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Subject: International Relations

  • The Supply Chain Resilience Initiative (SCRI) formally launched

    Tackling the supply chain disruption through SCRI

    • The Supply Chain Resilience Initiative (SCRI) was formally launched on Tuesday by the Trade Ministers of India, Japan and Australia.
    • The three sides agreed that the pandemic revealed supply chain vulnerabilities globally and in the region and noted the importance of risk management and continuity plans in order to avoid supply chain disruptions.
    • Some of the joint measures they are considering include supporting the enhanced utilisation of digital technology and trade and investment diversification, which is seen as being aimed at reducing their reliance on China.

    How China reacted

    • China’s Foreign Ministry on Wednesday described the move as ‘unrealistic’.
    • The formation and development of global industrial and supply chains are determined by market forces and companies choices, it said.
    • It also said that the artificial industrial ‘transfer’ is an unrealistic approach that goes against the economic laws and can neither solve domestic problems nor do anything good to the stability of the global industrial and supply chains, or to the stable recovery of the world economy.

  • Iran, U.S. warships engage in a tense encounter

    What happened

    • An American warship fired warning shots when vessels of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard came too close to a patrol in the Persian Gulf.
    • Footage released on April 27 by the Navy showed a ship commanded by the Guard cut in front of the USCGC Monomoy.
    • The incidents at sea almost always involve the Revolutionary Guard, which reports only to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

    Context of the nuclear deal

    • Some analysts believe the incidents are meant in part to squeeze President Hassan Rouhani’s administration after the 2015 nuclear deal.
    • The incident comes as Iran negotiates with world powers in Vienna over Tehran and Washington returning to the 2015 nuclear deal.
    • It also follows a series of incidents across the Mideast attributed to a shadow war between Iran and Israel, which includes attacks on regional shipping and sabotage at Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility.

  • An unquiet neighbourhood

    The article highlights the inherent difficulty in finding a solution to the two conflicts raging on in India’s neigbourhood.

    Tale of two conflicts in neighbourhood

    • Efforts to end two major conflicts in India’s neighbourhood have become intense.
    • To the west, a peace summit on Afghanistan, seeking to end decades of conflict there, was also scheduled to take place in Istanbul over the weekend.
    • To the east, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has produced a diplomatic opening with Myanmar’s military leadership.
    • Afghan conflict go back to the late 1970s; since then we have seen different phases of the conflict.
    • Although the crisis in Myanmar appears recent, the tension between civil-military relations is not new.
    • Back in 1988, the army annulled the huge mandate won by Aung San Suu Kyi and unleashed massive repression.

    3 Common Themes in the effort at peace and reconciliation

    1) Ending violence

    • The first is about ending violence.
    • In Afghanistan it has been near impossible to get a resurgent Taliban to agree to stop its attacks on government forces or the civilian population.
    • The ASEAN initiative in Myanmar calls for an immediate cessation of violence and utmost restraint from all sides.
    • The opposition demanding restoration of democracy might find this rather ironic, since it is the army that is employing violence and has shown scant restraint.

    2) Dialogue among all parties

    • The second theme in the ASEAN initiative — “constructive dialogue among all parties” to “seek a peaceful solution” — is also common to all peace processes.
    • The Taliban found all kinds of excuses to delay a dialogue with the Kabul government that it always saw as illegitimate. So far, it has avoided one.
    • In Myanmar, the army might be ready to engage the opposition in a prolonged dialogue and defuse international pressure; but it will be hard for the victims of the coup to accept a dialogue on the army’s terms.

    3) Third-party mediator

    • The Afghan conflict has long been internationalised.
    • All major powers, including regional actors and neighbours, have acquired stakes in the way the Afghan conflict is resolved.
    •  This unfortunately makes the construction of an internal settlement that much harder.
    • In Myanmar, the ASEAN has set the ball rolling by agreeing that a special envoy will be traveling to the region and will engage with all parties to the conflict.

    Cost-benefit in diplomacy

    • The US is hoping that the Taliban will moderate some of its hardline positions given its need for significant international economic assistance for reconstruction, political legitimacy.
    • In Myanmar, too, the international community will hope the military would want to avoid the risks of political isolation and economic punishment.
    • But how the Taliban and the Myanmar army calculate these costs and benefits could be very different.
    • Both have long experience of surviving external pressure and enduring sanctions.

    Conclusion

    Few civil wars have seen the kind of massive external effort to change the internal dynamics as in Afghanistan; but to no avail. In Myanmar, it is not clear how far the international community might go. The prospects for positive change in Afghanistan and Myanmar, then, do not look too bright in the near term.

  • Rohingya Deportation case

    The article highlights the issues with the order passed by the Supreme Court allowing the deportation of Rohingya refugees.

    Context

    • Recently, in its order in Mohammad Salimullah v. Union of India, the Supreme Court rejected an application to stay the deportation of Rohingya refugees to Myanmar.

    Principle of non-refoulement

    • The Supreme Court noted the petitioners’ reliance on a judgment of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) dated January 23, 2020, which recorded the genocidal conditions that resulted in 7.75 lakh Rohingyas being forced to take refuge in Bangladesh and India.
    • The Supreme Court relied on the word of the government that the principle of non-refoulement, or forcible repatriation to a place where the refugee’s life is in danger, applies only to signatories to the UN’s Refugee Convention of 1951 or its 1967 Protocol.
    • It must be stated that a UN Special Rapporteur was not heard, as the Court felt that serious objections had been raised to her intervention.
    • The Supreme Court accepted that the right not to be deported flows not from the right to life and liberty under Article 21, which applies to all human beings, but from the right to reside and settle in India under Article 19(1)(g), which applies to citizens alone.

    Why the judgement needs reconsideration

    1) India has recognised genocide as an international crime

    • India is a signatory to the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention, 1948),
    • Acceding to the Convention in 1959, India has recognised genocide as an international crime, and that the principles of the Convention are “therefore already part of common law of India”.
    •  India has also ratified the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) have a bearing on non-refoulement.
    • Article 6(1) of the ICCPR, which mirrors Article 21 of our Constitution.
    • A number of other UN conventions particularly those dealing with the rights of women (CEDAW) and children (CRC) also have a non-refoulment element in it and both of which have been declared by the Supreme Court to be part of our domestic legal framework.

    2) Prevention of genocide

    • The leitmotif of the Genocide Convention is prevention.
    • Prevention is also central to Article I, under which the contracting parties confirm that genocide is a crime under international law, “which they undertake to prevent and to punish”.

    3) Preemptory norm

    • It is increasingly accepted in public international law, that non-refoulement and other protections emanating from the Genocide Convention, are peremptory norms that apply to state parties as well as non-parties.
    • That non-refoulement is jus cogens, a norm from which there can be no derogation whatsoever. I
    • At least three high courts (Gujarat in 1998, Delhi in 2015, and Calcutta in 2019) have held that non-refoulement is part of the right to life and liberty protected by Article 21 of our Constitution.

    What should the Supreme Court do

    • There are two possible solutions.
    • The first is that in its interim order, the Court specifies that the Rohingya refugees may not be deported unless “the procedure prescribed for such deportation is followed”.
    • It is a long-held principle of Indian jurisprudence that the word “procedure” means “due process”, or a procedure that is just, fair, and reasonable.
    • The Supreme Court can, thus, suo motu clarify that due process requires that they not be deported as long as there exists a reasonable threat of persecution in Myanmar.
    • Alternately, since the order in question is an interim order, the Supreme Court could swiftly hear the main petition on its merits, and clarify the law on non-refoulement and Article 21. 

    Conclusion

    The order on the deportation of Rohingya refugees needs reconsideration by the Supreme Court considering the India’s treaty obligations on the genocide.

  • What the US’s recognition of killings of Armenians as genocide mean

    What is genocide

    • According to Article II of the UN Convention on Genocide of December 1948, genocide has been described as carrying out acts intended “to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group”.

    Why Armenians were targeted

    • In a way, the Armenians were victims of the great power contests of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
    • The resentment started building up after the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-78 in which the Turks lost territories.
    • In the Treaty of Berlin, big powers dictated terms to the Ottomans, including putting pressure on Sultan Abdülhamid II to initiate reforms “in the provinces inhabited by Armenians, and to guarantee their security against the Circassians and Kurds.”
    • The Sultan saw this as a sign of strengthening ties between the Armenians and other rival countries, especially Russia.
    • Post the treaty, there were a series of attacks on Armenians by Turkish and Kurdish militias.
    • In 1908, the Young Turks wrested control from the Sultan and promised to restore imperial glory.
    • Under the Turks, the empire became more and “Turkik” and persecution against the ethnic minorities picked up.
    • In October 1914, Turkey joined the First World War on the side of Germany.
    • In the Caucasus, they fought the Russians, their primary geopolitical rival.
    • But the Ottomans suffered a catastrophic defeat in the Battle of Sarikamish by the Russians in January 1915.
    • The Turks blamed the defeat on Armenian “treachery”.

    How the killings took place

    • As the War was still waging, the Ottomans feared that Armenians in eastern Anatolia would join the Russians if they advanced into Ottoman territories.
    • First, Armenians in the Ottoman Army were executed.
    • On April 24, the Ottoman government arrested about 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders. Most of them were later executed.
    • The Ottoman government passed legislation to deport anyone who is a security risk.
    • Then they moved Armenians, including children, en masse to the Syrian Desert. That was a march of death.
    • Before the First World War broke out in 1914, there were 2 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.
    • According to a study by the University of Minnesota’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, in 1922, four years after the War, the Armenian population in the region was about 387,800.
    • This has led historians to believe that up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed during the course of the War.

    What is Turkey’s response

    • Turkey has acknowledged that atrocities were committed against Armenians, but denies it was a genocide which comes with legal implications.
    • Turkey also challenges the estimates that 1.5 million were killed.
    • The Turkish Foreign Ministry has issued a strong statement to Mr. Biden’s announcement saying it doesn’t not have “a scholarly and legal basis, nor is it supported by any evidence”.
    • Turkey has called on the U.S. President to correct the mistake of recognition as genocide.

  • Amid concerns in India and Brazil, the unused vaccine stockpile in US

    Issue of diverting the vaccine stock to India

    • Epidemiologists to industry leaders are urging the Biden administration to release the reserve to countries like India and Brazil, given the assertion that the doses won’t be used in the US.
    • According to Brown University School of Public Health Ashish Jha, the US is “sitting on 35-40 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine Americans will never use”.
    • In early April, US chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci said the US will likely not need the AstraZeneca shot. 
    • The AstraZeneca vaccine has not been granted Emergency Use Authorization by the US Federal Drug Administration (FDA).
    • With documented cases of blood clots in younger women in Europe correlated with the vaccine, FDA authorisation may be further delayed.

    What has the US said in response

    • Co-ordinator of the US Covid-19 taskforce that the Quad partnership and team is providing assistance across government to the country.
    •  He also stated that as their confidence around our supply increases, we will explore the option of exporting the vaccines.

    Vaccine inequality

    • According to Bloomberg’s Vaccine Tracker, highest-income countries are vaccinating at a pace 25 times faster than the lowest ones.
    • The US has 22.9% of the world’s vaccines but only 4.3% of the world’s population.
    • China has 21.9% and 18.2% respectively, and India 13.8% and 17.7%, according to the tracker.
    • Almost half of all vaccines have gone to 16% of the world’s population.
    • The Washington Post reported that the world’s poorest 92 countries may not be able to vaccinate even 60% of their population for another three years.
    • India has vaccinated 8% per cent of the population with one dose and 1% with two. Brazil has vaccinated less than 12% with one.

    Impact on vaccination in African nations

    • India’s stalled vaccine exports have domino effects on the rollouts in African nations and other developing countries, as Serum’s productions were fuelling efforts globally before India’s second wave.

  • [pib] Exercise VARUNA-2021

    Details of the exercise

    • The 19th edition of the Indian and French Navy bilateral exercise ‘VARUNA-2021’ is scheduled to be conducted in the Arabian Sea from 25th to 27th April 2021.
    • The exercise will see high tempo-naval operations at sea, including advanced air defence and anti-submarine exercises, intense fixed and rotary wing flying operations, tactical manoeuvres, surface and anti-air weapon firings, underway replenishment and other maritime security operations.
    • Units of both navies will endeavour to enhance and hone their war-fighting skills to demonstrate their ability as an integrated force to promote peace, security and stability in the maritime domain.
    • On completion of exercise VARUNA-21, to consolidate accrued best practices and enhance interoperability, Indian Navy’s guided-missile frigate INS Tarkash will continue to exercise with the French Navy’s Carrier Strike Group (CSG) from 28th April to 1st May 2021.
    • During this period, the ship will take part in advanced surface, anti-submarine and air-defence operations with the French CSG.

    Significance of exercise

    • VARUNA-21 highlights growing bonhomie and showcases increased levels of synergy, coordination and inter-operability between the two friendly navies.
    • These interactions further underscore the shared values as partner navies, in ensuring freedom of seas and commitment to an open, inclusive Indo-Pacific and a rules-based international order.

  • Data and a new global order

    Digital data revolution

    • The Industrial Revolution restructured the global manufacturing order to Asia’s disadvantage.
    • But in the ‘Digital Data Revolution’, algorithms requiring massive amounts of data determine innovation, the nature of productivity growth, and military power.
    • Mobile digital payment interconnections impact society and the international system, having three strategic implications.

    3 implications of mobile digital payment interconnections

    1) Symbiotic nature of military and civilian system

    • Because of the nature and pervasiveness of digital data, military and civilian systems are symbiotic.
    • Cybersecurity is national security, and this requires both a new military doctrine and a diplomatic framework.

    2) Productivity advantage of data to Asia

    • The blurring of distinctions between domestic and foreign policy and the replacement of global rules with issue-based understanding converge with the growth of smartphone-based e-commerce, which ensures that massive amounts of data give a sustained productivity advantage to Asia.

    3) India can negotiate new rules as an equal with US and China

    • Data streams are now at the centre of global trade and countries’ economic and national power.
    • India, thus, has the capacity to negotiate new rules as an equal with the U.S. and China.

    How data shaped US-China relations

    • Innovation based on data streams has contributed to China’s rise as the second-largest economy and the “near-peer” of the U.S.
    • The national security strategy of the U.S. puts more emphasis on diplomacy than military power to resolve conflicts with China, acknowledging that its military allies have complex relationships with Beijing, as it seeks to work with them to close technology gaps.
    • China’s technology weakness is the dependence on semiconductors and its powerlessness against U.S. sanctions on banks, 5G and cloud computing companies.
    • But China’s digital technology-led capitalism is moving fast to utilise the economic potential of data, pushing the recently launched e-yuan and shaking the dollar-based settlement for global trade.

    How global strategic balance will be shaped by data standard

    • China has a $53-trillion mobile payments market and it is the global leader in the online transactions arena, controlling over 50% of the global market value.
    • India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) volume is expected to cross $1 trillion by 2025.
    • The U.S., in contrast, lags behind, with only around 30% of consumers using digital means and with the total volume of mobile payments less than $100 billion.
    • The global strategic balance will depend on new data standards.
    • The U.S., far behind in mobile payments, is falling back on data alliances and sanctions to maintain its global position.

    India’s role in digital economy

    • With Asia at the centre of the world, major powers see value in relationships with New Delhi.
    • India fits into the U.S. frame to provide leverage.
    • China wants India, also a digital power, to see it as a partner, not a rival.
    • And China remains the largest trading partner of both the U.S. and India despite sanctions and border skirmishes.

    Way forward for India

    • India, like China, is uncomfortable with treating Western values as universal values and with the U.S. interpretation of Freedom of Navigation rules in others’ territorial waters.
    • New Delhi’s Indo-Pacific vision is premised on “ASEAN centrality and the common pursuit of prosperity”.
    • The European Union recently acknowledged that the path to its future is through an enhanced influence in the Indo-Pacific, while stressing that the strategy is not “anti-China”.
    • The U.S. position in trade, that investment creates new markets, makes it similar to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

    Conclusion

    India alone straddles both U.S. and China-led strategic groupings, providing an equity-based perspective to competing visions. It must be prepared to play a key role in moulding rules for the hyper-connected world, facing off both the U.S. and China to realise its potential of becoming the second-largest economy.

  • India as a country of Particular concern: USCIRF

    About USCIRF

    • U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) is an independent bi-partisan commission.
    • USCIRF recommendations are non-binding.
    • The Trump administration had rejected the USCIRF recommendation to designate India a CPC last year.
    • Last year India had denied visas to members of USCIRF who wanted to visit India for their assessment.

    What are the key concerns of the report

    • The key concerns of the 2021 report include the Citizenship Amendment Act.
    • On the National Register of Citizens (NRC), the report says, “The consequences of exclusion – as exemplified by a large detention camp being built in Assam – are potentially devastating…”
    • Efforts to prohibit interfaith marriage – such as those in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh – are also highlighted as a concern.
    • In an apparent reference to the Tablighi Jamaat Markaz in March 2020, the USCIRF says that at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, disinformation and hateful rhetoric often targeted religious minorities.

    Recommendations of the report to the US Congress

    • The USCISRF recommended that the administration impose targeted sanctions on Indian individuals and entities for ‘severe violations of religious freedom’.
    • A second recommendation was for the administration to promote inter-faith dialogue and the rights of all communities at bilateral and multilateral forums “such as the ministerial of the  Quad].
    • Another recommendation – to the U.S. Congress – was to raise issues in the U.S. – India bilateral space, such as by hosting hearings, writing letters and constituting Congressional delegations.

  • EU’s Indo-Pacific strategy

    The Council of the European Union approved conclusions on a European Union strategy for cooperation in the Indo-Pacific.

    Aim:

    • To reinforce its strategic focus, presence and actions in the Indo-Pacific region.
    • To contribute to regional stability, security, prosperity and sustainable development at the time of “rising challenges and tensions in the region.”

    Rationale:

    • The current dynamics in the Indo-Pacific have given rise to:
      • Intense geopolitical competition
      • Increasing tensions on trade and supply chains
      • Challenges in technological, political and security areas
      • Issues related to Human rights
    • As per the EU, these developments threaten the stability and security of the region and beyond, directly impacting on its interests.

    Strategy by European Union:

    • Increased cooperation in the Indo-Pacific
    • Commitment to uphold democracy, human rights, the rule of law and respect for international law.
    • Promote effective rules-based multilateralism
    • Support for ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations)
    • Work to mitigate economic and human effects of the COVID-19 pandemic
    • Support open and fair environment for trade and investment
    • Tackling climate change and supporting connectivity with the EU
    • Conclude free trade agreements with Australia, Indonesia and New Zealand
    • Take steps towards the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment with China
    • Deepen economic relations with India
    • Develop partnerships in the areas of security and defence
    • Address maritime security, malicious cyber activities, disinformation, emerging technologies, terrorism, and organised crime
    • Extend the geographic scope of its CRIMARIO (Critical Maritime Routes) IIactivities from the Indian Ocean into South and Southeast Asia to contribute to safer sea lanes of communication with the EU.