After two decades, the SCO appears to be at a cross-roads with the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, asserts Srikanth Kondapalli, the leading China expert.
He said that following a build-up of troops, multiple transgressions and attempts to unilaterally change facts on the ground by China, there have been several levels of talks and a fair amount of communication to ensure that the matter can be resolved through negotiation and diplomacy.
Like China, India too should connect the dots and move ahead with a long-term perspective in Afghanistan, advises Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
American analysts and their camp followers in India are talking absolute rubbish when they try to establish that India is facing a Hobson's choice in regard of Donbass, called upon to take sides between Russia and the West, asserts Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Pakistan, however, has categorically dismissed as 'utter fabrication' the report published in the newspaper.
'The adversary will always exploit India's anti-national elements.'
Lobbying on the Hill is time consuming and cumbersome, but very effective to influence US government policies, asserts Ambassador T P Sreenivasan, deputy chief of mission at the Indian embassy in Washington, DC after the 1998 nuclear tests and during the Kargil War.
'From the very start, PM Modi was insistent that visiting foreign leaders should be exposed to an India beyond its capital.' 'Through these experiences, he felt that the full Indian narrative would be much better understood across the world,' explains External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar. A riveting excerpt from Bluekraft Digital Foundation's Modi@20: Dreams Meet Delivery.
Considering that Qatar is a trusted ally of Washington for decades, it is expected to be a steady influence on the Taliban leadership, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
The foreign secretary said almost all major initiatives of India in SAARC did not fructify due to hurdles posed by Islamabad.
In the book 10 Flashpoints: 20 years that is set to be released on December 2, the former union minister has looked back at the security situations that have impacted India in the last two decades.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi heaped praise on External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, saying she and her ministry have set an example of effectively using social media to deliver good governance and help Indians in distress in any corner of the world.
If and when India and Pakistan bilateral talks take place any issues concerning Jammu and Kashmir will not be on the table. Any future talks with Pakistan will be only about PoK, tactically or otherwise.
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Congress has questioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "absence" in Delhi and his engagement in state election campaigns at a time when unabated ceasefire violations continued from across the border.
United States President Donald Trump remarks on Monday that Prime Minister Narendra Modi sought his mediation on the Kashmir issue will "damage" the Indo-US relations, ex-diplomats said.
'China was a relationship from which Mr Modi had expected the most it seems.' 'It showed in a string of summits, and somewhat breathless celebration of Xi Jinping.' 'It was hasty and simplistic,' observes Shekhar Gupta.
Singh asserted that the people have made up their minds to vote out the government
'India cannot allow Beijing's policy of stabilising and destabilising the border at will to perpetuate its own ends.' A riveting excerpt from Manish Tiwari's 10 Flashpoints; 20 Years National Security Situations That Impacted India.
Khan in his maiden speech at the 74th UNGA session suggested that nuclear-armed Pakistan may not have much of a choice if a conventional war were to break out between Pakistan and India which he described as a country seven-times its size.
The reduction of tension on the Chinese border may have reduced the urgency of a Biden-Modi meeting, but the sooner Modi starts a bromance with Biden the better as he had done with Obama and Trump, suggests Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
PAk's Permanent Representative to the United Nations in Geneva Tehmina Janjua was the leading choice.
A former top envoy of the country questioned Pakistan's decades-old Kashmir policy.
'A sense of purpose is lacking in India's diplomacy.' 'This is what happens when foreign policy becomes the stuff for grandstanding before the domestic audience,' says Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
'War cannot resolve problems. So wisdom is to resolve diplomatically.'
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's phone call to Trump will help restore a degree of sanity to Indian statecraft and diplomacy, notes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's has been trying to mollycoddle India with sweet nothings while having a very close relationship with Pakistan.
'India's preference today seems to be to exploit the deepening chill in relations with China to breathe new life into its meandering partnership with the US,' argues Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Bruce Riedel, who spearheaded President Barack Obama's strategic review on Afghanistan and Pakistan, believes that aggressive US diplomacy to resolve the differences between India and Pakistan is 'absolutely critical' for the 'long-term chances of stabilising Afghanistan, and even more importantly, Pakistan'.He pointed out that "it got a whole lot more difficult," on 26/11 in Mumbai.
'Like General Patton, possibly the greatest exponent of the art of war, Vajpayee had the ability to be always on the offensive,' assesses Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
Vajpayee, who died on Thursday at the age of 93 after a prolonged illness, had made a significant diplomatic breakthrough and travelled on a bus from Amritsar to Lahore with a delegation that included the likes of Bollywood legend Dev Anand, writer Javed Akhtar and cricket icon Kapil Dev.
Shah also said that the return of pilot Abhinandan was a diplomatic victory.
An opinion is steadily gaining ground in Muslim countries in India's 'extended neighbourhood' that the Modi government is adopting State policies that are decidedly 'anti-Muslim', warns Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
India and Pakistan made "considerable progress" on resolving the Kashmir issue between 2004 and 2007 and considered several options, including demilitarisation and granting autonomy to the area, Pakistan's former army chief said on Wednesday.
Both leaders also exchanged views on the situations in South Asia, an official Chinese statement said about the meeting between Xi and Khan.
'By crudely dragging the topic into the bazaar to flog it for momentary pleasure, we turned it into a dead carcass by the time Modi even got back from Xiamen,' says Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
'The Modi government's grandstanding has hardened the reflexes in Beijing, Islamabad and Kathmandu and complicated India's relations with these three countries, which were even otherwise highly problematic.' 'Whatever prospects existed for a fair and balanced resolution of the territorial disputes may also have receded,' observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
'Secretiveness and the element of surprise in announcing decisions marks the Modi style of diplomacy. From being a voluble politician, he became a reticent statesman... But the diplomatic dance is performed on thin ice and his adroitness is still to be proved,' says Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
While India's High Commissioner Bisaria is in Islamabad, his Pakistani counterpart Moin-ul-Haq is yet to take charge in New Delhi.
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