Will the New Silk Roads, a.k.a. Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) ever manage to cross the Hindu Kush? Temerity is the name of the game. Even though strategically located astride the Ancient Silk Road, and virtually contiguous to the US$50 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) – a key BRI node – Afghanistan is still mired …
Continue reading Fear and loathing on the Afghan Silk Road
China’s cardinal foreign policy imperative is to refrain from interfering abroad while advancing the proverbial good relations with key political actors – even when they may be at each other’s throats. Still, it’s nothing but gut-wrenching for Beijing to watch the current, unpredictable, Saudi-Qatari standoff. There’s no endgame in sight, as plausible scenarios include even …
Far from being the astounding success that India’s jingoistic media is portraying it as, last week’s SCO Summit in Astana was a resounding disaster for Prime Minister Modi’s plans. India’s policies of using Afghan-based terrorism against Pakistan, attempting to “isolate” Islamabad from the Afghan peace process, and declining to participate in China’s One Belt One …
The struggle between the unipolar and multipolar camps to determine the future of the 21st century is rapidly turning into a contest between two competing hemispheric-wide connectivity projects. By now, everyone in the world is familiar with China’s One Belt One Road (OBOR) global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, though not many people are aware of the …
Continue reading Competitive Connectivity is at the Core of the New Cold War
Small but geopolitically important steps were taken by key members of the European Union from the EU’s Eastern periphery. While largely ignored in Western mainstream media and in Brussels, they could well portend a longer-term alternative economic space to the failing construct known misleadingly today as the European Union with its bankrupt Eurozone single currency …
At this juncture it’s clear that the attempt of the Trump Administration and related circles in the US military industrial complex have failed in their prime objective, that of driving a permanent wedge between Russia and China, the two great Eurasian powers capable of peacefully ending the Sole Superpower hegemony of the United States. Some …
Continue reading Eurasian Economic Transformation Goes Forward
India had an option to accept the invitation extended by Chinese President Xi Jinping to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to participate in the Belt and Road Forum meeting in Beijing on May 14-15. Modi, in turn, had an option to depute a dignitary – a cabinet minister or a special envoy – to represent him. …
Continue reading India Waits for Trump to Revive Obama-Era Policies
At the two-day New Silk Road international forum in Beijing, President Xi Jinping set out to establish China as the flagship of a new, benign trade-focussed world order. This was, said Xi, a “new model of win-win and cooperation” that will prevail over gunboat diplomacy. At the start of the conference, China’s state broadcaster Xinhua …
History will record the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing marked the juncture where the 21st century New Silk Roads assumed their full character of Globalization 2.0, or “inclusive globalization,” as defined by President Xi Jinping in Davos earlier this year. I have dealt with the monumental stakes here and here. Terminology, of course, remains a minor …
Continue reading Putin Aligns with Xi in Crafting the New World (Trade) Order
