Atlantic Sentinel

Tag: India

  • Cabinet Reshuffle Changes Little in India’s Political Outlook

    Sunday saw one of the biggest midterm cabinet shakeups in India since the United Progressive Alliance formed the government in 2004. The reason it is considered “big” is largely due to the fact that it heralds a generational change and lowers the average age of the cabinet.

    The specifics of the cabinet reshuffle are less important than the power structure of the ruling Congress party and the electoral and structural dynamics of the country.

    The National Congress has in its second term lost significant sympathy as a result of a nigh total policy paralysis and almost daily stories of monumental corruption, causing a string of electoral reverses in state elections.

    True power in the party rests with its president, Sonia Gandhi, who is not a member of the government. The split between executive and political power seldom works since in most cases, Gandhi can veto any decision that is made by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. No change was made in this party structure on Sunday so the fundamental political outlook of the Congress cannot have changed either. (more…)

  • Singh, Zardari Deserve Admiration for Détente

    President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India meet in New Delhi, April 8
    President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India meet in New Delhi, April 8 (MEA)

    The leaders of India and Pakistan are embroiled in scandals at home but can be applauded for at least keeping the dialogue between the two rivaling nations going.

    Various scams have been unearthed during the most recent months of Manmohan Singh’s premiership in India. Several of his cabinet ministers are deeply involved. In Pakistan, Asif Ali Zardari is in conflict with the judiciary for allegedly siphoning off public money.

    Nevertheless, their governments have kept up negotiations, particularly about trade instead of more contentious and time consuming issues like terrorism and Kashmir.

    In February, India’s commerce and industry minister Anand Sharma visisted Pakistan to finalize a trade agreement with his Pakistani counterpart. As a result, integrated border checks have been set up to facilitate and increase commerce. This month, the government of India allowed Pakistani investment, albeit in limited sectors of the economy.

    No unfortunatele incidents have taken place since India’s external affairs minister Somanahalli Mallaiah Krishna and his Pakistani counterpart Shah Qureshi engaged in a verbal duel on the former’s first visit to Islamabad in 2010. Hina Rabbani Khar, Pakistan’s incumbent foreign affairs minister, paid a visit to New Delhi soon after assuming her post and received a warm welcome there. The two explored the possibility of engagement on commercial instead of security issues which appears to be bearing fruit.

    This month, Krishna paid his second, much anticipated second visit to the Pakistani capital, again focusing on trade issues but also hinting that Indo-Pakistani relations would not be held hostage by disputes over the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks which India suspects were carried out with Pakistani assistance.

    The main problem in Indo-Pakistani relations is not terrorism or border disputes, rather a lack of trust and, sometimes, outright hatred between the two sides. Tension will remain, no matter how many issues are resolved, if this mutual suspicion persists. Public debate in both countries unfortunately fuels the distrust, tempting politicians to toe the line of nationalists and radicals instead of improving bilateral relations through compromise.

    Changing Indian and Pakistani perceptions of their neighbors is no simply task. The relationship has been marked by conflict since independence. But it is the only way to stabilize ties for the long term. It is the responsibility of leaders in both countries to take the first steps toward peaceful coexistence.

  • Central Asia: India’s New Strategic Neighborhood

    Indian foreign policy has started to morph in recent years from the idealistic and sometimes naive notions of Cold War nonalignment into a more realistic strategy that recognizes the country’s changing interests. India’s alliance building in Central Asia is emblematic of this policy shift.

    Walter Russell Mead recently blogged that in the past, Indian policymakers would list three enemies: Pakistan, Pakistan and Pakistan. But the old rivalry of South Asia now only has an emotional, not a rational connection with either the present or the future. India and Pakistan are working to improve their bilateral relationship. During his second visit to Islamabad last week, India’s foreign minister Somanahalli Mallaiah Krishna reiterated his country’s wish to see a peaceful and prosperous neighbor.

    One of the reasons for India’s continuous engagement with Pakistan is that it is on the road to Central Asia. The former Soviet satellite states in the region possess vast energy reserves and have attracted the attention of nearby great powers. (more…)

  • India Sends Message to Washington from Tehran

    The Nonaligned Movement has historically been seen as something of a talk fest — high on statements, missing in action and lacking in cohesion.

    This week’s summit in Tehran, while mostly living up to the stereotype, was nevertheless important because of what was not said.

    Of the 120 member states, only 29 sent their heads of government to Iran. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad chose a reasonably befuddled topic as the theme of the summit — “Lasting peace through joint global governance” — as if either of those will ever materialize. But in spite of one expensive exercise in whispering sweet nothings, one message was being conveyed loud and clear — and that was to the United States by India. (more…)

  • China Plays Energy Security Card in India Relations

    The Chinese and Indian state hydrocarbon monopolies signed a far-reaching agreement last week envisaging cooperation across the gamut of activities from exploration to the point of sales. This brings into play several business synergies but geopolitically, it throws up many conundrums and opportunities.

    Two possibly related developments have to be kept in mind here. India last month withdrew from its allotted exploration blocks in the South China Sea, widely seen as capitulating to Chinese pressure. Almost simultaneously, India’s defense minister Arackaparambil Kurien Antony delivered one of India’s harshest condemnations of China at the Shangri La summit in Singapore, in effect joining the ring of naval containment emerging around China.

    Both China and India are heavily dependent on sea lanes for their energy security. (more…)

  • India Stops Hedging, Backs American Naval Strategy

    Most dull speeches are ignored but a few mask statements of such enormity that their importance is lost.

    In that context, Indian defense minister Arackaparambil Kurien Antony’s words at the Shangri La 2012 summit were borderline genius.

    Unlike in previous centuries, maritime freedoms cannot be the exclusive prerogative of a few. Large parts of the common seas cannot be declared exclusive to any one country or group. We must find the balance between the rights of nations and the freedoms of the world community in the maritime domain. Like individual freedoms, the fullness of maritime freedoms can be realized only when all states, big and small, are willing to abide by universally agreed laws and principles.

    The sheer innocuousness of these statements mask their potency in the Indian context. The basic summary was that India stopped hedging and threw in its lot with America. (more…)

  • East-West Divide on Full Display in East Asia

    Developments this week in Asia highlight in stark contrast the two opposing sides that continue to emerge in the region.

    Although government officials take great pains in downplaying the security implications underlying their policies and dismiss talk of burgeoning alliances aimed at any one country in particular, their actions belie their words.

    On the one side there are the democracies of Asia and on the other, the authoritarian governments of China and Russia.

    First, Japan and India announced what are the first joint exercises by their navies to be held in Japanese waters scheduled for this weekend.

    In a news conference, the chief of staff of Japan’s Maritime Self Defense Forces, Admiral Masahiko Sugimoto, said that he wanted the joint exercises “to contribute to the stability of the Asia Pacific region.”

    As such, among the specific exercises likely to be conducted between the two countries are naval formation training and the rescuing of distressed civilian vessels.

    These are the first joint exercises held exclusively between the Japanese and Indian navies (they have participated previously in multilateral drills) and should be considered within the backdrop of China’s increasing naval buildup as well as closer relations between China and Russia.

    In addition to the joint naval drills, Japan and India are said to be writing a joint Defense Action Plan and considering the possibility of including the United States in a trilateral strategic dialogue.

    This does not portend the formation of a new defensive alliance per se as many in India bristle at their country being drawn into an anti-China alliance or a containment policy by the United States. However, it does underline the mutual interests driving the cooperation between Asian democracies versus the authoritarian governments in the region.

    For their part, relations between China and Russia have been drawing closer ever since the Shanghai Cooperation Organization was formed in 1996.

    During the most recent SCO summit in Beijing on Wednesday, China and Russia announced in a joint statement that they are increasing their strategic partnership. It said that they will continue the adherence to noninterference in each other’s internal affairs, mutual support of each other’s sovereignty, security and win-win reciprocity among other areas.

    However deep Sino-Russian bilateral relations are — as many maintain the two countries detest each other — they clearly have mutual foreign policy interests dictating their cooperation. For instance, in the United Nations, they are opposing foreign intervention in Syria by Western allies and they still have economic interests with Iran.

    Dmitri Trenin, of the Carnegie Moscow Center, wrote in China Daily this week that China’s and Russia’s core foreign policy interest coincide and aim at “promoting a different approach to national sovereignty, one that does not involve intervention and the use of force.”

    In that respect, by drawing a line in the sand against further regime change in the Middle East, Chinese and Russian policy is driven by their own economic, political and security interests. Specifically, by their fear of what more regime change would mean to their ability to control unstable regions in their own borders like the Caucasus, Tibet and Xinjiang.

  • Turkmenistan Finally Puts the “T” in TAPI

    On Wednesday Turkmenistan finally signed agreements with India and Pakistan’s state energy companies to clear the way for the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline.

    TAPI was conceptualized in the 1990s and has been beset with a multitude of problems since. Wednesday’s announcement removes a major obstacle for the TAPI project but many more remain.

    The pipeline would begin in Turkmenistan’s vast gasfields. Initial TAPI plans called for the source to be the Dauletabad field in southern Turkmenistan. More recent plans indicate that a portion of TAPI would come from the yet to be developed South Yolotan field near the Afghan border. (more…)

  • Nuclear Weapons Still Shape India-Pakistan Relations

    Fourteen years ago this May, India and Pakistan overtly conducted nuclear tests and declared themselves nuclear powers.

    India conducted its first test in 1974 and termed it a “peaceful nuclear explosion” while by the late 1980s, Pakistan had acquired the technological capacity to produce a bomb as well. Although many opposed and still oppose the tests due to various reasons and on many grounds, at least the two countries let the world and each other know that they had the bomb.

    Nuclear weapons played the role of deterrent and helped in the deescalation of tensions which could otherwise have resulted in war.

    For the first time in a war against Pakistan, in 1999 at Kargil, the Indian army did not cross the Line of Control. Even after the attack on the Indian parliament in 2002 and the Mumbai massacre that was carried out by militants based in Pakistan, war was averted. The regular exchange of fire along the Indo-Pakistani border has not resulted in an escalation of hostilities.

    As it is, India and Pakistan are nuclear powers and this cannot be reversed or changed despite anti-nuclear protests and a global push for denuclearization. Hence, it’s better to adapt to the situation.

    The two countries have taken many measures to prevent accidental use of their atomic weapons. Chief among them is that India and Pakistan since 1988 are regularly exchanging information about their weapons. They also inform the other side before carrying out military exercises near the border areas or testing their missiles.

    The real challenge is to prevent nuclear weapons from falling into the hands of terrorists. Whereas states behave in a rational and responsible way, this cannot be expected from nonstate actors.

    The weapons in both countries are kept in disassembled form and physically apart. They have each set up commanding hierarchies to take decisions about its assemblage and use. Any effort to steal or capture even a single part cannot go unnoticed by the security agencies nor the political leadership. To take possession of a nuclear weapon, a terrorist group would help from the inside, as Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, had.

    The presence of Taliban and other Islamic extremists in Pakistan complicates the challenge of securing the nation’s nuclear weapons. To check this, the credentials of defense staff and scientists responsible for providing security and maintenance of nuclear technologies must be properly scanned.

    The bomb has acted as deterrence but that does not mean it will always be that way. High escalation of bilateral tension may become a reason to trigger nuclear war. Hence, as responsible nuclear powers, India and Pakistan must continue to build confidence between them, if only to avert the accidental use of a nuclear weapon.

  • BRICS Expansion Could Produce G20 Minus Seven

    In the last two decades, the linkages among nation states have deepened to an unprecedented level. In terms of commerce and finance, the world has recovered and surpassed the degree of interconnectedness that was achieved before the Great Depression. Moreover, new issues have emerged, creating new linkages, deepening the web that connects the international community and giving a much wider sense to the notion of globalization.

    This has come at a price. As the 2008-2009 financial crisis demonstrated, the consequences of the actions of one state or one nonstate actor can resonate across the globe. The countries which are more likely to have a wider impact are, obviously, the most powerful ones.

    It is in this context that the rise of a number of nations has caused both interest and alarm. Among them, Brazil, Russia, India and China are regarded as the emerging powers. Their growing power has enabled them to present the most credible challenge to the hegemony and legitimacy to run world affairs which the United States and their Western allies enjoyed after the Cold War.

    The BRICs know it. Their leaders regularly meet to announce their agreement on certain issues and to let the world know that they can act in unison. By doing so, they increase their own power as well as the legitimacy of the group, helping them to provide an alternative forum to all states, including, if not especially, those that are not well regarded in the West.

    One thing to note is that the BRICs are all developing countries when comparing their gross domestic product per capita levels with those of the Western powers. This characteristic and their growing international legitimacy has led them to become representatives of the interests of the developing world in certain negotiations with developed nations.

    As a group, the BRICs have advanced the notion of reforming the current international system to give more say to the developing world. Among the most important demands are expansion of the United Nations Security Council and an increased voting shares for developing nations in the World Bank.

    In the area of global commerce, the BRICs have demanded a decrease of trade barriers. With respect to climate change and efforts by the West to reduce green emissions, the BRICs argue that the current environmental problems are the largely consequence of the industrialized world’s actions and that they have no right to stop others from developing.

    But the BRICs are not a coherent group. China and Russia are authoritarian states and sit on the UN Security Council while Brazil and india are democracies and looking to become permanent members. Would China and Russia still endorse the claim of expanding Security Council permanent membership if there was a strong possibility of doing so? Not likely.

    Furthermore, China and India are very suspicious of one another and have territorial disputes. India also fears a Chinese monopoly of the Indian Ocean and has recently increased its investment in maritime capabilities. Energy relations among China, India and Russia are very complex. China and India need Russian oil and gas, allowing Moscow to trade energy concessions for strategic gains elsewhere at the detriment of the other two BRIC powers.

    Unlike its peers, Brazil is not a nuclear power, which severely decreases its leverage on hard power issues. Brazil is also more adamant about trade liberalization while India seeks to protect its rice farmers.

    In short, each one of these countries has its own particular interests and will not renounce to them in favor of an alliance.

    While Brazil plays the role of model global citizen, Russia is far more focused on its security. China has serious domestic problems in terms of political accountability and sustainable growth. India struggles between its growth prospects and the institutional inefficiencies which prevent it from achieving them.

    The BRICs’ sole factor of cohesion is a shared interest to promote change in the international community. This implies that its usefulness as a grouping in the future will depend on the following perception in the member states — will acting as a group benefit their own particular agendas?

    Another question is whether these four countries are the only ones that can be qualified as the emerging powers and therefore legitimate representatives of the developing world? They answered that question by including South Africa in the group. Although it doesn’t compare in size and power to the BRICs, South Africa’s inclusion amply demonstrated there are other countries with sufficient assets and capabilities to be considered as rising powers.

    Other clear examples are Indonesia and Turkey. The BRICs would do well to include them. After all, the only requirement for joining seem to be power and an opposition to the existing international system.

    However, more members means more national interests to consider. Soon enough, an expanded BRICs could resemble a “G20 minus G7” which would hinder the very notion of promoting dialogue between the developing and the developed world.

  • Singh, Zardari Discuss Kashmir, Terrorist Dispute

    “In 1947, India and Pakistan were born to conflict.” This is the first line on the flap and gist of Stanley Wolpert’s most recent book, India-Pakistan: Continued Conflict or Cooperation (2010). His assessment is correct because these two countries have a jeremiad of problems.

    They have failed to resolve even a single contentious issue between them since independence. It’s not that they haven’t tried to sort out their problems but their structured diplomacy has failed to achieve any breakthroughs.

    To improve the relationship, there needs to be a significant change in attitude. There appears to be the will on the part of both civilian governments to see this change through.

    Whereas diplomacy used to be conducted behind closed doors, there is an effort today to engage the peoples of both nations. This form of engagement is visible at the highest levels of policy making where the leaders of India and Pakistan have met on the sidelines of multilateral summits and cricket matches.

    Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari’s visit to India this weekend was of such an informal nature but he did have lunch with India’s prime minister, Manmohan Singh. Last month, Singh met with Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani during the Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul, South Korea.

    During their luncheon, Singh offered technical assistance to retrieve the remains of the Pakistani soldiers who, on the morning of Zardari’s visit to India, perished in an avalanche on the Siachen Glacier, east of the Line of Control in Kashmir.

    India and Pakistan have held many talks about the demilitarization of Siachen but nothing has yet come of this dialogue.

    Singh also raised the issue of Hafiz Muhammad Saeed whom India considers to be the brain behind the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. He earlier declared a “water jihad” against India and has terrorized his own people for seeking rapprochement with their neighboring state.

    India and the United States have both asked for Hafiz Saeed’s extradition. Many in Pakistan consider this an affront to their sovereignty. The issue is not whether or not he should be handed over to another country however; the concern is the militant system which he runs.

    No progress was made on either of these issues on Sunday but at least the leaders talked. Such a continued dialogue is needed to contain minor incidents and keep the border calm.

  • Eurofighter: The Great German Backstab

    As David Cameron’s now infamous veto of a treaty for greater fiscal integration in the European Union, the leaders of France and Germany bonded closer, overcoming to a large extent their difficult personal chemistry.

    Thousands of kilometers away in India, this realignment coincided with the victory of the French-made Dassault Rafale in India’s Multi Role Medium Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) contest. The emerging schism which the tantrum was symptomatic of, had already begun to play out in India.

    The MMRCA contest has been India’s biggest fighter contest of this century, worth about $20 billion or $60 billion if spread out over the next thirty years. It coincided with a similar quest for a new fighter jet in Japan.

    The Eurofighter also participated in both contests. Italy and Spain, junior partners in the joint fighter project, took a backseat while Germany took the lead in India (unusually, given that the British are much more familiar with it) while the British were given charge of the Japanese campaign (again, unusual, since the Germans consider themselves to have penetrated the Japanese psyche more). (more…)

  • BRICS Can Bark But Cannot Bite

    The recent BRIC summit in New Delhi was heralded as a game changer in international politics. Although cooperation between Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa is definitely here to stay as an alternative to Western multilateral institutions, the praise has to do more with hype than substance.

    The BRICS summit has been compared to the 1941 conference between President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill in Newfoundland which led to the signing of the Atlantic Charter and ultimately to the creation of a new world order with the forming of United Nations in 1945. The BRICS doesn’t propose to create any such multilateral institution however. It merely seeks to make existing organizations as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank more democratic.

    A major obstacle to permanent cooperation within the BRICS is the lack of resemblance among the countries that compose it.

    Brazil is a regional power in South America, Russia is a great power in Eurasia, India is a great power in the Asia Pacific, China is a great power aspiring to be a superpower while South Africa is a regional power in Africa at best.

    What these countries have in common is that they aren’t too pleased with the status quo of the international system which is dominated by Western powers, specifically by the United States.

    Even in a country as India, which considers China to be its primary threat, there is strong domestic opposition against the values of the West and the Untied States.

    Yet it remains doubtful that these countries can come together to inaugurate an alternative system at the international level. They all need United States to balance against threats in their own domains.

    Brazil seeks American support in its struggle for regional hegemony with neighboring Argentina. Russia finds it hard to digest China’s influence in Central Asia and the Middle East and so does India in South and Southeast Asia. South Africa’s position in Africa is threatened by China’s presence on the continent. The latter’s scant regard for human rights is seen as a problem by both Brazil and South Africa.

    There is a risk that the BRICS evolves into a platform for Chinese foreign policy just as Moscow employs an array of interregional cooperative bodies to further its own goals. If that turns out to be the case, the legitimacy of the organization is in jeopardy and it would be high time for the remaining members to consider an alternative.

  • Eyeing China, India Strains Relations with Sri Lanka

    India’s support for an American-sponsored resolution at the United Nations Human Rights Council that condemned the government of Sri Lanka signifies a complete reversal of a decades-old policy.

    As irrelevant as Sri Lanka may seem strategically and in terms of resources, geopolitical stakes are playing out on what what would seem to be but a mild rebuke of Sri Lanka with little by way of actual consequence for the perpetrators of war crimes.

    China’s calculus is straight. Hemmed in by overwhelming American naval superiority and the fleets of Japan and Korea, its efforts at acquiring power projection capabilities have set off the same kind of opposing dynamic that German and Russian admirals Alfred von Tirpitz and Sergei Gorshkov triggered, reinforcing the offshore balancer.

    The Malacca Straits are a vital energy jugular of China’s economy and hence its rise. India’s emerging naval strategy seems, gauged both from procurement plans as well as the strengthening of Andaman’s joint air-naval command, directed at choking this jugular. China’s trump card, Pakistan, is now in the throes of disintegration moreover, its strategic utility seems lost, while Burma, due to a significant overdose of Chinese “soft power,” has run into India’s arms.

    Thus Sri Lanka emerges as China’s new strategic pawn more out of necessity than choice. Analogically, it is India’s Cuba, a mere irritant without nuclear weapons. Insufficient in national power and having no nuclear ambitions, its usefulness as an ally — at least the “crazy” independent kind which the Chinese seem to prefer — is limited. It does not posses a disproportionate ability to wreak havoc or tie down regional powers.

    What is more, the Sri Lankan economy is too dependent on Indian goodwill and supply routes to deal with a American style trade embargo. At best, it can be China’s “Albania” to draw in another analogy; strategically inutile and of dubious rhetorical value but requiring China to expend vast diplomatic resources.

    India’s Sri Lanka policies have largely been driven by paranoia surrounding the rise of China, stoked in no small degree by the budget hungry but intellectually deficient armed forces.

    This phenomenon has been exploited successfully in the past by Sri Lankan politicians to either extract concessions from or to relieve pressure applied on them by India.

    Some Indian commentators have exaggerated this development to suggest that Sri Lanka has somehow “successfully balanced” against India. As a result, New Delhi’s options to help Lankan Tamils have been completely paralyzed by dubious grand strategy analyses — overcompensating for every Chinese move and appeasing the Sinhala majority.

    This overcompensation has now produced a furious centripetal reaction from India’s Tamil Nadu state. Here, the state ruling party and opposition have joined hands to blackmail a severely weakened central government into executing a policy U-turn. This reversal is a stark departure from uncritical support of the Sri Lankan government last week to supporting a harsh condemnation of it the following

    In the final analysis, all three parties have overplayed their hands.

    China overplayed the Sri Lanka card and did so too soon to the point that it now faces being cornered, supporting a country that can provide it no tangible benefits in the foreseeable future.

    Sri Lanka in its attempt to thwart Indian support for Tamil rights overplayed the China card and demanded too much from India.

    India overplayed the China threat and has now been forced into a humiliating retreat by small regional parties within India’s polity.

    Some good may yet come of this forced construct of a China-Sri Lanka axis. As the former prime minster of Nepal Surya Bahadur Thapa used to say, “Nepal is surrounded by dogs, the one to the south barks but does not bite, the one to the north does not bark but bites viciously.”

    Sri Lanka is going to learn the Nepal lesson the hard way opting for an ally that can only realistically support it at diplomatic fora. As the lessons of Pakistan and North Korea show, China never pays the bills at the end of the day.

    China is now faced with the bloated cost of maintaining an ally that is incapable of realistically bringing synergies to the grouping. India on the other hand learns a good lesson; that China’s abilities must be viewed realistically and analyzed without hysteria.

    Sri Lanka has two options. One is to make good on its China threat with all the attendant liabilities. The other is to capitulate to India.

    The problem lies with India, which in spite of its delirious view of itself as a benign power was and is an insufferable regional bully. Like a man eating tiger that can never turn back once it has tasted human blood, the taste of victory in Sri Lanka will in all probability lead to triumphalism and the inevitable clumsily overplayed hand — the hallmark of Indian diplomacy, which will in turn set in motion a new round of regional balancing in the subcontinent.

    Correction: An earlier version of this story erroneously referenced the United Nations refugee agency instead of the United Nations Human Rights Council.

  • India’s Iran Policy Starting to Mirror Its Israel Policy

    A slow but sure shift can be observed in India’s Iran policy. What is curious about this is that in many ways, India’s Israel policy seems to be the blueprint.

    The Indian government still emphasizes the significance of Iranian oil and gas buys. This position is bolstered by Saudi Arabia’s refusal to boost output last week in anticipation of an expected drop in Iranian exports. Following a beggars can’t be choosers logic, New Delhi has refrained from joining an embargo of Iranian crude despite heavy Western pressure to do so.

    Reports have surfaced of sanctions being threatened against India for its obstructionism in this regard. The nature and substance of these sanctions remains unknown. The United States State Department though, in an unusual step, rather than squelching the rumors, added fuel to the flames, stating merely that reports to this effect were “highly speculative.”

    There are two implication of such a threat being held over India. (more…)