“It’s so far, but so very near to us now.” This is what Dr. Uttam Kumar Sinha observed during the opening of the AsiArctic conference at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis (IDSA) in New Delhi, India last week. India received observer status in the Arctic Council in May of this year, along with […]
Evicted from Bhutan at the age of 11, Vidhyapati Mishra spent two decades in U.N.-funded Bhutanese refugee camp in eastern Nepal before resettling in the United States. Just a week before his departure from Nepal to Charlotte of North Carolina, self-learned journalist Mishra also featured in the New York Times with his powerful narrative story […]
After receiving and reviewing an advanced copy of the Organization of Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) 2013 report Aid for Trade at a Glance: Connecting to Value Chains, I am intrigued by the ongoing process of replacing a portion of direct foreign aid with viable bi- and multi-lateral trade agreements that help in economic development, especially […]
Engineering of election results in Bhutan falls much short of a diplomatic victory of India At the peak of campaigning by Bhutan’s two political parties for the recently concluded National Assembly (NA) elections, word spread that India was unhappy with the shrill nature of arguments – and their counters – related to India. Almost immediately, […]
India is anticipating a massive wave of refugee migration from neighboring Bangladesh. This feared population swell – India already has 1.2 billion people of its own – would come not from anticipated political corruption, but from climate change. India projects that rising sea levels will yield an unprecedented number of Bangladeshi “climate refugees” seeking basic […]
“It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.” Several developments related to India call to mind William Shakespeare’s famous line in Julius Caesar. The first are the tours of the United States undertaken last week by Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram and Commerce & Industry Minister Anand Sharma, aimed at drumming up […]
As 25 leaders from West and Central Africa convened for a two-day conference in Yaounde, Cameroon, global leaders awaited solutions from the summit on how to fix the challenges of security in the Gulf of Guinea. The region is crucial in the geopolitical scope for many world powers as its vast oil resources account for large portions of […]
Russian Spy Games By Edward Lucas Foreign Affairs The Cold War may have officially ended and the rest may be the new policy, but Russia and the U.S. are still adversaries, says Lucas. While Ryan Fogle’s, the 29-year-old third secretary at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, gamble may seem absurd, the extraordinary thing about […]
By Tyler Hooper With U.S., NATO and International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) personnel set to withdraw the bulk of their military personnel from Afghanistan in 2014, regional powers such as China, India and Pakistan will have the opportunity to play an influential role in the country’s future. Both India and Pakistan have historically been involved in […]
Asia in, EU not yet China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, India and Italy have all been admitted as permanent observer states to the Arctic Council, while the EU will have to wait. Though technically admitted, it still must work out its differences with Canada. Countries are admitted as permanent observer states by consensus between the […]
News reporting on India, more specifically news regarding women in India, has recently been somewhat unsettling. Horrific cases of sexual abuse, some fatal, have made their way from the Indian media to a global stage. In terms of raising awareness, the impact has been powerful. Yet tarring all of India with the same brush would […]
Diplomats of the member states of the United Nations have gathered in New York at the organization’s headquarters tasked to hash out an Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). The potential ATT would set standards for the global conventional arms trade, a $70 billion industry. It recognizes that arms trade is a lawful business with friendly partners, […]
The following post is based on an address I delivered at the Shanghai Maritime Strategy Research Center two weeks ago. The punditry gods were smiling when Beijing and New Delhi declared 2012 as the Year of Sino-Indian Friendship. After all, it was a most curious designation, and not just because 2006 had received the same […]
My last post focused on the domestic implications in Pakistan of the latest revelations about the 1999 Kargil mini-war. Since the crisis is a key point of contention – a sort of Rorschach test, really – in the debate over whether the proliferation of nuclear weapons in South Asia has stabilized or aggravated the India-Pakistan […]
Each week, the Foreign Policy Blog’s editorial team compiles the five best long-form reads and five best in-house blog posts. This week’s features India-Pakistan relations, drones, Gérard Depardieu and much more.
