Courtesy: Xinhua / Wang Ye
The SCO aims to be more than a security dialogue, because churn in the global order means not only military power but includes new instruments like infrastructure, energy and technology. The SCO has potential here. China’s factories, Russia’s energy and resources, India’s technology and services, and Central Asia’s location and minerals, connected to Iran and Pakistan’s location on the Arabian Sea, could become a formidable economic geography.
Courtesy: Gateway House
The West Asian conflict is raising questions about Iran’s performance. Tehran appeared well-prepared, having expanded its low-cost drone and missile capabilities. It also widened the conflict by targeting U.S. bases in the Gulf. The key lesson is that eliminating leadership does not guarantee regime change. The conflict underscores that modern warfare depends not just on battlefield gains, but also on economic resilience, trade leverage, and technological strength.
Courtesy: AFP
It is important to take an objective review of PM Modi’s visit to Jerusalem and its implications for India’s security. New Delhi will have to demonstrate its strategic autonomy by managing heterogeneous and often contrapuntal relationships and strike a balance in its ties with the U.S. and Israel on the one hand and Iran and the Arab world on the other hand.
Courtesy: Finland in India
Amid the fast-changing geopolitical landscape, European Union (EU) member states seem to have rediscovered the value of close cooperation with India, an Asian power with greater ambitions. India, too, finds that growth in partnership with the EU and the UK is a source of strategic comfort. Both sides are propelled to deeper mutual policy proximity by the pressures generated by the Trump 2.0 presidency in the U.S.
Courtesy: Andreea Campeanu/Getty Images
The war in West Asia is crowded with armaments and players, but there is one presence that is LOB, or Left Out of the Battle: that of Europe. The Continent is peripheral in the current crisis. Structural constraints, strategic dependence on the U.S., internal political divisions, and a shift in Europe’s geopolitical priorities since the war in Ukraine, has reduced its strategic weight.
Courtesy: AFP
The U.S.–Israel war against Iran will alter the geopolitical landscape of West Asia and adversely impact the global economy, including India. Vali Nasr, Majid Khadduri Professor of International Affairs and Middle East Studies at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, analyses the conflict and its implications in an exclusive conversation with Nayanima Basu.
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The U.S. and Israel launched precise airstrikes on Iran, targeting nuclear facilities and senior leadership. Their aim is to weaken Iran’s nuclear programme and potentially induce regime change, while Tehran’s priority remains regime survival. The conflict’s duration will depend on whether it remains limited to missile exchanges or escalates into asymmetric warfare.
Courtesy: Getty Images
Germany’s prospects in 2026 are defined by tension rather than momentum. The country is neither in crisis nor comfortably on a path to renewal. Instead, it is engaged in a difficult process of adjustment, seeking to reconcile fiscal restraint with strategic ambition, social protection with demographic reality, and climate leadership with industrial competitiveness.
Courtesy: Gateway House
U.S. health secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. called the World Economic Forum a “billionaires’ boys club” imposing totalitarian controls. Indeed, since 1971, the elite platform shaped geopolitics. But its Western-centricism kept out the concerns of the rest. This gave rise to alternative forums, which look beyond financial agendas to the perspectives shaping the Global South. Here are 45 of biggest, half of which began just two decades ago.
Courtesy: Gateway House
Afghanistan’s Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi will visit India on October 10, marking the first high-level Taliban visit since the group took over Kabul in 2021. Nayanima Basu discusses the purpose of this visit and the importance of engagement with Afghanistan. She explains the roles of China, which seeks business; Pakistan, which pursues political interests; and the U.S., which has a renewed interest in Bagram Air Base and its return to the country it abandoned.