On the eve of the formation of the new government it is expected that Germany would mainly devote its energy at home as the mandate is for continuity in the time of economic recession. No spectacular point-of-departure in foreign policy can hence be expected from Berlin.
Incidents of racial profiling of Indian citizens at American airports have been reported time and again. The latest incident of ‘secondary questioning’ of a film star whom the United States embassy in New Delhi considers a ‘global icon’ and a welcome guest in the US, has once again brought to the fore the contentious practice of racial profiling in the name of effective counter-terrorism.
The European Union (EU) is going to have its first-ever summit with Pakistan on June 17 in Brussels. In Asia the EU has only three strategic partners, namely China, India and Japan, with whom it holds standard annual and occasionally half-yearly summits. Britain is the only country in Europe that holds annual summits with Pakistan. However, even these purportedly annual summits are irregular and have often been mired in controversy whenever a terrorist attack takes place in the UK or terrorist plots are unraveled and foiled by British agencies.
An article by the British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, in The Guardian (January 15) in which he suggested, “resolution of the dispute over Kashmir would help deny extremists in the region one of their main calls to arms, and allow Pakistani authorities to focus more effectively on tackling the threat on their western borders” evoked swift responses in the media, political and foreign policy establishments in Delhi. The Ministry of External Affairs was quick in its response that, ”Mr. Miliband is entitled to his views, which are clearly his own and are evolving”.
The outcome of the deliberations at the September 1 Extraordinary European Council meeting held to discuss the Russian-Georgian conflict was not very dramatic. Gordon Brown penned a scathing article in The Observer and attempted to set a high pitch for the meeting by presenting the conflict as ‘naked aggression’ by Russia and advocating that the EU review ‘root and branch’ its relationship with Russia.
The new government in Berlin
On the eve of the formation of the new government it is expected that Germany would mainly devote its energy at home as the mandate is for continuity in the time of economic recession. No spectacular point-of-departure in foreign policy can hence be expected from Berlin.