In 2009, as I gazed at the gaping hillside holes in Bamiyan where once two imposing Buddha statues had stood as silent sentinels for more than 1,500 years, two emotions were dominant. The first was …
Articles by: "Ramesh Thakur"
This is not an article I had expected, intended or wanted to write. I have politely declined requests to write on the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) in relation to the current crisis in Myanmar and …
In the Economist Intelligence Unit’s annual Democracy Index published in early February, the world’s top five democracies are Norway, Iceland, Sweden, New Zealand and Canada. North Korea sits triumphantly at the bottom. India is classified …
On 23 February, India accounted for 11 million of the world’s 112 million Covid-19 cases and 156,498 of 2,848,247 world deaths. Only the US had more cases and the US, Brazil and Mexico have recorded …
Critics of nuclear weapons have long pointed to two sets of risks. First, deterrence stability depends on all fail-safe mechanisms working every single time in every bomb-possessing country. That is an impossibly high bar for …
As President-elect Joe Biden and Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris prepare to be sworn in on 20 January, there’s an expectation of US re-engagement with multilateralism and a return to some semblance of normality, stability, continuity and …
Amid the nightmare of a global pandemic and the crumbling pillars of nuclear arms control, the leadership of one of the few stars in the nuclear firmament still shining bright is due for vote in …
Shinzo Abe was born into Japan’s political royalty. His maternal grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, barely escaped trial as a Class-A war criminal yet he served as prime minister from 1957 to 1960. His paternal grandfather, Kan …
Nuclear-weapon-free zones (NWFZs) deepen and extend the scope of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and embed the non-nuclear-weapon status of NPT states parties in additional treaty-based arrangements. This is why several NPT review conferences have repeatedly …
The confluence of forces built around shared unease and growing anxiety over the implications of China’s rapid military expansion, salami-slicing territorial creep and ‘wolf warrior’ diplomacy is fertile ground for the revival of the quadrilateral …
Herewith a preliminary assessment of losers and winners from the global pandemic. The list is subject to change without notice. Losers The United States may turn out to be the biggest loser of all. Washington’s …
In my previous post, I noted that there seemed to be no appreciable difference in fatality rates for US states that instituted lockdowns early or late, or among European countries whose social-distancing and lockdown measures …