The Pitfalls Of A Reactive Foreign Policy
One year after coming to power, the first thing that strikes one about the foreign policy of the Narendra Modi government is its remarkable consistency with that of its predecessor. Read Here – The Wire
Tag: United States
What Pakistan And Saudi Arabia Want From Each Other
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are each other’s wild cards. Each is the other’s out-of-region game-changer, a factor that must play into the calculations of all other players in the Middle East and South Asia alike. Think you’ve got the complex equation sorted out of Arabs vs. Persians, Sunnis vs. Shi’a, Ba’athists vs. Islamists? Well, if […]
Central Asia Is A Sitting Duck For Islamic State
The appearance of Colonel Gulmurod Khalimov in an Islamic State propaganda video on May 27 sent a chill across Central Asia. The head of Tajikistan’s Special Assignment Police Unit (OMON), a key element in President Emomali Rahmon’s security apparatus, had disappeared shortly before. In the video he promised to return to wage violent jihad. Read […]
A Tight Squeeze
During the financial crisis, when the global economy faced its gravest threat since the 1930s, policymakers sprang into action. To stimulate the economy, central banks slashed interest rates and politicians spent lavishly. As a result, the recession, though bad, was far less severe than the Depression. Unfortunately, however, that quick response nearly exhausted governments’ economic arsenals. […]
Coming To Terms
Burkina Faso, Congo, and Burundi are among the world’s poorest, least developed, worst governed countries. Compaoré, Kabila, and Nkurunziza are corrupt and unaccountable men, more like Mafia godfathers than like public servants, and they hardly bother to pretend otherwise. When they say that they must remain in office, they make no case for what good […]
India, Pakistan, Again
Forget the loons and the kooks, the puff-chested braggarts and the incorrigible denialists, and ask yourself this: what is the Pak-India relationship really about? At its core, as defined in the present era, stripped of hype and hyperbole, denuded of posturing and silliness, what is it that Pakistan and India need of each other in strategic […]
How China Is Building The Biggest Commercial-Military Empire In History
In the 18th and 19th centuries, the sun famously never set on the British empire. A commanding navy enforced its will, yet all would have been lost if it were not for ports, roads, and railroads. The infrastructure that the British built everywhere they went embedded and enabled their power like bones and veins in a body. Now it’s […]
How China and Pakistan Are Beating India In The New Great Game
As India looks east, it is losing influence to its west to China and Pakistan. India’s inability to consolidate space in South Asia should induce greater caution in assessments of its rise as a global power given its inability to establish dominance in its periphery. India has experienced a flurry of setbacks to its west as […]
How China Could Become A Two-Ocean Power (Thanks to Pakistan)
China’s interest in deepening its involvement in Pakistan is nothing new. What has changed and has enabled the Chinese to intensify their focus on Pakistan, is the effective end of the West’s, and in particular the United States’, military operations in Afghanistan in 2015. Accordingly, NATO’s departure from Afghanistan has had two consequences: it has […]
Brick And Mortar Of Foreign Policy
The principal drawback of the foreign policy establishment is that it is miserably understaffed. While New Delhi does have some first-rate diplomats, what we really need are not a few overworked senior officials but more, well-trained personnel. On account of financial constraints, bureaucratic inertia and inter-ministerial disagreements, all we have are around 900-odd Indian Foreign […]
looking beyond borders 