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 Brahma Chellaney

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Brahma Chellaney
Brahma Chellaney, a longstanding contributor to The Japan Times, is a geostrategist and the author of "Asian Juggernaut" (Harper, 2010) and "Water: Asia’s New Battlefield" (Georgetown University Press, 2011), which won the 2012 Bernard Schwartz Award. He is professor of strategic studies at the Center for Policy Research, New Delhi.
COMMENTARY
May 9, 2012
Ankle weights on Asia's rise
A favorite theme in international debate nowadays is whether Asia's rise signifies the West's decline. But the current focus on economic malaise in Europe and the United States is distracting attention from the many serious challenges that call into question Asia's continued success.
COMMENTARY
Apr 18, 2012
Dam-building disputes roil Asia
Dam building on shared rivers has emerged as the leading source of water disputes and tensions in Asia, the world's driest continent whose freshwater availability is less than half the global annual average of 6,380 cubic meters per inhabitant. Dam-building activities by China and Central, South and...
COMMENTARY
Mar 27, 2012
The cracks in the BRICS
As it prepares to hold its latest annual summit in New Delhi on March 28-29, the BRICS grouping — Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa — remains a concept in search of a common identity and institutionalized cooperation.
COMMENTARY
Feb 23, 2012
A false spring in South Asia
From the armed coup that recently ousted the Maldives' first democratically elected president, Mohamed Nasheed, to the Pakistani Supreme Court's current effort to undermine a toothless but elected government by indicting Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani on contempt charges, South Asia's democratic advances...
COMMENTARY
Feb 20, 2012
How the Arab Spring was hijacked
A year after the Arab Spring came to symbolize the ascent of people's power, hope has given way to a bleak sequel.
COMMENTARY
Jan 21, 2012
Escaping Afghanistan, the graveyard of empires
Since coming to office, President Barack Obama has pursued an Afghan war strategy summed up in just four words: "surge, bribe and run." The U.S.-led military mission has now entered the "run" part, or what euphemistically is being called the "transition to 2014" — the year Obama arbitrarily chose...
COMMENTARY
Jan 14, 2012
Asia's new tripartite entente
The launch of trilateral strategic consultations among the United States, India and Japan, and their decision to hold joint naval exercises this year, signals efforts to form an entente among the Asia-Pacific region's three leading democracies. These efforts — in the world's most economically dynamic...
COMMENTARY
Jan 4, 2012
China's dam frenzy exacts an environmental toll
China's frenzied dam-building hit a wall recently in Burma (Myanmar), where the government's bold decision to halt a controversial Chinese-led dam project helped to ease the path to the first visit by a U.S. secretary of state to that country in more than a half-century.
COMMENTARY
Dec 28, 2011
Build Japan-India naval ties
At a time when the specter of power disequilibrium looms large in Asia, the visit of Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda to India offers an opportunity to the two natural allies to help promote Asian stability by adding concrete strategic content to their fast-growing relationship. Japan and India need to...
COMMENTARY
Dec 3, 2011
Asia's water stress challenges growth and security
Water, the most vital of all resources, has emerged as a key issue that will determine whether Asia is headed toward cooperation or competition. After all, the driest continent in the world is not Africa, but Asia, where availability of freshwater is not even half the global annual average of 6,380 cubic...
COMMENTARY
Nov 8, 2011
America's troubling support for oil-rich Islamist regimes
When Libya's interim government announced the "liberation" of the country Oct. 23, it declared that a system based on the Islamic Sharia, including polygamy, will replace the secular dictatorship that Moammar Gadhafi ran for 42 years.
COMMENTARY
Oct 19, 2011
China's unparalleled rise as a hydro-hegemon
International discussion about China's rise has focused on its increasing trade muscle, growing maritime ambitions and expanding capacity to project military power. One critical issue, however, usually escapes attention: China's rise as a hydro-hegemon with no modern historical parallel.
COMMENTARY
Oct 6, 2011
Dams muddy China's image
China's frenzied dam building at home and abroad is emerging as a flash point in inter- and intrastate relations in Asia. Burma's decision to suspend work on a controversial Chinese-funded dam marks a tactical retreat on a project that has symbolized China's resource greed and is a trigger for renewed...
COMMENTARY
Sep 21, 2011
A rising hydro-hegemon raising worries downstream
Just as China has aroused international alarm by wielding its virtual rare-earths monopoly as a trade instrument and by thwarting efforts to resolve territorial disputes with its neighbors, it is raising deep concern over the manner it is seeking to fashion water into a political weapon against its co-riparian...
COMMENTARY
Aug 6, 2011
Cracks in the Chinese wall
In the face of a spreading ethnic Uighur rebellion, authorities in Chinese-ruled Xinjiang have alleged that a prominent Uighur separatist they captured had received terrorist training in Pakistan, China's "all-weather ally."
COMMENTARY
Jul 23, 2011
Why Mumbai was attacked
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COMMENTARY
May 7, 2011
The heartland of bin Laden
The killing of Osama bin Laden by United States special forces in a helicopter assault on a sprawling luxury mansion near Islamabad recalls the capture of other al-Qaida leaders in Pakistani cities. Once again, we see that the real terrorist sanctuaries are located not along Pakistan's borders with Afghanistan...
COMMENTARY
Apr 7, 2011
West is on a slippery slope
NEW DELHI — From initially seeking to protect civilians to now aiming for a swift, total victory in Libya, the mission creep that has characterized the Western powers' military attack raises troubling questions about their Libyan strategy and the risks that it could end up creating — however...
COMMENTARY
Mar 23, 2011
Nuclear power no solution
NEW DELHI — Just when nuclear energy had come to be seen as part of the solution to energy and global-warming challenges, the serial reactor incidents in Fukushima have dealt a severe blow to the world nuclear-power industry, a powerful cartel of less than a dozen major state-owned or state-guided...
COMMENTARY
Feb 6, 2011
Lama drama and intrigue
NEW DELHI — The police seizure of large sums of Chinese currency from the Indian monastery of the China-anointed, but now India-based, Karmapa Lama — one of the most important figures in Tibetan Buddhism — has revived old suspicions about his continuing links with China and forced him...

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