FOREIGN POLICY: New, Strong and Clear Outreach

sorcerer

Senior Member
Joined
Apr 13, 2013
Messages
26,920
Likes
98,472
Country flag

sorcerer

Senior Member
Joined
Apr 13, 2013
Messages
26,920
Likes
98,472
Country flag
India Delivers 30,000 Doses Of “MR” Vaccine Within 72 Hours To Maldives
India has delivered 30,00 doses of Measles and Rubella (MR) vaccine to Maldives. Maldives Government had requested India for MR Vaccine after the outbreak of measles disease in Maldives. India responded to emergency request of Maldives and Supplied 30,000 doses of Measles and Rubella (MR) vaccine within 72 hours of the request.
 

sorcerer

Senior Member
Joined
Apr 13, 2013
Messages
26,920
Likes
98,472
Country flag
India moving away from passive foreign policy to one vigorously advancing its interests: Alice Wells

India is moving away from having a passive foreign policy to the one vigorously advancing its interests, a top American diplomat said on Friday, attributing the trend to New Delhi’s “broadening strategic horizons” over the past two decades.

“It’s clear that India’s broadening strategic horizons over the past two decades have resulted in a shift away from a passive foreign policy to the one that advances Indian interests more vigorously,” acting Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Alice Wells told reporters at a news conference.

Wells, who has just returned from a trip to the region besides attending the Raisina Dialogue in New Delhi, said nowhere this shift is more visible than in the Indo-Pacific region.

“Whether it’s in our growing maritime and naval cooperation, the Quad, India’s Act East Policy, there’s virtually no daylight in our approaches to the Indo-Pacific,” she said.

Deputy National Security Advisor Matt Pottinger’s remarks at Raisina Dialogue endorsing an Indo-Pacific region stretching from California to Kilimanjaro only further reinforced the strategic convergence, she added.

While in New Delhi, she had meetings with her Indian counterparts which, she said, were focused on how to build on the diplomatic and defence gains achieved during the 2+2 ministerial dialogue last December.

With continued progress on defence cooperation, peacekeeping operations, space, counterterrorism, trade, people-to-people initiatives, and more, she said the quality and frequency of India-US naval cooperation, especially the information sharing, had reached unprecedented levels.

The two countries also remain focused on achieving a trade deal that promotes fairness and reciprocity, she noted

PTI
 

sorcerer

Senior Member
Joined
Apr 13, 2013
Messages
26,920
Likes
98,472
Country flag
India, France discuss co-production of films, set up joint working group
India and France on Tuesday discussed ways and means to co-produce films and collaborate on audio visual exchanges. The two countries also agreed to set up a joint working group towards implementation of these objectives after wide-ranging discussions between Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar and French Culture Minister Franck Riester here.
 

Why so serious?

Senior Member
Joined
Jul 1, 2017
Messages
1,386
Likes
5,911
Country flag
MEA starts its biggest internal rejig in 50 years
Indrani Bagchi | TNN | Jan 31, 2020, 01:54 IST
TNN
Foreign minister S Jaishankar is putting his plans of redrawing the MEA structure to work (File photo)
NEW DELHI: The foreign ministry is undertaking its biggest restructuring exercise in almost half a century, making it the Centre’s first ministry to undertake ‘root-branch’ structural reform.


The ministry’s management and functioning structure remains hidebound and out of sync with modern practices and demands of India’s foreign policy, which is becoming more complex and diverse.


With foreign secretary Harsh Shringla
taking charge this week, foreign minister S
Jaishankar is putting his plans of redrawing the MEA structure to work. It helps that Shringla and Jaishankar are on the same page regarding the overhaul, and getting it out early in the government’s tenure means they will have ample time to put the plans into action.





The new structure will be more corporate in nature. MEA will build a series of ‘verticals’ like economic and trade diplomacy, development partnership, consular, emerging areas like technology etc. Each of these verticals will be headed by the equivalent of “political directors” at the additional secretary level. The idea is to decentralise the present pyramid-like structure, to separate routine foreign policy work from strategic projects. This will leave the secretaries to handle the big-ticket issues.


On Thursday, MEA created the first verticals. Akhilesh Mishra, the current head of ICCR (Indian Council for Cultural Relations) will oversee all the four development partnership divisions. These are key to India’s overseas aid and development projects, particularly in the neighbourhood and Africa. Dinesh Patnaik will take over ICCR and handle the entire cultural diplomacy portfolio. P Harish will oversee the economic diplomacy initiative, leading the multilateral economic diplomacy and states division. Nagma Mallik will have three Africa divisions reporting to her. She will relinquish her current job as joint secretary, policy planning to Anupam Ray, who has just returned from Houston. Vikram Doraiswamiwill take charge of all multilateral work, overseeing political, economic and conferences and summits. He will give up his charge as head of Indo-Pacific to Neena Malhotra, who will oversee Indian Ocean, Indo-Pacific, and south-east Asia, with Smita Pant taking over as joint secretary (Bangladesh and Myanmar).

Consular issues, an increasingly important area, emerging strategic technologies, cyber will be the future areas of expertise to be woven into the MEA structure. MEA recently set up the NEST (new and emerging strategic technologies) division. India wants to be part of the global rule-making order in these areas, so stands to reason that MEA should build policy expertise here.


Currently, the system puts enormous pressure on joint secretaries as well as the four secretaries, making running the ministry and India’s foreign policy a continuous fire-fighting exercise, leaving little or no space for strategic planning, initiatives, etc. The new system is designed to break some of the silos that MEA currently functions under, align the Indian system with global powers, which will answer a perennial problem MEA faces when organising official dialogues with their international counterparts – of a mismatch in designations.


With a reputation of having one of the smallest foreign services in the world, MEA will need to get creative about staffing. At present they take in officials from other services, but soon that pool will be expanded from the private sector, think tanks, etc. In addition, MEA plans to deploy its people in other key ministries like commerce, defence, finance, science & technology, etc. There are two reasons for this – international cooperation is increasingly being used for domestic development goals and India’s internal decisions have a foreign policy impact. This cross-pollination is intended to synergise the two goals.


The exercise has just started, and it will take a few months, perhaps even a year to straighten out the knots at the operational level. But MEA may become a trailblazer in the Indian government.
 

sorcerer

Senior Member
Joined
Apr 13, 2013
Messages
26,920
Likes
98,472
Country flag
Bali: Indonesian President Joko Widodo sets up the country’s first Hindu State University
The primary objective of the regulation to set up a new varsity is to administer and support Hindu higher education programmes. IHDN rector, I Gusti Ngurah Sudiana, is optimistic about this new development. He is now awaiting the handover from the central government. Sudiana also hailed this move as a historic moment for the Indonesian Hindus.

https://www.opindia.com/2020/02/ind...sar-hindus-state-university-higher-education/
 

sorcerer

Senior Member
Joined
Apr 13, 2013
Messages
26,920
Likes
98,472
Country flag
How Pakistan’s anti-India rant in OIC was vetoed by UAE with Saudi support

According to sources, Pakistan’s move was backed by Turkey as part of Ankara's strategy to oppose Saudi-UAE dominance in the OIC. However, Malaysia which had earlier joined ranks with Turkey and formed an alliance of sorts to oppose the traditional influence of Saudi Arabia and the UAE in the OIC did not back Pakistan with same vigour as in the past.


:rofl::clap2::rofl::rofl::rofl:

#PKMB by Saudi and UAE
 

fire starter

Tihar Jail
Banned
Joined
Jan 14, 2020
Messages
9,609
Likes
84,137
Country flag
How Pakistan’s anti-India rant in OIC was vetoed by UAE with Saudi support

According to sources, Pakistan’s move was backed by Turkey as part of Ankara's strategy to oppose Saudi-UAE dominance in the OIC. However, Malaysia which had earlier joined ranks with Turkey and formed an alliance of sorts to oppose the traditional influence of Saudi Arabia and the UAE in the OIC did not back Pakistan with same vigour as in the past.


:rofl::clap2::rofl::rofl::rofl:

#PKMB by Saudi and UAE
This is what porkis get every where.
images.png
 

Tshering22

Sikkimese Saber
Senior Member
Joined
Aug 20, 2010
Messages
7,869
Likes
23,213
Country flag
In the recent developments that have happened, India needs to rethink its foreign policy engagements a little more militarily and selfishly.

We two simultaneous challenges at the moment:

1. A militarily self-reliant China that has enough local critical mass to profit from wars & wants a war on our border (They know that we are still import-reliant and therefore wars are costly for us)

2. A limping Pakistan that has the full support of an Islamist Turkey, which is using scholarships and funding with Muslim groups and associations in India to radicalize local Muslims (ironically still the only community that 'gets radicalized' against the country at the drop of a hat).

Both these threats need to be seen in two separate dimensions.

1. CCP-controlled CHINA

For China, even if the current Ladakh stand-off doesn't convert into a war (it almost is), it will still keep needling till CCP controls Tibet - let's face it, that's the reality we need to be prepared for. Communist Party of China has a goal of Mao's Five Finger Punch strategy since after1967 when they lost badly at the hands of a better prepared Indian Army.

They may stop salami-slicing for some time temporarily to restore some economic confidence, and make us believe that things have normalized, maybe through a change of leadership soon in China (not change in the political party but leadership). Nonetheless, they will keep trying to wrest the Himalayas from us. In this century, any country that controls Himalayas + Indian Ocean is the superpower. The Indian Ocean is in our control and 70%+ of the Himalayas is in India. CCP doesn't like that. They believe that the entire Himalayan belt should be in the control so that they can dictate terms to us using water flow as an excuse the way they have already started doing.

The only way to counter this is to have an aggressive and pre-emptive Tibet Action Plan (TAP for short). While Tibetans themselves may not offer any serious threat to the now powerful PLA, PLAAF and PLAN, they can be instrumental assets in dealing with the CCP when trained adequately. We also need to start rethinking about the One China policy more proactively.

Meaning, for every dispute that China backs against India, we should also raise voices in support of Taiwan and Tibet. Leave Xinjiang intentionally out because they are turning to Islamist ideology for violence. Once we support them proactively, we cannot expect the world to buy our words when we raise the issue of our own jihadi Islamist problems within India. Turkey is already backing the Islamist factions in that area through their common "Turkic roots".


A. The QUAD
Everyone thinks that the answer is a four-letter word called QUAD. Well, it is so when you see from a bird's eye perspective. But when we dig a little deeper, there are a lot of ifs and buts that we need to consider here.

Allow me to explain in detail.

A.1. The United States of America

While the USA has been very vocal in its support and wants to clip CCP's wings, you have to consider that it is a temporary measure and that their supply chain backing to us may not be reliable at the peak of the war. They are known to have ditched "non-white, non-western" allies in the middle of the action in the past.

The Republican party in its current iteration is opposed to China; the Democrats are virtually in bed with them because of the business interests of many Democrat financiers and political backers. And it is quite obvious that both the parties have the blessings of the Deep State that politically controls the country in the garb of the "two or more political parties".With less than two months and Trump trying to salvage his party right now, It is very unlikely that the US would get seriously involved in any form of combat with CCP alongside us.

A.1.2. Australia

Australia under the Morrison government has been quite friendly to India and has a realistic assessment of the threat perception in the Asia Pacific region. However, economic realities will compel Australia to not push CCP too far, too soon. There is a lot of pressure on the Morrison government to go easy with China despite his legitimate reasons after the Australian university issue that Australia faced (basically, the CCP had infiltrated their institutions to make them talk pro-China or suffer economic consequences).

They may tighten the purse and limit CCP's further access to the Australian economy. But then again that is not of much use in a scenario of war.

A.1.3. Japan

Japan has been doing a lot on the economic front and is perhaps the most aggressive country in the Quad other than us - they are literally paying their companies to dismantle their setup in China and come to India (along with a few other friendly countries).

But militarily, they are not ready. If there is action in the Sea of Japan, they will call upon the 35,000+ US military forces present in their territory. CCP may be egoistic but it is not foolish enough not open up a front with Japan+USA while it is fighting us. Such a confrontation would be from the main cities of China that are all exposed to the Pacific and don't have the buffer zone of Tibet to take a casualty.

Also, the Japanese military is not known for combat these days -> they may have fancy gadgets and lots of US-backed war games, but the games mean nothing unless you have faced real combat. They haven't seen a fight in the last 75 years, making them extremely vulnerable in a war.

________________________

This puts us in a situation where the only non-Quad country will militarily stand by us if we give them enough reasons to trust us and that country is Vietnam. They are the only ones who have given a bloody nose and have a psychological advantage over CCP-led China. They are capable of inflicting a lot more damage down south in the long run.

Another country that can potentially be helpful, is Taiwan. But none of Taiwan's territories is occupied by China. Also, it is a defensive force with limited offensive capabilities. But politically it can be quite a strong support like Australia.

So realistically, it is us along with some degree of weapons supply from the USA (not without political strings) in case this 'race to the top' exercise between our soldiers and PLA converts to a full-blown hot war. If coaxed enough, Vietnam can seize this opportunity to take back their Paracel islands while the PLA/PLAAF are engrossed in the Himalayas.

2. Turkey and Pakistan

This might sound funny here to put Turkey in the same league as even Pakistan, but remember that they are a credible threat of upsetting India from within. They might be a nobody in head-to-head military confrontation against us, but they hold quite a sway among India's large Muslim population that has a serious identity crisis since their conversion happened a few centuries ago. Sorry for being unapologetically crude here, but this is a fact. These are the only people apart from devout Xtians who have a tendency to start siding with outsiders at the drop of a hat. They may say that they don't need a certificate to prove their patriotism, but that applies to individuals.

Judging by the vicious brainwashing and total control of information in the majority of their community, they can pose to be quite an internal problem. Bengal, which is just a few hundred km away from my city, saw the rise of India's first sharia-compliant village - no cellphones, no TV, no music allowed. Turkey can easily manipulate this, given their desperate attempts under Erdogan to recreate the Islamic Ottoman Empire. Erdogan is not a threat but can become a problem for us due to our own stupidity of not reining the radicalization of Muslim community by their clerics in the country by taking a closer look at their religious teachings; all in the name of 'democracy'.

Turkey needs to be nipped in the bud before it becomes out of control. As we all know Erdogan the jabber jaw cannot keep his mouth shut & has already angered Greece and France with his territorial intrusion of the Greek and Cypriot waters.

This presents a perfect opportunity for us to meddle into Turkey's affairs. Not meddling into their affairs thinking that they will respect our concerns, is stupid. We need to be more aggressive with them.
 

Compersion

Senior Member
Joined
May 6, 2013
Messages
2,258
Likes
923
Country flag
Always wondered by having and taking a geographical look of the world map.

If for example a advanced algorithm and computer programme was designed and conducted on where and how it would be ideally placed with cities, resources, trade etc etc etc.

It is fascinating to see the area from Bay of Bengal, to Normanton Australia have a straight line and also from Inja Russia (near Sakhalin) likewise and Lianyungang PRC, even Haiphong Vietnam. Also trade routes are within "barriers" and having concentrated "natural" doorways. This is not clear other areas away from Bharat and the closest one can perhaps equate is Mozambique elsewhere. Also if one notes the places mentioned have long straight geography next to the coast and nearby advantageous features - what else is there... The link and development with Bharat and to its East is fascinating. and fascinating times we live in. Jai Hind.
 

fire starter

Tihar Jail
Banned
Joined
Jan 14, 2020
Messages
9,609
Likes
84,137
Country flag
our foreign policy is really flawed.
1. Not recognising Taiwan.
2. Voting continuously against Israel.
3. Not forming alliance with America and still betting on snake Russia.

MEA babus have failed us on every domain
These guys have brain in their foot.
 

Latest Replies

Global Defence

New threads

Articles

Top