The article analyses the current Russian regime and its possible alternatives, both nationalist and pro-Western, from the viewpoint of various theoretical approaches. It argues that applying the criteria and terminology of political science, which are usually used in studies of modern Western societies, to define contemporary Russia’s social and economic system is just as pointless as describing its political system in terms of the modern Western political system.

• Alexander Lukin
• March 2018
• Strategic Analysis

The stunning British vote of June 24, 2016, to quit the European Union (EU)—dubbed Brexit—has triggered a major realignment of economic and political forces across the globe, strengthening the template of a new world order tilted towards Moscow, Beijing and the rising powers of Asia and Africa. As Washington nervously recognizes, there will be a decline in the influence of the US, EU and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the latter two having served as instruments of US global domination.

• Sandhya Jain
• January 2017
• Strategic Analysis

At the turn of the 21st century, the world entered a new period of development. The customary bipolar system that prevailed after World War II had collapsed following the self-destruction of one of its poles. Russia’s refusal to follow the Western course is only the first poignant sign of confrontation between the West’s united world project and the emerging multipolar world.

• Alexander Lukin
• November 2021
• Strategic Analysis

The recent Australian decision to extend civilian nuclear cooperation to India, overriding its own long-term principled position, is no ordinary development. Taking that as a starting point, this article seeks to set out the context and rationale for an all-round and long-term closer relationship between the two countries.

• Vishal Ranjan
• September 2016
• Strategic Analysis

In an ominous way the Dalai Lama recently threatened to terminate the over 400-year-old spiritual lineage of his position, saying that Tibetans no longer require the authority of the Dalai Lama and it would be a shame if a ‘weak’ person succeeded him.

In 2011, he also gave up his political authority in favour of an elected leader among Tibetans living in exile. Seemingly, the motive for these measures was to forestall any alternative plan by Beijing to appoint a successor after him and challenge the authority of such an appointment if Beijing does so.

• P. Stobdan
• July 2016
• Strategic Analysis

On 3 May 2013, Australia’s former Prime Minister Julia Gillard released the Defence White Paper (DWP) 2013, making it the sixth White Paper on defence in the history of Australia, and the third since 2000. The last Defence White Paper, entitled Defending Australia in the Asia Pacific Century: Force 2030, was released in 2009 when Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was serving his first term.

• Rahul Mishra
• November 2013
• Strategic Analysis

The Arctic is beginning to test the stage-managed optics of China and Russia’s ‘strategic partnership’. Friction was most recently on display after the Arctic Council’s May 2013 decision to confer permanent observer status on Beijing. The Chinese media celebrated the move as an affirmation of the nation’s ‘legitimate rights’ in Arctic affairs.1 Russian officials were much less enthusiastic.

• Lincoln E. Flake
• November 2013
• Strategic Analysis

The Barents Euro–Arctic Region (BEAR), which in terms of land territory is one of the biggest international region-building projects in Europe, was established in 1993 to meet the new security challenges following the breakup of the Soviet Union and the opening up of the borders between East and West. Stretching over major parts of Northwest Russia and three Nordic countries, the region bridges areas, which for decades were heavily influenced by high Cold War tensions and deep social, economic and political cleavages.

• Rune Rafaelsen
• July 2013
• Strategic Analysis

Over the last two decades Kazakhstan has implemented foreign policies aimed at improving relations with many new geopolitical actors, as well as longstanding common partners such as Russia, on which it was formerly heavily dependent. By utilising its huge hydrocarbon production potential, Kazakhstan has managed to surpass all other Central Asian states in political and economic importance. Kazakhstan has now turned its eyes to China, seeing it as an important and powerful partner in the economic, political and security spheres.

• Richard Rousseau
• January 2013
• Strategic Analysis

This commentary will begin by giving a background of the ‘New Silk Road’ and its different versions, moving on to a discussion of the geopolitical and economic factors related to it. The commentary will then try to analyse some of the critical obstacles to the ‘New Silk Road’ and also make recommendations for a more acceptable and feasible project within the current geopolitical set-up

• Tridivesh Singh Maini
• July 2012
• Strategic Analysis

In June 2011, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), an influential Eurasian regional grouping consisting of Russia, China and four Central Asian Republics (CARs)—Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan—formally approved a ‘memorandum of obligation’, which will now enable non-member countries to apply for SCO membership. India is an observer in the SCO and has expressed its desire to play a larger and more meaningful role as a full member of the organisation.

• Meena Singh Roy
• July 2012
• Strategic Analysis

This article develops the message that the artificially introduced administrative borders during the Soviet era, which were subject to the processes of re-delimitation after 1991, whether for reasons of security, administration, mutual distrust or the population's ethnic attachment, have become results and means of political manipulation and pressurisation. This has resulted in further pushing regional states to follow mutually exclusive policies.

• Timur Dadabaev
• July 2012
• Strategic Analysis

This article examines the strategic importance of Turkmenistan for India in respect of: energy resources; transit potential; and proximity to Afghanistan and Iran. It argues that India's economic potential, its liberal-democratic values, its pluralistic structure, secular fabric, military strength, strong financial, scientific and technological capabilities make it the most desirable partner for all the five Central Asian republics.

• Meena Singh Roy
• July 2011
• Strategic Analysis

Everything is geopolitical in Central Asia where the newly independent state (NIS) Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are located. In other words, the major international political events in the region and most fateful political turns in regional developments bear, or are saturated with, geopolitical essence.

• Farkhod Tolipov
• July 2011
• Strategic Analysis

We must prove to the world community that a new political culture takes root in Kyrgyzstan and a new political strategy supported by people will have a future. A return to the past will imminently lead to the restoration of totalitarianism and a clannish government. We must learn a lesson from the past. Life will show how suitable the parliamentary system is for our community. Our people had lived in the conditions of a nomadic democracy for thousands of years, preserving their traditions and values in difficult times of history.

• Meena Singh Roy
• March 2011
• Strategic Analysis

The energy sector since the mid-2000s has acquired top priority in Russian state affairs, but since late 2008 it has also become the epicentre of the economic disaster that still continues to affect Russia. President Medvedev has effectively discarded the notion of Russia as an 'energy super-power' and is now focusing on 'modernisation' for Russia's development. But coherence of this course is problematic because the bulk of new investments must go into the energy sector in order to sustain the high revenues.

• Pavel K. Baev
• November 2010
• Strategic Analysis

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's visit to India on March 11–12, 2010 signifies the beginning of a new phase in Indo-Russian friendship. In fact, this visit needs to be viewed in the context of the changing geopolitical and geo-economic realities in the international system.

• Meena Singh Roy
• July 2010
• Strategic Analysis

The expiry of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty-1 (START-1) in 2009 and an urgent need to conclude a new US-Russian agreement on strategic nuclear weapons so that the oldest and biggest nuclear powers demonstrate some progress in implementing Article 6 of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in proximity of the 2010 NPT Review Conference has drawn international attention to the interface between the progress/crisis in nuclear disarmament and strengthening/weakening of the NPT regime.

• Alexander Nikitin
• March 2010
• Strategic Analysis

The overall post-Soviet and post-Cold War transformation of the five Central Asian countries is multifaceted and complicated. New geopolitics has penetrated into almost all critically important spheres of post-Soviet transformation. Geopolitics even influences spheres such as national self-identification, which is traditionally regarded as having nothing to do with geopolitics. That is why one can assume that geopolitics stipulates regional integration as well.

• Farkhod Tolipov
• January 2010
• Strategic Analysis

Geopolitics has always had a global dimension even since the time of H.J. Mackinder. In the current context, understanding of a region like Central Asia would be incomplete without comprehending the global military and political transformations that are taking place.

• Evgeny Kozhokin
• July 2009
• Strategic Analysis

Emmanuel Macron has been aiming high for the EU to reiterate its global positioning through a series of policy reforms. With him at the helm of the Council of the EU, there exists an opportunity to translate it into reality.

• Swasti Rao
• January 24, 2022
• Issue Brief

In order to maintain a semblance of balance in its ties with its two key strategic partners, Kazakhstan would perhaps have to leverage its geo-strategic importance for both Moscow and Beijing to navigate the new Arctic route.

• Jason Wahlang
• January 19, 2022
• IDSA Comments

Triggered by the recent hike in auto gas prices, the current crisis in Kazakhstan appears to be an expression of the long-term frustrations of common Kazakhs with the political system.

• Deepak Kumar
• January 12, 2022
• IDSA Comments

Kremlin’s increasingly assertive stance on the troop build-up along the Russia–Ukraine border can be viewed as not just prompted by Ukraine’s potential NATO membership but also as Russia underscoring its place as a stakeholder in shaping European security architecture.

• Rajorshi Roy
• January 03, 2022
• IDSA Comments

With few convergences among partners, the path of the “traffic light coalition” headed by Olaf Scholz is laden with challenges, but also offers spaces for positive action. With several new faces in key positions, its success would lie in maintaining continuity, and tweaking it to accommodate necessary changes when required.

• Swasti Rao
• December 23, 2021
• IDSA Comments

President Putin’s short but highly consequential visit to India and the launch of the 2+2 format have imbued new dynamism into the bilateral partnership. There might be a few areas of divergence between the two sides but spheres of convergence are much greater.

• Ashok Sajjanhar
• December 16, 2021
• IDSA Comments

Nord Stream 2, a Russian undersea gas pipeline project that intends to deliver natural gas from Siberia to Germany, currently sits at an intersection of several geopolitical and geo-economic cross-currents that determine the economic security as well as the geostrategic balance of Europe.

• Swasti Rao
• December 10, 2021
• IDSA Comments

While the international community has maintained a cautious stand vis-à-vis the Taliban, Tajikistan has decisively thrown its weight in support of the resistance movement against the Taliban and has made a clarion call for an inclusive government in Afghanistan.

• Jason Wahlang
• November 10, 2021
• IDSA Comments

The 2015 terrorist attacks in France have seriously tested the nation’s faith in liberal and secular values as well as its tolerance for Political Islam. Taking a hands-on approach to combat terrorism, France has initiated what is being described as the “biggest trial” in its modern history.

• Saman Ayesha Kidwai
• September 22, 2021
• IDSA Comments

The May 8, 2021 India-EU Summit in Portugal is expected to further invigorate and provide a fresh direction to the bilateral relationship, even as both sides grapple with bilateral, regional and global challenges.

• Ashok Sajjanhar
• April 07, 2021
• IDSA Comments

Even as China has emerged as one of Russia’s pillars to tackle the perceived Western threat, it is unlikely that their ongoing entente will morph into a military alliance.

• Rajorshi Roy
• March 08, 2021
• Issue Brief

India’s vision of the Indo-Pacific not only accommodates Russia’s clamour for ASEAN centrality but also complements its Greater Eurasia construct.

• Rajorshi Roy
• February 03, 2021
• IDSA Comments

Public perception in the European Union (EU) has perceptibly changed against China due to its aggressive aid diplomacy and propaganda efforts during the pandemic

• Aditya Laxman Jakki
• January 28, 2021
• Issue Brief

Russia’s new nuclear strategy is both a tactical and a strategic document. It leaves the door open for adversaries to recalibrate their strategies while giving Russia the scope to manoeuvre the ongoing turbulence in its ties with the US

• Rajorshi Roy
• June 23, 2020
• IDSA Comments

The distraction of Chabahar’s questionable economic rationale and the embellishment of a centuries-old fascination with Suez alternatives, whilst entirely logical from a Muscovite perspective, must cede priority to New Delhi’s immediate interests in its own strategic backyard

• Philip Reid
• November 30, 2018
• IDSA Comments

The 19th bilateral summit has left a mixed feeling about the current state of the Indo-Russian relationship and its future prospects.

• Aleksei Zakharov
• October 18, 2018
• IDSA Comments

India needs to use economic leverages more efficiently to build closer ties with Central Asia.

• P. Stobdan
• September 17, 2018
• Policy Brief

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made a foreign policy course-correction after realising that the strategic tilt towards the United States has not only grossly upset India’s geopolitical image but also undermined national interests.

• P. Stobdan
• July 06, 2018
• IDSA Comments

India should institute regular strategic and security dialogue and conferences to discuss issues of common interests and identify priority actions for stronger cooperation with SCO countries.

• P. Stobdan
• April 16, 2018
• IDSA Comments

The Doklam episode should prompt India and Bhutan to rethink their hitherto overlooked issue of resituating Menser and Darchen-Labrang in their academic discourse and policy positions.

• P. Stobdan
• February 16, 2018
• Policy Brief