Reaffirming his nation's commitment to continue pouring billions of dollars into the economies of developing countries as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) - the "project of the century" - enters its second decade, Chinese President Xi Jinping underlined earlier this week at the BRI forum that "China can only do well when the world is doing well... When China does well, the world will get even better." More significantly, and perhaps expectedly, he took aim at the West when he suggested that "we stand against unilateral sanctions, economic coercion, decoupling, and supply chain disruption."
As tensions continue to escalate in the Middle East, diplomacy too has picked up pace with US President Joe Biden deciding to visit Israel to assess Israeli plans. After the attack on a Gaza hospital last night left 500 dead and amid reports of an impending Israeli ground offensive, there are growing concerns about the humanitarian toll and its long term costs.
As the G20 summit successfully concluded in New Delhi last week, it managed to generate some positive headlines for India globally. Even India’s staunchest critics had to concede that contrary to their expectations, New Delhi managed to pull off a successful summit at a time when geopolitical and developmental fault-lines have been sharpening by the day. Despite the absence of Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin (and perhaps because of it), a large part of the world agreed and put its stamp on India’s global developmental priorities. A strong message has gone out from New Delhi that India is now, more than ever, willing to lead from the front and shedding its perpetual reticence of yore.
Harsh V. Pant It has become a cliche to suggest that the world is at an inflection point. Shifting global balance of power is often identified as the key variable driving this change. A perceptible inward orientation in the US…
For all of Sunak's achievements so far, he faces tough political challenges ahead. And it is in times like these that faith becomes an anchor, helping to navigate the turbulence around and within.
BRICS has little to show by way of achievement even as fault lines within it sharpen, with China and Russia trying to convert its geo-economic orientation into a patently anti-West one. In subsequent years, the BRICS goal of gaining a stronger voice in the international financial system essentially provided the five countries with two possibilities: challenging versus reforming global governance.
