Courtesy: Gateway House
The Smackover Formation in south Arkansas and east Texas holds vast reserves of lithium — the critical mineral powering electric vehicles, energy storage systems, and data centres. If successfully tapped, those reserves could drastically reduce America's dependence on China. Arkansas has a stable, proven, predictable regulatory and statutory framework and familiarity with the production process. Policymakers in India would be wise to follow developments closely.
Courtesy: X/ @bdbnp78
Bangladesh’s new government has been in power for two months now, and the challenges are immense. Yet Prime Minister Tarique Rahman is trying to balance a plethora of issues: energy shortages, an under-performing economy, a major constitutional reform, addressing corruption and introducing transparency and accountability – all the while putting “Bangladesh First.”
Courtesy: AFR
The Persian Gulf conflict has already impacted India’s oil imports and financial security. However, India has not created meaningful options to protect itself from oil shocks over the last decade – and such shocks will continue. Now is the time for India to make equity investments in oil and gas companies in stable economies like the U.S., Canada and Australia, to protect itself from future energy crises.
Courtesy: Gateway House
The Arctic region is at the crossroads of the dramatic environmental shifts and heightened conflict that are shaping global politics today. In the region, major geopolitical events and enduring rivalries necessitate a logic of competition, yet coordination on transboundary issues remains important. This echoes the challenges facing oceans, ecosystems and planetary problems in global governance more broadly, in which political efforts yield frustratingly incremental, yet indispensable, results.
Courtesy: MSN
The war in the Persian Gulf has already caused significant disruption in India’s South Asian neighbours. A prolonged conflict is likely to push the region back into economic and political crises from which it had been hopeful of emerging this year.
Courtesy: Gateway House
Early indicators of the ongoing war in West Asia point to a conflict trajectory from the rapid decision to the controlled escalation to distributed strike capacity, advanced military integration and mounting regional exposure. Much like Johann Goethe’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice, conflicts initiated based on assumptions of control can acquire a momentum of their own.
Courtesy: Indian Navy
Over the last two decades, the Indian Navy has taken a quantum leap in modernising its fleet with stealth frigates, warships, submarines, and fighter planes. Its goal is to be the net security provider and first responder securing Sea Lines of Communication in the region. But it is still lagging behind its Indo-pacific naval partners and most important, its regional rival, China.
Courtesy: Ingram Pinn
Multipolarity indicates who holds power, while multilateralism is about how states choose to cooperate. In today’s world, power is diffusing and interdependence is deepening simultaneously. A multipolar world creates fluid alignments and strategic competition, but multilateralism manages interdependence through rules and institutions. The world is becoming both, simultaneously, requiring states to manage competition, preserve cooperation, and stabilise an increasingly complex global landscape. That is easier said.
Courtesy: Gateway House
Iran has often stood at the crossroads of social and political metamorphosis and regional geopolitical recalibration, from the Islamic Revolution of 1979 to the attrition of the Iran-Iraq War. The current landscape reflects the convergence, once again, of internal pressures and sharper deterrence postures, that the social compact—from a Lockean and Rousseauian perspective—needs a new edition, and that timely diplomacy to prevent escalation is required.
Courtesy: Getty Images
The U.S. demand for Greenland for security purposes, has alarmed Europe enough for talk of Article 5 of NATO’s collective defence agreement to be put on the discussion table. But can NATO survive without Article 5? And can Article 5 survive without the U.S. defence cover for Europe?