This daily column includes Gateway House’s Badi Soch – big thought – of the day’s foreign policy events. Today’s focus is on the negotiations for a free trade agreement between the E.U. and the U.S.
Courtesy: Somenametoforget/Flickr
Conventional political parties around the world seem to be on the decline, and there are common factors too – precarious economies and a leaching of ideology, for example. How can countries achieve grassroots empowerment in their village republics, and those of ordinary citizens the world over?
Courtesy: trendscout::/Flickr
All the major economic forces in the world have come together in Africa in a new version of the Great Game. The competition for the continent’s resources will ultimately harm Africa unless Africa uses this opportunity to its advantage and to address its own serious problems.
Courtesy: Gateway House
Gateway House prepared a Global Stability Map, using 20 differing indicators, to analyze the stability of 60 countries around the world. Using criteria that are important to the emerging economies of the world, the map provides an Indian perspective of the world today.
Courtesy: Fletcher6/WikimediaCommons
As the revelations pile up after the LIBOR rigging incident, it seems Europe and Britain are more committed to enforcement action than America. Real conservatives believe fully in market capitalism, that prices must come from uncorrupted market signals. Could this start a sea-change for enforcement globally?
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: 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: 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.
The scope for any process on nuclear talks with Iran to founder on distrust, misunderstanding and political in-fighting in both Tehran and Washington remains formidable. Equally disturbing are the wider political realities. Can the upcoming talks in Istanbul launch a process that can, over time, lead to agreement?
Courtesy: nazeah/Wikimediacommons - Ramesh Lalwani/Flickr
The year 2011 saw various events - the Arab Spring, anti- corruption protests, Europe's sovereign debt crisis - transform countries and reshape the world order. Gateway House takes a look at what these events mean for India, and presents India's top foreign policy cheers and jeers for the year.