The guided-missile destroyer USS Barry operates with the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan in the Philippine Sea on May 30, 2020. If there is one template on which the Carnegie Endowment of Peace for International Peace, CNN, New York Times, Washington Post can agree with China’s Xinhua news agency and the CGTN in the present-day …
Japan-US alliance gets less intimate
Land-based missile defense system, Aegis Ashore, at the US Navy’s Pacific Missile Range Facility in Kauai, Hawaii. File photo. Regional security in Northeast Asia underwent a jolt on Thursday with the announcement in Tokyo by Japanese Defense Minister Taro Kono that Japan would cancel the purchase of a multi-billion dollar ballistic missile defense system made …
Modi only can reach a border settlement with China
Prime Minister Narendra Modi (R) & Chinese President Xi Jinping (L) at informal summit, Mamallapuram, India, October 12, 2019 The controversy over Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s remarks at the All-Party Conference in New Delhi on June 18 regarding the border clashes with China will have limited shelf life only. All this brouhaha becomes quintessentially an …
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1962 India-China war redeux?
Indian & Chinese patrols challenge each other, typically, in Ladakh. File photo The Indian analysts have been comparing the military build-up in the India-China border in eastern Ladakh to the Doklam standoff in 2017. This was only to be expected since the leitmotif was once again a road construction in disputed border regions. In Doklam, …
EU, China draw closer in post-pandemic setting
China’s ‘New Silk Road’ freight train to Europe. (File photo) The 10th annual Strategic Dialogue between the European Union and China on June 9 can be regarded as marking the resumption of structured big-power diplomacy in the post-Covid-19 setting. It was both a symbolic and substantive event, preparing the ground for the forthcoming EU-Summit. At …
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Standoff in Ladakh needs political solution
Lone Indian soldier guarding northern border with China. File photo The good thing about the nihilistic Indian media narratives — relentlessly negative — over the military standoff in eastern Ladakh is that the government largely disregarded them. Hopefully, a de-escalation of tensions is on cards. Nihilists and cynics are best shunned. Especially when they also …
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G7 walks towards a long sunset
President Trump vs. the West: Iconic picture out of the G7 summit, Fairmont Le Manoir Richelieu, Quebec, Canada, June 8-9, 2018. The US President Donald Trump will be completing his first term with foreign-policy legacies, which, even detractors must grudgingly admit, are game-changing for world politics. Debris of monumental proportions surrounds him — Paris Accord on …
India’s reality shows on world stage are wearing thin
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi (R) and his Australian counterpart Scott Morrison (L) held a virtual summit today, June 4, 2020 (File photo) In a trove of declassified CIA documents some years ago, there was a list of Soviet jokes from the 1980s offering the glimpse of a secret American weapon to debunk and demoralise the US’ …
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Trump’s China policy at a cul-de-sac
US President Donald Trump (R) and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He (L) after signing the US-China trade deal, Washington, Jan. 15, 2020 This past week has been a catastrophic seven days that shook America. Some of the debris may have inevitably fallen on President Donald Trump too. Most important, the Trump administration has lost …
Covid-19 impacts global alignments
Russia-China partnership challenges US global hegemony The sluice gates have opened, as it were, on world politics after the ‘timeout’ through the past 2-3 months due to Covid-19. The spectacle of America’s epic war with Covid-19 under President Donald Trump’s watch creates a range of emotions in the world community — ranging from sympathy and …