German Chancellor Angela Merkel to visit White House on July 15, will be the first European leader to do so during Biden presidency A caveat must be added to the famous line by Lord Hastings Lionel Ismay, NATO’s first Secretary General and Winston Churchill’s chief military assistant during the Second World War, that the purpose …
Continue reading “Takeaways for Russia, India from Merkel’s US visit”
Amidst reports that Taliban fighters have entered Kandahar City, Afghan forces guarding a road, Afghanistan, July 9, 2021 The untimely remarks by External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar on the situation in Afghanistan during a joint press conference with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov at Moscow on Friday does no good for his reputation as a …
Continue reading “China opens the SCO pathway to Kabul, India should go along”
The guided-missile destroyer USS Ross enters the Black Sea to participate in Sea Breeze 2021 exercises, June 26, 2021 The Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov exhorted today in an extraordinary statement that the state authorities and the society at large must mobilise their resources amid the West’s pressure. Addressing an audience in Vladivostok, Lavrov said, …
Bagram after US military left the base, Kabul, July 5, 2021 The British newspaper Daily Telegraph did some kite-flying in the weekend that London is considering open-ended deployment of a contingent of elite special forces to Afghanistan “ to provide training to Afghan units and deploy with them on the ground as advisers.” At the …
Continue reading “A hybrid war to replace Afghan ‘forever war’?”
HMS Defender passes through Bosphorus on what turned out to be an eventful passage to Black Sea, June 14, 2021 The Russian President Vladimir Putin has stated in black and white during a nationally telecast interview on June 30 that the mysterious incident a week earlier involving a British guided missile destroyer HMS Defender off …
Continue reading “Anglo-American tripwire traps Russian bear”
Zhou Enlai (left) and Mao Zedong (second from left) at Chinese Communist capital of Yan’an, c.1936. Photo by Edgar Snow. This is the season to reread Edgar Snow’s Red Star Over China, the classic work on the birth of the communist movement in China. Alongside John Reid’s Ten Days That Shook the World, the gripping …
Continue reading “CPC transforms China as a world class power”
The US military carried out airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, targeting operational and weapons storage facilities of Iran-backed militia Unusual for a Sunday, John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, rushed to clarify that the US airstrikes in Iraq and Syria in the weekend targeted facilities used by Iran-backed militia groups to launch attacks on American …
Continue reading “US airstrikes in Iraq, Syria: preemptive or provocative?”
European Union summit in Brussels, Belgium, June 25, 2021 A thoughtful, far-sighted proposal by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron calling for resumption of the European Union-Russia summit met sudden death at the EU’s summit in Brussels on Friday. A consensus was impossible to reach and the exchanges revealed a strong undercurrent …
When the anointed king receives his vassal formally at his durbar for the first time, it is a moment of truth conveying that the latter’s obeisance is noted, while the vassal hopes to claim legitimacy. A US president is due to receive Afghan president Ashraf Ghani in the White House on Friday after a gap …
Continue reading “Afghan Ghani makes farewell call on Biden”
Iran’s president-elect Ebrahim Raisi addresses his first press conference in Tehran, June 21, 2021 It is painful to read the US reports commenting on the result of Iran’s presidential election. The New York Times carried a blurb on Monday, “Ebrahim Raisi, Iran’s ultraconservative president-elect, said that he would not meet with President Biden, and that …
