 Hello everyone, welcome to another International Relations Capsule for the Shankar AIS Academy. This time I thought we would touch upon two or three subjects, already interesting and important but the background has already been covered so I thought I would just talk about the latest developments. Of course the ongoing most difficult situation is in Ukraine and I'm sure you're all following the developments there. For a few months, two or three months now, this is the eighth month of the war but last two or three months there was some kind of a lull apart from of course the things like annexation of the four republics and criticism of that internationally and NATO talking about countering it and Ukraine saying that they would now press for immediate admission of Ukraine to the NATO which was not very warmly welcomed by NATO. There was not much of a comment on that because nobody wanted to do something serious like that at that point in time. NATO is itself cautious about that but then suddenly out of the blue Ukraine was able to blow up a huge bridge, 19 kilometers bridge which connects Russia to Crimea which of course was annexed by Putin in 2014 and this seems to have hurt the Russians more than any other recent activity in the war and so there was a very quick reaction. It could be various reasons. Generally there was an impression that Russians are not doing too well in the war and that may have caused some concern and in general Mr Putin appointed a new general who is known to be very vicious and very strong and very what shall we say heroic kind of a general. His record is of very serious action in very different situations so the moment this general was called back to the operation in Ukraine it was very clear that something was going to happen and it happened in the last few days. For the first time after several months they hit Kiev very extensively and one could see a large number of fires in the city and though that toll was not very high but it was considered a very serious development Ukraine and the president of Ukraine said there's nothing this is nothing but terrorism and he also said that this is an effort to wipe Ukraine off the world map that is how he put it. He is of course accustomed to speaking in very flowery language so he meant that this was a very serious threat to Ukraine and in response we saw NATO talking about the missile defense system because some 84 missiles were fired and apparently half of them actually hit different targets in Ukraine particularly in and around the Kiev so all all missiles could not be resisted some actually landed and caused some damage and therefore this particular situation has created a demand for NATO to do something about the missile systems how soon they can establish it for Ukraine one does not know but there has been talk of it and even the US has talked about giving them a missile system how long it will take what will happen etc we don't know and in the meanwhile there was a resolution in the General Assembly which of course the same pattern as before and criticizing Russia you know the largest number of people from the general assembly voting for the resolution but since this is a general assembly resolution it has on the kind of moral value and it has no implication for Russia so that has also happened in India as before abstain on that resolution and so things are really bad in Ukraine at the moment but Zelensky seems to keep up his spirits and is wanting to fight and at the same time there was talks about reconciliation talks about mediation a UAE president said to have reported to have gone to the area others might also do that India's name is being mentioned as a candidate for negotiations and for dialogue but all this depends on what Mr Putin wants and so everybody is waiting we all know that this is his war in the mind of one man and as you know the his mind there's no way of predicting it so in other words there is no good news from from Ukraine Russia or front some indication of the United States not being very happy with the Indian position and some of these topics is visible in some announcements recently about US-Pakistan relations we know that Pakistan recently pledged $460 million US dollars to what they call to maintain the F-16 aircraft in Pakistan we know about F-16 we had a shutdown on F-16 in the in the war between them and the attack that India did on the Pakistani beyond the LOC and we know that it is in operation F-16s are all in operation in Pakistan and that was one of the reasons why we did not buy F-16 or F-18 aircraft in 2010 when we decided to buy French aircraft rather than American because we didn't want to have the same kind of fighter jets that Pakistan already has so that's a past history so but now saying that they are going to maintain the F-16 may be part of a contract and Trump having stopped the supply of weapons or financing to Pakistan so this is a new development to maintain this and we have of course naturally resized that and we have said that this would be used against India and there's a point that we have been making with the Americans for a long time and each time they would say that no no they will not be used this is basically for their own security and so on but we know where they land and therefore we have some concerns but interestingly the our concerns was met by the State Secretary of State saying that India and Pakistan are both partners of the United States so it looks as though the old linkage old hyphenation between India and Pakistan is being restored I know the old system that whatever they do for Pakistan they must do for India vice versa including presidential visits remember Clinton came to India for five days and he went via Pakistan for five hours just to fulfill that requirement of hyphenation but that was given up during Trump's time but it looks as though this is their weapon against India in a sense and therefore they have revived this and you know started talking about the different points of emphasis between India and Pakistan but both are important partners and also there was a an irritant in the sense that the Pakistani ambassador in Islamabad seems to have visited POK and referred it to as Azad Kashmir this is a provocation because most diplomats don't do that and when the American ambassador goes there going there itself is we are not too very happy but at the same time to say that this is Azad Kashmir using the Pakistani word rather than Pakistan occupied Kashmir so that also is rather interesting then the Pakistani foreign minister Bilawal the young man was in Washington and he was warmly welcomed and you know questions regarding India-Pakistan relations are also discussed etc and even more importantly this visit of General Gavit Bajwa who is about to retire as the army chief of Pakistan who he met US defense secretary and it was reported that he was given a given a separate special treatment he was given what is called enhanced honor pardon and of course I believe something like that was done for Foreign Minister of India also but here General Bajwa was leaving the chief position of the Pakistan army going there and having discussions at the political level is considered interesting so these indicators have an amount of strain in India-US relations but obviously India is much more important for Pakistan and we are members of the Quad and in fact Mr Jaishankar made a very positive reference to the Quad in the midst of all this saying that it is because of the United States that Quad is working well and he also spoke positively about Mr Biden's policies towards India and the Quad so some kind of mending fences you know US with Pakistan and we with the United States so this is not very abnormal but we thought that this period was over and India-Pakistan India-US relationship is much stronger than the US-Pakistan relationship so there's a little of a setback but I suppose in diplomacy these things happen and sometimes they would like to express their displeasure or disappointment in certain ways but this is two familiar parts that they have taken and maybe this will be reversed but a similar thing has happened between UK and India also it's very surprisingly because this has been discussed before also that you know Indians overstaying in the UK illegally has been an issue and this has been raised before also but the Home Ministry which has got Indian origin ministers they have come up with a question about you know the Indian immigration and this is considered serious enough that the FTA the trade agreement which has to be signed between India and the UK has been delayed because this has been going on for a long time and this year we are supposed to complete it but these statements about Indian migrants overstaying as a serious issue is again come up in 2016 there was some discussion about the Indians not returning and now what they are saying is that visa issues to India will be affected by this particular situation it is tied to the return of Indians with no regular right to live in the United States as the language of the objection and of course we have not reacted too strongly to that we said that since there are many immigrants there this may happen in certain stages but this is not something which has to be tied down to FTA or any kind of relationship between the UK and India so maybe it will be ignored but the position is that we have more than 1.5 million Indians and is 18% of the population of the UK and according to the UK there are 200,000 Indians who have been overstaying in the UK so here again it is possible that this is a repercussion of the of our position on the Ukraine war because we are rather unhappy but we have been very consistent and we believe it is being appreciated but in diplomacy reciprocity is a kind of holy principle and so if you take a position which is concrete to their national interest they are likely to react like that and so it has to be taken by that and meanwhile our ex-minister was in Australia which was a very good visit about Indo-Pacific and very warm things being said about Australia and India and that's something which we expect because it was really Australian policy towards China has changed and as a result it has come closer to India and as members of the Quad we have some linkages also there and then there was this incident of North Korea shooting off a missile across South Korea and Japan and this is of course familiar ground but this is dangerous when people are talking about nuclear weapons slightly because I believe the danger of Putin using nuclear weapons is becoming more and more more and more real and people say Russia has the largest number of tactical nuclear weapons which theoretically can be used but the destruction will be such that nobody would want to do that and Putin has increasingly been referring to that and some missiles supposed to have been shifted from the Arctic to somewhere or the other and so these are very dangerous signals so this is the middle of that North Korea has announced that they have tested the missile and they are seeking their position that they will maintain their nuclear weapons whatever may happen and IAE has been asking questions because North Korea has accepted inspection so but then they switch off the cameras and often distract the IAE and hide their activities so that is one dangerous signal that we have apart from Putin's own threats to use tactical nuclear weapons and so this is created once again an issue of nuclear danger and hopefully every one country will restrain itself rather than make this into a worse situation so crane war where in the middle end we don't know and in what situations and meanwhile such threats also also arise there have always been developments in Taiwan the Taiwanese president has just spoken about the danger from China as a real threat and she also said that Taiwan will fight the war by themselves without having any external support so that's a matter of nationalism and the kind of strength and ability that they have but I suppose the United States has already said that they will intervene if that's your thing happens but the president is going to face re-election and she's likely to be re-elected and so this must be in that context that she's talking about being able to fight the Chinese by themselves and she has also said that Taiwan is accumulating more different capability and so it is a warning to China that they cannot have to walk through our Taiwan of course American support is very much with them even though the Chinese now have Russian support to deal with Taiwan so it's also also complicated but the real big issue is the winter in Europe and this is something you have heard about general winter defeated armies you know when winter sets in it's a very very difficult situation to fight a war or even even living freely without you know energy and heating is very essential and there are some alternatives have been proposed of people sleeping in sleeping bags and not having to heat up their rooms it's not going to be very easy it will be very tough maybe technology is being developed in this level but it remains the fact remains that they need to have a winter fuel to keep their homes warm and that is becoming increasingly difficult because of the situation about oil crisis energy crisis Russia is still holding the price down but prices are going up in the Gulf and so this is the real crisis which is facing Europe at this moment and it makes it makes it all the more necessary for the war to end because otherwise this situation will become much worse for Europeans themselves and of course it will affect all of us you know specifically we have a warm weather but our requirement of important fuel is also very high so therefore we also are affected will be affected by this whatever may happen and therefore there is an increasing pressure on president put into end the war but he has to find a formula by which we have to declare victory but the collapse of the bridge has really enraged and he has in fact made it more difficult for anyone to have any kind of conversation in the war but the efforts taking place in all directions and let's hope things will improve before the first anniversary of the war which is which is quite nearby so I just thought I'll collect all these important developments to indicate the kind of situation that we are in there's really no good news from any side now everyone is looking at the G20 meeting in Indonesia later it's meeting in India so the G20 is increasingly significant in all this context so this is the picture of this week so I thought I'll cover generally at that thank you very much well use India to deter China I don't know whether it is true but certainly using Pakistan to deter India is a standard practice as well as China is concerned I don't know whether they are using India to deter China because India is not as powerful as China and in fact anything we are more vulnerable to Chinese aggression are being used as a kind of deterring against China because our armies are not equal in strength or capability and so it'll be an unbalanced situation so I haven't heard about US deterring China by using India and zero emission because it's not related to the political situation because all the countries have fixed net zero emissions and it's a matter of their countries honestly implementing them so but that again will be affected because of the fuel crisis because the idea is to cut down energy consumption and go to zero emission years that may not be affected directly and climate change things may not be affected but of course when there is an atmosphere of competition and conflict then cooperation is not very easy to do and you need cooperation in the case of dealing with climate change so there may be difficulties but here now the responsibilities of the individual countries of course they can come up and say for this reason this reason we are not able to fulfill our commitment that is a possibility but I don't see there is a direct link between climate change and the atmosphere of conflict which is prevalent in the world today it could be independent of each other because I'm sure that there is another interaction there is the implication for everything today this could be one of them this is fundamental isn't it because China believes that Taiwan is part of China because history is like that when it became up to the China the revolution in China Chiang Kai should move over to Formosa and establish their government there so they consider that an illegal government since then but then Taiwan has developed it has a democratic system it is one of the powerful countries of the world 23 million people and all that and that was not very easy for China to just work over it and then the United States's commitment even though we all say only one China but we're all dealing with Taiwan in various ways including India and so this has been one of the major missions of China to reunify so in the case of Hong Kong they accepted the principle of one country two systems because it was necessary for them to have Hong Kong as a trading center but in the case of Taiwan they are not even talking about some of us have been writing about it saying that why don't we adopt the Hong Kong formula though the Hong Kong formula is not worked increasingly China is just taking out everything they are not leaving that system intact so that's not a good model anymore but China has made no secret to the fact that they will reunite Taiwan with China whether it is by peaceful means or by war this is a declared policy and there has been no change after the Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan the situation even got more aggravated because they saw it as a signal that the Americans will stand by Taiwan whatever and then of course Russia supporting China has become another factor in Taiwan and in return for China supporting Russia on the Christian Ukraine so people expect something will happen in China in Taiwan the year 2027 is being mentioned as the outer limits that China has switched for them to annex Taiwan so it's not a not a secret that's very public the objective of China is to simply amalgamate Taiwan with China that's only point that's being made but it's timing it's seriousness it has become a world war all these things are still open questions but China's intention is crystal clear thank you very much thank you