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Under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, India and Japan shared a live and confident partnership. The engagement with India is one of his legacies, with Japan a steadfast partner and the strategic dimension being qualitatively different. Dealing with a new Japanese leader will be a challenge for India, and that new equation will determine the pace at which Japan's partnership with India will deepen.
Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons
As the world enters the Second Space Age, an Indo-Emirati space partnership can be a lodestar for others. However, it is only the people-to-people connect and the diversity of the innovation linkages between the Emirati and Indian diaspora, that can truly make it a success for science and citizens, and help achieve their aspirations for the 21st century.
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On 18th August, Pakistan announced wide-ranging restrictions on prominent anti-India terrorist leaders. These steps are clearly aimed to prevent Pakistan from slipping into the black list of the Financial Action Task Force, where Pakistan is already grey-listed. Their implementation remains key as in the past, Islamabad's global anti-terrorism commitments have been abandoned once global scrutiny of its support to terrorist infrastructure, decreases or is distracted.
Courtesy: Gateway House
Pakistan’s recent claims on Junagadh is a response to its frustration that the big powers and Islamic world have failed to respond to India’s unilateral action in revoking Article 370 and incorporating Ladakh and Kashmir under New Delhi’s federal control. But the continuing claim is only damaging to Pakistan’s cause.
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Hong Kong’s sweeping new National Security Law could be a window of opportunity for India. Companies with established data centres in Hong Kong are worried for the privacy of their customers as the law’s stringency has sparked changes in online activity.
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The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated geopolitical changes. Countries around the world are becoming increasingly concerned about the nature of China’s global advances. China, at the urging of President Xi Jinping, is pursuing technological goals and investment programs to build a China-centric global model, not to mention its militarization of the South China Sea and its clampdown on Hong Kong.
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India and Mexico will both be non-permanent members at the UNSC for 2021-22. Although located on different sides of the globe, culturally, the two countries share more in common than expected. As fellow non-permanent members of the UN Security Council as well as pro-active members of G20, the two countries need to intensify their mutual dialogue and cooperation on how to overcome the current weakening and impasse in the multilateral system.
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The delivery of five Rafale fighter jets last month is a big boost for Indian military capacity. The government's recent ban on the import of 101 defence items is a major step forward in building domestic defence-industrial capabilities. Partnering with like-minded diplomatic partners and adopting emerging technologies will help India in this endeavour.
The Quad, a grouping of Indo-Pacific democracies, is more relevant than ever. It must now operationalise not just the military exchanges but also formalise economic and technology partnerships that will undergird a meaningful new multilateral, provide it with resilience and appeal in the Indo-Pacific region. In this Webcast, co-hosted by Gateway House and Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, the panelists discuss the need to reform Quad, which hosts the four leading global voices, in order for it to become the magnet that attracts like-minded nations, small and big cutting across continents and oceans to converge on the new world order realities.
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The recent use of geospatial analyses by Indian social and mainstream media for near real-time defence and military intelligence in Ladakh has been made possible because of the lower cost of earth-observation satellite construction, and thereby, easy access to satellite imagery on the internet. While independent analysis is useful, the same intelligence can be also used against the interests of a sovereign nation by an adversary, especially border imagery. India must find innovative methods to reduce this vulnerability of commercial satellite imagery.
