Review of World Affairs (RWA)
By Shashi P.B.B. Malla
Nepal & the MCC-Compact: Parliamentary Ratification Questionable
Because of his own short-sightedness, that is to say, his tactical and strategic mistakes, Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba finds himself in a quandary. He gives the impression of not being able to move forward in the Millenium Challenge Corporation-Compact; nor can he move backwards anymore. He has literally manoeuvred himself between the devil(s) and the deep blue sea.
Even now with the American ultimatum of February 28 looming so close, the two Communist allies of the Nepali Congress leader – Pushpa Kamal Dahal, aka ‘Prachanda’ of the CPN-Maoist Centre and Madhav Kumar Nepal, aka ‘Makune’ of the CPN-Unified Socialists – are doing all they can to bring the MCC-Compact to fall. Another major villain of the piece [unbelievably] is the Speaker of Parliament, Agni Prasad Sapkota.
Dahal is using all the dirty tricks of his trade to still block the MCC-Compact from moving forward. He even had the audacity of making the proposal to request the Americans to grant a further six months to one year citing the approaching local elections [which he originally opposed!]. The point is that whatever Dahal utters must be taken with a pinch of salt. He has already been badly exposed for his duplicity and double-dealing. In addition, it is an open secret that he and ‘Makune’ are fifth-columnists in the pockets of foreign powers.
An unnamed Congress leader said that Dahal is of the view that if the MCC is ratified now, the ruling alliance will break and the CPN-UML of former PM K.P. Sharma Oli will benefit in the forthcoming local elections (The Kathmandu Post, Feb. 13).
Of late, the Congress source informed that Dahal and Nepal, who are afraid of breaking the present alliance, have decided to cooperate with Deuba in rectifying MCC.
Denigration of Parliament
While the hullabaloo is continuing, Loktantra has been fully exposed. It’s fully undemocratic on the part of the political parties not to let parliament function in a normal way.
The CPN-UML which has been very active in preventing parliament from doing its legitimate business has now turned everything on its head. It has the effrontery to claim that the impeachment motion against Chief Justice Cholendra Shumsher J.B. Rana is part of the conspiracy of the ruling alliance and an attack against the judiciary and democracy in the country!
Critical Voices
The prominent banker Anil Shah has highlighted one critical aspect of the MCC-Compact high drama: “…if we do not get the needed transmission lines [which would be funded by the MCC agreement] in place at the earliest then the saving of millions of Nepalis that the banking sector has been directed to lend to the hydropower sector will definitely be in troubled waters.”
“Along with this, the thousands of Nepalis who have invested in shares of hydro projects also may see an impact on the value of their investments if there is a glut in power supply and not enough transmission lines to get the power evacuated and sold” (Internet-Google Group NNSDEE).
However, Shah is too optimistic of the outcome and too trusting: “I am sure our leaders will have the foresight and courage to make the right decision for our nation.”
The former UN top official, Kul Chandra Gautam [at the same source] puts it succinctly: he hopes that instead of “getting carried away by the imaginary threat to Nepal’s sovereignty, our parliamentarians and political leaders will muster the wisdom and courage to proceed with the project…It is good to be vigilant, but it is foolish to be paranoid.”
Virulent Opposition
Makune, the so-called chairperson of the CPN-Unified Socialists, together with his comrade-in-arms Dahal of the Maoist Centre, has launched a full-scale attack against the MCC-Compact, propagating lies and misinformation.
He claims that the agreement cannot be ratified in its present form, without spelling out the details. He only vaguely says that there are still “some doubts regarding the MCC” (my Republica, Feb.14) without elaborating at all!
Then, he also throws in that “Nepal has adopted a non-aligned foreign policy and the country should not be a battleground under any pretexts.”
It should be crystal clear to all discerning Nepalese that Makune, Dahal and the whole pack of Communists are actively working to undermine the welfare of the Nepalese people and society. They are the true regressive! It is past time for PM Deuba to part ways with his strange bedfellows.
Ukraine Impasse
With Russia carrying out a massive military buildup near Ukraine from three sides [including Belarus] and the political West roundly rejecting Moscow’s broad-based security demands, the window for diplomacy in the confrontation seems to be closing.
Even as Moscow continues to bolster its forces, holds sweeping war games – clearly threatening Ukraine, an independent and sovereign nation, with armed aggression — Russian President Vladimir Putin is simultaneously keeping the diplomatic window open for more negotiations in a calculated game of brinkmanship intended to persuade Washington and its European allies to accept Russia’s wide-ranging demands.
It is indeed a surreal situation. The West —especially the United States — fears that a Russian invasion of Ukraine may be imminent, while Russia – in spite of its clear threatening posture – maintains it has no plans to do so.
The United States is set to evacuate its embassy in Kyiv as Western intelligence officials warn that a Russian invasion is increasingly imminent. The chill of a cold war hung over Eastern Europe last week. U.S. President Joe Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Putin could give the order to launch an invasion of Ukraine any day now (AP/Associated Press, Feb. 12). The situation had all the hallmarks of a self-fulfilling prophecy!
German Initiative – Last Chance for Peace?
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was due in Moscow Tuesday in search of a diplomatic solution to avoid a war in Ukraine as the West and Russia signaled tentative hopes of an easing in the tense standoff.
Scholz was previously in Washington and Kyiv, and Germany’s special relations with Russia may just make the difference between war or peace. There will be no language difficulties in Moscow since Putin speaks fluent German since his time as a KGB officer in Leipzig, East Germany before the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Biden Warns Putin of “Swift and Severe” Costs of Invading Ukraine
In an urgent hour-long phone call with Putin last Saturday, Biden made clear that if Russia undertakes a further invasion of Ukraine, the United States together with its European allies will respond decisively and impose swift and severe costs on Russia.
With the US warning, Russia could soon invade Ukraine, time could be too short for any proposal to circumvent a new armed conflict/war.
The discussion did not bring about any breakthrough and there was no fundamental change in the dynamic. Biden put more ideas on the table to help persuade Putin not to invade Ukraine. The two leaders agreed to remain engaged, regardless of whether Moscow decides to invade Ukraine or not (WSJ/Wall Street Journal, Feb. 13).
Russian Demands & Western Responses
The Kremlin’s strategy in the standoff is to persuade the U.S. and its European allies to keep Ukraine and other Soviet-era countries from joining NATO, refrain from stationing any weapons near Russia, and roll back alliance forces from Eastern Europe.
The U.S. has in the meantime augmented deploying soldiers to Poland, Germany and Romania in a show of Washington’s commitment to protecting NATO’s eastern flank. These new troops are to train with host-nation forces but not enter Ukraine for any purpose. The U.S. already has about 80,000 troops throughout Europe at permanent stations and on rotational deployments.
The U.S. and its European allies have delivered planeloads of weapons and munitions to Ukraine.
Washington and NATO reject the Russian demands as “non-starters”, but they are also offering to discuss possible limits on missile deployments, greater transparency of military drills and other confidence-building measures.
Russian Military Muscle-Flexing
Russia has undoubtedly raised the stakes by massing over 130,000 troops near Ukraine and carrying out a series of military manoeuvres from the Arctic Ocean to the Black Sea. War would entail tens of thousands of casualties.
As part of the Russian show of force, Moscow has moved trainloads of troops, tanks and weapons from the Far East and Siberia to Belarus for joint war games, drawing Western, and above all, Ukrainian concerns that Russia could use them as a cover for an invasion. The Russian standpoint is just not convincing.
Washington and its allies are raising the prospect of unprecedented sanctions in the event of an actual invasion, including a possible ban on dollar transactions, draconian restrictions on key technology imports like microchips, and the shutdown of the newly built gas pipeline Nordstream 2 to Germany.
Calculated Russian Escalation
By concentrating troops that could attack Ukraine from many directions – as well as, on land, at sea and from the air – Putin has demonstrated a readiness to escalate the crisis to achieve his goals.
“Putin appears overconfident and is exhibiting a high level of risk-tolerance, said Gen. Ben Hodges (retd.), who served as commanding officer of the U.S. Army Europe. “He seems intent on applying maximum pressure on the West in this self-manufactured crisis” (AP).
Potential Paths for Compromise
As the Ukraine crisis persists, some pundits have turned from speculation to creative problem-solving.
In a recent Foreign Affairs essay, Samuel Charap recommended non-aligned status for post-Soviet states like Ukraine and Georgia, to satisfy Russia’s concerns about Western influence in its neighbourhood.
Writing in Foreign Policy, Anatol Lieven, who has warned about the Russia-Ukraine conflict since last autumn, proposes a suite of measures: a non-aggression pact between NATO and the Russia-led CSTO alliance; trade normalization between the European Union and the trade block Russia leads; and a new European security council of sorts composed of the U.S., France, Germany, the U.K. and Russia.
Top Retired Russian General Criticizes Putin
Retired Russian Colonel-General Leonid Ivashov, the head of the “All-Russian Officers Assembly”, has gone public with a sharp statement that calls for Russian President Vladimir Putin to resign over the confrontation involving Ukraine (The Hill, Feb. 11).
To remove any doubt as to his message, Gen. Ivashov, 78, followed the public statement with an interview on a liberal Russian media outlet “Echo Moskvy” insisting that he was speaking in the name of the assembly of retired and reservist Russian officers which he heads.
Ivashov is not some Putin critic or Russian dissident in the mould of a Boris Nemtsov or an Alexei Navalny. In the absence of an active marshal of the army, a colonel-general would be the second-highest rank in the Russian army.
Ivashov served as a senior aide to the country’s defence minister and as the ministry’s chief of general affairs before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. He subsequently held other high-ranking military posts and commands before retiring – or being sacked by Putin—in 2001. These roles included numerous negotiations with NATO and the US military.
Since then, he has written extensively on Russian military matters and geopolitics, from the perspective of a pro-Soviet and hard-line nationalist. He has criticized Putin frequently and has called repeatedly over the years for Putin to resign.
He may be the lone military voice speaking out publicly against Putin’s actions regarding Ukraine, but is as of Ukraine, a significant voice nonetheless. As Michael McFaul, a former US ambassador to Russia has written: “This is a big deal. At one time, General Ivashov was one of the most respected [and hawkish] leaders in the Russian [ministry of defence]. Russian generals don’t usually get involved in public policy debates, especially ones like Ivashov.”
To be clear, Ivashov believes that NATO is a hostile power, but his experience has taught him that the NATO/U.S. threat is fully under control and no external threat is immanent from the Western Powers [unlike Putin and his coterie].
For Ivashov and others like him, the massive buildup of Russian troops on the Ukraine and Belarus borders, therefore, is not to deal with a threat from the West. Rather, it is to divert attention from the domestic health, demographic challenges, the collapse of living standards and pervasive corruption that the Russian common people are suffering under the mismanagement of an incompetent Putin regime.
For all intents and purposes, Putin would face significant political backlash within Russia if he were to order an invasion of Ukraine.
The writer can be reached at: shashipbmalla@hotmail.com
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