Following the hullabaloo of US President Barack Obama’s whistle stop tour of Asia in November – the focus of which was primarily on China, Japan, the Koreas and South East Asia – it might be logical to assume that Washington-New Delhi relations have fallen down the pecking order of America’s list of foreign policy priorities. [Read more...]

Pakistan is one of the most geopolitically important countries in the world today, and how it evolves will affect a whole range of strategic issues. These include:

The future of political Islam

The fate of Afghanistan

The spread of nuclear weapons

The economic development of South Asia

The development of energy [Read more...]

Eight years after the ‘9/11’ terror attacks, the outcome of the subsequent ‘War on Terror’ is still inconclusive.
Overall, I have not really changed my view from the blog post I wrote on the seventh anniversary.
Neither ‘the West’ and its allied governments nor al-Qaeda and its offshoots have scored a decisive blow. In any case, as [Read more...]

Question: Which country would you feel safer investing in, South Korea or Pakistan? Most people would probably say Korea, but judging by the performance of their currencies this year, the answer is not so clear cut. Every night lately, just before drifting off to sleep, I’ve found myself wondering where the Korean won would be [Read more...]

I am hard-pushed to think of many countries (except for extreme places like Zimbabwe, North Korea, the USA et al) that are facing such tremendous difficulties as Pakistan right now. As far as I can see, Pakistan seems to be on the brink of a debt crisis, and will have to secure foreign financing if [Read more...]