COMMENTARIES
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Spotlight West Asia
The Battle for Aleppo and the Imminent Regional Shifts
Ranjit Gupta · 13 Oct, 2016 · #5153 · Commentary · Column
Aleppo, the crossroads of civilisation for millennia, Syria’s largest city, and its main commercial and cultural centre, is also the most important strategic gateway from Turkey into Syria. Controlling Aleppo is essential for any ruler to ...
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Dateline Colombo
Understanding our “Blindspot†to Make Peacebuilding Comprehensive
Asanga Abeyagoonasekera · 13 Oct, 2016 · #5152 · Commentary · Column
“The sailor cannot see the North —but knows the needle can.”
– Emily Dickinson, in a letter to a mentor, TW Higginson, seeking an honest evaluation of her talent (1862)
The young soldiers and Tamilia...
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Evaluating Sri Lanka’s Regional Priorities
Husanjot Chahal · 10 Oct, 2016 · #5151 · Commentary
While embarking on a two-day visit to New Delhi in October 2016, Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe was probably aware of the forthcoming challenges. Sri Lanka had recently announced that the prevailing regional environment wa...
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Eagle Eye
Critical Challenges to the Indo-US Strategic Partnership
Chintamani Mahapatra · 10 Oct, 2016 · #5150 · Commentary · Column
The strategic partnership between India and the US has slowly and steadily been moving in an upwardly trajectory through periodic turbulences. However, as the world's balance of power has entered a serious phase of transition, New Delhi and ...
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Fragile States Index 2016
FSI and South Asia
Monish Gulati · 10 Oct, 2016 · #5149 · Commentary
The Fragile States Index (FSI) is an annual ranking
of 178 nations, conceived with the core notion that weak and failing states
pose a challenge to the international community and in a highly interconnected
world, ‘pressures’ on o...
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Fragile States Index 2016
Bangladesh: A Conflict Shatter Zone
Mirza Zulfiqur Rahman · 06 Oct, 2016 · #5148 · Commentary
The Fragile States Index (FSI), published annually by the Washington DC based The Fund for Peace has come out with its report for 2016, which covers the conflict events for the year 2015. This article analyzes the indicators provided by the repo...
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Fragile States Index 2016
FSI's Broader Conclusions: Methodology, Empirical Trends and Current Realities
Amb TCA Raghavan · 06 Oct, 2016 · #5147 · Commentary
The broad conclusions on India of the Fragile States Index are:
(a) 2016 as compared to 2015 has seen a significant worsening of India...
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East Asia Compass
Future of the TPP and the US' Pivot to Asia
Dr Sandip Kumar Mishra · 04 Oct, 2016 · #5146 · Commentary · Column
In the first round of the presidential debates in the US, it became certain that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is still far from being realised. While the Republican candidate, Donald Trump reiterated his opposition to the TPP, even ...
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Mining in Afghanistan: Scale Down to Reap More
Roshan Iyer · 04 Oct, 2016 · #5145 · Commentary
The mining industry in Afghanistan holds the potential to completely revolutionise the country’s domestic economy. Afghanistan has around 1400 deposit sites of minerals worth between USD 1 and 3 trillion – according to the 2010 US Ge...
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Contextualising Iran: The Nixon and Obama Doctrines
Kimberley Anne Nazareth · 04 Oct, 2016 · #5144 · Commentary
Presidents are infamous for their doctrines, a tactic used in an effort to elevate the status of their policies making them sound prophetic and strategic than they actually are. Presidential doctrines are tools used to clarify their agendas as w...
