Geopolitics

A Lesson from Fukushima
By: Air Marshal AK Trikha | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 06 Apr , 2011
Japan is no stranger to natural disasters. In living memory it has been rocked by severe earthquakes, battered by typhoons and tsunamis which have left a trail of death and destruction in their...

Libya: The West faces three disturbing ground realities
By: B Raman | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 05 Apr , 2011
The Western campaign — by exploiting the fig leaf cover of the UN Security Council Resolution 1973 for protecting civilians in Libya — to work for a regime change in Libya has come face to face...

Need to guard against commando-style swarm attacks at Mohali
By: B Raman | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 28 Mar , 2011
The “Dawn” of Karachi has reported as follows in its web site: “The guessing game ended early hours on Sunday when the Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani decided to accept Indian...

India needs an intelligent strategy
By: Bharat Verma | Issue: Vol 20.2 Apr-Jun 2005 | Date: 28 Mar , 2011
By a turn of good fortune, geo-political factors today favor India. We are perhaps the only country in the world with unique access to opposing camps, consisting of major and minor powers or...

Jasmine Revolution: Make or Break in Bahrain?
By: RSN Singh | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 28 Mar , 2011
The so-called ‘Jasmine Revolution’ in the Middle East, which has impacted the popular perception of the Western World, particularly amongst the uninformed, seems to have hit a roadblock in...

Neighbour is not sporting but we’ve handed out invite
By: Kanwal Sibal | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 28 Mar , 2011
Not only the World Cup sporting fortunes of our cricket team in the quarter final match against Australia were in play, the political fortunes of our relations with Pakistan were at stake too....

India’s Role in the New World Order
By: Col Ajay Singh | Issue: Vol 26.1 Jan-Mar 2011 | Date: 25 Mar , 2011
Over the past five months or so, in spite of surfacing corruption charges, a virtual paralysis of parliament and sense of political drift in the country, India has had much to cheer about. The...

Hardly any water in Wikileaks revelations
By: Kanwal Sibal | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 25 Mar , 2011
Professional diplomats will find little that is new or startling in the Wikileaks cables. For them the quality and content of reporting in the leaked cables is quite standard fare. Transmitting...

Libya: Increasing Confusion
By: B Raman | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 23 Mar , 2011
“The rebels’ strategy is to push west but this has got off to a halting start, and without further concerted air strikes it is difficult to see how this rag-tag army will ever achieve its aim of...

Will Pakistan Implode?
By: Maj Gen Dhruv C Katoch | Issue: Vol 26.1 Jan-Mar 2011 | Date: 21 Mar , 2011
Imagine a country where every week one or two young men – mostly in their teens, blow themselves up as suicide bombers in senseless acts of violence! Where targeted killings take place almost...

Davis Deal: US to limit HUMINT Ops in Pak territory
By: B Raman | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 17 Mar , 2011
It is leant from reliable sources in Pakistan that acceptance of blood money by the heirs to the two Pakistanis who were killed by Raymond Davis on January 27,2011, their withdrawal of the...

Bahrain: On the Sectarian Razor’s Edge
By: B Raman | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 16 Mar , 2011
Bahrain, a Shia majority State ruled by a Sunni family, is on the sectarian razor’s edge following the entry of about 2000 troops from the member-States of the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC)...

Ethical Dimensions of the Tibet Question
By: Dalai Lama | Issue: Book Excerpt: Rising India | Date: 16 Mar , 2011
The Tibet issue is a moral issue. First, the Tibetan nation or community has been influenced by Buddhism which came from India. It changed the whole Tibetan way of life, making it a more...

Tibetan cause after the Dalai Lama
By: B Raman | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 14 Mar , 2011
While wishing and hoping for a long life for His Holiness the Dalai Lama, one has to mentally prepare onself to the eventuality of his being no more with us one day and think of how to keep the...

Takshashila announces the ‘B Raman Fellowship for Geopolitical...
By: IDR News Network | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 10 Mar , 2011
The Takshashila Institution, an independent, non-partisan, networked think tank, Sunday March 6th 2011, launched the B Raman Fellowship for Geopolitical Analysis—to encourage, recognise and...

Raymond Davis: Time for US to talk tough to Pakistan
By: B Raman | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 10 Mar , 2011
There is no solution yet in sight to the Raymond Davis tug of war between the US and Pakistan. Davis, as one would recall, is the US citizen posted in the US Consulate-General in Lahore as a...

Pak Taliban’s fresh reprisal spree could make Davis case more difficult
By: B Raman | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 10 Mar , 2011
The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is on a fresh reprisal spree against the Pakistani security agencies and elements in the Pashtun population, which have been co-operating with the Government....

India, China and the Indian Ocean
By: B Raman | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 04 Mar , 2011
The following are my answers to some questions on the above-mentioned subject received by me by E-Mail from an Italian journalist: Gwadar in Pakistan, Hambantota in Sri Lanka, Akyab Cheduba and...

Tibet: The Panikkar Factor
By: Claude Arpi | Issue: Book Excerpt: Tibet - The Lost Frontier | Date: 04 Mar , 2011
One of the most important factors in the relation between Tibet and the Government of India was the appointment of K.M. Panikkar as the Ambassador to ‘two Chinas’. It is unusual that the...

Dark Clouds over Pakistan
By: Prakash Nanda | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 03 Mar , 2011
It all began in June 2009. Asia Bibi, a farm hand from the village of Ittan Wali in Sheikhupura District of the Punjab province in Pakistan, was asked to fetch water. Bibi, whose is the only...