Regaining lost ground on China, re-engaging the United States Mint’s Samar Srivastava & Tanmaya Kumar Nanda have an opinion round-up on the prospects for India’s foreign affairs under the second UPA government. They find that the “UPA win (is) good for foreign policy, but (there are) clouds ahead”, and that the biggest of those clouds ...
Can Manmohan Singh redeem himself? Dr Manmohan Singh has an altogether more difficult job this time. When he become prime minister in 2004, it was after Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s NDA government had begun the strategic tango with the United States, galvanised the ‘peace process’ with Pakistan and arrived at a positive bilateral relationship with China. ...
Pakistan’s military-complex might strike when Indian attention is focussed on election results Even as the Indian political establishment—and constitutional machinery—goes into a state of flux for the next few days, ahead of the formation of a new government, it is vulnerable moment that the Pakistani military-jihadi complex is highly likely to exploit. Last week, media ...
Talibanisation doesn’t necessarily need a Pashtun Taliban commander to take over In March, after Juan Cole argued that “a few thousand tribesmen can’t take over a country of 165 million with a large urban middle class that has a highly organized and professional army”, this blog pointed out that “‘Taliban takeover’ does not necessarily mean ...
China’s geoeconomic move to strengthen its geopolitical power in Asia A few days ago, China, Japan, South Korean and the ASEAN states agreed to set up a US$120 billion to manage currency volatility. The Chiang Mai Initiative (CMI) primarily reduces the member countries’ dependency on the International Monetary Fund. It deliberately excludes India. Here’s an ...
Shouldn’t India nail that canard? Here’s a thought: almost everyone in Pakistan, and many thinking people in the United States still believe in that story about why having to face a stronger army on its eastern border makes the Pakistani army less able to throw more resources into the fight against the Taliban (see this ...
Prachandagate casts the UN mission in poor light What is interesting about the ‘Prachanda video‘ is not that it exists (via Sandeep Dougal’s blog), but rather, that it was leaked to the media at this time. Someone the Maoist leader offended decided to play a card and make things a little more difficult for Pushpa ...
The controversy over a new book by Chinese intellectuals arguing for China to adopt a strong nationalist-realist posture in its foreign policy has gone largely unnoticed in India. Yet the issue is important: not merely for what the authors argue but also for the response the book has received from other thinkers and opinion makers ...
A stable balance between Sri Lanka’s ethnic groups better serves India’s interests than a partitioned island In an op-ed in Mint I suggest how India might acquire greater leverage over the Sri Lankan government and use it to shape post-civil war situation. Excerpt: New Delhi’s half-apologetic, half-embarrassed attitude towards providing military assistance to Sri Lanka ...
Prachanda’s actions isolate the Maoists The question of the induction of the Maoist insurgents into the Nepalese army—a force they spent a decade fighting—has boiled over into, what else, a crisis. Pushpa Kamal “Prachanda” Dahal, the Maoist prime minister, would like them to be absorbed immediately. Others, not least the army chief, thinks otherwise. That’s ...