India’s oldest Socialist Weekly!
Editor: Dr. G.G. Parikh | Associate Editor: Neeraj Jain | Managing Editor: Guddi
It is not in India’s interests to needlessly annoy a host of countries in the region and from outside the region such as Turkey, Iran, Qatar, China, Pakistan — and even Russia. The bottomline is that the government must explain how India benefits out of this joyride in Quad-2.
The Moscow meeting of ten regional states and the Taliban officials on Wednesday has produced an outcome that by far exceeds expectations. It is also clear – the Biden administration has lost the plot.
Powerful narratives envelop India’s deeply troubled relationships with Pakistan and China. Fundamentally, these narratives are stories about the way things ought to be. They may help make decisions easier for leaderships that lack erudition but the consequences of such decisions can be deleterious.
Two big regional developments took place last week — the announcement of the AUKUS, security alliance of three “maritime democracies” on September 15; and Iran’s accession to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation as full member on September 17.
India began to align with the anti-Iran regional front that Trump was sponsoring, involving Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and with Washington’s Indo-Pacific strategy against China. With Trump losing the election, and Biden deciding to engage with Iran, India is getting sidelined in the region.
The US is a mere passive bystander while the two powerhouses in the Gulf – Saudi Arabia and Iran – are drawing close. One of them is Washington’s client state for almost 80 years while the other is an archetypal enemy for the past 40 years.
The root problem is the Modi Govt’s obsessive rivalry and one-upmanship vis-a-vis China, to display that India is shining better than China. It is a futile effort, as an original is always worth more than a copy.
The historic China-Iran agreement signed on March 27 in Tehran during the visit of China’s State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi is going to affect geopolitics hugely. The West Asian region is all about geopolitics — starting from oil and jihad to petrodollars.
Pre-conditions now exist for a positive turn to the India-China bilateral relationship. But whether it will lead to peace and stability in short and medium term depends on a number of factors.
By giving the goahead for the completion of the Nord Stream 2 AG project, Germany has signalled that it will not yield to pressure from Washington in their dispute over the pipeline project even after the transfer of power in the U.S. in January.
Janata Weekly is India’s oldest independent socialist weekly.
Ever since its founding in 1946, Janata has voiced its principled dissent against all conduct and practice that is detrimental to the cherished values of nationalism, democracy, secularism and socialism, while upholding the integrity and the ethical norms of healthy journalism. For more than seventy years now, week after week, it has continued to analyse the changes taking place in the country and the world from a socialist standpoint, and thus promote the spread of socialist ideology in the country.
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