Washington grumbles about the Indian relationship with Iran, but the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan leaves New Delhi little choice The striking juxtaposition this week in New Delhi is a nice illustration of how Tehran has become a complicating factor in U.S.-India relations. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was in town to exhort Prime Minister […]
Hell in a Very Small Place. That was the name of a book by Bernard Fall about the siege of Dien Bien Phu. The 1954 battle was a turning point in Indochina, where the French made a last ditch effort to maintain control in Vietnam. It also is the point where the United States began […]
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s broadly successful eight-day visit across Asia directly cemented India’s dominance as the regional power hub in South Asia, while also giving Bangladesh its due as an important regional ally. Bangladesh was Clinton’s gateway into India, a figurative and literal go-between in the political jockeying that has pit India against China. […]
I’m sure most of us are familiar with this famous quote from Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels: “If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth.” Personally, I prefer the much more humorous George Costanza line in a Seinfeld episode when Jerry is trying to defeat a polygraph test being given to him […]
Sometimes it’s hard to know what to make of the country Even casual observers of India quickly realize it is a jumble of self-contradictions that often defy simple explanation. The latest evidence for this proposition comes in the form of two new opinion polls that present contrary data regarding the national psyche. Yesterday the […]
A broad ambivalence about economic reform prevails in New Delhi He’s not the real problem My previous post dealt with the mounting criticism of New Delhi’s economic management. Not too long ago, India was feted as the “New China” and a driving force in the BRICS fraternity. It was the toast of the 2006 […]
The director of a well-known Cambodian environmental organization seeking to highlight governmental negligence and corruption regarding the issue of illegal logging was brutally gunned down by military police this past Wednesday night. Chut Wutty, director of the Natural Resource Protection Group (and a personal friend of this author), was shot and killed in a car […]
Criticism about New Delhi’s economic management reaches a crescendo Although he claims to have been misquoted, Kaushik Basu, the chief economic adviser at the Indian finance ministry, has only confirmed what has been readily apparent for quite some time. In Washington last week for the annual spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the […]
The United States should launch a Marshall Plan-like initiative to reinforce economic cooperation between India and Pakistan Previous posts (here and here) have highlighted how growing economic engagement is now the driver of the peace dialogue India and Pakistan launched a year ago. The guiding principle is the so-called “Chinese model” – that is, the two […]
The Singh-Zardari luncheon was more productive than many expected. But the bonhomie will eventually run into stark political realities. Although the timing was coincidental and neither man professes the Christian faith, it was appropriately symbolic that Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari broke bread in New Delhi on Easter Sunday. […]
Tibetan filmmaker Dhondup Wangchen has been languishing in prison because he made a short documentary about how Tibetans felt about the summer Olympics coming to Beijing in 2008. He and his assistant were arrested on charges of inciting separatism shortly after the film was finished in 2008 and were given a six-year sentence. His wife, […]
In the latest twist in the increasingly violent saga of Thailand’s southern problem, last month’s triple bomb blast in the province of Yala highlighted another failure of the administration of Yingluck Shinawatra’s eight-month old government: the campaign vow to grant the three southern provinces of Yala, Pattani, and Narathiwat ‘special administration zone’ status. Much like […]
The curious timing of the bounty on Hafiz Saeed raises the issue of whether U.S. policies toward New Delhi and Islamabad are in sync. If anything, the $10 million bounty the Obama administration offered last week for information leading to the capture and arrest of Hafiz Muhammed Saeed, a high-profile jihadi leader in Pakistan, is […]
Islamabad’s embarrassing rhetoric towards Beijing is a sign of strategic desperation The playing off of two stronger patrons by a smaller or weaker country is a time-honored tactic in international politics. So it is no surprise that Pakistan seeks to create geopolitical leverage by nuzzling up to China whenever a downdraft occurs in its relations with […]
Safe inside his armored motorcade and surrounded by nearly two dozen police motorcycle escorts, Chinese Premier Hu Jintao traversed north along Sothearos Boulevard in Phnom Penh this past Saturday morning, passing a 20 foot portrait of his face as well as one of his wife’s as his entourage made its way towards the Peace Palace […]
