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Taiwan Belongs to China- Chinese Defense Minister’s Warning to US at The SCO Meeting
During a recently concluded SCO ( Shanghai Cooperation Organization) meeting held on 24th August, 2022 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, the Chinese Defense Minister virtually addressed the member participants and reiterated that, ” Taiwan is China`s Taiwan and the Taiwan issue is China`s internal Affair.” Clearly, the Minister was referring to the recent trip to Taiwan by the US House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, despite warnings from China to refrain from such a visit. This interaction has infuriated the Chinese who consider such a move, provocative by the US. In response, the Chinese conducted massive military drills near the island, invoking the Taiwanese government to claim that this time, the drills were deep within Taiwanese territorial waters and a mock exercise for invasion of the island. The Chinese Defense Minister also took the opportunity to stress and appreciate the international community/ organizations stance for recognizing that Taiwan is a breakaway province and an integral part of China. He was referring to the 170 plus countries who do not maintain diplomatic ties with Taiwan or recognize its independence. He also stated that the SCO, (which comprises of India, Russia, China, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan) is a positive platform for regional peace and harmony and President Xi Jinping`s proposed Global Security Initiative `provides a correct solution for addressing international security challenges”. He urged the SCO member states to strengthen security cooperation with one another as the world community is currently experiencing a global crisis and facing challenges unseen before. He called for global unity and harmony and said China is ready to work with other countries to uphold global equity, justice and world peace. In the present political situation, the SCO can be seen as a positive alliance of regional countries for promotion of peace and stability in the region. However, the US would presumably see it as another bloc...
Re-Engaging with The Taliban: Russian-Chinese Initiative
The United States has blocked Afghan Central Bank foreign currency reserves from reaching the country, totaling approximately US$7 billion. Despite the international pressure, the US is hesitant to allow this money to return to its rightful owners – the Afghan people – since it is still reeling from its defeat. To deal with the existing economic crises in their country while realizing they will not get support from the West, the Taliban have reached out to Russia and China for assistance. The United States pullout from Afghanistan last year, after almost 20 years of occupation, has been painful and embarrassing for them the American government. Despite spending a trillion dollars on the war, the US has achieved nothing in strategic terms and even with its military power, could not manage to defeat its main enemy, the Taliban. Although you could classify the Taliban as a bunch of rag-tagged guerilla fighters, they still possessed the discipline and perseverance to achieve their goal. Following the US departure, the Taliban started to bring some form of stability to the country and formed a government consisting of their former senior commanders and religious leaders. However, running the country has not been easy as the country is amongst the poorest nations with the worst living conditions. There is hardly any food for the general population, and there is no existing infrastructure for providing energy needs, including the import of oil that is direly needed. Hence, they are in dire need of international aid. To compound the worsening situation, the US has blocked Afghan Central Bank foreign currency reserves from reaching the country, totaling approximately US$7 billion. Despite international pressure, the US is hesitant to allow this money to return to its rightful owners – the Afghan people – since it is still reeling from its defeat. Recently though, after calls from within the administration, President Biden is mulling the prospect of allowing US$3.5 billion...
Critical Minerals – The Next Front Line In The China-US Rivalry?
China should shore up its supply chains in essential resources as the US seeks to cut dependence, experts suggest Washington has long been aware of its vulnerabilities but Beijing has not come up with a way to assess supply risks Beijing should forge alliances with “friendly” suppliers of critical minerals as the United States and its allies seek to reshape global supply chains to cut dependence on China, two Chinese resources experts say. In an article in prominent journal Science & Technology Review earlier this month, the experts said such alliances could also give China and its Belt and Road Initiative trade partners a greater say in international trade negotiations over those minerals. “The focus should be on controlling the risk of shortages of key minerals, building a global trade network for key minerals that is conducive to China’s resource security, and achieving a rational, efficient and secure allocation of key minerals,” they wrote. “At the same time, China should focus … on strengthening cooperation with other mineral resource supplying countries, form international resource alliances, and speak out together in international trade negotiations to ensure the security of supply of key minerals to China and friendly countries.” The authors – Zhao Shen from Jiangxi University of Science and Technology and Wang Peng from the Ganjiang Innovation Academy at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Jiangxi – are based in Ganzhou, the resource-rich region home to state-owned China Rare Earth Group. The proposal is part of an assessment of US policies on supplies of essential minerals over the decades. It comes amid a US drive to strengthen its alliances with Western democracies to counter China on a range of fronts, from the military to technology. Zhao and Wang said that drive reflected Washington’s shift in focus “from being solely oriented towards security of supply to meeting political and diplomatic needs”. China is a major player in mineral processing. It...
“Pacing China Challenge” necessitated Afghan Pull-out: US Official
A senior American defence official has dismissed the ubiquitous notion that the United States abruptly withdrew its troops from Afghanistan, saying the move was driven by the Biden administration’s shift in “strategic priorities”. Pentagon Under Secretary of Defence for Policy Colin Kahl made the startling but not surprising statement at an August 8, 2022, press conference in Washington, which was the first candid and categorical expression of why the US withdrew from Afghanistan a year ago. It was not abrupt, the official implied. “The fundamental driver of the President’s decision to complete the withdrawal from Afghanistan …..was a recognition that America’s strategic priorities had shifted and that the United States had to prioritize the challenge – a pacing challenge posed by the People’s Republic of China,” Kahl said, signaling that the US is now focused on China’s westward expansion, and the Biden administration is gradually implementing a policy that defines China as a rival country. The under-secretary underscored a need to extricate the US from over two decades of war in Afghanistan and focus on the threats that Russia and China pose to the United States. “We had to be prepared to focus more on the threat to European security represented by the acute threat that — that Russia poses. That for too long, we had been bogged down in a particular part of the world at the expense of other, more pressing strategic priorities. And I think the events we’ve been talking about today, whether it’s across the Taiwan Strait or in Russia-Ukraine, validate that assessment — that the world has changed and we need to focus on the biggest threats to our security in the contemporary environment.”, Kahl underscored. President Joe Biden, in an address to Congress on April 29, 2021, made several references to China to underline the new focus on the world’s second-biggest economy. “We compete with China and other countries to win the 21st Century”, Biden said. President Xi...
America’s False Attempt to Portray China as a Threat
For the last few years, Americans have used every platform to disseminate that China is the most dangerous challenge to the current world order. They have habitually favored their domestic law over international laws to upgrade their position while threatening global stability. On the contrary, China is a founding member of the United Nations and was the first country to sign the UN charter. Historically, it has taken all the optimal measures to preserve the international order and has seldom engaged in coercive diplomacy despite facing numerous challenges from its rivals. A worthy figure in the contemporary world, Noam Chomsky has said on multiple occasions that if the Nuremberg principles were applied, every post-World War II US president would be indictable. The country claiming to be the chief guardian of human rights, democracy, and other values faces an uphill to proving the propagated belief. For the last few decades, the Americans have used their global outreach and lobbies to portray to the world that “China’s threat” is real and inevitable. To suppress China, the US has relied on deceptive, hypocritical, and dangerous language to contain and suppress Chinese growth. The falsehoods present in the American narrative to depict China as a threat to western values backfires when the history of the US is studied carefully. For the last few years, the Americans have used every platform to disseminate that China is the most dangerous challenge to the current world order and is undermining it. On the other hand, they have defended the stance of Washington for upholding the international norms and rights of sovereign states. In reality, the US has consistently molded the international order to satisfy its hegemonic lust and vowed for the US-dominated order to achieve its national interests. The quest that started with the Korean War stretched throughout the Cold War and the United States continues to intervene in the affairs of other states – as evident in the...
Working for Collective Peace and Development: How to Defeat Fake News
Key elements of journalism were discussed in a workshop on "Working for Collective Peace and Development: How to Defeat Fake News" for Baloch journalists, organised by CRSS. The panel consisted of expert journalists who engaged in a critical discussion on how to combat fake news. The sessions covered objective journalism, ethos of journalism, motivated news and role of western media in distorting facts.
Russia Warns of ‘Direct Military Clash’ with US
The continued confrontation between the two powers could lead to unpredictable results, Russia’s US embassy warns Washington’s behavior on the world stage risks direct conflict between the nuclear states, the Russian embassy in the US has warned. “Today, the United States continues to act with no regard to other countries’ security and interests, which contributes to an increase in nuclear risks,” the embassy said in a statement on its Telegram channel. “The [US’] steps to further engage in a hybrid confrontation with Russia in the context of the Ukrainian crisis are fraught with unpredictable escalation and a direct military clash of nuclear powers.” The embassy noted that Washington has recently withdrawn from two key arms control agreements, the 1987 Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which banned certain classes of land-based missiles, and the 1992 Treaty on Open Skies, which allowed for surveillance flights over each other’s territories. The embassy urged the US to “take a closer look at its own nuclear policy instead of making unfounded accusations against the countries whose worldviews do not coincide with the American ones.” “Our country faithfully fulfills its obligations as a nuclear-weapon state and makes every effort to reduce nuclear risks,” the diplomats said. The statement comes after the US accused Moscow of using the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine as cover for its soldiers. The plant, the largest in Europe, was seized by Russian troops during the early stages of Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine, which was launched in late February. It continues to operate with Ukrainian personnel under Russian control. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called Russia’s action at the facility “the height of irresponsibility.” Russia and Ukraine, meanwhile, have been accusing each other of shelling the plant. According to Moscow, artillery fire by Ukrainians forces caused several fires and partial power outages this month. Russia...
Post Ayman Al Zawahiri: Will The Taliban Learn Lessons From Its Past?
On August 1st 2022, the Afghan press reproduced a Twitter message of the former director the Afghan security Rahmatullah Nabil, claiming that he had spotted the American drones in Kabul’s airspace that had attacked various locations in Kabul. The Taliban spokesman for the Kabul Police Khalid Zardan, quickly issued a press release confirming that a rocket [not a drone attack] had struck a vacant house on July 31, that caused no injury[1]. The subject was closed. No panic, no fury, and no condemnation of USA for violation of Afghan’s sovereignty. Probably, the Taliban were either not fully aware of what had already happened or they were simply awestruck at the incident and were now looking for a face-saving strategy that could be suitable for both – internal and external consumption. The next day, the world press was flashing a lead report claiming that the Al-Qaeda Chief, Ayman al-Zawahiri, had been eliminated in Kabul by US drone attacks. The US blamed the Taliban for ‘grossly’ violating the Doha agreement by sheltering al Qaeda’s Zawahiri; the Afghan Deputy Prime Minister Abdul Salam Hanafi, called the attacks a violation of both national sovereignty and the Doha Agreement, but refrained from admitting the identity of the victim. After staying silent for a couple of days, the Taliban came out with an official statement denying the death of Al-Qaeda chief on Afghanistan’s soil and even refused to admit if he had ever arrived and stayed in Afghanistan. But then who had been the target of US drone attacks? Instead of answering this Hanafi opted for the rhetoric of the government’s resolve that is based on no use of Afghan soil against others. This wasn’t the first time that the Afghan Taliban were blamed of providing shelters to terrorist groups. A day before the American drone...
Nancy Pelosi’s Visit to Taiwan: Has the US Gone for the Jugular?
China and US are once again on the contending grounds. On August 3rd, 2022, a visit by the US House of Representative Speaker, Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan, further strained the already deteriorating ties between the U.S and China. The visit took place in defiance of China's warnings to refrain from taking such a step, creating an extremely dangerous situation with the possibility of armed conflict between the two countries. At the heart of this divide is that China sees Taiwan as a breakaway province that will ultimately be part of the mainland. Taiwan however regards itself as a sovereign nation, unwilling to reunite. Their self-declaration of independence has been fully supported by the U.S, much to the opposition and disapproval of China, which considers reunification with Taiwan as their internal matter and ultimate national goal. Although the U.S officially recognizes the One-China policy, it has pledged to support Taiwan’s independence and supports it through the supply of military hardware and aid. This visit to Taiwan by Nancy Pelosi, a staunch opponent of China, was not officially sanctioned by the White House but has been a mistake and a dilemma for the Biden administration. Why? Firstly, China today is a much stronger country than they were, 20 years ago, economically and militarily. The China of today is not afraid to flex its muscle (in the context of Taiwan) and can, if necessary, invade Taiwan. The repercussions of that move would surely result in a military confrontation with the U.S. Suffice to say that it may lead to another world war, with respective allied nations getting involved in the conflict. Secondly, the ongoing Russian- Ukrainian conflict has already sent ripples across the world and the U.S economy is on the verge of a recession. Therefore, an armed conflict with China is the last thing the Biden administration wants. With energy prices soaring and inflation rampant in almost every country, the world and the U.S cannot afford the...
Pakistan’s Political Chaos and Relationship with Neighbouring Countries
Pakistan is going through an internal political crisis which is translating into and deepening our economic crisis, to the point that further chaos could push the country into default. At the same time, the geo-strategic reorientation in the region and Pakistan’s relations with its neighbors is another challenge to stand up to. Pakistan is undoubtedly going through one of the worst crises in its recent times: the economy is in shambles with fears of default looming around, and the political circus keeps giving every single day as the dominant political parties are in a bid either to capture power or to stay in power, the judiciary is being sought to interfere at every point and their decisions are further increasing the polarization within society. And while the musical chair of power within Punjab is the center of gravity, and the contradictions of the system are on the display, there is no popular alternative discourse to make inroads and shape a different political, social, and economic reality. The result: While the elite is playing power politics, Pakistan is suffering, and common people are bearing the brunt of the instability fuelled by all the pillars of the state. Amidst all this, there is a geo-strategic challenge of improving relations with its neighbors in an unstable regional environment, a problem Pakistan has had for much of its history. Take the example of Afghanistan which has been the breeding ground for imperial wars for decades now, with Pakistan being a part of that. We have had an adversary in Afghanistan for their claim of the Pashtun region of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa but averted that picture by becoming part of the anti-communism war in Afghanistan. We then used our relations with the Afghan Taliban for “strategic depth”. The policy has been in effect since the 90s and thus but there was a general hope that Pakistan will have considerable influence on the new Afghan government following the U.S. withdrawal in August 2021, for the Pakistani...
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I am also a member of National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Information and Broadcasting. Recently, we held a meeting with the Director General of Radio Pakistan and we told them to initiate such local programs (like Constituency Hour) in regional languages to educate and inform people. Even Indian Radio can be heard in FATA which is being used for propaganda purposes and must be closed. Therefore, we should launch some standard and quality programs like CRSS that will change the taste of the listeners.