— Coalition Politics in Nepal
— Militants Active in Afghanistan & Pakistan
— Macron’s Decisive Victory in France
— Putin’s Aggression: The Second Stage
— Russo-Ukrainian War: U.N. to the Rescue
— A New Primer of International Relations
By Shashi P.B.B. Malla
Political Alliances in Nepal: A Boon or Curse?
Conspiracy to Break Government Alliance?
The Nepali Congress President and Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba has claimed that a conspiracy is being hatched to break the current ruling alliance government (My Republica, April 19).
Deuba claimed that the alliance with the Communists has benefitted the Nepali Congress (NC). As a result, the NC established chief ministers and ministers in most provinces. [As if this was the sine qua non of all politics!] The end game should be good governance, but this is nowhere in sight – whether at the centre or the ‘provinces’ [which is actually a term used in unitary states and not in a federation, which should use ‘state’]. It just shows that our politicians are not at all comfortable with the functioning of our ‘federation’, which in any case has become defunct.
Deuba feels that he has done good work in and for the NC. Hobnobbing with Communists, he has really not achieved much, besides capturing power – which has become an end in itself, instead of being a means to better governance.
The devil is in the detail. Deuba and his Nepali Congress are indeed shameless for awarding former PM Jhala Nath Khanal [of course, through the federal president) the highest decoration of the land, and also former PM General Subarna Shumsher J.B. Rana [posthumously] only the second-highest decoration!
However, General Subarna Shumsher happens to be one of the few founding members of the Nepali Congress – on the same pedestal as B.P. Koirala and Ganeshman Singh, the supreme leaders of the Revolution of 1950-51, and a close confidantes of HM King Tribhuwan, the ‘Father of the Nation’. What despicable treatment!
Deuba wants the current political alliance to continue since he expects [fears] that no single party will receive a majority in the polls.
At the same time, he claimed that no force would/could defeat the NC in the upcoming elections provided that it remained integrated and intact.
The fact is that the NC is struggling to share seats at various local units with its alliance partners while it is facing strong opposition within the party itself with local leaders up in arms. There is a double contradiction – within the party itself and within the alliance.
Afghan Militants Attack Pakistani Army Post
Militants in Afghanistan fired heavy weapons across the border into a Pakistani military outpost overnight, killing three personnel, the Pakistani army said, in the latest armed violence to rattle the volatile region (AP/Associated Press, April 23).
A firefight ensued with the militants firing toward the army post in Pakistan’s rugged north-western North Waziristan region, and several were killed.
It comes as Afghanistan itself is reeling from a series of explosions in recent days, including the bombing of a mosque in northern Kunduz province that killed 33 people, including several students of an adjacent madrasa, or religious school.
That includes an attack last Thursday on a school in Kabul that killed seven children.
The stark increase in attacks in Afghanistan – as well as in neighbouring Pakistan highlights the growing security challenge facing Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers.
The Taliban have not learnt from their past mistakes. Their harsh religiously motivated edicts, reminiscent of their late 1990s rule, have drawn severe criticism.
And their heavy-handed approach to security has not brought early expectations of improved safety.
Resurgence of the Islamic State
The vicious Islamic State affiliate, known as the Islamic State in Khorasan Province, or IS-K – which claimed the recent spate of attacks in Afghanistan, as well as a growing number in next-door Pakistan – is proving an intractable challenge.
The IS-K took responsibility for a series of attacks across Afghanistan, most of which targeted the country’s minority Shiites who the radical Sunni Muslim militants revile as heretics [as do the ruling Taliban].
Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan
However, the IS-K, which is the sworn enemy of Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers, is not the only radical militant organisation in a religiously driven government.
The violent Pakistani Taliban, known as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) – which the United Nations says numbers 10,000 outposts from its Afghan hideouts.
Other militant groups also operating in Afghanistan include China’s militant “Uighurs of East Turkestan Movement”, which seeks independence for the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in northwest China, and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.
Some of the groups are loosely allied to the IS-K, while others act more independently.
Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers have promised no militant group would use its soil as a base to attack another country, but Kabul has yet to arrest or hand over any TTP leaders in Afghanistan to Pakistan.
Pakistan’s powerful military has warned Afghanistan’s Taliban to do more: “Pakistan strongly condemns the use of Afghan soil by terrorists for activities against Pakistan and expects the Afghan Government will not allow the conduct of such activities in future.”
Interestingly, India continually complains that Pakistan allows terrorists entrenched in its territory to attack India, especially in the disputed state of Jammu & Kashmir.
Macron Defeats Le Pen & Vows to Unite Divided France
Centrist Emmanuel Macron won five more years as president of the Fifth Republic after a convincing victory over rival Marine Le Pen, who nevertheless secured the far right’s highest share of the vote yet in a presidential election. He won by 58.55 % percent to 41.45 % percent, a greater margin than had been expected (BBC, April 25).
Macron is the first president in a generation to win re-election. But he will “face a fractured, discontented country, much of which has little time for him” (Economist).
A Le Pen victory would have been a seismic event for Europe. Having her in charge of the EU’s second-biggest economy and only nuclear power would have instigated an unraveling of western institutions. Her closeness to Putin’s Russia would also have added fuel to the fire.
The centrist leader told jubilant supporters at the foot of the Eiffel Tower that now the election was over he would be a “president for all.”
Macron struck a somber note: “An answer must be found to the anger and disagreements that led many of our compatriots to vote for the extreme right,” he said in his victory speech. “It will be my responsibility and that of those around me.”
More than one in three voters did not vote for either candidate. Turnout was just under 72 %, the lowest in a presidential rub-off since 1969, and more than three million people cast spoilt or blank votes.
The low turnout reflected the apathy of voters who complained neither candidate represented them. Voters casting blank ballots said they wanted to punish the sitting president.
International Reaction
Macron’s victory was welcomed by relieved European leaders, who had feared a far-right candidate offering a series of anti-EU initiatives.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was first to congratulate him, singling out their mutual challenge in responding to Russia’s war on Ukraine.
U.S. President Joe Biden looked forward to close cooperation with America’s oldest ally [which had even helped during the American Revolution].
Ukraine’s Volodymr Zelensky congratulated him as a “true friend” and said he looked forward to a strong and united Europe.
Putin of Russia also congratulated him and wished him success.
Prospects
For France’s political leaders, the next task is to regroup and fight parliamentary elections in June.
Macron may have a majority for the moment, but defeated candidates from the first round of the presidential election already have a new campaign insight. One opinion poll suggests that 63 % percent of voters want him to lose his majority.
If that happened, he would be forced into a “cohabitation” with a government led by other parties.
Far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon, who was third in the first round, has already held out the prospect of defeating the president’s centrist party and becoming prime minister.
For Macron, time is, therefore, of the essence and he has to immediately initiate reforms as promised, so that “no one will be left by the wayside.”
Russia’s Assault on Ukraine
Russian troops are pressing their offensive in the eastern Donbas region in an attempt to fully seize Ukraine’s industrial heartland but have made little headway as fierce Ukrainian counterattacks have slowed their efforts (AP/Associated Press, April 23).
Russia continues to fight for full control of the Donetsk and Luhansk areas that make up the Donbas industrial zone and seeks to secure ‘a land route between these territories and the occupied Crimea’ [since 2014], including by wiping out the last pocket of resistance in the besieged port city of Mariupol, Ukraine’s General Staff said.
Russian control of the devastated Mariupol region would amount to a significant and horrific Kremlin victory.
Maintaining Pressure on Russia
The well-read and well-connected Indian-American commentator Fareed Zakaria maintains that the only way out of this conflict is to put enough pressure on Russia to force it to the negotiating table and seek sanctions relief in exchange for peace deal (WaPo/The Washington Post, April 21).
To achieve this, the international coalition against the brutal Russian aggression – in which Vladimir Putin has emerged as the ‘Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse’ – needs the staying power to maintain and even ratchet up sanctions and embargoes against Moscow.
Zakaria argues this is only conceivable in a scenario in which energy prices come down from their current highs. If oil prices remain over US $ Dollar 100 a barrel – and they could easily go much higher – Europe would soon enter a recession and the entire global economy would see a reduction of growth and political backlash against the sanctions.
This would almost certainly mean the collapse of the coalition against Russia, as countries search for ways to gain cheaper energy. That is surely Putin’s diabolical hope.
The solution lies in bringing energy prices down from their current highs.
There is only one way to do that – get the world’s largest ‘swing producer’ Saudi Arabia, as well as other Gulf states, such as the UAE and Kuwait to increase the production of oil.
That would entail normalizing U.S. relations with de facto Saudi ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Sometimes global powers must choose ‘strategy over ideology’.
U.N. Secretary-General Mediates in Ukraine Conflict
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is set to meet separately with the presidents of Russia and Ukraine this week to make urgent, face-to-face pleas (AP/Associated Press, April 23).
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed that Guterres is to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Tuesday and that Vladimir Putin will also host the UN chief.
The UN later announced that Guterres will head on Thursday to meet President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba.
In both visits, Guterres aims to discuss ‘steps that can be taken right now to stop the fighting and help people to get to safety, a UN spokesperson said, adding: “He hopes to talk about what can be done to bring peace to Ukraine urgently.”
Guterres had urged Russia to stop its attack since it began two months ago, in what he called ‘the saddest moment’ in his five years in the U.N.’s top job.
The UN Secretary-General had stepped up his personal, public involvement after being urged to do so by former UN officials.
Whatever overtures may have been made privately, the now planned trip ‘is a visible symbol of what the United Nations is supposed to be standing for, which is peace and security,’ said Jeffrey Feltman, former UN political affairs chief.
“I don’t think any of us should have exaggerated expectations about what the secretary-general will be able to accomplish, but he has significant moral power,” said Feltman, now a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “It’s important that the secretary-general have these conversations.”
A New-Old Way to Conduct Government Policy: “The Return of ‘Statecraft’ “
In a brilliant and perspicacious study of government policy and execution in the forthcoming issue of Foreign Affairs [ May/June 2022 ], Professor Eliot A. Cohen at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies laid out the careful need for a return to the basics.
Above all, he made a cogent case for “statecraft” , which should replace “grand strategies” in the formulation and conduct of government policy – whether domestic or external.
The Oxford Dictionary defines ‘statecraft’ succinctly as “the skilful management of state affairs,” thus encompassing both the internal and external realms of a state [ although today, the borders have become extremely porous.
It can be equated with good governance: the experienced/accomplished/dexterous action or manner of conducting the policy and affairs of a state.
The equivalence can be found in the German “Staatskunst”, which expresses the art of the possible in state affairs.
The writer can be reached at: shashipbmalla@hotmail.com
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