The week that was: Trump-Xi's first meet in 6 years, Russia's Burevestnik missile, and more

Welcome back to another edition of My Take 5, your weekly round-up of top international news. This week we are covering the Trump-Xi meeting in Busan, Russia ’s Burevestnik missile, the new India-US defence framework, Sudan’s increasingly complicated civil war, and Morocco’s huge win at the UNSC over the Moroccan Sahara issue. So, let’s get to it.

Trump-Xi meeting: Trump and Xi met in South Korea’s Busan – their first face-to-face meeting in six years – to smoothen the US-China relationship that has been fraying since the White House incumbent unleashed his trade war earlier this year. China has refused to bend to Trump’s tariffs and restrictions on American tech exports, and hit back with its own export controls over rare earths. This tit-for-tat trade war was clearly hurting both Washington and Beijing. So, the Busan meet was meant to bring the bilateral relationship back into management mode. Trump reduced fentanyl-related tariff on Chinese goods by 10% -- bringing overall tariff rates to 47% -- while China resumed rare-earth supplies by suspending restrictions for a year, in exchange for US allowing the export of American tech to Chinese companies, but not advanced assets like Nvidia’s Blackwell chip, which is said to be the best for AI.

(Read our editorial this week: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/toi-editorials/g2-returns/)

But what is interesting is the framing of the Trump-Xi meeting as the return of the G2 by Trump himself. In India, we don’t have good memories about the G2. The last time the formulation came up – in the late 2000s under the Obama administration – we saw China behaving like a bully towards India, confident in the knowledge that Washington won’t do anything to jeopardise its relationship with Beijing. It’s another matter that the G2 unraveled quickly when the US realised that China posed a systemic challenge to the US-led global order. But if G2 is being revived, India would be wary of how this could impact China’s posture in South Asia.

For, the basic rule of thumb with China is that it adopts a friendly approach to India when it has problems with the US. But when Beijing and Washington get along, Beijing starts throwing its weight around vis-à-vis its neighbours.

That said, all is not hunky-dory between US and China. This is exemplified by the fact that moments before meeting Xi, Trump ordered the resumption of US nuclear testing in response to advanced weapons testing by China and Russia. I suspect that Trump is recalibrating here. After all, driving a strategic wedge between Russia and China has always been a key US goal. Trump tried winning Putin over through his Alaska summit and pressuring Zelenskyy in the Russia-Ukraine war. But he now realises that Putin won’t budge. He won’t back off in Ukraine unless he is made to.

And China has enabled Putin in this respect. So, Trump is trying the other tact now – try and win China over. He is testing to see if China will dump Russia for a grand deal with the US. The resumption of US nuclear testing is part of this process to wean China away.

But my hunch is China and Russia won’t be broken up so easily. At least till Putin and Xi are in charge. Plus, Chinese and North Korean soldiers have bled alongside Russian soldiers on the Ukraine frontline. But you never know. China has its own calculations vis-à-vis Russia, whom it sees as a useful disruptor. And Beijing is certainly eyeing Russia’s vast far east. So, the chess game continues.

Russia’s Burevestnik missile: Speaking of nukes, Russia said this past week that it has successfully tested its Burevestnik nuclear-powered missile. If true, it would mean that Russia has mastered nuclear air propulsion. That’s a big claim. After all, nuclear air propulsion was being researched during the Cold War by both the US and the erstwhile Soviet Union. But the experiments didn’t lead to much and the whole thing was abandoned. Right off the bat, there are issues with a nuclear-powered missile which essentially has a miniaturised nuclear reactor as its engine.

Such a missile, while theoretically having limitless range and air time, can disgorge radiation along its flightpath. Plus, if opposition forces are able to hit the missile sites before they are launched, that will pose a serious radiation problem for the launcher.

Note that one unit of Russia’s intermediate-range ballistic missile, Oreshnik, used last year against Ukraine and said to be unstoppable, was apparently destroyed by a Ukrainian covert operation inside Russian territory in 2023. What if Ukraine carries out such an operation against the Burevestnik?

I suspect that the Burevestnik is essentially part of Putin’s propaganda to show Russia remains on top of the military innovation game. Other than that, the missile doesn’t seem to be practical – Russia already has long-range conventional ICBMs – and doesn’t really add anything to Moscow’s arsenal. And it won’t change the situation for Ukraine.

(Read my explainer on the Burevestnisk: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/europe/burevestnik-n-powered-missile-hype-or-tech-breakthrough/articleshow/124874073.cms)

New India-US defence framework: India and US inked a new 10-year defence framework to deepen defence collaboration across all domains, including military industrial collaboration, military interoperability across land, air, sea, space and cyberspace, as well as maritime domain awareness. Both sides also framed the agreement as vital to a free and open Indo-Pacific, which is a signal to China. Plus, the agreement also aims to provide a “unified vision and policy direction” to deepen cooperation in all domains.

Coming on the back of signals that an India-US trade deal may finally be ready to be rolled out, the new defence framework can be seen as bringing the bilateral relationship back on track after months of friction. There is no denying that US and Indian defence interests align in many respects. As the oldest and largest democracies, they can do much together to advance a rules-based order, especially in light of a revisionist and increasingly assertive China. Hopefully, the friction of the last eight months is finally giving way to the logic of cooperation. Trump, perhaps, needed to mollify his MAGA base in the first year of returning to office. And next year should see normal collaborations resume. Fingers crossed.

Is Sudan heading for another split?: The ongoing civil war in Sudan appears to be creating conditions for another split of the country as the paramilitary RSF took control of the capital of North Darfur state, el-Fasher, the last remaining stronghold of the Sudanese army in the larger Darfur region. The international community recognises the Sudan Armed Forces-backed government of Prime Minister Kamil Idriss and head of state General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. But the RSF, led by Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo, in August set up its own rival government. This has created the possibility of an east-west split of Sudan with the RSF controlling the west and the internationally recognised government controlling the east and north.

What is complicating Sudan’s civil war is the involvement of foreign players. UAE is reportedly supporting RSF with war materiel and other aid. But others from Egypt, Iran and Turkey to Russia and Ukraine have also been involved. In fact, away from global glare, Sudan has become a middle powers’ conflict. Already the war has killed more than 40,000 people and displaced more than 12 million. In fact, RSF’s takeover of el-Fasher has been accompanied by multiple reports of executions, torture and rapes.

Sudan needs to be stabilised soon. Otherwise, we are looking at a situation worse than Libya that will draw in chaos, instability, and possibly terrorism, for Africa and the world.

Morocco’s huge victory: In a landmark vote at the UNSC on the issue of Moroccan Sahara, 11 members of the council voted in favour of the resolution that called Morocco’s Autonomy Plan for the Sahara as the basis for achieving “just, lasting, and mutually acceptable political solution”. No members voted against while three – China, Pakistan and Russia – abstained. Algeria did not participate in the vote. This is the first time that Morocco’s Autonomy Plan has got such overwhelming support at the highest UN body. While UNSC resolutions in previous years did acknowledge the Autonomy Plan as significant and credible, this time it was seen as the main basis for future negotiated settlement. Also, the resolution did not have any mention of a referendum, which was anyway long made impossible by the separatist Polisario ’s own actions.

The Autonomy Plan proposes a high degree of autonomy for Morocco’s Sahara provinces under Moroccan sovereignty. It is the most realistic solution to the issue that is a leftover of Morocco’s colonial past where the Sahara provinces were hived off and made a Spanish exclave. The Sahara was return to Morocco in 1975 and 1979, but an Algeria-backed separatist movement, Polisario Front , carried out an armed struggle against Morocco. A UN-sponsored ceasefire in 1991 remains in place with occasional breaches by the Polisario. But it is Algeria that is pulling the strings behind Polisario. It doesn’t want to see Morocco prosper and assume a leadership role in North Africa, and hence uses the Polisario to keep the Sahara issue alive. Now, finally, Algeria’s bluff is being called.

The latest UNSC vote is the biggest win for Morocco since the US recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over the Sahara in 2020. Since then, an increasing number of countries including France, Spain and UK has come to see Morocco’s Autonomy Plan for the Sahara as the only solution. This should help put this artificial dispute to rest.