Here’s the February 2009 issue of Pragati, a special on Pakistan.
This issue argues that if a stable, prosperous and peaceful Pakistan is in the common interests of India, the world’s major powers and indeed the wider international community, then it is incumbent upon them to engage in a MacArthur-like intervention to transform Pakistan. Merely providing [...]
India’s outrage over David Miliband’s gross insensitivity and atrocious behaviour was near universal. After a scathing critique of Mr Miliband’s words and antics, a Mint editorial held that "Miliband’s misadventure in India is unlikely to have any lasting impact on relations between India and his country; it will, however, leave a bad taste for some [...]
And there’s no fight in NATO
You hear about leaked diplomatic memos, resigned assessments by British field commanders and complaints by pundits—but it is when you read reports like this one, about German commandos twiddling their thumbs for three years (yes, three years) sitting in their camps, that you know why the Taliban are getting so [...]
Credit asphyxiation
Ajay Shah describes the reasons for the crisis, and the current panic…
Once a financial panic starts, only government intervention can solve it. Once trust is lost, only governments, with the power to print money and pay off debt through future taxes, can offer credible financial guarantees, and get the financial sector to work again.
An [...]
And why it must do so again
The pirates of Puntland made the strategic mistake of becoming too successful. And they also ran out of luck, when among the vessels they hijacked was one carrying a huge arms shipment, and another something mysteriously important. And suddenly, the world’s navies with the capability to get there—save India’s—decided [...]
…is that it only wants to do the easy stuff
In an op-ed in European Voice, Richard Gowan argues that “it may be better for the EU to base a partnership with the world’s largest democracy not on values, but on a joint effort to deal with the crisis in Afghanistan.”
Realists will scarcely raise an [...]
The West risks causing one
In a recent exchange on on this article, Zorawar Daulet Singh (who had covered this theme in the November 2007 issue of Pragati) had this to say:
It was and is not in Russian interest to start a Cold War. But the facts are pretty clear, the conflict in Caucasus was precipitated [...]
Time for the West to mend fences with Iran’s neighbours
It’s unclear if US and NATO policy-makers are looking at maps of Afghanistan and its surroundings. How do they think they are going to supply their troops in landlocked Afghanistan? The supply lines through Pakistan are coming under increasing attack by Taliban militants. Bad relations with [...]
States should only care about the interests of their own citizens
There is much to admire about Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s energetic president. But what he said to the Russian president after ‘mediating’ in Russo-Georgian war was simply wrong:
“It’s perfectly normal that Russia would want to defend the interests both of Russians in Russia and Russophones outside [...]
No realpolitik please, we’re Americans
Many American geopolitical pundits are behaving just like their economic counterparts. If the latter believed that a long period of growth and low inflation meant the demise of the business cycle, the former convinced themselves that the long period of relative peace between the world’s great powers indicated the “end of [...]
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