Gautam Bambawale has a unique distinction: He was India’s high commissioner in Pakistan, Ambassador to Bhutan and China from where he retired last November. In this exclusive interview to SNI, his first since returning to India from Beijing, Bambawale offers a perspective from his tenure in the two capitals that are at the core of South Block’s strategic concerns.
The post-Cold War order is fading, but the next world order has yet to emerge. As America, China, Europe, and Russia reposition for an uncertain future, old assumptions are collapsing. This is the story of borrowed power, strategic decline, rising rivals, and a world caught between eras.
When Trump flew to Beijing carrying an unwinnable war, rising fuel prices, and a closed strait he could not reopen alone, Xi gave him pageantry with a twist. Nothing was signed. Yet, perhaps everything was decided.
Xi Jinping enters the May summit having brokered a ceasefire Trump credited publicly, weaponized Taiwan's opposition for diplomatic cover, and — per US intelligence — quietly arming Iran through cutout channels. This is not three stories. It is one architecture.
Applying Graham Allison's Thucydides Trap to the 2026 Iran war. Blending asymmetric war economics, $3T market distortions, alliance fractures, and revealing the deeper US-China power struggle beneath the conflict.
Disruptive promise of and June 12th US ban on Mythos shook the world. There are competing AI visions - Krishna vs Clarke. Convergence of Quantum, AGI/ASI and Crypto may unprecedentedly destroy our world if not enslave humanity.
Musk promises abundance for all. A Scottish earl explained 200 years ago why the machines that make everything will make their owners richer than ever, and everyone else dependent. The real question was never the size of your ration. It is who owns the river, and who holds the rod above him.
Disparagement humor is a built and financed weapon. It boxes a people with a label, hardens the label into stigma, and makes the sacred laughable until a civilization forgets why it was worth saving. Rome never learned this lesson. However, India needs to. Ask - Who is paying for the laughter?
India's exam crisis is real. NEET leaked. JEE was hacked. CBSE's answer sheets were blurred. But the movement built on student anger arrived too organized, scaled too fast, and demands regime change — not reform. A sixty-year-old doctrine explains exactly what is happening.
