2014 will be a turning point in Afghanistan. Power will be handed over to a new President after elections. The US military will complete its withdrawal. The Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) will take over the security responsibility for the cou
Our response to the killing of five Indian soldiers last week by the Pakistanis inside our Line of Control has again shown our inability to deal effectively with the dual issue of dialoguing with Pakistan and scotching the terrorist threat from it. T
Many in India believe that we have failed in our policy towards our neighbours. For them the hall mark of any successful foreign policy is good relations with neighbours. Because we are so big, many think that we must make an extra effort to win the
Doubts persist both in India and the United States on the substance of their strategic partnership. High-sounding declarations about the partnership being one of the defining ones of the 21st century, or one between “natural allies,” have not era
China constitutes by far our most difficult diplomatic challenge as its rise impacts us directly in view of its territorial claims on us, the unsettled Tibetan situation, the potential impact of China’s upstream river projects, its “more precious
If the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak by the mass of protestors in Tahrir Square in 2011 was a surprise, the ouster of President Mohamed Morsi by even larger protests in Tahrir Square and across Egypt in recent days is equally dramatic. Mubarak
Hassan Rowhani’s election as President of Iran on June 14 is unlikely to materially change the dynamics of the conflict between Iran and the western powers. The “reformists” in Iran who have backed Rowhani want improved handling of Iran’s di
Our statements on the recent India-China face-off in Ladakh continue to confound. One would have thought that we would have analysed the incident in depth, tried to figure out China’s motivations in staging it just before External Affairs Minister
This is the lesson from Ladakh — when cracks are papered over, they reappear several conclusions can be drawn from The India-China Stand-off in Ladakh. One, China can create an incident on the unsettled border at a time and place of its choosing, i
China’s motives in provoking the Depsang valley incident in Ladakh are not easy to decipher. The Line of Actual Control (LAC) on the undemarcated India-China border is not defined on the ground, unlike in the case of the Line of Control in J&K. We