Defining The Red Lines

Critics of the Indian government see inconsistency in its apparently contradictory posture over the WTO agreement and relations with Pakistan, but observers of Indian foreign policy and strategic thinking must pay closer attention to the underlying message emanating from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, writes Sanjaya Baru Read Here – Indian Express

Rate this:

Moving Past Potential

With the passing of the bipolar international order and India’s own shift toward market economics, it was assumed that the traditional commonality of democratic values, complemented by an increasingly robust set of inter-societal ties, would accentuate a dramatic convergence of national interests between the two countries. Read Here – The National Interest

Rate this:

Lessons From Ford

Barack Obama is not the first U.S. president to face aggressive adversaries, nervous allies, and a U.S. public deeply unwilling to make the commitments necessary to reassure those allies in the Asia-Pacific. A look back at the Asia-Pacific policy of President Gerald Ford and his chief foreign policy architect Henry Kissinger is surprisingly instructive for […]

Rate this:

Is A Borderless World For Real?

Ecuador, inspired by a vision of a pre-modern world with more freedom to wander, has been experimenting in recent years with making political boundaries more flexible. It’s one of the world’s boldest contemporary efforts to reinvent human migration. Is it working? Read Here – The Atlantic

Rate this:

Don’t Push Your Banker

Why would China fear a nation it could traumatize tomorrow by dumping its debt or shifting its iron ore, coal and copper orders elsewhere? That’s a good question for the United States to ask itself. Read Here – Bloomberg

Rate this:

Tectonic Shifts

The key reason for China’s aggressive posturing on the seas is the tectonic shift in Beijing’s strategic environment that occurred following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. For the first time in its long history, China no longer faces any threat whatsoever on its northern frontiers and this immense geopolitical development largely explains […]

Rate this:

Great Neighbours, Great Powers

While there is considerable room for debate over the future extent of Sino-Russian relations (a formal alliance looks far from likely), it is worth considering the potential geopolitical implications of a growing entente between the two Great Powers. In no short measure, close alignment between Beijing and Moscow would accelerate the decline of U.S. relative power […]

Rate this:

The Soviet Union’s Kinkiest Collection

The collection’s story begins in the 1920s, when the Bolsheviks turned what was once the Rumyantsev arts museum  into the country’s national library. As the newly anointed Lenin Library began amassing new literature, it also opened a rare book department to house compromising materials, acquired primarily from confiscated noble libraries. Read Here – Moscow Times

Rate this:

Authoritarian Arrogance

In the 1930s travellers returned from Mussolini’s Italy, Stalin’s Russia, and Hitler’s Germany praising the hearty sense of common purpose they saw there, compared to which their own democracies seemed weak, inefficient, and pusillanimous. Democracies today are in the middle of a similar period of envy and despondency. Authoritarian competitors are aglow with arrogant confidence. […]

Rate this: