‘We expect Indian aid on Rohingya issue’

Commending India’s role in the 1971 war with Pakistan to liberate Bangladesh, a senior Bangladesh Minister said here on Friday that Delhi needs to play “a similar diplomatic role” to resolve the Rohingya crisis. Engineer Mosharraf Hossain, Minister of Housing and Public Works of Bangladesh, who were in Kolkata to attend Vijay Diwas marking the surrender of the Pakistani Army in 1971, said India should influence the international community to bring Myanmar under pressure to take back the Rohingya refugees. Since August 25, nearly 650,000 Rohingya Muslims have reached Bangladesh fleeing violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine state. “We would look forward to India’s role. The way India played a diplomatic role earlier [in 1971] to liberate us, we would expect them [India] to play a similar role now. We would expect India to initiate a resolution in the UN to ensure [Rohingya] return [to Myanmar],” Mr. Hossain said. The Minister added that pushing the refugees back to Myanmar is not an option. The Hindu, 16th December 2017.

Will reverse Obama-era warnings on climate change and de-emphasise multinational agreements

Prioritising national sovereignty over alliances, President Donald Trump is poised to outline a new national security strategy that envisions nations in a perpetual state of competition, reverses Obama-era warnings on climate change, and de-emphasises multinational agreements that have dominated the U.S.’s foreign policy since the Cold War. The Republican President, who ran on a platform of “America First”, was to detail his plan later on Monday; one that if fully implemented could sharply alter the U.S.’s relationships with the rest of the world. The plan, according to senior administration officials who offered a preview on Sunday, is to focus on four main themes — protecting the homeland and way of life; promoting American prosperity; demonstrating peace through strength; and advancing American influence in an ever-competitive world. Mr. Trump’s doctrine holds that nation states are in perpetual competition and that the U.S. must fight on all fronts to protect and defend its sovereignty from friend and foe alike. While the administration often says that ‘America First’ does not mean ‘America Alone’, the national security strategy to will make clear that the U.S. will stand up for itself even if that means acting unilaterally or alienating others on issues like trade, climate change and immigration, according to people familiar with the strategy.

‘Rogue regimes’

The last such strategy document, prepared by then-President Barack Obama in 2015, declared climate change an “urgent and growing threat to our national security”. A senior official said the Trump plan removes that determination following the administration’s threat to pull out of the Paris climate accord but will mention the importance of environmental stewardship. Despite the risk of potential isolation presented by Mr. Trump’s strategy, its fundamentals are not a surprise. The Associated Press last week reviewed excerpts of a late draft of the roughly 70-page document and spoke to two people familiar with it. The draft emphasises that U.S. economic security is national security and that economic security must be ensured with military might. And they said it would stress the U.S. is interested only in relationships with other countries, including alliances like NATO, that are fair and reciprocal.

‘Rogue regimes’

Mr. Trump, according to the senior officials, is also expected to discuss threats he’ll deem as “rogue regimes”, like North Korea, and “revisionist powers”, like Russia and China, who aim to change the status quo, such as Moscow and its actions with Ukraine and Georgia, and Beijing in the South China Sea. Mr. Trump is also planning to renew his call for the member states in the United Nations and NATO to spend more on defence, saying that the U.S. will insist on its alliances being fair and reciprocal. The Hindu, 19th December 2017.

Other 14 Security Council members back resolution seeking to nullify Trump’s move

The United States was further isolated on Monday over President Donald Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital when it blocked a United Nations Security Council call for the declaration to be withdrawn. The remaining 14 members voted in favour of the Egyptian-drafted resolution, which did not specifically mention the United States or Mr. Trump but which expressed “deep regret at recent decisions concerning the status of Jerusalem”. An insult, says Haley “What we witnessed here in the Security Council is an insult. It won’t be forgotten,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said after the vote. It was the first veto cast by the United States in the Security Council in more than six years, Ms. Haley said. “We do it with no joy, but we do it with no reluctance,” she said. “The fact that this veto is being done in defence of American sovereignty and in defence of America’s role in the Middle East peace process is not a source of embarrassment for us; it should be an embarrassment to the remainder of the Security Council.” The UN draft resolution affirmed “that any decisions and actions which purport to have altered the character, status or demographic composition of the Holy City of Jerusalem have no legal effect, are null and void and must be rescinded in compliance with relevant resolutions of the Security Council”. “In the wake of the decision of the United States... the situation has become more tense with an increase in incidents, notably rockets fired from Gaza and clashes between Palestinians and Israeli security forces,” UN peace envoy Nickolay Mladenov told the Security Council ahead of the vote. The draft UN resolution had also called upon all countries to refrain from establishing diplomatic missions in Jerusalem. The Hindu, 19th December 2017.

Blogpost on Chinese website blames India for Beijing’s assertion in South Asia China’s political assertion in the Indian Ocean, especially Sri Lanka and Maldives, is a response to India’s moves in the South China Sea, a post on a Chinese website says. A blog post on Xilu.com, which focuses on Chinese military affairs, claims that China has delivered “hard blows to India”, citing Beijing’s recent agreements with Colombo and Male. The post, authored by the website’s contributor Zhan Hao, adds: “Without being quite obvious, China gave very hard blows that have caught India off-guard. The Indian backyard has been catching fire.” Citing foreign media reports, it highlighted that China and Maldives have signed “ocean area cooperation papers” in Beijing on December 7. “This reflects that China is showing more interest in the South Asia area,” the blog says. It cited unnamed “relevant experts” as saying that “it is not the deeper China-Maldives economic cooperation that India worries about, but China’s greater political and security influences in South Asia. Of course, it is just the beginning of India’s nightmare in the area.” The post said India received a “harder blow” on December 9, when Sri Lanka transferred the operations of Hambantota port to China on a lease for 99 years. The write-up asserts that India has been warned that it should “care about its own business”. It specifically referred to the tri-service drill that India had undertaken on November 23 in the Malacca straits that “severely influenced our (China’s) strategic safety”. It claimed that while the naval drill was going on, India bought 100 military use cranes to build a road “in the conflicted area between China and India and severely damaged our borders peace and stability”. The Hindu, 20th December 2017.