Andrew Korybko |
India’s zero-sum plans of using its reinvigorated strategic partnership with Russia to “balance” China in the region of “Greater South Asia” are at risk of being ruined if Iran goes through with its recently announced interest in building a CPEC-parallel LNG pipeline to China (E-CPEC+, with the “E” standing for “energy”) and receives Moscow’s world-class support in constructing this...
Muhammad Sharreh Qazi l
Islamabad is under a new administration that aims to play a far more active part in regional priorities than previous regimes. It aims to diplomatically involve itself as ‘peace-broker’ or ‘ice breaker’ for any regional issue at hand. All Islamabad asks in return is fair share in economic assistance from stakeholders. Somehow, this strategy works fine...
Sabah Aslam l
It has been almost six years now, since CPEC was first conceived and approximately four years since the mega project became a ground reality. So far, the project has ushered long lasting and positive results for both, Pakistan and China. Its first phase of early harvest projects worth USD 18.9 billion is almost complete as you read...
M K Bhadrakumar l
At a press briefing Tuesday afternoon in Washington, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo cautioned against any rushed estimation that the exit of National Security Advisor John Bolton signalled a seismic shift in the Trump administration’s foreign policy.
Pompeo said, “I don’t think that any leader around the world should make any assumption that because some one...
TIC Focus l
According to a report by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), “the Strait of Hormuz is the world's most important oil chokepoint because its daily oil flow of about 17 million barrels per day in 2015, accounted for 30% of all seaborne-traded crude oil and other liquids”. According to the EIA, about 80% of the crude oil that...
The debate on the Treaty of Non-aggression between Germany and the Russia have been deliberately whipped up by the West as an opportunity to lodge various historical, political and even financial grievances with Russia and discredit the country’s foreign and domestic policies. To that end, a series of resolutions were passed between 2006 and 2009 by PACE, the European Parliament, and...
M K Bhadrakumar l
The stunning news that India’s GDP growth rate is hitting a six-year low figure of 5 percent in the past six-year period comes as reality check. Many economists even hold the view that in actuality, take away the statistical jugglery, India’s actual GDP growth figure could be somewhere around 3 percent.
Either way, it is a dismal scenario. As...
Andrew Korybko |
Sri Lanka catapulted to global attention a few months ago when it was victimized by one of the worst-ever suicide bombing attacks since 9/11, but the island nation’s latest security-related crisis is conspicuously being ignored by the Mainstream Media. Its pro-Western Prime Minister is collaborating with the US to replace the 1995 Status Of Forces Agreement (SOFA) in order to make it...
Farid A Malik |
The Prime Minister (PM) is right in saying that by invoking Article 370 of which 35A is a part of the constitution, India has played the last card on Kashmir. Unlike the Nehru family led Indian National Congress (INC), the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) wants to settle Kashmir as they desire to build a Hindu State....
Asif Haroon Raja l
Till the Islamic revolution in Iran in March 1979, Iran under Reza Shah Pahlavi was a strategic partner of USA and was lionized as the policeman of the Persian Gulf.
Friendship turned into deep-seated animosity once Imam Khomeini took over power. There was no letup in their animosity till Hassan Rouhani was elected President in June 2013....
M K Bhadrakumar l
The US President Donald Trump’s remarks at the Oval Office in the White House on August 20 regarding the Afghanistan peace talks and related issues exuded an overall sense of satisfaction that the “endless war” is finally ending —although issues still remain to be sorted out before the deal is closed.
This was also Trump’s first public assessment of...
Andrew Korybko |
An interesting sequence of events has recently taken place that makes many wonder what Russia’s up to in the Iranian port of Chabahar. It’s widely known that Russia, Azerbaijan, Iran, and India are cooperating on the North-South Transport Corridor (NSTC) project to integrate each of their economies more closely together, with Chabahar being this initiative’s terminal port...
TIC Focus l
The United Nations has accused India again of human rights violations in Kashmir and has called for the formation of a commission of inquiry into the allegations. A 43-page report released by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) also accused Pakistan for detaining Kashmiri separatists in its portion of the...
M K Bhadrakumar l
The three-year old Russian-Turkish tango in Syria has been incisive, exciting and provocative, but the inability of the two partners to trust each other or surrender to the care and needs of the other has deprived the relationship of the energies to work symbiotically.
If tango serves as a metaphor of relationship, an overall imbalance of energy...
TIC Analysis |
Prime Minister Imran Khan affirmed on Wednesday that he would no longer seek dialogue with Indian officials over the escalating issue of Occupied Kashmir. In an interview with The New York Times, PM Khan inveighed against repeated rejections of his offers for dialogue by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at, both before and after the August 5...
Sabah Aslam l
The terrestrial and maritime connectivity proposed by the Chinese government back in 2013 with six connectivity corridors reflects the vision of shared future for humanity. Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is an omen of modern transformation of the globe. The journey of transition from geo-politics to geo-economics is itself a huge achievement. As geo-economics brought in the...
TIC Focus |
The UN Security Council held a consultative meeting on Friday to discuss the Kashmir issue where Pakistan urged the world body to implement its own resolutions on this 70-year-old dispute.It being a closed-door session, no formal statement was issued after the meeting. However, Pakistani, Chinese, and Indian representatives talked to the media and presented their own opinions.
Pakistani...
M K Bhadrakumar l
Compared to the events two decades ago when the Afghan Taliban appeared in the Amu Darya region in northern Afghanistan and Central Asian states and Russia went into feverish tantrums, there is an eerie calm palpable in the steppes today.
The contrast couldn’t be sharper. In 1997 when Taliban first appeared in Mazar-i-Sharif on the Amu Darya...
M K Bhadrakumar l
Editorials have appeared in two leading Delhi newspapers (here and here) urging the government to present a credible, appealing diplomatic narrative on the J&K developments.
The Indian narrative so far is largely focused on the domestic audience. It has gone to ridiculous extents by projecting that the situation is actually quite “normal” in J&K. Pictures of National Security Advisor...
Saad Rasool |
On 5th of August, 2019, the myth of a secular India – inclusive of its many minorities – was finally buried by the right-wing, fascist, Hindutva government of Narendra Modi. And with this move, Indian presence in Kashmir is at par with Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories; except that the hotbed of Kashmir now also forms a flashpoint...
Sabah Aslam l
Throughout the past, nations have strived to seek knowledge from each other. In order to enhance the society and uplift its standards, lessons from past ventures of one society proved beneficial for the others as well. Whether it bethe military tactics or economic programs, every civilization as well as nation has much to edify others. Dr. Mehbub-ul-haq,...
Khurram Ali l
The key Chinese foreign policy-makers, including the whole standing committee of the politburo, summoned a landmark conference dedicated to ‘Peripheral Diplomacy’. It was aimed at outlining the country’s strategic direction, in particular, with its neighbors. In the conference, President Xi categorically articulated the nodal points of peripheral diplomacy, arguing that: “The core concern of the peripheral diplomacy...
Andrew Korybko |
The idea is that Russia and China, which have historically been closer to India and Pakistan (both of which are member states of the SCO) respectively, could join forces in somehow encouraging their regional partner of choice to moderate their positions and therefore reach some sort of a “compromise” on the future status of the disputed region....
TIC Focus l
Former Maldivian President Mohammed Nasheed has clashed with the Chinese envoy over Male's "alarming levels" of Chinese debt, which stands at $3.4 billion, even as India has regained ground in the strategically important Indian Ocean atoll nation with the exit of pro-Beijing former president Abdulla Yameen.
Speaking at a think tank meeting last week, Nasheed said that the...
M K Bhadrakumar l
India’s impending purchase of the Russian S-400 missile system has come to be the leitmotif of the “2+2” dialogue of the foreign and defence ministers of India and the United States due to take place in New Delhi on September 6. However, the issue here is not about a single defence transaction, either. There are far...
