The U.S. presidential elections have always been a good example of excellence and superiority. It has developed the entire environment excellent and smooth. The elections rely a great deal on homespun and China made confetti with the stature of the American President being, “the most powerful and significant personage” in the entire realm of the international ecosystem. Rhetoric, verbiage and stand-up comedy tracks run amok in the homeland to attract the denizens of the land along with propelling the candidates for a larger-than-life political and diplomatic serenade.

Recently, the eye of the storm is being caught by the name of Steve Bannon, who was the master strategist of the Candidate Trump’s electoral campaign, who recruited the United Kingdom-based Consultancy Cambridge Analytica with the connivance of a few Cambridge University denizens. Thus, the Facebook data of personal nature from thousands of FB pages was roped in as a grand and matrix- like strategy by Cambridge Analytica in order to shore up the electoral fortunes and the mathematics of the Donald Trump’s election campaign trail. The leak by one of the employees of the UK-based firm bears uncanny resemblance to the Snowden exposes of the WikiLeaks a few years back. Also, in the name of sustaining the security and steadfast health of the American society and polity, personal norms of privacy have been breached where personal posts and uploads have been utilised clandestinely and the resultant hoopla has belittled the corporate ethics of the UK-based firm, along with casting bad light on Steve Bannon and President Donald Trump. The Washington Post reported that the reach and the influence of the Cambridge Analytica went beyond influencing the US Elections.

The questions and posers related to ethics in journalism and media coverage, neutrality, transparency and objectivity have once again raised their uncomfortable heads with the “Aiyarri- espionage” carried out by ordinary mainstream data guzzling firm to influence the larger political process of a superpower nation. The reputed British SCL Group founded the Cambridge Analytica in order to work on American politics. The website of the company includes offices in Malaysia and Brazil along with those in the United States and Britain, and also beyond the American territory. The era and aura of globalisation and convergence, particularly the flip side of the coin, comes to the fore as an assiduous affront to the steadfast territoriality and sovereignty of nations such as China and United Sates of America. Recently, in his televised address to the Chinese nation on the occasion of the CPC summit, Chinese President Xi Jinping warned the national population that the integrity and the internal functionality of a nation and its population depends fervently upon the concern of its territoriality remaining intact in a world system marred by the seething ideas of globalisation and convergence. Even, the Indian political class is expressing its nervousness about the utilisation of Cambridge Analytica to snoop over the other political outfits in the fray and frame a perspective to shore up their political fortunes and mar the prospects of the antagonist. This episode also brings up the tenets of corporate responsibility and the question as to how far global establishments play with the homeland themes even in a nation as overbearing and paramount as the United States of America. In a news piece broadcast all over the world, the CEO of Cambridge Analytica took the credit for shoring up the fortunes of the Candidate Donald Trump’s election campaign. Thus, it amounts to an allegation that Baudrillard’s “Simulacra” plays a handsome hand in the making and marring the prospects in nations as self-sufficient and chink-free as United States of America. The UK-based daily Guardian reported that the officials of Cambridge Analytica literally boasted about winning the elections for Donald Trump.

Data protection is a clichéd business and nomenclature in the US, which has does not have a singular legislation unlike in places such as the European Union. The right to privacy at the federal level includes:

“The right to be free from search and seizure by the Government.”

“The right to have one’s communications free from interception.”

“The right to keep one’s personal information private.”

Still, what is explicitly stated in the American law is that these rights are not absolute and un-amendable by their nature and function. The American Government can intercept and utilise related data for the purposes of national wellbeing and homeland security, which is the same sentiment reflected in the Homeland Security Act. And, going by the gung ho drive of the Trump campaign, it was a national emergency that emergency measures had to be implemented; what was amplified during the campaign is further executed during President Trump’s Presidency.

The Federal Trade Commission in the United States, too, has a word about the juxtaposed coupling of privacy and security. The Gramm Leich Billy Act contends that concern about privacy and security, “The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act requires financial institutions — companies that offer consumers financial products or services like loans, financial or investment advice, or insurance — to explain their information-sharing practices to their customers and to safeguard sensitive data.” Thus, it is part of the corporate liability that information of private individuals ought to be confidential and should not be subjected to sneak peek even by the American establishment. Still, when the American homeland is in a quandary, the corporate should have no qualms about the dictum that, “With great power comes great responsibility”.

There is an inherent antagonism in the perspectives between an agency such as Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the American Government which has to be broodingly amalgamated. The language goes that, “The FTC now considers information that can reasonably be used to contact or distinguish a person, including IP addresses and device identifiers, as personal data. However, a few US federal or state privacy laws define “personal information” as including information that on its own does not actually identify a person. The bottleneck can be that by now, the American nation and the attendant political system does not possess a data protection authority such as the one on media, which is the FCC, the Federal Communication Commission. Do we also say that, trolling also is data? It is definitely a true statement if these are posted on the social media.

(The writer teaches International Relations at Indian Institute of Public Administration, Delhi)

Writer: Manan Dwivedi

Courtesy: The Pioneer

The Indo-France connection defined that how the France President, Emmanuel Macron, visit could be more beneficial if we get our hold right.

From solar power to defence deals, Asia-Pacific security to the possibility of France replacing Russia as India’s all-weather ally at a time when Moscow seems recalibrating its position in a fluid geostrategic environment in which some see a new global bi-polarity emerging with the US and China forming the poles, New Delhi has engaged with Paris at an apt juncture. Prime Minister Narendra Modi pulled out all the stops in ensuring President Emmanuel Macron’s recently concluded four-day visit to India, which had a hectic and by all accounts very productive itinerary, went off well. Indeed, even as you read, the navies of India and France are engaged in a joint bilateral exercise — Varuna-18 — in the Arabian Sea off the Goa coast which aims to enhance operational synchronicities.

Yet, the whole is not in the sum of these parts but dependent on the X Factor, as it were, which is the forging of a state-to state ideological and values-based relationship reflecting the affinity between the Indic and French civilisational ethos. This is a consummation devoutly to be wished as a countervailing force to the narrative of the global triad of multiculturalists, mullahs and Marxists which threatens to reduce contemporary narratives on individual (especially women’s) rights, personal liberty, the agency of nationalism, the role of the nation-state, issues of security related to terror and/or migration and cultural particularities into a communitarian discourse. Worse still, it is a narrative which champions membership of fundamentally illiberal groups and denies, by implication and/or directly, the notion of both an Indian and a French exceptionalism.

India has a similar affinity with Israel given the notion of an exceptionalism that runs through all three civilizational cultures and a common danger to all of them emanates from an ideological architecture that has enabled the arming, quite literally, of the enemies of the nation-state in general and the abovementioned nation-states in particular. The good news is that our engagement with the State of Israel has acquired some depth and is in the process of acquiring the breadth that would make for a lasting alliance, credit for which much go first to PV Narasimha Rao and his team of strategic thinkers in the early 1990s who had the moral courage and intellectual nous to grapple with the changing contours of a post-Cold War world and the, till then under-theorized, radicalization of the ‘Muslim World’ despite those from within the fold who tried then and haven’t, one eye on domestic politics, given up trying even now, to undermine them. Similarly, credit is due to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and President Jacques Chirac who started the process of a deep engagement between India and France as defined strategic partners in 1998.

India’s French connection is still far from having been explored to its fullest potential, though, in part at least due to the language issue. Now the French establishment has always been as keen as mustard to spread globally the “language of freedom”, as it were, but in Macron it seems to have found a nuts-and-bolts man who has a plan — “plot”, according to the Brit tabloids, god bless them — to bring this to fruition. Speaking a couple of days ago, the French President announced an allocation of millions of euros to double the number of teachers and students learning French in schools worldwide, begin a sustained push in Africa to promote the language across the continent so it is not limited only to the former French colonies there and, post-Brexit, increase its use as the preferred language of communication in the European Union in place of English. Macron’s description of this effort as a “new moment in history”, however, has not gone down terribly well in the Francophone world especially in Africa where allegations of a colonial hangover and French meddling slip easily off the tongue, which is why the President asserted that France saw itself merely as “a country among others” in the French-speaking world.

Macron, who unlike previous French presidents loves to speak English at summits and regularly uses English slogans such as “start-up nation” and “make our planet great again”, makes no apologies for regularly speaking English, saying it has become an international language of business. But he iterates that speaking French is also a way to highlight French “values”. Therein lies the rub.

For India, which has an English-advantage in the modern world albeit the language spoken nowadays is more Queenie Singh’s than the Queen’s (but that’s just this writer being a youngish fogey and aesthete), the promotion of French isn’t what excites us. Equally, we should waste neither time nor resources on the promotion of Hindi globally — all three languages are, as the chips have fallen in world history, merely functional outside national borders though some more than others. (They are rightly cherished at home, of course, and lovers of each of these languages should always be encouraged to pursue them.) If anything, our emphasis should be to ensure that Sanskrit, along with Latin and Hebrew, are promoted as global languages of antiquity which enable access to pre-medieval primary sources and help us understand our cultural origins warts, glories and all.

The X Factor in our French connection is not, and very unlikely to be in the foreseeable future, a common language and we can safely elide Anglo-French competitiveness around which should be the lingua franca of the world. It is the ideas conveyed by the language, which it is fallacious to assume are lost in translation, which are of immediate import.

Professor Bhiku Parekh’s seminal work on the cultural particularity of liberal democracy is now widely accepted as historically evident and the Indian approximation of the same is today a work in progress. But the notion that individual rights can never be trumped by group rights, the imperative of gender equity and an uncompromising adherence to personal liberty all premised on a uniquely inclusive civilizational impulse within an Indic cultural context that India ought to attempt to institutionalise via state instrumentalities will gain immeasurably from a deepening of strategic, security and cultural ties with France.

Within this rubric, practicalities such as an Indo-French outreach in Africa makes a lot of sense given our weaknesses and strengths on that continent are broadly complimentary. Apart from gaining strategic depth including enhancing our energy security, such a move would provide a fillip to economic growth/capacity-building in individual African nation-states while boosting investment opportunities/growth for India and France as well as serve to counter the aggressive push over the past decade by an increasingly authoritarian China in Africa. Leveraging the French connection to deepen both economic and security ties with the EU, and Paris understands our concerns better than most in Europe, must be the other area of focus. Bilaterally, the sky is the limit if the Indo-French entente cordiale is actively transformed into a multi-faceted strategic partnership given the cultural affinity of our respective liberal, inclusive and secular heritages though both India and France, as nations, arrived at them via very different routes. In fact, it is these very values which are under attack from communitarian ideologies.

Nearly three centuries after the Carnatic Wars were fought on the Indian peninsula by the then dominant colonial powers for control over the sub-continent, a conflation of ideas and interests between New Delhi and Paris has come to pass.

(The writer is Consulting Editor, The Pioneer)

Writer: Ishan Joshi

Courtesy: The Pioneer

Amongst the current probe into Russian suspected interference in the US election held in year 2016, a new debate has come up with U.S. president Donald Trump congratulating his Russian mate Vladimir Putin on his re-election, in spite of warning as a national security adviser that not to do so.  

“I had a call with President Putin and congratulated him on the victory — his electoral victory,” he told reporters on Tuesday, adding: “The call had to do, also, with the fact that we will probably get together in the not-too-distant future so that we can discuss arms, we can discuss the arms race.”

“We had a very good call, and I suspect that we’ll probably be meeting in the not-too-distant future to discuss the arms race, which is getting out of control, but we will never allow anybody to have anything even close to what we have. And also to discuss Ukraine and Syria and North Korea and various other things,” Trump said.

Later in the day, The Washington Post, citing officials familiar with the call, reported that Trump did not follow “specific warnings from his national security advisers”, set out in briefing materials in all-capital letters, stating: “DO NOT CONGRATULATE”.

While there was no tweet from Trump himself on the subject, CNN cited a source as saying that the president was “infuriated” over the leak to the media that he had been directly instructed not to congratulate the Russian leader.

Trump’s congratulatory words also provoked fellow-Republican John McCain, known for his hawkish stance on Moscow, to put out a sharply critical statement against Trump.

“An American president does not lead the free world by congratulating dictators on winning sham elections,” Senator McCain said, adding: “And by doing so with Vladimir Putin, President Trump insulted every Russian citizen who was denied the right to vote in a free and fair election to determine their country’s future, including the countless Russian patriots who have risked so much to protest and resist Putin’s regime.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell commented that Trump can “call whomever he chooses,” but added that calling Putin “wouldn’t have been high on my list”. Yet another Republican, Senator Marco, said he doesn’t agree with Trump congratulating Putin.

Writer: S Rajagopalan

Courtesy: The Pioneer

After so many annoying tweets by the U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday, it gives rise to so many rumors that he might have started laying ground to fire the special counselor Robert Mueller interfering in the US presidential election. After analyzing the continuous attack of Trump, some senior Republicans have warned Trump against going off route.

Any such move would mark “the beginning of the end of his presidency”, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said, while a spokesperson for House Speaker Paul Ryan, without going into the President’s latest tweets, said: “As the Speaker has always said, Mr. Mueller and his team should be able to do their job.”

“I don’t know what the (President’s) designs are on Mueller, but it seems to be building toward that (firing him), and I just hope it doesn’t go there because it can’t. We can’t in Congress accept that,” said Senator Jeff Flake, another Republican and a strong Trump critic, on CNN.

And Republican Congressman Trey Gowdy, reacting to Trump’s personal lawyer John Dowd favoring disbanding the Mueller probe based on a “fraudulent and corrupt dossier”, commented that the lawyer was doing Trump a disservice, adding: “If you have an innocent client, Mr. Dowd, act like it.”

Trump’s tweets and commentary on Sunday talk shows intensified the talk of a possible Mueller ouster so much that White House lawyer Ty Cobb opted to issue a statement on Sunday night to say that the President was not considering the Special Counsel’s removal.

“In response to media speculation and related questions being posed to the Administration, the White House yet again confirms that the President is not considering or discussing the firing of the Special Counsel, Robert Mueller,” Cobb said.

And White House Legislative Affairs Director Marc Short took the stand that Trump’s team was fully cooperating in the investigation and that the President was only expressing his growing frustration with the manner in which the probe has been going on and on for so long.

But, in the midst of these clarifications, Trump himself took to the Twitter again on Monday morning, suggesting that the ongoing Russia probe was a “total WITCH HUNT with massive conflicts of interest”.

What set off the chatter on the fate of Mueller probe was Trump’s series of Sunday tweets, asserting: “The Mueller probe should never have been started in that there was no collusion and there was no crime.”

“It was based on fraudulent activities and a Fake Dossier paid for by Crooked Hillary and the DNC, and improperly used in FISA COURT for surveillance of my campaign. WITCH HUNT!” he tweeted.

Trump went a step further, suggesting for the first time that Mueller’s team was packed with Democrats.

Writer: S Rajagopalan

Courtesy: The Pioneer

United States’s President Donald Trump fires United States Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Tuesday. President Trump announced that he would replace Rex Tillerson with Mike Pompeo the C.I.A. director and former Tea Party congressman, who has a close relationship with the president and is in more sync with Mr. Trump’s America First credo.

Conspiracy theorists who believe, with some credibility, of Russian meddling in the 2016 US Presidential elections, which Donald Trump won in an electoral upset for the ages. However, that may not be the case for Tillerson, he had reportedly referred to his boss as a ‘moron’ (with an unkind adjective ahead of it) and even as the US President referred to last morning in Washington DC, Tillerson has major disagreements with Trump, particularly around the issue of the nuclear deal with Iran, which Trump despises and the State Department in the United States wanted to defend.

Had Tillerson’s firing or resignation been a one-off, it would have been quite ordinary. After all, premiers have the right to hire and fire staffers, even senior ones. However, Donald Trump’s White House seems almost dysfunctional. Tillerson was fired a week after David Cohn, Donald Trump’s Chief Economic Advisor, quit his job in protest over Trump’s import tariffs and headlong rush towards a trade war. A few days before that, Hope Hicks, a long-time Donald Trump confidant and the White House Communications Director, quit as well. And this follows a pattern of several top Trump Administration officials either being fired or being forced to resign in disgrace in the 14 months that the Administration has been in office.

Nations across the world look up to the United States, thanks to its democracy, economy, and military. However, what most people are currently viewing is a completely dysfunctional state. By his imposition of trade barriers, Trump has appealed to his populist base, but being has shocked the traditionally pro-business wing of the Republican party, and that is just one example. He has also questioned climate science, education and immigration in the United States as well as attacked traditional allies. Then again, Trump has by some fluke managed to bring North Korea to the negotiating table, he might even manage to push through gun reform in the United States. Yet, some stability and talent in his Cabinet would go a long way towards assuaging the rest of the world. It might be ‘America First’ for Trump but America does not live in isolation. However, many also feel that Tillerson was not doing a great job, so it remains to be seen how Mike Pompeo will bring the rest of the world around.

Writer: Pioneer

Courtesy: The Pioneer

The Republican members that constitute the House Committee have come to the conclusion that there is no proof that President Donald Trump or anyone from his campaign conspired with officials from Russia to influence the 2016 White House race.

“We found no evidence of collusion,” Congressman Michael Conaway, who oversees the Russia probe, told reporters ahead of Tuesday’s scheduled release of a 150-page draft report to the Democrats for review.

“We found perhaps some bad judgment, inappropriate meetings, inappropriate judgment in taking meetings — but only Tom Clancy could take this series of inadvertent contacts, meetings, whatever, and weave that into some sort of a spy thriller that could go out there,” Conway said.

Rejecting the assertions, Congressman Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the panel, called the move to end the probe a “tragic milestone” and a “capitulation to the executive branch”.
“By ending its oversight role in the only authorized investigation in the House, the Majority has placed the interests of protecting the President over protecting the country, and history will judge its actions harshly,” Schiff commented.

Trump took to Twitter to capitalize on the news, saying: “The House Intelligence Committee has, after a 14 month long in-depth investigation, found no evidence of collusion or coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election.”

“We’re very happy with the decision by the House intelligence committee saying there’s absolutely no collusion with respect to Russia,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday, calling it “a very powerful decision, a very strong decision”.

“I understand they’re going to be releasing hundreds of pages of proof and evidence – but we are very, very happy with that decision. It was a powerful decision that left no doubt, so I want to thank the House intelligence committee and all of the people that voted,”

Trump said.

In contrast to the assertions by Trump and House Republicans, Schiff contended that the evidence “is clear and overwhelming that the Intelligence Community Assessment (of Russian meddling) was correct”.

“If the Russians do have leverage over the President of the United States, the Majority has simply decided it would rather not know,” Schiff said.

Writer: S Rajagopalan
Courtesy : The Pioneer

With the successful visit of Vietnam’s President Tran Dai Quang to India, from 2nd to 4th March, 2018, the relationship between the two countries are expected to mount to another level. The main agenda of the visit was a discussion on the possibilities of trade and defense collaboration and exchange. This was Quang’s first visit to India as President. He landed in the country with 18 delegates, including Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh, Deputy PM, ministers for trade and industry, and ministers of planning and investment.

Earlier in Jan, Vietnam’s Prime Minister, Nguyen XuanPhuc, visited India on Republic day, to strengthen the partnership between the two countries. The visit also marked the manifestation of a landmark Memorandum of Understandings (MoUs) in port development and civil nuclear cooperation, which speaks volumes about how much Hanoi values defense partnership with India.

In view of China’s destructive posturing in the South China Sea, both Vietnam and India have recognized maritime security as one of the foremost areas in which they should unite. Three major agreements were signed that including nuclear cooperation and enhancement of trade and agricultural research. A MoU on cooperation between GCNEP and VINATOM was also discussed. The main purpose of the MoU is to support the technical cooperation of atomic energy.

South China Sea is a major crisis with abilities to swift a major conflict. While China entitles this part of the ocean space in its zone, there are several other claimants in the region who claims certain parts of the Sea falling in their zones. Although India is not directly involved in the matter, it is more concerned about China’s attempt to control this ocean space as trillion dollars of trade pass through the ocean every year. India has also its own economic stake as it has joined Vietnam on its invitation for joint exploration of oil and gas reserves off the coast of Vietnam in the South China Sea. After the discussion, Quang welcomed Indian businesses to expand their oil and gas exploitation and exploration activities on land and in the inland shelf and Exclusive Economic Zone of Vietnam”.

Though no agreement was signed in the field of defence cooperation, both are expected to continue to work on fulfilling India’s $100 million Credit Line commitment to Vietnam, some of which has been used for procuring Offshore Patrol Vehicles (OPVs), while talks continue on Akash Surface to Air Missile systems (SR-SAMS) and Dhruv advanced light helicopters. Vietnam has also from time to time expressed its desire to purchase BrahMos supersonic missiles from India. Both Modi and Quang also agreed to enhance exploring the possibility of co-production and opportunities in transfer of technology in defence manufacturing. Military-to-military cooperation between the services is also going on. The two countries also agreed to strengthen relations in different sectors such as renewable energy, agriculture, textiles and petroleum.

The two countries also signed a MoU on economic and trade cooperation aimed at establishing a framework for enhancing economic and trade promotion.In terms of trade, both are striving to bring bilateral trade to $15 billion by 2020. In the fiscal 2016-17, bilateral trade stood at $6.24 billion, an increase of 40 per cent from the previous year. From his side, Quang underlined his country’s commitment to creating favourable conditions for businesses in areas ranging from information technology to infrastructure. In a joint statement issued, both sides agreed to hold the next meeting of the Joint Sub-Commission on Trade in Vietnam’s capital city of Hanoi in 2018 at the earliest. The joint statement stated: “In order to realize potential to both increase the volume of trade and diversify its composition, they (Modi and Quang) requested the relevant ministries and agencies on both sides to explore substantive and practical measures to achieve the trade target of USD 15 billion by 2020 including but not limited to utilising established mechanisms, strengthening exchanges of trade delegations, business-to-business contacts, regular organisation of trade fairs and events”. Both sides urged leaders of business and industry of both countries to explore new trade and investment opportunities in identified priority areas of cooperation.

A work plan for the years 2018-2022 between the Indian Council of Agricultural Research and Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development of Vietnam was also signed between the two countries. The purpose of this work plan is to promote cooperation in the transfer of technology and exchange of visits of technical experts in the field of agriculture. India requested Vietnam to consider signing the Framework Agreement of the International Solar Alliance to strengthen cooperation in the renewable energy space. Vietnam agreed to examine.

When Modi visited Vietnam in 2016, the “strategic partnership” was elevated to a “special strategic partnership”. Quang committed to further deepen this partnership. In 2016, Modi had announced a grant of $5 million for the construction of an Army Software Park at the Telecommunications University in NhaTrang. A Line of Credit of $100 million is already being used for eight off-shore patrol vessels to Vietnam. The armies of the two countries conducted joint military exercise in February for the first time. Vietnam also buys defence equipment for its navy and air force. Also, though Vietnam has shown an interest in buying the Brahmos supersonic missile from India, not much headway been made. Negotiations on terms and conditions are under way.

The fact that a business delegation of 65 businessmen from 34 Vietnamese companies visited India with Quang and had interaction with prominent Indian businessmen shows that Vietnam is keen to deepen economic and business ties with India. As regards the composition of trade, while Vietnam exports a lot of manufacturing products such as mobile phones, machineries and computers, India’s export basket to the Vietnamese market includes machineries, textile materials, sea food and medicines. Despite the enthusiasm shown by both sides, the trade volume has not reached the expected level.  

India continues to be among Vietnam’s top ten largest trading partners. Though overall bilateral trade volume is below the desired level, it has increased 16 per cent per annum on average in the past decade and this is an achievement. Many major Indian firms have established and expanded their footprints in Vietnam. The growth trajectory cannot be overlooked. What also cannot be overlooked is the fact that India has given priority to Vietnam in development cooperation and education and training and focused on areas such as science and technology, information and communication.    

Investments from India in Vietnam are still very low. India ranks 28th among the 126 countries and territories investing in Vietnam in 2017 with 168 projects and total registered capital of $756 million. Many major Indian corporations, including Tata group, ONGC and Essar, have sound business in Vietnam. Vietnam expects more investments from India, so that the target of $15 billion in bilateral trade by 2020 can be realised. India’s strength in renewable energy, manufacturing, IT, infrastructure, could be attractive for Vietnam. Both need to strengthen bilateral and regional connectivity as well as infrastructural connectivity such as air links, roads and maritime links, and digital connectivity. Under Modi’s Act East thrust, these areas are the preferred projects and shall contribute to a win-win situation when energies of both sides are unleashed. Quang’s visit should be viewed from this perspective.

Writer: Rajaram Panda
Courtesy: The Pioneer

During the raucous rally of supporters in Pennsylvania on Saturday night, America’s President, Donald Trump, told that his new tariffs were related to save the steel industry and advised them to send a Republican to the House so he can keep delivering those kinds of results. The president gave his preference to Republican Rick Saccone in the final days of the competitive election outside Pittsburg that could resonate nationally ahead of the November interim elections. Hitting peak campaign mode for himself, he revitalized many of his 2016 riffs and even unveiled his 2020 planned slogan, “Keep America Great!”

“We can’t say ‘Make American Great Again’ because I already did that,” Trump said in Moon Township, a Pittsburgh suburb, adding: “Our new slogan when we start running in — can you believe it, two years from now? — is going to be ‘Keep American Great, exclamation point.”

It turns out that Trump actually had hit upon the “Keep America Great” slogan long ago, having told The Washington Post in January 2017 that he had instructed his lawyer to trademark the phrase with and without an exclamation point.

  “The task for all of us, for everyone here tonight is to make sure that this great American comeback continues full speed ahead. We are doing things that are amazing,” Trump said as he campaigned for a Republican locked in a stiff contest with a Democrat in a special Congressional election on Tuesday. “The world is watching. Get out on Tuesday and vote like crazy,” he told the crowd.

Trump made it a point to tout his controversial decision to slap 25 per cent on imported steel – something that was set to resonate in Pittsburgh – once the centre of America’s steel industry and still carries the title “The Steel City”, despite plants having closed down in recent decades in the face of acute competition from cheaper foreign steel.

“Steel is back. Aluminium is back,” he claimed, predicting that a lot of steel mills would now reopen because of his tariffs push to keep cheaper imports at bay.

Ditching his prepared address, Trump attacked his three predecessors – Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton – for their failure to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue. “They all had their shot and all they did was nothing,” he said and claimed that it was because of his own maximum pressure campaign that Kim Jong Un has now sought a meeting with him and he has accepted the invitation.

Back to his familiar campaign mode, Trump also lashed out yet again at the liberal mainstream media and a host of Democrats, notably House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, Congresswoman Maxine Walters and Senator Elizabeth Warren, who is thought to be among a host of Democrats considering a presidential run in 2020.

“I look forward, I really do, I look forward to 2020 because I want to see how far left the person is going to be that we’re going to run against,” Trump said. Bringing up Oprah Winfrey, he urged the media celebrity to throw her hat into the ring, saying he would “love” to campaign against her. “I would love to beat Oprah. I know her weakness. I know her weakness … I would love it. That would be a painful experience for her,” he remarked.

Writer: S Rajagopalan
Courtesy: The Pioneer

The state of emergency in Maldives has brought Indian strategic interests to a point of reckoning. It is a tough decision for India.

Political crisis In Maldives has deepened ever since President Abdulla Yameen declared a state of emergency in the country for 15 days starting February 2 after the ruling of the Supreme Court to reinstate the 12 rebelled MPs and release political prisoners. While the Chief Justice and former President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom have been arrested, Yameen is trying to consolidate his dictatorial regime. To justify his brazen act, he accused the top court 01 acting hastily and said, “I declared the state of emergency because there was no way to hold these justices accountable.”

But, the ongoing political chaos is not a surprising development. In fact, the things were moving in this direction since 2012, when the first democratically elected President, Mohamed Nasheed was ousted. With the election of Yameen as President in 2013, things turned worse as he launched a crackdown on civil liberties. Later, Nasheed was illegally sentenced to 13 years on charges of terrorism in 2015. Moreover, in the last five years, Yameen has abrogated a serious of democratic reforms, imprisoning or forcing into exile nearly nearly every politician who opposes him. This became evident when Vice President Ahmed Adeeb was arrested on unsubstantiated charges of plotting the attack on Yameen.

However,the recent order of the apex court posed a serious threat to the stability of the Yameen regime, given the fact that with the 12 legislature getting back their seats, the Opposition would gain a majority in the 85-member Parliament. Since the top court ordered the release of Nasheed, Yameen was left to face a tough competition in the next general election, which is due later this year. These factors, along with enhanced ties with China and Saudi Arabia, emboldened Yameen to impose emergency In the country to acquire unlimited power to protect his regime. The ongoing political unrest has caught international attention, with Opposition leaders of Maldives requesting the international community to restore democracy. In particular, Nasheed, who is in exile in Sri Lanka, has requested India to send an envoy, backed by its military, to release the judges and political prisoners.

India is also closely watching the developments in Maldives, especially when relations between the two countries have remained very sticky since 2012 when President Mohammed Waheed Hassan cancelled the contract signed with GMR, an Indian company. Though India hosted President Yameen three times till 2016 and he also lauded the Modi Government’s ‘Neighborhood First’ policy, Male has not taken any concrete step to improvise with New Delhi. Instead, Yameen has shown interests in strengthening ties with China. This can be gauged from the fact that while an unprecedented rise in the number of Chinese travelers to Maldives has been recorded, Yameen has already endorsed China’s Maritime Silk Road, which is the part of the One Belt One Road.The two countries also signed the Free Trade Agreement in December 2017. It is also believed that the new law passed by Maldives, allowing absolute foreign ownership of land on the conditions that interested parties mold make a minimum investment of one billion dollar and reclaim 70 per cent land from the sea, will greatly benefit China in expanding its foothold in the Indian Ocean. India’s concern is that China, with its strategic ally Pakistan, could use the Maldives as a strategic choke point for India if push came to shove. The threat from Pakistan- backed fundamentalists is no less threatening. Rapid inroads of Wahhabi Islam are taking place in Maldives and the growth of terror modules in that country have generated concerns among the Indian strategic community. Therefore, internal stability is not important just to Maldives, but also to the International community, and most of all, to India. Even now, while Yameen has announced to send envoys to friendly countries: Chika, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, he did not find it fit to consult India, underscoring Yameen’s hatred against New Delhi.Maldives has emerged as one of the most important neighbors of India in geo-strategic and economic terms. It is situated in a mid-way between Strait of Malacca and Suez,which are the world’s busiest trade routes and thousands of cargo pass through these trade routes. At the same time. as Kerala and Lakshadweep are in close proximity to the Maldivian islands, there are always India’s concerns about the possible use of Maldives’ territory against it. These concerns get importance in the light of the fact that the November 2008 cross-border terrorist attack in Mumbai was made possible from across the sea. Maldives also occupies a special place in lndia’s foreign policy priority because of increasing cases of piracy in the Indian Ocean near Somalia and Strait of Malacca, which has made the position of Maldives very important for establishing Naval bases for security in the Indian Ocean.

It was in this context that the Indian Government issued a strong statement saying, ‘We are disturbed by the declaration of a state of Emergency in the Maldives following the refusal 01 the Government to abide by the unanimous ruling of the full-bench of the Supreme Court on February 1, and also by the suspension of Constitutional Rights of the people of Maldives. However, it is equally true that New Delhi may not like to take hard steps against Yameen because it will further enhance ties between China and Maldives. We also do not know how the Government in Male, after a regime change. will behave with regard to Indian interests. Thus, the Modi Government has taken the right decision to put pressure on Yameen through diplomatic channels to revoke the state of emergency. Now, it has to be seen in a testing time like this how India manages to keep China at a distance, reinforcing its position of an ultimate security provider in the South Asia region.

{Sumit Kumar Jha: The writer is an ICSSR doctoral fellow, UGC Centre for S. Asia Studies, Pondicherry University)

President Donald Trump has ruled out talks with the Taliban and vowed to “finish what we have to finish” in Afghanistan, following the wave of deadly terrorist attacks in recent days, killing over 130 people and wounding hundreds more.

“They’re killing people left and right,” Trump said at a meeting with UN Security Council members at the White House on Monday. “Innocent people are being killed left and right …. bombing, killing all over Afghanistan:’ So we don’t to talk with the Taliban.”

“So we don’t want to talk with the Taliban. There may be a time, but it’s going to be a long time,” Trump commented, declaring: “We’re going to finish what we have to finish. What nobody else has been able to finish, we’re going to be able to do if’

The total number of American troops in Afghanistan is expected to grow to about 15,000 in coming months, with some 4,000 of them sent to the war-torn country under President Trumps watch.

Prior to the recent wave of attacks, Washington had entertained hopes of a negotiated political settlement to the persisting Afghan crisis.

Several attempts in the past to hold peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban have failed. The most prominent effort was in 2013, when the Taliban opened an office in Qatar for the talks, but the Taliban’s move to hoist its flag derailed the negotiations.

At his luncheon meeting with representatives from the 15-member Security Council, including ambassadors to the US from China, France, Russia and Britain, Trump also discussed other security challenges, including the North Korean nuclear challenge.

“We will discuss our cooperation on a range of security challenges, including the denuking of North Korea, very importantly; countering [ran’s destabilization activities in the Middle East; ending the Syrian conflict; and confronting terrorism,”Trump said in remarks ahead of the meeting.

A political thriller played out in Saudi’s royal family

The recent turn of events in Saudi Arabia have been nothing short of a Hollywood thriller with Family, King, Princes, neighbouring countries and missile attacks all thrown into the mix for good measure. Eighty-year-old King Salman Abdulaziz Al Saud, in a political liquidation, rounded up 11 princes of the royal House of Saud, along with various Ministers and officials in what was marketed as an “anti-corruption” initiative in which prominent royal members were arrested and “jailed” in Riyadh’s notoriously luxurious Ritz Carlton hotel. This included globally influential names such as billionaire investor Alwaleed Bin Talaal, who has close ties with various American industrialists and owns five per cent of social media site Twitter. Over the span of 72 hrs starting November 3, a purge was underway, ballistic missiles were fired towards the Saudi capital Riyadh from Yemen, Lebanon’s Prime Minister Saad Hariri resigned (on television) from his post from Saudi Arabia, accusing Iran of medaling in internal Arab affairs before disappearing from public eye, Yemen’s incumbent President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, who also took up refuge there months ago, was reported to be under ‘house arrest’ (Saudis released pictures of a meeting with Hadi in attempts to refute such rumors). Two other princes were reportedly killed, one in a curiously timed helicopter crash near Yemen and another, rumored to have been shot while resisting an ‘attempted arrest’. This tragedy-ridden Shakespearean theatre makes King Salman the conductor of a never seen before ‘tripurge’, orchestrating political changes in his own country, Lebanon and Yemen simultaneously.

Understanding the politics of the Saudi monarchy is no easy task, with over 9,000 members in the royal family, Saudi politics is a never ending series of internal turmoil and power struggles.

However, most analysts agree that the recent events are King Salman’s strategy to clear way for the 32-years old heir apparent, Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. It is believed King Salman has already started the process of aiding Prince Salman to the throne, his son from his third spouse, transferring power by the end of 2018. The start of the said process was highlighted by social reforms with Saudi Arabia agreeing to allow women to drive, a long standing issue of contention. It has also allowed women to attend sports events at stadium. These changes come on the back of waiting for the accession of a young King, who will preside over a very-young and globally well-connected Saudi population on the cusp of a post oil economic and social order, and a corrupt royal system against which sentiments had been latently bubbling for a long time.

The challenges for the Saudi monarchy in the decades to come are plenty. Currently, the Saudi youth have it relatively easy, with various social schemes keeping them occupied, thanks to the petro-dollars, however, Riyadh has (finally) decided to move beyond its dependence on a singular mode of finance and approach models, such as those embraced by its neighbours, specifically Dubai.

This would require relaxed norms and a better global positioning to attract foreign investments, foregoing its rigid and suffocating rules that curtail freedom and basic human rights for its citizens, specifically women. The announcement of Saudi Aramco, the country’s national oil company, which at a point few years ago was worth more than India’s GDP, going partially public to raise money came as a surprise to many. However, it implanted the narrative of slow but drastic changes taking place in the kingdom, both politically and socially. This is highlighted by examples such as the steadily increasing domestic oil consumption in the country, thanks to domestic population growth. A robust and rich domestic economy is critical for Riyadh, both to keep a check on its young population and till a certain degree secure the House of Saud’s own future.

Geo-politically, the Saudis are continuing to make attempts to rein in the growing Iranian influence in the region, something that Prince Salman, the world’s youngest Defense Minister, has reiterated during the purge in an effort to stamp his own authority. Saudi concerns in regional West Asian dynamics have heightened over the past few months with Iranian influence growing at a rapid pace. The question around Syria and future of the said conflict has now been pretty much decided, with President Bashar al-Assad expected to stay, with the help of the Russians and Iranians. Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Hezbollah-backed militias are today already prevailing interest groups in large parts of Syria, with Tehran also wielding significant power in Iraqi and Lebanese politics along with running a indirect war in Yemen. The recent failed Kurdish referendum also saw Iran’s influence shine through over contentions between Baghdad and Erbil regarding the control of Kirkuk after its liberation from ISIS, while the Saudi Qatar diplomatic standoff pushed Doha to increase its engagements with Iran as well.

Despite collusion of regional interests, the exact reasons and future outcomes of this purge remain unclear. The narrative of an anti-corruption drive remains strong, but also begs the question whether this is the start of greater transparency in Saudi Arabian affairs or greater turmoil. Riyadh is banking on US President Donald Trump to back it to the hilt, specifically against Iran, on the pretext of which its regional overtures could be marketed as legitimate political tinkering to an often- naive new White House. How this purge plays out in reality, is anyone’s guess at the moment.

Courtesy The Pioneer ( The writer is an Associate Fellow with the Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi)