I used to roll my eyes whenever I boarded Air India One and had to fly with the Indian prime minister to some corner of the world. The 747 is about 15 years old and feels it. Whenever I’ve attended a Group of 20 summit or some similar global powwow Air India has always stood out – for its shabbiness. Read more

Fiscal cliffs and walls are all the rage these days. One of the more curious financial facts about the United States is that it has a student debt bomb. Outstanding red ink collected by students for their education is over one trillion dollars. Read more

Afghanistan is going to make a comeback in the international political arena. It shouldn’t be, going by what everyone seems to believe. The United States is pulling out of Afghanistan. The Taliban and Hamid Karzai will duke it out, but ultimately the rest of the world will just yawn. Afghans killing Afghans. The oldest story in Southwest Asia. Read more

As the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty is heading for its final week of discussions, India is trying to leverage its position as one of the world’s largest weapons importer to craft an agreement to its liking. Read more

The United States and Pakistan are in a death spiral of invective and abuse, a good thing for India one would presume. Largely yes but with a little smidgeon of no. Read more

The new Obama administration’s defence strategy came out last week and caused a few ripples. But for the most part there wasn’t anything in it that didn’t strike one as being just common sense. Read more

The East Asia Summit has begun in Bali, Indonesia, and is generating a lot more interest than such powwows normally do. The reason: we are seeing a recommitment by the United States to maintaining the stability of the Indo-Pacific area. Read more

The “jasmine revolutions,” or the Arab spring, have been seen through two different prisms by the world’s two largest democracies. Read more

Japan is on the nuclear brink, the jasmine revolution is withering and the Indian parliament is in an uproar over a Wikileak document about how money was used to buy votes in favour of the Indo-US nuclear deal. Having immersed myself all day in these issues, I will write about something completely different. Read more

In the Zone

In the capital of Western Australia for my second stint at the local university’s In the Zone conference, I’m reminded again how much the country’s only Indian Ocean facing state is determined to seek a worldview distinct from that of the more populous bits of Australia that face the Pacific. Read more