India, Pakistan Battle for Global Sympathy After Border Truce
By , Kamran Haider, Dan Strumpf, and Swati Gupta
Save
Two weeks after pulling back from the brink of all-out war, India and Pakistan are now racing to win over global opinion.
Both sides are sending delegations to global capitals to influence international perception of the conflict, as tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals continue to simmer.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
10 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Carney and Zelenskyy speak ahead of Trump-Putin summit in Alaska
Prime Minister Mark Carney and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke by phone Monday, reaffirming their agreement that Ukraine must be a party to any discussions about a possible end to the war in that country. Speaking in advance of the Friday meeting in Alaska between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Carney and Zelenskyy welcomed Trump's leadership in working toward a lasting peace for Ukraine. "The two leaders underscored that decisions on the future of Ukraine must be made by Ukrainians [and] international borders cannot be changed by force," said a statement detailing the discussion that was released by the Prime Minister's Office. The statement also said Ukraine's allies must continue to keep pressure on Russia to end its aggression and that any peace deal must include a "robust and credible" security guarantee. Trump announced in a social media post on Friday that he would be meeting with Putin in Alaska on Aug. 15. Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, now holds nearly a fifth of the country. In addition to Crimea, which it seized in 2014, Russia has formally claimed the Ukrainian regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia as its own, although it controls only about 70 per cent of the last three. Russia also holds smaller pieces of territory in three other regions, while Ukraine says it holds a sliver of Russia's Kursk region. Zelenskyy could attend second meeting, says Trump "I am grateful for Canada's support for Ukraine and our people," Zelenskyy said in a social media post after speaking with Carney. "We agreed that no decisions concerning Ukraine's future and the security of our people can be made without Ukraine's participation." Zelenskyy expressed skepticism that Putin genuinely intends to end his invasion of Ukraine, saying it's obvious "the Russians simply want to buy time." The Ukrainian president said that until his country is invited to the negotiating table and Kyiv is given security guarantees, "sanctions against Russia must remain in force and be constantly strengthened." Trump told a White House news conference Monday that his Friday meeting with Putin will be a "feel-out meeting" to gauge whether the Russian president is really willing to make a deal. "So I'm going in to speak to Vladimir Putin, and I'm going to be telling him; 'you've got to end this war. You've got to end it,'" Trump told reporters. Trump also said a future meeting between himself and Putin could include Zelenskyy. He said he would speak to European leaders soon after his talks with Putin and that his goal was a speedy ceasefire in the bloody conflict.
New York Times
42 minutes ago
- New York Times
Trump Wields Tariffs as a Force in Diplomacy, to Questionable Effect
As President Trump pushes to end the war in Ukraine, he is using tariffs to try to persuade Russia to agree to a cease-fire that would halt its invasion. The economic tool is not often associated with war and peace. Mr. Trump said last month that Russia's trading partners could face 'very severe tariffs,' in what would be a roundabout way of trying to hurt Moscow. To show that he means business, Mr. Trump raised tariffs on Wednesday on imports from India to an extraordinary 50 percent, saying he was punishing the country for buying Russian oil. The taxes would be paid by American companies importing goods and would result in higher costs for consumers in the United States. An Aug. 8 deadline for Russia to agree to a cease-fire came and went, and Mr. Trump did not impose new tariffs on its trading partners. Instead, he announced plans to meet with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in Alaska on Friday. For Mr. Trump, tariffs are not just about raising revenue for the government or protecting American industries from foreign competition. They are a cudgel to try to get other countries to do as he wishes on matters that are entirely separate from trade, and to punish them when they do not. He has used or threatened them on everything from armed conflict to deportations to legal proceedings tied to his political grievances. Late last month, Mr. Trump raised tariffs on Brazilian goods to 50 percent, with a few exceptions, largely because of a coup-plot case in the country's Supreme Court against Jair Bolsonaro, the former right-wing president, whom Mr. Trump sees as an ally. Around that time, Mr. Trump threatened to impose 36 percent tariffs on Thailand and Cambodia if they did not halt their border war. American presidents have typically used financial sanctions targeting specific foreign companies to end certain channels of trade between countries, in hopes that pain changes a government's behavior. Sanctions have had mixed results at best. Tariffs used in diplomacy are somewhat different. Their aim is to make some or all of a nation's goods less competitive in the U.S. market, also with the end goal of causing pain to change a country's behavior (compelling India to stop buying Russian oil, for instance). Previous American presidents have tried to use the tariff threat in this manner, but not nearly to the degree that Mr. Trump has a half-year into his second term. He is betting that other countries care about access to the American market — he calls the United States 'a giant, beautiful store' and 'the biggest department store in history.' 'I put these in a mental framework that honestly has very little to do with trade and a lot more to do with coercive economic statecraft,' said Emma Ashford, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center who studies U.S. foreign policy. 'The tariffs that are used as leverage on some other issues are more like sanctions, in that they're leveraging U.S. economic power to some other policy end.' 'You could even see the use of tariffs this way as a continuation of the trend toward evermore draconian coercive economic measures by the U.S. in recent years' she added, citing sanctions and export controls as two of those measures. 'We keep using bigger and bigger economic guns when it becomes apparent that the smaller ones aren't achieving what we want.' Mr. Trump's threat of tariffs appears to have influenced other governments a couple times. One instance involved Colombia, which accepted U.S. military flights with deportees early this year, There was also the recent diplomacy between Cambodia and Thailand. But on larger challenges, Mr. Trump's threats have had no effect so far. Mr. Putin has continued to press his war against Ukraine despite the threats of further economic pain on Russia, which was subjected to heavy U.S.-led sanctions after its invasions of Ukraine in 2014 and 2022. And Indian officials have been defiant in the face of Mr. Trump's tariffs, saying they would continue to buy Russian oil. 'He doesn't want to do anything against Putin directly, so imposing tariffs on oil-buying countries is his preferred option right now,' said Fiona Hill, a senior director for Europe and Russia on the National Security Council during the first Trump administration. Even Mr. Trump has acknowledged the questionable value of the tactic: He told reporters on July 29 that new financial penalties on Russia 'may or may not affect them.' Sanctions are more effective at pushing a country to change its behavior than tariffs, said Edward Fishman, a former State Department official and current scholar at Columbia University who has written a new book on economic warfare. One reason is that tariffs aim to punish a country by hobbling its commercial competitiveness in the U.S. market. But the United States takes in only 13 percent of global imports, he said, so some nations targeted with tariffs might decide they can weather that pain. U.S. sanctions, on the other hand, can cut off entire channels of commerce because many companies cannot trade without access to a global financial system that the U.S. dollar underpins. (That said, many governments have weathered sanctions, even as the penalties pummel national economies and daily lives.) 'I'm personally skeptical of secondary tariffs as a weapon of economic warfare,' Mr. Fishman said. 'The United States as a destination for imports is not a choke point the way the dollar is. And it's a roundabout targeting action.' In addition, tariffs raise tensions between governments, as in the case of the United States and India, whose relationship had been improving until Mr. Trump's latest actions. And tariffs punish American companies and consumers, because U.S. companies paying the taxes generally pass on the costs to buyers, which can lead to inflation in the United States. Some American diplomats say they worry that the long-term effects of the tariffs, and how they will affect U.S. diplomacy and the global economy, have been overlooked in the State Department as a result of a recent purge that has emptied its ranks of economic, energy and other such subject-matter experts. The Trump administration is not the first to impose tariffs on nations for reasons unrelated to trade policy. During the Napoleonic Wars, the United States wielded tariffs against Britain and France for geopolitical reasons, Mr. Fishman said. And after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, he added, the Biden administration imposed tariffs on imports of Russian aluminum instead of sanctions on Russian aluminum companies, because American officials feared that prices would surge globally if those companies were forced out of the market. 'A sanction is a full cutoff,' Mr. Fishman said. 'Tariffs are a relatively weak tool of economic warfare.' But Mr. Trump has continued to try to use tariffs as leverage, perhaps because of his success with Colombia. Just days after he took office, Colombia turned back two American military aircraft carrying Colombian immigrants deported from the United States in late January. Mr. Trump responded by announcing new tariffs, sanctions and travel restrictions against the country, which has long been an important U.S. partner. Then President Gustavo Petro of Colombia announced retaliatory tariffs. 'You don't like our freedom, fine,' Mr. Petro said at the time. 'I do not shake hands with white enslavers.' By that night, they had reached an agreement. The White House claimed victory and said Mr. Petro would accept deportation flights. Later that month, Mr. Trump threatened to impose the penalty on Mexico and Canada unless they did more to stop the flow of migrants and fentanyl into the United States. He did not lay out exactly what the countries needed to do — he often keeps his demands vague so he can more easily declare a victory. When Mr. Trump postponed those tariffs, the White House claimed it had secured a series of concessions from both countries. Some of the actions though, including Canada's commitment to send more security personnel and technology to its southern border, had already been agreed to. 'President Trump has leaned on tariff threats to pressure some countries to take back more deportation flights, but oftentimes, these threats amount to no more than political theater,' said Andrea Flores, who directed border management for the National Security Council in the Biden White House. Perhaps Mr. Trump's most overtly political use of tariffs involves Brazil. Mr. Bolsonaro is accused of trying to carry out a plot to remain in power after losing the presidential election in 2022. Mr. Trump has demanded that Brazil drop the charges. That case echoes one the Justice Department brought against Mr. Trump on charges that he had conspired to overturn the 2020 U.S. election, which he lost to Joseph R. Biden Jr. The department asked a court to dismiss the case after Mr. Trump won the 2024 election, because of a Justice Department policy saying it is unconstitutional to pursue prosecutions against sitting presidents. 'Trump's secret weapon is doing what other leaders neither expect or would do themselves,' said Ricardo Zúniga, a former senior State Department official and U.S. consul general in São Paulo, Brazil. Although U.S. courts might eventually rule against Mr. Trump's use of emergency authorities to impose tariffs, Mr. Zúniga said many businesses around the world have already felt the economic toll. 'I've seen it in Brazil, where the tariffs and the tariff exemptions are disrupting trade in everything from coffee to beef to Brazilian-built transformers critical to U.S. data centers,' he said. 'And the fact is that President Trump himself will decide whether to tie the outcome of trade negotiations to Bolsonaro's trial, so companies and sectors are struggling to make their case with U.S. officials.' Lara Jakes contributed reporting from Rome.
Bloomberg
2 hours ago
- Bloomberg
Trump Downplays Expectations for Summit Deal With Putin
00:00 Normally in diplomacy, you would hold that back a trip to the United States. We all remember when Trump raised the prospect in his first term of the Taliban coming to Camp David, and there were a lot of us sitting around. Maybe the reason they didn't come was that's just so strategically stupid. Yeah. And now we're inviting the leader of a country that's invaded an ally not to sign an agreement, not because he's made major, major concessions just to feel each other out, according to the president earlier today. That's not the sort of thing that you do in sequential order. You start with the substance and then you get to the superficial stuff. Right. They should, I guess, in the traditional sense, be showing up with an agreement already in hand. Right. We're coming here to codify this agreement. Will there be other people in the room? Will this go on for hours? What do you expect? Well, we know from past meetings, even past telephone calls, Trump likes to go mano a mano with Putin, maybe a Russian translator in there, which means there are no American eyes or ears on that conversation. Concerning, Yes. Who will be in the room? Probably. Marco Rubio, not least of which because he holds like 11 different cabinet positions at the moment. Yes. But also on top of that, look, the question of Vladimir Zelinsky, we are talking about Ukraine, and yet Ukraine still has a question mark. You know, and it's interesting, J.D. Vance yesterday saying, well, we'll kind of see and work that out. No, that's something you work out before you extend the invitation to Putin. And the price of Putin getting to come to the U.S. is sitting at a table with Vladimir Zelenskiy. And the notion that they haven't worked these things out ahead of time is just really perplexing. He just said this morning that the next meeting would likely between be between Putin and Zelensky, as he saw it, or all three of them, because he'd be glad to show up and help to mediate this. He's approaching this as the man who wants the Nobel Peace Prize. Does that bring its own liability? Well, let me disabuse those around this town who are floating the idea that the Nobel Committee, a committee of Swedes, Norwegians who believe firmly in things like anti-colonialism, are going to give a guy who's threatening to colonize not one, not two, but multiple countries the peace prize. Because when we talk about peace, we're not just talking about, you know, this kind of superficial social post that Trump puts out there and claims that it's a peace deal. We're talking about real substantive peace deals. And, Joe, you and I have had conversations about this. But, you know, when we're involved in peace deals, there are chapters, there are whole volumes that are involved of, you know, borders as well as how exchanges of troops and and the whole confidence building measure. None of that is here with any of these deals. Well, in the meantime, Vladimir Zelensky is sitting in his office reading stories about freezing lines in place that we're going to hand over the Donbass and Crimea. And the president referred to these so-called land swaps. He was asked about this earlier today, Brett. Let's listen to what he said. The next meeting will be with Zelensky and Putin or Zelensky and Putin. To me, I'll be there if they need. But I want to have a meeting set up between the two leaders. I was a little bothered by the fact that Zelensky was saying, Well, I have to get constitutional approval. He's got approval to go into war and kill everybody, but he needs approval to do a land swap because there'll be some land swapping going on. And I know that through Russia and through conversations with everybody to the good for the good of Ukraine. Good stuff, Not bad stuff. Also some bad stuff for both. Some bad stuff. Land swapping. Are we talking about Donbas and Crimea in exchange for a sharp erasure of something very lopsided? What does he mean by swapping? Just to be clear, it is 2025. It is not 1825. Yeah. The president of the United States does not get to swap territories of other countries. That is why we had the Peace of Westphalia of 1638. It is critically important that Trump understand what he can and what he cannot negotiate away. And at the end of the day, not only Ukraine, but our European allies are not going to accept that Trump is rewarding somebody who invaded another country, that he is deciding what the borders of Ukraine will be. Ultimately, yes, it is up to the Ukrainian constitution. More importantly, it's up to the Ukrainian people to make that determination. Well, so far from the idea of rewarding Russia for its behavior, and that does seem to be the essence of the agreement that we have been talking about, at least in the past couple of days. By the way, there is an alternate European plan that we can get into as well that I'm not sure the president has a lot of interest in. But look, I'm going to ask you this and you might not want to answer it. A lot of the analysis recently has referred to Munich that the president is walking into the next Munich. Is that where your head is? I think it's worse in some it's worse. Yes, because in the sense that we face back in the run up to World War Two with Adolf Hitler, with the threat that he posed a clear and present danger. But what Putin does is actually, in many ways more nefarious, because he is yes, in some cases like in Ukraine, directly attacking a sovereign country, but in others he's undermining from inside. And that includes in the United Kingdom and other parts of Europe and here in the United States. That, again, is why it is so strange that you would invite Vladimir Putin to American territory while he is still actively working to undermine our institutions, our ideals, the borders of the United States. I mean, he I think it was somewhat of a Freudian slip today when Trump suggested he was going to Russia. I certainly hope that Alaskan territory American territory is not in the cards with these land swaps. But, you know, there was a time, I do have to say, at least in the Munich Agreement, there was a European and American consensus about the rights of certain countries, about international law. There is not currently. And that's what makes this moment, Joe, so dangerous. European plan rejecting this Russian proposal here to keep the eastern Donbas. There was a big meeting over the weekend calling for a diplomatic end here and protect Ukraine's interests. Does Donald Trump care what our European allies think? He suggested he'd give them a call and let him know what happened after this meeting. So here's the funny thing. TRUMP Now, you know, a good 200 days into his term is starting to realize, yes, you can bluster, you can bulldoze over our allies, but then it comes back to bite you in the rear end because they are not going to cooperate in other ways. And yes, he can certainly with Ursula von der Leyen and the European Union, try to impose his 15% tariffs, one way tariffs on the EU. But they, in this notion of reciprocity in international relations, are able to find ways to be less cooperative on fronts that we need them.
