 Welcome everyone to another capsule international relations for the Shankar IAS Academy. We have reached the end of the year 2021 and what I'd like to do is to have an overview of the year from the perspective of foreign policy and foreign affairs. Most of the developments of the year we have already dealt with in detail but the idea is to link them all together and see what exactly has been the major impact of 2021 in geopolitics. So the most inevitable topic is the pandemic itself. In fact 2021 will go down in history as the most frustrating and the most disappointing year in recent years. 2020 was a horrible year but we are all expecting that by the end of the 2020 the pandemic might start disappearing and that 2021 will occur in a new era or go back to the old era. In fact there were some indications that this was go this was so in the beginning of the year and killed about the summer of 2020 but from summer 2021 the year became even much worse than that of 2020 from the pandemic point of view particularly in India. India became the biggest contributor to corona disease and deaths in the world and shortages, problems, funeral fires were seen unattended, people were dying near the hospitals because the most horrible scenes that we saw in India and also in Sweden. And then towards the end of the year things started looking better and then comes Omicron about which we don't know enough. So 2021 is ending on a sad note in the sense that the uncertainty facing humanity is continuing. We do not know what 2020 would be like but hopefully things will be better in the new year as we had expected in 2021. So the main issue continued to be of humanity and existential threat and vaccines were found, areas were found for international cooperation by different bodies and things were structured after almost one year of total really disorganized dealing with the pandemic. So things are in place and therefore now there is a sense that even if there is another wave of a new virus we will still be able to manage it and also there is news that the the new virus is not as deadly as the previous one even though it may be more infectious. Well we have to see. So from the point of view of those who follow international affairs, the point to note is that 2021 was as difficult as 2022 but there are some hopes raised and 2021 kind of stabilized the situation with regard to the pandemic and 2022 may well be the end of the pandemic because the latest stream seems to be in accordance with the regular plans of the pandemic. Towards the end it becomes very infectious but then slowly dies out. Anyway so the whole world affairs were dominated by the pandemic, whichever body or whichever group met during the year 2021, efforts were made to coordinate it. Of course the United Nations still did not take an all human approach which they had taken in the case of HIV, AIDS etc. which is still with WHO with other countries and groups trying to do its test. The second most important thing that happened in 2021 was the change of administration in the United States but unfortunately it was also the time when in the United States democracy was followed into question in a big way. All of you remember on January 6th before President Biden was declared as a candidate in the joint session of the US Congress there was an insurrection certainly motivated by the outgoing President himself who did not want to believe that he had lost the election and he called for this resurrection literally and this was the darkest moment in United States history as a democracy because every principle of democracy was violated elections were declared fair by all the authorities concerned but a desperate effort was made by the supporters of President Trump by physically entering the US capital and stopping the vice president from formalizing the results. But there was some bloodshed and there were a lot of huge crowds, a very serious dereliction of duty by the law and order officials but in spite of all that the vice president prevailed and we had results announced and President Biden took over. But the tragedy of it is that even after one year even today Republicans and the Democrats are still divided after the elections because normally after the elections there is a kind of period of honeymoon when both the parties would work together and try to frame an agenda for the nation but that did not happen in fact there was no honeymoon because everybody protested and the Republicans protested not only the hard-core one but even the so-called moderate Republicans protested against the results and there has not been a single instance of the two parties working together. Everything is being fought hard in the Senate and the Congress in the Senate Democrats have equal numbers and with the vote of the speaker they can carry any decision and the Congress they have a small minority, small majority and now the elections are coming in 2022 the midterm elections when some of the seats in both the houses and there will be a very tough fight because President Trump and his party are still very actively campaigning for the next election and even for 2024. So this was an absolute disgrace to the United States and but the procedures went on President Trump left Washington and with that it was possible for things to move and I must say President Biden moved very fast on the first day itself he re-entered the Paris Agreement announced that he would join the negotiations for Iran nuclear deal and various other things like immigration and so on he took action on the first day itself but somehow his presidency did not take off in spite of all his effort primarily because of this background of the elections and also because the pandemic was a big threat he had to correct the mistakes made by his predecessor and that took a lot of his time with vaccines and masks and social distancing etc and the rejection of vaccines by a large number of Americans still prevails even though vaccination has been has been continued very effectively but still a vast, a big minority of the people of the United States are still vaccine hesitants and what does not happen elsewhere there it is not only the known, it's not the non-availability of vaccines but the reluctance of people to take the vaccine in spite of the fact that the new virus is increasing very rapidly in the United States but he also took on various important international assignments and the foreign policy the two rivals he identified Russia and China he had a face-to-face or discussions with President Putin in Geneva and also he had a virtual meeting with President Xi and both these were very important meetings in which he tried to develop his own policy towards these two countries he said that both are rivals but at the same time he urged that these differences between the two countries between the two of them both of all the three of them should not reach a stage of thought that things should be settled peacefully and while rivalry continues there is no need for a conflict at any stage and that the other two also seem to agree and therefore there is no immediate danger of a war not even a cold war because they all said that they did not want a cold war but that I believe is not avoidable because there's already a cold war in that sense because they are acting at cross purposes and the Ukraine crisis has added another dimension to U.S. relations with Moscow so all these we have discussed in detail but simply to flag the second major development of the year Biden as president the general impression is that he is trying very hard but he's not making a headway and his popularity has gone down ever since he took over and that itself that remains a question mark and what will happen in 2022 and what will happen in 2024 remain as as questions whether he'll be a candidate in spite of his age and whether President Trump, President Trump will be a candidate in 2024 or all these open questions. China in his presidency talks with President Biden challenged the whole question of United States claiming to be the champion of democracy because unlike in the previous years China has taken on this mission of proving that China itself is a democracy and not only a democracy but the biggest democracy in the world and they claim that they have elections they follow things democratically etc and so they are not only challenging the western system of democracy but also claiming that they are a democracy so the situation is still very much in a flux nobody knows who the you know the leader of the world will be United States has repeatedly declared that United States is back but various other issues will come to Afghanistan later and all these are still creating a lot of trouble for President Biden. As well as China is concerned with next most important development of the year as well as India is concerned there has been a hardening of the Chinese position on the line of actual control in India they have stopped the disengagement process even though dialogue is continuing at different levels and we have even had several meetings with the Chinese present on various occasions but in spite of all that there is no progress at all on the question of disengagement and meanwhile there have been several news items from inside China the 19th Communist Party Congress took very major decisions like continuing with socialism with Chinese characteristics and more than that upholding the leadership of President Xi all party members had to work in unison under the hell's net the new name given to him as the great leader and a grand resolution was passed by the Communist Party Congress it was the third resolution of this kind in 100 years once in 1945 by Mao Zedong another in 1978 by Deng Xiaoping and now 2021 by Xi Jinping saying basically that Xi Jinping is now the legitimate leader and question leader and all others were sidelined and definitely he will get another term next year and this would be unusual and we do not know whether there will be any other developments which will prevent this because recently there have been two articles which appeared in China by think times one in which Xi Jinping was not even mentioned and this paper talked more about Deng Xiaoping and his other predecessors so this created some flutter in the china watchers as to what this means because on the one hand he has been kind of you know declared president for the future maybe for life and at the same time an authentic document came out in which he is not even mentioned and Deng Xiaoping's achievements were highlighted that we don't know whether it has a plan something else but that is also to be noted so we'll have to wait till the Congress itself meeting in 2022 but meanwhile because we have also discussed various reforms of President Xi Jinping moving a little bit backward from the the capitalistic economic system and you know declaring making many big wicks many billionaires poor by withdrawing the support to them and trying to divide the wealth among the ordinary people the next important development was the operationalizing of the part on the one hand China is moving forward United States gave new life to part quite as you know was first talked about in 2004 and it was reluctantly pursued but with the arrival of President Biden and also because of the increase in the Chinese threat in the Indian Ocean the President Biden declared that this would be a group of democratic partners who share a world worldview and have a common vision for the future for a free and open India Pacific but in the process of discussion and also the meetings finally the final one in the in Washington itself some changes took place in the nature of of Quad because many people thought that it was a military alliance but disguised as a kind of dialogue but maybe because of the reluctance of India the agenda changed the agenda moved on to rule of law freedom of navigation and overflights peaceful resolution of disputes democratic values and territorial integrity of states covid vaccines climate change clean energy energy technologies so a number of other agenda items of a peaceful developmental nature were added to the Quad particularly because of India's hesitation to join any kind of of alliance so Quad got established very much in that process but its agenda became a bit blurred because even though it is anti-Chinese in its substance because of the in Chinese influence increasing influence in Indo-Pacific but the military nature was somewhat laid down after the Washington meeting and the reason for it is that there was a new military alliance which was formed on the 15th of September 2021 what is called AUKUS that is Australia UK and US you may wonder why they have to be an alliance because they are already in alliances of various kinds they are western powers but I think this was formalized into a military alliance in the context of the Quad taking on more civilian responsibilities but I presume they link together if in case of there any any crisis but of course we all know that the purpose of AUKUS was very specific this was to give capability to Australia for nuclear powered submarines because so far in the world only UK and US of course apart from Russia which have the capability to build nuclear armed submarine sorry nuclear powered submarines not nuclear armed and but the crisis arose because with this meant that when the Australians shifted to a nuclear driven powered nuclear powered submarines then they had to cancel a huge billion dollar agreement reached with France so France was very angry it withdrew the ambassadors from UK and US protested made havoc about AUKUS basically because their business were interests were affected but then the realization came that these submarines are going to come about only in about 20 years so France did not have to get so agitated about it and therefore there is some amount of peace established there but the Chinese government went frontally to attack AUKUS calling it an extremely irresponsible seriously undermines regional peace and stability and that's really the language of alliances even New Zealand was not very happy with AUKUS because New Zealand believes that the South Pacific where these countries Australia and New Zealand are located is a nuclear free zone nuclear weapon free zone but introducing nuclear powered submarines in this region is against the spirit of a nuclear weapon free zone and New Zealand has also expressed some kind of concern that such an alliance has been established and France was of course more worried about its own financial situation and they are also in the South Pacific and therefore they have a concern about what is happening in the South Pacific and but of course the why this happened was because of the deterioration of the relations between Australia and China Australia was a good friend of China but recent events have shown that they have to they have decided to break away from their special relationship with China and that was also one of the reasons why the US-UK partnership was strengthened with Australia because Australia felt threatened in the new situation so so Quad and AUKUS were major developments of 2021 then of course Afghanistan which as we know has been the biggest event of 2021 after of course the other four things that I mentioned and so Afghanistan was not expected to explode like this because a certain agreement was reached with Taliban for the Americans to withdraw President Trump himself had established it and President Biden just followed all those decisions continued the discussions with the Taliban and then finally what he did was to declare a date by which the United States will leave and that decision was obviously not taken with considerable thought and and then having declared September 11th as the day September 9 11 as the day on which finally the Americans leave President Biden advanced it a little bit and the soldiers left in August itself and leaving the country for the Taliban and the softhold of gun forces built by the Americans to fight it out and President Biden said that it will take three months four months six months one year for Taliban to be cleared but lo and behold that is not what happened without any without firing in short Taliban was able to occupy Kabul and took over power and formed the cabinet and went along in spite of a small protests by the former president in Panjshir Valley that is also put down by force and the proper regular government was formed in Afghanistan about their policies they were a bit weak but they are generally saying that all people will be treated as equal and we know criminalization of any activity women will be given a new place but all under Sharia law and the interpretation Sharia law we knew we saw in practice was not what they were talking about so this is created a grave concern in the whole world particularly the United States and India because China, Russia, Pakistan, Taliban kind of an axis has been formed and even though no country in the world has so far recognized Afghanistan government they are dealing with them discussions are being taken place and for humanitarian assistance even India has joined so we have not returned our mission to Kabul but Afghanistan but Russia and China and Iran are already operating from Kabul so in our case the worst impact will be on us because terrorism in Afghanistan is a major threat to India particularly in Jammu and Kashmir and Pakistan will use the opportunity to heighten tension in Jammu and Kashmir because they want to be equations for Article 370 and we have of course started discussions with everyone in fact one special thing I noticed about India's foreign policy in 2021 was that we were willing to have universal engagement so there have been several instances of our being engaged in different groups in which we do not have full support of all the members like SCEO for example we attended the meeting some members of the SCEO held another meeting and took another decision as against the group we called the meeting of the national security advisors of the region because Pakistan did not come but we took the initiative to do certain things at the national secretary crisis level we called the meeting of the central Asian countries and we even attended a meeting where Russia, China and India were present and so wherever there was an opportunity India has begun a very active diplomatic effort with regard to Ladakh on the one hand and China on the other sorry and Afghanistan on the other so India was compelled as it were to energize its diplomacy to a great extent and that has resulted in a lot of meetings and the impression that India is willing to talk to everyone and anyone and I would say that from a kind of selective alliances or selective alignments we have even moved on to some kind of universal conversations with anyone we can or is interested in the future of the world and the latest then this practice is the most unexpected visit by the Indian foreign secretary to Myanmar we do recognize Myanmar of course and but nobody in the world has has recognized or reconciled to what I've been doing in the last one year also which is still in prison and for the Indian foreign secretary to go there at this time looked appeared a little bit unusual but he was received at the highest level of discussions were held apparently the foreign secretary talked about the need for return to democracy and he also wanted to meet on Sansuchi that was not permitted so this visit was a tough one as to what the foreign secretary should say to a dictator to go to a dictator and tell him please give up your dictatorship is not something very pleasant and but anyway this meeting to place we have to wait and see whether it has an impact on the military dictatorship ASEAN is also active and we have said that we will work together with ASEAN as we as we go on so India as I said is very much disadvantaged in the Afghanistan situation and that is one reason why Indian diplomacy has been very active our external affairs minister has been traveling to various capitals in spite of the pandemic and we cannot say that we have gained anything specifically either on the question of Ladakh or on the question of things are not moving in the way we want it but we keep persisting so these are the issues that I wanted to highlight in this session and we will probably we have one more session before the end of the year and that we will deal with some of the other developments of 2035 so what I'd like to do is to stop here with a general assessment of the year as I first said earlier hopes were belied at the beginning it was but the country here turned out to be as tragic as 2020 with reference to India particularly the some silver lining was of course vaccines as the key and but at the same time now we hear about something which would defy the vaccine so we have a problem in Ladakh and we are tackling these questions continuously and we still have to wait for it so 2021 was not a good year for the world and not for India many things remain to be tackled so in the remaining time if we have any questions we can deal with them and we'll do another review for some of the remaining issues the next session thank you very much