It’s BRI Against Indo-Pacific All Over Again

It’s BRI Against Indo-Pacific All Over Again

All bets are off on the outcome of India Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s potentially ground-breaking meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping this Friday and Saturday in Wuhan. Things have not exactly started in auspicious mode. After a meeting in Beijing of foreign ministers represented at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), India, once again refused to support…

From Ankara to Moscow, Eurasia Integration Is on the Move

From Ankara to Moscow, Eurasia Integration Is on the Move

As presidents Vladimir Putin, Hassan Rouhani and Recep Tayyip Erdogan met in Ankara for a second Russia-Iran-Turkey summit on the future of Syria, Moscow hosted its 7th International Security Conference attended by defense ministers from dozens of nations. A more graphic illustration of the synchronicity drive towards Eurasia integration would be hard to find. Crucially,…

From “Bandwagoning” Against Eurasia to “Circling the Wagons” in the Center of It

From “Bandwagoning” Against Eurasia to “Circling the Wagons” in the Center of It

The International Relations theories about the Balance of Power and Regional Security Complexes don’t sufficiently explain the simultaneous emergence of three distinct but interconnected power blocs in Eurasia, which is why the new concept of “Circling the Wagons” is being proposed to account for it. The end of the Cold War radically changed International Relations…

21st-Century Paradigm Shift in Eurasia: Towards a New Trilateral – China, Russia and Pakistan

21st-Century Paradigm Shift in Eurasia: Towards a New Trilateral – China, Russia and Pakistan

The post-Cold War strategic landscape in Eurasia saw the emergence of the Multipolar Trilateral of Russia, India, and China in the late 1990s and early 2000s, brought about by the dedicated diplomatic efforts of Russia’s former Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov. These three Great Powers would later form the basis for BRICS, and the pragmatic relations…

Afghanistan Ready to Play Connector Role in Eurasian Integration

Afghanistan Ready to Play Connector Role in Eurasian Integration

One of the top roller-coaster sagas in what, some years ago, I christened Pipelineistan, has yielded a definitive twist. The US$8 billion,1,814-kilometer Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline (TAPI) was officially inaugurated on Friday, in full pomp, and with proceedings broadcast live on Afghan TV, on the Turkmen-Afghan border close to Herat. Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani hosted Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan…