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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
Jul 23, 2011
Why Mumbai was attacked
It is not a mere coincidence that Mumbai's commercial hub has repeatedly been struck by terrorists since 1993. Mumbai has become the favored target because the terrorist aim is to undermine India's booming economy and its status as a rising power by rattling foreign investors and driving away tourists....
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 inadvertently...
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 to deny that...
COMMENTARY
Jan 26, 2011
Universal values do matter
NEW DELHI — With a Nobel Peace Prize to his credit, U.S. President Barack Obama was widely expected to advance universal values. Yet he has signaled that promotion of human rights is a tool to be used only against the small kids on the global block who hold no major economic benefits for the United...
COMMENTARY
Jan 11, 2011
China's tiger-rabbit heart
NEW DELHI — By roaring at its neighbors and picking territorial fights with them, China lived up to the year of the tiger that 2010 represented in its astrology. An increasingly assertive China also strained its relations with the United States and Europe, while its resource extraction-centered outreach...
COMMENTARY
Dec 29, 2010
Troubling China-India ties
NEW DELHI — The already fraught China-India relationship appears headed for more turbulent times as a result of the two giants' failure to make progress on resolving any of the issues that divide them. Earlier this month, during the first visit in more than four years of a Chinese leader to India,...
COMMENTARY
Nov 27, 2010
NATO's Afghan nightmare
The agreement at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit meeting in Lisbon on a transition plan to help end the war in Afghanistan within the next four years raises troubling questions about regional security and the global fight against transnational terrorism. As the United States and...
COMMENTARY
Nov 23, 2010
Let trade transform Burma
NEW DELHI — The election process in Burma has altered its political landscape, giving birth to new institutions and players, triggering a generational change in the armed forces, bringing to power the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), and facilitating the release of prodemocracy...
COMMENTARY
Nov 18, 2010
A new great game in Asia
U.S. President Barack Obama's 10-day Asian tour and the consecutive summit meetings of the East Asian Summit (EAS), the Group of 20 and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) helped put the spotlight on Asia's security challenges at a time when tensions between an increasingly ambitious China and...
COMMENTARY
Nov 3, 2010
Asia warily watches China
Asia's festering Cold War-era territorial and maritime disputes highlight the fact that securing long-term regionwide peace depends on respect for existing borders. Attempts to disturb Asia's territorial status quo are an invitation to endemic conflict — a concern that led Asian states to welcome the...
COMMENTARY
Oct 1, 2010
The center of Asia's divide
NEW DELHI — Japan may have created the impression of having buckled under China's pressure by releasing the Chinese fishing trawler captain. But the Japanese action helps move the spotlight back to China, whose rapid accumulation of power has emboldened it to aggressively assert territorial and maritime...
COMMENTARY
Sep 22, 2010
A Sino-centric Asia unlikely
How Asia's geopolitical landscape will evolve over the next couple of decades is not easy to foresee. But it is apparent that an increasingly assertive China is unwittingly reinforcing America's role in Asia as the implicit guarantor of security and stability.
COMMENTARY
Aug 7, 2010
The NPT's uncertain future
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty's coming into force. Despite its central role in shaping the global nuclear order, the NPT's future looks anything but promising.
COMMENTARY
Jul 21, 2010
Don't underestimate ASEM
One of the less-noticed initiatives in the world is the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM), designed to foster closer cooperation between the old economic giants of Europe and the new economic powers of Asia — the two diverse but culturally rich continents that together represent half of the world's GDP and...
COMMENTARY
Jul 5, 2010
China now exports its convicts
Relieving pressure on overcrowded national prisons by employing convicts as laborers at Chinese-run projects in the developing world is a novel strategy China has adopted — an approach that is certain to create new backlashes against Chinese businesses overseas, besides highlighting the country's egregious...
COMMENTARY
Jun 23, 2010
America's China policy flop
Success breeds confidence, and rapid success spawns arrogance. That, in a nutshell, is the China problem facing Asian states and the West. But no country faces a bigger dilemma on China than the United States because the present American policy simply isn't advancing its objectives.
COMMENTARY
Jun 6, 2010
Decks are stacked against China keeping its stake in Korea game
KOREAN DEMILITARIZED ZONE — One of the last Cold War relics, the Demilitarized Zone that cuts the Korean Peninsula in half, is the world's most fortified frontier. Although this division has prevailed for almost six decades, it is unthinkable that it can continue indefinitely, despite renewed inter-Korean...
COMMENTARY
Apr 15, 2010
Why precious is strategic
Water, food, mineral ores and fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas are resources of the greatest strategic import. They hold the key to human development and, in the case of water and food, to even human survival.

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