Coronavirus Could Flatten the Curve of China’s Rise After half a century of remarkable growth, China’s ascent toward great-power status could prove to be a casualty of the coronavirus pandemic. The pandemic presented an opportunity for China to demonstrate it could be a responsible, leading global power – thus far, it has failed. by Jeffrey Cimmino

After half a century of remarkable growth, China’s ascent toward great-power status could prove to be a casualty of the coronavirus pandemic. The pandemic presented an opportunity for China to demonstrate it could be a responsible, leading global power. Thus far, it has failed.

Diplomatically, China finds itself in a significantly more hostile global landscape than it did prior to the crisis. This stems in large part from China’s missteps and suppression of information in the early stages of the crisis, and its bungled attempts to deflect blame and assert its influence abroad.

Indeed, the virus was likely identified in China in early December, yet Chinese officials reprimanded doctors for discussing the new virus and ordered samples of it destroyed. By the time Chinese officials instituted rigorous movement restrictions in Wuhan, the original epicenter, millions of people had left the city.

To cover its errors, China launched a full-scale propaganda campaign to distract from its irresponsible behavior, even suggesting the United States unleashed the virus on the world. The primary effect of this campaign was not convincing the world of its innocence, but sharpening American resolve that China is an adversary that must be confronted.

In fact, China’s blunders and subsequent propaganda campaign have led to a rare case of bipartisan consensus in the United States: most Republicans and Democrats agree that America needs to be tough on China, that Chinese authorities cannot be trusted, and that China is responsible for the pandemic. The United States, with its capability of amassing a vast reserve of hard and soft power, is especially dangerous to autocratic adversaries when it is not bogged down in gridlock.

Outside the United States, China’s attempts to improve its image have similarly faltered. In Europe, much of the medical equipment provided by China has proven faulty. The Netherlands, for example, recalled hundreds of thousands of facemasks it received from China. Spain, meanwhile, recently canceled an order of defective test kits—the second time they received flawed kits from China.

China’s aggressive, so-called “Wolf Warrior” diplomacy, named for popular movies depicting a Chinese hero defeating American mercenaries, is also undermining relationships abroad.

Recently, after Australia called for an inquiry into the virus’s origins, China’s state media claimed Australia was “gum stuck to the bottom of China’s shoe.” Chinese officials suggested Australia was jeopardizing its trade relationship with China, with its ambassador saying, “Maybe the ordinary people will say, ‘Why should we drink Australian wine? Eat Australian beef?’” Perhaps instead of the “Wolf Warrior” label, this is more accurately called the Don Corleone school of diplomacy.

China has raised the ire of other close partners of the United States. The Chinese embassy in Berlin got into a public spat with the German newspaper Bild after it called for billions of dollars from China in compensation to Germany. Chinese diplomats also accused France of intentionally letting older residents die in nursing homes, prompting reprimands from French officials.

Rising xenophobia in China has damaged relations with African countries, particularly after reports emerged of African residents of the Chinese city of Guangzhou being targeted for eviction amid the pandemic. African officials have publicly rebuked China for these and similar actions.

In the realm of diplomacy, rather than living up to the moment, China has been acting out on the world stage and it is witnessing the negative consequences. A report by a Chinese think tank connected to the Ministry of State Security, the country’s foremost intelligence body, and reportedly seen by President Xi Jinping, warns that anti-Chinese sentiment is at a global high not seen since the country suppressed protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Moreover, China’s troubles are not limited to diplomacy. Its economy contracted for the first time in half a century, shrinking by 6.8 percent in the first quarter of 2020. Retail sales and industrial output declined significantly compared to the same period last year, while unemployment grew. Even with stimulus measures, economic growth for the year is likely to be sluggish.

Lethargic growth could pose problems for the country’s political stability. The Chinese Communist Party’s governance model relies on fostering economic expansion and steadily increasing living standards to mitigate any broad challenge to its political authority. Should domestic turmoil arise from the downturn, China’s ability to project power overseas could also be limited.

Several months into the pandemic, China finds itself with declining soft power, a battered economy, and a generally more inhospitable global environment. It has, in short, failed the leadership test presented by the pandemic and its quest to be a leading global power could wind up dead-before-arrival.

Having failed the diplomatic test, the next question will be whether China’s economy can bounce back quicker than the United States and its allies, thereby putting it in a stronger position to become the lynchpin of a global economic recovery. But leading a global recovery will also require China to demonstrate leadership abroad, which China has shown it is ill-prepared to handle.

The Effect of Coronavirus on the Afghan Economy Could COVID-19 make decades of carnage even worse? by Hanif Sufizada

After the outbreak of the novel coronavirus in December 2019 in Wuhan, China, and then spreading to many parts of the country and more than one hundred locations around the world, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared coronavirus a pandemic.

According to statistics released by the end of this date, the virus has spread to almost every corner of the world and infected almost 5,000,000 people, of which over 300,000 have died and around 1,800,000 have recovered. It has been speculated by many medical professionals that the actual total death rate is much higher due to people dying at home, the inability to test everyone, and deaths attributed to other illnesses not linked to the disease. Coronavirus spread quickly in European countries, especially Italy and Spain. Likewise, it spread quickly in the Middle East hitting Iran, Pakistan, India, and of course, Pakistan.

Because of declining demand in world markets due to the pandemic, many companies have been shutting down, leading to unprecedented levels of unemployment around the world-amounting to 36.5 million in the United States according to the U.S. Department of Labor. It looks like the situation will not become normal anytime soon. The private sector, especially non-financial corporations, has also resorted to borrowing. The UN and World Bank have mentioned that we will witness a sharp decline in economic activity around the world in the first half of this year, and continue for many months thereafter.

The Afghan Economic Impact

From January 1 to April 11, nearly 243,000 people crossed back into Afghanistan from Iran, according to the International Organization for Migration. Iran has been hit hard by coronavirus with it causing a major blow to its already shaky economy. But the influx of returnees, without a clear coronavirus diagnosis, brought serious threats with them to Afghanistan, which the current government, embroiled in a political crisis and negotiations with the Taliban, may not be able to address on its own. Recently, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Afghanistan helped nearly 91,486 Afghans stranded in different countries to return home. This included 70,000 people from Pakistan, 13,600 from the UAE, 5,400 from India, 2,000 from Turkey, 300 from Qatar, and 186 people from Kazakhstan. Also, 634 inmates from different countries were released and helped return to Afghanistan. According to the Ministry of Public Health of Afghanistan on May 19, 7,653 positive cases of the coronavirus have been reported so far, with Kabul (2,231 cases) and Herat (1,286 cases) ranking first and second, respectively. Of these, 178 people have died and about 850 have been recovered so far. But people are skeptical of the Ministry of Public Health's statistics.

Afghanistan is currently running short of sufficient resources and equipment to cope with the outbreak of the coronavirus. The virus cannot only cause a health crisis in Afghanistan, but also an economic crisis. The pandemic has shaken the world economy. However, the people of Afghanistan have not been serious about flattening the curve.

The serious economic consequences that can be expected from the coronavirus include:

The unprecedented decline in business activity. Coronavirus will further damage business activities, especially the small and medium enterprises which make 80 percent of Afghan businesses. Like other countries where firms have been shut down, here in Afghanistan, national and international flights have been suspended indefinitely. Other manufacturing and service companies have also halted their operations or completely shut down. The pandemic could further damage informal businesses because they neither have insurance nor access to bank loans. If the coronavirus spread worsens within Afghanistan, it will have a detrimental effect on market supply and demand. A decline in business activity will further slow economic growth and reduce government revenue. A recent study conducted by Biruni Institute concluded that, due to sluggish activity, the Afghan economy will contract by 3.3 percent at least in their moderate scenario and 9.9 percent in an acute coronavirus scenario. In addition, the $1 billion reduction in U.S. aid to Afghanistan is expected to take a heavy toll on the already fledgling economy.

Increased food prices. Afghanistan is an import-driven economy, with more than 80 percent of its food imported from other countries. With the spread of the coronavirus in neighboring nations such as Pakistan and Iran, imports may decrease as these countries become aware of their own domestic consumption. UN Food and Agriculture Organization senior economists and agricultural analysts have warned that lockdowns and high food purchases may increase global food inflation. Despite a large supply of cereals and oilseeds by major exporters, the hoarding of commodity items by large importers such as big companies and governments is enough to create a crisis. That is why, in just the first month into the outbreak, Kabul witnessed a dramatic increase in the price of food, especially flour. The authorities, thankfully, intervened in a timely manner and took measures to prevent a dramatic increase in food prices around the country. Prior to the news of the coronavirus outbreak, the price of 50 kg of flour was up to 1,400 Afghanis ($19), but in just one day the price of 50 kg of flour skyrocketed between 1,900 ($25) to 2,500 Afghanis or $33, forcing some people to buy food at a high price. Afghanistan has strategic reserves in twenty-two provinces with a capacity of 263,000 metric tons of food, but currently, it has 20,212 metric tons of wheat in its stock. It is noteworthy that India has also pledged to provide 75,000 tons of wheat to Afghanistan. In April, India shipped the first consignment of 5,022 metric tons of wheat to Afghanistan to ensure food security during these trying times.

The Afghan Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation, and Livestock (MAIL) has announced that it can merely afford to distribute food for three months from the national strategic reserve. According to MAIL, six million tons of wheat are needed annually, of which four million and five hundred thousand tons are harvested and about two million tons of wheat is imported from the neighboring countries. But last year, Afghanistan imported $656 million worth of flour and wheat from the neighboring countries. In late April 2020, President Ashraf Ghani announced a bread distribution program to take place initially in Kabul, Balkh, Herat, Kunduz, Nangarhar, and Kandahar. The government has now decided to extend the program to the remaining twenty-eight provinces of the country to help the needy and stabilize prices. 

Rising unemployment. In 2019, the unemployment rate in Afghanistan was about 1.52 percent according to the World Bank. If on the one hand, the current political crisis and peace talks with the Taliban remain unresolved, and on the other, the number of people infected with the virus grows exponentially, I am afraid the unemployment rate in the country will increase dramatically. The National Union of Afghanistan Workers & Employees said last week that approximately two million workers and employees have lost their jobs due to the spread of the coronavirus and preventive measures like the lockdowns in the cities. The Ministry of Economy warned earlier that unemployment in Afghanistan will increase by 40 percent and poverty will increase by 70 percent because of unemployment and the spread of the coronavirus. And seeing that informal businesses account for 80 percent of the country's economic activity, quarantining cities will further increase unemployment thus aggravating the economic constraints.

A Big Blow to Exporters. Afghanistan mainly exports fruits to countries such as India, Pakistan, and others. If the coronavirus situation worsens, Afghanistan's exports may see an unprecedented decline due to border closures. Transport restrictions, such as the restrictions on international air travel, will also cause serious damage to the already struggling economy. The coronavirus will dramatically influence the country’s exporting strategy, especially with new standards in the food and agriculture sector. Pakistan had closed its border with Afghanistan but announced in April that it would open the two border crossing points thrice a week to facilitate the entrance of cargo trucks and containers into Afghanistan. On May 17, Pakistan decided to open its border crossings—Torkham in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Chaman in Balochistan—for six days a week to facilitate cross-border trade.

Recommendation to the Afghan government

1. Serious Enforcement of the Anti-Hoarding Law. To prevent commercial opportunism in the free market system that prevails in Afghanistan, Articles 800 and 801 as well as Articles 900 to 905 of the Afghan Penal Code considers hoarding a crime. Since hoarding disrupts the economic order of society, the Afghan government must act seriously in accordance with the provisions of the law. Merchants and shopkeepers must work shoulder-to-shoulder with the government. Last month, food markets in Kabul saw a large influx of people, but fears and threats of the coronavirus and the need for people to hoard food resulting in profiteering. In the fight against the coronavirus pandemic, the government must act more seriously and businessmen must be fair.

2. Strengthen Strategic Grain Reserves. Over the past decade, Afghanistan has twice experienced severe shortages of wheat due to declining production and the threat of wheat supply from the region's export markets. As a result, large numbers of Afghans, especially those living in rural and remote areas, have faced a shortage of wheat. The government these days needs to increase its strategic reserves. The government must import more flour from countries that it has good trade relations with and can easily transit import, and export with Afghan traders before the spread of the virus is uncontrollable.

3. Increase Investment in the Health Sector. Afghanistan's public health sector is weak in general, which makes its population vulnerable to the rapid spread of the coronavirus. Currently, there are only two coronavirus testing labs with a total capacity of nearly 2,000 tests per day. There are four in Kabul (National Public Health Lab, National Veterinary Lab, Afghan-Japan Hospital, and Military Hospital), and one each in Herat, Kandahar, Nangarhar, Balkh, Paktya, and Kunduz. A new one-hundred-bed coronavirus hospital is now open in Herat. The Afghan-Japan hospital initially could not conduct even a hundred tests per day when it started operations. Now it can do at least six hundred tests per day, which is still not sufficient given the alarming number of people at risk. 

Additionally, health workers are more prone to the virus. According to Public Health officials, more than 350 medical staff have been infected with the virus. This may put serious pressure on the health system, which will ultimately cause adverse economic effects in the country. In the absence of the necessary health facilities and adequate health workers, the increasing number of deaths will cause more damage to the workforce, and companies and small and large entrepreneurs will be harmed.

4. Quarantine Affected Cities and Create a Safety Net. The government should create a stronger safety net with the cooperation of international organizations and distribute food and other basic necessities to the people. And if it is in the power of the government, it should help the people with the distribution of cash via assistance programs. Although this may seem impractical, it will help the government save the country. How much is a human life worth? To prevent the rapid spread of the coronavirus, the government should have mandated compulsory quarantine in areas most exposed to the coronavirus much earlier. Still, people are very indifferent to lockdowns. Only recently, hundreds of people were out in the city doing their Eid shopping despite the fact that the government extended lockdown measures until May 25 across the country.

5. Support the Private Sector. Since small and large domestic businesses will be affected by the pandemic, the government should assist them with tax exemptions or subsidies. As the coronavirus spreads, private investors are likely to leave the country, which would be a major blow to the economic cycle. In order to ensure that there is no disruption in the food supply chain and other basic necessities of the citizens, the customs tariffs, especially the tariffs imposed on foodstuffs or raw foodstuffs, should be reduced or be put at zero.

6. Handle Financial Markets Disruption. The Central Bank of Afghanistan, as it is sensitive to the risks of banks in developed countries, must be prepared to respond to the turmoil in the financial markets. To restore financial stability and boost growth, it may need to reduce interest rates and inject liquidity. It is worth mentioning that with the global infection of coronavirus, the issue of transmission of this virus through coins and paper money has also been considered. Afghanistan is a country where cash is still a common mode of financial transactions. The WHO announced on its website that it has not yet conducted a specific study on the rate at which viruses can be transmitted through banknotes and coins, but in general coronavirus can survive for several days on various types of surfaces. The organization strongly recommends that people use electronic money transfer tools as much as possible and wash their hands thoroughly if they come in contact with banknotes and coins. Therefore, the Afghan government should make sure to inform people that they should wash their hands, including after handling money—especially if they are eating or touching food. The government may also explore ways to collect old money from the market.

7. Observe Strict Transparency in International Aid. The international community has so far pledged over $600 million to Afghanistan to help the country in its fight against coronavirus. Of that amount, $100 million was provided by the World Bank, 117 million euros were pledged by the EU, $50 million was pledged by the Asian Development Bank, $35 million was promised by the United States, and $220 million in loans were granted by the International Monetary Fund. Other countries such as China, the United Arab Emirates, Iran, and the Czech Republic also provided material aid—in many cases in the form of medical equipment. The government needs to undertake transparent management and spending of the aid money.

Afghanistan’s Future

Now that Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani have signed a power-sharing deal, they should pay serious attention to addressing the coronavirus crisis in the country besides prompting entry into intra-Afghan negotiations with the Taliban, who are hampering and harming the coronavirus efforts across the country. The United States on the other hand should also act more fairly in helping Afghanistan at this difficult time of the crisis. A serious effort by the Afghan government, the United States, and the Taliban will not only help Afghanistan to avoid a major human catastrophe, but also salvage its nascent economy from the coronavirus pandemic storm.

Everyone Is Taking Today's Peace Between India And Pakistan For Granted It's one of the world's most dangerous nuclear hotspots. by Sebastien Roblin

Despite diverging political agendas on the Indian subcontinent, there should be a common interest in limiting the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the likelihood of nuclear war. Growing arsenals in India and Pakistan serve to increase the catastrophic human cost of a potential conflict between the too, without evidently decreasing the frequency of inflammatory episodes of violence that spike tensions between the nuclear-armed states. 

While the United States is preoccupied by the threat of nuclear weapons in the hands of potential adversaries such as Russia, China or North Korea, the danger of nuclear conflict may actually be greatest between two of its allies, Pakistan and India. The two nations have engaged in four wars starting since their partition along religious lines in 1947. A fifth could be drastically more costly, as their nuclear capabilities continue to grow and diversify.

Several years ago I made the acquaintance of a Pakistani nuclear science student in China. Curious about the thinking behind his country’s nuclear program, I asked if he really believed there was a possibility that India would invade Pakistan. “There’s still a lot of old-school thinkers in the Congress Party that believe India and Pakistan should be united,” he told me.

I doubt there are many observers outside of Pakistan who believe India is plotting to invade and occupy the Muslim state, but a feeling of existential enmity persists. The third conflict between the two countries in 1971 established India’s superiority in conventional warfare—not unexpectedly, as India has several times Pakistan’s population.

The bone of contention has always been the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. At the time of partition, the predominantly Muslim state was politically divided over which nation to join. When Pakistani-allied tribesmen attempted to force the issue, the Hindu maharaja of the region chose to accede to India, leading to the first war between India and Pakistan. Ever since, the line of control between the Indian and Pakistan side has remained bitterly contested, with artillery and sniper fire routinely exchanged. Pakistan intelligence services have infiltrated insurgents and plotted attacks across the border for decades, and Indian security troops have been implicated in human-rights violations and killings of the locals as a result of their counterinsurgency operations.

Pakistan does have to fear the potential of an Indian counterstrike intended to retaliate for a terrorist attack by Pakistani-aligned groups, such as the killing of 166 in Mumbai by Lashkar-e-Taiba in 2008 or the attack on Indian parliament in 2001 by Jaish-e-Muhammad. In both cases, the attackers had ties with Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence, and Islamabad has shown limited willingness or ability to crack down on these groups. Complicating matters, civilian control of the military is far from consolidated in Pakistan, and it would be quite possible for ISI or some other agency to carry out such activities on its own initiative without the knowledge or support of the head of state.

India’s military has formulated a “Cold Start” doctrine to enable its forward-deployed land forces to launch an armored assault into Pakistani territory on short notice in response to a perceived provocation from Islamabad. This new strategy was devised after the Indian Army’s armored strike corps took three weeks to deploy to the border after the attack on the Indian parliament in 2001, by which time Pakistan had already mobilized its own troops.

Islamabad sees nuclear weapons as its deterrent against a conventional attack, and Cold Start in particular. This is demonstrated by its refusal to adhere to a “No First Use” policy. Pakistan has an extensive plutonium production capacity, and is estimated to possess 130 to 140 warheads, a total that may easily increase to 220 to 250 in a decade, according to a report by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

Many of the new weapons are smaller, short-range tactical weapons intended for targeting frontline troops. To enable a second-strike capability, Pakistan has also empowered local commanders to launch retaliatory nuclear strikes in case the chain of command is disrupted.

While battlefield nuclear weapons are less likely to cause the mass civilian casualties that a strike against a densely populated city would produce, they are deeply worrying in their own way: a state may be more tempted to employ tactical nuclear weapons, and perceive doing so as being intrinsically less risky. However, many simulations of nuclear war suggest that tactical-nuclear-weapon usage rapidly escalates to strategic weapons.

Furthermore, tactical nuclear weapons are necessarily more dispersed, and thus less secure than those stationed in permanent facilities. These issues led the U.S. Army to at first reorganize its tactical nuclear forces in the 1960s, and largely abandon them after the end of the Cold War.

Pakistan fields nearly a dozen different types of missiles to facilitate this strategy, developed with Chinese and North Korean assistance. Ground based tactical systems include the Hatf I, an unguided ground-based rocket with a range of one hundred kilometers, and the Nasr Hatf IX, which can be mounted on mobile quad-launchers. Longer reach is provided by Ghauri II and Shaheen II medium-range ballistic missiles, which can strike targets up to around 1,600 and 2,500 kilometers, respectively.

The Pakistani Air Force’s American-made F-16 fighters are also believed to have been modified to deploy nuclear weapons. The older F-16As and Bs of the Thirty-Eighth Fighter Wing and the newer Cs and Ds of the Thirty-Ninth are both believed to be based near nuclear-weapon storage facilities. The PAF’s five squadrons of Mirage IIIs, based in Karachi and Shorkot, meanwhile, have been modified to launch the domestically-produced Ra’ad nuclear Air-Launched Cruise Missile (ALCM), with a range of 350 kilometers. New JF-17 fighters jointly produced with China are also thought to be capable of carrying the Ra’ad ALCM.

The Pakistani Navy lacks a nuclear strike capability, but appears interested in acquiring one. In January of this year, it released a video claiming to show a test launch of a Babur-3 submarine-launched cruise missile. The domestically produced Babur is similar to the Tomahawk, and designed to approach its target at low altitude to avoid detection. Pakistan already possesses land-based TEL vehicles to deploy the nuclear-capable weapon.

Reflecting its superior conventional abilities, India does adhere to a “No First Use” nuclear weapons policy. Its security posture is also complicated by long lasting tensions with China, dating back to a border war in 1962 in which Beijing seized territory in the Himalayas. Today, China is closely allied economically and militarily with Pakistan, and even has a naval base in Gwadar as part of a strategy to envelop India. India, by contrast, continues to receive much of its weaponry from Russia, but does not enjoy the same kind of military alliance. It has instead dramatically expanded civilian nuclear cooperation with the United States and other nations in the last decades.

India possesses a smaller number of nuclear weapons, estimated in 2015 to range between ninety and 120. However, New Delhi recently acquired a full nuclear triad of air-, land- and sea-based nuclear platforms when it deployed its first home-produced nuclear-powered submarine, the INS Arihant. The Arihant is capable of launching a dozen K-15 Sagarika submarine-launched ballistic missiles. However, these are limited to a range of 750 kilometers, and are thus incapable of reaching the major inland cities of Pakistan or China, a shortcoming India is attempting to address with new K-4 missiles, derived form the land-based Agni-III. New Delhi intends to produce three more nuclear submarines over the years, while Pakistan is considering building one of their own.

India’s chief nuclear arm is thought to lay in its Mirage 2000H and Jaguar fighter-bombers, which can carry nuclear gravity bombs. In 2016, India signed a contract for thirty-six nuclear-capable fourth-generation Rafale fighters from France, further enhancing its aerial striking power. India has also modified its Su-30 fighter-bombers to carry the BrahMos cruise missiles with a range of five hundred kilometers. These could theoretically carry nuclear warheads, though none are believed to have been so equipped so far.

India also has its own array of ground-based nuclear ballistic missiles. The most numerous are slow-firing Prithvi short-range ballistic missiles. Twenty mobile Agni-1 ballistic missiles with a range of seven hundred kilometers are also deployed along the border with Pakistan, while ten heavier Agni-II systems with a range of two thousand kilometers are situated in the northwest for potential strikes on China. India also possesses a small number of rapid-deploying Agni III missiles with a range of 3,500 kilometers, and is developing an Agni IV MRBM and Agni VI ICBM with sufficient range to hit Chinese cities on the Pacific coast.

If there is any silver lining to this steady escalation in nuclear firepower, it’s that neither India nor Pakistan appears to possess chemical or biological weapons. (India completed the destruction of its stock of mustard gas in 2009.) However, the potential for catastrophic loss of human life if nuclear warheads rain down on the cities of the Indian subcontinent is self-evident.

Indian prime minister Narendra Modi and Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif showed goodwill in a surprise meeting in 2015. Unfortunately, neither state appears capable of shaking out of its intractable pattern of conflict, driven by domestic political forces, which makes diplomatic accommodation difficult. The struggle for Kashmir occupies an important part of Pakistani national identity, and there has yet to be a civilian head of state in Islamabad with the will and authority to bring an end to cross-border infiltration and support for terrorist or insurgent fighters. For its part, the Indian Army has failed to respect local Kashmiri leaders and significantly improve its human-rights record.

In 2016 the killing of Kashmiri militant Burhan Wani led to an outbreak of domestic civil unrest in Kashmir that resulted in dozens of civilian deaths. After attackers killed seventeen Indian Army troops in Uri on September 18, the Indian army launched a cross-border raid under murky circumstances ten days later, followed by heavy exchanges of artillery and sniper fire in October and November that killed or injured dozens of civilians and soldiers on both sides of the Line of Control. 

The United States sits awkwardly astride the two states. During the Cold War, the United States tilted in favor of Pakistan due to India’s good relations with the Soviet Union. Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, against the advice of the State Department, even dispatched a carrier task force in a futile attempt to dissuade India from its support of Bengali independence fighters. However, in recent decades, U.S. diplomacy has moved gradually in favor of democratic India, both due to its potential as a future superpower and its role as a counterbalance to Chinese influence. The role played by President Clinton in helping negotiate the end of the Kargil conflict in 1999 stood as a key turning point in the region—and marked one of the most dangerous confrontations in recent history, as it two nuclear-armed states were at risk of entering into full-scale conflict.

U.S. relations with Pakistan, meanwhile, have worsened despite a continuing flow of American arms for the Pakistani military. This mutual distrust is due to the presence of Islamic militant groups on Pakistani soil and U.S. drone strikes targeting them. Washington and Islamabad have genuinely diverging interests in regards to Afghanistan, the latter desiring to control Afghanistan out of fear that it might otherwise fall under Indian influence. Pakistan, however, can fall back on its relations with China if the U.S. alliance collapses, leading to a complicated diplomatic balancing act.

Despite diverging political agendas on the Indian subcontinent, there should be a common interest in limiting the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the likelihood of nuclear war. Growing arsenals in India and Pakistan serve to increase the catastrophic human cost of a potential conflict between the too, without evidently decreasing the frequency of inflammatory episodes of violence that spike tensions between the nuclear-armed states.

India and Pakistan will of course retain their nuclear arms, and continue to see them as vital deterrents to attack. However, for such policies to remain tenable in the long run, the longtime adversaries must seek to bring an end to a pattern of recurring conflict that is entering its seventh decade this year.

Why We Should Worry About China and India’s Border Skirmishes Three decades ago, the two countries reached an understanding not to fight. But Beijing is now a much stronger power. BY SUMIT GANGULY, MANJEET S. PARDESI

An Indian soldier communicates with colleagues on a walkie-talkie at Nathula Gate, leading to the Nathu La border crossing between India and China on July 4, 2006. DESHAKALYAN CHOWDHURY/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Tensions between India and China are not new. The two countries—which share the world’s longest unmarked border—fought a full-fledged war in 1962 and have since engaged in several small skirmishes. Not since 1975 has a bullet been fired across their shared border. As a result, the theory that Sino-Indian clashes are flashes in the pan and unlikely to lead to more extensive fighting has become a widely held consensus. Recent events, however, suggest that escalations are highly possible. Both sides have substantial—and growing—military deployments along a mostly disputed border. And for more than a decade, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has been testing India’s military readiness and political resolve along several strategic areas. Peace can no longer be taken for granted.

The most recent clashes took place earlier this month. On May 5, Indian and Chinese soldiers clashed near the Pangong Tso lake in Ladakh. It is believed that the skirmish took place because the PLA had objected to Indian military patrols in the area. Most of these clashes apparently stem from differing assessments of the location of the so-called Line of Actual Control—the de facto international border. And then on May 9, at an altitude of 15,000 feet, in the Naku La region near Tibet, soldiers from both sides came to blows and threw stones at each other mostly in efforts to induce the Indian troops to move back from the areas they were patrolling. No arms were used but several dozen soldiers were injured, including a senior Indian officer who was required to be airlifted to a hospital.

After a long period of relative quiet along the Sino-Indian border, militarized incidents have come to the fore again. According to the Indian government, the Chinese military crossed into Indian territory 1,025 times between 2016 and 2018. Given that China and India’s borders remain unmarked, such transgressions are likely rooted in how Beijing and New Delhi have different perceptions about the extent of their territories.

In 2017, when Indian and Chinese troops faced off for two months in Doklam, an area claimed by both Bhutan and China, a serious military clash was a distinct possibility. While that particular crisis abated, it is perhaps instructive to see the standoff not as an aberration but as part of a new phase in relations between the two countries. The old phase dates back to 1988, a year after a military skirmish between India and China in the Sumdorong Chu Valley in Arunachal Pradesh, when Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi visited his counterpart Deng Xiaoping in Beijing to mend ties. The two leaders agreed to establish a forward-looking relationship even as important issues such as the border dispute were temporarily set aside. The reason for this pragmatism was rooted in economic and strategic factors: Both China and India needed a stable external environment to promote domestic economic development. China was already a decade into the dramatic economic reforms that Deng had initiated, while Gandhi’s India had also embarked on a similar path, albeit hesitantly.

The 1988 compromise between India and China, helped in part by New Delhi’s studious silence on developments within Tibet, was driven by the fact that the two countries were near equals on the world stage. According to the World Bank, India’s gross domestic product was $297 billion compared with China’s $312 billion that year, while India’s defense spending, at $10.6 billion, was also close to the Chinese allocation of $11.4 billion.

The material balance of power between China and India has dramatically changed since then. At $13.6 trillion in 2018, China’s GDP is now more than five times India’s $2.7 trillion. Similarly, China spent $261.1 billion on defense expenditure in 2019, almost four times India’s total of $71.1 billion. While India has risen as an economy and a global power in the past three decades, its relative strength to China has in fact greatly declined.

A new economic dynamic means that the underlying bedrock of the Gandhi-Deng bargain—of similar means and goals—is fizzling out. Although it remains unclear when exactly the understanding between New Delhi and Beijing began to fade—most likely after the 2008 global financial crisis—China has become far more assertive in its foreign affairs in recent years, from artificial-island-building activities in the South China Sea to its muscular diplomacy amid the coronavirus pandemic. Indeed, some scholars have argued that an impending power transition is underway between China and the United States, the current global hegemon. While New Delhi has also become a more assertive player in global politics its rise has not been of much concern to the United States.

China and India’s recent border clashes look increasingly worrying in the context of these changing power dynamics. The Gandhi-Deng bargain paved the way for a number of border management agreements (including the 1993 and 1996 agreements related to confidence-building measures and the 2005 agreement on the political parameters guiding boundary negotiations). More recently, high-profile summits between the two countries’ top leaders—in Wuhan and in Mamallapuram—have played an important role in managing the overall relationship. However, even as the 1988 deal allowed relative tranquility along their border and promoted commercial links between China and India, none of their outstanding issues—including the border dispute—were actually resolved.

China and India find themselves in an “extraordinarily complex relationship,” according to Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, India’s foreign minister. In addition to the border dispute, some of the core issues in the Sino-Indian rivalry include Tibet (the presence of the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan government-in-exile, and tens of thousands of Tibetan exiles in India), the burgeoning China-Pakistan partnership, and the two countries’ overlapping spheres of influence in Asia. These issues have become more salient in the context of the two countries’ simultaneous but asymmetric rising power.

China and India’s material capabilities remain in flux; China continues to outstrip India along most axes of power even as New Delhi seeks to boost its own capabilities. According to the World Bank, India recorded higher growth rates than China every year between 2014 and 2018. While the long-term economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic remains unclear, India’s smaller economy and marginally faster growth rates mean that it has the potential to narrow its power gap with China—at least in the long term. In other words, India is the only major power that is rising with respect to China—even as China grows faster than other major powers such as Japan and the United States.

In addition to accruing power domestically, India is also building strong strategic partnerships with China’s other rivals, especially the United States and Japan. Meanwhile, a rising China has stabilized its northern borders with Russia and is working to undermine the United States’ primacy in the East Asian maritime commons through the modernization of its military and its push to build islands. This basically leaves only one border issue with a rival unresolved: namely, the Sino-Indian border. It is hardly surprising that it is exerting periodic pressure on India along this front—a trend that is only likely to escalate.

As China and India continue with their ascent, China will increasingly see India as an impertinent rival unwilling to settle the border dispute on terms favorable to China. The ongoing fragmentation of the global trading system (through tariffs and restrictions on investments), as well as a trend of rising nationalism around the world, will further test Sino-Indian relations because trade negotiations are likely to become more fraught and contentious. Indeed, given that Beijing sees New Delhi as the principal impediment to the realization of its ambitions to dominate Asia, a more violent clash along the volatile, poorly demarcated Sino-Indian border is highly likely. Unless China emerges as the dominant power in South Asia (and the Indian Ocean), China is likely to remain a regional power in East Asia. Put another way, China’s quest for pan-Asian dominance will intensify the ongoing Sino-Indian rivalry as India itself is seeking primacy—but not hegemony—in southern Asia.

To avert a conflict spiral India will need to pursue a multifaceted strategy which will need to include cooperative elements such as summit diplomacy and working together in international institutions such the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the New Development Bank, and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. But while these cooperative endeavors could forestall more border violence, they will not address core outstanding issues in Sino-Indian relations. Short of making significant territorial concessions, there is little that India can do to assuage the underlying sources of the rivalry.

Stop Calling The B-52 Bomber ‘Old’ — It’s More Youthful Than A B-2 Stealth Bomber. by David Axe

A B-52 Stratofortress from Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana takes off from Nellis Air Force Base, ... [+]

 U.S. AIR FORCE PHOTO BY STAFF SGT. PHILIP BRYANT

The U.S. Air Force has asked industry to pitch a new engines for the service’s 76 B-52 bombers. With new motors, the B-52s could keep flying into the 2050s.

Or longer. The youngest B-52 rolled off Boeing’s Wichita production line in 1962. But it’s not fair to call the B-52 a 59-year-old airplane. Very little of any B-52 actually dates to the 1960s. In many ways, a B-52 is “younger” than airplanes from the 1980s and ’90s.

It’s not for no reason that, in 2018, the Air Force announced it would retire its 62 ’80s-vintage B-1Bs bombers and 20 newer B-2 stealth bombers by the 2030s, while retaining the the updated B-52s alongside a fleet of at least 100 new B-21 stealth bombers.

After decades of dithering, the Air Force on May 19 issued a request for proposals as part of the Commercial Engine Replacement Program. Responses are due in July ahead of a mid-2021 contract award.

General Electric GE, Pratt & Whitney and Rolls-Royce all plan to compete for the effort, which combined with other upgrades could cost U.S. taxpayers more than $20 billion. The winner will have to build 608 engines that fit the cowlings for the B-52’s current Pratt & Whitney TF-33s.

The Air Force wants the new motors to improve the B-52's fuel-efficiency by at least 20 percent while maintaining its ceiling and take-off performance. A B-52 with TF-33s can carry 35 tons of bombs and missiles as far as 4,500 miles without aerial refueling at a top speed of 650 miles per hour.

A modern turbofan such as General Electric’s CF34-10 or Passport, Pratt & Whitney’s PW800 or Rolls-Royce’s F130 can operate for 30,000 hours or more between overhaul. The B-52 have racked up around 20,000 flight hours apiece over their nearly 60 years of service. Assuming the Air Force installs the B-52’s new engines in the late 2020s, the service might not need to remove them until, oh, 2090 or so.

Don’t laugh. Few plane designs aside from the DC-3 and the C-130 are likely to fly for more than 100 years. But the B-52 very well could join that exclusive club. After all, the bomber’s actual components aren’t actually that old.

Ask yourself what limits the service life of a warplane. To keep flying, a plane must be safe, economical and useful. The B-52 has met all three criteria since the 1950s. There’s no reason to doubt it will continue to meet them in 2050 or later.

Airmen assigned to the 5th Maintenance Squadron lower the vertical stabilizer on a B-52H ... [+]

 U.S. AIR FORCE PHOTO BY AIRMAN JESSE JENNY

The B-52 is safe. Built tough by Boeing, the B-52 “has good bones,” Gen. Robin Rand, then head of Air Force Global Strike Command, told Air Force Magazine prior to his 2018 retirement.

The most fragile element of a B-52 is the skin of its upper wing. Boeing replaced that skin in the late 1970s.

Every four years, a B-52 spends a few months at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma, where workers strip off the plane’s paint, remove panels and inspect every component, repairing or replacing the broken ones.

That’s been going on for decades. ''I would be surprised if there's an original rivet in any of those airplanes we have out on the ramp,” Col. Robert Durkin, commander of the 28th Bombardment Wing—a B-52 unit in South Dakota—told a reporter in 1983. “It's been re-winged. It's been re-skinned. It's been re-tailed. It's not an unsafe airplane.''

The B-52 is economical. It costs around $70,000 to fly a B-52 for one hour. That’s roughly the same as what a B-1 costs for an hour of flight, and half what a B-2 costs. And the B-52’s per-hour cost eventually could drop owing to the greater fuel-efficiency of the new motors.

U.S. Air Force 1st Lt. Kevan Thomas, a pilot assigned to the 96th Bomb Squadron, does a preflight ... [+]

 U.S. AIR FORCE PHOTO BY AIRMAN 1ST CLASS DUNCAN C. BEVAN

The same simplicity that makes the B-52 so cheap to operate also makes it more reliable than other bomber types are. The B-52 fleet in 2019 boasted a mission-capable rate of 66 percent. The B-2’s rate was 61 percent. The B-1’s—an embarrassing 46 percent.

The B-52 is useful. It might not be fast like the B-1 is or stealthy like the B-2 is, but it doesn’t need to be. For high-intensity warfare—nuclear or conventional—the B-52 is a missile-truck. A wide range of new long-range missiles are in development to allow the B-52 to strike targets from hundreds or even thousands of miles away.

The Long-Range Stand-Off nuclear cruise missile. The Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile. The hypersonic Air-Launched Rapid-Response Weapon.

And to make it a better missile-truck, the Air Force is spending billions of dollars upgrading the B-52’s radios, wiring and sensors.

Arguably the most important of these upgrades is a new radar. The Air Force in 2019 tapped Raytheon to install a new electronically-scanned array radar on the B-52 starting in 2024. “The advanced radar upgrade will ensure the aircraft remains mission-ready through 2050 and beyond,” Raytheon stated.

If a bomber’s rivets, skin, engines, wiring, sensors and weapons are new, is the bomber actually old—even if its born-on date is 1962?

Iran picks cyber fight with Israel as both sides target critical infrastructure

The simmering cyber conflict between Iran and Israel reached a boiling point this week as the two enemies have been going tit-for-tat in an effort to quietly take down critical infrastructure that security analysts dub something of an electronic cold war.

“The fact that Iran is behaving so aggressively, and trying to disrupt critical services in Israel, is very disturbing,” David Kennedy, founder/CEO of TrustedSec, and a former hacker for the NSA and U.S. Marine Corps told Fox News. “Any time you have a state actor engaged in industrial sabotage, that is a real cause for concern. When you attack a critical service like water, power, hospitals, or transportation, you are essentially putting lives at risk.”

Last month, Iran fired the first shot by purporting to cyberattack water installations – including tanks, pumps, and pipelines in Israel – raising the alarm among national security and cyber experts over the vulnerability of critical infrastructure.

While some slight damage to water valves and control systems did take place, according to Haaretz, ultimately there was no persistent damage to the water supply as the hackers had likely intended.

And then on May 9, the Bandar Abbas port terminal in the south of Iran was suddenly crippled, and shipping traffic was suspended for days. Israel was behind the retaliatory strike back which successfully inflicted severe damage without causing casualties, the Washington Post reported this week.

Israeli Water Authority officials reportedly detected the attempt and immediately changed system passwords and took measures to secure their systems.

“It is definitely unusual to see a state actor targeting the critical infrastructure assets of another state. That type of activity is usually reserved for war or near-war situations, at least by most countries,” Kennedy surmised. “Iran doesn’t respect those rules.”

Moreover, analysts have also pointed out that Iran’s cyberattack was executed through servers based in the United States and Europe, which indicates some degree of sophistication, despite being a routine TACTIC used globally by those adverse to the West.

“The Israeli response was measured yet enough to cause logistical and economic disorder from Iran’s main port at a time when they can ill afford any further financial disruptions due to sanctions, low oil prices, unemployment, and massive inflation,” noted Jeff Bardin, the Chief Intelligence Officer at security firm Treadstone 71. “My assumption here is that the Iranians used extracts and updates to Stuxnet code to manipulate the Israeli equipment.”

The Stuxnet virus was a joint cyber operation between Israeli and American intelligence and was deployed in 2011 to infect Iran’s then-burgeoning nuclear program – effectively harming the electricity boxes linked to the centrifuges being utilized for uranium enrichment. Nonetheless, Tehran was able to course correct in the aftermath of the course contagion, learning how to bolster its own cyber defense and develop tactics of its own.

Protesters burn representations of Israeli flag during a demonstration over the U.S. airstrike in Iraq that killed Iranian Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani, in Tehran, Iran, Jan. 3, 2020. Iran has vowed "harsh retaliation" for the U.S. airstrike near Baghdad's airport that killed Tehran's top general and the architect of its interventions across the Middle East, as tensions soared in the wake of the targeted killing. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

And following the April attempt to harm Israel’s water systems, the regime is said to have overinflated the outcome in its press as a means of distraction against the coronavirus pandemic crippling much of the nation’s health care system. The gloating prompted Israel to acknowledge that an incident had happened, although it was largely dismissed.

“We are in a state of constant cyber cold war accentuated by regular skirmishes such as the Iranian attack on Israeli water systems and the Israeli response on Iran’s main port. Israel does not usually come out of the shadows to execute publicly identified cyber-attacks,” Bardin continued. “They did so this time since Iran was chest-thumping over the attack on the Israeli water system, considered critical infrastructure. Israel had to strike back and did so in such a way that shut down the port for 10 days.”

And Kennedy further underscored that because Iran does not have the military might to confront Israel or the United States directly, it is instead forced to engage in asymmetric warfare, of which cyber is an important part.

“Ever since Iran was hit by Stuxnet, they have been actively developing their own cyber-kinetic capabilities. This capability is extremely important for Iran because it gives them the ability to strike inside the borders of countries that they could not attack directly with traditional military forces. It also allows them to score PR victories at home, without risking a humiliating military response,” he said. “Iran’s cyber operations against Israel are definitely becoming more aggressive during the pandemic. Anytime you target critical infrastructure, you are seriously escalating the situation.”

And things kicked up an extra notch on Thursday, after allegedly Iran-based hackers seemingly infiltrated tens of thousands of unsecured Israeli websites, disabling their functions and blasting threatening videos and messages pertaining to the “crimes against the Palestinians,” and “all we can do is revenge from a cyberattack.”

The group remains on both Facebook and Youtube.

“Thousands of Israeli sites, including sites of major and major companies in the economy, were vandalized following an attack by anti-Israel officials against the Upress hosting company,” Bardin explained. “The attack disrupted the company’s servers. Instead of the usual content of the sites appears content calling for the destruction of Israel. In addition, the sites ask the users permission to use the camera to take photos.”

He pointed out that, at this stage, it is unclear whether the company’s databases were hacked or is it merely a corruption. Upress, one of Israel’s largest website hosting companies, announced on its Facebook page that the attack was caused by security vulnerabilities in the WordPress plugin. “We work in collaboration with the state cyber authority, conduct security investigations, and handle all sites,” the company added. Hacking a web hosting company allows hackers to hit many sites at once.

In addition, Bardin’s Treadstone 71 found significant chatter in Iranian social media sites on WordPress vulnerabilities prior to the penetration.

But where the Iran/Israel cyber conflict goes from here – and whether tensions will continue to rise – remains to be seen. According to Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow and Iran expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), the use of cyber tools for purposes of damage and espionage is consistent with Iran’s asymmetric military strategy.

“Just like proxy wars, the cyber domain permits Iran to mask its hand and involvement, as well as limit the potential for kinetic blowback and escalation,” he explained. “In this regard, Iran’s cyber wars have been successful, even if they invite Israel or other states to respond to Iranian aggression using The same or better cyber means.”

Some experts have also asserted that Iran’s reignition of the quiet fight with Israel last month was in response to Israel’s frequent targeting of Iran-backed, Hezbollah assets in Syria.

“(The cyber conflict) will not end anytime soon. The cyberattack that Iran launched on Israel's water infrastructure was a convenient and relatively low-risk way to retaliate against recent (presumed) Israeli strikes on Iranian targets in Syria,” added Heather Heldman, managing partner of Luminae Group and a former Middle East advisor at the US State Department. “Regardless of the fact that Iran's cyberattack failed to cause significant damage or disruption inside Israel, it gave the Iranian regime an opportunity to score points with its domestic audience and distract from the turmoil transpiring at home, which has intensified in the wake of Coronavirus and low oil prices.”