The telephonic exchange between Narendra Modi and Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this month reveals the changing architecture of India’s Middle Eastern strategy. The telephone exchange between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu at the start of the New Year was the latest signal of a strategic alignment three decades in the making. It came as Israel struggles to turn a fragile Gaza ceasefire into something more durable, and as India steadil

While India’s consumption-led economy is holding the fort against a hostile world, the ongoing trade war will test the depth of that resilience. The year 2025 was not kind to the world economy. War, tariffs and geopolitical one-upmanship tore through supply chains and spooked capital. Yet India, buffeted though it was by these storms, sailed on with surprising steadiness. Services exports kept surging, merchandise trade expanded in patches, and, most importantly, the vast eng

While the world’s shipping fleet looks bigger than ever, its safety culture is quietly rotting and India has the most to lose. Global shipping transports over 80 per cent of world trade, making it essential for economic stability and global supply-chain security. From oil and grain to smartphones and fertiliser, the modern economy remains lashed to steel hulls and diesel engines. The merchant fleet has never been larger as well over 100,000 vessels ply the oceans today, but i

China’s dams on the Mekong mirror its grip on the Brahmaputra, forcing India into a battle of waters. Mekong is the mighty river that rises in Tibet, flows through the Mainland South-East Asia (MSEA), and supports the livelihood of 70 million people from the five nations that constitute the sub-region. It is larger than India’s Ganga, around 2000 kms longer, and ranks as the third largest of Asia, Ganga being the eleventh. The difference lies also in the fact that Mekong has

India’s free-trade pact with New Zealand is less about tariffs than about anchoring New Delhi more firmly in an unsettled Indo-Pacific. India’s recently concluded free-trade agreement (FTA) with New Zealand, negotiated with unusual speed and diplomatic intent, marks another step in India’s quiet but consequential reorientation towards the Indo-Pacific. After deals with Australia and Britain, this pact extends India’s commercial arc deeper into the Pacific’s southern reaches,

Economic despair at home and American bluster abroad have revived old fears of regime change in Iran. Iran has seen protests before that have changed the course of its history. It has seen foreign pressure, sanctions and threats in abundance. But what makes the present moment unsettling is the coincidence of both. Ever since demonstrations spread across the country last month, sparked by a collapsing currency and surging prices, they have quickly become entangled with a far m

From India’s oil choices to Venezuela’s sovereignty, America’s return to coercive diplomacy shows that power, not principle, still governs the global order. In international affairs, an old Hindi proverb captures a stubborn truth with disarming bluntness:  jiski lathi, uski bhains  - he who wields the stick owns the buffalo. Strip away the rhetoric of norms, values and institutions and power still decides outcomes. The modern world likes to pretend it has outgrown jungle law.

America’s seizure of Nicolás Maduro may please his victims but it tramples the law and revives the worst habits of oil imperialism. President Donald Trump’s decision to attack Venezuela, abduct its president and temporarily run the country marks a striking departure for a politician who once derided foreign adventurism and mocked his predecessors for mistaking regime change for strategy. Nicolás Maduro is no saint. He has presided over a devastated petrostate, has stolen elec

The Islamic Republic’s latest satellite launch powered by Russia shows how sanctioned powers are reshaping the politics of orbit For decades, space has been sold to the public as humanity’s most cooperative endeavour and as a realm above borders where science trumps politics. Yet, history suggests otherwise. From Sputnik’s shock in 1957 to the weaponised GPS of modern warfare, the orbit has always been an extension of earthly rivalry. Iran’s latest satellite launch executed w

India’s courtship of Jordan blends history, hard interests and quiet diplomacy. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent visit to Jordan, the first full bilateral visit by an Indian prime minister in nearly four decades, was stripped of ceremony and sentimentality and marked a careful recalibration of India’s engagement with a pivotal, if understated, West Asian partner at a moment of regional flux. India and Jordan have enjoyed cordial relations since 1950, but for much of that

Myanmar’s election is less a step toward democracy than an attempt to legitimise military rule amid a raging civil war. Myanmar is launching a three-phase general election billed by the ruling generals as a return to multi-party democracy. In reality, the vote comes amid civil war, mass displacement, and military control over barely a fifth of the country. Myanmar’s crisis began in February 2021, when the army, or Tatmadaw, overturned Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for De

As India courts Africa with history and technology, its relationship with Ethiopia offers a revealing test of Southern diplomacy. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Ethiopia earlier this month, the warmth of his reception said as much about the present as it did about the past. India’s engagement with Africa is no longer framed merely as solidarity among post-colonial states. It is now pitched as a strategic and technological partnership which is self-consciously diffe

The habits of mind formed by Soviet spy fiction still inform Vladimir Putin’s Russia. 17 Moments of Spring (1973) Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent visit to India was a deliberate cock of the snook at the West, a display of sovereign choice and strategic autonomy by two powers resisting Washington’s overbearing claims through hushed diplomacy. Such moments of statecraft trigger memories of the films and television series that once defined espionage for a generation of

Thailand and Cambodia are engaged in their worst border conflict in decades. Since July, the conflict has killed dozens, displaced lakhs, and shattered a peace deal signed just weeks earlier. The Thailand-Cambodia border disagreement dates back to 1907, when France, which ruled Cambodia at the time, signed a treaty with Siam (now Thailand) to establish their shared border. The treaty stated that the border would follow the watershed of the Dangrek Mountains. While this seemed

Sharif Osman Hadi’s death elicits Western condolences while Bangladesh’s burning newsrooms and lynched minorities go unremarked. The most damning moral failures announce themselves not with silence, but with selectivity. Bangladesh, on the brink once again, offers a textbook example. After Sharif Osman Hadi, a student activist elevated by last year’s uprising that toppled the pro-India Sheikh Hasina government succumbed to gunshot injuries in Dhaka, Islamist mobs rampaged acr

The partnership is driven by China’s economic and strategic dominance, while for Pakistan and Kyrgyzstan, it offers a pathway to growth and connectivity. Xi Jinping Shehbaz Sharif Sadyr Japarov A new triangular partnership is emerging in Asia, linking China, Pakistan and Kyrgyzstan. The collaboration signals a push to deepen economic, security and infrastructure tie

As China tightens its grip over the South China Sea and America looks away, New Delhi must rethink how to remain a balancing force in Asia. Narendra Modi Ma. Theresa P. Lazaro When India embarked on its Look East policy in the early 1990s, and when the nation wasalmost immediately accommodated within the ASEAN framework as a dialogue partner, it waswidely commented upon

India’s strategic tango with Russia and its hard-nosed bargaining with America signal a foreign policy no longer bound to any single camp. The world is moving into a new era-one defined unmistakably by the politics of multipolarity. Gone are the days when the global order revolved solely around a single axis the United States. The unipolar system dominated by America is gradually fading. Today, India is forging strategic partnerships with Russia on both military and economic

Part 2: Through symbolic diplomacy and strategic trade in mutual currencies, India and Russia are signalling a new multipolar world order that undercuts American economic control. The recent bilateral meeting between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin in India has sent shockwaves through the corridors of power in Washington. Despite intense international pressure aimed at preventing the summit, the two leaders held a frank, unembellished

Part 1: In three-part series, we are exploring India’s longstanding ties with Russia and dissecting the behind-the-scenes diplomacy and dealmaking during Vladimir Putin’s recent visit. The recent joint press conference between Indian authorities and their Russian counterparts which followed President Vladimir Putin’s visit left many observers expecting headline grabbing announcements, be it the arrival of S-400 or the prospective 5-500 missile systems, or the induction of the