Is ground beneath Biden’s Russia policy shifting?
The resignation of the US Undersecretary for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland, the third highest ranking diplomat in the Biden administration, came as a bolt out of the blue on Monday. …
M K Bhadrakumar
China resumes shuttle diplomacy as Ukraine war drums get louder
The Chinese Foreign Ministry announcement on Wednesday that Beijing’s Special Representative on Eurasian Affairs Li Hui will set out from home on March 2 on a “second round of shuttle…
China, Russia pip US to the Taliban hearth
The diplomatic recognition of the Taliban government in Afghanistan on January 31, 2024 by China must be bracketed with two other far-reaching regional policy moves by Beijing in the post-cold…
China ignores US entreaties of mediation
There is an old proverb that when misfortunes come, they come in battalions. Coming on top of reports of American soldiers going down like nine-pins on a drone strike against the super…
India gets a rude awakening in West Asia
From the standpoint of affirming ‘solidarity’ with the regime of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the October 7 attack, India has swung away to the far horizon and has unceremoniously…
India’s turnaround on Palestine has more than meets the eye
Indian diplomacy is ending 2023 with a momentous turnaround. What began as a course correction necessitated by the torrential flow of events in West Asia is assuming strategic overtones. Truly,…
India’s solidarity with Israel is untenable
India’s muscular diplomacy, an attribute of the present government, has run into heavy weather. Body blows from multiple sources — spat with Canada; Maldives’ triumphalism about evicting Indian servicemen; China-Bhutan…
Nijjar affair poses an existential dilemma
The raging controversy over alleged involvement of the Indian government in the killing of Sikh plumber-cum-religious activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in faraway Canada is snowballing. Sensing that our elites are…
Who’s afraid of Prigozhin and Wagner?
There has been an avalanche of western media reports within minutes or hours of the ghastly death on Wednesday of the head of the Wagner organisation of Russian military contractors,…
Glimpses of an endgame in Ukraine
The problem with the war in Ukraine is that it has been all smoke and mirrors. The Russian objectives of “demilitarisation” and “de-Nazification” of Ukraine wore a surreal look. The…
Ukraine war takes its toll on UK politics
The NATO Summit in Vilnius on June 11-12 turned out to be an anti-climax with the fractured relationship between the regime in Kiev and the Western powers surging. What is…
Prigozhin goes into exile but left behind a can of worms
On Monday night, Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed the nation for the second time with the intention to bring the curtain down on the coup attempt by Wagner “founder” Yevgeny Prigozhin on…
The rise and fall of a Russian oligarch
The Kremlin leadership has acted decisively to meet the threat of an armed insurrection by the Russian oligarch and self-styled ‘founder’ of Wagner Group of military contractors, Yevgeny Prigozhin. In…
New Era of China-Saudi Ties Riles Iran
The pomp and ceremony of the recent visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping to Saudi Arabia has drawn comparison with the banality and frigid atmosphere surrounding the U.S. President Joe…
EU Cracks a Gentle Whip at Iran
The European Union has returned to the ritual of sanctioning Iran to leverage its foreign and security policies. The highlight of the EU Foreign Affairs Council ministerial meeting in Brussels…
U.S. Internationalizes Iran’s Unrest
The ongoing unrest in Iran since mid-September following the death of a Kurdish woman in police custody shows no signs of abating as of now. The unrest has drawn support…
The G20 is dead. Long live the G20
The seventeenth G20 Heads of State and Government Summit held in Bali, Indonesia, on 15–16 November stands out as a consequential event from many angles. The international politics is at…
Biden nods to compromise in Ukraine
The midterm elections in the US witnessed razor-thin races as Senate and House control hangs in the balance. But that didn’t discourage President Biden from holding a press conference on Wednesday to…
No end in view for Ukraine war
The US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s meetings with Ukrainian leaders, including President Vladimir Zelensky, in Kiev has created a lot of confusion and misperceptions. One one side, the White…
Big picture of disengagement in Ladakh
The Ministry of External Affairs has done the right thing by explaining its taciturn press release on September 8 Thursday in a single sentence regarding the disengagement of troops in the area…
An appalling slur on the civilisation state that is India
The outrage in the Muslim world over the transgression of the red line in anti-Muslim politics in India is understandable, although the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party acted swiftly for damage control. The…
Asian Fault Lines Emerge Over Great War Conflict
The tremors of the United States’ tensions with Russia playing out in Europe are being felt in different ways already in Asia. The hypothesis that Ukraine is a part of…
We’re Europeans, Christians, Whites!
Racist Ukraine coverage in mainstream Western media. Notice the racist overtones. 1. BBC “It’s very emotional for me because I see European people with blue eyes and blonde hair being…
Ukraine’s hybrid war is mutating
The first signs of the dual track in Russia’s hybrid war in Ukraine have surfaced. By Thursday evening, the Kremlin held out an olive branch to the Ukraine president Volodymyr…
Putin crosses the Rubicon. What next?
Russia’s recognition of the ‘people’s republics’ of Luhansk and Donetsk in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbass on Monday is a watershed event. In a manner of speaking, by this…
China’s support is a game changer for Russia
During the visit by President Vladimir Putin to Beijing on Friday, the world attention was focused on how far China would go in support of Russia in the latter’s standoff…
US pips regional states at race for Kabul
In a hugely consequential advisory, the US Treasury Department quietly signalled on Wednesday that it was “tweaking” the sanctions against the Haqqani Network. The international banks can transfer money to…
US reminds India it’s showtime
Pegasus, ‘ultimate spyware’ from Israel, is back in news cycle Pegasus, CAATSA, Nagaland — prime facie, they’ve nothing in common. At least, reading the Indian press, one gets that impression.…
The West co-opts the Taliban
The three-day conclave in Oslo on January 23-25 for interaction for a core group of Western diplomats with Taliban officials marks a new phase in the political situation in Afghanistan.…
Blinken delays US response to Russia
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warns of imminent Russian assault on Ukraine, scrambling to get allies to rally. (File photo) A special press briefing in unseemly hurry by the US…
Souring of Taliban’s relations with Pakistan
External interference in Afghanistan has reappeared much sooner than one would have expected after the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan in August. In a familiar pattern, the rumour mill has become…
Russia’s shadows in Sahel region
On Friday, Mali’s transitional government has clarified that it is engaged with Russian military trainers even as French troops are drawing down. So, it is official that Russian security personnel…
Nord Stream 2 is a double-edged geopolitical tool
When Pavel Zavalny, the chairman of Russian parliamentary committee on energy, made the forecast last Friday that Nord Stream 2 pipeline could start shipping natural gas to Germany as early…
Joe Biden presidency on the skids. World must take note.
American politics took a dramatic turn on Sunday with the announcement by the West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin that he “cannot vote” for the Build Back Better Act, President Joe Biden’s signature…
Spectre of war is haunting Europe
A fateful week is ending today for international security with the Russian Foreign Ministry releasing the two documents on security guarantees that Moscow had proposed to Washington as the basis…
Week after Biden-Putin meeting, crunch time is coming
Russia is reiterating its ‘red lines’ seeking long-term legal guarantees against NATO’s further advancement to the east and the deployment of weapons on Russia’s western borders. The Russian Foreign Ministry…
Biden White House spoofs the Kremlin
This must be a rare occasion when Russian President Vladimir Putin during his 18 years in the Kremlin came out second best in an encounter with an American president. And…
Biden-Putin meeting is a cliffhanger
US President Biden dismisses Russia’s red lines on Ukraine What has unfolded in the past 24 hours in the US-Russia diplomatic tango can be seen as a foreplay of the…
India-Bangladesh ties at inflection point
In the life of a nation, perhaps, the first fifty years ought to be regarded as marking the rites of passage through adolescence. India can congratulate itself for helping navigate…
As UAE embraces Iran, fizz goes pop for Abraham Accords
The terrible secret about Faustian deals is that they need a Mephistopheles to nurture them. That said, Goethe’s Mephisto is very different from the crude devil of medieval legend. Goethe…
Taliban: One Hundred Days of Solitude
As the Taliban completes its first hundred days in power, the Western powers are groping for a face-saving formula to engage with the authorities in Kabul with some modicum of…
US, China commence ‘responsible competition’
The only breakthrough that can be ascribed to the virtual meeting between the US and Chinese presidents, Joe Biden and Xi Jinping, on Monday / Tuesday is that there has…
COP26: India ends up as fall guy
Greta Thurnberg, the famous Swedish climate change activist, summed up that the deal reached at COP26 at Glasgow on Saturday was “very, very vague” with several loopholes. She told the…
US recognition of Taliban Government will be a game changer
The stunning disclosure late Tuesday in Brussels that the US is working on a “road map” for according recognition to the Taliban Government will take a lot of people by…
COP26: Wall Street rolls out climate finance
The US climate envoy John Kerry is getting down to the real business at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Glasgow after President Joe Biden has had…
Glasgow climate summit: An elite farce?
The Glasgow summit on climate change has been a media extravaganza. The ruling elites from all continents cooped up in their national capitals due to the raging pandemic, finally got…
Blinken’s ‘Indo-Abrahamic Accords’ unravels
The US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is a man in a hurry. The president expects him to produce foreign-policy success stories. Success stories are desperately needed as post-Afghanistan, the…
A tale of two Quads
The United States’ chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan has dented the credibility of the trans-Atlantic relationship and dealt a body blow to the NATO. These developments add to the already existing…
Taliban Government gains traction
All indications are that the regional states are preparing to accord recognition to the Taliban government. The meeting of regional states and Taliban officials in the so-called Moscow Format last…
Biden’s Taiwan gaffe meant no harm
The probability is that the US President Joe Biden committed yet another diplomatic gaffe at a CNN town hall last Thursday that Washington had a commitment to come to Taiwan’s…
Taliban is the winner at Moscow conference
The Moscow meeting of ten regional states and the Taliban officials on Wednesday has produced an outcome that by far exceeds expectations. The salience of the consensus opinion is four-fold, as…
Biden gets predictability in Russia ties
Moscow has butted the grand old transatlantic alliance in the chest on Monday with the foreign ministry announcing that it will suspend the NATO military liaison mission with effect from November 1…
Afghanistan: Moscow meeting is a landmark event
The United States regretted its inability to take part in the talks on Afghanistan in Moscow this week. The Russian side was pinning hopes on a meeting of the exclusive Troika Plus…
Narrative traps in India’s decision-making
I read a stimulating essay recently co-authored by Paul Dolan, professor at the London School of Economics, and his research assistant Amanda Hedwood analysing, against the backdrop of the uncertainties…
Russia draws red lines for US
Moscow has categorically stated that it will not accept a US military presence in the Central Asian region. This reiteration has come at the level of Russian Deputy Foreign Minister…
A face-off over Nord Stream 2
The Russian President Vladimir Putin will be delivering “an informative and very important speech and then take part in a plenary discussion” on Wednesday in Moscow at the Russian Energy…
Taliban receives overtures from near and far
The Taliban is getting many suitors lately. It is far from the “pariah” that the Biden Administration thought it was destined to be. During the past month alone, the Taliban…
US, UK prepare to re-engage Taliban
Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan has written yet another opinion piece in the Washington Post, sensing a turning point lies ahead with the Biden Administration assembling a sustainable, durable policy toward Afghanistan…
Rise of centre-left in Germany
The big take-away of Germany’s first election of the post-Merkel era is that none of the parties has ‘won’ and each of the parties has reason to look miserable and…
What Biden told the Indians
Given the state of the Indian media today, it is difficult to cut through the Indian-American rhetoric from a distance of 10,000 kilometres and get a rounded view of Prime…
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