is likely that the Agreement will make transporting both people and goods easier, and thus promote the increase of trade and development of infrastructure in the region.

In October 2017 India, together with Bangladesh and Nepal, started acting on its obligations under the Agreement. These three countries have already ratified the BBIN MVA, unlike Bhutan. While Bhutan has signed the Agreement, the MVA still lacks the support of the Bhutanese public and the national parliament has not ratified it yet. Nevertheless, Bhutan expects to ratify the Agreement, and has agreed to allow its partners to start putting the Agreement into effect without it.

India has announced that, as part of the BBIN MVA, it intends to create new bus routes between India and major cities in Nepal and Bangladesh, and also take part in road construction in the region.

In January 2018, representatives of India, Bangladesh and Nepal reached agreement on the text of a protocol to the Agreement, setting out the border crossing procedure for passenger buses and private vehicles. The final document will be signed once it has been approved by all the parties.

It has been announced that there have already been a number of trial consignments of goods along the Calcutta-Dhaka-Agartala and Delhi-Calcutta-Dhaka routes.

There is another important project that will increase India’s links with other countries in the region: the bridge that is being built over the river Feni, which forms a major part of the border between India and Bangladesh. The bridge, which is being built near Sabroom (state of Tripura, India) will link the Indian state of Tripura and Khagrachhari district in Bangladesh.

According to the Indian High Commissioner in Dhaka, Harsh Vardhan Shringla, who visited the construction site in October 2017, this bridge will become a vital link between the peoples of India and Bangladesh. Its completion will bring about a significant growth in trade and tourism between the two countries.

The bridge is scheduled to be completed in 2020. India has provided most of the funding, and construction is being managed by the Indian National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation (NHIDCL).

It is worth pointing out that, while these projects will clearly benefit both India and the region as a whole, they do seem very modest when compared with the Chinese OBOR initiative. As far as international infrastructure projects are concerned, it is very hard for India to compete with China, even though China’s other rivals are supporting the project. For example, the Asian Development Bank is providing technical and financial support to the BBIN MVA project. It is no secret that the leading members of that financial organization are Japan and the USA, which are supporting India in its competition with China. However, there is no news, so far, of any major Indo-American or Indo-Japanese projects that could be a serious competitor to OBOR.

Because of the long-running confrontation between India and China, the BCIM international transport corridor between Bangladesh, China, India and Myanmar, proposed by China, has been on hold for many years. The BCIM corridor could link the southern Chinese province of Yunnan with India and Myanmar, via Bangladesh.

The BCIM project, under various names, has been under discussion since the 1990s, and it is now part of the OBOR initiative. If it did materialize then trade would increase considerably throughout the South Asian region, which would bring many benefits to poorer countries in the region, such as Bangladesh and Myanmar, as well as to India and China.

However, the project has repeatedly been postponed, because of the rivalry between India and China for influence in the region. Both countries think of their neighbors Myanmar and Bangladesh as part of their own private sphere of influence, and they are not prepared to accept any interference from competitors there.

India is also unwilling to take part in OBOR. It sees this initiative as an instrument for increasing China’s influence, both in Asia and globally. However, such countries as Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal, the Maldives, Sri Lanka etc. have little interest in the geo-political rivalry between two powerful nations. They are more concerned with their own important problems, including the fight against poverty and social and economic development. In the rivalry between India and China, they will give their support to the party that can actually support their economies. That is why they are ready to agree to be a part of OBOR, which will promote the development of transport infrastructure and trade in the region, create more jobs, etc.

The BBIN MVA, the River Feni Bridge project, and other similar initiatives can be considered as successful moves by India to strengthen its relations with South Asian nations. But these projects are much smaller in scale than China’s ambitious OBOR. As a result, India is, as yet, unable to offer its neighbors in the region any real alternative to OBOR. To keep its influence in South Asia it may have to rethink its attitude to OBOR. It looks like India’s neighbors will take part in that initiative anyway, and it is up to India to decide whether it wants to get on board or not. If India continues to boycott OBOR without providing any real alternative to it, then it may find that it no longer has any significant role in its neighbors’ economies, and that China has taken its place. But if India starts cooperating with China, and also carries on developing its own infrastructure projects, it has the chance to join in OBOR as an important partner and hold onto its status in the region.

Dmitry Bokarev, political observer, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”

The Indian Ocean Region is Going to Heat Up

In the complex political picture that looms in the Indian and Pacific region, the various processes that are taking place in all of its geographical elements deserve attention. At the same time, it makes sense once again to designate the special significance of the sea band between the coast of the PRC and the so-called ‘First Island Line’. However, there are increasing signs of an increase in the role and region of the Indian Ocean (IOR).

It is also useful to recall that in the expert community itself, the Asia-Pacific region (APR) and IOR are in the same geopolitical region since the middle of the last decade. Even then, the strategic importance of controlling the largest sea traffic starting from the Persian Gulf zone, as well as the east coast of Africa and ending in the ports of India, Australia, China, Japan, and other significant participants of the modern geopolitical game. All of them, while maintaining their involvement in the processes taking place in the aforementioned area, are developing their activity in the IOR. First of all this applies, of course, to India, where the meme the ‘Indian Ocean must be Indian’ is popular. However, China is in complete disagreement with its semantic content, the various aspects of its activities in the IOR are constantly being discussed in the IEE.

The increasing competition between the two Asian giants for the control of IOR was once again manifested after India’s test of the IDB Agni 5, which took place on 18 January, the missile was launched from a test site on the island of Abdul Kalam, located off the east coast of India in the Bay of Bengal. In 2015, the island received its current name on behalf of the 11th president of the country, a well-known scientist who for a long time headed Indian programmes in the field of armaments and, in particular, applied-space rockets. Under his leadership the development of a series of ballistic missiles Agni with different range, including the latest 5-th modification began. All of them are intended to be equipped with nuclear warheads. Agni 5 has a design range of 5 thousand kilometres and can hit any significant targets across the whole territory of China.

This was the fifth launch since the beginning of the April 2012 tests of this type of IDB. According to the representative of the Agni 5 developer-organisation, this time the main task of the launch was to test the latest navigation system, which ensures that the warhead hits the target ‘with an accuracy of several metres’. The system test was ‘a complete success‘.

‘In response to Indian missile tests China should increase its presence in the Indian Ocean’, – an article under such a heading in the Chinese Global Times came out on the same day (18 January) in which military-political consequences of the next launch of Agni 5 were assessed. Of these, the chief, according to the author, is ‘a direct threat to China’s security and a serious challenge to global efforts to the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons’.

The last remark deserves particular attention. The thing is that China is against India’s intention to join the so-called ‘Nuclear Suppliers Group’, which controls the flow of technology and materials that can be used to produce nuclear weapons by those countries that have not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

These include India, whose plans, however, include a sharp increase in the energy balance of the country’s share of nuclear power and, therefore, a very relevant issue of accession to the NSG. It is therefore not accidental that the statement made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 20 January on India’s commitment to all the provisions of the NPT, although it is not a signatory of the Treaty.

In the article quoted above, the Chinese expert drew attention to another fragment in which the fact of the next Agni 5 test is immersed in the context of the regional political game with a mention of its main participants. Of these, Japan ranks first, ‘cooperation’ with India ‘is growing in order to contain China’.

This remark is also not accidental. It is directly related to the trends in Japanese defence construction, which are manifested both in the statements of recent months of officials, and in some paragraphs of the project of the defence budget of the country for 2018 fiscal year, which will be approved by Parliament until 31 March this year.

Earlier we already noted the intention of the Japanese leadership to make fundamentally new positions in the “National Security Strategy”, which are primarily due to the plans for the formation of the “Four” allies with the participation of the United States, Japan, India and Australia.

However, expansion of the Japan’s comprehensive cooperation separately with each member of the (future) ‘Four’ has been noted long ago. In particular, it is very noticeable in the pair ‘Japan-India’.

Delhi has a complete understanding of Japan’s desire to increase its presence in the Indian Ocean. There will certainly be a positive assessment and plans to expand the list of so-called ‘ports of call’ for Japanese naval ships in the coastal countries of the Indian and Pacific oceans. Moreover, in this case, Japan is going act together with the members of the ‘Four’ and Britain.

With regard to the question of which Japanese ships would be “entering” foreign ports, the first two new type ‘destroyer-helicopter carrier’ of the Izumo class already in the Japanese Navy are the focus of attention. Here the type of these ships is quoted for the reason that it is a question of full-fledged helicopter carriers (a standard displacement of 27 thousand tonnes), which can easily turn into light aircraft carriers.

Actually, the possibility of such a metamorphosis with these ships was discussed at the beginning of the current decade in the period of their laying on the stocks. Even then, aircraft were indicated, which can be placed in hangars and decks of future aircraft carriers (up to 10 units each). It was about the newest fighters-bombers of 5th generation F-35 in variant “B” which provides a shortened takeoff and vertical landing.

Note that the same fighters will be based on the British aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth, about the possibility of sending it to the region recently said Foreign Minister Boris Johnson, and the plans for the Japanese-British military cooperation (primarily at sea) was discussed during the visit in Tokyo, Prime Minister Teresa May.

With the aforementioned message about the intention of the Japanese Navy to modernise the ‘destroyers-helicopter carriers’, leaks to the press are completely correlated about the plans of the Ministry of Defence to purchase dozens of additional’ F-35s. The fact is that the company Mitsubishi (with the assistance of the American company-developer Lockheed Martin) has already started to manufacture on 42 F-35A fighters, intended for the Japanese Air Force. Part of the “extra” F-35 may well be designed to equip the aforementioned ships.

According to the Japanese newspaper Mainichi Shimbun, most likely, the current information campaign will be reflected in the new MoD documents on the medium-term planning of the country’s military construction, which will appear in 2020. These documents, according to the article of the said newspaper, will be a trend in giving the Japanese armed forces “shock-offensive” potential.

It should be noted that by that time, first, Japan will be headed by a new monarch (the name of the reign of which is currently being discussed) and, secondly, the current Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is going to realize the main goal of his political career, that is Amendments to the 9th article of the National Constitution.

Apparently, by 2020, Japan’s MoD will no longer need to resort to euphemisms in the designation of the types of weapons systems being developed and the tasks of naval patrols (or even basing), for example, in the Indian Ocean.

Vladimir Terekhov, expert on the Asia-Pacific region, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”

 

With Pakistan Ending Up on the List of US Enemies, One Can’t Help but Wonder Who’s Next?

The state of bilateral relations between the US and Pakistan that used to be one of the most faithful allies of Washington, remains in a rather sorry state after Trump’s insulting New Year’s tweet, that left Islamabad thoroughly outraged. Specifically, Trump chose to make his first post in 2018 about Pakistan, noting that:

The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools. They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!

However, the scandal didn’t stop just there, as the head of the press service of the Department of state Heather Nauert slammed Islamabad with allegations that it wasn’t doing enough to put an end to the spread of terrorism. According to this official figure, from now on Pakistan must “earn” the financial support that the West was providing it to keep terrorists at bay. In turn, the sitting United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley rushed to clarify that the withdrawal of any support that Pakistan was getting was in no way connected to its decision to support the UN General Assembly resolution condemning Washington’s unilateral decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. However, you can’t really hide an elephant in plain sight, as it’s obvious that Washington got mad at Pakistan for its commitment to the defense of its fellow Muslims at the international stage. One can recall how Nikki Haley would send out a total of 180 letter of intimidation in late December in bid to force sovereign states into changing their positions on the issues of Jerusalem.

The Pentagon specified that Washington froze at least 900 million dollars allocated to Pakistan for it to be able to carry on its anti-terrorist operations. This explanation was given on 5 January, by the official representative of the office of military cooperation of the Pentagon Patrick Evans, commenting on the decision of the administration of President Donald trump to suspend aid to Islamabad in the field of security.

According to Evans, this decision affects the support provided along the lines of the Pentagon through the Fund support coalition (FPC), while specifying that the US Congress has allocated 900 million dollars to Pakistan, however it wouldn’t receive this sum now. In addition, the United States decided to withhold 255 million dollars that was promised to Pakistan in the 2016 fiscal year under the foreign military assistance. Those funds were supposed to be spent on the acquisition of American-made weapons.

As a response to such steps Islamabad, that is a principal US ally in Central and South Asia and a nuclear power, has decided to challenge Washington for the first time in the history of bilateral relations. Speaking at the Islamabad Institute of Strategic Studies, Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khurram Dastgir Khan announced that his country is planning to suspended all large-scale military operations conducted together with the Pentagon and American intelligence services. These actions coincided with another demonstrative gesture of Pakistan: the Supreme Court of the Pakistani city of Peshawar “out of medical concerns” decided to release from prison the Sufi Mohammad, the founder and leader of the Pakistani radical group Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi, that used to fight invading NATO in Afghanistan in 2001.

In interviews with American media sources, unnamed Pakistani officials point out that Islamabad is planning to close a number of transit routes that are used to deliver American men and equipment to Afghanistan, realizing that there is no real alternative to those . One of the commanders of the Pakistani Air Force also suggested that Pakistan’s airspace could be blocked for American military aircraft, including drones.

In turn, Pakistan’s opposition leader Imran Khan urged the government to reduce the level of Islamabad’s relations with the United States, adding that Pakistan must be in a great hurry to get rid of an excess of US diplomatic, non-diplomatic and intelligence personnel operating in Pakistan in order to establish diplomatic parity in accordance with international legal norms.

In his interview for the Guardian Pakistan’s prime minister, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi declared himself mystified by US threats to cut off funding, saying that US financial assistance was “very, very insignificant” and that Pakistan was “on the forefront of the war on terror. He would add that:

I am not sure what US aid has been talked here,as the aid in the last five years at least has been less than 10 million dollars a year. It is a very, very insignificant amount. So when I read in the paper that aid at the level of 250 million dollars or 500 million or 900 million dollars has been cut, we at least are not aware of that aid.

It should be added that American military assistance to Pakistan first started in 1954 under Eisenhower and lasted for almost eleven years, in which the United States provided over 800 million dollars to Pakistan, averaging nearly 75 million dollars every year. However, in 1965, following an arms embargo imposed on Pakistan, President Lyndon Johnson ended US military aid to Pakistan after the outbreak of the first India-Pakistan war. For the next sixteen years, until 1982, Pakistan received little to no support from the United States.

In recent years, bilateral relations between Washington and Islamabad have been deteriorating rapidly as the Obama administration announced new cuts in the assistance Washington was providing to Islamabad in 2016, depriving the latter of 300 million dollars in aid However, while expressing its dissatisfaction with the level of bilateral cooperation with Islamabad, Washington wouldn’t dare to take really radical steps until this year’s notorious tweets made by Donald Trump.

It’s clear that America’s support over the last six decades has failed to transform Pakistan into an obedient puppet of Washington. In fact, it has made Pakistan more resolute in pursuing its goals. Although Pakistan has weathered previous US aid cuts, each past episode in the bilateral relationship has driven the partnership more towards an irreparable trust deficit. The first event that created a Pakistani distrust of the United States was in 1962 during the Indo-Sino border conflict when the Kennedy administration decided to provide India with military assistance.

This year Pakistan is going to conduct general elections, which is going to be pretty unfortunate for Washington. With the persistent growth of anti-American sentiments that was boosted by the recent statements and actions of the Trump administration, any politician who would dare to make concessions to Washington would be perceived as a “traitor” of national interests.

It is noteworthy that despite the difficulties experienced by the Pakistani economy, according to the estimates of a number of international organizations, the year 2017 has actually become the best one in country’s 70-year history, with the GDP growth nearing 4.7%. This allows us to speak of Pakistan as a state that is not going to be treated as a US client regime anymore, no matter how much pressure the US would try to apply on Islamabad.

Therefore, it is too late to impose financial sanctions against Islamabad, which Washington is up to now. The Islamic Republic has long found its wellbeing in its regional allies, that will help it to compensate any financial losses suffered through Washington’s steps. After the release of the new US strategy on Afghanistan and South Asia, experts began to talk about the fact that the recent actions of Americans and the further cooling of relations with the United States involuntarily pushes Pakistan into the embrace of Russia and China, which in the long term can lead to a change to a radical shift in the balance of forces in the Asian region. Considering that Islamabad needs external assistance, it will be happy to receive it from Moscow and Beijing, which are not in Washington’s fan club these days as well.

Martin Berger is a freelance journalist and geopolitical analyst, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”  

Russia Strengthens its Position in Bangladesh Through Energy.

As it is well known, the economy of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh (PRB) is one of the least developed, but one of the fastest growing economies of Asia demonstrating steady growth in the last few years. Today many countries seek to cooperate with PBR, in the hope of making profitable investments, gaining access to its growing markets and cheap labor. Among them are India, China, South Korea, Japan, the United Kingdom, USA and other states.

Russia has achieved significant success in the development of relations with Bangladesh concluding a partnership with this country in a strategically important area such as energy. The Russian Federation plays an important role in the oil and gas industry of PRB and is a key figure in its atomic project.

Fuel shortage is a major problem for Bangladesh. There is a significant reserve of oil, coal and natural gas in its territory, that country pins great expectation economic development with. However, since the early 2000’s, the exploration and development of new deposits in the PBR were not conducted.

In 2010, the Bangladesh Government turned towards Russia for assistance in such matters as exploration of new hydrocarbon deposits, their development and establishment of a unified gas supply system in its territory. Later, negotiations started between the leadership of Bangladesh and Russian state oil and the gas corporation “Gazprom”. Soon Gazprom signed a memorandum of mutual understanding with Bangladesh Minerals, Oil and Gas Corporation “Petrobangla”.

Gazprom International (GI), a company affiliate of Gazprom specializing on search and production of hydrocarbons outside of the Russian Federation, was entrusted to work with the Bangladeshi partners. In 2011, the GI proposed the leadership of the PRB its program for the development of Bangladeshi deposits and establishment of a single Bangladeshi gas supply system (a similar Russian system was taken as a model).

In 2012, GI signed a number of contracts with ВАРЕХ, BGFCL and SGFL – the subsidiaries of Petrobangla, in accordance with which the Russian company began to drill and equip ten wells with a depth of 3-4 km at the gas fields of PRB. The work began in the spring of 2013 and by November 2014, all ten wells were put on regular operational mode. The results were very satisfying to the Bangladeshi side that it readily continued to develop its cooperation with the Russian company.

In the autumn of 2015, GI signed new agreements with the same Bangladeshi companies to drill five wells more. The work was completed before the deadline at the end of 2016.

In March 2017, GI and ВАРЕХ agreed to build two more wells on the island of Bhola in the southern part of Bangladesh.

In December 2017, GI started drilling “North Bhola-1” well. Its depth is to be 3.55 Km. The area where the drilling is conducted has high terrastatic pressure, which require the use of advanced technologies that Russian drillers possess. This fact once again confirms the rightness of the decision of the Bangladeshi leadership to cooperate with Russia.

In 2017, the average level of natural gas production in Bangladesh was about 70 million cubic meters per day and the annual production amounted to about 27 billion cubic meters. It is reported that about 10% of this volume is produced in wells built by GI. It is still not sufficient to completely cover the country’s needs of natural gas (which is about 30 billion cubic meters per year). But, provided that the current pace of the construction of wells is maintained, the required volume of production can be achieved and exceeded in the coming years.

Currently, the PRB leadership is considering a new five-year programme of development of its gas fields. If it is approved, GI may obtain an order to drill about 100 more wells. Moreover, the possibility of creating a joint venture of GI and BAPEX is being discussed for implementation of joint projects in the oil and gas sector. In addition, the Russian side expressed its intention to undertake training of qualified personnel for the Bangladeshi hydrocarbon industry, both on the basis of Russian universities and in Bangladesh, where a specialized training centre is planned to be created with the support of Russian specialists.

Another important point of contact between Russia and Bangladesh is – Atomic energy. In 2011, the countries signed an Agreement on the construction of first Bangladeshi APP “Rooppur”. The work was entrusted to “AtomStroiExport”- a company within the Russian State Atomic Corporation “RosAtom” established for working abroad. In 2015, the head of “RosAtom” Sergey Kirienko arrived in Bangladesh. At that time, the main contract was signed and it became known that the cost of the project would exceed $12 billion dollars. The majority of the required amount was provided by Russia giving Bangladesh a loan of $11.38 billion dollars in 2016.

It is important to noted that the 2011 agreement was signed after the catastrophe at the Japanese nuclear power plant Fukushima-1″ which occurred in March 2011, after which many countries froze their nuclear projects or rejected them altogether. A significant role in the selection of PRB in favour of cooperation with the Russian Federation played its Enhanced Safety Standards, which are adhered to by Russian nuclear scientists and a special protection system they equip their WWER model reactors with. It is believed that nuclear power plants built by Russian technologies are able to withstand severe strokes. This is particularly important for Bangladesh, which is located in a hazardous area, periodically experiencing powerful hurricanes and floods.

Thus, one may conclude that cooperation with Russia plays an important role in the development of the Bangladeshi energy sector. This makes Russia one of the key partners of PBR and contributes to the development of relations between the two countries in all fields. Mutual Russian-Bangladeshi trade turnover increased almost twice during the period of 2012-2016, surpassing $1.4 billion dollars in 2016. Cooperation in military-technical sphere is developing, which together with nuclear cooperation testifies to a special trust between the two states. Given Bangladesh’s special relation with India and the China’s growing interest in it, a presumption can be made that cooperation with Bangladesh can strengthen the Russian positions in the Asia and Pacific region.

Dmitry Bokarev, political observer, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”

What do Donald Trump’s Attacks on Pakistan Mean?

Posted on January 1, 2018, the President of the USA Donald Trump’s tweet about the mistake of providing Pakistan with American financial aid (more than 33 billion dollars over the last 15 years), which was rewarded with “nothing but lies & deceit,” was a significant news event in the world politics of the recently arrived New Year.

Speaking the next day to reporters, the permanent USA representative to the UN, Nikki Haley, clarified that the American president is considering the possibility of ending financial assistance to Pakistan, which gives “safe haven to the terrorists” the Americans “hunt in Afghanistan.”

To get an explanation on the meaning of Donald Trump’s statement, the American ambassador in Islamabad was summoned to the foreign ministry of Pakistan. The head of the foreign policy department of Pakistan, Khawaja Asif, said that Washington was trying to shift the blame to his country for the failure of its own policy in Afghanistan. Stressing the active participation of Pakistan in the fight against terrorism, he recalled that during the war in Afghanistan, the Americans carried out over 57,800 attacks from bases located in Pakistani territory.

Generally speaking, Donald Trump and Nikki Haley said nothing new or worthwhile. Let us recall that, roughly speaking, the same was also said by Donald Trump on August 21, 2017, when (after a protracted silence) he for the first time ever addressed the exceptionally timely and painful for the USA prospects of the 16 year military adventure in Afghanistan.

It is hypothesized that the current portion of American sharpness towards Pakistan is simply the realization of explicit threats from the very same Nikki Haley towards the countries that on December 18 and 21, 2017 (respectively, in the Security Council and at the UN General Assembly) voted in favor of a resolution denying recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

It appears, though, that the real reason for another manifestation of USA discontent with Pakistan is of a much more serious nature. It is likely that it was the response to an extremely significant event, which took place on December 26 in Beijing, where the “First Dialogue of Foreign Ministers of the PRC, Pakistan, and Afghanistan” was held. In the joint press release on this occasion a number of points are of significant note, in which:

- representatives of Pakistan and Afghanistan congratulate the Chinese “with the successful conclusion of the 19th Congress of the CPC and fully support the proposed by President Xi Jinping” vision of the future of all mankind;

- readiness to deepen cooperation in a trilateral format is expressed, including cooperation in the framework of the ‘New Silk Road’ project, in the fight against terrorism and security;

- it is stated that the peace process in Afghanistan, “supported at the regional and international levels,” should be conducted with the participation of all parties to the conflict including the Taliban, but it must be ‘headed’ by Afghanistan itself;

- the second meeting in the same composition will be held in Kabul “during 2018.”.

The document contains no hints towards the supposedly negative role of Pakistan in the Afghan conflict. It does not mention the fact of the 16-year military presence in Afghanistan of the main world power that has buried there enormous financial resources and sustained high political costs in the process.

Therefore, the American leadership has all the reasons to be upset. All the more so since Washington planned to hold before the end of the last year its tripartite meeting on the Afghan problem, but in the “USA-Afghanistan-India” format. However, something went wrong and the main geopolitical opponent of the USA clearly stole the initiative in the process of a peaceful resolution to the Afghan conflict.

Judging by the contents of the document cited above, its authors assign to India and the USA a fairly indirect role, speaking about the need to maintain this process at the “regional and international levels”.

The participants in the meeting in Beijing designated as the main initiator and ‘leader’ (once again we lay emphasis on this exceptionally important point) ‘Afghanistan itself’.

We must note, however, the remark made on December 27 at a press conference by the FM of the PRC, Wang Yi, that the establishment of a ‘Chinese-Pakistani-Afghan Dialogue’ is not intended to replace other existing international platforms dedicated to this issue. We add that this is simply impossible. The USA and India are not states which will reconcile with the auxiliary role of some ‘regional and international’ forces in the process of resolving the Afghan conflict.

It should also be borne in mind that Pakistan quite explicitly sees Afghanistan as a strategic rear (‘backyard“) in the confrontation with India. Something which the latter will never agree with, we should add.

The position of the pro-Indian forces is quite strong in the Afghan elite, while the Pakistani-Afghan relations face serious problems (including, for the above reason), which have accumulated over the years. Such problems can hardly be resolved in the course of a single ministerial level event.

Meanwhile, Washington, which in recent years has been expressing a clear preference for the development of relations with India (a tweet by D. Trump was named in the newspaper Indian Express “sweet music” (), does not want to completely sever ties with Pakistan and is not going to give it ‘without a fight’ to be under the full influence of the PRC. This in particular is evidenced by the visit to Islamabad by USA Secretary of Defense James Mattis three days after the scandalous tweet by Donald Trump.

However, the remark by the deputy director of CNN Michael Kugelman about this visit (“Congratulations, Secretary Mattis. You’ve become the latest US official to serve as lead vocalist on a hopelessly broken record, apparently, adequately reflects the current state of US-Pakistan relations.

It seems that the Pakistani train leaving the USA has already gained considerable speed and it will not be easy for Washington to hop onto the last car. An article in the Chinese newspaper Global Times aptly titled ‘Trump tweet draws China, Pakistan closer‘ lists the main components of the rapidly developing China-Pakistan cooperation.

All in all, we can state the main thing: games around the issue of control over the territory of Afghanistan, which have lasted for at least two centuries with different participants,  will continue after the Beijing ‘Dialogue’. The latest anti-Pakistani attacks by the USA clearly provoked by the aforementioned event are a testimony to this.

Vladimir Terekhov, expert on the issues of the Asia-Pacific region, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.” 

India Loses Out the Maldives to China

At the end of 2017, the Free Trade Agreement was signed between China and the Republic of Maldives – an insular country situated in the Indian Ocean, not far from Sri Lanka and southwest of India. This deal became an untoward surprise for India.

The capital of the Republic of Maldives, Malé, is the only city and port on the territory of the country. Like all ports in the Indian Ocean, Malé is included into China’s area of interest due to its project ‘The 21st-century Maritime Silk Road’, which is aimed to unite all the navigable routes between Asia, Europe and Africa and covers the whole of the southern coast of the Eurasian continent.

According to China’s announcements, the project titled ‘The 21st-century Maritime Silk Road’, which is part of One Belt and One Road Initiative (OBOR), pursues exclusively economic goals aimed at the development of the trade and co-operation in the region. However, several countries feel skeptical about these projects, if OBOR and ‘The 21st-century Maritime Silk Road’ contribute to over-intensification of political leverage of China globally. Among the opponents of OBOR is the main rival of China in Asia and the closer neighbor to the Maldives – India.

Apart from the concerns regarding global Chinese domination, India also has its regional reasons to treat suspiciously both OBOR and ‘The 21st-century Maritime Silk Road’. The matter is that within the framework of these projects, China is actively developing its collaboration with the neighbors of India, such as Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka, trying to turn them into its zones of influence. The Republic of Maldives is also included into this list. Also, China is collaborating with Pakistan, which is the long-time political opponent of India. China has made large investments into the transport infrastructure of these countries, including investing into the development of the sea ports of those countries that have access to sea.

India is particularly unhappy with the attempts of China to build military collaboration with these countries. Officially, China is not aiming for military dominancy in the zone of ‘The 21st-century Maritime Silk Road’, however in August 2016, the first Chinese military base was opened in Djibouti, an African country at the coast of Bab el Mandeb, a strategically important area of the marine passage between Europe and Asia. Also, the ROC Navy periodically call at ports participating in the project ‘The 21st-century Maritime Silk Road’, such as Sri Lanka. In August 2017, three Chinese warships called at the port of Malé, which caused quite a negative reaction of New Delhi.

The relations between China and the Maldives have been developing steadily for 45 years already. The two countries are actively collaborating in the economic sphere. The Maldives regarded the OBOR initiative and its subproject ‘The 21st-century Maritime Silk Road’ with enthusiasm. In 2014, the Chinese leader Xi Jinping visited the Maldives. During his visit, he received the consent of the Republic of Maldives to participate in the OBOR initiative and become part of ‘The 21st-century Maritime Silk Road’. In the same year, the mutual volume of business between China and the Maldives exceeded $100 million, after which they started negotiations regarding creation of a free trade area, where the customs tariffs would be reduced to zero for more than 95% of goods. India, that would anxiously treat the Chinese activity in the Maldives, was watching closely the course of negotiations, however concluding of the Chinese-Maldives FTA has caught it off balance.

As per the reporting in the Indian mass media, on 29th November 2017, the government of the sitting Maldivian President, Abdulla Yameen, rushed the law on FTA through the People’s Majlis with gross violations. Thus, it was reported that the minimum number of parliamentarians were not present at the sitting (43 out of 85), which was necessary to adopt the law, and there were no representatives of the opposition: only the members of the ‘Presidential’ Progressive Party of Maldives were present. Also, the Indian side maintains that about an hour was spent to study and sign the voluminous document. Overall, the Indian mass media characterize the situation as the diplomatic failure of their country and the final evasion of the Maldives from India’s influence. Also, in their opinion, the situation demonstrates the wish of China to spread its influence across South Asia by any means.

On 7th December 2017, the Chinese-Maldives FTA was signed by the Maldivian President, Abdulla Yameen, and President of the People’s Republic of China Xi Jinping during the official visit of Abdulla Yameen to Beijing.

According to the words of the Chinese politician, the relations between China and the Maldives are developing successfully, with China welcoming the active participation of the Maldives in the OBOR initiative and considering this country an important partner in the creation of ‘The 21st-century Maritime Silk Road’. Also, Xi Jinping advised that China is counting on the further rapprochement and mutual development with the Maldives.

In response, Abdulla Yameen stated that China is an important partner of his country and noted the role of OBOR in the development of many small states. He expressed the support for the principle of ‘one China’ and the wish to develop further the amicable relations and the economic co-operation.

A week after signing of the agreement by the Chinese and Maldivian leaders, India officially voiced their opinion too. The spokesperson of the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, Raveesh Kumar, announced that India assigns high priority to their relations with the Maldives, and therefore would expect greater attention to their concerns, related to the growth of economic influence of China in the Indian Ocean. He noted the old-established historical and cultural relations of the Maldives and India and noted that his country is advocating democracy, development and stability in the Maldives. Moreover, Raveesh Kumar expressed his surprise regarding the fact that the Maldives signed the agreement with China so hastily, even though Abdulla Yameen, during his recent visit to New Delhi, announced that the Maldives would first sign such an agreement with India. He also raised his hope that the Maldives would be more considerate for the interests of their neighbor and partner, India, in the future. Nevertheless, as a conclusion, he summed up that India would maintain the evolution of the relationship between the Maldives and China, if they facilitate peace and stability in the region.

One should note that many experts believe that the FTA with China is necessary for the economy of the Maldives. The main sources of income in the Republic of Maldives are tourism and fishing industry. Until 2013, the main importers of the Maldivian fish products were the EU countries. However, in 2013, the EU deprived the Maldives of trade preferences, which significantly reduced the revenues of this country. Now, the main importer of the fish products from the Maldives is China, and due to the FTA, the Republic of Maldives is expecting to build up sharply its fishery exports to China.

We should also remember that tourism as the primary source of income of the Maldives now also depends on the relations of that country with China. Most tourists visiting now the Maldives, are citizens of the People’s Republic of China. Thus, the two key sectors of the Maldives economy depend on the co-operation with China.

It is no wonder that the Maldives are turning around hotfoot towards China, even despite its old-established ties with India. China is taking energetic efforts to strengthen its influence in all countries of the region, which are accepting co-operation because it promises the real benefit. Possibly, India should get a load of the actions of China if it wants to retain its positions in South Asia.

Dmitry Bokarev, political observer, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”

 

Kashmir – The Independence Movement Much More Dangerous Than Catalonia’s

At the moment everyone is pitching in on the situation in Catalonia as the real story. Having held a referendum on independence, in defiance of the Spanish constitution, the Catalan regional parliament must have expected Madrid to defend that constitution by not recognising the result, re-imposing direct rule to prevent it being enacted and jailing people who advocated doing so. So much can be said in retrospect for self-determination, and so-called European values, as all that is but a moot point by now.

However unsavoury these measures, it is the Spanish government’s claimed Constitutional Duty to take them, as was the case in Georgia in 2008. But of course the Central government is spurring separatist sentiment all over Europe and beyond, in countries where such votes can be legally held and then respected with greater ease. We can expect a number of other regions which identify themselves as separate, whether ethnically, politically or historically, to regard the Catalans as martyrs and go down the same path.

Catalonia as a convenient distraction

However Catalonia is also a convenient distraction. Another “occupied region” is demanding independence – Kashmir . If Catalan independence is becoming a hornet’s nest of problems, these pale into insignificance beside those of Kashmir. This conflict has all the potential to surpass the US-North Korea standoff as a potential disaster you don’t want to think about.

Kashmir has been used for years as a means of retaining the regional balance to prevent those problems. But that is precisely why there is now a push to independence. Trapped between regional enemies and great power rivals, it has nothing to lose by trying to go it alone. The only questions are who will decide to support it, whether Kashmir wants that support or not – and what harm its nuclear-armed neighbours will do to each other, and the rest of the world, because the locals in this remote region are sick and tired of all of them.

Too many truths to be true

Kashmir is the one place on a political map with lines across it. It is claimed by both India and Pakistan, which have fought at least two wars over the territory. India administers a plurality of it and Pakistan most of the rest, but both countries claim the whole of it. If either abandoned these claims this would have a knock-on effect on their other territorial claims, so they never will.

That is bad enough for the locals. However China is also part of the mix, as it controls two Kashmiri regions as a result of the 1962 Sino-Indian War. Neither India nor Pakistan recognise the Chinese claim to these regions, as once again doing so would affect their own claims elsewhere. But China is preventing either from exercising their claimed rights at the expense of the other, and not losing, rather than winning, has always been the point of the India-Pakistan conflict.

When India became independent Jammu and Kashmir was one of the hundreds of small, independent “princely states” in the Indian subcontinent which were protected by, but not actually owned by, the British. The British had no authority to incorporate them into either India or Pakistan. Each was given the option of joining either country, or remaining independent, after British protection was unilaterally removed in 1947.

But this right was given to the rulers of these states, not the people. Most citizens of Jammu and Kashmir were Muslim, but its maharaja was the Hindu Hari Singh, long trained and supported by the highest levels of the British establishment. He sought to retain his state’s independence by manouvering between the two, but this merely raised suspicions on both sides that he was going to join the other eventually.

While the maharaja was busy convincing the new state of Pakistan not to invade, an irregular Muslim force, certainly supported and probably organised by Pakistan, entered from Afghanistan to try and prevent him by force from joining India. The British would not supply troops, so the only way Hari Singh could retain his authority was to ask India for help. On Britain’s suggestion, he legitimised this move by agreeing to join India, thus making the Indian troops his own.

India therefore claims that the whole of Jammu and Kashmir is part of India because its ruler signed an Instrument of Accession saying so, like dozens of other local princes did. This is true. Pakistan claims the territory because the Indian Independence Act gave all the Muslim majority areas to Pakistan, which is also true, even though Jammu and Kashmir was not covered by that act.

China has always maintained that the portion it controls is an integral part of China “stolen” by the princely state, as China never agreed the boundaries the British set for that state. In itself, that is also true. But if this claim is accepted it invalidates both the Instrument of Accession and the Indian Independence Act, and if these are invalid, have either India or Pakistan a legal right to even exist?

Kashmiris caught in the middle argue that their country has been ruled by foreigners for 500 years, having previously been their own. The maharajas of the princely state were just as alien to them as Delhi is now, a fact Pakistan continues to exploit. So as you would expect from people who feel they have had no political voice for centuries, local opposition long took the form of a disparate, disjointed but enduring armed resistance, particularly in the Kashmir Valley, the most disputed part of the area.

But some armed groups wanted independence, some wanted unification with Pakistan and others wanted the people to decide when the foreigners had been expelled. Already on a hiding to nothing trying to take on India, China and the Pakistanis who wouldn’t countenance independence, these splits ensured that most of these groups were eventually suppressed by Indian troops. However this has created an opportunity for civilian groups, more likely to gain international support, to take the lead. These are now arguing, quite sensibly, that Kashmir should be independent simply because enough is enough, and the only way to end the cycle of violence is to invalidate everyone’s claims by kicking them all out.

China doesn’t want trouble in Kashmir when it is moving ahead, nor to give up territory when it is claiming it elsewhere, such as the South China Sea. India and Pakistan won’t render the authority which created their states meaningless. Every side has some legitimacy in its position, and unfortunately, enough of that to attract the support of greater powers who have long sought to control the whole subcontinent.

It was no coincidence that China took its part of Kashmir during the Cuban Missile Crisis, in a war whose dates exactly corresponded to the dates of that crisis. Only when others were distracted could it do what it wanted, as no one wants any side in this dispute to win over another. An independent Kashmir would be everyone’s friend because it is everyone else’s enemy, and the independence campaign could release intolerable pressures internationally, let alone locally.

Change is staying the same

It is in this context that we should view the most recent developments in Kashmir. After all these years, India is now promising a “sustained dialogue” with the Kashmiris. This means two things. Firstly, India will not just send troops in and then refuse to listen to the people the armed groups claim to represent. Secondly, India has no intention of granting Kashmir independence. That would mean no further dialogue was necessary, so places at the table and bribery to remain in India are being offered as the alternative.

Furthermore, this dialogue is being offered to “understand the legitimate aspirations of Kashmiri people”. India knows perfectly well that Kashmiris ultimately want respect, whether that is obtained through union with Pakistan, which would grant them the same rights other Muslims were granted, or greater or full independence. The question is what India regards as a “legitimate aspiration”, and who it regards as “Kashmiri people”.

It is an old trick to dismiss an aspiration you don’t like as illegitimate because you say it comes from terrorists, not the people. Northern Irish republicans, who are utterly opposed to terrorism, and unconnected with it, still want to be ruled from Dublin like the terrorists do, but as long as this view is associated with terrorists it is not a “legitimate aspiration”. India has not stated who it will be negotiating with either, giving it the right to pick and choose who is “representative”, as happens in the Middle East where “Palestinian” and “PLO” are differentiated to great effect.

At the same time, India has been ordered by its own Human Rights Commission to investigate a number of mass graves near the administrative boundary with Pakistan . On the face of it, this is a positive move. But India was ordered to do this by the European Parliament in 2008, on pain of sanctions, and did nothing. The same Human Rights Commission then gave the same instruction in 2011, but nothing was done then either.

India’s excuse has always been that such an investigation would create a “law and order” problem in Kashmir. However it also maintains that any mass graves must contain the bodies of locals who were being armed and trained in Pakistan to fight for the armed groups. Kashmiris in general are sympathetic to the political aims of the armed groups but do not join them, so if this is true, investigation of the graves will change nothing. If it is not, and the bodies are those of disappeared civilians, that would be a threat to law and order.

But the fact that India has been order to do this also serves Delhi’s purposes. It reinforces its claims to the region by recognising the Indian government as the competent authority to carry it out – the Pakistani government has not, as yet, been asked to investigate mass graves in its part of Kashmir, if they exist. This is ultimately more important to India than what the graves contain. Even if there were clear evidence that these were civilians slain by Indian troops without good reason, the international community would treat this as a domestic crime rather than that committed by a foreign army of occupation, which is why such a situation developed in the first place.

Give my head peace

The ongoing conflict in Kashmir suits too many people to ever be resolved. China only claims the part of it it controls, so it is unlikely to intervene further as its claim to this part on historic grounds would then be undermined. Nor will the collapse of Pakistan, much more likely than India’s because it is no longer useful, resolve anything as this would increase direct foreign support for the independence movement, now it was no longer associated with one “occupier” or the other.

As mentioned in previous articles, Pakistan is there to stop India getting too high and mighty and India is allowed to develop with strings attached. Both countries know the purpose they serve. They are no more functionally independent than a Kashmiri state carved out of them would ever be. Catalonia may not affect the international order, but Kashmir inevitably will.

Supporting Pakistan means supporting its claim to Kashmir; this is obliged to include a clause about “letting the Kashmiri people ultimately decide” because the Pakistani claim rests on the religious orientation of the majority of those people, rather than the actions of their old Maharaja. But Kashmir’s claim to independence is likewise largely based on the locals’ religious difference to Indians, and the fact this was once recognised as the basis for separating from India.

Actual independence would weaken Pakistan considerably because it would mean that being an Indian subcontinent Muslim no longer meant you should be Pakistani. This would have ramifications throughout the Muslim world, which is publicly struggling with whether you support fellow Muslims for the sake of it, or particular nations even if they oppose fellow Muslims.

India itself is highly multi-ethnic, and each group has some sort of grudge to bear. The Sri Lankan government claims to have defeated the Tamil Tigers, but this has given the local Tamils greater kinship with their brethren in India. The historic DMK, which long governed Tamil Nadu, initially pressed for a separate South Indian state, and largely because of this secession is now as illegal in India as it is in Spain. The great powers would rub their hands in glee at an Indian civil war, as they would be able to support both sides simultaneously, given their positions for and against India in different arenas, and obtain greater control of both regardless of the outcome.

Don’t look, and don’t leap either

Independence inevitably creates new political realities anywhere. If one place can achieve it, others think themselves similarly qualified. They also routinely think that the principle is worth sacrificing everything for, including the security of all the countries around them.

Faced with a problem like Kashmir wanting independence, many diplomats would simply give up and find easier ones to look at. But that isn’t an option either. In a conflict where everyone is right and everyone is wrong, perpetual frozen hostility is the only way of maintaining peace. This means making continual efforts to get all parties to sign up to that, and if anyone fails to make the effort, then their rivals will gain at their expense, by proxy.

During the Cold War there was much discussion about which side would be forced to go nuclear first in the event of any war. In Kashmir nuclear war is as much a danger as it was then, not because conventional forces would run out but because the issues people are fighting about are so difficult to resolve that simply destroying the place may be the only realistic way of doing that. In the present frozen conflict, no one has to look for answers, only recognise the questions. If any player jumps on the bandwagon of Kashmiri independence answers will have to be found – and no one has seen one in the last seventy years, when they have had breathing space to do so.

Seth Ferris, investigative journalist and political scientist, expert on Middle Eastern affairs, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.