China-France-Germany climate summit, Beijing, April 16, 2021 Considering the US media build-up as President Biden’s climate envoy John Kerry set out for China, the 4-day visit turned out to be an uneventful affair. Perhaps, the chances of President Xi Jinping participating in the signature event in Washington — the Leaders Summit on Climate on …
US expects Russia to submit. Will it?
US President Joe Biden departs after delivering remarks on Russia in the East Room at White House, Washington, DC, April 15, 2021 In his landmark foreign policy speech delivered from the US state department on February 4, President Joe Biden had proclaimed that “America is back. Diplomacy is back at the centre of our foreign …
Chronicle of the unavailing Afghan war
President Joe Biden wipes his eye as he walks through Arlington National Cemetery to honor fallen veterans of Afghan war, April 14, 2021 One missing part in US President Joe Biden’s remarks Wednesday announcing troop withdrawal from Afghanistan was that he didn’t order a commission of inquiry into the disastrous military invasion of 2001. It’s …
India should welcome the end of US occupation of Afghanistan
A Taliban unit in Laghman, Afghanistan, Dec. 2020 (File photo) The spectre haunting India today is that its worst case scenario in Afghanistan is becoming reality — a Taliban takeover. Delhi watches with disquiet the United States unceremoniously dumping its “conditions-based” troop withdrawal agenda, cutting loose and quitting the war. The salience of the background …
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A “win-win” for US, Turkey in Hindu Kush
Turkey is a pillar of NATO mission to Afghanistan (File photo) The zeal with which Washington is soliciting Turkey’s services to plot the pathway leading to the mainstreaming of Taliban in Afghanistan raises some troubling questions. Acting on Washington’s request, Turkey will be hosting high-level talks on the Afghanistan peace process (likely April 16) to …
US: Indian Ocean is not India’s ocean
Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS John Paul Jones prepares to pull alongside aircraft carrier USS Nimitz (File photo) The guided-missile destroyer USS John Paul Jones sailing past Lakshadweep Islands April 7 has thrown India’s Sinophobes into confusion. One leading daily noted it as a “rare falling out between the two partners in the Quad grouping.” …
US, Turkey, ISIS, al-Qaeda, Taliban make one happy family
Exactly a decade after the United States sought a pioneering role by Turkey for launching the regime change project in Syria, it has solicited help from Ankara in regard of another political transition in the Greater Middle East — in Afghanistan. Analogies never hold one hundred percent in politics or diplomacy, but the similarities are …
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Whither India-Russia ties?
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (L) at press conference with External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar (R), Delhi, April 6, 2021 On Monday, the prominent Moscow daily Kommersant commented that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s visit to New Delhi on April 5-6 “is not going to be easy because relations between the two countries are …
Coup attempt in Jordan leaves a trail
“What happens in the Middle East has a way of making itself felt everywhere around the world,” Jordan’s King Abdullah II ibn Al-Hussein while addressing the European Parliament, Strasbourg, 15th January 2021 A coup attempt is an orphan unless it succeeds. Therefore, all we can say is that a coup was in the making in …
Ukraine: Frozen conflict is hotting up
US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Porter sails in the Bosphorus, Istanbul, on its way to the Black Sea, January 28, 2021 The terrible beauty of “frozen conflicts” is that it takes hardly any effort to turn up the heat and re-escalate them into hot violence, but pressing the “pause” button later would need consensus, which …