Ramesh Thakur

When Scott Morrison visits India later this month, he should temper his marketing enthusiasm. The Modi government is fast-tracking India into uncharted territory despite a forest of flashing amber signs of dangers ahead. (more…)

There are three sets of reasons for a palpable rise in nuclear anxieties around the world: growing nuclear arsenals and expanding roles for nuclear weapons, a crumbling arms-control architecture, and irresponsible statements from the leaders of some nuclear-armed states. (more…)

The timing of the impeachment inquiry shows frustration. With uncharacteristic honesty, Democratic Representative Al Green confessed in May: ‘I’m concerned that if we don’t impeach this president, he will get reelected’. A speeded-up removal of Trump could well prove cathartic for the still-traumatised Democrats. In the Quinnipiac survey, respondents split 56-36 on whether the impeachment advocates are motivated mainly by ‘partisan politics’ or are reacting to facts. The perception of partisanship by Republicans and independents will ensure the Senate doesn’t bend to their whim and the country is left even more polarised and bitter. (more…)

The whistleblower’s complaint, made on 12 August, was based entirely on hearsay. The existing guidelines had said in bold, underlined, all-caps: ‘FIRST-HAND INFORMATION REQUIRED’. After receiving the complaint, the intelligence community inspector-general (ICIG) revised the internal guidance to permit evidence that was not first-hand. (more…)

The United Nations is the world’s premier and its only universal international organization. It alone houses the divided fragments of humanity. But currently it faces a threat to the foundational principle of inclusivity. Its purpose-built headquarters was located in New York after the Rockefeller family announced a donation of $8.5mn (worth $103mn in 2014) and the city contributed land along the East River and spent $23mn ($279mn in 2014 dollars) on constructions and improvements around the permanent site. On 14 December 1946, the General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to make New York the host city. The Headquarters Agreement signed in 1947 obligates the US to grant unrestricted access to citizens of all UN member states engaged in official UN duties. (more…)

We come back to the Russia collusion narrative. A lot of it seems to have had Ukraine connections, so much so that Ukraine was Ground Zero of that story. The primary motive of the Poroshenko administration would have been to spike Trump’s candidacy in order to prevent any rapprochement between the US and Russia. Apparently Ukrainians outside government have volunteered some information to the US Justice Department on this. (more…)

Fasten your seatbelts. With fresh revelations on almost a daily basis, we look set for convulsive politics over the coming weeks and months in the UK, the Mother of Parliaments, and in the US, the world’s most successful and powerful democracy, even while the world’s most successful and powerful non-democracy, China, grapples with its own protracted dilemmas in Hong Kong. At this stage it is hard to see happy endings in any of the three storylines, and that will have deleterious consequences for us all. But this four-part article is about the Anglo-American crisis of democracy. (more…)

During Scott Morrison’s recent trip to the US, did the PM absorb some of Donald Trump’s intellectual genius by a mysterious process of osmosis? How else are we to explain his incoherent, befuddled speech at the Lowy Institute on Thursday evening where he puffed up his own importance by running down the United Nations? (more…)

Decades of astonishing economic growth have given China new tools for extending its influence abroad and achieving its political goals. Some of these tools are inducements, including Belt and Road Initiative projects and new development financial institutions. But China has demonstrated that it will use its new economic leverage in pursuit of political goals unrelated to economic exchange, swiftly shifting inducements to punishments. One example lies in the field of tourism. (more…)

Amid the impeachment furor, don’t lose sight of the renewed importance of protecting the integrity of the 2020 election. (more…)

The attacks on the country’s two biggest oil facilities last month represent an unprecedented humiliation for the Saudis and The kingdom feels disgraced, angry and injured. It also became clear that the Saudis are certain who was behind the attack. The attack fits into the ‘pressure against pressure’ strategy that Tehran has been taking against the U.S. since the spring.

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There is an extraordinary irony in the fate of both Benjamin Netanyahu and Iran. The first has been captaining the Titanic, in the words of one Israeli academic, through the past couple of days. The second – a rather better captain, it might be said – has been captaining a couple of tankers in and out of the Mediterranean and the Gulf. (more…)

Future historians may come to describe Brexit as the defining moment of a nationalist wave that swept away the postwar liberal international order. Yet their task will be complicated by the fact that Brexit is not, in fact, a manifestation of British nationalism. To the contrary, it is precisely the lack of a proper British nationalism that has pushed the United Kingdom to the brink of disintegration. (more…)

As the international trading system grows increasingly strained under the escalating US–China trade dispute and the paralysis of WTO reform, many have eagerly called for the conclusion of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) by the end of 2019. The ASEAN-led initiative is a mega regional free trade agreement (FTA) that was first launched in November 2012 and to date has seen 27 rounds of negotiations. (more…)

Canada’s PM Justin Trudeau is caught in a messy hypocrisy scandal, not a racism scandal. To be absolutely clear: Trudeau is not a racist, was never a racist and, in my judgment, has never behaved in a racist manner – just deeply embarrassing. But he has given fresh ammunition to critics to reinforce the narrative that he is a dilettante playboy who lacks gravitas. (more…)