'Castro told us: "Give me a thousand Gurkhas and I shall keep my neighbour under control!"' 'We pretended that we did not know which neighbour he meant.'
;The world paid a heavy price for the megalomania of the Third Reich's fuehrer.' 'Will it pay a similar price for the ambitions of China's leader-for-life?' asks Amulya Ganguli.
'I am not minimising either the seriousness or the complex nature of the current situation.' 'Naturally, we have to do what it takes to secure our borders.' 'We are talking to the Chinese, both through military channels and diplomatic ones.'
'In fact, they work in tandem.' 'When it comes to finding a solution, this must be predicated on honouring all agreements and understandings.' 'And not attempting to alter the status quo unilaterally.'
Rup Narayan Das reveals the towering Odisha leader's role in improving national security after the 1962 War with China.
It's time Rahul Gandhi became attuned to the reality of the 21st century instead of recycling failed political jargon of the 20th century,' argues Virendra Kapoor.
'There is a compulsion to look hard, decisive, and risk-taking; start something; and then conclude it in a way you can claim victory.' 'That is not such an easy option against China,' notes Shekhar Gupta.
She was capable of a level of human compassion that is rare today among politicians, recalls Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar, who knew the Communist legend K R Gowri, who passed into the ages on May 11, from his childhood.
Singh, who arrived in Moscow on a three-day visit on Tuesday at the invitation of the Russian Ministry of Defence to attend the 75th Anniversary of Victory Day Parade, said his visit to Moscow is the first foreign visit from India of an official delegation after the COVID-19 pandemic.
'Steve was the foremost strategic analyst on South Asia,' remembers Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
Modi stunned buttoned-down members of the commission last year by turning up at a meeting with a video that accused them of high-handedness and hobbling states with one-size-fits-all policies.
Yuli Vorontsov will be mourned in India by many, who knew him as a sophisticated and friendly diplomat.
'From now on, every time Modi takes a foreign dignitary in his arms, the Indians will remember how he was taken aback when an Indian indulged in hugplomacy,' says Amulya Ganguli.
Fans tuning in to the 2016 World Chess Championship from home may well have the best seats in the house, with the tournament set to be broadcast live in 360-degree Virtual Reality (VR) -- a first in any sport, organisers say.
Moscow erupted in street celebrations on Sunday as the World Cup hosts booked a place in the quarter-finals, defeating Spain on penalties at Russia's flagship stadium.
Unless the Taliban goofs up in a big way, which seems highly unlikely, we are looking at a regime that will be around for quite a long while and present a level of governance that the puppets of the richest and most advanced countries failed to provide, predicts Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Western criticism of Russia's Winter Olympics was reminiscent of Cold War ambitions to hold the Soviet Union back, President Vladimir Putin said on Monday, despite signs that the world was warming to the most expensive Games ever held.
Keen player and avid fan Boris Yeltsin is responsible f or making tennis popular in Russia.
Seventy years ago on June 6, the beaches of Normandy in France were the site of an invasion never before, one that would change the course of history.
Seventy years ago on June 6, the beaches of Normandy in France were the site of an invasion never before, one that would change the course of history.
Indians at large harbour a notion that their country is cherrypicking out of the American basket of goodies, but the policymakers in Delhi and the political leadership are well aware that it can only be a pipe dream since a military alliance with a superpower is a profound irrevocable commitment, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Grabavo, where Flight MH17 exploded and crashed, is in the eastern province of Donetsk. It is 40 odd kms from the Russian border and for many years, was called Stalino after Josef Stalin.
The BUK surface-to-air missile system is believed to have been used to shoot down the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 with 298 people aboard.
China is engaged in hotly contested territorial disputes in the South and East China Seas. Beijing has also made substantial progress in militarising its man-made islands in the past few years, which it says it has the right to defend.
Events in the Ukraine have a relevance that goes beyond Ukraine itself, says former foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal, himself a former Indian ambassador to Russia. The plot is aimed at bringing about regime change today in the Ukraine and tomorrow in Russia itself.
Afghanistan have high expectations of achieving success on the cricket pitch and despite being relatively new to the sport, their breakthrough 50-over victory against a Test-playing nation was met with only muted celebrations among the players.
'Manmohan Singh's fond hope of avoiding conflict over territory by 'making borders irrelevant' is increasingly difficult to realise in a world where institutional restraints on aggression are weakening and the new game in town is unalloyed power play,' notes T N Ninan.
'Khrushchev, of course, abused Bhutto and said should Pakistan look towards India or Afghanistan, the Soviets would take our eyes out,' said a noting made by Ayub Khan.
Why omit the Tiananmen massacre from the history of China's Communist party, asks Claude Arpi.
Brutal and ruthless, with terrible human rights records, these autocrats will welcome Narendra Modi to their realm this coming week.
The two leaders had some firm convictions in defence matters and are idolised by their respective people because they salved the scarred collective psyches of their societies.
'It was a mission undertaken in darkness in every sense -- literally, because Afghanistan had no electricity at that time; and, metaphorically because Delhi historically dealt only with the Pashtuns of Afghanistan and the foreign ministry's vast archives had nothing to offer on the culture and politics of the northern tribes in the Hindu Kush.'
It's been 100 years since Lenin and the Bolsheviks overthrew the government, and its legacy remains visible even today in the buildings and monuments scattered throughout St Petersburg.
The sight of a Russian athlete crossing herself before a race was one small example among many of how the country has changed in the generation since it last hosted the Olympic Games.
'Vietnam has become an adjective as well as a verb -- the Americans, for instance, were driven by the passion to do a 'Vietnam' on the Soviet Union when that country invaded Afghanistan in 1979.'
The 102nd Indian Science Congress, which concluded last week, saw claims on ancient aviation and surgery, and created quite a stir
The perpetrators of the 2008 Mumbai attack, who shot dead 166 people, had confessed to details that should have been enough to hang him, but Pakistan enjoyed his anti-India rhetoric and let him spread his tentacles. A revealing excerpt from Khaled Ahmed's Pakistan's Terror Conundrum.
'The China Pakistan Economic Corridor is Pakistan's number one preoccupation today -- and tensions with India and the $46 billion projects simply do not go together,' points out Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
In this pandemic, why can't we have multiple locations for various disciplines, all of it then merged into a virtual convergence called the Olympics instead of one massive event in one city, asks Shyam G Menon.
Asia leaders join Sochi as Barack Obama, and others give it a skip.
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