India and Japan have found common cause at sea as the Indo-Pacific becomes the world’s strategic center. For Japan, the sea lanes through the Malacca Strait are its economic lifeline. For India, security across the Indian Ocean is necessary for trade and energy.
The SCO summit at Tianjin in China, followed by a spectacular military display in Beijing, signal a resolve to contest the vagaries of the Trump Administration and tweak the global and regional orders.
The 5 “stans” form the Central Asian region, namely Kazakhstan (Astana), Uzbekistan (Tashkent), Turkmenistan (Ashabat), Kyrgyzstan (Bishkek), and Tajikistan (Dushanbe).
The international system is crowded with security alliances, NATO, AUKUS, QUAD, BRICS+, I2U2, yet wars rage across Ukraine, Gaza, Yemen, Sudan and beyond.
BRICS travelled from the world of fiction to an institutional reality in 2009, with Brazil, Russia, India and China coming together.
This time around, the Qataris—and by extension, other Arab and Islamic countries—are showing exceptional unity in confronting Israel directly, and, by implication, the US as well
India embraces its need for American intelligence and weapons to keep China at bay. At the same time, India does not want to be obliged to the US so much that it comes under its thumb. India is better off with a multipolar world, with multiple power centres.