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Antony Blinken, a long term Biden confidant confirmed as the Secretary of the State by the US Senate

Antony Blinken

The US Senate, on Tuesday, confirmed Antony Blinken as America’s top diplomat, tasked with carrying out President Joe Biden’s commitment to reverse the Trump administration’s “America First” doctrine that weakened international alliances.

Senators voted 78-22 to approve Blinken, a longtime Biden confidant, as the nation’s 71st secretary of State, succeeding Mike Pompeo. The position is the most senior Cabinet position, with the secretary fourth in the line of presidential succession.

Blinken, 58, served as deputy secretary of State and deputy national security advisor during the Obama administration. He has pledged to be a leading force in the administration’s bid to reframe the U.S. relationship with the rest of the world after four years in which President Trump questioned longtime alliances. Blinken is expected to start work on Wednesday after being sworn in, according to State Department officials.

“American leadership still matters,” Blinken told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at his January 19 confirmation hearing. He further added, “The reality is, the world simply does not organize itself. When we are not engaged, when we are not leading, then one of two things is likely to happen. Either some other country tries to take our place, but not in a way that is likely to advance our interests and values, or maybe just as bad, no one does and then you have chaos.”

Also Read: Trends in US foreign policy- which archetype might Biden fit in

Blinken vowed that the Biden administration would approach the world with both humility and confidence, saying, “We have a great deal of work to do at home to enhance our standing abroad.” Despite promising renewed American leadership and an emphasis on shoring up strained ties with allies in Europe and Asia, Blinken told lawmakers that he agreed with many of Trump’s foreign policy initiatives. He backed the so-called Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and several Arab states, and a tough stance on China over human rights and its assertiveness in the South China Sea. He did, however, signal that the Biden administration was interested in bringing Iran back into compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal from which Trump withdrew  in 2018.

Also Read: The plausible link between the Abraham Accords & the Afghan peace process

Trump’s secretaries of State nominees met with significant opposition from Democrats. Trump’s first nominee for the job, former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, was approved by a 56 to 43 vote and served only 13 months before Trump fired him by tweet. His successor, Pompeo, was confirmed in a 57-42 vote. Opposition to Blinken centred on Iran policy and concerns among conservatives that he would abandon Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran.

Blinken inherits a deeply demoralized and depleted career workforce at the State Department. Neither Tillerson nor Pompeo offered strong resistance to the Trump administration’s attempts to gut the agency, which were thwarted only by congressional intervention. Although the department escaped proposed cuts of more than 30% of its budget for three consecutive years, it has seen a significant number of departures from its senior and rising midlevel ranks. Many diplomats opted to retire or leave the Foreign Service given limited prospects for advancement under an administration that they believed did not value their expertise.

A graduate of Harvard University and Columbia Law School and a longtime Democratic foreign policy presence, Blinken has aligned himself with numerous former senior national security officials who have called for a major reinvestment in American diplomacy and renewed emphasis on global engagement.

Blinken has served on the National Security Council during the Clinton administration before becoming staff director for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when Biden was chair of the panel. In the early years of the Obama administration, Blinken returned to the NSC and was then-Vice President Biden’s national security advisor before he moved to the State Department to serve as deputy to the then Secretary of State John Kerry, who is now serving as special envoy for climate change.

(Associated Press)

 

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After he leaves the office Trump may be missed in the Middle-East-the testing ground for Biden’s foreign policy

In the aftermath of the US capitol storming, Trump became the first President in the history of the US to be impeached twice after the House of Representatives accused him of inciting violence based on false claim of election fraud. Though his trial remains to be completed in Senate, he will be replaced by Joe Biden on January 20, after inauguration. In this backdrop, some regional players in the Middle-East would miss him or rather his transactional attitude to international relations. In contrast to other Presidents of US, his approach has been identified as Trumpism by many scholars, who identify it by it’s chaotic nature and unpredictable ways. Many a times, his team at the Press meets would be caught off guard during his announcements which would take the world of diplomacy by storm.

Developments in Middle-East

Since the year 2011, the Middle East had seen a resurgence of the Political Islam. Over the past four years, the US had withdrawn itself from the theatre in the Middle-East, driven by an inward looking & deal-making approach of Trump. Israel had tied up with most of the Arab world. It had opened diplomatic relations with the UAE through the Abraham Accords. The Egypt and the Gulf Arabs are trying to be done with the Political Islam, while Russia is trying to increase its influence in the region due to the relative withdrawal of the US from the role of a mediator. Abu Dhabi’s Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan had his own way in dealing with his rivals in the Middle-East. The Oil rich region of Marib in Yemen currently in the control of the Saudi-led coalition, is being looked on by the Houthis. The UAE has been pushing the Houthis from the South of Yemen. The civil war in Yemen has resulted in a hunger of catastrophic scale, but is providing leverage to Saudi-Arabia and the UAE, and with no interference from US, it stands to benefit the other regional players like UAE in terms of military stronghold.

Also Read: Link between Abraham Accords and Afghan Peace Process

Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey got rid of the Kurds, who had helped in the defeat of ISIS, but was dumped by US under Trump and Turkey. The only involvement of the US in the region has been with respect to provision of arms.

Weapon-deals & the case of Khashoggi

In 2017, a $ 110 billion deal was sealed between the Saudi-Arabia and the US by the involvement of Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law. As part of the Abraham Accords, the UAE had purchased $23 billion worth of advanced drones & F-35fighter jets from US. Apart from these, Trump had not allowed for justice efforts to investigate the death of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate at Istanbul.  That Khashoggi was opposed to and critical of the Saudi involvement in the Yemeni civil war is widely known. In November 2018, the CIA had concluded that the journalist was assassinated on the order of Mohammed Bin Salman, the King of Saudi Arabia. Even while, Turkey had criticized the attack on Khashoggi, Trump administration left the region in a chaos with each player including Turkey to fend for itself.

Other crises in the ME

The transactional nature of Trump has left Middle-east with new problems, with Russia, Turkey and UAE looking to increase influence over Africa. On a slightly brighter side, the Syrian Civil war came to an endpoint with a ceasefire deal between Turkey and Russia. But another impeding problem in the region is whether Lebanon or Iraq would go broke first.

In 2019, the public debt-to-gross domestic product of Lebanon was the third highest in the world and the unemployment stood at 25% with a nearly a third of the population living below the poverty line. In 2020, it was observed, that in Lebanon, the central bank was running a Ponzi scheme of sorts, by borrowing from the commercial banks at above the market interest rates in order to pay back its debt. Things have gone worse after the Beirut explosion. Oil & gas industry which was hugely hit by the pandemic forms an important source of Iraqi revenue. Currently, Iraq is finding it difficult to pay its bills or salaries. More problematic in the case of Iraq is that majority of its leaders are from the party backed by Iran, which had recently witnessed killing of its nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.

Also Read: Iranian Nuclear scientist assassinated-changing of Iran’s equation with West

All of this would definitely place the new administration in US at discomfort, especially after the chaos and confusion left in the Middle East. The exclusively transactional nature of Trump’s Presidency, which has given the players in Middle-East arms, ammunitions, and drones, at the cost of peace, has thrown the region into a simmering disorder which would be a testing ground for the foreign policy of the incoming President-Joe Biden.

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Will of the people prevailed- Election victory of Biden formally affirmed- Putin sends congratulation

Election victory of Biden

President-Elect Joe Biden addressed USA for the first time after the Electoral College affirmed his win and said, “The will of the people prevailed”. Biden further added, “In this battle for the soul of America, democracy prevailed. We the people voted. Faith in our institutions held. The integrity of our elections remains intact.”

Joe Biden officially won the 2020 US Presidential race. Crossing the 270-vote threshold required to win, Biden secured 306 of the 538 electoral votes in the November 3 elections.

Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated Joe Biden on his victory in the US presidential election on Tuesday, six weeks after the vote and a day after the Electoral College officially affirmed Biden’s win.

While many world leaders congratulated President-elect Biden within days of the election, the Kremlin had said at the time that it deemed it “correct” to wait for the official results before Putin congratulated the winner.

A Kremlin readout said on Tuesday, “Vladimir Putin wished the President-elect every success and expressed confidence that Russia and the United States, which bear special responsibility for global security and stability, despite their differences, can truly contribute to solving many problems and challenges that the world is currently facing.”

Putin noted that “Russian-American cooperation based on the principles of equality and mutual respect would meet the interests of people in both countries as well as the entire international community.” The Russian President further said, “For my part, I am ready for cooperation and contacts with you.”

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Fight against Covid19 – UK begins vaccination – China, Russia, and the US also in the vaccine race

Margaret Keenan, a grandmother of four, made history on Tuesday after getting a potentially lifesaving birthday present. With one-shot or “jab” as Britons might say  Keenan, who turns 91 next week, officially launched the United Kingdom’s nationwide coronavirus immunization campaign, the largest such effort in its history.

“I feel so privileged to be the first person vaccinated against COVID-19,” said Keenan, who received the shot at 6:30 a.m. U.K. time. “It is the best early birthday present I could wish for because it means I can finally look forward to spending time with my family and friends in the new year after being on my own for most of the year.”

The U.K.’s vaccination effort begins nearly a year after the virus first appeared in China and at the same time much of the world still grapples with the pandemic. British health officials said that Tuesday marked a turning point in the country’s battle with the virus, an illness that, as per John Hopkin’s University data has infected more than 67 million people around the world and has killed more than 1.5 million people. The U.K. alone has more than 1.7 million confirmed COVID-19 cases.

Health officials began the immunization campaign just six days after granting the vaccine’s makers, Pfizer and BioNTech, emergency approval. Britain’s government has secured 800,000 doses of the vaccine so far, enough to give 400,000 people two doses each, the government said. To immunize the rest of the country’s 68 million people, health officials must contend with enormous logistical challenges. Vials of the vaccine must be kept frozen at minus 70 degrees Celsius (minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit).

There are also concerns over how Britain’s impending split from the European Union could affect the vaccine’s transport from Belgium. The government said that it was prepared to ask the military to fly the vials over the border. The U.K. will give the vaccine first to front-line health workers, long-term care facility workers, and residents over 80 years old. Shots will be made available first at hospitals before being distributed to doctor’s offices.

National Health Service England’s chief executive Sir Simon Stevens said, “It will take some months to complete the work as more vaccine supplies become available and until then we must not drop our guard. But if we all stay vigilant in the weeks and months ahead, we will be able to look back at this as a decisive turning point in the battle against the virus.”

Meanwhile, the U.S. and other European countries are expected to approve the vaccine’s emergency use later this month. Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine has proved to be nearly 95% effective in clinical trials. But the immunization campaign in the U.S. could be hurt by critical supply issues.

The New York Times reported that several months ago, the Trump administration passed on an option from Pfizer to purchase more vaccine doses beyond the initial 100 million agreed upon. Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported that the administration has been told by Pfizer that it cannot provide more vaccine until late June or July due to its commitments to other countries.

China and Russia have begun a mass rollout of their coronavirus vaccines before clinical tests are complete, in what is emerging as an unexpectedly complex geopolitical challenge for the United States. China’s Sinopharm announced this week that it would provide emergency doses of one of its two trial vaccines to the United Arab Emirates, prioritizing the U.S. ally over the vast majority of Chinese. China is now the sole supplier of Coronavirus vaccine to the Middle East.

Meanwhile, Russia’s sovereign wealth fund signed a deal to supply India with 100 million doses of the Sputnik V vaccine. These moves have thrown Western policymakers off balance. American health-care experts say that the United States should not rush out its own vaccine in response. But that leaves China and Russia as the only countries wielding this valuable diplomatic tool for potentially months to come.

The upshot is that by next year, China and Russia may have purchased significant geopolitical power by having bent the rules and rushed out their vaccines. It is also possible that their vaccines may fail, at an enormous human cost.

Hundreds of thousands of people in China, including diplomats, the military, front-line health workers , and employees of state-owned enterprises, have received Sinopharm’s vaccines under urgent-use stipulations, according to state media reports. But even as the rest of the country awaits access, Beijing has begun deploying vaccines abroad to regions where it is seeking to expand its influence.

Aside from the UAE collaboration, Sinopharm is also running Phase 3 trials in Jordan and Bahrain. On September 11, Egypt announced that it will also begin trials with Sinopharm, three days after the British-Swedish drugmaker ­AstraZeneca paused its clinical trial because of a “potentially unexplained illness.” The trial has since resumed, although not in the United States. Egypt signed a deal with AstraZeneca in July to purchase 30 million doses of its vaccine.

Officials in Moscow said that initial doses of the Sputnik V vaccine have been delivered to all regions of Russia, with health-care workers and teachers to be the first to receive access.

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Team of advisors of Biden to meet for follow-up on vaccine action while Moderna makes a breakthrough

follow-up on vaccine action

President-elect Joe Biden had formed a Covid advisory team after the declaration of the election results. The scientific advisers in Biden’s team will meet with the manufacturers of vaccines in the coming days as the presidential transition remains almost frozen because of Donald Trump’s reluctance to concede his defeat in the election. Infectious disease experts have stated that delayed handoff of vaccine would be dubious during a public health crisis, and can complicate public health situation.

In the US, corona-virus disease has entered its most dangerous phase in the context of the president-elect’s outreach to vaccine manufacturers. The seven-day rolling average for new daily cases stood at 145,400 (as of Saturday) as per the data from John Hopkins University. This signifies that the country is adding about 1million current cases a week, with deaths averaging 820 a day as of Saturday, a 33% increase in just two weeks.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease asserted that the arrival of vaccines would not be like flipping a switch to come back to normal life. The first doses will become applicable for people of the high-risk groups after this year. He asserted that America must maintain stringency in measures such as wearing masks, social distancing and frequently washing hands well.

Various vaccine manufacturers are in the final phase of testing their formulations. The government has inaugurated a program known as “Operation Warp Speed”, supported by the White House to speedily manufacture and dispense 10 million doses of vaccine. The shot will be available free to every American and the aim is to have most people vaccinated by about this time next year.

A top health official in the Trump administration, which is in the blues regarding Transition, has asserted that 20 million doses would be available by this month-end and an additional 20 million by the end of the year. Assistant HHS secretary, Brett Giroir, seconded Fauci’s assertion that Americans must follow basic public health precautions adding that if they do not follow these things, then the cases will continue to rise.

It should be underscored that there is a concern regarding the lack of communication, especially regarding vaccine roll-out, between the Trump administration and the transition team of Biden.

Moderna, a US biotech firm on Monday announced that its experimental vaccine against Covid-19 was almost 95 percent effective, marking a second major breakthrough in the quest to end the pandemic. It released the early results from a clinical trial with more than 30,000 participants, after another American pharmaceutical company Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech had said last week that their vaccine was 90 percent effective.

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Proposal by Mike Pompeo to counter China in the tour in Indo-Pacific regions

As the US presidential elections come closer, the US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo visited the three countries, which are part of the Indo-Pacific region including India, earlier this week. Pompeo, along with Mark Esper, the Secretary of Defense discussed the India-China spat with the Defense Minister of India, Rajnath Singh and S Jaishankar, the Minister of External Affairs.

In the US-India talks held in New Delhi, Pompeo had openly discussed an anti-China orientation which is to be a part of the Indo-Pacific region. This region is an important region where the US and China have had spats and competitions for several years now. It is also the place where recently, India and China had faced issues, especially in the Maldives and Sri Lanka.

India had been trying to gain the support of the superpower in expanding its footprint in these neighboring countries, without ever interfering in the finer nuances of geopolitical affairs. However, now it seems that it does not mind sharing the power and keeping the middle players in the region closer, in the hope that this will reduce the Chinese influence up to some extent.

Since the Indian military force is already dealing with the Chinese troops at the Line of Actual Control, it has opted to take the support of the US and embrace its proposal of an ‘anti-China tour’. However, at the recent Quad Foreign ministers meeting, S Jaishankar did not join the anti-China proposal. Although, in a joint statement by the US and India, bringing in a ‘rule-based’ international order was stressed upon, against China.

The three countries Pompeo visited, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and the Maldives are equally important for China and its Belt and Road Initiative. His motivation behind the visits to all the three countries was to explain to the people why China and its Communist Party do not follow any international laws and are considered as ‘lawless’.

Focusing on the Maldives, Pompeo said that China is reflecting its reckless and threatening behavior. Maldives had signed a framework defense and security agreement with the US. However, since Ibrahim Solih became the president of the country, it has formed close ties with China as well as other neighboring countries like India. Dunya Maumoon, the former Foreign Minister of Maldives made a statement on Pompeo’s visit, “We all want a peaceful Indian Ocean, I urge the US to respect the independence of Maldives. Please respect the right of Maldives to keep its friendship with all countries that benefit our development. We do not want to engage in power struggles & rivalries in the Indo-Pacific.”

Sri Lanka, which is considered to be the country highly influenced by the Chinese government, had refused  Pompeo’s proposal clearly. Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the President of Sri Lanka said that Beijing has helped Colombo for the past 10 years, and that they share a close relationship. China has acquired the Hambantota port in Colombo, helping Sri Lanka in various Construction and Development projects.

Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta is the headquarters of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), some members of which are influenced by China and some others are its rivals in the South-China Sea issue. Some of the territories of Indonesia are claimed by China, regarding which Pompeo said that the US rejects such ‘unlawful claims’ of sovereign territories by the Communist Party of China.

The author is a student member of Amity centre of Happiness.  

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Hunter Biden email controversy points to the ‘exploitability’ and ‘vulnerability’ of Trump & Giuliani to Russian intelligence as stated by former spooks in US

President Donald Trump smirked, when one of his supporters ranted out a familiar chant “Lock him up!” in reference to Biden controversy. The supporters shouted repeatedly in unison, “lock him up!” as the president laughed, at a campaign rally last Friday. The shouting chants referred to Joe Biden, the presidential nominee and his son Hunter Biden whom Trump and his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani have always accused of being in cahoots with vested Ukrainian interests.

Trump and Giuliani have alleged numerous times that Biden had inappropriately used his role as vice president to shut down a criminal investigation into the Ukrainian gas company, Burisma Holding. It was supposedly done to save Hunter, who was serving on Burisma Board at the time. There are in fact no pieces of evidence, as reported by Business Insider, which hold merit for the allegations against the Bidens. The claims by Trump and Giuliani have been summarily debunked by the intelligence community in the US.

The Biden –Ukraine conspiracy theory had been in news recently after a news report intended to point to the email communication between the Bidens and the Bursima board, allegedly as an evidence of the nexus. The report was written by a former producer of the Fox News Show, Hannity, and the email communication series was later found to be a part of foreign influence operation. Former spooks in US, (as reported in Business Insider) showed that the report in fact showed how susceptible Trump and Giuliani are to hostile intelligence services and their manipulation especially by Russian Intelligence.

Former intelligence operatives, assert, referring to the personality traits of Trump and his lawyer Giuliani, especially their desire to dig up dirt on political rivals, that both of them form natural targets and become gold mine for foreign intelligence machinery. Giuliani, many observers state and assert, is similar to former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, in almost always considering himself the smartest in the room. This personality trait makes him and others like him natural targets for foreign intelligence organizations. Such people in top echelons, who want to get hold over any information which can harm their rivals, no matter what, make the foreign intelligence ponder what kind of psychological makeup that person has, and whether can such people be duped. For Giuliani, the answer to all such questions on gullibility is yes. A prominent example of such manipulation is a Ukrainian national Andrii Derkach, who has been sanctioned by the Treasury Department for acting as a Russian agent and was found to be spreading disinformation about the Bidens and the 2020 elections.

(-taken from Business Insider)

The author is a student member of Amity Centre of Happiness.  

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Wishing to gain India’s increased involvement in the Quad and a better hold on its neighbourhood, US on its way to reset ties with Bangladesh

US deputy secretary of state Stephen Biegun has told the Indian government that Washington will counsel it more on its neighbouring nations, as US makes a key stride towards resetting ties and links with Bangladesh at a gathering with Prime Minister Sheik Hasina on Wednesday. Biegun has arrived at Gonobhaban in Dhaka after a halt at New Delhi for the talks. It is a unique moment and chance as the USA is interested in knowing the current Indian perspectives on its South Asian neighbours while Bangladesh is interested in persuading the US to push for the repatriation of the Rohingyas to Myanmar.

Today’s US-Bangladesh interaction comes within weeks of India’s virtual meeting based dialogue with Bangladesh through the Joint consultative commission, in which Teesta river agreement and other major agreements on shared rivers were discussed.

Stephen Biegun will be the first important US high official to visit Dhaka in 10 years.  As indicated by individuals acquainted with the issue, Biegun, in his conversations with Indian ambassador to the US, Harsh Shringla, went over approaches to reinforce the QUAD security discourse and looked for India’s contributions on its neighbourhood.

They talked about respective collaborations on an exchange basis, including the advancement of basic guidelines, a structure for speculations, aside from steps to enable the Indian subcontinent to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic, and plans to appropriate an immunization program when it is prepared.

Sources indicate that Shringla likewise advised his US counterpart on Bangladesh, and educated him concerning the requirement for Washington to set-up full-fledged relations with Bangladesh, a nation with a majority Muslim population in a time when it is rising financially under the current administration.

Previous US Secretaries of State John Kerry and Hilary Clinton had indicated their expectations to visit Dhaka, however, their plans did not see the light of the day. For a long time, India has urged the US to set up ties with Bangladesh under the initiative of Hasina, pointing out that the nation has moved past the hardliner attitude under Khaleda Zia.

This comes in the backdrop of China making immense advances into Bangladesh, with the last purchase of over 80% of the military equipment from Beijing, including cannons firearms, and ammo made by Hasina government. India in this regard had offered $500 million as a credit to Dhaka to purchase military equipment during Manohar Parrikar’s visit in 2018. The protection participation between the two neighbours is still a work in progress.

While the setting up of ties between US and Bangladesh can add to India’s benefit, some issues will still be contentious, like that of the displacement of Rohingyas, a substantial chunk of whom are in the slums in the Coastal Cox bazaar city in Bangladesh.

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Helsinki talks between US and Russia provide the hope to reboot the New START treaty in nuclear arms control

Since mid-1950s, the USA and Russia have been involved in numerous rounds of talks which were aimed to reduce the threats of nuclear arms race over the world-peace. These talks involving successes, failures, blame-games, inspection analyses, cooperation, and data exchange have been carried out over decades irrespective of whatever the global situation may have been. Both the USA and Russia, have conducted talks and given shapes to various treaties like SALT, START, SORT, INF treaty, START-II over the decades of developments of nuclear weapons and nuclear tests by both the countries. They are slated for another round of talks which began in Helsinki, Finland. This round of talks comes as a follow-up of the talks held in Vienna, Austria this summer. It is aimed at generating a new agreement which would replace the New START treaty which is set to expire in February 2021. During the talks the US delegation is being led by US ambassador Marshall Billingslea who leads the arms control negotiations on the behalf of USA on every platform. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov is leading the Russian side in the Helsinki talks. The Finnish President met both the world leaders separately after a round of discussion and stated that in the coming few days it is hoped that the New Start treaty would be rebooted.

Advocates of nuclear disarmament are looking towards this round of delegation-level discussion with hopes as this would be a chance to revive the last remaining treaty which aims to constraint the nuclear arsenals of the USA and Russia.  In early August 2019, the Trump administration had formally announced the withdrawal of the USA from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty which was signed in 1987 and became effective in 1988. The USA withdrew from the INF treaty as it blamed that Russia was violating the INF treaty by deploying 9M729 missile which was claimed to be in the range that was disallowed under the treaty. Russians asserted that the USA was violating the INF treaty in the launch of the Mark 41 VLS system. This series of blames led to the collapse of the INF treaty. Almost a year prior to US withdrawal from the INF treaty, Trump had asserted that America would build its arsenal to put pressure on Russia and China. In response to this, Russia had stated that it would act accordingly to counter the USA. That had raised concerns with regards to the efforts taken by the US and Russia till then to limit their nuclear stockpiles which are now under the purview of the New Start treaty that is set to expire next year.

In 2009, the New Start treaty was signed between the Obama administration and the Russian side led by Dmitri Medvedev and it became effective in February 2011. This treaty which is hoped to be rebooted in the ongoing Helsinki meet between the USA and Russia had put a limit on the number of deployed missiles and bombers (700), the number of deployed warheads including Re-entry vehicles and bombers (1550) and the number of deployed and non-deployed launchers covering both missile tubes and bombers (800). Under the inspections carried out within the regime of the New Start treaty, it was found that as of March 1, this year, the number of deployed ICBMs, SLBMs and heavy bombers was at 485 for Russia and 655 for the USA. The total number of warheads on deployed ICBMs, deployed SLBMs and nuclear warheads counted for deployed heavy bombers was at 1326 for Russia and at 1372 for the USA. The inspections also found out that as of March 1, this year, the total number of deployed and non-deployed launchers of ICBMs and SLBMs and deployed and non-deployed heavy bombers was at 754 for Russia and 800 for the USA. The data from the latest inspections under the New Start treaty showed that the USA has a marginal advantage over Russia in terms of numbers of it’s war-machines including missiles and bombers. Various think tanks have pointed out that the warheads of Russia pack a higher punch in terms of the yield, seemingly balancing the power with US.

In September 2017, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was signed by 84 countries with the aim of totally banning nuclear weapons. This treaty was a result of the efforts of the New Agenda Coalition formed out of Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, and South Africa, all of which are non-nuclear weapons wielding countries.  This treaty was termed as too utopian by the critics in a world having nefarious non-state entities like ISIS and other terrorist organizations. The countries which doubt the success of the 2017 Treaty included the nuclear weapon states (as defined under the NPT treaty) and the states who have declared their possession of nuclear weapons for deterrence like India.

Nonetheless, there always remains hope for greater peace when the main flagpoles of the global power i.e. the USA and Russia put a leash on their nuclear arsenal. This round of talks not only comes as a follow-up of the talks in Austria but also in a world where China has slowly expanded its power in the military as well as the economic dimension. It is worth noting that Trump had stated during the talks in Austria that the nuclear arms control dialogues like the ones in the context of New Start Treaty, should also include China so that the three countries carry out the negotiations in good faith and hope for perpetual peace. The Helsinki talks of nuclear arms control, in all possibilities, would be symbolic of this hope.

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US president Trump and the first lady test positive for Coronavirus

US President Donald Trump and the first lady Melania Trump have tested positive for the Coronavirus infection. The POTUS tweeted about the results of the Covid tests. After Hope Hicks, one of Trump’s closest aides tested positive for Coronavirus, the president had begun his process for quarantine along with Melania Trump. Hicks used to accompany Trump on his various trips around the world in the Airforce One. She was recently seen getting off the presidential jet in Cleveland without a mask. Trump had recently concluded the first round of Presidential debate with the Democrat Presidential Nominee Joe Biden held in Cleveland which was noted for its chaotic end.