IR Aficionado

As President Joe Biden officially assumed the highest office of the land and entered the White House, it marked the beginning of an era in American politics and International Relations whose full significance can only be comprehended in retrospect decades into the future. But history can help us ascertain the direction the new epoch is likely to take. An existing superpower is threatened by a putative rising star and the entire globe (or the parts of it that really matter) calibrates its actions to secure its self-interest in the resulting world order. The two main rivals vie for supremacy on a variety of domains until they succeed in subduing their nemesis. The subduing may be inflicted by outside forces, as in the defeat of Nazi Germany, or may be caused by domestic implosion, as occured in the collapse of Soviet Union. But what if both competitors are simply too powerful to be undermined, much less be conquered? It might lead to all-out war. But in the era of nuclear arms, going to ...

Few authors can deal with the colossal history of the Indian subcontinent right from the arrival in its land of the central Asian adventurer Babur in the early 16th century all the way through its dominion by the British, established effectively in the mid 18th century and consecrated by the recognition of the crown’s suzerainty in mid 19th century and their subsequent exit in the mid 20th century, and down to the trajectory the newly independent India took in the political, economic and social spheres over the next thirty years, in a single volume other than Percival Spear. A History of India Volume 2 is an account of almost all significant events that transpired in the subcontinent over four and a half centuries. The author must be commended for his temerity to take upon himself such a monumental task. Let us consider in detail how well he has fared in accomplishing it. The book begins in the early 16th century, when much of North India was in a turmoil, with feeble rulers occupyi...

                          The Impending Super-Power Rivalry Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, has killed tens of thousands and afflicted many more across the world. Even developed nations are scrambling to contain the pandemic and Italy and Spain are grasping at straws to mitigate the economic losses and human suffering already inflicted by the pandemic. At such trying times, an idealist would have expected to see a coming together of countries, shedding their differences for the time being, and taking collective efforts to weather this maelstrom of a crisis. The institutional framework exists in the form of the United Nations and its numerous subsidiary and specialised wings. After all, it was precisely to fight these common problems that the UN was founded. Indeed, the Coronavirus provides a much-needed recipe for global cooperation and camara...

What we had feared the most has come to pass. A senile, raving, gaffe-prone dotard has well-nigh won the democratic presidential nomination to run against Trump in November 2020. At the end of a fratricidal race that pitted candidates without major differences in their policy agendas (with the exception of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren) against each other, the contestant who was until recently thought to be the least likely to win the nomination has wound up clinching it. Pundits who wrote off Joe Biden after his poor showing in Iowa and New Hampshire can now eat their words. Even more dispiriting is the fact that Biden crushed Bernie Sanders in Michigan to emerge as the clear front-runner. Sanders’s momentum that seemed to be rife after his stellar performance in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada has fizzled out. The fateful Super Tuesday that tipped the scales in Biden’s favour took the momentum away from Sanders. What explains Biden’s appeal? Did the democratic electorate...

                                           One Palestine, Complete by Tom Segev Khalil al Sakakini, a noted Arabic teacher in Jerusalem, is accused of treason and sent off to a prison in Damascus for helping a Jewish insurance agent who was on the run for his life. The year was 1917, the war that had gripped Europe was raging with full ferocity and the Ottoman empire was struggling to save face. Whilst Sakakini awaits the gallows in Damascus, British troops under the command of General Allenby reach Palestine and the Ottomans formally surrender. Sakakini is saved. In 1926, a young man called Yefim Gordin arrives in Palestine from Vilna, hoping to make a living in the ancient Jewish homeland. His verve for Zionism comes into its own with his active participation in the activities of the Battalion for the Defence of Language, the hot-headed organisation that sought to asse...

Pressing sanctions and recalcitrant mullahs In the throes of a threat to his country’s designs to dominate the region, Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, countenanced a sharp rise in the price of a commodity that Iranians hitherto obtained for a pittance: petrol. What happened next? All hell broke loose. As though fate hadn’t been sufficiently unkind to Iran, this move came in the backdrop of widespread protests in Lebanon and Iraq, both of them countries in which Iran has made deep inroads. Iran’s proxy group Hezbollah, political party and militant organisation, wields considerable clout in Lebanon. Iraq, as revealed by documents recently leaked to The Intercept, has come under Iran’s sway ever since U.S. troops left the country in 2011. While the causes of these protests are mainly economic, they are also seen as fulminations against the sinister influence of Iran in Iraq and Lebanon. Economic woes The reason this step was taken at such an unpropitious moment can ...