news

I've been neglecting Bhadrakumar lately (through no fault of his own, I've just been busy) and he's put out some interesting pieces in the meantime.

In the first, he describes how India has turned around on the Israel-Palestine conflict:

India’s voting pattern in the United Nations with regard to the Israel-Palestine conflict is lately marked by a calibrated distancing from Israel. Only a few weeks ago, Israel’s ambassador in Delhi bullishly described the Indian stance as one of “100% support” to his country. But that is no more the case today.

Delhi has rejected the repeated Israeli entreaties to declare Hamas as a terrorist organisation, marking its independent opinion regarding the ecosystem of resistance movements. Indeed, this is a highly significant distinction that Delhi is making vis-a-vis the Israeli and Western narrative about Hamas. although India has not hesitated to condemn the violence directed against Israel on October 7, it refused to name Hamas.

...from a geopolitical perspective, Delhi has marked its distance from the US-Israeli campaign branding Iran as the instigator of extremist groups acting against Israel. Interestingly, on December 19, India was one of only thirty states — along with Russia and China — who voted against a UN resolution on “the human rights situation in Iran.”

The unprecedented unity among the Arab countries, the close coordination between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the huge groundswell of opinion in the Arab world against Israeli atrocities against the Palestinian populations in Gaza and West Bank — all this has created a new momentum in Middle East politics that has pitchforked the Palestine problem to the centre stage, which is something India cannot afford to ignore. ... The acolytes of Israel in the Indian strategic community feel utterly disillusioned. Simply put, an influential constituency in India and the interest groups that it spawned are no longer calling the shots in Delhi. This is going to be consequential.

In the second, he describes how the US war on Ansarallah is illusory, and they are more isolated and vulnerable than they would like to admit:

From a geopolitical perspective, the US has strong reasons to dominate the Red Sea where China has a naval base in Djibouti and Washington has been fuelling the civil war in Sudan to keep the country on the boil and block Russia’s plans to set up a submarine base.

Another littoral state Eritrea occupies a key strategic position on the eastern side of the Red Sea, which has strong economic, diplomatic and military ties with China and Russia. Indeed, the US efforts failed miserably to overthrow the democratically elected Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed of Ethiopia, the largest country in the Horn of Africa, who is aligned to Russia. Suffice to say, the US has not a single friend or ally left today in the entire eastern part of the Red Sea.

The big question is whether the US ploy to drag QUAD — and along with that, India — into the Red Sea will succeed. This is in some ways a replay of history when resisting pressure from the George W. Bush administration, the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government refused to join the US-led coalition of the willing to invade Iraq in 2003. In retrospect, that proved to be a wise decision. Then, as now, there are influential interest groups in Delhi who would probably argue for Indian participation in the US-led ‘war on terror’ against the Houthis.

...Stakes are indeed high for Israel to give ballast to the US-led coalition in the Red Sea. The US and Israel are desperate to rope in India in their upcoming ill-fated ‘war on terror’ against Yemen, a civilisational state, so as to give their risky enterprise a regional habitation and name.

And in the third, he talks about Putin's speech on December 19th:

Putin’s speech exuded a buoyant mood. The Russian economy has not only regained its pre-2022 momentum but is accelerating toward a 3.5% growth rate by the yearend, marked by rising incomes and purchasing power for millions of its citizens and an increase in living standards. Unemployment is at an all-time low and Russia has beaten back the Western sanctions and the attempts to isolate it in the international arena.

... On the military side, clearly, Russia will press forward the attritional war to its logical end of pushing the Ukrainian military into a strategic dead-end, which would mean seeking tactical improvements along the frontline, undermining Ukraine’s economic potential, inflicting military losses, and boosting Russia’s own defence industry on a scale that tips the balance of forces to weigh against any military adventures by the NATO.

In the final analysis, Putin asserted, Russia is determined to reclaim the “vast historical territories, Russian territories, along with the population” that the Bolsheviks transferred to Ukraine during the Soviet era. However, he drew an important distinction as regards the “western lands” of Ukraine (west of Dnieper) that are a legacy of World War II over which there could be territorial claims from Poland, Hungary and Romania, which at least in the case of Poland is also linked to the transfer of “eastern German lands, the Danzig Corridor, and Danzig itself” following the defeat of the Third Reich.

Putin took note that “people who live there (western Ukraine) – many of them, at least, I know this for sure, 100 percent – they want to return to their historical homeland. The countries that lost these territories, primarily Poland, dream of having them back.” That said, interestingly, Putin simply washed his hands off any territorial disputes that may arise between Ukraine and its eastern neighbours(all of whom are NATO countries.) Looking ahead, this is going to be a can of worms for the US. Recently, Russia’s intelligence chief Sergey Naryshkin used a powerful metaphor, warning that the US may face a “second Vietnam” in Ukraine that will come to haunt it for a long time.

...a decisive shift in the balance of forces against Ukraine is entirely conceivable by the end of next year, leading to an end of the conflict on Russia’s terms.