Commodore S.L. Deshmukh

Beijing’s renewed claims over the Shaksgam Valley lay bare how quiet coercion is redrawing the India-China-Pakistan frontier. A barren tract of ice and rock high in the eastern Karakoram has again re-emerged as a geopolitical fault line at one of Asia’s most volatile junctions. China’s recent reassertion of its claim over the Shaksgam Valley, coupled with fresh justifications for infrastructure development there, has revived an old dispute that India insists is neither settled nor obscure....

A nascent Pakistan–Saudi–Turkey security pact is reshaping West Asia and narrowing India’s room for manoeuvre. Even before the ink on the recent Pakistan–Saudi Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement was dry, its implications were already reverberating across the region.  The pact, treating an attack on one as an attack on both, in language reminiscent of NATO’s Article 5, was Riyadh’s boldest bet yet that its future security no longer lies solely under an American umbrella. The decision now to...

An unelected regime, rising fundamentalism and great-power meddling have pushed India-Bangladesh ties to their coldest point in decades. Foreign policy is rarely forged in the chancelleries alone. It rests on sturdier foundations: a government’s legitimacy, public consent and a coherent sense of economic and military purpose. When those pillars weaken, diplomacy becomes reactive and neighbours feel the tremors. Bangladesh today offers a cautionary tale. Its interim administration headed by...