Putin’s Russia ignores the European attempt by Foreign Minister Borrell to have a managed relationship and sends three EU-diplomats packing for doing their job. This will have wider repercussions, in Europe and beyond. EU Foreign Minister Josep Borrell visited Moscow to lodge a strong protest against the treatment of Alexei Navalny and his supporters in…
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Biden/Harris as PM Modi’s “dream team”?
[ ... ]The US will have a Vice President of Indian descent. Kamala Harris, Biden’s Vice-President elect, born in the USA, is the daughter of an Indian lady from Chennai, South East India, who had immigrated to California for higher studies. Kamala Harris’ father was Jamaican, who had immigrated to the USA, also for higher studies. A…
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China wins, India loses in a changing Middle East
[ ... ]The Middle East and Persian Gulf region has, over recent years and months, experienced events and developments that have changed the pattern of alliances and strategic interests to a large extent. Let’s remember that, for a historical moment, an effective alliance against the so-called “Islamic State” (“ISIS”), composed among others of American, Turkish, Iranian, Kurdish,…
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Huawei may be the canary in the coalmine
[ ... ]In the pre Covid-19 world, international value chains became ever more globalized in a relentless effort to drive prices down. Not any longer and not just because of the pandemic. Commercial calculations will have to increasingly price in risk, including political risk. It is not a coincidence that Britain’s turn-around on using Huawei for its…
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Modi’s India in decline
[ ... ]At the beginning of June of this year, India is experiencing the fastest expansion of Covid-19 infections in the world and the numbers continue to grow faster than anywhere else. Add to the figures the fact that due to the sub-standard infrastructure of the country huge numbers of infected people and the dead will never…
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Europe under threat
[ ... ]Yes, by the Corona virus like everybody else, but also by the fighting in Syria and Libya. Can Europe, can the EU react adequately? And what will Brexit Britain do? Covid-19 dominates not only the media headlines but the everyday life of just about anybody in Europe. In the federalist EU, it is still up…
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India between global economics and Hindu nationalism
[ ... ]India is currently torn between challenges of global economic competition and self-imposed limitations derived from Hindu nationalism. Since its inception as the independent Republic of India, the country has been living with two strategic and psychological traumas: the Partition of 1947, with which the Muslim League took away half of India’s Muslim population and founded…