Home & Away

Indrani Bagchi Take your ringside seats, people, as another US-China tournament of shadows unfolds. When Donald Trump spoke to Taiwan’s president Tsai Ing-Wen and challenged established US-China policy, many parts of Asia, India included, quietly cheered. As expected, China retaliated -- by stealing a US Navy drone from South China Sea, testing both a departing president and an incoming one.  Bill Clinton had the Taiwan Straits crisis, George Bush was greeted with the embarrassment of the EP-3E crash, and Obama was challenged when five Chinese navy ships harassed the USNS Impeccable. Trump is being greeted ahead of his term but we await events with interest, because they could determine global events of the coming four years. Both US and China are in a dangerous part of the field. China has to protect the aura of “core leader” Xi Jinping, who is driving the combined tigers of nationalism, military modernization, anti-corruption and a slowing economy. The US pi...

Indrani Bagchi This time last year, Indians and Pakistanis were basking in the glow of the birthday bumps Nawaz Sharif got from Narendra Modi. The Nepal blockade was being lifted, Afghans had got their parliament and military helicopters … after charming the Fortune 500, PM wowed Silicon Valley and the Arabs with equal felicity, we reached out with a fab Africa summit, sealed a border agreement with Bangladesh, rolled out an ambitious Indian Ocean policy and hey, we were up there with the Americans to give the world a climate change deal. 2015 was about Modi changing global perceptions about India. In 2016, Modi took a breather from his global blitz, as India consolidated some of the gains and foreign policy ventured into some new areas. But peering into 2017, the horizon appears much darker -- the world is “loosening”, alliances and relationships are getting complicated, and the old-fashioned balance of power is making a comeback. For India, a non status-quo power, the challenge...

Indrani Bagchi Fun fact: Star Wars – The Force Awakens, shot a large part of the film in the desert landscape of the UAE. But the futuristic sets of the latest George Lucas creation were created by Bollywood for an Abu Dhabi company. Gulf Arabs ideally want the marriage of Bollywood and Hollywood on their sands. On the geopolitical level, they say they have been waiting for India to claim its space in the region for years, a space that continues to be dominated by the US. But the sands are shifting, compelling India to look west in a way it hadn’t done before. As the Crown Prince of the UAE, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan takes the spotlight as chief guest for Republic Day, the journey that began with the visit of late King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia in 2006 moves to the next level. Investment and economic opportunity are strong attractions – India is looking at over $60 billion in investment interests by the third largest economy in the Gulf region. This time they are pri...

Indrani Bagchi In a few weeks, when Dalai Lama is scheduled to visit Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh, China will be tempted to make a Mongolia out of India. It shouldn’t. 2017 is not turning out to be anything like how China imagined at all, just when Xi Jinping is getting ready to become a leader without a successor. Foreign secretary, S. Jaishankar stated 2017 would be a year when Indian foreign policy would “invest” more in China. The newly minted strategic dialogue in Beijing though showed the distance that still needs to be traveled, despite the gloss put on it by India. China is nowhere close to addressing India’s concerns, but India and China are nothing if not mature, pragmatic powers, so they decided to do stuff together in Afghanistan. Not wildly exciting, and they continue to have divergent political tools. China is pushing “reconciliation” with Taliban, India is not. India is clear-eyed about Taliban hosting LeT, JeM etc against us. China is realizing that Uighur ETIM m...

Indrani Bagchi Washington mavens have a new parlour game – called “impeachment & removal”, the game is all about devising new and innovative ways of putting President Donald Trump out to grass. But Trump has danced with Saudi leaders, eaten chocolate cake with Xi Jinping and burgers with Netanyahu, played golf with Abe and been blessed by the Pope. In a few weeks, it will be his turn to get the Modi hug. India has watched with apprehension as the Trump administration moved from being a promising tabula rasa to the OMG-what-will-they-do-next roller coaster. The China relationship is … now, where is it exactly? The chocolate cake came with 59 missiles to Syria; overnight Xi Jinping found himself holding the North Korean nuclear can, fearfully contemplating a THAAD system in South Korea when he has more important things like the 19 th  Party Congress on his mind. In fact, Xi has reasons to be a worried man. A readout of the Xi-Trump discussions shows the depth of unpredict...

Indrani Bagchi That slightly awkward hug at the end of the Modi-Trump summit settled one important debate about the future of US-India relations in the Trump administration - hugs will stay, white-knuckle handshakes are for others.   The Modi visit was tightly crafted, with most of the heavy lifting being done by foreign secretary S. Jaishankar and NSA Ajit Doval well in advance. Jaishankar and Doval have logged many frequent flyer miles to get the desired outcome, with the foreign secretary negotiating directly with Rex Tillerson and James Mattis, while Doval did the hard work with McMaster and Kelly. The Trump administration is seriously short-staffed and battling external, internal and virtual enemies — India did not want to fall into these boxes or through the cracks. The US relationship is much too important for that. The Indians went into this summit intent on preserving the strategic contours of the relationship. That has received a strong endorsement in the joint ...

Indrani Bagchi The Indian Hospice in Old Jerusalem is the only one the UN still uses for refugee welfare activities, others having changed hands and disappeared. In fact, some years ago, it took an Israeli PM to intervene against several settlers who had arbitrarily moved in, just so the unique character of this building could be preserved. In some sense, it symbolizes the unique nature of the India-Israel relationship, which was in full bloom last week.   Modi was always going to make Israel the last stop in his Middle East outreach, despite the fact that among the first congratulatory calls on May 16, 2014, came from Netanyahu. India’s Think West policy is a series of balancing acts, with Israel as a third pole all by itself. Given the nature of politics in that region, India had to secure all its other relationships before venturing into Jerusalem. But once there, India embraced Israel wholeheartedly. Two things stood out for all watchers, first, Modi did not visit Ramal...