India’s External Affairs Minister Dr. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar (L) met Member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Vientiane, Laos, July 25, 2024 There is an expectation that Prime Minister Narendra Modi would prioritise a historic turnaround in India’s relations with China as a legacy of his 15 years …
US engages a chastened Modi in office
Prime Minister Narendra Modi displays a letter from President Draupadi Murmu inviting him to form the next government, June 7, 2024 The US president Joe Biden has deputed his trouble shooter National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan to travel to New Delhi no sooner than Prime Minister Narendra Modi forms his new government. The White House …
US’ war on terror against Houthis is smoke and mirrors
A November 20, 2023 file photo of a Houthi military helicopter flying over Galaxy Leader cargo ship in the Red Sea The United States has hosted the first meeting of the new working group on terrorism in the Quad format in Honolulu, Hawaii, on December 19-21. The QUAD working group on terrorism was constituted in …
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India won’t be bullied in multipolar setting
External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar (L) met US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Washington, DC, September 28, 2023 The sombre mood at the Council on Foreign Affairs in New York during External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar’s talk on Tuesday was only to be expected against the backdrop of the India-Canada diplomatic spat over the killing …
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AUKUS, QUAD transforming alliance-like
US President Joe Biden, Australian PM Anthony Albanese, Japanese PM Fumio Kishida and Indian PM Narendra Modi held a QUAD meeting in Hiroshima, Japan, 20 May 2023 This week augurs an acceleration of strategic realignments among the big powers amidst growing signs of a new cold war globally with particular focus on the United States’ …
Politics of hedging in the Indo-Pacific
Indonesia’s Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi (C) with Director of Foreign Affairs Commission of Communist Party of China Central Committee Wang Yi (L) and Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (R) at trilateral meeting, Jakarta, July 12, 2023 On Monday, while delivering the keynote address at the annual China Business Summit held in Auckland, New Zealand Prime …
Indian diplomacy in overstretch
G7 Summit leaders at “working lunch” session, Japan, 19 May, 2023 The Foreign Secretary’s special briefing on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Asia-Pacific tour (May 19-24) dovetailed skilfully into three summit meetings, and brings to mind an institution of the Middle Ages known as the “wandering minstrels”. Wealthy people used to employ minstrels to entertain them …
Shinzo Abe: A controversial visionary
‘Sayonara’ – Japan’s controversial statesman Shinzo Abe departs When politicians die, especially an untimely death in tragic circumstances, obituaries tend to go overboard. A sense of perspectives is lost when obituaries become eulogies. But you can’t falsify history. And in the final analysis, it is the forces of history that write the course of politics …
Indo-Pacific power dynamic in radical shift
A Russian Tu-95 strategic bomber takes off during a 13-hour joint air patrol with China in Asia-Pacific region, at an unidentified location (image released by Russian MOD on May 24, 2022) The joint air patrol over the waters of the Sea of Japan and the East China Sea on Monday by an air task force …
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Indo-Pacific strategy adrift in an illusion
US President Joe Biden and leaders of Association of Southeast Asian Nations at a special summit, Washington, May 12, 2022 The Chinese daily Global Times featured a political cartoon marking the US-ASEAN summit meeting in Washington on May 12-13. It showed the US President Joe Biden seeking help from a bus load of ASEAN officials …
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