Courtesy: PMO
Creating a neighbourhood of compatible interests in South Asia isn’t easy, especially when intra-regional trade accounts for only 5% of total trade in the region. However, the region has seen considerable progress in the past year. India is well poised to lead the change, starting with the upcoming SAARC summit.
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The completion of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline is significant to secure a constant supply of natural gas to India. Since this pipeline passes through Afghanistan and Pakistan, both restive regions, security concerns have triggered wide debate on its viability.
Courtesy: PMO
NATO’s poor strategy in Afghanistan has failed to quell the Taliban. Now, India will begin to train the Afghani military, and has proven with its light force tactics in Kashmir that it is better suited for the role than NATO forces.
Courtesy: PMO
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s speech at the UN General Assembly has put Indian perceptions on the record and clearly outlined India’s independent foreign policy. India came out unequivocally in support of the Palestinian struggle & reiterated its traditional stance of respecting countries’ sovereignty.
Corruption has become a galling global phenomenon: structured, vertically-integrated networks, whose objective is the extraction of resources, are forming in countries around the globe. And strikingly, these structures are masquerading as democratically-elected, seemingly-open governments.
Although the U.S. has not faced another terrorist attack since 9/11, much has changed in its democratic framework. Gripped by fear, 3,984 federal, state and local organizations work on domestic counter-terrorism, spending an estimated $1 trillion.
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A change has come about after 9/11: the ideologies grouped as “Al Qaeda” has morphed, from a group directed by a few individuals, it is now disaggregated. Due to this change, NATO is empowering it's future foes in the Arab world by its continued belief in the camouflaged jihadis.
Courtesy: Scott Hudson/Flickr
India's security concerns seem to grow weaker by the year. The dangerous political polarity, a paralysed ruling coalition, a fractured opposition, a popular distaste for a corrupt polity and complicit bureaucracy, and a slowing economy, has handicapped any progress towards this issue.
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A decade after 9/11, the U.S. has prevented further terrorist attacks - a major achievement. But with a $1.3 trillion budget deficit, a debt downgrade, and 24 million Americans searching for jobs, the U.S. needs to attend to matters at home rather than intervening in the world's affairs.
Courtesy: Sven-steffenarndt/WikimediaCommons
The U.S. Justice Department is slowly but surely clamping down on Pakistani terrorist activities, as is evident not only by the recent arrest of Kashmiri propogandist Ghulam Nabi Fai but also in open claim that the ISI Security Directorate "overseas militant groups".
