On the 23rd of September 2013, the Lebanese port authorities confiscated 2750 Tonnes of illegal ammonium Nitrate, a strictly regulated compound used for fertilizers and explosives; from a Russian cargo ship sailing under a Moldovan flag. Th...
Iran and China have recently surged ahead with an economic and military deal that will elevate their relationship to a new height. While this has come as a shock to many, in the midst of increasing geopolitical tensions surrounding Iran, it...
“International politics is a nasty and dangerous business, and no amount of goodwill can ameliorate the intense security competition that sets in when an aspiring hegemon appears in Eurasia.” John J. Mearsheimer. Mearsheimer wrote ‘China’s ...
Political transitions in Afghanistan have been fraught with tensions and contestations. While one may think that the transfer of leadership in 2014 from Hamid Karzai to Ashraf Ghani was peaceful, the changes and implications which it brough...
States have been the most essential unit since the Treaty of Westphalia. The world has seen the entry of many new actors, but the state remains the most fundamental unit in international relations. The 9/11 attacks represent a major shift i...
Islamic State (IS) emerged as splinter group from a faction of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, during a chaotic conflict in 2003 after the United States led invasion. The vision, which still remains constant, is to establish an ‘Islamic Caliphate’, cover...
The world at present faces several issues whether it’s the Coronavirus Pandemic, uncertainties over the existing world order have been raised accompanied with inter-state competitions in the political, economic and military realm. Recently,...
In 2019, ASEAN leaders acknowledged the Indo-Pacific as a geopolitical imagination, but have reinforced their commitment to the ASEAN-centered regional architecture. The ASEAN stance was manifested through a document ‘ASEAN Outlook on the I...
Throughout the last decade since Maldives became a multi-party democracy, several changes occurred in the country for greater political integration. During the early years the new constitution gave more powers to the judiciary and legislatu...
China’s construction activity in the Sihanoukville port in Cambodia as part of One Belt One Road Initiative, and the adjoining development of a large air strip at Ream military base has garnered international media attention. In late 2019, ...
The Quad 2.0 is being hailed by some, but many are also calling it an extension of the United States of America’s Hub-and-Spoke model. Critics have questioned the relevance of Quad 2.0 as there is no template or blueprint, and the inclusion...
Amid the pandemic that is sweeping the world and the United States embroiled in domestic racial tensions with President Donald Trump, and the era of the US dollar’s “exorbitant privilege”, a word coined by France’s then-finance minister Val...
