Make way for the Global Raja-Mandala Doctrine Led by the redoubtable Aziz Haniffa some observers are getting more than a little flustered at a senior US official’s remarks about the United States letting China play a bigger role in and around the Indian subcontinent. Speaking at a seminar at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, ...
Exports to India account for 1.6% of Indonesia’s GDP A research note from CLSA notes that from Indonesia’s perspective India is one of the smaller markets (accounting for 6% of its exports) but a rapidly expanding one. ASEAN (21%), Japan (16%) and China (9%) are bigger export destinations. From India’s perspective, imports from Indonesia constituted ...
If you’d like to join me and a handful of members of the INI community for a informal get-together on Saturday 25th September, 10:30am in Bangalore, let me know. Tweet ...
A new Takshashila discussion document charts out a thirteen point plan You can download Takshashila fellow Sushant K Singh’s 13-point plan here (185 KB, PDF). The immediate goal for New Delhi and Srinagar should be to restore peace and security in the violence-affected districts of Jammu & Kashmir so that normal activity can resume. This ...
Beijing’s has made some bad moves recently It is fairly common to ascribe a certain oriental strategic wisdom to China’s foreign policy moves. That’s not always true. Whatever the outcome of the current stand-off with Japan over the fishing trawler near the Senkaku islands, Beijing has already lost one round of the geopolitical game. The ...
My new monthly column in Business Standard is called The Asian Balance. It “will devote itself to chronicling and interpreting the unfolding geopolitics of East Asia. It will be a unabashed advocate of Looking East far beyond the Straits of Malacca. Rebuilding the economic, cultural and political relationships that India historically shared with the countries ...
The Indian Mujahideen might be hiding their weakness After a long polemic on the Kashmir issue a letter claiming to be from the Indian Mujahideen gets to the point on the fourth of the five pages. It dedicates today’s shooting of a tourist bus outside Delhi’s Jama Masjid to what it calls the “martyrs…who proudly ...
…is unlikely to be vegetarian The tragedy of M K Bhadrakumar’s article in today’s Hindu is that one half of it is eminently sensible and the other, unsubstantiated wishfulness. Yes, it is important not to allow paranoia to determine policy towards China, but unless Mr Bhadrakumar is wired into the minds of the Chinese leadership, ...
Five neighbourhood paradoxes You might have noticed that, relatively speaking, India’s policy towards the United States or Japan is far more coherent than towards, say, Nepal. Over the last few years, New Delhi was able to challenge the age-old dogma of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT), strike a favourable bargain with Washington and break into ...
Washington should not undermine the sanctity of the Indus Waters Treaty The formidable Richard Holbrooke and his talented team could have been more effective in their Af-Pak brief if they had a better grip on reality. They can achieve a whole lot more if thety were to solicit and receive genuine co-operation and support from ...