South China Sea challenges pose risks to ASEAN unity The ASEAN meeting in Brunei has ended with a joint communiqué which promises that ASEAN and China will work more closely to find an amicable solution to South China Sea dispute after Beijing agreed that it is ready to look into the drafting of a Code of Conduct. A CoC is necessary to bring down the tension in the South China Sea which can prevent parties… Read More »CoC needed
Antony’s three nations visit and its significance At a time when the US Defence Secretary Chuck Hegel was elaborating the Pivot to Asia policy renamed as Rebalancing Asia, during the Shangri- la dialogue in Singapore in the first week of June, the Indian defence minister A K Antony was visiting those countries prominently included by the US in its rebalancing Asia strategy. The visit to Singapore, Australia and Thailand by the Indian defence minister drew… Read More »New orientation
Babies have short attention spans. Congressmen are even worse. A couple of months ago legislators were outraged over the willingness of President Barack Obama to ignore the Constitution by going to war in Libya. Now the issue is all but forgotten. The debt-limit fight offered Congress an excuse for being preoccupied. But now legislators again should confront the president’s law breaking. In recent years presidents have taken on kingly airs. Frustrated with only being tasked… Read More »Predator behavior: US Congress must stop Obama’s Libya war
It is a good news that South Sudan is born as 193rd country among the comity of nations but what is the future of this tiny landlocked nation which needs a long way to go. No doubt it has brought freedom for millions of South Sudanese who have been fighting for this day for last 50 years. Despite all the potentialities, there is a saying democracy works better if there are enough resources to support… Read More »Limited future: Potential for a role model or a disaster
The Strategic Dialogue between India and the United States has gained salience in the context of the emerging international and regional security environment. The timing of the second Indo-US Strategic Dialogue, which got concluded during the third week of July 2011, was such that it got preceded by the terrorist attacks in Mumbai at three different locations. It is ironical that such incident keeps taking place in India despite the fact that there is a… Read More »Overcoming deficit: Significance of Indo-US strategic dialogue
Even after four years wait for the newly elected Constituent Assembly to draft a constitution, Nepal’s squabbling political parties have not been able to agree on the shape of a Constitution or even what the future of this small Himalayan nation would be. The situation in Nepal becomes more obscure with the elections which were scheduled on November 22 being postponed due to refusal of political parties to participate unless current Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai… Read More »Deepening crisis: Political impasse in Nepal
Amid Chinese Prime Minister’s decision to land on Indian soil on his first foreign trip on 20th May, 2013 and the warmth displayed by the new Chinese President Xi Jin Ping during his meeting with the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during the Durban BRICS Summit, the 15th April incident of incursion by a platoon strength of Chinese PLA in the Depsang valley of the eastern Ladakh has poured cold water over the new euphoria being… Read More »Testing patience: Nefarious games at the LAC and Li visit
The tumultuous welcome and Head of State like reception extended to the opposition democratic leader Aung San Suu Kyi in India and a week later the visit of the US President Barack Obama to Naypyidaw in mid November, has put Myanmar in centre stage of world politics. Till last year considered a pariah State by the US and West, Myanmar is now being hugged openly in the expectation that the country will witness real democratic… Read More »Back in focus: Bumpy road to full democracy
For a nation as obsessed with “strategic depth” as is Pakistan, its Achilles heel will forever remain within India’s reach. The troubled province of Sindh and the commercial hub of the nation, Karachi, lie well within India’s reach as was shown up so dramatically on December 4, 1971, when the Indian Navy attacked Karachi sinking several warships and destroying harbor installations including fuel storage tankers that burned for nearly a week enveloping the port city… Read More »Hurting efficiently: Keeping Pakistan in search of strategic depth
Wikileaks going public, since December 2010, on US State Department confidential cables is more than just stifling embarrassment for the Obama Administration because it is neither the precipitation of the historic era of cyber war-fare in full media glare, nor the challenging of a century old world order premised on state supremacy. The resultant ‘Big-Brother’ techniques employed as the instruments of state-power and authority could be the very beginning of the supremacy of the individual… Read More »Beyond exposure: Information revolution and Wikileaks