COMMENTARIES
  • India-Sri Lanka
    Mahinda’s India Visit: Reading between the Lines
    Dr. Sripathi Narayanan    ·   17 Feb, 2020    ·    #5650    ·    Commentary    
    Between 7 and 11 February, Sri Lanka’s new Prime Minister, Mahinda Rajapaksa (MR), travelled to India on his maiden foreign visit since assuming office. This visit marked the fifth high-profile bilateral exchange since his brother, Gotabaya R...
  • Is the Doomsday Clock Still Relevant?
    Tanvi Kulkarni.    ·   11 Feb, 2020    ·    #5649    ·    Commentary    
    On 23 January 2020, the Doomsday Clock struck 11:58:20 PM – that is, 100 seconds away from midnight. The clock’s time is meant to symbolically indicate how close humanity is to a global catastrophe. And, the current time suggests that we a...
  • India: The Politics and Economics of Soft Power
    Muneer Ahmed    ·   31 Jan, 2020    ·    #5648    ·    Commentary    
    Indian External Affairs Minister (EAM) Dr S Jaishankar, at the 4th Ramnath Goenka lecture on 14 November 2019, gave a rundown of India's foreign relations, and highlighted critical milestones. His key thrust was on the need for an Indian forei...
  • The Strategist
    The Chanciness of Squirming Back from the Brink of Nuclear War
    Vice Admiral Vijay Shankar    ·   31 Jan, 2020    ·    #5647    ·    Commentary    ·   Column
    Stanislav Yefgrafovich Petrov, Colonel Second Rank of the Soviet Strategic Air Defence Forces, stood as watch-in-charge at the Oko nuclear early warning surveillance system at the top secret Serpukhov-15 complex in a South Moscow suburb. His d...
  • East Asia Compass
    A New Phase in US-North Korean Denuclearisation Talks?
    Dr Sandip Kumar Mishra    ·   27 Jan, 2020    ·    #5646    ·    Commentary    ·   Column
    North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, by recently replacing his foreign and defence ministers, has indicated his intent to take a tough stand on the issue of denuclearisation. On 18 and 22 January 2020, Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho was replaced by Ri ...
  • Kashmiri Pandits and J&K Reorganisation
    Shivangi Seth    ·   22 Jan, 2020    ·    #5645    ·    Commentary    
    In early 2019, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi remarked about the injustice of the 1990 Kashmiri Pandit (KP) exodus and reiterated his commitment towards facilitating their dignified return to Kashmir. After Article 370 was abrogated in ...
  • Strategic Space
    Nuclear Energy: Is it In or Out?
    Manpreet Sethi    ·   20 Jan, 2020    ·    #5644    ·    Commentary    ·   Column
    Two contrasting news on nuclear energy from two different parts of the world greeted the dawn of the new year. Germany announced the decommissioning of another of its nuclear power plants in keeping with its plan to phase out nuclear energy by ...
  • The Killing of Gen Soleimani and the Islamic Republic’s Options
    Majid Izadpanahi    ·   15 Jan, 2020    ·    #5643    ·    Commentary    
    After a rocket attack on a US military base which led to the killing of an American contractor, the US blamed the Kata'ib Hezbollah (an Iran-backed proxy militia) and later plotted the bombing of a base belongs to that militia. Few days later, ...
  • The Assassination of Iran’s Soleimani: Victory for Trump, Failure for the US?
    Pieter-jan Dockx    ·   06 Jan, 2020    ·    #5642    ·    Commentary    
    On 3 January, a US drone strike near Baghdad airport killed Major General Qasem Soleimani of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as well as his main Iraqi ally, militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. The assassinations are the late...
  • CAA and Citizenship Determination: An ‘Assamese’ Exception
    Niharika Das    ·   27 Dec, 2019    ·    #5641    ·    Commentary    
    The Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 (CAA), which came into force on 12 December 2019, amends the Citizenship Act, 1955, to state that “any person belonging to Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi or Christian community from Afghanistan, Bangla...
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