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Observer
02-07-2025
- Politics
- Observer
Germany, UK to sign mutual defence pact
BERLIN: Germany and Britain will on July 17 sign a defence treaty that includes a mutual assistance clause in the event of a threat to either country, the Politico news outlet reported on Wednesday. The report came almost a year after British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and then-German Chancellor Olaf Scholz issued a joint declaration promising closer cooperation on issues from trade to security. That broad agreement is now being finalised, according to Politico, and a key area is defence. It will include a section stating that any strategic threat to one country would represent a threat to the other and the accord is expected to be signed on July 17, it reported, citing two London-based officials. Although both countries are committed to Nato, the defence agreement highlights a shift among European states, including Germany under Chancellor Friedrich Merz, to work more closely together and rely less on the US under President Donald Trump. A spokesperson for the German defence ministry said on Wednesday that he had no new developments to impart when asked about the Politico report at a government press conference in Berlin. — Reuters
Express Tribune
30-06-2025
- Business
- Express Tribune
G7 risks disappearing into oblivion
The Western efforts to display cohesion on global challenges collapsed after US President Donald Trump left the G7 summit in the middle and embarrassed other member states by accusing them of not offering a fair trade deal. The widening cracks imply that G7 has effectively regressed into G6 with the future of the alliance entering an uncharted territory. G7 was originally established to cope with economic challenges but it broadened its scope in the 1980s to foreign and security policy issues. In the coming years, this seismic shift aggravated conflicts and hampered peace and prosperity the world over, weighing upon credibility of an alliance whose approach was replete with risks and relevance marred by internal differences. Beneath G7 downfall, there lies aggrandisement of threats and advancement of self-seeking interests. These narcissistic cravings drove the bloc to impose the US-led international order on the rest of the world, preventing greater involvement of major international players and shunning collaboration on pressing global challenges. Yet once Trump returned with all his bully and bluster, the G7 member states began to feel the pinch of venturing recklessly with Washington. As a result, they are seeking "independence" from America's security guarantees, declaring US tariffs as "brutal and unfounded" and recalibrating ties with China to diversify their trade away from the US. Trump believes that the European Union was formed to "screw" the US. In his first term too, he had launched a scathing criticism of the bloc. This prodded then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel to rely less on Washington and "take our fate into our own hands". While factors such as lack of follow-through and Trump's acrimony have the bloc's unity to test, middle powers' exclusion has contributed to a sharp decline in G7 international prominence. The alliance's waning economic heft is another rationale behind its declining significance. G7 share in global GDP on purchasing power parity, per International Monetary Fund, is set to contract from 51.8% in 1980 to 28.4% in 2025. With emerging and developing countries accounting for almost 61% of global economic output, the North can more stifle the rise of the Global South or strip it of its legitimate right of having a greater role in the global governance system. In order to prevent it from fading into triviality, G7 posed itself as an inclusive organisation by inviting leaders of emerging economies such as Brazil, India and South Africa that are part of the China-led BRICS, a multilateral alliance seeking to strengthen economic, political and social cooperation and increase influence of the South. But G7 is unlikely to catch the South's attention because it has for decades denied accession to the emerging economies and remained narrowly focused on interests of a handful of advanced industrial economies. A literal exclusion of South suggests that the bloc pursues to leverage its economic relationship to achieve its own mercenary goals. Its spending cuts, leaving developing countries exposed to poverty, hunger, conflicts and climate disasters, debunk its commitment with the South. The BRICS is being accused of diminishing the role of West-dominated institutions. Its long-term priorities have been to reform and strengthen these very multilateral bodies with the aim of enhancing representation of marginalised countries. The notion of a reimagined G7 to resolve the global governance crisis is doomed from the outset given it will just be an extension of an elite club, constraining the involvement of the South as a bystander. Even proponents of the concept have acknowledged the South would find a little appeal in it as they will still be excluded from the alliance. The Western double standards are the biggest obstacle to G7 drive of tantalising the South into its camp. For instance, the US and allies have been framing Russia's invasion of Ukraine as a struggle for democracy, supporting its right to defend itself and its sovereignty under Article 51 of the UN Charter. Yet when it came to Gaza and now Iran, the rich nations extended full-throated support to Israel, disregarding the latter's violations of international law and the UN Charter. This powerful display of the Western hypocrisy - as Trump dismissed his own intelligence community's assessment that Tehran wasn't building nuclear weapons - would further alienate the North from the South. The West's violent strategy, inflated threat perception and hypocrisy on climate change - as well-heeled countries historically accounted for most of the carbon emissions but shifted the responsibility of the green transition on the South that contributed the least to triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution yet suffered the most - have triggered resentments in the South and would continue to blight the G7 ambition of carving out developing world from China's influence into its orbit. For decades, G7's delusion of grandeur has precluded it from authorising entry of developing economies to the forum, ensuring it remains an exclusive club of wealthy-only nations. This stubbornly arrogant posture accompanying a marked propensity to spark conflicts has faced a pushback from the South, dishing out a beatdown to the alliance's significance. The bloc is at a crossroads, ergo: mend its hypocritical approach or risk disappearing into oblivion.
National Business Review
15-05-2025
- Politics
- National Business Review
Putin a no-show in key Ukraine talks; UK economy expands
Kia ora and welcome to the end of another working week. Let's bring you up to speed with the latest news from overnight. First this Friday, the leaders of Russia – and now Ukraine – won't be attending peace talks in Türkiye, with other officials set to discuss the path forward in Istanbul on Friday local time, the ABC and Reuters reported. Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin was "not serious" about ending the conflict. US President Donald Trump previously said progress was unlikely until a proper face-to-face meeting between him and Putin. Ukraine's defence minister will attend for the first direct negotiations between the two sides since 2022. Putin sent a team of negotiators, which the BBC said was a 'very junior delegation'. Zelensky called them "stand-in props". US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the US did not have high expectations about what will happen in the peace talks. 'I hope that those talks will be between Ukraine and Russia, with our Turkish counterparts in the room, along with someone from our team or members of our team at the appropriate level. 'I don't think we're going to have a breakthrough here until the President [Trump] and President Putin interact directly on this topic,' Rubio added. Putin last met his Zelensky at a summit in Paris in December 2019, Reuters noted. Zelensky took office in May 2019 and Putin also held talks with President Emmanual Macron and then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel. French President Emmanuel Macron. In the Middle East, at least 115 Palestinians were killed in a wave of attacks by Israel on the Gaza Strip, Al Jazeera reported. Rubio spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, telling reporters that the US was not immune to the suffering of the people in Gaza. The latest attacks killed mostly women and children. To date, about 53,000 Palestinians had been killed, with about 120,000 wounded, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. Meanwhile, the Israeli army declared large areas of Gaza unsafe, telling residents to leave ahead of "intense strikes", the BBC reported. Israel said ongoing bombing and aid blockades were meant to pressure militant group Hamas to release the remaining hostages. Elsewhere, the UK economy expanded at the fastest pace in a year, against warnings of a fall in activity, as businesses digested Trump's trade tariffs, the Guardian reported. The Office for National Statistics said the economy rose 0.7% in the March quarter, slightly above expectations, and followed 0.1% growth in the December quarter last year. The services sector expanded 0.7%, production – which included manufacturing, mining and energy – gained 1.1%, while the construction sector was flat. Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell said longer-term interest rates could be higher as the US economy changes and because of policy uncertainty, CNBC reported. He was commenting on the central bank's policy framework review over the past five years. 'Higher real rates may also reflect the possibility that inflation could be more volatile going forward than in the inter-crisis period of the 2010s,' Powell said. 'We may be entering a period of more frequent, and potentially more persistent, supply shocks – a difficult challenge for the economy and for central banks.' Finally, Trump said he told Apple chief executive Tim Cook that he doesn't want the technology company to build its products in India, as it diversifies production away from China, CNBC reported. 'I had a little problem with Tim Cook,' Trump said. 'I said to him: 'My friend, I treated you very good. You're coming here with US$500 billion, but now I hear you're building all over India. I don't want you building in India'.' Trump referenced Apple's commitment in February of US$500b investment in the US. CNBC said Apple had increased production in India with the aim of making around 25% of global iPhones in that country over the coming years to cut reliance on China production.
CNN
14-03-2025
- Politics
- CNN
Analysis: How not to end a war: 3 lessons from the last time Ukraine and Russia agreed a ceasefire deal
The ceasefire proposal put forward by the United States on Tuesday and accepted by Ukraine is part of a plan, said US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, 'to end this conflict in a way that's enduring and sustainable.' It's a promise fraught with risk for Ukraine. The last time it signed a peace accord with Russia, 10 years ago this February, it brought only sporadic violence, mounting distrust, and eventually full-scale war. 'I told President Trump about this,' Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview last month with CNN affiliate CNN Turk. 'If you can get Putin to end the war, that's great. But know that he can cheat. He deceived me like that. After the Minsk ceasefire.' The Minsk accords – the first signed in September 2014 and, when that broke down, a second known as Minsk II just five months later – were designed to end a bloody conflict between Kyiv's forces and Russian-backed separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk, in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region. Russia's Vladimir Putin and Ukraine's then-leader Petro Poroshenko were signatories, along with the OSCE. The accords were never fully implemented and violence flared up periodically in the seven years that followed. Now, as Ukraine and its allies attempt to forge another path to peace, experts warn the failures of Minsk serve as a cautionary tale for today's peacemakers, and that the risks of history repeating are clear. Here's what we've learned: In 2015, Western military aid to Ukraine was minimal, and mostly limited to non-lethal supplies, though the Obama administration did supply defensive military equipment. 'The crisis cannot be resolved by military means,' said then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in a speech at the 2015 Munich Security Conference, which coincided with the talks on Minsk II. Her assessment of those diplomatic efforts was blunt: 'It's unclear whether they'll succeed.' It didn't help that both Minsk accords were signed right after, or during, major military defeats for Ukraine. The first agreement followed what's believed to be the deadliest episode of the conflict in the Donbas, at Ilovaisk. In late August 2014, hundreds of Ukrainian troops were killed as they tried to flee the town to avoid encirclement. Six months later, Minsk II was signed while fierce fighting raged for another Donetsk town, Debaltseve. That battle continued for several days beyond the initial ceasefire deadline. Marie Dumoulin, a diplomat at the French Embassy in Berlin at the time, says those defeats put both Ukraine and its allies firmly on the back foot in the talks. 'Basically the main goal, both for France and Germany, but also for the Ukrainians, was to end the fighting,' she told CNN. But, she added, 'Russia through its proxies, but also directly, was in a much stronger position on the battlefield, and so could increase the intensity of fighting to put additional pressure on the negotiations.' From a military perspective, Ukraine's Western-backed, almost million-strong army of today is almost unrecognizable from the underfunded and under-equipped force that took on the Russian-backed separatists in 2014. And yet, as Ukraine 'accepts' a temporary ceasefire proposal, it faces a double challenge. Firstly, Russia, has been inching forward in recent months on the eastern front (albeit at a huge cost to personnel and equipment), and inflicting almost daily aerial attacks on Ukraine's cities. And secondly, the US, Ukraine's biggest backer, has now withheld crucial military aid, in response to a public falling-out between Zelensky and US President Donald Trump. The aid is now restored, but the episode has left Ukraine on shaky ground. 'That makes Ukraine's situation now very precarious,' said Sabine Fischer, senior fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. 'Ukraine from… the Trump administration's perspective has become an obstacle to this normalization that they want for their relationship with Russia.' Experts agree the Minsk accords were put together hastily as violence escalated. Johannes Regenbrecht, a former German civil servant who was involved in the negotiations, pointed out in a recent paper that Ukraine's allies had reached the point in February 2015 where they worried that allowing Russia to continue unchecked 'would have resulted in the de facto secession of eastern Ukraine under Moscow's control.' With hindsight, experts say, the resulting document left too much ambiguity when it came to implementing the deal. The thorniest issue was how to link the military provisions (a ceasefire and withdrawal of weapons), with the political ones (local elections, and a 'special regime' in the separatist-controlled areas). 'Ukraine was saying, we need security first and then we can implement the political provisions. Russia was saying, once political provisions are implemented, separatists will be satisfied and will stop fighting,' said Dumoulin, now director of the Wider Europe program at the European Council on Foreign Relations. That initial disagreement was an early sign of what Dumoulin and other experts see as Moscow's ultimate intention to use the political provisions of Minsk to gain greater control over Ukraine. Fischer argues that Trump's desire to end the war quickly suggests the US may not only be at risk of reaching a flawed deal in haste, but may actually be willing to settle for something that doesn't offer long-term solutions. 'Comprehensive ceasefire agreements are not negotiated quickly… they're very complicated, many intricacies… And I don't think that this is what the Trump administration is aiming for,' she told CNN. In the end, the biggest issue with the Minsk accords, especially Minsk II, wasn't what was in the text, but what wasn't. There's not one mention of 'Russia' in the entire text, despite clear evidence that Russia was both arming the separatists, and sending reinforcements from the Russian army. 'Everyone knew that Russia was involved, but for the sake of the negotiations, this was not recognized,' said Dumoulin. 'The agreements were based on the fiction that the war was between separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk and Kyiv, and that it was ultimately a domestic conflict.' There is no direct parallel today but there is, experts say, a risk Moscow is now using the false narrative that Zelensky is illegitimate because he failed to hold elections – Ukrainian law clearly states elections cannot be held during martial law – to rebrand the war as something that should be solved internally in Ukraine, and ultimately bring about regime change. And even more concerning for Ukraine is that the US has taken a similar line, with Trump last month labeling Zelensky 'a dictator without elections,' although he subsequently appeared to distance himself from that statement. The failure of the Minsk accords leaves no doubt as to the risks of perpetuating such falsehoods. Back then, the fiction that Russia wasn't an aggressor or party to the conflict, along with insufficient pressure on Moscow in the form of sanctions or the provision of lethal military supplies to Ukraine, ultimately meant Minsk never addressed the root cause of the conflict. 'The fundamental contradiction of Minsk,' wrote Regenbrecht, 'was that Putin sought to end Ukraine as an independent nation… Consequently, he had no interest in a constructive political process.' There's no evidence that that position has changed. In his speech on February 21, 2022, three days before the full-scale invasion, Putin described Ukraine as 'an inalienable part of our own history, culture and spiritual space,' before claiming, 'Ukraine actually never had stable traditions of real statehood.' In January this year, one of his closest aides, Nikolai Patrushev, said he couldn't rule out 'that Ukraine will cease to exist at all in the coming year.' And so, even amid US promises of keeping Ukraine out of NATO, and forcing them to accept territorial losses, the negotiating teams in Saudi Arabia have so far, it seems – just like their predecessors in Minsk – come nowhere close to tackling that core issue.
