Russian apprehensions about QUAD

With the spotlight recently on Russia’s relations with the United States and Europe, following the meeting between US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin and the G7 and NATO summits, less attention has been paid to the complex challenges facing Russia in Asia.

After the inaugural QUAD summit between the leaders of Japan, Australia, India and the US in mid-March this year, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov visited China, South Korea, India and Pakistan to underscore Russia’s continuing relevance.

Lavrov’s talks in New Delhi aimed at bolstering Russia–India ties. He underlined Moscow’s concerns about the QUAD, repeating Russia’s opposition to the creation of security blocs in the Asian region.

In December last year, Lavrov had sharply criticized the QUAD as part of a US-led ‘persistent, aggressive and devious’ policy intended to ensnare India in its ‘anti-China games’ and designed to undermine the close partnership between Moscow and New Delhi. Russia also claims the QUAD is divisive and undercuts ASEAN centrality.

First and foremost among Russia’s priorities in Asia is China. The close and growing strategic partnership between Moscow and Beijing reflects political affinities, economic complementarities and foreign policy convergences. But it remains a pragmatic, transactional relationship, and Moscow is conscious that growing asymmetries make it the junior partner.

Russia has sought to balance its close ties with China by expanding relations with other Asian states, especially India but also Japan and ASEAN states. Little headway has been made with Japan, with the intractable Kuril Islands dispute impeding progress. Efforts to intensify economic links, especially energy and arms sales, with partners like Vietnam and Indonesia have made more headway.

Underpinning its Asian swivel, Russia has promoted its Greater Eurasian Partnership idea as a platform for engagement with the wider Asian region, based on institutions such as the Eurasian Economic Union and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization—in which Russia plays a leading role. Moscow has advocated greater cooperation between the EEU and ASEAN, and supports observer status for the EEU at APEC. Russia has sought to leverage its geographical location to promote its relevance to greater connectivity between Asia and Europe.

Moscow fears that the emerging Indo-Pacific strategic concept, especially closer security cooperation within QUAD, jeopardizes its position in Asia.

Conceptually, the Indo-Pacific construct is a maritime-based cooperative framework, as opposed to the continental Eurasian-centered vision for regional integration promoted by Russia. Whereas the Eurasian cooperative model would confer a leading role on Russia, it’s not clear to Moscow how it might fit into the Indo-Pacific framework.

Moscow’s concern is that QUAD, perceived as a US-orchestrated security coalition against China, will complicate Russia’s efforts to strike some balance in its relationships with China and other key Asian regional countries, especially India.

If the QUAD gains momentum, drawing in Asia–Pacific players such as South Korea and ASEAN, Russia fears that it will become more isolated and be compelled into greater dependence on China than it would like.

India is a particular concern. Moscow knows that New Delhi’s growing anxieties about Beijing, including military rivalry, underpin India’s involvement in the QUAD. Moscow believes this will encourage New Delhi’s tilt towards closer cooperation with the US, weakening Russia’s own ‘special and privileged partnership’ with India.

India has tried to mollify Russia, talking up the Indo-Pacific as a principles-based, inclusive and unifying construct and encouraging Moscow to view it positively as an opportunity—but to no avail.

Moscow remains suspicious of where India is heading. While Russia is an important partner for India, especially in energy and defence, the overall relationship remains thin, compared to India’s growing and diverse connections with the US and others.

In this context, Lavrov’s subsequent visit to Pakistan—his first in a decade—was a clear warning to New Delhi. During talks in Islamabad, Lavrov discussed expanding Russian security assistance to the Pakistan military.

Alive to potential marginalization, Moscow will strive to bolster its relevance and importance as a credible major actor in the wider Asian region. Expect further intense Russian bilateral and regional diplomacy over coming months, as well as efforts to diversify ties with other Asian partners, such as Bangladesh, Pakistan and Myanmar. Moscow will try to lift its modest military presence and influence in the Indian Ocean, building on the recent naval basing agreement with Sudan and military exercises with India, Iran and Pakistan.

China Communist Party Marks Centenary

China will not allow itself to be bullied and anyone who tries will face “broken heads and bloodshed in front of the iron Great Wall of the 1.4 billion Chinese people,” President Xi Jinping said at a mass gathering Thursday to mark the centenary of the ruling Communist Party.

Wearing a grey buttoned-up suit of the type worn by Mao Zedong, Xi spoke from the balcony of Tiananmen Gate, emphasizing the party’s role in bringing China to global prominence and saying it would never be divided from the people.

Xi, who is head of the party and leader of the world’s largest armed forces also, said China had restored order in Hong Kong following anti-government protests in the semi-autonomous city in 2019 and reiterated Beijing’s determination to bring self-governing Taiwan under its control.

He received the biggest applause when he described the party as the force that had restored China’s dignity and turned it into the world’s second largest economy since taking power amid civil war in 1949.

“The Chinese people are a people with a strong sense of pride and self-confidence,” Xi said. “We have never bullied, oppressed or enslaved the people of another nation, not in the past, during the present or in the future.”

“At the same time, the Chinese people will absolutely not allow any foreign force to bully, oppress or enslave us and anyone who attempts to do so will face broken heads and bloodshed in front of the iron Great Wall of the 1.4 billion Chinese people,” Xi said.

Xi’s comments come as China is enmeshed in a deepening rivalry with the United States for global power status and has clashed with India along their disputed border. China also claims unpopulated islands held by Japan and almost the entire South China Sea, and it threatens to invade Taiwan, with which the US has boosted relations and military sales.

Beijing faces criticism that it is guilty of abusing its power at home, including detaining more than 1 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities for political reeducation in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, and for imprisoning or intimidating into silence those it sees as potential opponents from Tibet to Hong Kong.

Thursday’s events are the climax of weeks of ceremonies and displays praising the role of the Communist Party in bringing vast improvements in quality of life at home and restoring China’s economic, political and military influence abroad. Those improvements coupled with harshly repressing opponents have helped the party hold power despite its 92 million members accounting for just over 6% of China’s population.

While the progress dates mainly from economic reforms enacted by Deng Xiaoping four decades ago, the celebrations spotlight the role of Xi, who has established himself as China’s most powerful leader since Mao. Xi mentioned the contributions of past leaders in his address, but his claims to have attained breakthroughs in poverty alleviation and economic progress while raising China’s global profile and standing up to the West were front and center.

Xi, 68, has eliminated limits on his time in office and is expected to begin a third five-year term as party leader next year. In seeking to capture more gains for the party on the world stage, Xi is setting up China for a protracted struggle with the US, said Robert Sutter of George Washington University’s Elliot School of International Affairs.

 “In foreign affairs it involves growth of wealth and power, with China unencumbered as it pursues its very self-centered policy goals at the expense of others and of the prevailing world order,” Sutter said.

While the party faces no serious challenges to its rule, the legitimacy of its rule has been undercut by past disasters such as the mass famine of the Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Cultural Revolution’s violent class warfare and xenophobia, and the 1989 bloodshed at Tiananmen Square.

The party’s official narrative glosses over past mistakes or current controversies, emphasizing development, stability and efficiency — including its success in controlling COVID-19 at home — in contrast to what it portrays as political bickering, bungling of pandemic control measures and social strife in multiparty democracies.

Xi’s comments Thursday on bullying, oppression and enslavement will elicit historical memories among Chinese of the 19th century Opium Wars that led to foreign nations gaining special legal and economic privileges in China, as well as Japan’s brutal invasion and occupation of much of the country during the 1930s and 1940s.

Xi said those experiences had made the party’s rise to power inevitable as the only force truly able to rid China of foreign meddling and restore its global stature.

Xi said the party would retain absolute control over its military wing, the People’s Liberation Army, which now has the world’s second-largest annual budget after the US armed forces and has been adding aircraft carriers and sophisticated new aircraft, showcased in a flyover at the start of the ceremony featuring a squadron of China’s J-20 stealth fighters.

“We will turn the people’s military into a world-class military, with even stronger capabilities and even more reliable means to safeguard the nation’s sovereignty, security and development interests,” Xi said.

Thursday’s rally recalled the mass events at which Mao would greet hundreds of thousands of Red Guards in Tiananmen Square during the chaotic 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, a time many older Chinese would prefer to forget.

Donald Rumsfeld Obituary

Donald Rumsfeld, the former Defense Secretary who led the Pentagon when the United States launched wars against Iraq and Afghanistan, has died at the age of 88. 

History may remember him for his extraordinary accomplishments over six decades of public service, but for those who knew him best and whose lives were forever changed as a result. He will be remember his unwavering love for his wife Joyce, his family and friends, and the integrity he brought to a life dedicated to country.

Rumsfeld was first Defense Secretary during the Ford administration and was the youngest person in the country’s history to hold that job.

He came back to the job in 2001, this time as the oldest person to have held the position, his legacy shaped by his handling of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Rumsfeld, who ran the Pentagon for former President George W. Bush lost his job a day after Republicans lost the House majority in 2006.

Rumsfeld’s tenure was marked by several controversies at the Pentagon, including the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison. Rumsfeld, who offered to resign twice in 2004 amid the scandal, later called Abu Ghraib his “darkest hour.”

As the United States got bogged down in twin wars and Democrats took control of Congress on a wave of antiwar sentiment, Bush replaced Rumsfeld with Robert Gates in 2006.

In a statement Wednesday, Bush called his first Defense secretary “a man of intelligence, integrity and almost inexhaustible energy.”

“On the morning of 11^th September 2021, Donald Rumsfeld ran to the fire at the Pentagon to assist the wounded and ensure the safety of survivors,” Bush recalled. “For the next five years, he was in steady service as a wartime secretary of defense ‑ a duty he carried out with strength, skill and honor.”

“We are so sorry to learn that the world has lost Don Rumsfeld, but sorry most of all for the great empty space we know his passing has left in the lives of his family,” former Vice President Cheney and his wife, Lynne, said in their own statement. “During some of our nation’s most serious challenges, he was entrusted by presidents to help guide America through turbulent times. He did so with strength and resolve that came to embody who he was as a person.

Several lawmakers also put out statements mourning Rumsfeld.

“Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was an exceptional leader who dedicated decades of his life in public service to this nation,” House Armed Services Committee ranking member Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) said in a statement. “I also appreciate his help to lay some of the early groundwork for Space Force.” 

“My relationship with Secretary Rumsfeld seems almost old-fashioned in today’s political environment – we agreed on much, while disagreeing often through thoughtful debate and mutual respect,” Senate Armed Services Committee ranking member Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) said in his own statement. “Kay and I are keeping Joyce and his entire family in our prayers as we join in their grief and honor a devoted patriot and public servant.”

Appearing in the Pentagon briefing room frequently to discuss the wars, Rumsfeld also became known for acerbic and, at times, nonsensical quotes.

“As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don't know we don't know," he said in 2002 to suggest Iraq was giving terrorists weapons of mass destruction despite no evidence that was happening.

Arabs will take time to understand Naftali Bennett

After more than a decade under Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel has a new prime minister, Naftali Bennett. Netanyahu’s years in power have been extremely significant for country’s relations with the Arab world. Most notably, with the aid of former US president Donald Trump, Netanyahu signed normalization agreements with four Arab and African countries.

Bennett, head of the right-wing Yamina Party, has been a part of Israel’s political system for 15 years, but his regional and international presence has been relatively minor. Now, the Arab world, which has complicated relations with Israel, is crafting its image of Israel’s new premier.

The Qatari-based media giant Al Jazeera published an article about Bennett shortly after he was sworn in, calling him “Netanyahu’s student.” The article took note of that fact that Bennett is the first prime minister to come from what Al Jazeera called “the hard-line religious right,” and said that he is “one of the strongest opponents to the founding of a Palestinian state.

The Saudi-financed Al-Arabiya news website notably does not mention Bennett’s position on the Palestinian-Israel conflict. In an article that can almost be called flattering, Al-Arabiya tells of the new premier’s success in business, his background in Israel’s elite military forces and his various political exploits in recent years.

Oraib Al Rantawi, Founder and Director General of the Al-Quds Center for Political Studies in Amman, told The Media Line, in light of the recent political upheaval, “First of all I think there is a deep feeling of relief, among most of the Arab countries – especially in Palestine and Jordan – at seeing Netanyahu depart.”

In terms of how Bennett is viewed in the Arab world, Rantawi said, what matters is his approach to the Palestinian-Israel conflict. He’s in the far-right camp.” Bennett, he adds, is seen as opposing the two-state solution and a Palestinian state, as well as supporting Jewish settlements in the West Bank. This, and statements perceived as hawkish in the past, have built his image as a hard-line leader in Arab eyes, which Rantawi calls a cause for pessimism.

At the same time Bennett is seen as a weak leader, lacking the international status and personal charisma to rival Netanyahu, Rantawi says. 

“He has no charismatic personality, no connection with the international scene – this will make it easier to counter the Israeli narrative, especially in the US decision-making institutions. We don’t think that Bennett can fill the vacuum of Netanyahu or succeed in establishing strong influence in many international capitals. Not only in Washington and European countries, but also with Russia,” he said.

 “Some countries... are not happy to see Netanyahu depart the scene, especially the Emiratis, and the Saudis to a certain extent,” he also said. “For them, Netanyahu, together with Donald Trump, was a strong ally” regionally and, most notably, against a mutual enemy, Iran. Others such as the Jordanians and the Palestinians often termed ‘The Resistance Axis’ – Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas, are happy.”

Many Arab voices in the media are saying that Bennett and his partners will be a continuation of the same policies because Netanyahu’s legacies will outlast his presence as prime minister.

The new government notably includes an Arab Israeli minister from the left-wing Meretz Party and an Arab-Israeli party, the Islamist Ra’am (United Arab List) Party, headed by Mansour Abbas. While this may be seen as something that would help ease relations between the Jewish state and its Arab neighbors, Rantawi believes it will have little to no influence.

Iran to host ECO Clean Energy Center

Iranian Energy Minister Reza Ardakanian has announced the readiness of Islamic Republic for hosting Center for Clean Energy of Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO).

Speaking at the ECO’s 4th ministerial meeting on Thursday, Ardakanian stated that the Iranian Energy Ministry has several programs for the development of energy exchange with the countries of the region on the agenda so that the country's geopolitical capacity can be maximally used in global energy markets.

He further suggested that ECO should establish a regional energy corridor to promote cooperation, exchange of knowledge and experience, and use the capacities and potentials of the countries in the region.

Creating such a corridor can lead to the expansion of energy exchanges for a sustainable energy supply, and will also promote the development of various power plants, especially renewable ones, to supply the energy needs of the region, Ardakanian said.

The official noted that the ECO region enjoys rich human and natural resources, energy reserves, capable private sectors, and privileged advantages of regional connectivity.

He said that sustainable energy supply and exchanging electricity can guarantee the security of countries and provide them with sustainable economic income.

“This can be made possible by connecting the electricity grids of neighboring countries, and this "cross-border connection of power grids" can not only pave the way for the transmission of electricity to neighboring countries, but also improve the reliability and resilience of the region’s power grids,” he stressed.

Ardakanian also underlined the significant potentials of the Iranian renewable market for foreign investors, and said, “Having great renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, biomass, and geothermal, Iran is offering long-term contracts for guaranteed purchase of electricity at incentive rates, so the country’s renewable energy market, with its high potentials, is a very attractive market for foreign investors.”

The official put the country’s installed renewable capacity at 877 megawatts (MW), saying that all of the country’s renewable power plants have been constructed and established using the private sector investment.

“Over 160 companies are currently active in the field of renewable energies in the country,” Ardakanian said.

Exit of US troops from Bagram: Symbolic and strategic victory for Taliban

“The closure of Bagram Airbase is a major symbolic and strategic victory for Taliban,” said Bill Roggio, senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

 “If Taliban is able to take control of the base, it will serve as anti-US propaganda fodder for years to come,” said Roggio who is also editor of the foundation’s Long War Journal.

It would also be a military windfall.

The departure of US troops is rife with symbolism. Not least, it’s the second time that an invader of Afghanistan has come and gone through Bagram.

The Soviet Union built the airfield in the 1950s. When it invaded Afghanistan in 1979 to back a communist government, it turned it into its main base from which it would defend its occupation of the country. For 10 years, the Soviets fought the US-backed mujahedeen, dubbed freedom fighters by President Ronald Reagan, who saw them as a front-line force in one of the last Cold War battles.

The Soviet Union negotiated its withdrawal in 1989. Three years later, the pro-Moscow government collapsed, and the mujahedeen took power, only to turn their weapons on each other and kill thousands of civilians. That turmoil brought to power the Taliban who overran Kabul in 1996.

When the US and NATO captured Bagram in 2001, they found it in ruins, a collection of crumbling buildings, gouged by rockets and shells, most of its perimeter fence wrecked. It had been abandoned after being battered in the battles between the Taliban and rival mujahedeen warlords fleeing to their northern enclaves.

After dislodging the Taliban from Kabul, the US-led coalition began working with their warlord allies to rebuild Bagram, first with temporary structures that then turned permanent. Its growth was explosive, eventually swallowing up roughly 30 square miles.

For nearly 20 years, Bagram Airfield was the heart of military power of United States in Afghanistan, a sprawling mini-city behind fences and blast walls just an hour’s drive north of Kabul. Initially, it was a symbol of the US drive to avenge the 9/11 attacks, then of its struggle for a way through the ensuing war with the Taliban.

In just a matter of days, the last US soldiers will depart Bagram. They are leaving what probably everyone connected to the base, whether American or Afghan, considers a mixed legacy.

“Bagram grew into such a massive military installation that, as with few other bases in Afghanistan and even Iraq, it came to symbolize and epitomize the phrase ‘mission creep’,” said Andrew Watkins, Afghanistan senior analyst for the Brussels-based International Crisis Group.

US Central Command said last week that it’s well past 50% done packing up Bagram, and the rest is going fast. US officials have said the entire pullout of the troops will most likely be completely finished by 4th July 2021. The Afghan military will then take over Bagram as part of its continuing fight against the Taliban — and against what many in the country fear will be a new eruption of chaos.

The enormous base has two runways. The most recent, at 12,000 feet long, was built in 2006 at a cost of $96 million. There are 110 revetments, which are basically parking spots for aircraft, protected by blast walls. GlobalSecurity, a security think tank, says Bagram includes three large hangars, a control tower and numerous support buildings. The base has a 50-bed hospital with a trauma bay, three operating theaters and a modern dental clinic. There are also fitness centers and fast food restaurants. Another section houses a prison, notorious and feared among Afghans.

Jonathan Schroden, of the US-based research and analysis organization CNA, estimates that well over 100,000 people spent significant time at Bagram over the past two decades. “Bagram formed a foundation for the wartime experience of a large fraction of US military members and contractors who served in Afghanistan,” said Schroden, director of CNA’s Center for Stability and Development.

For Afghans in Bagram district, a region of more than 100 villages supported by orchards and farming fields, the base has been a major supplier of employment. The US withdrawal affects nearly every household, said Darwaish Raufi, District Governor.

The Americans have been giving the Afghan military some weaponry and other material. Anything that they are not taking, they are either destroying or selling to scrap dealers around Bagram. US officials say they must ensure nothing usable can ever fall into Taliban hands.

Last week, the U.S. Central Command said it had junked 14,790 pieces of equipment and sent 763 C-17 aircraft loaded with material out of Afghanistan. Bagram villagers say they hear explosions from inside the base, apparently the Americans destroying buildings and material.

 “There’s something sadly symbolic about how the US has gone about leaving Bagram. The decision to take so much away and destroy so much of what is left speaks to the US urgency to get out quickly,” said Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Asia Program at the US-based Wilson Center.

“It’s not the kindest parting gift for Afghans, including those taking over the base,” he said.

Inevitably, comparisons to the former Soviet Union have arisen.

Retired Afghan Gen. Saifullah Safi, who worked alongside US forces at Bagram, said the Soviets left all their equipment when they withdrew. They “didn’t take much with them, just the vehicles they needed to transport their soldiers back to Russia,” he said.

The prison in the base was handed over to the Afghans in 2012, and they will continue to operate it. In the early years of the war, for many Afghans, Bagram became synonymous with fear, next only to Guantanamo Bay. Parents would threaten their crying children with the prison.

In the early years of the invasion, Afghans often disappeared for months without any reports of their whereabouts until the International Red Committee of the Red Cross located them in Bagram. Some returned home with tales of torture.

“When someone mentions even the word Bagram I hear the screams of pain from the prison,” said Zabihullah, who spent six years in Bagram, accused of belonging to the faction of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a warlord designated a terrorist by the US. At the time of his arrest it was an offense to belong to Hekmatyar’s party.

Zabihullah, who goes by one name, was released in 2020, four years after President Ashraf Ghani signed a peace deal with Hekmatyar.

Roggio says the status of the prison is a “major concern,” noting that many of its prisoners are known Taliban leaders or members of militant groups, including al-Qaida and the Islamic State group. It’s believed about 7,000 prisoners are still in the prison.

“If the base falls and the prison is overrun, these detainees can bolster the ranks of these terror groups,” Roggio said.

Britain selling weapons to human rights abusers

Reportedly, Britain has sold arms and military equipment to two-thirds of countries slammed for their dire record on human rights and civil liberties.

Between 2011 and 2020, Britain licensed £16.8 billion of arms to 39 countries castigated by Freedom House, a US government-funded human rights group, for their poor record on political and human rights, according to British daily newspaper The Guardian.

The London-based Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) also found that during the same period, £11.8 billion of arms had been authorized by the British government to countries on the Foreign Office’s own list of repressive regimes.

The British Department for International Trade has also identified nine countries, including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt, as “core markets” for arms exports. The countries have been widely criticized for human rights abuses.

“Right now, British-made weapons are playing a devastating role in Yemen and around the world. The arms sales that are being pushed today could be used in atrocities and abuses for years to come,” said Andrew Smith of the CAAT.

“Wherever there is oppression and conflict there will always be arms companies trying to profit from it, and complicit governments helping them to do so,” Smith said.

Saudi Arabia and its regional allies, emboldened by Western powers’ weapons and support, launched a deadly military campaign against Yemen in March 2015 to reinstall the former Riyadh-friendly Yemeni President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi.

The war – which they claimed would last only a few weeks but is still ongoing – has led to the death of hundreds of thousands of civilians, including women and children, and destroyed much of Yemen’s infrastructure.

Throughout the campaign, the British government kept up arms sales to Saudi Arabia despite widespread reports that the weapons are being used against civilians.

Britain has sold combat aircraft, helicopters, drones, grenades, bombs and missiles to Riyadh, with most weapons licensed via the opaque and secretive Open License system.

According to Sarah Waldron of the CAAT, “British-made weapons have been central to a bombardment that has destroyed schools, hospitals and homes and created the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.”

“Many of these sales are going to despots, dictatorships and human rights abusing regimes. They haven’t happened by accident. None of these arms sales would have been possible without the direct support of Boris Johnson and his colleagues,” Smith added.

Back in February, Oxfam, an international charity organization, warned that British arms sales to Saudi Arabia could prolong the war in Yemen.

The UK is “ramping up its support for the brutal Saudi-led war by increasing arms sales and refueling equipment that facilitate airstrikes,” said Sam Nadel, head of policy and advocacy at Oxfam.