Courtesy: Ludovic MARIN / AFP
Macron’s 2025 tour of Southeast Asia reinforced France’s strategic commitment to the Indo-Pacific. By engaging deeply with Vietnam, Indonesia, and Singapore—three key ASEAN members—France is demonstrating its ability to forge partnerships beyond its traditional transatlantic ties. France’s Indo-Pacific vision—based on its territorial presence, economic interests, and diplomacy values—offers a nuanced alternative to the binary logic of U.S.-China rivalry.
Courtesy: Gateway House
The proposed IMEC corridor connecting India to Europe through the Gulf, can be transformative, helping to reduce risks to the global movement of goods and data. It’s early days yet, but it needs to meet the challenge of missing infrastructure and overcome a diplomatic rift.
Courtesy: Shashi Prabhu
The Mumbai Cricket Association’s Wankhede Stadium celebrates its golden anniversary this year. On 23 January 1975, the new stadium hosted its first Test Match – India versus the West Indies. Ever since, Wankhede has had an impressive run rate in hosting first-class test matches and its shorter 20-over variants. Long forgotten, but worth recalling, are the struggles to build the stadium - the result of an ego clash between two Mumbai titans, a legendary cricketer and a state minister.
Courtesy: Reuters photo
Presidential visits abroad are high-level instruments of statecraft and, more often than not, signals of geopolitical priorities. The recent visit of U.S. President Donald Trump to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, exemplified this, indicating the administration's policy orientation.
Courtesy: X /@antonioguterres
A proposed humanitarian corridor from Bangladesh to Myanmar’s suffering Rakhine state is the need of the hour. But Chief Advisor Yunus has linked it with repatriation of the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, mixing up unrelated issues. This is a classic ploy to distract the public from his own shortcomings, and his single-minded focus to extend and legitimise his regime.
Courtesy: Embassy of India, Berlin
New German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s early decisions suggest that foreign and security policy will be defining features of his chancellorship. The coalition agreement reflects a conservative yet pragmatic response to changing global dynamics.
Courtesy: Abhijit Chavda Podcast
The rules-based world, perceived to be functional till last year, seems broken, giving way to an increasingly multipolar order. Manjeet Kripalani, Executive Director, Gateway House discusses in the Abhijit Chavda podcast, how emerging middle powers like India, Brazil, and Indonesia to name a few, have the heft to rewrite the rules of global trade and reform, away from U.S. and China.
Courtesy: India Today
The Pahalgam attack has changed India’s strategic calculus. With Operation Sindoor, the country is moving towards a more assertive posture, consolidating its strategy around an evolving doctrine of Proactive Deterrence underpinned by Calibrated Coercive Capability. A strategic practitioner’s viewpoint is below.
Courtesy: Reuters
The India-UK Free Trade Agreement comes amidst increasing economic uncertainty caused by the Trump administration’s reciprocal tariff policies. The FTA has revitalised previously lethargic discussions for India to conclude FTAs between like-minded countries. An India-EU FTA, along with the India-UK FTA, may reform global rule-making on international trade and perhaps even revive the WTO.
Courtesy: Nayanima Basu
Operation Sindoor has established a “new normal” in India-Pakistan relations. It has also given the world a glimpse into the Narendra Modi government’s future strategy in countering terrorism supported by the Pakistani Army and ISI, and how New Delhi will manage the Kashmir dispute.