Not only is the Middle East one of the cradles of civilizations but also a region with the largest natural gas and crude oil reserves on the planet. It is a place where different cultures collide, a focal point of international trade and an important political arena. Interests of three continents (Asia, Africa and Europe) merge in this region, where the Unit...
Today, when Turkey is experiencing serious difficulties in its relations with many countries of the Western world, primarily the United States and the EU, as well as the Middle East, Turkish President Erdoğan is trying to pursue a policy of a circus tightrope walker in order not only to get to “solid ground”, but also not to fall into an abyss of internal an...
Let’s start with the conclusion - a sequencing very much in vogue these days. To put it bluntly: we should celebrate the looming failure of the Congressional initiative to create a special Bi-Partisan Commission to investigate the events of January 6. The reason is that as keen as we are to get a probing, comprehensive examination of all aspects of the affai...
An audio recording of what some experts believe to be a secret speech by Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif was shown on a Persian news channel in London. The audio culminated with his criticism of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and their late commander Qassem Soleimani. The leaked tape is believed to have been aimed at undermining any hope o...
For two decades, the Pentagon has been applying the “Rumsfeld/Cebrowski doctrine” to the “wider Middle East”. Several times, it thought of extending it to the “Caribbean Basin”, but refrained from doing so, concentrating its power on its first target. The Pentagon acts as an autonomous decision-making center that is effectively outside the power of the presi...
The Śaka tribes are heard for the first time in Ikshvaku King Sagara’s period. Sagara was the ancestor of Rama who defeated Haihayas and Talajanghas to take back his country overrun by them. Mention of Śaka tribes appears in that context. Śaka-s, Yavanas, Kambojas, Paradas, and Pahlavas were defeated in that war but were let free by Sagara on the advice of t...
The people of Jammu and Kashmir look forward to pleasant weather conditions at the onset of summer that also heralds the tourist season. This year the region, like the rest of India and the world, is restrained due to rising COVID infections. The Government is putting in all efforts to contain the virus and has achieved a fair degree of success. However, the...
The pandemic and lock-down have produced some deeply moving personal stories of trial and tribulation. I heard one especially harrowing tale from an acquaintance who found himself marooned in a mid-Manhattan office for 67 days. He and his not-insignificant other are staffers at the NEW YORKER. They were confined when Editor David Remnick, in a panic as he ru...
As pointed out earlier, China must have realized by now that India is a growing, confidant nation - a far cry from what it was in 1962. Still, China refuses to consider India as an equal. As the Co-Director of the East Asia Program and Director of the China Program at the Stimson Center in Washington DC, Yun Sun puts it: “China believes in power politics and...
Pakistan has two basic interests in giving China a free hand to lay down the CPEC and to maintain a permanent presence inside the country. First, the Pakistani military has welcomed China in because it is paranoid that in the future India might make an effort to break up Pakistan further. The Pakistani military is convinced that the presence of a large numb...
The Doklam stand-off and subsequent violent activities by the PLA in Ladakh have been cited by some observers as signs of China’s growing arrogance in its quest to show the world that India remains a pushover militarily. What is evident to all is that China is trying to take advantage of a border that remains undemarcated. It is taken for granted that transg...
Within a relatively short period of time, bilateral relations between China and India have taken a nosedive. During the past five years, the veil of trust that had shrouded the face of rising China and kept Indian eyes misty and unfocused for the last three decades was lifted. A set of harsh knocks forced India to look at the real face of Xi Jinping’s China ...
Given Russia’s significant shift eastward, news of new cooperation with Vietnam and other southeast Asian nations bears watching. President Putin’s recent call with General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Nguyen Phu Trong over Sputnik V shipments highlights moves by Moscow to engage the region. Vietnam began vaccinating citizens using th...
The recently held Quad summit, which transformed an informal frame work of the US, India, Japan and Australia into a formal grouping with a broad range of objectives in the Indo-Pacific seems to have triggered China into action in South Asia. China’s State Councillor and defence minister Gen Wei Fenghe made a two-day visit to Colombo after a fleeting visit t...
Recently, there has been a clear trend among Middle Eastern countries to review the foreign policy directions that have been pursued in recent decades. The most striking example of this is the adjustment of Riyadh’s foreign policy vectors, especially with regard to countries with which Saudi Arabia has long been at enmity. After preparing a diplomatic b...
It is said that if a person has something at the back of his mind he tends to blurt it out unwittingly in the course of a conversation. Something of the sort happened with Pakistan foreign minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi. It seems that deep down he is convinced that Pakistan is unjustified in demanding revocation of India’s decision to abrogate Article 370, a...
In three years, France has gone through two major crises that have not been answered: the questioning of globalization by the Gilets jaunes and the disintegration of the State by the police unions. Neither of them has received a substantial response. If the observations of these whistleblowers are shared by all, it becomes impossible to share them publicly. ...
Turkey has once again escaped the consequences of its actions, this time in Nagorno-Karabakh. It is probably today in the crosshairs of the Pentagon, which wishes to destroy it like all the other states in the wider Middle East. This is the problem: it risks being set on fire to continue the “endless war” and not to defeat its racist ideology. The adversary ...
India’s strategic security challenges have become more complex after the “coming of age” of the Quad - the Quadrilateral strategic grouping of the US, Japan, India and Australia. The Quad is no doubt China-centric and was formed to ensure a free and open international order based on the rule of law in the Indo-Pacific. However, the virtual summit meeting of ...
The now infamous blockage of the Suez Canal, along with the incident that nearly led to its repetition that occurred in early April, as well as a series of terrorist attacks committed by Israel against Iranian ships, has forced the international community to actively look for a possible alternative to this vital maritime transport artery. Against the back...
Against the backdrop of the attempts to publicly humiliate Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman undertaken by the Biden administration, Washington in recent weeks has actively sought to use Riyadh in a game against Iran to its own advantage. To ease its sanctions and develop contacts with Tehran, the White House gave appropriate instructions to its strateg...
The ‘Cyprus meeting’ of officials from Israel, the UAE, Greece and Cyprus highlights the ‘changing’ Middle East. While the US has, ever since Trump’s defeat and Joe Biden’s arrival into the White House, seemingly taken a step back from pushing the Gulf and Arab states for signing The Abraham Accords, the pact still continue to shape the Middle Eastern geo-po...
The Indus Valley Civilisation culture didn’t come into existence suddenly one fine day. A systematic decipherment of the events of the Mahabharata shows that it was post- Mahabharata culture. (From Mehrgarh to Saraswati, Dwarka people spread and started the Early Harappan culture). There is a clear demarcation of 3 regions in the IVC: (1) The Saraswati regi...
The digital giants have taken over the world. Nobody has ever amassed this much power. Hitler would die of envy if shown the greatness of Google. Huxley and Orwell’s protagonists could only dream of what Bezos and Gates do. The latter overthrew the US President and installed one they prefer, and for good reason. The combined net worth of the top 100 ultra-ri...
For Britain, as for other Atlanticists, Central Asia (CA) has long been an area of key interest. To some extent, this is due to the region’s significant mineral reserves, as well as its strategic location as a bridge between Europe and Southeast Asia. That is why in recent years the West has been particularly active in trying to prevent the restoration of Ru...
The Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir has undergone monumental changes for the better in the last few years. The security forces set the pace by carrying out relentless counter-terrorist operations, which succeeded with the support of the local populace and government, and resulted in near decimation of the terror machinery in the region. T he improved c...
After failing to block Turkey’s purchase of the advanced S-400 Russian air defense system, Washington diplomacy in recent months appeared to have managed to “flip” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to support of US interests in several critical countries from Libya to Armenia to Ukraine, even Afghanistan. With the Turkish economy on the brink of catastr...
While the Joe Biden administration has confirmed a US withdrawal from Afghanistan with or without a political settlement between Kabul and the Taliban, the story that has started to unfold following Biden’s announcement shows that withdrawal isn’t after all going to be a straightforward pull out of all military resources currently deployed and operating in A...
What makes the Middle East difficult to understand is that it comprises a multitude of actors with different logics who, depending on the circumstances, make or break alliances. We often think we know the region politically, who our friends and enemies are. But when we return to the same place years later, the landscape has changed dramatically: some of our ...
Against the background of a possible return of the United States to a “nuclear deal” with Iran, Tel Aviv has recently demonstrably intensified the actions of its intelligence services to undermine Tehran’s nuclear program and damage not only this industry, but the Islamic Republic as a whole. And at the same time, Israeli officials make no secret of their di...
Ötzi man is in news again. (Ötzi was the oldest well-preserved remains of a man found on the highs of Alps in 2017, and dated at around 3300 BCE Wikipedia article). (Disclaimer: this article is not about the migration of Ötzi man).
After a recent discovery of the presence of the Indian-origin H.pylori bacterium in his stomach, establishing his ancestral...