Courtesy: MEA/Flickr
The 17th Summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is being held in Astana this week at which Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Nawaz Sharif will be present. But no meeting is likely to take place between them--and even if it does, it will not advance peace between the two countries
Courtesy: MEA/ Flickr
India views its ties with Malaysia as a core element of its Act East Policy, while the Malaysian leadership has taken note of India’s geopolitical importance and the many attractions of its market Both nations share a strong commitment to multiculturalism, democracy and inclusive development
Courtesy: Wikimedia
China is coming in from a position of strength to challenge American primacy in the Asia-Pacific, and the Trump administration needs to abjure the hopeful, hesitant approach of its predecessors
Courtesy: Wikimedia
As the United States considers its policy options towards North Korea it must understand that Pyongyang has been thinking about military conflict for decades. It too will have military plans and they could pose major challenges for the U.S. This is why China and South Korea–and U.S. regional experts too–prefer the diplomatic route
Courtesy: Wikipedia/ Gateway House
Nepal, currently one of the 21st century’s important locations in Asia, has to safeguard itself by its own initiative, not rely on guarantees from external actors. The authors, one of whom is a former minister of the country, suggest that a changed world order calls for more modern security forces and an independent defense policy
Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons
China’s resurrection of the ancient Silk Road is ambitious, sprawling, hegemonic. Its pre-European origins, though, lay in a criss-crossing of nameless caravan routes on which Indian cotton was traded as vigorously as Chinese silk, tangible proof of the interdependence of two ancient civilisations over two millennia
Courtesy: MEA/ Flickr
The Indo-Pacific region is home to some of the largest and most rapidly growing economies as also powerful military forces. Nuclear threats, international terrorism and climate change are some of the issues that define the region. Uncertainty dogs relations among the four nations in the top league—U.S., China, India and Japan—but what is emerging is a hawkish, policy stance from the U.S. as opposed to an isolationist outlook apprehended earlier
Courtesy: The Wire
China has launched the One Belt, One Road (OBOR) Initiative in an attempt to rebuild the ancient Silk Road with proposed land and sea routes to promote infrastructure, trade, and investment in the regions that it will thus connect. The challenge will be to attract private financing to support the official and multilateral ones
Courtesy: MEA/Flickr
The West Asian monarchies are being forced to ‘look East’ due to a range of factors: the rise of the Islamic State, their need to boost falling oil revenues and doubts about the United States continuing to remain a guarantor of regional stability. Quite coterminously, India is looking towards the Gulf for energy security besides fulfilling other geostrategic goals: this is an ‘East’ and ‘West’ where the ‘twain will meet
Courtesy: Wikipedia
Trump’s cabinet has a preponderance of China hardliners, which has wider implications for the Asia Pacific region while some of its members view Narendra Modi as Reaganesque and a man of the times