Kashmir in the crossfire
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Al Jazeera
an hour ago
- Al Jazeera
Did Trump's tariff war force India and China to mend ties?
India and China have agreed to step up trade flows and resume direct flights in a major diplomatic breakthrough, as the two most populous nations try to rebuild ties damaged by a 2020 deadly border clash and amid US President Donald Trump's unpredictable foreign policy. The two rivals also agreed to advance talks on their disputed border during Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi's two-day visit to India. The rebuilding of India-China ties coincides with friction between New Delhi and Washington, following the recent imposition of steep tariffs on India by the Trump administration. So why did India and China decide to mend their ties, and what steps were taken to address their border dispute? What specific points were agreed? Discussions covered a range of issues related to withdrawing tens of thousands of troops that both countries have amassed along their Himalayan border, boosting investment and trade flows, hosting more bilateral events, and enhancing travel access. The Asian neighbours agreed to reopen several trading routes – namely the Lipulekh Pass, Shipki La Pass and Nathu La Pass. An expert group will also be established to explore 'early harvest' steps (i.e. mini-agreements that can be implemented quickly before the conclusion of a more complex deal) to improve border management, a move India had previously opposed. In the past, India was keen to avoid a situation where China secured partial gains up front, but where its territorial integrity concerns remained unresolved. India's opposition has accused the government of ceding territory to China. Elsewhere, China has reportedly agreed to address India's concerns over its export curbs on fertilisers, rare earth minerals and tunnel-boring machines, according to Indian media reports. But Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning, when asked about Indian media reports on the lifting of export controls, said she was not familiar with the media reports. 'As a matter of principle, China is willing to strengthen dialogue and cooperation with relevant countries and regions to jointly maintain the stability of the global production and supply chain,' she said in a media briefing on Wednesday. New Delhi and Beijing also agreed to resume direct flights between the two countries, enhance river-sharing data and drop certain visa restrictions for tourists, businesses and journalists. Who said what? During his two-day trip, Wang Yi held meetings with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and India's National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, encounters that will pave the way for Modi's first visit to China in seven years at the end of August. 'Stable, predictable, constructive ties between India and China will contribute significantly to regional as well as global peace and prosperity,' Modi posted on X after his meeting with Wang. Meanwhile, Doval said that China and India had achieved a 'new environment' of 'peace and tranquillity'. He added that 'the setbacks that we faced in the last few years were not in our interest', and 'delimitation and boundary affairs' had been discussed. A readout from China's Foreign Ministry said Wang told Doval that 'the stable and healthy development of China-India relations is in the fundamental interests of the two countries' people'. The two sides 'should enhance mutual trust through dialogues and expand cooperation', Wang said, and should aim for consensus in areas such as border control and demarcation negotiations. Looking ahead, Modi is scheduled to travel to China at the end of this month to take part in the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation – his first visit to the country since June 2018. Why did relations sour in the first place? Relations between the two countries plummeted in 2020 after security forces clashed along their Himalayan border. Four Chinese soldiers and 20 Indian soldiers were killed in the worst violence in decades, freezing high-level diplomatic relations. The chill in relations after the deadly Ladakh clash – the first fatal confrontation between India and China since 1975 – also affected trade and air travel, as both sides deployed tens of thousands of security forces in border areas. Following the border tensions, India imposed curbs on Chinese investments in the country. Months later, New Delhi banned dozens of Chinese apps, including TikTok, owned by China's ByteDance, citing security concerns. But despite the soaring tensions, the bilateral trade between the two countries did not see a drastic drop, and in fact, New Delhi's imports from Beijing have grown to more than $100bn from $65nb in the financial year 2020-2021 as the country's electronics and pharma industries heavily rely on raw materials from China. On Monday, Wang said, 'The setbacks we experienced in the past few years were not in the interest of the people of our two countries. We are heartened to see the stability that is now restored on the borders.' For his part, Modi emphasised the importance of maintaining peace and tranquillity on the border and reiterated India's commitment to a 'fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable resolution of the boundary question', his office said in a statement on Tuesday. Why did the two sides decide to mend ties? The geopolitical disruption caused by Donald Trump's trade wars has helped create an opening for Asia's leading and third-largest economies to try to mend their diplomatic and economic relations. Indeed, the improvement in ties has accelerated since Trump increased tariffs on both countries earlier this year – particularly India, which had been pursuing a closer relationship with the United States in a joint front against China. Moreover, India and the US have been haggling over free trade agreements for months, with Trump accusing India of denying access to American goods due to higher tariffs. China has also been locked in months-long trade negotiations with the US. China and India increased official visits and discussed relaxing some trade restrictions and easing the movement of citizens since Modi met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Kazan, Russia last October. In June, Beijing even allowed pilgrims from India to visit holy sites in Tibet while India issued tourist visas to Chinese nationals in a sign of improving ties. But Trump's decision to declare a 25 percent 'reciprocal' tariff on India in June over the country's imports of Russian oil – and his move a week later to raise it again to 50 percent – have hastened dramatic diplomatic realignment. Even the US's close allies – South Korea and Japan – have not been spared by Trump's tariffs. Top Trump officials have accused India of funding Russia's war in Ukraine, with US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Tuesday accusing India of 'profiteering'. But China's imports of Russian oil are even larger than India's. And on August 12, the US extended a tariff truce on Beijing for another 90 days – staving off triple-digit tariffs. In turn, New Delhi has accused Washington of double standards over its tariff policy. Suhasini Haidar, an Indian journalist writing in the newspaper The Hindu, said that the rationale behind the US sanctions on India is 'dubious'. 'The US has itself increased its trade with Russia since Trump came to power,' she wrote. US Treasury Secretary Bessent, however, has defended Washington's decision not to impose secondary sanctions against China, saying Beijing 'has a diversified input of their oil'. Beijing's import of Russian oil, he said, went from 13 percent to 16 percent while India's went from less than one percent to over 40 percent. Trump's claim that he secured a ceasefire between India and Pakistan has further caused anger in India, which has refused to give credit to the US president for the May 10 ceasefire that stopped the five-day war between the nuclear-armed neighbours. Trump's hosting of the Pakistan Army's General Asim Munir has not helped the cause, either. US-India relations have frayed despite Modi cultivating personal ties with Trump, particularly during his first term. The Indian prime minister was Trump's first guest in his second term in February, when he coined the slogan 'Make India Great Again' (MIGA), borrowing from Trump's 'Make America Great Again' (MAGA) base. 'MAGA plus MIGA becomes a mega partnership for prosperity,' Modi said. But Trump's repeated attacks on India have poured cold water on 'the partnership', with Indian foreign policy experts fearing the ties are headed towards uncharted territory. 'At risk is three decades of India's economic ascent, and its careful positioning as an emerging power, shaped in the shadow of US strategic backing,' wrote Sushant Singh, a lecturer in South Asian studies at Yale University, in the Financial Times. 'Trump has shredded India's road map; it could be replaced by strategic drift, realignment or eventual rapprochement.' The turbulence in India-US ties has forced New Delhi to repair ties with its adversary China, which supplies military equipment to Pakistan and took the side of Islamabad during the recent war. Amid Trump's trade war, New Delhi and Beijing have joined forces to improve trade and people-to-people contact. The new developments may also boost relations between members of the BRICS bloc – with India and China being the group's founding members, along with Brazil, Russia and South Africa. India and China will host the 2026 and 2027 BRICS summits, respectively. Trump has also railed against BRICS nations, warning the member nations against challenging the US dollar.
Al Jazeera
4 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
Is Ukraine closer to peace after Trump's meetings with Zelenskyy, Putin?
Kyiv, Ukraine – With unprecedented backing from European leaders, Ukraine seems – in theory – to have secured 'very good protection' from the United States. 'We will give them very good protection, very good security,' US President Donald Trump said on Monday, sitting next to his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy and seven helmsmen from Europe. The meeting followed the Trump-hosted summit in Alaska with Russian President Vladimir Putin, which yielded no ceasefire. Many questions loom about how the collective Western aegis will help Kyiv navigate a peace deal with Moscow and shield it from the resumption of hostilities. A Ukrainian military analyst is sceptical about the real outcome of Monday's gathering. 'No decision has been made from the viewpoint of security guarantees, the supply of arms and [the deployment of Western] troops,' Lt Gen Ihor Romanenko, former deputy head of Ukraine's general staff of armed forces, told Al Jazeera. No 'direct conflict' with Russia The security guarantees are vague, undefined and will most likely be 'relative', according to Volodymyr Fesenko, head of the Kyiv-based Penta think tank. A mutual assistance deal with Washington and Brussels guaranteeing their rapid military intervention if Russia attacks Ukraine 'is hardly possible', he told Al Jazeera. 'Because we're talking about Russia with nuclear weapons, and Americans along with Europeans will avoid the risk of a direct military conflict with Russia,' he said. What may secure the guarantees is a Trump-backed deal that removes the fiscal burden of protecting Ukraine from US taxpayers, provides US arms manufacturers with hefty profits and makes Europe foot the bill. Zelenskyy said he agreed to the future supply of US-made weapons worth $100bn that Europe will pay for and will take years to manufacture and deliver. The new mechanism has been dubbed PURL – the Prioritised Ukraine's Requirements List – and Berlin has already agreed to contribute $500bn for military equipment and munitions. 'Unacceptable deployment' A 'symbolic guarantee' could be the deployment of a European peacekeeping contingent to Ukraine that could become a containment factor, Fesenko said. 'But Russia is categorically against it, and that would be a problem at further talks,' he added. Moscow bristled at the prospect, calling it the 'reanimation of an obviously unviable idea' that is 'categorically unacceptable' in any format, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Tuesday. Another possible guarantee could be Kyiv's strategic partnership deal with Washington, modelled after similar accords with Egypt or South Korea, Fesenko said. Unlike the February debacle at the White House, when Trump and his Vice President JD Vance insulted Zelenskyy for being 'ungrateful' and briefly halted US military aid, this time Trump seems to have warmed up to the Ukrainian leader. 'The White House didn't want a scandal, it wanted an accord, constructive decisions,' Fesenko said. Zelenskyy also changed his ways around Trump; instead of his trademark military fatigues, on Monday he wore official attire – a black suit – and showered the host with 'thank yous'. He also held his ground – literally and metaphorically – by not agreeing to cede the eastern Donbas region that Putin demands as a precondition for freezing the front line in other regions. Zelenskyy 'managed to find an ideal balance between the principled defence of his main points, including the matter of ceding territories to Russia', Fesenko said. Controlling the exports Some analysts suggest that while providing Ukraine with funds, arms and diplomatic support, the European Union failed to curb crucial military exports to Russia. 'It didn't do the only thing that seriously threatened Russia's military machine from Europe, namely, it didn't take any real steps to limit the export of equipment, materials and tools for military industries to Russia,' Nikolay Mitrokhin of Germany's Bremen University told Al Jazeera. The war revealed Russia's technological disadvantage: A lack of machine tools and electronics for its advanced weaponry, observers have said. Moscow has ramped up the purchase of such tools and chips, mostly through former Soviet republics such as Kyrgyzstan. The EU could have easily facilitated a system of checking the final destination of these exports and imposing colossal fines on the manufacturers and exporters who allowed them to reach Russia, Mitrokhin said. 'Russia could have hardly found an adequate replacement in China or other nations, especially during the war's first stage,' he said. Focusing on China Trump's seemingly abrupt about-face regarding a peace settlement in Ukraine could actually be rooted in Washington's bigger geopolitical strategy. The Russian-Ukrainian war has cost the White House hundreds of billions of dollars and rocked its relationship with the Kremlin. But Washington's main geopolitical rival is Beijing, not Moscow, and Trump is reluctant to spend hundreds of billions more to deter Russia, analysts said. 'That's the money that can be invested in the re-industrialisation of the United States that is of paramount importance in the context of countering China,' Kyiv-based analyst Aleksey Kushch told Al Jazeera. The White House does not want to bet its entire geopolitical potential on a nuclear escalation with Russia the way it did during the Cold War. China reaped enormous geopolitical gains from the Cold War escalation after US former President Richard Nixon's groundbreaking 1972 visit to Beijing and Washington's subsequent push to invest in China's industrialisation. 'China always wins in case of a confrontation between the US and Russia,' Kushch said. Therefore, Trump needs the Russian-Ukrainian war to be over so that Washington can focus on containing China, he added. Putin's 'hoodlum mindset' The peace settlement and security guarantees are complicated by the fundamental difference between the way the West and Russia see the war, a Ukrainian war veteran said. While Western politicians see any conflict as beneficial or detrimental to their nations' interests, Putin has the mindset of a hoodlum who always wants to look tough, said Yuri Bohdanchenko, who lost his right leg after stepping on a Russian landmine in the southern region of Kherson in 2023. 'Putin thought that conquering us would be easy, but when he faced so much resistance, he didn't stop because he didn't want the world to consider him weak,' he told Al Jazeera. Putin snubs the skyrocketing death toll and Russia's deepening economic degradation – and understands that the war's end threatens his grip on power, Bohdanchenko said. 'Fighting is cheap, considering the [high] oil prices and the propaganda effect at home, when he can use the war as an excuse to purge anyone who dares say a word against him, his people and the corruption they breed,' he said.
Al Jazeera
5 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
Israel to call up 60,000 reservists in plan to expand war, seize Gaza City
Israel will call up 60,000 reservists in the coming weeks as it pushes forward with a plan to seize Gaza City, the military has said, even as mediators pursue efforts to secure a ceasefire in the 22-month war. The military said on Wednesday that Defence Minister Israel Katz approved plans to begin operations in some of Gaza's most densely populated areas, and that it would call up 60,000 reservists and lengthen the service of an additional 20,000 reservists. The announcement comes as human rights groups warn that a humanitarian crisis could worsen in Gaza, where most residents have been displaced multiple times, neighbourhoods lie in ruins, and starvation deaths continue to rise amid the threat of widescale famine. An Israeli military official told journalists that the new phase of combat would involve 'a gradual precise and targeted operation in and around Gaza City,' including some areas where forces had not previously operated. The official said the military had already begun operating in the neighbourhoods of Zeitoun and Jabalia as part of the initial stages. Al Jazeera's Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from central Gaza, said residents are bracing for the worst as Israel pursues its plan to seize Gaza's largest city, in an operation that could displace hundreds of thousands of people to concentration zones in the south of the territory. Abu Azzoum said Israeli artillery has flattened rows of homes in eastern Gaza City as attacks intensified across densely populated areas. 'Last night was completely sleepless as Israeli drones and warplanes filled the skies, attacking and destroying homes and makeshift camps,' Abu Azzoum said. He also described how a father in al-Mawasi, an Israeli-designated so-called safe zone in southern Gaza, lost his children in an overnight strike. 'He told us his children were sleeping peacefully when the Israeli missile tore through the tent and ripped their bodies apart.' At least 35 Palestinians, including 10 people seeking aid, were killed in Israeli attacks on Wednesday, according to medical sources. Mediation efforts Israel's plan to escalate its assault coincides with renewed mediation efforts led by Qatar and Egypt, with backing from the United States. The latest framework calls for a 60-day truce, a staggered exchange of captives and Palestinian prisoners, and expanded aid access. While Qatar said the proposal was 'almost identical' to a version Israel had previously accepted, Egypt stressed that 'the ball is now in its (Israel's) court.' Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not publicly commented on the proposal. Last week, he insisted any deal must ensure 'all the hostages are released at once and according to our conditions for ending the war'. Senior Hamas official Mahmoud Mardawi said his movement 'opened the door wide to the possibility of reaching an agreement, but the question remains whether Netanyahu will once again close it, as he has done in the past'. The truce push comes amid mounting international criticism of Israel's conduct in the war and growing domestic pressure on Netanyahu. The Palestinian Ministry of Health has said at least 62,064 Palestinians have been killed since Israel's war on Gaza started on October 7, 2023, most of them civilians. The United Nations regards the ministry's figures as credible.
