Int’l Affairs

The Leaders Summit on Climate Climate at the center of new global transformation On April 22, world leaders from 40 countries, 17 of them responsible for around 80 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, held a virtual summit convened by US President Joe Biden. This summit, explicitly designed to make up for the time lost by America’s withdrawal from …

Revival of Quad Possibilities and Prospect The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, also referred to as Quad, is a strategic consultation framework between the United States, Australia, Japan and India. The Quad began nearly seventeen years ago (in 2004) with joint response to tangible and urgent crisis, the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. For nine days in December 2004 and January …

India’s Options in Post-Withdrawal Afghanistan The US military has started its complete withdrawal from Afghanistan, marking what amounts to the beginning of the end of the United States’ nearly 20-year-old war in the country. But, as expected, this withdrawal is not smooth as fierce fighting between government forces and the Taliban erupted after the US military began withdrawing its remaining …

Covid-19 Crisis  and Rich Countries Most of this reasoning was speculative. But by the late summer of 2020, two clear trends were emerging. While parts of Western Europe were enduring a devastating first wave of Covid-19 cases, Africa and south Asia were experiencing a slow-moving, sometimes stalling rate of infection and a comparatively low death toll. Those trends are now …

China’s Own Space Station China has launched a core module of its own space station, moving a step closer to the finishing touches on the country’s decades-old manned space program. Encased in the extra-large fairing of the country’s state-of-the-art Long March-5B launch vehicle, the 16.6-meter-long, 4.2-meter-diameter Tianhe (literally meaning Harmony in Heaven) core module, rose from the tropical island province …

Biden’s Address to US Congress America is Rising anew On April 28, President Joe Biden addressed a joint session of US Congress. “America is on the move again,” President Biden said, acknowledging that he took office in the middle of the worst pandemic in a century, the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and what he called the “worst …

The Modi-fied INDIA Dissecting Modi’s New India Driven by RSS ideology whose rallying cry since its inception has been ‘Hindu’ ‘Hindi’ and ‘Hindustan’, Modi-led BJP wants to sculpt a Hindu rashtra or Sangh parivar to realize its supremacist ambitions. And, in this pursuit, the ruling dispensation has left no stone unturned to translate its dreams into reality. Oddly enough, the …

The Quad Summit The leaders of the Australia-India-Japan-United States alliance, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (or Quad) met on March 12 in a virtual summit as the Biden administration seeks to make good on its commitment to multilateralism, as well as sending China a signal of unity among the regional powers. The Quad summit and the joint statement issued at its …

Enough with Words It is truly shocking what the Palestinian people have again encountered in Jerusalem and Gaza lately. Peaceful worshippers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem have been prevented from fulfilling their religious obligations during the holy month of Ramadan. The Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of East Jerusalem has endured systematic attacks to expel Palestinians from their homes, all for …

Diplomacy in the Age of Twitter ‘Media pervasiveness’ as the scholars call it, is an undeniable fact of life. Be it the launch of attacks on Afghanistan, Osama Bin Laden stealth operation in Abottabad or Tahrir Square uprising in Egypt, they are stark reminders of the immense power at the disposal of media to cover real-time actions. The impact of …