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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
Aug 31, 2006
Defuse crisis by letting Tehran save face on nuclear issue
NEW DELHI -- With Iran rebuffing the United Nations Security Council, yet another global hot spot is emerging in the vast but volatile region between India and Israel. This arc of volatility between the only two democracies in the region has been made worse by the developments in Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza,...
COMMENTARY
Aug 19, 2006
Tokyo sends Beijing a signal
NEW DELHI -- No place of homage has generated more political heat between countries in recent years than the eye-catching Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. At the center of the storm has been a dark horse who became Japan's prime minister more than five years ago and who leaves office next month, having fashioned...
COMMENTARY
Jul 16, 2006
Soft target needs an antiterror strategy
NEW DELHI -- The grisly July 11 Bombay train bombings, the latest in a series of major terrorist attacks in India, are a reminder that the country needs to move from hand-wringing to a credible counterterror strategy against jihadist groups.
COMMENTARY
Jul 3, 2006
Will India-China border talks ever end?
NEW DELHI -- For 25 years, India has been seeking to settle by negotiation with China the disputed Indo-Tibetan frontier. Yet, not only have the negotiations yielded no concrete progress on a settlement, but they also have failed so far to remove even the ambiguities plaguing the long line of control....
COMMENTARY
May 13, 2006
A quiet burial of a scandal that will haunt Washington
NEW DELHI -- With global attention focused on the U.S.-led face-off with Tehran over the nuclear issue, Pakistan has ingeniously seized the opportunity to give a quiet burial to the worst proliferation scandal in world history, involving the Pakistani transfer of nuclear knowhow and equipment to three...
COMMENTARY
Mar 3, 2006
The black hole for U.S. aid
NEW DELHI -- Despite making the spread of freedom the rallying cry of his second term, U.S. President George W. Bush has found it difficult to visit the world's largest democracy, India, without also stopping to meet the Pakistani president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf.
COMMENTARY
Jan 27, 2006
Don't do mullahs' bidding
NEW DELHI -- The United States and European Union have taken the lead in framing a robust international response to a series of provocative actions by Iran's hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The wise way to tackle a renegade Iran, however, is not through punitive action, but through sustained...
COMMENTARY
Jan 5, 2006
Deal harms Indian interests
NEW DELHI -- A real problem of an ever-shifting goal post has cast a cloud over America's current negotiations with India to implement a much-heralded nuclear deal that is supposed to showcase the emerging global partnership between the world's most powerful and most populous democracies. Seeking to...
COMMENTARY
Nov 18, 2005
A chance to clean up terror
NEW DELHI -- The Oct. 8 South Asian earthquake struck at the epicenter of a principal recruiting ground and logistic center for global terrorists, leveling a number of terrorist nurseries and training camps in an area that serves as the last main refuge of al-Qaida. Much of the quake's destruction occurred...
COMMENTARY
Sep 26, 2005
China should face its own unsavory past
NEW DELHI -- The new foreign-policy subtleness that China has displayed in recent years is a far cry from the coarse image its earlier Communist rulers presented, especially when they set out, in then-Premier Zhou Enlai's words, to "teach India a lesson" in 1962, or when, to quote strongman Deng Xiaoping,...
COMMENTARY
Sep 4, 2005
Neo-emperor of evil genius
NEW DELHI -- History is replete with myths woven by victors. The myths about Mao Zedong, including his military exploits and triumphs over imperialism and capitalism, have helped keep the Chinese communists in power, even as a transformed China now practices capitalism and presents itself as a large...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 4, 2005
Neo-emperor of evil genius
NEW DELHI — History is replete with myths woven by victors. The myths about Mao Zedong, including his military exploits and triumphs over imperialism and capitalism, have helped keep the Chinese communists in power, even as a transformed China now practices capitalism and presents itself as a large...
COMMENTARY
Aug 10, 2005
No rationalization for Nagasaki attack
NEW DELHI -- History is written by victors and thus abounds in well-cultivated rationalizations for the winners' actions, however unjustifiable or gory they might be. Vanquishers are rarely burdened by guilt. Sometimes the rationalization stops with their first major slaughter in a war, as if their willful...
COMMENTARY
Jul 17, 2005
The international terror lab
NEW DELHI -- The July 7 London bombings, suspected to be the handiwork of British citizens of Pakistani origin, should serve as a reminder that major acts of international terrorism have first been tried out by Islamists in India before being replicated in the West. Such acts include attacks on symbols...
COMMENTARY
Jun 29, 2005
India: U.S. ally or independent power?
NEW DELHI -- The courtship between the world's most powerful and most populous democracies is in full swing, with a new international poll showing that at a time when anti-Americanism has spread across the globe more people in India have a positive view of the United States than in any other nation surveyed....
COMMENTARY
May 24, 2005
Power politics ensnare reform
NEW DELHI — Sixty years after its establishment, the United Nations is at a crossroads, its future direction and authority uncertain, even as it struggles with the diminution of its role in world affairs. Reforms are essential to revitalize the U.N.'s role, shore up its legitimacy and make it politically...
COMMENTARY
Apr 2, 2005
India-China rivalry sharpens
NEW DELHI -- When Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao arrives in India next week, the rhetoric of cooperation between the two Asian giants will intensify. But one has only to scratch the surface to know the extent of the embedded mistrust and competition between the two.
COMMENTARY
Mar 5, 2005
India's new double standard
NEW DELHI -- The growing warmth in U.S.-Indian relations is getting strangely reflected in India's adoption of U.S.-style dual standards on democracy.
COMMENTARY
Oct 25, 2004
China reconstructs past to chart future
NEW DELHI -- How folklore guides Chinese foreign-policy interests was brought out by Beijing's recent spat with South Korea over the ancient kingdom of Koguryo, which was founded in the Tongge River basin of northern Korea and, at its height, included much of Manchuria.
COMMENTARY
Sep 25, 2004
High-tech barriers to better ties
NEW DELHI -- Catchphrases like "enhanced engagement," "strategic partnership" and "sustained interaction" are bandied about to describe the new U.S.-Indian relationship. A novel, hyperbolic tag, NSSP, or Next Steps in Strategic Partnership, was added to the diplomatic lexicon when on January 13, 2004,...

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