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’ …
Continue reading “India’s reality shows on world stage are wearing thin”
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). …
European Union unveiled a road map to phase out Covid-19 pandemic containment measures, Brussels, April 15, 2020 A European Union road map plotting the way out of the containment measures to counter Covid-19 — commonly known as ‘lockdown’ — was unveiled in Brussels on Wednesday. The document titled Joint European Roadmap towards lifting COVID-19 containment measures holds …
Continue reading “Europe eases Covid-19 lockdown but caveats remain”
A man braving the coronavirus against the silhouette of Rashtrapathi Bhavan, Delhi, which was put under lockdown on March 25, 2020 Even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi was addressing the nation yesterday announcing “total lockdown” in the country, Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro also took to a televised address to dismiss such health measures against …
Continue reading “A lockdown for ventilators and hospital beds”
Youth release balloons and pigeons to celebrate the reduction in violence, Jalalabad, Afghanistan, Feb. 28, 2020 The reactions of the major regional states surrounding Afghanistan over the US-Taliban peace agreement in Doha Saturday reveal fault lines that are useful pointers in the Afghan peace process. A sardonic remark by the Indian foreign minister S. Jaishankar …
Continue reading “Regional states won’t oppose US-Taliban deal”
India needs to cut the Gordian knot of strategic stalemate in its external environment MK Bhadrakumar Former Ambassador A‘whispering campaign’ has been going on that CPEC is fated to put an intolerable burden on Pakistan’s debt repayment liabilities, with no commensurate economic returns. Fact check is uncommon in our part of the world: Moody’s says …
WITH the inaugural session of the 2+2 US-Indian dialogue of foreign and defence ministers held in New Delhi last Thursday, the Modi government’s foreign policy has taken a full circle. Things are back to where they were in a priori history in September 2014 when a new foreign policy trajectory was dramatically launched with the …
The US-Indian defining partnership took a leap forward in the field of defence at the first session of the “2+2” dialogue of the two countries’ foreign and defence ministers in New Delhi this week. It is a “win-win” for Washington. Highly lucrative multibillion-dollar arms deals sail into view, while Washington also shepherds India towards a …
Continue reading “For Modi’s India, 2+2=0 as Trump tightens the leash”
With the “2+2” dialogue between India and the United States due to begin in New Delhi on Thursday, the Modi government has done the right thing to allow India’s state refiners to work out with Tehran the logistics of using tankers and insurance arranged by Iran so that the import of Iranian crude oil can …
India’s impending purchase of the Russian S-400 missile system has come to be the leitmotif of the “2+2” dialogue of the foreign and defence ministers of India and the United States due to take place in New Delhi on September 6. However, the issue here is not about a single defence transaction, either. There are …
Continue reading “India, Russia and the post-American Century”
