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The head table of global affairs is in for a makeover. In one month from now, Manmohan Singh’s top interlocutors could all be new faces, as US, China, and even Japan head for the hustings. On November 6, Barack Obama will be up for re-election, in a race that has thrown up unpleasant surprises close to the home stretch. From being a candidate who could barely control his own Republican party, Mitt Romney surged forward to be a surprisingly competent debator. A tired, “not there” Obama opened up the presidential sweepstakes, even giving Romney a 4-point lead, and turning what was until then an easy victory to a question. Despite the Romney surge, pundits would still put their money on Obama. But it is increasingly clear that the new presidency, with either Obama or Romney at the helm, will be different from the last four years. The job figures, which has been measured as closely as blood pressure, fell to a reassuring 7.8 per cent last month __ to the level it was when Obama took of...

Fifty years ago, India suffered its worst military defeat when China invaded and India buckled. The memory of that defeat __ along with embarrassing revelations of India’s misbegotten “forward policy”, strategic and tactical blunders __ still sends a humiliating chill down Indians’ spine. The unspoken thought always is __the war stopped when China carried out a unilateral ceasefire. What if it didn’t? The collective Indian trauma that surrounds the 1962 war has informed India’s strategic outlook since. India has never made public the Brooks-Henderson report which analysed the conflict. Neville Maxwell, whose book, India’s China War squarely blames India for the conflict was banned in India. We never looked at ourselves critically on that war. And perhaps left gaps in future strategic thought. K. Subrahmanyam, late guru of strategic thought once said, “India’s 1962 burden stems from the fact the defeat of Sela-Bomdilla was papered over and the nation never had th...