In the midst of a full blown India-Pakistan challenge, it is easy to forget US Vice President J D Vance's visit to India earlier this week. It was largely a private visit but its public manifestations reinforced the foundations of a bilateral relationship that has been in the throes of a shift, like other relationships of the US.
India’s military strikes as part of Operation Sindoor on nine sites in Pakistan and Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK) – in response to the Pahalgam terror attack on April 22 – have also placed China and its responses to the escalation in focus. Lin Jian, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson, described the Indian strikes as “regrettable”. Beijing called on India and Pakistan “to avoid worsening the situation” and “remain calm and exercise restraint”.
Retaliation is easy, Restraint is better. The terrorists who killed 26 innocent tourists in Pahalgam hoped to destabilise and reverse the return to normalcy in Jammu and Kashmir in the wake of successful elections and movement towards the restoration of statehood for the territory.
When I set out on a study journey to investigate the intersections of ancient Indian literature and modern international policy, I had no clue how much the Mahabharata and Chanakya's Arthashastra would resonate with today's geopolitical challenges. As a scholar interested in India's historical involvement in global affairs, I aimed to understand how these timeless works may inform contemporary diplomatic efforts.
The Baltic Sea is about to be the center of the Russia-NATO rivalry in the coming years. As of March 2024, the Baltic Sea, with the exception of Russia, is entirely surrounded by NATO members. With NATO’s only purpose being to defend the West from the Russian threat, this is of grave concern to Russia.
Pakistan based terror groups have been executing the cross-border terrorism against India for nearly four decades as an instrument of Rawalpindi’s designs in particular and their foreign policy in general. World knows and fully understands the source and sustenance of the rabid terrorist groups that have proliferated in our western neighbourhood for decades with the alacrity of misplaced Jihad and the impunity extracted from global majors including its iron clad friends.
In the complex tapestry of South Asian geopolitics, few agreements have held as much symbolic and strategic weight as the Simla Agreement of 1972. Signed in the aftermath of the 1971 Indo-Pak war—an event that not only redrew the map of the subcontinent with the birth of Bangladesh but also reshaped regional power dynamics—the Simla Agreement was envisioned as a framework for peace, coexistence, and bilateral resolution of disputes. Over five decades later, its relevance is once again under scrutiny, as Pakistan signals a suspension of the accord amidst renewed tensions.