World Health Assembly, decision-making body of WHO, meets in Geneva every May. This year’s is a virtual meeting. File photo The World Health Assembly’s virtual meeting on May 18-19 has brought into focus the politics of the Covid-19 pandemic in the international arena. The WHA is the decision-making body of the 194-member World Health Organisation (WHO). …
Remains of the day as India exits lockdown
Excavator clearing bags of cement scattered on a road after the truck accident killing 26 migrant workers in the wake of India’s lockdown, Auraiya, Uttar Pradesh, May 16, 2020 The national directives for Covid-19 by the Union Home Ministry that come into force across India on May 18 mark a defining moment. The country has …
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Russia makes a botch of its Syrian alliance
Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad (L) at a meeting with visiting Russian President Vladimir Putin (R), Damascus, January 7, 2020 Russia’s relationships with its client states have never been easy. Of course, managing client states is always a complicated exercise. The Kremlin’s cupboard is full of skeletons — Hungary (1956), Czechoslovakia (1968), Cuba (1962), Afghanistan (1980), Ukraine …
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Now General Bipin Rawat speaks up?
General Bipin Rawat took charge as India’s Chief of Defence Staff, New Delhi, January 1, 2020 Through the past three years and more at the pinnacle of the Indian armed forces, General Bipit Rawat acquired a reputation as an outspoken general causing firestorms of controversy every now and then. The controversies erupted largely due to …
US leverages Delhi-Kabul nexus. But what’s in it for India?
India’s National Security Advisor Ajit Doval (L) and External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar (C) met the US Special Representative for Afghan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad (R), Delhi, May 7, 2020 The two-hour stopover in Delhi on May 7 by the US special representative for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad, accompanied by the White House official in charge of …
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US lowers threat perception on Iran
The drawdown of US military presence in the Middle East, especially from Saudi Arabia, may not be an automatic open sesame — to borrow the magical phrase in the story of “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves”— leading to the hidden treasure of regional peace and stability, but it does open up a tantalising vista …
Pompeo and the capricious virus
Sanitising the shrine of Hazrat Masoumeh against the coronavirus in the holy city of Qom, Iran, February 25, 2020. File photo Iran has delivered a devastating blow to the ego of the Trump administration, puncturing it beyond repair, by its announcement Sunday that mosques will start reopening in low-risk areas of the country from May …
Trump’s vacillation on China is well-grounded
China cast the five-day Labour Day holidays as opportunity to ease pent-up travel demand within the country, May 1, 2020 The US President Donald Trump has tied himself and onlookers in knots by his alternating encomiums and diatribes against China over Covid-19 in the recent weeks. Only he can cut the Gordian knot and …
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Russia-China entente deepens in the shadow of the pandemic
Richard Lugar Public Health Centre in Georgia, which Russia alleges to be a Pentagon laboratory for biological weapon development. Beijing has called on the US to respond to Russian concerns. The Russian-Chinese entente emerged as one of the most significant templates of international politics in the recent period since the hugely consequential developments in Ukraine …
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There is no exit from coronavirus, only containment
France bringing an end to lockdown on May 11 but it will not mean instant return to normal life. A woman, wearing a protective face mask, walks past Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral, Paris, France, April 27, 2020. From this point, the buck stops with the Modi government, as the country trudges along the Covid highway. The …
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