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 …
Continue reading “Russia makes a botch of its Syrian alliance”
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 …
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 …
Continue reading “US leverages Delhi-Kabul nexus. But what’s in it for India?”
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 …
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 …
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 …
Continue reading “Trump’s vacillation on China is well-grounded”
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 …
Continue reading “Russia-China entente deepens in the shadow of the pandemic”
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 …
Continue reading “There is no exit from coronavirus, only containment”
In business transactions and international diplomacy alike, there could be constant variables and dependent variables. Constant variable is where the value cannot be changed once it has been assigned a value. But it becomes a dependent variable if it is susceptible or open to the effect of an associated factor or phenomenon. Then, there is …
Continue reading “US return to JCPOA can end impasse over Iran”
Soviet officers and American soldiers met up at the Elbe River near Torgau, Germany, 25th April, 1945 Unusual for a Saturday evening, the White House and the Kremlin upgraded their websites simultaneously to feature a joint statement by the two presidents on “Commemorating the 75th Anniversary of the Meeting on the Elbe” (here and …
Continue reading “Trump and Putin revisit the “Spirit of the Elbe””
