Courtesy: Open Democracy
The NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2014 should be done tactically so that it doesn't destabilize Pakistan. Despite having accepted Pakistani help in the past, the Taliban might empathize with Pakistani Pashtuns and spread the very secessionist tendencies which Pakistan’s Afghan policy was designed to prevent.
Courtesy: The White House
Apart from bilateral ties, also at play at the India-U.S. Strategic dialogue is the difficult triangulation in India’s relations with the U.S. and Iran. It does not serve India to get enmeshed in the U.S-Iran confrontation. Instead, the relationship must develop on the basis of realpolitik and mutual interest.
Courtesy: U.S. State Department
The setting for the third Indo-U.S. Strategic Dialogue is promising: a global shift of economic weight to Asia, U.S. military exhaustion and indebtedness to China and other factors call for a greater convergence in Indo-U.S. interests than ever before. It is essential then, to take bold decisions at the dialogue.
Courtesy: IAEA Imagebank/Flickr
Ahead of nuclear talks between Iran and the P5+1 in Moscow, the West seems confident that sanctions will induce Iran to settle on its uranium enrichment. But rather than arriving at a negotiated settlement by applying the principle of reciprocity, the West may look to anaesthetize oil markets.
Courtesy: Secretary of Defense/Flickr
Pakistan’s refusal to re-open NATO supply routes into Afghanistan has made the country an instant pariah in the U.S. at the NATO Summit. The communiqué released confirms a withdrawal of 130,000 troops by as early as mid-2013. Can the remaining soldiers help maintain peace when a force much larger could not?
Courtesy: Ministry of External Affairs, India
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's recent visit to China, India, and Bangladesh is keeping with the U.S. pivot to Asia. The choice of countries has strategic significance for the U.S., where India is flagged as balancing the rise of China, and Bangladesh as a strategic base in the Bay of Bengal.
Courtesy: World Economic Forum/Flickr
After the $2 billion loss reported by JP Morgan, one of the four U.S. mega banks, the odds for regulation may be better now. The sentiment is global: banks in Europe have already faced a small backlash, and the prevailing opinion in parts of Asia is not whether there would be another financial crisis, but when.
Courtesy: U.S. Department of Defense
An important take-away from the preliminary pact reached by Kabul and Washington is that unlike the 1990s, the Americans are not just packing their bags and leaving. This is good news in terms of regional stability, and the upcoming NATO summit may answer some questions this draft agreement raises.
Courtesy: LGEPR
With turmoil in the Middle East, a drawdown in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Iran-Israel-U.S. conflict, the international community has paid little attention to the democracy of a small group of people - the Bahrainis. More worrisome, however, is that politics now responds to the elite.
Courtesy: Flickr/freeedomania
By forcing regime change in Libya, and attempting the same in Syria, and by promiscuously arming disparate groups of Wahabbis and Salafists to achieve this aim, NATO is creating more room for instability in the region. What Syria needs is engagement, not isolation; it needs dialogue and not the arming of rebels.