IDR Blog
Can Kim Jong-Un be tamed?
Days after US President Donald Trump made his first decisive foreign policy intervention by launching a flurry of Tomahawks into a Syrian air base, in response to the chemical attack blamed on the Assad regime, he has now moved an American naval strike group to the Western Pacific. The move is supposedly a result of the continuing brinkmanship...
Monk in the Midst of Muck
China speaks big and loud, but it has not been able to win the hearts of the Tibetans 60 years after their so-called liberation. How can the Communist leadership convince the people of Arunachal to join the authoritarian regime? Buddhists believe in the concept of sacred places or peethas. During the 10th century, the great Indian yogi Tilopa...
US Policy Focus 2017-Middle East or East Asia?
The United States in 2017 seems to be falling into the same trap of the decade of the 2000s wherein US Middle East-predominant policy focus enabled China’s military rise threatening American predominance in East Asia. The United States policy establishment should recall that the Korean War of the 1950s involved North Korea and China entering...
New Infrastructure Developments in Tibet
Last week, Xinhua announced the construction of a new ‘scientific’ observation station in Metok, north of Upper Siang district of Arunachal Pradesh: “The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) will build a new observation station in Tibet, to assist research and monitoring of the ecological system in the southeast of the Autonomous Region,” said...
CPEC: Quo Vadis?
Arguments have recently been raised on CPEC including my own. At the end of the day, it seems commercial benefit only that overrides among few others. The bluff of CPEC is China’s dumb thinking that its cheap goods will always sell, be it in textiles or electronics. But where is the quality stamp vis-à-vis finished reliable European...