Member of Parliament
for Thiruvananthapuram
August 7th, 2011
'Henry Kissinger's world view is madarin-tinted'
Henry Kissinger is arguably the most famous diplomatic elder statesman in the world: winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973, National Security Adviser and Secretary of State to US Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, now highly-paid international business consultant and author
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July 21st, 2011
International affairs all too often seems a weighty subject, full of complexity and nuance, laden with portents of tension and conflict.
No wonder it lends itself to overly solemn treatment, full of abstract analyses and recondite allusions: the relations between countries, it is usually assumed, cannot be understood
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The appointment last week of France’s finance minister, Christine Lagarde, as managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) brings an end to a race which, for all its illusions of drama and contest, was in fact entirely predictable.
The so-called Bretton Woods institutions — the World Bank and the IMF,
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2011-06-10
NEW DELHI – The recent India-Africa summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, at which India’s government pledged $5 billion in aid to African countries, drew attention to a largely overlooked phenomenon – India’s emergence as a source, rather than a recipient, of foreign aid.
For decades after independence – when Britain left
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The Arab Spring is not quite shading into our Indian monsoon, but it has claimed some impressive results already.
The long-serving Presidents of Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen, in that order, have fled their palaces for refuge elsewhere (or in the case of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, for a jail
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Throughout history, men have waged war for power, wealth, land and occasionally over women. But rarely, except in the past two or three centuries have they gone to war to bring peace. Is peace really the raison d’etre for the wars being fought in different parts of the world? Or
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By Shashi Tharoor and Keerthik Sasidharan
May 22nd, 2011
In the 1920s, a young Tamil girl sang and starred in her school musical. It was, ostensibly, a private event with few outsiders. Yet so exceptional was her singing that Swadesamitran ran her photograph and wrote about the event. Seeing that photo in
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May 13th, 2011
If there is one assumption taken for granted by all of us familiar with Chinese sensitivities, it is that of “One China” — the inflexible policy adhered to by Beijing that requires the world to accept the unity and indivisibility of the Chinese nation, including not only Tibet
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ndia’s recent decision not to purchase American warplanes for its $10 billion-plus fighter aircraft program – the largest single military tender in the country’s history – has stirred debate in defense circles worldwide. India’s defense ministry deemed the two American contenders, Boeing’s F/A-18 Superhornet and Lockheed’s F-16 Superviper, not to
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The role of social media websites — such as Twitter, Facebook, Google, YouTube and Skype — in the unfolding revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, with ripples elsewhere in North Africa and West Asia, has given new impetus to the discussion of their impact on world politics. The eminent American
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