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What does Russia give in exchange for North Korean troops?
Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden and co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations, shares his perspective on European politics from Stockholm, Sweden.
What are the global consequences of North Korean soldiers now appearing on the frontlines in Ukraine?
Well, I think first, it's a reflection of the fact that Russia President Putin, does have difficulties getting the manpower to man the front lines. He has difficulty recruiting in Russia itself. He's dependent upon soldiers, and evidently, he's now dependent upon North Korea to supply the front lines. I mean, that's a sign of at least long-term weakness in terms of Russia. Then the question is, of course, what has he given in return to the sort of dictator in Pyongyang? In all probability, high-tech and different sorts of military equipment. And that, of course, has serious implications or potential serious implications for stability on the Korean Peninsula. So there are consequences on the frontlines in Russia and on the Korean Peninsula.
What’s the nature of the agreements that German Chancellor Scholz concluded during his recent visit to Delhi?
Well, apart from bilateral German-Indian things, he was putting an amount of pressure on the Indians to move forward on the negotiations ongoing for a free trade agreement between the European Union and India. That's been negotiations that have been going on for quite some time. It's been a valley of tears because of slightly different approaches from the European and the Indian side. But it's clearly very much in the mutual interest to have such an agreement concluded, particularly since we don't know what's going to happen in the US. And more choppy waters when it comes to global trade. So let's see if there is any progress coming out of the visit. It remains to be seen.
Graphic Truth: BRICS economies eclipse the G7
In 2001, a Goldman Sachs economist coined an acronym for the four largest and most promising “emerging market” economies: Brazil, Russia, India, and China became known as the “BRIC” countries.
Five years later, reality imitated art when the countries decided to begin meeting regularly at “BRIC summits,” with the latest occurring in Kazan, Russia, this week. The subsequent inclusion of South Africa upgraded the “s” to a capital letter: the BRICS.
The group, which lacks formal treaties or binding obligations, has always been united more by what it opposes — US dominance of global financial systems — than by what it supports.
After all, it’s a hodgepodge: energy exporters (Brazil and Russia) and importers (China and India), democracies (India and Brazil) and non-democracies (China and Russia), allies (Russia ❤️China) and adversaries (India x China).
But the economic clout of the group is, on paper, formidable. With the addition of Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates this year, the BRICS+ economies account for 36% of global GDP – while the G7 group of wealthy democracies amount to just 29%. But, of course, there’s a catch: China and the US each contribute more than half of their respective group’s GDP.
Here’s a look at the economic size, and breakdown, of the BRICS+ and the G7 group it hopes one day to eclipse — not only economically but also geopolitically.
Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shakes hands with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi after the family photo with invited guests at the G7 summit in Biarritz, France, August 25, 2019.
The US and Canada press India on government-sanctioned murder allegations
The United States says it won’t be satisfied until there is “meaningful accountability” from an investigation into an alleged assassination attempt against US-Canadian Sikh activistGurpatwant Singh Pannun on American soil.
The US alleges that an Indian intelligence official was involved in the plot to murder the Sikh separatist, an allegation that follows the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, also a Sikh activist, in Canada last year. The Trudeau government says there are “credible allegations” that the Modi government was involved in Nijjar’s slaying and in a campaign of harassment and intimidation against other Sikhs in Canada.
Canada expelled the Indian high commissioner and six other diplomats from the country in mid-October over the allegations; India did the same, expelling half a dozen Canadian diplomats. The US hasn’t followed suit.
Relations between India and Canada are, to say the least, strained, which raises questions of not just whether there will be justice for victims, but what the future holds for immigration and trade relations between the two countries.
US-India relations seem more stable, at least in the long term, setting up the question of how far the US is willing to go to support one of its top allies, Canada, as its diplomatic row with India deepens. Trade between India and the US was worth just under $200 billion in 2022, compared to just $8 billion between India and Canada.
Doctors, paramedics, and medical students from various medical institutions are attending a protest against what they say is the rape and murder of a trainee doctor, inside the premises of R G Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata, India, on August 12, 2024.
India’s protests of an August rape and murder reach critical stage
In August, the brutal rape and murder of a female medical resident in a Kolkata hospital set off aseries of protests by doctors and others who demanded a full investigation of the crime and stepped-up police protection in government-run hospitals.
The protests haveexpanded to denounce corruption, poor working conditions, administrative mismanagement, and many other problems plaguing India’s hospitals. Morespecific demands include the implementation of a bed vacancy monitoring system to improve care, more security surveillance cameras inside hospitals, rooms on-site where doctors can rest between shifts, a better system for filling vacant doctor and nurse positions, more women in the workplace, and more hospital bathrooms, particularly for women.
With little progress in the investigation of the crime, more than two dozen doctors launched a hunger strike on Oct. 5. Six of them, who have had water but no food, have now been hospitalized, and at least two have been downgraded to critical condition.
The protests have grown larger in recent days as they coincide with the annual harvest festival of Durga Puja, which celebrates the Hindu goddess Durga as a symbol of women’s strength.
Canadians manage to give Modi a headache for a change
For years, Justin Trudeau’s government failed to manage foreign interference in Canadian politics, with officials struggling to explain how they failed to see or act on intelligence reports. It got so bad that frustrated Canadian spies started leaking damaging tidbits, forcing the prime minister to call a public inquiry.
Canada has one of the world’s highest proportions of foreign-born citizens, which leads to lively grassroots diaspora politics, but it has failed to set up adequate protections against outside influence. It is only now setting up a foreign agent registry, for example, and the gaps appear to have been taken advantage of by foreign powers, particularly China and India.
Trudeau has been accused of turning a blind eye to Chinese interference and being too close to separatist Canadian Sikhs, while his Conservative opponents are accused of being too close to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Trudeau and his officials have been on the defensive for years, struggling to explain their inadequate measures while trying to rectify them. But on Monday, his team showed a sign of progress as it took a series of carefully orchestrated steps designed to push back at Modi.
First, Canada announced it had expelled six Indian diplomats, including High Commissioner Sanjay Kumar Verma. In New Delhi, after being summoned by India’s Ministry of External Affairs, Canadian Deputy High Commissioner Stewart Wheelertold Indian journalists that Canada had provided “credible, irrefutable evidence of ties between agents of the government of India and the murder of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil.”
Next, senior Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers said they had “evidence pertaining to agents of the government of India’s involvement in serious criminal activity in Canada,” including “well over a dozen credible and imminent threats to life.”
Then, a steely-eyed Trudeau held a news conference outlining the allegations and complaining that India had failed to cooperate with Canadian police and public safety officials. “We will never tolerate the involvement of a foreign government threatening and killing Canadian citizens on Canadian soil,” Trudeau said.
Finally, officials worked the phones, giving off-the-record details to national security reporters in Ottawa and Washington, adding lurid details to the broad picture already laid out by the police and politicians.
Speaking off the record, Canadian officials told journalists that Indian diplomats have been forcing Indian Canadians to spy on one another, using money, visas, and threats for leverage, then sending the information back to India, where a senior official “authorized the intelligence-gathering missions and attacks” on people Modi wanted to be targeted. An unnamed Canadian official told the Washington Post that the senior official in India was Amit Shah, Modi’s right-hand man.
India denounced the “preposterous imputations” and blamed “vote bank politics,” Indian shorthand for Trudeau’s reliance on Sikh Canadian voters. India has often accused Canada of being soft on Sikh separatists, alleging that it harbors terrorists, blaming the Canadians for ignoring Indian warnings that might have prevented the 1985 Air India bombing that killed 329 people.
On their face, the Canadian allegations seem too outlandish to be true. Officials allege that the attacks in Canada were carried out by thugs controlled by famous gangster Lawrence Bishnoi, who is directing assassins on behalf of his masters in the Modi government even while he sits in a Punjab prison cell. The targets include supporters of an independent Khalistan and other people who have gotten on the wrong side of Modi.
India has been demanding evidence of criminality since September 2023, when Trudeau accused Modi of being behind the murder of Canadian Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who was gunned down by a hit squad outside a temple in British Columbia that June. Back then, India scoffed and falsely accused Trudeau of being coked up, acting as though Canada was making up lies.
Going to see Uncle Sam
But last November, an indictment was unsealed in New York that revealed Indian national Nikhil Gupta, acting on behalf of Modi’s government, had allegedly tried to hire a hitman to kill Nijjar’s lawyer, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun. India’s bumbling 007s made two big mistakes. Pannum is an American citizen, so the Americans could hardly let that slide. And the hitman Gupta tried to hire was actually an undercover Drug Enforcement Agency officer.
Gupta is now in a US prison, and officials in Canada and the police must now have a thick dossier linking India to other assassination attempts, including that of Nijjar.
Sushant Singh, a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi and a lecturer at Yale University, says Modi can’t afford to be seen to have angered Uncle Sam.
“There will hardly be any damaging political consequences for Mr. Modi unless the United States decides to pursue its case very very strongly and embarrass India,” says Singh.
“Then it would make a material difference to how Mr. Modi is perceived.”
Trudeau showed his cards just as Indian officials were arriving in Washington this week to help the Americans with their inquiries in the Gupta case, maximizing the impact and embarrassing Modi on the world stage.
One of the most surprising things about the whole affair is that India seemingly did not dial down its activities after Trudeau called them out last year: Canadians allege that a recent attack against a popular singer was linked to Indian intelligence.
What does this mean for Modi?
So far, it’s a murky, inconclusive mess. The Canadians, of course, have proved nothing, and Trudeau’s back is to the wall as he’s facing growing pressure at home to step down as Liberal Party leader. In testimony at the inquiry on Wednesday, he went after his Conservative opponents, linking them to foreign interference, which lends credence to Indian allegations that he is just trying to save his own skin.
But allies have not expressed skepticism about the evidence the Canadians have shared. The US State Department seems unimpressed by India’s failure to cooperate with Canadian authorities, as do the UK and Australia.
Experts think this is a headache for Modi, but it is unlikely to blow up the significant strategic and trade relations between India and its Western friends.
“The US is likely to deliver a clear message to India about interfering in the internal affairs of allied democracies, especially Washington’s trusted Five Eyes partners,” says Graeme Thompson, a senior analyst at Eurasia Group.
“But it’s also going to seek to contain the fallout from Delhi’s dispute with Ottawa with an eye to the bigger strategic prize: alignment with India as an essential partner to counter China.”
Behind the scenes, Canada’s allies can be expected to twist arms to try to get the Indians to call off their hit squads. If they don’t, they can expect police and intelligence agencies to keep a close eye on their diplomats, even while military and economic ties grow stronger.
Canada's fight with India over Sikh assassination heats up again
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.
What is the role of the United Nations in the Israel-Gaza war?
Well, it's actually quite a few roles. One, the General Assembly and the Security Council are principle places where you get to see how the various countries around the world respond to the war, what their political positioning is, so the comparative isolation of the United States on the Security Council, for example, what countries do, don't stand with Israel, the Palestinians of the 194 member states around the world? Secondly, the UN is the principal organization that delivers humanitarian aid on the ground in Gaza, staffed overwhelmingly by Palestinians, thousands of them. That's been controversial because a number, something like seven or eight, have been found to have been involved in the support for the attacks on October 7th, the terrorist attacks. And then, finally, you have UN peacekeepers, thousands of them, on the ground in southern Lebanon, with many countries around the world participating. That's the Security Council that's responsible for that but has not been particularly effective at ensuring that the Security Council resolutions, creating a buffer zone, pushing Hezbollah back, and not allowing them to strike Israel, have actually been implemented. So lots of places that they have a role, you learn a lot about the world as a consequence, but it's not like they have a lot of power or a lot of money.
Why did Canada expel Indian diplomats?
Well, it's a fight that's been going on for over a year now with the assassination of this Sikh terrorist that India was found to be behind on sovereign Canadian territory. There had been a conversation between Modi and Trudeau on the sidelines of recent G20 Summit. It looked like facilitated by the United States, that that relationship was improving. It has fallen apart again. One of the things, I mean, there's more information that's come out in Canada about what India's role has been interfering with Canadian politics and citizens, but also the fact that Trudeau is in really tough shape domestically. He's thinking that a fight with India right now may help him in terms of popularity. I don't think it's going to work, but that certainly is not irrelevant.
How important is Elon Musk in the US election?
I don't think he's very important to the outcome. Obviously, Twitter/X is significantly oriented towards the right in terms of both Elon and what's being algorithmically promoted, but it's a lot smaller for US citizens than TikTok, which is younger and is more focused to the extent there's a political slant on the left. So if you ask me, which is going to matter more? I suspect TikTok will bring out more voters than Twitter/X, will. I think you on, is important in the election because he has personally done so much to promote disinformation, and it's making it harder for the average American to know what they can trust, what's a trusted source of media, what's a trusted source of information, what they should believe around vaccines, around FEMA response to a hurricane, around whether or not the election is free and fair. And I'm worried deeply that there's much greater likelihood of violence in the United States on the back of his personal decision of how to run Twitter/X than there would've been otherwise. We'll be focused on this very closely.
Royal Canadian Mounted Police Commissioner Mike Duheme takes part in a press conference about India-linked criminal activity occurring in Canada, in Ottawa, Ontario, October 14, 2024.
India and Canada expel diplomats in deepening criminal scandal
Canadian authorities declared India’s High Commissioner Sanjay Kumar Verma a persona non grata note on Monday, expelling him and five other diplomats from their posts over allegations they were part of a criminal network harassing Canadian Sikhs. New Delhi retaliated by expelling six Canadian diplomats, including Ottawa’s second-in-command in the subcontinent, Stewart Wheeler.
The dispute dramatically burst onto the scene following the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar last year, which led to the arrest and indictment of three Indian nationals. Canada has found itself somewhat isolated from its friends amid the dispute, as the US and European Union attempt to cultivate friendship with India as a counterbalance to Russia and China.
Eurasia Group Senior Analyst Graeme Thompson says the Canadian Royal Mounted Police likely feel confident in the evidence they have collected against India’s diplomats to comment publicly on such a sensitive issue.
“The big question is whether the dispute will be contained to diplomatic tit-for-tat exclusions, or if visa restrictions or other measures affecting business and other people-to-people ties could follow,” he says. “It will also be very interesting to see what, if any, comment US officials make publicly about these developments, which could indicate how the US is handling the dispute behind the scenes.”
Who are the Sikhs, and why is India allegedly going after them? The Sikh religion emerged from the teachings of Guru Nanak in the late 15th century, and its corps of mighty Khalsa warriors carved out an independent empire in what is now northern India and Pakistan between 1799 and 1849. Some Sikhs today still agitate for an independent state of Khalistan, which New Delhi considers a threat to its sovereignty. Canada, home to the largest Sikh community outside India, has found itself in the crossfire.FILE PHOTO: Members of media speak in front of cameras outside the premises of the Supreme Court in New Delhi, India October 13, 2022. REUTERS/Anushree Fadnavis/File Photo
Indian government opposes criminalizing marital rape as “excessively harsh”
India’s Supreme Court is hearing petitions this month and will soon rule on whether to criminalize marital rape, but the government opposes the idea, stating it would be “excessively harsh.” The Interior Ministry argues that while a man should face “penal consequences” for raping his wife, criminalizing the act “may lead to serious disturbances in the institution of marriage.”
The petitions seek to overturn Section 375 of India’s Penal Codewhich lists “exemptions” for sex to be considered rape, including “by a man with his own wife” if she is not a minor. A lower Delhi High Court delivered a split verdict on the issue in 2022, but when Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government overhauled the country’s penal code in July, the exemption stayed on the books. Modi’s party, the conservative Bharatiya Janata Party, has longopposed changes for reasons of “illiteracy, poverty, social customs and values.”
But activists argue the 164-year-old law must be amended to combat systemic gender inequality. Sexual violence against women is rampant in India, andmedical workers are still striking over the August rape and murder of a trainee female doctor in Kolkata, for which a man was formally charged last Monday.
Around the world, more than 100 countries have outlawed marital rape. We’re watching whether public outcry – and a high court verdict - will force Modi’s government to do the same.