Mainstream Weekly

Logic and reasoning in the time of war | M K Bhadrakumar

M K Bhadrakumar — 2025-05-10T03:13:19Z

May 9, 2025
One of the saddest things about India

- 2025

Winners and losers in Syria | M K Bhadrakumar

M K Bhadrakumar — 2024-12-07T21:58:00Z

December 8, 2024
Iran and Russia are the two big losers in the ouster of Syria

- 2024

India gets a rude awakening in West Asia | M. K. Bhadrakumar

M K Bhadrakumar — 2024-01-12T05:34:39Z

January 12, 2024
From the standpoint of affirming ‘solidarity' with the regime of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the October 7 attack, India has swung away to the far horizon and has unceremoniously dumped the US-Israeli axis, which provided beacon light to Delhi's West Asian policies in the past few years.
From a strategic asset, Israel connection is becoming a liability for the Indian government. Delhi spurned Netanyahu's repeated entreaties to brand Hamas as a terrorist (…)

- 2024

India's turnaround on Palestine has more than meets the eye | M K Bhadrakumar

M K Bhadrakumar — 2023-12-23T02:22:00Z

December 26, 2023
Indian diplomacy is ending 2023 with a momentous turnaround. What began as a course correction necessitated by the torrential flow of events in West Asia is assuming strategic overtones.
Truly, the aberration in India's policies can be traced to the UPA rule (2004-2014) but it is under the period since then 2014 that they accentuated phenomenally and began creating contradictions undermining national interests. This aberration also led to a serious erosion of India's (…)

- 2023

Diplomatic blow to India as Biden turns down invite | M K Bhadrakumar

M K Bhadrakumar — 2023-12-16T05:14:40Z

December 14, 2023
It is easy at once to exaggerate or underestimate the sensational case of the aborted assassination attempt on Sikh separatist leader and US citizen, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun in New York and its ramifications.
At one end is the myopic view that like the proverbial ostrich burying its head in the sand, India can escape God's wrath. Typically, a commentary by a Delhi-based think tanker estimates that Pannun case “will remain a mere blip in surging India-US ties.” The (…)

- 2023

India's discontent with the SCO | M K Bhadrakumar

M K Bhadrakumar — 2023-07-07T18:58:34Z

July 6, 2023
The virtual summit meeting of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation on July 4 welcomed Iran as its tenth member
To be out of sync with the contemporary life anywhere at anytime becomes indeed a despairing situation. That was the tragic predicament of the Austrian writer of the inter-war period, Stefan Zweig, who once wrote, “One must be convinced to convince, to have enthusiasm to stimulate the others” — alluding to the rising tide of fascism in Europe in the twenties and (…)

- 2023

The rise and rise of far-right in Germany | M. K. Bhadrakumar

M K Bhadrakumar — 2023-06-17T04:08:48Z

June 13, 2023
The political class in Germany is stunned by the findings of a YouGov poll[[https://www.euractiv.com/section/all/news/germany-far-right-overtakes-scholzs-spd-in-new-poll] published on Friday that 20 percent of German voters would give their vote to the far-right AfD (Alternative for Germany), making it the second-strongest party behind the centre-right CDU (28%) and ahead of Chancellor Olaf Scholz's SPD (19%). There is no mistaking that it is a political earthquake.
Given (…)

- 2023

Russia's Ukraine offensive in suspended animation | M K Bhadrakumar

M K Bhadrakumar — 2023-02-25T09:49:07Z

February 24, 2023
The general expectation that the first anniversary of Russia's special military operations in Ukraine would mark the commencement of a big military offensive has been belied, going by the speeches by President Vladimir Putin and the US President Joe Biden, separated by a few hours on February 21, in Moscow and Warsaw.
Neither said anything very original. Putin cut himself loose towards the end of his speech by dropping a bombshell that Russia is suspending its (…)

- 2023

India's got the BRICS blues | M K Bhadrakumar

M K Bhadrakumar — 2023-01-06T23:04:31Z

January 6, 2023
The Brazilian news agency reported that Lula da Silva's inauguration as the new president on January 1 for a historic third term amidst a carnival-like backdrop was attended by over five dozen foreign delegations, composed of heads of government, vice presidents, foreign ministers, special envoys and representatives of international organisations. It was the largest event with high-level international figures in Brazil since the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.
The BRICS leaders (…)

- 2023

Reflections on Events in Afghanistan — 41 | M K Bhadrakumar

M K Bhadrakumar — 2022-12-02T17:07:05Z

41. US brings culture wars to Afghanistan
The time has come to pick up threads from my blog of January 27 titled The West co-opts the Taliban[[https://www.indianpunchline.com/reflections-on-events-in-afghanistan-40]. Indeed, the wheel has come full circle since the three-day conclave in Oslo on January 23-25 between a core group of Western diplomats with Taliban officials failed to work out a reasonable modus vivendi. The pendulum has since swung to the other extreme.
Afghanistan has (…)

- 2022