Rubio urges Cambodia, Thailand to deescalate, offers US for talks
"The United States is prepared to facilitate future discussions in order to ensure peace and stability between Thailand and Cambodia," the department said in statements on Sunday about separate calls with Thai Foreign Minister Maris Sangiampongsa and Cambodian Foreign Minister Prak Sokhonn.
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Reuters
6 minutes ago
- Reuters
Breakingviews - US-India standoff is about more than Russian oil
HONG KONG, Aug 5 (Reuters Breakingviews) - The standoff between the U.S. and India may well get worse before it gets better. Having slapped a 25% tariff on goods the South Asian country sends to America, Donald Trump is vowing to ratchet up the rate over the $4 trillion economy's purchases of Russian oil. New Delhi calls the threat unjustified and unreasonable. A deal with Washington is possible, but diffusing the situation looks tricky. Far from being a winner in the U.S. president's global trade war, India is rapidly emerging as a big loser alongside China. Trump's desire to isolate the People's Republic - and its exporters routing goods through Southeast Asia - was initially expected to benefit India, which sent $87 billion of goods to the U.S. last year. His sudden cooling on Russia, though, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi's reluctance to open up his country's agriculture market out of a desire to protect millions of poor farmers, have put India in his firing line. India's economy can withstand Trump's aggressions, for now. Nomura, a Japanese bank, reckons the 25% U.S. tariff on imports from India might shave 20 basis points off its 6.2% GDP growth forecast for the country's current financial year. Sure, New Delhi argues its purchases of cheap Russian oil, which comprise 40% of its crude imports, are a "national compulsion" and keep global prices in check. But India can manage without it: at 2.1%, its consumer price inflation is at the lowest level since January 2019, so giving up the roughly $4 discount per barrel on Russian supplies would not cause too much domestic pain at current prices. Yet India has a lot more besides oil to lose from giving Russia the cold shoulder. The duo's longstanding relationship may be undergoing a managed decline, opens new tab as New Delhi diversifies its weapons supplies, but Moscow remains a reliable partner to India and relations with the country buttress its multipolar foreign policy. Trump's decision to work with Pakistan to develop its oil reserves, and his subsequent taunt that it perhaps will sell oil to neighbouring India one day, further underscore why New Delhi may always keep some distance from Washington. India can perhaps afford to wait and see what the U.S. agrees with China. Beijing has vowed to protect its energy sovereignty in response to similar U.S. threats over Russian oil purchases. That poses a major obstacle for Trump to strike any grand bargain with the world's second-largest economy. Ultimately the U.S. may see value in preserving a warm relationship with India as a counterbalance to China. The wait, however, will be awkward. Follow Una Galani on LinkedIn, opens new tab and X, opens new tab.
Reuters
6 minutes ago
- Reuters
Chinese government has 'final say' in Dalai Lama reincarnation, Tibetan official says
BEIJING, Aug 5 (Reuters) - The discovery of the next Dalai Lama will be carried out by the Chinese government, and not under the current Dalai Lama's directions, a Chinese Communist Party committee official for Tibet said on Tuesday. China considers the Nobel laureate Dalai Lama a separatist and wants to bring Tibetan Buddhismunder its control,, opens new tab but the Dalai Lama and his huge following have been obstacles to that ambition. At his 90th birthday celebration last month, he assured followers that he would be reincarnated, and a non-profit institution he has set up will have the sole authority to identify his reincarnation. But Gama Cedain, the deputy secretary of the Chinese Communist Party committee in Tibet, said the Dalai Lama's reincarnation would be found using a domestic search and approval by the central government. "The central government has the indisputable final say in the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama," he told reporters at a press conference about the socioeconomic development in Tibet. He said that was the creed devotees adhered to, and the government's process follows the strict religious rituals and historical customs of the reincarnation of living Buddhas. "The reincarnation has never been decided by the Dalai Lama himself," he said. The current Dalai Lama, 14th in the line of spiritual leaders for Tibetan Buddhism, has said his reincarnation will be born outside China and ruled out Beijing's role in choosing his successor. China installed a Tibetan Buddhist monk picked by Beijing as the faith's No. 2 leader, the Panchen Lama, three decades ago after a six-year-old chosen by the Dalai Lama for the position disappeared in 1995.
The Independent
36 minutes ago
- The Independent
Trump's clumsy nuclear rhetoric shows he still has no strategy to deal with Putin
US president Donald Trump claims to have ordered a redeployment of nuclear submarines in response to threatening language from Moscow. Predictably, the US and global media have reacted excitedly, without always stopping to consider what, if anything, has happened, and why. As with Trump's other comments on Russia, the vague statement raised more questions than answers. Trump claimed he ordered two nuclear submarines (without specifying whether that meant nuclear-armed or nuclear-powered) to be positioned 'in the appropriate regions' (without explaining why they would have been somewhere inappropriate to start with). All of which came in response to a taunt containing a reference to The Walking Dead and a laughing emoji on social media from Dmitry Medvedev, once president of Russia but now enjoying a public persona more akin to a court jester. Trump's secretary of state Marco Rubio seems confident that Medvedev is 'not a relevant player in Russian politics', and yet his trolling has supposedly triggered a change in American nuclear posture. As with so much else in Trumpworld, the explanation probably lies elsewhere. It's true that Trump's verbal outbursts criticising Moscow have become more frequent recently – and that this marks a startling turnaround from his earlier inclination to blame Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy for Russia having invaded his country. But despite the latest claims, there's still no indication that Trump is willing to follow words with meaningful action. The latest arbitrary deadline for Vladimir Putin to take unspecified action towards ending Russia's war on Ukraine, followed by an equally arbitrary bringing forward of the deadline, suggest there is no coherent plan for putting pressure on Moscow. Instead, when setting dates, Trump appears to be plucking random numbers from the air and then changing them with no warning, in the same manner as when setting the United States's global trade policy. With the submarine comment, Trump has discovered another means of appearing 'tough on Russia' without actually doing anything that would be of any concern to Moscow – and there are plenty of other reasons why he might be seeking headlines that suggest he is taking a firmer line with Putin. Namely, that Trump needs distractions at the moment. His best efforts to keep his relationship with sex offenders Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell out of the headlines, and prevent the release of any material from their criminal case that may implicate Trump personally, have been counterproductive. And the effects of his economic policies are starting to dawn on even those sections of the American public that still believe he has their best interests at heart. With prices rising rapidly amid uncertainty triggered by Trump's chaotic tariff policy, it is becoming harder to maintain upbeat messaging on the economy – and last week also saw the release of employment statistics so bad that Trump felt compelled to shoot the messenger who delivered them, by firing the head of the Bureau of Labour Statistics. This, and moving submarines in response to an insult from a Russian politician who throws them for a living, unfortunately fits Trump's style of governing through outbursts and rants in response to perceived slights more than through clear and considered policy. But whatever the reasons for that, the net effect is that once again, Trump has taken every possible step to pressure Russia short of actually doing something. In fact, he has succeeded in preventing action that Russia would dislike: Trump's notional deadline for Putin to do something successfully headed off an initiative by Senate Republicans to push through a package of secondary sanctions that would have caused genuine headaches for Moscow, not to mention a proposal for sanctions on China for supporting Russia's war. That's one reason among many why Russia felt the Trump submarine claim, which, if made by any other US president, would have been a significant and dramatic move, could be calmly ignored. Whatever Trump's latest verbal salvo at Moscow may be, there's one thing it isn't: a strategy for dealing with Russia, let alone a sensible or coherent one. Vladimir Putin and those around him will no doubt continue to watch Trump's moves closely; but perhaps as much out of curiosity as of concern as to what he will do next.
