US President Donald Trump with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Royal Palace, Riyadh, May 13, 2025 President Donald Trump is already looming as a Colossus striding 21st century history. Acutely conscious that he’s left with less than four years to create his legacy Trump is undoubtedly a man in a hurry. Amazingly, his agenda in the …
Logic and reasoning in the time of war
Kashmiri villagers outside their house damaged after cross-border shelling from Pakistan, Uri, north of Srinagar, May 8, 2025 One of the saddest things about India’s lurch toward transforming as a national security state through the past decade since our late ‘peacenik prime minister’ Manmohan Singh handed over power has been the gradual atrophying and the …
India-Pakistan tensions show signs of easing
Exchange of fire on Line of Control between India and Pakistan Time past is time present in India-Pakistan crisis. The ‘mediation’ by the United States from behind the scene on the diplomatic track appears to be once again working, which calls on both Delhi and Islamabad to show restraint and pull back from a military …
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India should tread warily on battlefield
Prime Minister Narendra Modi (C) chaired a meeting with Defence Minister Rajnath Singh (L), National Security Advisor Ajit Doval (R) and the military top brass, New Delhi, April 29, 2025 In a timely reminder, even as Indians are demanding robust retaliation for the terrorist attack in Pahalgam in Kashmir, the US president Donald Trump pulled …
India’s discontent with the SCO
The virtual summit meeting of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation on July 4 welcomed Iran as its tenth member To be out of sync with the contemporary life anywhere at anytime becomes indeed a despairing situation. That was the tragic predicament of the Austrian writer of the inter-war period, Stefan Zweig, who once wrote, “One must be …
Russia’s gas union eyes Pakistan, India
The Uzbek grid prepares to receive gas supplies from Russia Pakistan’s acute energy crisis is the immediate backdrop against which Foreign Minister Bilawal Zardari’s forthcoming talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Moscow today need to be understood. But then, Lavrov is a ‘Renaissance man’ in the world of international diplomacy and is sure …
India, Pakistan, Taliban on the same page
Afghans sit beside sacks of food grains distributed as aid The three-week long “anti-terror operation” undertaken by the Indian Army from October 11 in the Bhatta Durrian forest in Poonch following the killing of nine soldiers, including two junior commissioned officers and two policemen, was billed as “one of the longest” in the history of …
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India, Pakistan on the road to peace
New hope for India-Pakistan relations? Opportunities missed and opportunities seized in the chronicle of international diplomacy in modern history provide two outstanding illustrative examples. After centuries of enmity and the colossal destruction inflicted by two devastating world wars in the last century, France and Germany seize an opportunity to turn a new page in their …
India revisits SAARC to fight COVID-19. Scepticism is in order.
Coronavirus pandemic is on the rise in India The teleconference today at 5 pm IST between the leaderships of the SAARC countries is a rare event in regional cooperation. After an interlude of nearly six years, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is once again networking with India’s neighbours in a SAARC setting. He had sprung a …
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Pakistan’s exit from FATF list puts India on the spot
US Acting Asst Secy of State Alice Wells met Pakistan’s Interior Minister Ijaz Shah, Islamabad, Jan. 20, 2020 The media reports that in the Indian estimation there is “a 75 per cent chance” of Pakistan exiting the ‘grey list’ of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) at the plenary of the international body on February 16 …
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