Int’l Affairs

On February 7, 1845, US Congressman John D. Cummins rose in the US House of Representatives to clamour for US possession of the Oregon Territory, then occupied jointly by the United States and Britain. He declared that these opulent Northwest lands were ‘the master key of the commerce of the universe.’ ‘Put that territory under US jurisdiction,’ he argued, ‘and …

Europe is in the throes of its most dangerous crisis since the end of the cold war. When President Viktor Yanukovich, recently, was toppled in Kiev, the world wondered how the Kremlin would respond to the fall of its cherished ally and the threat that Ukraine might shift westwards. But, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, gave his uncompromising answer when …

Saudi Arabia has turned into a country of surprises and shocks almost overnight. First, its Foreign Minister, Prince Saud Al-Faisal, refused to give his speech at the UN General Assembly, in September, due to its ‘double standards; and, second, his ministry has declined the membership of the UN Security Council due to the group’s failure to resolve the Palestinian issue, …

Water is one of the most precious natural resources of our planet. Only 2% of the world’s water resources are made up of freshwater. This scarce resource, however, plays a crucial role in all segments of nature, society and economy. In view of the projected growth in popular demand for water and an accelerating climate change, it is expected that …

The influential media in the United States continues to be preoccupied with the aftermath of the government shutdown, and especially with the Obamacare’ the object of the Republicans’ continuous ire. The other object of ‘Republicans versus Democrats’ dispute was resolved when the Republicans gave in and agreed to raise the ceiling for the national debt. The Second Liberty Bond Act …

The warm waters of the Gulf look quiet but such tranquillity hardly reflects the conflicts this region continues to generate. The euphoria of the so-called Arab Spring is long gone, what remains is a region that is rich with resources and burdened with easily manipulated history that is in a state of reckless transition. No one can see what the …

The warm waters of the Gulf look quiet but such tranquillity hardly reflects the conflicts this region continues to generate. The euphoria of the so-called Arab Spring is long gone, what remains is a region that is rich with resources and burdened with easily manipulated history that is in a state of reckless transition. No one can see what the …

The map of the modern Middle East, a political and economic pivot in the international order, is in tatters. Syria’s ruinous war is the turning point. But the centrifugal forces of rival beliefs, tribes and ethnicities’ empowered by unintended consequences of the Arab Spring’ are also pulling apart a region defined by European colonial powers a century ago and defended …

In the US, spying is a big business. The NSA’s new centre for stocking computer records at Bluffdale, Utah will cost on its own $2 billion, but the agency has a ‘secret-defense’ budget which, for all its cloak of secrecy, is at least five times that. It’s a slush fund involving the huge defense contractors like Lockheed-Martin and Endgame as …

The ongoing Iranian nuclear crisis is all about a global nuclear order, based on what India’s former External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh once described as ‘nuclear apartheid.’ To our friends in the Western world, the nuclear question has traditionally been uni-dimensional. The symptom, not disease, is their problem. Their undivided focus has been on non-proliferation only as a concept which …