Courtesy: AP
Saudi Arabia has been the new centre for mediation between warring states and their sponsors. It reflects the shifting dynamics in an increasingly multipolar world and the redefinition of power structures. This role has extended to other Gulf states, which have strategically positioned themselves as neutral players, leveraging their strong relations with the great powers, and adopted culturally sensitive to consensus-building.
Courtesy: Gateway House
A visit to Israel in the last week of January coincided with the six-week ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and the 80th anniversary of the Holocaust in which 6 million Jews were killed during the Second World War. It revealed a country at war and in mourning, yet one whose natural resilience looked to the future with optimism.
Courtesy: Gateway House
Japan's growing influence in India’s Northeast and Bay of Bengal region is proving to be a gamechanger, with the potential to transform its economic and geopolitical landscape. With cultural ties and strategic investments, states like Assam and Meghalaya hope to enhance development while fostering a mutually beneficial relationship with Japan. Additionally, the latter could help ensure wider regional stability given the tensions with Bangladesh and Myanmar.
Courtesy: BERNAMA
Malaysia’s chairmanship of ASEAN in 2025 is pivotal. It will have to steer ASEAN toward regional peace, stability, and prosperity while reinforcing its centrality. All this during a time of heightened geostrategic rivalry, economic deglobalisation, rising protectionism, and nationalist trends.
Courtesy: X
The first plurilateral meeting attended by new U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was the Quad, a day after assuming office. The meeting reinforced the commitment to the Indo-Pacific but with the change in government, the Quad's trajectory in 2025 remains a question. Part of the answer lies in its past interactions, while the rest depends on how the U.S. and India will approach China.
Courtesy: Reuters
India and the U.S. have a big agenda, bilaterally and geopolitically, to discuss when Prime Minister Narendra Modi and U.S. President Donald Trump meet in Washington on Feb 12-13. Trade, China and migration are central points of discussion. So will ensuring that Trump allies with India on its neighbourhood as an area of common concern. The big election win in New Delhi will strengthen Modi’s negotiating hand.
Courtesy: AFP
February 1 marks four years of the military coup in Myanmar, which plunged the country into a bloody civil war, still on-going. The crisis is deepening, as the struggle between the Junta forces and a fragmented resistance wages on with no resolution in sight. A stalled mediation by ASEAN, and lack of consensus amongst neighbouring countries on how to help, leaves Myanmar’s future uncertain.
Courtesy: Oxford University Press
The India Middle-East Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) announced during India’s G20 leaders’ summit in September 2023 aims at security and ease of connectivity by multi-modal physical, digital and energy corridors connecting India, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Europe. Like many of the connectivity projects created around the world today, IMEC’s origins are 2,300 years old, ancient routes that connected the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea
Courtesy: Wikipedia
The lessons of 2024 are a compass for navigating geopolitical currents in 2025. Global conflicts have doubled over five years and ever-changing realities are challenging traditional foresight. With several elections due regionally this year, political fissures within and new foreign diplomacy without, will make the Latin American path one of hard decisions.
Courtesy: NBC News
Since the Ukraine crisis, Russia has been positioning itself strategically in the African continent, strengthening bilateral ties and addressing regional security issues. It is leveraging economic, energy, agriculture and military ties and investments in order to be seen as serious a counterweight to the U.S. and the European Union’s presence in the continent.