India relies on the weak oversight of developing countries that make up the bulk of its exports – that’s how it can continue to push substandard and often deadly medicines there. — Bloomberg
FOR a nation that seeks to claim the mantle of “pharmacy to the world,” India is scandalously short on regulatory oversight.
In the last six months, its generic cough syrups have killed dozens of children, its eye drops have caused blindness and its chemotherapy drugs have been contaminated.
The children who died – mostly under the age of five years – were given Indian-made over-the-counter products contaminated with industrial solvents and antifreeze agents that are fatal in even small amounts.
The eye drops that contained extensively drug-resistant bacteria? So far 68 patients across 16 US states have been affected. Three people died, several had to have their eyeballs removed, some went blind, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention reported on March 21.
The Indian company, Global Pharma Healthcare, issued a voluntary nationwide recall for the drops. India is the largest provider of generic medicines, producing 20% of the world’s supply, according to the government’s Economic Survey.
Its US$50bil (RM220bil) drug-manufacturing industry exports medicines to over 200 nations and makes 60% of all vaccines. It boasts “the highest number” of US Food and Drug Administration or FDA-compliant plants outside America, and indeed, some of its generic pharmaceutical companies produce high-quality medicines.
That may well provide consumers with a level of comfort, but history suggests it is unwise to trust that feeling.
The latest drug recalls just add to a long line of scandals that have tainted the sector.
In 2013, a US subsidiary of major Indian drug manufacturer Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd pleaded guilty to US federal criminal charges and agreed to pay US$500mil (RM2.2bil) lion for selling adulterated generic drugs, fabricating data, and committing fraud. Serious flaws in the FDA compliance regime allowed these breaches to go undiscovered, until a years-long investigation laid bare the endemic corruption.
A generic drug made in India and modelled on Lipitor sold in the US to treat high cholesterol, for example, was contaminated with shards of blue glass, as journalist Katherine Eban documented in her book, Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom. Her book draws in part on the experience of whistleblower Dinesh Thakur, who worked at Ranbaxy.
You would think such a damning indictment would prompt India to develop a safer, better pharmaceutical oversight regime. Think again.
The systemic fraud exposed by the investigation – where data was routinely falsified to fool inspectors, increase production and maximise profit – did not result in a regulatory overhaul.
Still, a two-day “brainstorming session” held in February appeared to acknowledge the system’s inherent weaknesses, with Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya telling participants India needed to “move from generic to quality-generic drugs.”
Discussions involved “how to make the country’s drugs regulatory systems transparent, predictable and verifiable,” according to a health ministry media release.
Consumers shouldn’t hold their breath, though. A national law on drug recalls has been under discussion since 1976 without resolution, and the government – at least publicly –remains in denial: Since the Ranbaxy scandal, Thakur has campaigned for the reform of India’s main regulator, the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation, and, with lawyer T. Prashant Reddy, has written his own book, The Truth Pill: The Myth of Drug Regulation in India, which was published in October.
They note that adulterated Indian drugs aren’t just killing children in developing-world export markets like Gambia and Uzbekistan. They’re also killing children at home: In 2019, at least 11 infants died in the state of Jammu because of cough syrup containing diethylene glycol.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) sent alerts in October and January, asking for the cough medicine to be removed from the shelves. (It also issued a warning last year for cough syrups made by four Indonesian manufacturers sold in that country, where 203 children died in similar circumstances.)
Maiden Pharmaceuticals, whose medicines were sold in Gambia and linked by the WHO to the deaths of at least 70 children, has denied wrongdoing. And India’s regulator rejected the WHO’s findings, saying no toxic substances had been found in samples taken from Maiden’s plant.
It shouldn’t have taken more deaths for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration to act. The red flags have been there for years. What’s lacking is political will, and transparency. The FDA publishes different reviews of new drug applications on its website, along with detailed notes.
So why does contamination with such deadly substances occur so regularly?
“The simple answer is that Indian pharmaceutical companies quite often fail to test either the raw materials or the final formulation before shipping it to market,” Thakur said.
India relies on the weak oversight of developing countries that make up the bulk of its exports – that’s how it can continue to push substandard and often deadly medicines there.
In the absence of a global framework for pharmaceutical safety, what can be done to make the generic drugs that consumers around the world have come to rely on safer and effective?
For a start, the WHO’s prequalification programme, which facilitates the purchase of billions of dollars’ worth of medicines through international agencies such as Unicef, must be overhauled. Then there’s the question of holding these companies to account for the harm they cause inside and outside India via legal avenues and victims’ compensation. — Bloomberg
- Ruth Pollard is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. The views expressed here are the writer’s own.
Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire with Michael Hudson
https://youtu.be/NK0ls5hV_5Y
The Rise and Fall of Great Powers? America, China, and the Global Order
When the meek are weak, they suffer because they must. But when the strong are insecure, that is when war begins.
AS tensions over the Taiwan Strait mount, everyone needs to think through whether war is inevitable.
Leon Trotsky once said: “You may not be interested in war but war is interested in you.”
And if we slip into war by what World War I historian Barbara Tuchman called the “March of Folly”, can the great powers step back from mutual nuclear annihilation?
When the world’s unipolar power incurred more pandemic deaths (at last count 752,000) and got defeated in Afghanistan by tribal warriors, no one should be surprised to ask whether America (and by extension Western civilisation) is in a decline.
The prestigious US magazine Foreign Affairs devoted three issues this year to: “Can America Recover?”, “Decline and Fall – Can America ever Lead Again?” and “Can China Keep Rising?”
For those reading the endless barrage of invectives against America’s rivals, it certainly feels like the Cold War has returned with a vengeance.
However, for Greta Thunberg and fellow climate activists, surely the world leaders’ priority is to work together to address our looming climate disaster.
Why are alphas fighting in a burning planet? Shouldn’t we call “time out” to see how to address collectively the urgent and existential issues of human and planetary distress?
Next month, the World Economic Forum is meeting in Dubai with an agenda to move from a Great Reset to a Grand Narrative Initiative “to shape the contours of a more prosperous and inclusive future for humanity that is also more respectful of nature.”
Grand Narrative may sound like a media story but the reality is that the masses are unlikely to buy an elite-driven dream until they are part of the conversation.
Take Harvard historian Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilisations” narrative. Written in 1996, Huntington seemed prescient in predicting the clash between Western civilisation and the rest, namely, Sinic, Japanese, Hindu, Islamic and Latin American.
He asked poignantly: “The central theme for the West is whether, quite apart from our external challenges, it is capable of stopping and reversing the internal process of decay. Can the West renew itself or will sustained internal rot simply accelerate its end and/or subordination to other economically and demographically more dynamic civilisations?”
Huntington basically reflected the worry of British historian Arnold Toynbee (18891975) that since civilisations are born out of primitive societies, the key is whether the elites can respond effectively to new challenges, internal or external.
Toynbee saw clearer than other Western historians like Gibbon (Decline and Fall of Roman Empire) that collapses are not necessarily due to barbarian invasions but whether the ruling elite can overcome their own greed or interests to address the new challenges.
In pure economic, financial, technology and military terms, few question that the West remains superior in almost all aspects, except in population numbers.
According to the Maddison projections of population and GDP, the rich countries (essentially Western Europe, plus Western offshoots (the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) and Japan would be 947 million people and 36.3% of world GDP by 2030, whereas Asia (China, India and other parts of Asia) would have a population of 4.7 billion and 49.6% of GDP.
This reverses the 2003 position when the West (including Japan) accounted for half of world GDP, compared with one-third for Asia.
The dramatic reversal is due to the rise of China, India and the rest of Asia to higher-middle-income levels by 2030, mainly through trade and catch-up in technology.
In the coming decades, roughly one billion rich West must contend with the rising powers of China (1.4 billion), India (1.3 billion) and Islamic countries (1+ billion), which have cultures and ideologies very different from the West.
If the planet heats up as expected, expect more Latin Americans, Africans and Middle East poor arriving on the West’s borders to migrate.
At the same time, with the American demonisation of Russia and China pushing them closer together, the United States is confronting at least three fronts (including the Middle East) amid a fractious domestic arena, where political polarisation prevents policy cohesion and continuity.
This current situation reminds Islamic countries following their great historian Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406 AD) of the cycle of dynastic and empires that Islam went through.
When the social cohesion or bonds (asabiya) is strong, there is state legitimacy and empires rise. When it is weak, dynasties fall and empires are lost.
After the Jan 6, 2020 insurrection in Washington DC, many are inclined to believe that fratricidal tribalism is happening now inside America.
Similarly, Chinese macro-historians Sima Qian (Records of the Grand Historian, 146-86 BC) and Sima Guang (Comprehensive Mirror for Governance, 1019-1086 AD) also recorded that empires fall not so much from external invasion but internal decay.
In Yale, historian (Rise and Fall of Great Powers) Paul Kennedy’s terminology has the United States arrived at the point of “imperial over-reach”, when the country’s global ambitions and responsibilities exceed its financial and industrial capacity.
After all, the US government debt has reached as high as the end of World War II level without even starting World War III.
But all historians know that rise, decline or fall is never pre-ordained. The past is not a scientific linear predictor of the future. The unipolar order has weakened, without any grand bargain between the great powers on what the new order should even begin to look like.
Any grand bargain requires the incumbent hegemon to admit that there are equals and peers in power that want the rules of the game reset from the old order.
This does not mean that anyone will replace the United States soon because everyone wants to buy time to set their own house in order after the pandemic.
In short, before any Grand Narrative, we need a whole series of conversations with all sides, from the weakest to the most powerful, on what individually and collectively the post-pandemic order should look like.
There can never be one Grand Narrative by the elites until there are enough dialogues between the many.
When the meek are weak, they suffer because they must. But when the strong are insecure, that is when war begins.
By ANDREW SHENG. Andrew Sheng writes on global issues from an Asian perspective. The views expressed here are the writer’s own.
MAN and nature are running out of time. That’s the core message of the UN Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change ...
Moral vacuum at the heart of modernity, now embodied in US laws!
` In short, historically it was the Church that gave the moral blessing
for colonisation, slavery and genocide during the Age of Globalisation.
The tragedy is that the Doctrine of Discovery is now embodied in US
laws.
South-East Asian Nations cautions over AUKUS Pact | WION USA Direct | Latest World English News
https://youtu.be/69ilKe8KFAg
ASEAN: Concerned Over AUKUS Alliance! QUAD Sidelined?
https://youtu.be/ezOKGzAHLGo
Power Crunch Is Just the First Step!
The entry of the new trilateral defence pact in the asia-pacific region has divided South-East Asian countries and negated the quest for a zone of peace, freedom and neutrality.
AUSTRALIA’S moniker of “deputy sheriff” is back in circulation again with last week’s announcement of the Aukus trilateral military alliance involving the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia.
The agreement, under which the US and the UK would provide Australia the technology to build nuclear-powered submarines for the first time, was declared in a joint virtual press conference by US President Joe Biden, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Australian PM Scott Morrison on Sept 15.
The three Anglo Saxon nations declared that the new deal is meant to protect and defend shared interests in the Indo-pacific amid “regional security concerns which had grown significantly”.
The epithet “deputy sheriff of the US” first gained infamy 22 years ago when then Australian PM John Howard used it in an interview to describe the country’s projected role in regional peacekeeping.
In an interview with The Bulletin magazine, he defined Australia as a medium-sized, economically strong regional power, “acting in a deputy role to the US in maintaining peace”.
He also said Australia had a responsibility within its region to do things “above and beyond”, bringing into play its unique characteristics as a Western country in Asia.
The remarks led to both ridicule at home and diplomatic backlash from regional leaders who rebuked
Australia for taking orders from the United States while being geographically closer to Asia. History repeats itself often, and Australia’s partnership in Aukus has brought the focus back on that lackey image.
Besides drawing indignation from China, which condemned the deal as “extremely irresponsible, narrowminded and severely damaging regional peace”, Aukus – the abbreviation representing the initials of the three countries – has also ruffled feathers within Asean and divided the 10-member grouping.
Based on the reactions over the past few days, two camps have emerged. Malaysia and Indonesia are clearly opposed to it on the grounds that it would unsettle the region. Thailand, a traditional US ally which has a close economic relationship with China, is also of the view that the security pact would undermine stability.
On the opposite side, the Philippines has taken a totally contrary stand. It has declared support, with its foreign minister Teodoro Locsin arguing that Aukus would address the imbalance in the forces available to the Asean member states and that the enhancement of Australia’s military capacity would be beneficial in the long term.
Vietnam, which recently hosted US vice-president Kamala Harris, has not commented on the pact although its spokesperson Le Thi Thu Hang offered this ambiguous response: “All countries strive for the same goal.”
Meanwhile, Singapore Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan has stated that the city state is “not unduly anxious” about the new strategic alliance because of its longstanding relationship with the three countries.
The four other countries in the grouping have been largely silent on the issue.
Malaysia was swift and forthright in making its position clear. Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob warned that Aukus would spark a nuclear arms race and provoke other powers to act more aggressively in the region, especially in the South China Sea.
In his phone call to Morrison, he also raised the importance of abiding by existing positions on nuclearpowered submarines operating in Malaysia’s waters, including rules under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982 (UNCLOS) and the Southeast Asian Nuclear-weapon-free Zone Treaty (SEANWFZ).
The questions being asked now are: How will China react to Aukus? Will it intensify the arms technology race in the region by increasing military expenditure for its navy or create more missile launch facilities, also known as underground missile silos, for the storage and launching of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMS)?
That is what is being predicted by the hawks in the US military establishment, who have been consistently exaggerating China’s supposed military threat.
Among the talk is that China would boost the number of missile silos to 100 over the next two decades. For the record, the US already has at least 450 such facilities.
It is no secret that China has been building up its navy although it is still a long way from matching the marine power of the United States or the United Kingdom with just two aircraft carriers and a third still under construction. In comparison, the United States has 11 aircraft carriers and the United Kingdom two, but only one has been commissioned.
The US has 72 submarines – all nuclear-powered – compared with China’s 56, out of which only six are nuclear-powered.
With the entry of this newfangled military pact, Asean nations are now caught in a quandary. The quest for a Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality in South-east Asia (Zopfan) declared on Nov 27, 1971, when the world was in the midst of a Cold War between the US and its Western allies and the USSR, looks like a distant dream today.
Zopfan was mainly aimed at preventing the world’s big powers from competing for influence and military prowess in the region.
The concept was inspired by the UN’S principles of respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states, abstention from threat or use of force, peaceful settlement of international disputes, equal rights and self-determination, and non-interference in the affairs of member states.
But as Dr Laura Southgate, a specialist in South-east Asian regional security and international relations, highlighted in a recent article in The Diplomat, Aukus has clearly exposed Asean’s lack of cohesion.
As she put it, driven by different threat perceptions and geo-strategic interests, it had become very difficult for Asean member nations to speak with one voice, although many states hope to maintain a balance between China and the US and its allies.
Media consultant M. Veera Pandiyan likes this observation by Niccolò Machiavelli: “Wars begin when you will, but they do not end when you please.” The views expressed here are the writer’s own.
Indo-Pacific: AUKUS alliance causes anger in France and EU | DW News
https://youtu.be/8WpwHJV6TG4
China and France criticise UK-US-Australia submarine pact
A Royal Australian Navy submarine is seen during a drill with the Indian Navy in Darwin on September 5. Australia is buying a fleet of nuclear submarines as part of a new defence pact. Photo: TNS
The new US security pact with Australia and Britain shows Biden’s approach in building overlapping alliances and partnerships in dealing with its China challenge
THE empire strikes back. So it seemed as United States President Joe Biden announced recently at a press conference attended virtually by Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his British counterpart Boris Johnson, the conclusion of a new military and security agreement between their three nations.
The agreement smacks of the old “Anglo” arrangements made a century ago between what used to be called the “Mother Country” and two of her major English-speaking siblings. And President Biden’s jovial reference during the latest press conference to the Australian Premier as “that fellow Down Under” only heightened the “retro” feel of the entire enterprise.
But appearances can be deceiving, and what may look and sound like a blast from the past could well turn out to be a major pointer of the world of tomorrow. For there is little doubt that the new Aukus arrangement – as this pact is rather ungainly called – is already being rated as a fundamental step change in Asian and, perhaps, even global security structures.
Professor Rory Metcalf of the Australian National University and one of his country’s most prominent strategic experts, is not a man known to exaggerate. But on this occasion, no exaggeration seemed too much: Australia, he wrote after the Aukus deal was announced, “has crossed a strategic Rubicon, bitten the bullet, nailed its colours to the mast”. In short, no expression, however grand or over-used, is out of place in expressing the significance of the new deal.
French fury over subs deal
Following the announcement, most of the attention concentrated on the impact of the Aukus agreement on Australia’s existing contract with France for the delivery of a new generation of conventional, diesel electric powered submarines. That deal has been cancelled and will be replaced with the supply of nuclear-powered submarines based on Us-developed technology.
The French were predictably apoplectic at the loss of a contract for the construction of 12 Barracuda submarines, a mega deal worth at least Us$88bil in today’s prices, and a critical part of France’s struggle to maintain an indigenous naval industry.
Officials in Paris were particularly indignant about being kept in the dark by the Australians about their negotiations for a nuclear submarine replacement deal. French Foreign Minister Jean-yves Le Drian called the entire episode a “stab in the back”; junior politicians in Paris have used even more colourful language, and French officials have been steeling themselves for a prolonged legal battle with Australia over what they claim is a broken contract.
As is often the case with military deals which contain many confidential clauses, the conclusion may well be that both sides to the dispute are right.
The French may be correct to point out that Australia could have gone for the purchase of nuclear submarines back in 2016, when the initial deal was signed. It was Canberra that insisted on the diesel variety partly because the anti-nuclear mood was strong among Australians then, and one of the chief attractions of picking France’s Barracuda submarines at that time was precisely the fact that the submarines could be switched from diesel to nuclear power. So, it looks odd that the Australians are now ditching a French contract by arguing that it does not offer them the technology which they could have had from the start, but rejected.
However, the Australians may also be right in claiming that the French submarine project is both behind schedule and more than double the initial budget, and that the promises initially made by Paris to transfer 90% of the work to shipyards in Adelaide were subsequently whittled down to not more than half of the construction capacity, thereby failing to create the national Australian submarine manufacturing capability which Canberra craved.
But all these arguments, although weighty, are marginal. For what persuaded the Australian government to go for the deal was the unique access it offers to the technology which no other nation has, apart from the US and the United Kingdom.
Only six nations in the world have nuclear-powered submarines: Britain, China, France, India, Russia and the US. The Americans have never shared their technology with any other country apart from Britain, and even that technology-sharing deal was concluded back in the late 1950s.
There is no question, therefore, about the significance of the latest agreement for Australia. A senior American official who briefed the media about the Aukus deal on condition of anonymity underlined the “very rare” nature of the arrangement and the “extremely sensitive” technology that will be shared.
“This is, frankly, an exception to our policy in many respects. I do not anticipate that this will be undertaken in any other circumstances going forward; we view this as a one-off,” he told journalists.
The French were wondering why they were not offered a part in one shape or another in this Australia-britain-us triumvirate. The answer is quite simple and, of course, fully known in Paris.
The French have spent decades trying to develop technologies which are independent from the US and offered as alternatives to American platforms. President Emmanuel Macron uses every opportunity to urge the rest of Europe to develop “strategic autonomy” from the US. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that the Americans are taking France at its word and propose to respect French “autonomy” by excluding it from sensitive military projects.
The Five Eyes
In reality, the Aukus deal builds on almost 80 years of intelligence cooperation within the so-called Five Eyes arrangement in which the Australians, Brits and Americans are also joined by New Zealanders and Canadians. The unique flow of classified information between them served as not only the foundation for the current deal, but also the basis for common threat assessment.
Australia has decided that it needs nuclear-powered submarines because they are stealthier and can endure far longer periods submerged, but also because the submarine deal is a curtain-raiser to something far bigger: the development and transfer of technology with the Americans and British involving a variety of other fields, including cyber, artificial intelligence and quantum technology.
Furthermore, senior US officials are now talking about setting up “a new architecture of meetings and engagements” between relevant defence and technology teams from the three countries which will not only identify joint areas of research and development, but also promote “deeper interoperability” across the entire spectrum of a future battlefield. This is, to all intents and purposes, a new alliance.
And the longer-term political ramifications are just as substantial.
In a 30-minute phone call on Wednesday, the French and US presidents agreed to try to find a way forward and will meet in Europe at the end of next month.
But there is no doubt that the conclusion of the Aukus deal marginalises Europe. The Europeans have spent the past 18 months proclaiming their desire to elaborate a new policy towards the Indopacific region, and particularly towards China, one which will supposedly entail both a “critical engagement with China” and a friendly engagement with the US.
Yet when the chips were down, the only European partner the US was interested in enlisting was Britain. The fact that the announcement of the Aukus deal came literally hours before the European Union unveiled its own Asia policy paper only added to the continent’s sense of marginalisation.
The deal with Australia is also a huge boon for British PM Johnson. He was castigated for pulling Britain out of the EU, something which supposedly made his country irrelevant. But the Aukus pact seems to confirm Johnson’s claims that out of the EU, the Brits have plenty of global engagement alternatives. The deal with Australia also demolishes the argument that the Johnson government is not taken seriously in Washington.
The Aukus deal also ensures that Britain’s existing intelligence and technology cooperation links with the US are now being recast as part of a global effort to keep up with the perceived Chinese threat, a useful advantage for the British, who often fretted that, with the old confrontation against Russia now less important, the US would lose interest in cooperation with them.
America’s China strategy
But the most significant aspect is what the Aukus deal tells us about America’s long-term strategy on China.
For years, the discussion in many world capitals was about the feasibility of creating a broad, global Us-led coalition to contain China, one which includes most Asian countries, and mimics the Nato alliance in Europe during the Cold War. But that was never feasible in Asia, and probably was never even considered in Washington.
Instead, what President Biden is seeking to promote is several more restricted alliance and partnership arrangements, some overlapping and some complementing each other. The Quad is one such arrangement, the Aukus another, and there will be others in the offing.
The approach has the advantage of enhancing the existing hub-andspokes arrangements whereby the US is crucial to every single regional arrangement but is not presiding over a uniform region-wide alliance.
The overlapping nature of these arrangements is intended to increase the cost which China may have to pay in any future confrontation, but at the same time does not isolate the Chinese or condemn the region to a Cold War-style confrontation. Still, the Aukus military pact is not without its own potential difficulties.
The fact that it is seen as a public rebuff of France and of the EU is decidedly unhelpful. The US needs EU cooperation in Asia, and particularly French cooperation. Next to the British, the French have the most capable European military force, and the only one apart from the British with true long-range expeditionary capabilities. France is also a Pacific power: It has two million citizens in the region.
So, urgent steps must be taken to include France in any future regional projects.
Because of its privileged and exclusive nature, the Aukus deal can also create tensions with other US allies such as Japan and South Korea, which may wish to get similar technology-sharing deals.
So, it’s better if, after the initial publicity splash, the Aukus copies the example of America’s nuclear submarines and dives into the depth of secrecy, never to be talked of again. Most of its added value is by working behind the scenes.
There will also be political difficulties. Critics in Australia will claim that their country is losing its independence by getting too close to the US. And critics in Britain – including former prime minister Theresa May – are already warning that the Aukus deal makes the British too dependent on US policy towards China, with potentially grave consequences.
Still, none of this detracts from the conclusion that, in seeking to counter China, the US has lost none of its ability to innovate and surprise. And decision-makers in Beijing would be well advised to reflect on how their own actions of condemning Australia, boycotting Australian goods and, more recently, presenting a set of humiliating conditions to the Australians as a precondition for the restoration of normal relations have contributed to the creation of the Aukus alliance.
Far from achieving what Beijing would regard as Canberra’s “good behaviour”, the pressures have resulted in an Australia which will be better armed and more closely aligned with the US, precisely the outcome China sought to avoid.
Jonathan Eyal is the Europe correspondent at The Straits Times, a member of the Asia News Network (ANN), which is an alliance of 24 news media entities. The Asian Editors Circle is a series of commentaries by editors and contributors of ANN.
When
the 9/11 attacks hit New York and Washington in 2001 and the U.S. armed
forces went on full alert, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice
got on the direct line to Moscow and told Vladimir Putin the United
States was not going to attack...
25 Sep 2021
Why AUKUS, Quad and Five Eyes anger China
The declared aim of a new defense agreement comprising the U.S., U.K. and Australia, christened AUKUS, is to maintain a “free and open IndoPacific,” with nuclearpowered submarines potentially on patrol. But you can add it to the list of arrangements among democracies attempting to counter China’s growing power. The so-called Quad partnership, created after the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, and even the World War II-era “Five Eyes” spy alliance now seem overwhelmingly focused on Beijing. The growing web has provoked fury from Beijing and worries in some Asian states that the new groupings could fuel a dangerous arms race in the region.
Q: Q:What is AUKUS?
A: A:A new security partnership that will see Australia acquire nuclearpowered submarine technology – but not nuclear weapons – from the U.S. and U.K. While it could take more than a decade for Australia to build its first sub, the agreement shows the U.S. seeking to form a more cohesive defense arrangement in Asia to offset China’s rapidly modernizing military. Australia has long tried to balance security ties with the U.S. and its close economic ties with China, insisting it didn’t need to pick sides. But Beijing’s barrage of punitive trade reprisals following Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s push for an investigation into the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic appears to have drastically changed the strategic calculus in Canberra.
Q: Q:Why are the submarines important?
A: A:Nuclear-powered vessels are vastly superior to their diesel-electric counterparts: They’re faster, can stay submerged almost indefinitely, and are bigger – allowing them to carry more weapons, equipment and supplies. Given Australia’s remote location and the fact its subs may operate in waters stretching from the Indian Ocean up to Japan, these are big pluses. Until now, only six nations – the U.S., U.K., France, China, Russia and India – have had the technology to deploy and operate nuclear-powered subs. France was enraged by the Aukus deal, which came as a surprise, because Australia simultaneously canceled a $66 billion agreement it had had with Paris for conventional subs.
Q: Q:What’s the Quad?
A: A:It brings the U.S., Japan, India and Australia together in an informal alliance of democracies with shared economic and security interests that span the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Formed to coordinate tsunami relief efforts, it lay dormant for years afterward until 2017, when it was revived under then-U.S. President Donald Trump as his administration sought to challenge China from every angle. Trump’s successor, Joe Biden, organized the first-ever gathering of the Quad leaders in March, at which they pledged to accelerate production of Covid-19 vaccines and distribute them across Asia. Although their statement doesn’t mention China, the talks came amid a flurry of U.S. diplomacy designed to build a common approach to dealing with Beijing.
Q: Q:What’s Five Eyes?
A: A:It’s a decades-old intelligence-sharing arrangement among the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand. It’s so good at keeping secrets that its existence wasn’t publicly revealed until the mid-2000s. It isn’t clear how much intelligence is shared, but most of whistle-blower Edward Snowden’s vast 2013 dump of classified U.S. National Security Agency data, for instance, was marked FVEY, meaning it was available to other Five Eyes members. Advocates say the collaboration was used to positive effect in the Afghanistan war as well as in counter-terrorism operations in the Philippines and East Africa. Snowden attacked it as unanswerable to democratic oversight by national governments. Cracks emerged this year over China, when New Zealand distanced itself from moves to broaden the group’s remit and take positions on issues such as Beijing’s human rights record.
Q: Q:Why so much focus on China?
A: A:Its rise has steadily become one of the biggest foreign policy challenges not just for the U.S., but for almost every Chinese neighbor and democracies around the world. China’s rapid military development is a particularly acute threat to neighboring countries such as India and the Philippines, which have active maritime or border disputes. But it also threatens the U.S. military presence that has underpinned Asia’s security architecture for decades. Researchers at the University of Sydney, for example, warned last year that China’s growing missile arsenal could wipe out America’s bases in Asia during the “opening hours” of any conflict. China’s global economic reach has also greatly expanded as state-owned companies buy up strategic assets such as ports around the world that could be harnessed in times of war. Its statecraft – spearheaded by “wolf warrior” diplomats – has also grown more aggressive, particularly throughout the Covid pandemic.
Q: Q:What’s China’s reaction?
A: A:It has consistently lashed out at what it calls a “Cold War mentality,” denouncing such partnerships as anti-China cliques. Chinese officials argued that Aukus will stoke an arms race in the Asia-Pacific region. In their view, its members are trying not just to compete, but to contain China’s rise – to throw a military net around it in vital waterways like the South China Sea and undermine the country’s economic development. Relations have been getting tenser on all sides. Biden, like Trump, has trained his energies on preventing the world’s second-largest economy from pulling ahead. Beijing also has sparred with the U.K. over Hong Kong and Canada over detained citizens, while Europe has called China a “systemic rival.”
US-Australia nuclear arms deal
On September 15, the heads of government of Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States announced the formation of AUKUS, "a new enhanced trilateral security partnership" among these three countries. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson joined US President Joe Biden to "preserve security and stability in the Indo-Pacific," as Johnson put it.
While China was not explicitly mentioned by these leaders at the AUKUS announcement, it is generally assumed that countering China is the unstated motivation for the new partnership. "The future of the Indo-Pacific," said Morrison at the press conference, "will impact all our futures." That was as far as they would go to address the elephant in the room.
Zhao Lijian of the Chinese Foreign Ministry associated the creation of AUKUS with "the outdated Cold War zerosum mentality and narrow-minded geopolitical perception." Beijing has made it clear that all talk of security in the IndoPacific region by the US and its NATO allies is part of an attempt to build up military pressure against China. The BBC story on the pact made this clear in its headline: "Aukus: UK, US and Australia launch pact to counter China."
What was the need for a new partnership when there are already several such security platforms in place? Morrison acknowledged this in his remarks at the press conference, mentioning the "growing network of partnerships" that include the Quad security pact (Australia, India, Japan and the United States) and the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing group (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the United States).
A closer look at AUKUS suggests that this deal has less to do with military security and more to do with arms deals.
Morrison announced that the "first major initiative of AUKUS will be to deliver a nuclear-powered submarine fleet for Australia." Two red flags were immediately raised: first, what will happen to Australia's pre-existing order of diesel-powered submarines from France, and second, will this sale of nuclear-powered submarines violate the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)?
In 2016, the Australian government made a deal with France's Naval Group (formerly known as Direction des Constructions Navales, or DCNS) to supply the country with 12 diesel-electric submarines.
A press release from then-prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and his minister of defense (who is the current minister of foreign affairs), Marise Payne, said at the time that the future submarine project "is the largest and most complex defense acquisition Australia has ever undertaken. It will be a vital part of our defense capability well into the middle of this century."
Australia's six Collins-class submarines are expected to be decommissioned in the 2030s, and the submarines that were supposed to be supplied by France were meant to replace them. The arms deal was slated to cost (in Australian dollars) "about $90 billion to build and $145 billion to maintain over their life cycle," according to The Sydney Morning Herald.
Australia has now canceled its deal with the French to obtain the nuclear-powered submarines. These new submarines will likely be built either in the US by Electric Boat, a subdivision of General Dynamics, and Newport News Shipbuilding, a subdivision of Huntington Ingalls Industries, or in the UK by BAE Systems; BAE Systems has already benefited from several major submarine deals.
The AUKUS deal to provide submarines to Australia will be far more expensive, given that these are nuclear submarines, and it will draw Australia to rely more deeply upon the UK and US arms manufacturers.
France was furious about the submarine deal, with Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian calling it a "regrettable decision" that should advance the cause of "European strategic autonomy" from the United States.
WHEN
the 9/11 attacks struck New York and Washington in 2001 and the United
States armed forces went on full alert, National Security adviser
Condoleezza Rice immediately got on the direct line to Moscow and told
Vladimir Putin not to worry:...
Last
week witnessed the aukward birth of a new security alliance — AUKUS —
bringing together Australia, the United Kingdom (UK) and the United
States (US), coupled with a deal involving the US and the UK building
eight nuclear attack...
The
story so far: On September 15, U.S. President Joe Biden, along with
Prime Ministers Scott Morrison and Boris Johnson of Australia and the
U.K. respectively, announced the formation of a new trilateral security
partnership called...
The Hindu
26 Sep 2021
The AUKUS alliance: How not to win friends
Last
week witnessed the aukward birth of a new security alliance — AUKUS —
bringing together Australia, the United Kingdom (UK) and the United
States (US), coupled with a deal involving the US and the UK building
eight nuclear attack...
Hindustan Times (Lucknow)
25 Sep 2021
US rules out adding India or Japan to AUKUS pact
Washington,
Sept. 23: The United States has ruled out adding India or Japan to the
new trilateral security partnership with Australia and Britain to meet
the challenges of the 21st century in the strategic Indo-Pacific region.
On September...
24 Sep 2021
US rules out adding India or Japan to AUKUS pact
24 Sep 2021
Washington,
Sept. 23: The United States has ruled out adding India or Japan to the
new trilateral security partnership with Australia and Britain to meet
the challenges of the 21st century in the strategic Indo-Pacific region.
On September 15, US President Joe Biden, Australian PM Scott Morrison
and British PM Boris Johnson jointly announced the formation of the
trilateral security alliance AUKUS under which Australia would get a
fleet of nuclear-powered submarines for the first time.
“The
announcement of AUKUS last week was not meant to be an indication, and I
think this is the message the President also sent to (French President
Emmanuel) Macron, that there is no one else who will be involved in
security in the Indo-Pacific,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki
told reporters at her daily briefing on Wednesday.
Ms
Psaki was responding to a question if countries like India and Japan
whose leaders would be in Washington this week for the first in-person
Quad summit would be made part of the new security alliance.
“On
Friday you’ll have the Australians there (for the Quad summit). But
then you also have India and Japan. Would you envision for them a
similar kind of military role that you’ve now defined for the
Australians?” a journalist asked.
“AUKUS?
What would it become? JAUKUS? JAIAUKUS?” Ms Psaki then quipped, before
giving an answer to the question. The trilateral security alliance
AUKUS, seen as an effort to counter China in
the IndoPacific, will allow the US and the UK to provide Australia with
the technology to develop nuclear-powered submarines for the first time.
China has sharply criticised the trilateral alliance, saying such an
exclusive grouping has no future and will gravely undermine regional
stability and aggravate the arms race and hurt international
non-proliferation efforts.
The move also
angered France, an European ally of the US, which said it had been
“stabbed in the back” and publicly voiced its outrage at the AUKUS
alliance. It recalled its ambassadors to the US and Australia after the
AUKUS security deal was announced.
France
is furious. The announcement of the new Australia-UK-US alliance
(Aukus) and the ditching of a previous French-Australian submarine deal
has led France’s foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, to term the pact
“a stab in the back”.
Beijing’s...
24 Sep 2021
Quad leaders’ meeting first after pact agreed
Leaders
of the US, Japan, India and Australia were scheduled to meet in person
as a group for the first time on Friday for a summit expected to bring
progress on COVID-19 vaccines, infrastructure and technological
cooperation. The...
China Daily (Hong Kong)
25 Sep 2021
Another grouping
In
its first reaction to AUKUS, the new partnership between Australia, the
U.S. and the U.K., India has made it clear that it does not welcome the
announcement, nor does it wish to link AUKUS to Indian interests.
Foreign Secretary Harsh...
` ` MAN and nature are running out of time. That’s
the core message of the UN Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change
...
Moral vacuum at the heart of modernity, now embodied in US laws!
` In short, historically it was the Church that gave the moral blessing
for colonisation, slavery and genocide during the Age of Globalisation.
The tragedy is that the Doctrine of Discovery is now embodied in US
laws.
