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Subject: International Relations

  • Why ICJ order on Ukraine matters

    Context

    The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ordered Russia to immediately suspend its military operations in Ukraine. In short, to end the war instantly.

    Breach of the Genocide Convention

    • Ukraine moved the ICJ against Russia accusing it of falsely claiming that Ukrainians are committing genocide in their territory and using this untruthful premise to start an illegal war.
    • This, Ukraine believes, breaches its rights under the Genocide Convention — a treaty that is binding to both Russia and Ukraine.
    • This decision was rendered by the ICJ in response to Ukraine’s application for indication of provisional measures under Article 41 of the ICJ Statute.
    • Provisional measures under the ICJ Statute are the international equivalent of an interim injunction that can be provided by the court to preserve the rights of the parties pending a final decision on the merits of the case.

    Three reasons cited by the ICJ

    1] ICJ’s jurisdiction in the case

    • Since 2014, Russia has been repeatedly accusing Ukraine of committing genocide in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
    •  Just before the military invasion, Russian President Vladimir Putin mentioned ending the genocide in Ukraine as the reason to use force.
    • Ukraine vehemently rejects this charge.
    • Prima facie, this shows the existence of a “dispute” under Article IX of the Genocide Convention — the compromissory clause that bestows jurisdiction on the ICJ.
    • Self-defence under Article 51 of the UN Charter: Russia contended that its formal basis for use of force against Ukraine was its right to self-defence under Article 51 of the UN Charter (a patently illegal argument, but this issue is not before the ICJ).
    • The court held that it had prima facie jurisdiction in the case because the subject matter fell under the Genocide Convention.

    2] Preservation of rights claimed by the parties

    • Ukraine argues that it has a right under the Genocide Convention not to be falsely accused of genocide and rely on this wrong pretext to use force against its territorial integrity.
    • The ICJ held that the objective of indicating provisional measures is the preservation of the rights claimed by the parties, pending the decision on merits.
    • Since the current proceedings were only for provisional measures, the ICJ did not decide definitively whether Ukraine has such a right under the Genocide Convention.
    • Nonetheless, the ICJ found Ukraine’s right plausible, which is adequate for the current purposes.
    • While the court did not decide on whether Russia has breached the Genocide Convention, as this is a question of merits, it did express doubt over whether a country can unilaterally use force against another country for punishing or preventing an alleged act of genocide.

    3] Risk of irreparable harm to Ukraine’s rights

    • The ICJ held that if it does not indicate provisional measures, that is, order cessation of military action, there is a real and imminent risk of irreparable harm to Ukraine’s rights.
    • This is because of the magnitude of destruction that the ongoing war has caused.

    Significance of the order

    • ICJ’s decision is binding on Russia and constitutes part of its international legal obligations.
    • However, the remedy for not complying with ICJ rulings lies with the UN Security Council, which has Russia as a permanent member.
    • But just because authoritarian populist leaders like Vladimir Putin don’t care for international law does not diminish its significance.

    Conclusion

    The weight of global opinion against Russia on its egregious abuse of international law is mounting with each passing day. Russia can keep ignoring this only at grave peril to itself.

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  • Deepening investments in Australia-India strategic, economic, and community ties

    Context

    On March 21, Prime Ministers of India and Australia held their Virtual Summit and took stock of the pace of implementing the Australia-India Comprehensive Strategic Partnership.

    India-Australia relations

    • Since we elevated our relationship in 2020, we have advanced practical actions on cyber and critical technologies, maritime affairs, defence ties, economic and business links and Quadrilateral cooperation.
    • The two Prime Ministers announced a range of tangible and practical initiatives spanning the breadth of our shared economic, strategic, and regional interests.

    Areas of cooperation

    • Energy partnership: Both countries are working on a new and renewable energy partnership, to support the development of technologies such as green hydrogen and ultra-low cost solar.
    • We are also supporting research and investment to unlock Australian critical minerals for Indian advanced manufacturing.
    • We will boost collaboration on innovation, science and entrepreneurship, to scale up ideas that address global challenges.
    • Space sector: We are also increasing investments into our countries’ rapidly growing space sectors.
    • We are establishing the Australia-India Centre of Excellence for Critical and Emerging Technology Policy — and a Consulate-General — in Bengaluru.
    • Australians value highly the Indian diaspora and student contributions to its community — whether economic, social, or cultural.
    • Australia and India are also working to ensure a peaceful and stable region.
    • Both countries are committed to a free and open Indo-Pacific.
    • In our defence relationship, there is an enhancement in information sharing and operational cooperation.
    • Such arrangements also help continue delivering quality humanitarian support to the region, seen recently when India helped Australia’s Pacific family, Tonga and Kiribati.

    Conclusion

    These investments in strategic, economic, and community ties show what we can achieve when two multicultural democracies join in a spirit of trust and understanding.

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  • On South Asia, US must reorient itself

    Context

    On the external front, Russia’s Ukraine war and the Sino-Russian alliance are setting the stage for a reordering of South Asia’s great power relations.

    Opportunity for the US in South Asia

    • If it looks beyond the region’s immediate response to the war in Ukraine, Washington can seize the current opportunity to elevate the US’s salience for the Subcontinent in partnership with India.
    • The Indo-Pacific strategy offers new pathways for the US to limit the traditional economic and military weight of China and Russia in the Subcontinent.

    Three regional trends in South Asia

    1] Decline of Pakistan’s influence

    • In the wake of the missile accident, Islamabad moved to seek international intervention, including from the UN Secretary-General.
    • But there were few takers for this old South Asian formula, except in Beijing.
    • Underlining the peremptory dismissal of Islamabad’s concerns is a deeper trend — the relative decline of Pakistan’s international standing.
    • Since his election, US President Joe Biden has refused to call Imran Khan, who runs a “major non-NATO ally”; high-level visitors from Washington now skip Pakistan during South Asia visits.
    • Chinese and Russian official visitors are among the few to combine trips to Delhi and Islamabad.
    • Islamabad’s decline after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan is likely to accelerate amidst Pakistan’s deepening domestic political chaos.
    • With an economy that is smaller than that of Bangladesh and limited prospects for rapid growth in the coming years, Pakistan will find it hard to match its traditional claim for “strategic parity” with India.

    2] Declining interest in China’s Belt and Road Initiative in South Asia

    •  Just a couple of years ago, China’s commercial march into South Asia seemed unstoppable. Not any longer.
    • Troubles in Pakistan and Sri Lanka: Pakistan and Sri Lanka, which embraced the BRI with great gusto, are South Asia’s two worst-performing economies.
    • The deepening economic crises are compelling the elites of Pakistan and Sri Lanka to focus on non-Chinese financial sources to stabilise their economies.
    • Sri Lanka, which ostentatiously refused to accept $480 million developmental assistance from the US in 2020, is now desperately looking for hard currency support for its sinking economic fortunes.
    •  In Nepal, the dominant communists had made political opposition to US infrastructure assistance of $500 million as a life and death issue for a decade.
    • At the end of last month, Nepal’s parliament ratified the US loan that will facilitate Nepal’s infrastructure development and its economic integration with the Subcontinent.

    3] The growing possibilities for US security cooperation with the Subcontinent

    • During the Cold War, the US military engagement was limited to Pakistan.
    • In the 21st century, there has been a steady expansion of US defence cooperation with India.
    • The current focus on the Indo-Pacific is getting Washington to modernise the defence partnerships with the smaller countries of the region.
    • The Trump Administration discarded the traditional obsession with Pakistan and began to recognise the strategic significance of the smaller South Asian states for its Indo-Pacific strategy.
    • The visit of US Undersecretary of State to Bangladesh over the weekend saw progress towards signing the so-called GSOMIA (General Security of Military Information Agreement) that codifies the commitment to protect classified military information.

    Conclusion

    Reversing that must necessarily involve deeper security cooperation with the region and developing alternatives to military dependence on Beijing and Moscow. This is best done in partnership with Delhi.

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  • Sri Lanka’s aggravating Economic Crisis

    Sri Lanka’s economic crisis is aggravating rapidly, putting citizens through enormous hardship.

    Reasons for the Crisis

    The first wave of the pandemic in 2020 offered early and sure signs of distress.

    • In-migration: Thousands of Sri Lankan labourers in West Asian countries were left stranded and returned jobless.
    • Shut-down: Garment factories and tea estates could not function, as infections raged in clusters. Tourism sector to saw a big dip.
    • Domestic job losses: Thousands of youth lost their jobs in cities as establishments abruptly sacked them or shut down.
    • Forex decline: It meant that all key foreign exchange earning sectors, such as exports and remittances, along with tourism, were brutally hit.

    Policy failures of Lankan govt

    • No strategy: The lack of a comprehensive strategy to respond to the crisis then was coupled with certain policy decisions last year.
    • Ill-advised policies: It included the government’s abrupt switch to organic farming —widely deemed “ill-advised”, further aggravated the problem.
    • Food hoarding: The government declared emergency regulations for the distribution of essential food items. It put wide import restrictions to save dollars which in turn led to consequent market irregularities and reported hoarding.
    • Continuous borrowing: Fears of a sovereign default rose by the end of 2021, with the country’s foreign reserves plummeting to $1.6 billion, and deadlines for repaying external loans looming.

    What is happening on the ground?

    • At the macro-economic level, all indicators are worrisome.
    • The Sri Lankan rupee, which authorities floated this month, has fallen to nearly 265 against the U.S. dollar. Consumer Price inflation is at 16.8% and foreign reserves stood at $2.31 billion at the end of February.
    • Sri Lanka must repay foreign debt totalling nearly $7 billion this year and continue importing essentials from its dwindling dollar account.
    • Sri Lanka will incur an import bill of $22 billion this year, resulting in a trade deficit of $10 billion.

    Implications on Public

    • For citizens, this means long waits in queues for fuel, a shortage of cooking gas, contending with prolonged power cuts in many localities and struggles to find medicines for patients.
    • In families of working people, the crisis is translating to cutting down on milk for children, eating fewer meals, or going to bed hungry.

    How is India helping?

    • Acting in the Neighbourhood’s first policy, India stands with Sri Lanka.
    • $1 billion credit line signed for supply of essential commodities. Key element of the package of support extended by India.
    • Beginning January 2022, India has extended assistance totalling $ 2.4 billion — including an $400 million RBI currency swap and a $500 million loan deferment.

    Chinese lure of aid

    • China is considering Sri Lanka’s recent request for further $2.5 billion assistance, in addition to the $2.8 billion Beijing has extended since the outbreak of the pandemic.

    How is India’s assistance being viewed in Sri Lanka?

    • Sacking key infra projects: The leadership has thanked India for the timely assistance, but there is growing scepticism in Sri Lankan media and some sections, over Indian assistance “being tied” to New Delhi inking key infrastructure projects.
    • Deep incursion: They mainly include the strategic Trincomalee Oil Tank Farm project; the National Thermal Power Corporation’s recent agreement with Ceylon Electricity Board to set up a solar power plant in Sampur, with investment from India’s Adani Group.
    • Diplomatic blackmail: SL media accuses New Delhi was resorting to “diplomatic blackmail”. The political opposition has accused the Adani Group of entering Sri Lanka through the “back door”, avoiding competitive bids and due process.

    Options available for SL

    • Sri Lanka is hoping for a Rapid Finance Instrument (RFI) facility as well as a larger Extended Fund Facility (EFF) from the IMF to deal with its foreign currency shortages.
    • IMF had assured to help the country with an amount of $300 million to $600 million.

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  • Why the West should focus on China

    Context

    The Russian offensive on Ukraine on the night of February 23-34 shocked the world. The trigger for the conflict has been the rise of anti-Russia/Putin and pro-Europe lobby in Ukraine, led by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and with the tacit support of the US and the West.

    Background of the conflict

    • The situation became deeply polarised after battle lines were drawn in 2015, with Ukraine’s breakaway Donbas region seeking a merger with Russia, after Crimea’s unification with the latter.
    • Russia has, over the years, quite correctly questioned the relevance of NATO — a grouping of the Cold War era — and its expansion eastwards. 
    • For instance, NATO included the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries of Georgia and Ukraine, earlier part of the Soviet Union, in its “Partnership for Peace” programme, despite Russian objections.

    Implications of war for geopolitics and role of China

    • Geopolitics will never be the same, especially with Germany and Japan announcing militarisation initiatives, polarisation in Europe and the strengthening of the anti-US nexus of China- Russia-Turkey-Iran.
    • Focus moves away from China: A matter of concern is that once again, the attention of the US and the West has been diverted from China, the main adversary, to a war that should not have taken place.
    • Possibility of annexation of Taiwan: In the current conflict, the ineptitude of the US/NATO to support Ukraine with “boots on the ground” is bound to embolden China in its nefarious design to annex Taiwan.
    • This could also lead to increased hostility by China in the resolution of land disputes with the neighbouring countries, as well as in the South and East China seas.

    Consider the question “With the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the geopolitics will never be the same again.”Comment. 

    Conclusion

    For India, the greatest lesson is that it will have to meet the Chinese challenge on its own. There is no likelihood of the US or any other nation getting involved in India’s fight with China. Let us focus on atmanirbharta in all its dimensions.

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  • What Quad can learn from NATO’s blunders

    Context

    The Russian invasion of Ukraine offers several lessons to the Quad countries.

    Negligence on part of NATO

    • This article is admittedly written in hindsight, but there is a continuing thread to the western blunders in the approach to dealing with Moscow, particularly concerning Putin.
    • He has had a dramatic rise in the political hierarchy of Moscow, with many of his successes unexplained but for the strong behind-the-scenes backing of the FSB.
    •  Unfortunately, it was ignored in the West, and particularly in Europe, which was busy with civilianising and militarily downgrading NATO.
    • The western leaders were overcome with hubris and dismantled the military intellectual content of NATO headquarters, reducing NATO forces to a rapid reaction force under the political control of a civilian secretary-general.
    • The West, therefore, failed to connect Putin’s invasion of Georgia with his continuing vision to fight the regime change in Ukraine in 2015.

    What can Quad learn?

    • War in Indo-Pacific will be maritime war:  War in the Indo-Pacific will be a maritime war fought in accordance with maritime strategy and space assets.
    • The greatest difference is that peaceful maritime reconnaissance is a legitimate activity with the help of which situational awareness can be built up, enabling the delivery of a crippling conventional first strike in the first stages of a possible conflict.
    • Avoid making Quad a diplomatic grouping: To call the Quad a “diplomatic grouping” is a catastrophic error.
    • Implication of calling Quad a diplomatic grouping: In actual fact, the Quad, is all about maritime domain awareness, underwater domain awareness, and information sharing — all of them purely naval activities, which need continuous communication (that is catered for), a command organisation and a secretariat, neither of which we have because Quad is a diplomatic grouping.
    • The military is trained to think structurally, cast future scenarios, do contingent planning, find alternatives and plan for victory. Diplomats have no such background.
    • Confusing Beijing by calling it a diplomatic grouping will certainly lead to a misunderstanding of the Quad nations’ resolve and possible Chinese adventurism.

    Way forward

    • The Quad needs to be represented by the owners of the maritime assets used to obtain domain awareness and a staff with command communications and a depth of intellectual planning.
    • The great maritime strength of the Quad is its force of Maritime Patrol Aircraft.
    • Japan and the US are particularly rich in those resources.
    • India’s force of P-81s is substantial and with the help of Australia, a maritime domain awareness can be built up that denies the PLA navy the chance to hide in the vastness of the ocean.
    • The Indo-US communication agreement was presumably established to keep the four-nation search group on a common grid.
    • Quad meetings should be headed by naval officers, with diplomatic support.

    Conclusion

    West failed to read Putin’s ambitions and downgraded NATO. The same mistakes should not be repeated in Indo-Pacific by the Quad.

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  • India and Japan: A special partnership

    Context

    Seventy years after diplomatic relations were established, here in India today, a metro system built with the support of Japanese official development assistance (ODA) is in operation, cars built by Japanese companies run on the streets, and a high-speed rail will make its debut in the future.

    The realisation of new form of capitalism

    • Japan has been concentrating on measures to overcome Covid-19, and working towards the realisation of a “new form of capitalism” that will revive the economy through a virtuous cycle of growth and distribution.
    • As part of such measures, it is focusing on finding solutions to various social challenges, including digital, climate change and economic security in the growth strategy. 
    • For Japan, India is certainly the best partner to have when seeking to realise a “new form of capitalism,” as showcased in India’s contribution in response to the global health crisis as a major manufacturing base, leadership in decarbonisation efforts, including through the International Solar Alliance, engagement in advanced digital society initiatives such as Aadhaar, and the promotion of economic security initiatives, including measures for supply chain resilience.

    Challenges to the global order

    •  Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a clear violation of international law as well as an attempt to unilaterally change the status quo by force.
    •  Upholding the core principles of the international order is indispensable from the perspective of diplomacy and security in the Indo-Pacific, where the situation has been rapidly worsening.
    •  In the recent Japan-Australia-India-US (Quad) Leaders’ Video Conference, leaders concurred that any attempt to unilaterally change the status quo by force, such as this time, must not be tolerated in the Indo-Pacific region.
    • There is a challenge of protecting the rules-based international order, building resilient supply chains and reinvigorating the economy.
    • We need strategies to respond to new international challenges like cybersecurity and climate change.
    • Both Japan and India are committed to taking bold measures to tackle such challenges.

    Way forward for India-Japan relations

    • People to people contact: Although the Covid-19 situation remains challenging, people-to-people exchanges between two countries are also being advanced.
    • Cooperation in security: Cooperation has also taken great strides in the area of security, including joint exercises between the Japan Self-Defense Forces and the Indian Armed Forces.
    • Quad: Cooperation is also rapidly developing between Japan, Australia, India and the United States, four countries that share fundamental values, and the next leaders’ summit is under coordination.
    • Cultural bond: As the name “Special Strategic and Global Partnership” suggests, Japan-India relations have evolved into an inclusive and multi-layered relationship based on cultural bonds, firm friendship, and common universal values.

    Conclusion

    As Japan’s prime minister comes on visit to India, his visit to India will open a new chapter in bilateral relations that will deepen the “Japan-India Special Strategic, and Global Partnership” even further.

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  • In news: Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC)

     

    In a highly notorious move, the OIC has invited Kashmiri separatist leaders in the Foreign Ministers’ meet in Islamabad.

    What is OIC?

    • The OIC — formerly Organisation of the Islamic Conference — is the world’s second-largest inter-governmental organization after the UN, with a membership of 57 states.
    • The OIC’s stated objective is “to safeguard and protect the interests of the Muslim world in the spirit of promoting international peace and harmony among various people of the world”.
    • OIC has reserved membership for Muslim-majority countries. Russia, Thailand, and a couple of other small countries have Observer status.

    Do you know?

    Guyana and Suriname (from South America) are members of OIC.

    India and OIC: A Backgrounder

    • At the 45th session of the Foreign Ministers’ Summit in 2018, Bangladesh suggested that India, where more than 10% of the world’s Muslims live, should be given Observer status.
    • In 1969, India was dis-invited from the Conference of Islamic Countries in Rabat, Morocco at Pakistan’s behest.
    • Then Agriculture Minister Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed was dis-invited upon arrival in Morocco after Pakistan President Yahya Khan lobbied against Indian participation.

    Recent developments

    • In 2019, India made its maiden appearance at the OIC Foreign Ministers’ meeting in Abu Dhabi, as a “guest of honor”.
    • This first-time invitation was seen as a diplomatic victory for New Delhi, especially at a time of heightened tensions with Pakistan following the Pulwama attack.
    • Pakistan had opposed the invitation to Swaraj and it boycotted the plenary after the UAE turned down its demand to rescind the invitation.

    What is the OIC’s stand on Kashmir?

    • It has been generally supportive of Pakistan’s stand on Kashmir and has issued statements criticizing India.
    • Last year, after India revoked Article 370 in Kashmir, Pakistan lobbied with the OIC for their condemnation of the move.
    • To Pakistan’s surprise, Saudi Arabia and the UAE — both top leaders among the Muslim countries — issued nuanced statements, and were not as harshly critical of New Delhi as Islamabad had hoped.
    • Since then, Islamabad has tried to rouse sentiments among the Islamic countries, but only a handful of them — Turkey and Malaysia — publicly criticized India.

    A group of hippocrats

    • The OIC has been making factually incorrect and unwarranted references to Jammu and Kashmir.
    • The so-called religious group is covertly silent over the persecution of Rohingyas, Uighurs, Kurds etc.

    How has India been responding?

    • India has consistently underlined that J&K is an integral part of India and is a matter strictly internal to India.
    • The strength with which India has made this assertion has varied slightly at times, but never the core message.
    • It has maintained its “consistent and well known” stand that the OIC had no locus standi.
    • This time, India went a step ahead and said the grouping continues to allow itself to be used by a certain country “which has a record on religious tolerance, radicalism, and persecution of minorities”.

    OIC members and India

    • Individually, India has good relations with almost all member nations. Ties with the UAE and Saudi Arabia, especially, have looked up significantly in recent years.
    • The OIC includes two of India’s close neighbors, Bangladesh and Maldives.
    • Indian diplomats say both countries privately admit they do not want to complicate their bilateral ties with India on Kashmir but play along with OIC.

    Way ahead

    • India sees the duality of the OIC as untenable, since many of these countries have good bilateral ties and convey to India to ignore OIC statements.
    • But these countries sign off on the joint statements which are largely drafted by Pakistan.
    • India feels it important to challenge the double-speak since Pakistan’s campaign and currency on the Kashmir issue has hardly any takers in the international community.

     

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  • Western sanctions on Russia are like none the world has seen

    Context

    Economic measures to cut Russia off from the world’s financial arteries are the most powerful implements a West unwilling to meet a nuclear adversary on the battlefield has dared wield in response to the invasion of Ukraine.

    Use of sanctions

    • The use of sanction has boomed over the past few decades.
    • Since 2000 the number of individuals and entities on America’s sanctions list has risen more than tenfold to 10,000.
    • Ever more governments, keen to punish military aggression or human-rights abuses but reluctant to go to war over them, have embraced the tactic.

    Sanctions against Russia

    •  After debating whether to make it much harder for Russian banks to process international payments by shutting them out of SWIFT—some European countries feared it would hurt their own banks, too—Western allies agreed to try targeting seven of them, though it has steered clear of Sberbank, Russia’s largest by assets, which plays a big role in processing energy payments. 
    • The most potent financial sanctions, though, have been aimed not at Russia’s commercial banks but at its central bank.
    • In the eight years since annexing Crimea made Russia the target of a first wave of sanctions, Russia has built up reserves (they now total $630bn) and shifted their composition away from dollars to help insulate the economy from further punishment.
    • But reserves become moot, whatever the currency in which they are held, if they cannot be used.
    • America, acting with Europe, has banned a range of parties from transactions with Russia’s central bank.
    • The West has also frozen most of the bank’s assets outside Russia.

    How it will affect Russian economy

    • Within hours of the sanctions taking effect, Russia’s central bank raised its main interest rate from 9.5% to 20% in an attempt to shore up the currency.
    •  Export controls will limit the components Russia can buy for its military and high-tech sectors, denying it goodies ranging from cutting-edge machinery to microchips.
    • The measures apply not just to goods made in America, but to those containing American technology that are made in and shipped from third countries, such as China.
    • For now, consumer goods dear to ordinary Russians like smartphones and home appliances are exempted from such measures.
    • But Apple is no longer selling iPhones or other kit in Russia. It is one of a fast-growing number of Western companies getting out.

    Effectiveness of sanctions

    • Measuring sanctions’ success is hard, not least because of the difficulty of disentangling their effects from other economic, and on occasion military, forces, but there have been few outright successes.
    • A recent success was the squeeze on Libya by America and allies in the 1990s and early 2000s.
    • A mix of sanctions and financial inducements persuaded Muammar Qaddafi to end his wmd programme and stop funding terrorism.
    • The apparent failures of sanctions are many.
    • Sometimes this is because they are fundamentally symbolic, or weakened by interest groups in the countries imposing them.
    • Though the point of sanctions is to exploit asymmetries, doing much more harm to the adversary than to yourself, there are always burdens to be borne by some.
    • There is also a loss to the economy as a whole.
    • The cost of compliance with sanctions for banks and companies has rocketed over the past decade.
    • Financial institutions alone spent over $50bn worldwide in 2020 on screening clients for sanctions risks, according to LexisNexis, a data firm.
    • One thing which weakens sanctions is leakiness. Despite America’s maximum-pressure measures, Iran manages to export an estimated 1m barrels of oil per day as middlemen find ways to disguise the origin of shipments.

    Risks associated with sanctions

    • Collateral damage: The more powerful sanctions are, the greater the risk of collateral damage, particularly when targeted regimes are indifferent to the suffering of citizens.
    • Work in favour of regime: Increasing the harm done can work at least in part in the government’s favour.
    • In Venezuela, a significant number of those opposed to President Nicolás Maduro and his henchmen also oppose the American sanctions putatively aimed at dislodging them.
    • Increase the closeness between countries: Sanctions can also push countries they target into each other’s arms.
    • Russia and China—hit with American sanctions over its mistreatment of Uyghurs as well as its suspected tech-spying—are enjoying their friendliest relations for decades.
    • Alternative infrastructure: It encourages those who fear them to develop alternative financial and technological infrastructures.
    • China is pushing hard in that direction.
    • As well as trying to boost its chip-making, it is creating its own version of swift, called cips, which simplifies cross-border payments in yuan, and developing a digital currency.
    • It has a long way to go.
    • Though usage of the yuan as a currency for international payments is at an all-time high, at just over 3% of the total it still pales beside the dollar, at 40%.
    • As the world economy reels from financial crises, nationalism, trade wars and a global pandemic, sanctions are aggravating existing tensions within globalisation.

    Conclusion

    When used in earnest, sanctions can inflict heavy economic costs on both sides on top of the deprivation inflicted in targeted countries. Even then, they do not always work.

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  • A missile misfiring and its trail of poor strategic stability

    Context

    The accidental firing of an Indian missile into Pakistan highlights the sorry state of bilateral mechanisms for crisis management between the two nuclear adversaries where there is a missile flight time of barely a few minutes.

    Balance response from both side

    • The Pakistani response to the accidental firing of the missile was a balanced one.
    • While New Delhi maintained a silence over the issue until it was brought up on March 11, the Indian response was also far from denial.
    • In that sense then, the Indian and Pakistani responses to the missile (mis)firing were the best possible outcome under the circumstances given that there is little bilateral mechanism for crisis management.
    • The two sides do not have high commissioners on the other side, there is no structured bilateral dialogue, and, most importantly, the two sides have not held ‘Expert Level Talks on Nuclear Confidence Building Measures’ or ‘Expert Level Talks on Conventional Confidence Building Measures’ for several years now.

    Lack of strategic stability regime

    Following are the reasons why the strategic stability regime in South Asia is hardly prepared for dealing with accidents such as the one that just happened, or enhancing effective crisis management and deterrence stability.

    1] Pre-notification agreement does not include cruise missiles

    • For one, although India and Pakistan signed a ‘Pre-Notification of Flight Testing of Ballistic Missiles’ agreement in October 2005, it does not include cruise missiles.
    • Notably, the missile that was misfired by the Indian side earlier this month, suspected to be the BrahMos, was a cruise missile (even though it was a misfire, and not a flight test).
    • Way forward: Given the many sophisticated cruise missiles that are now a part of each side’s arsenal, it is important to include them in the pre-notification regime.

    2] No structured meetings on nuclear confidence-building measures (CBMs)

    • The two sides have not held their structured meetings on nuclear confidence building measures (CBMs) and conventional CBMs for several years now.
    • Given the nature of the India-Pakistan relationship — adversarial, nuclear-armed, crisis prone, and suffering from trust deficit — there is an urgent need, especially in the wake of the recent incident, to revive these two dialogue mechanisms.

    3] China has so far refused to engage in strategic stability discussions with India

    • The third state with nuclear weapons in the region, China, has so far refused to engage in strategic stability discussions with India even though China today is involved in the India-Pakistan conflict more than ever before, apart from being in a military standoff with India.

    Way forward: Mechanisms for communicating sensitive information during crisis periods

    • India and Pakistan should consider setting up mechanisms such as nuclear risk reduction centres (NRRCs), established between the U.S. and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
    • The primary objective of NRRCs, or similar structures that can be set up on either side, is risk reduction by providing a structured mechanism for timely communication of messages and proper implementation of already agreed-upon confidence-building measures.
    • Such a body could routinely exchange messages, provide timely clarifications, and review compliance to agreements, among others.

    Consider the question “The incident of the accidental firing of a missile by India highlights the issues with the strategic stability regime in South Asia. Discuss the issues and suggest the measures needed? 

    Conclusion

    New Delhi should provide assurances to Pakistan that efforts will be made to avoid such mistakes in the future. And both sides should use risk reduction mechanisms.

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