The U.S.’s continued insistence on talking directly to the Taliban without the involvement of the Afghan government, has worrying implications for the region and especially India. In conversation with Ashwin Ahmad, SNI Editor Surya Gangadharan and Associate Editor Amitabh Revi say that the suspicious motives of U.S.’s Afghan envoy Zalmay Khalilzad during the ongoing peace talks, the hard to be believed assurances of the Taliban to the U.S. on curbing terror, and the ‘hidden’ Pakistan hand, will continue to ensure an unstable and violence-ridden Afghanistan in the coming future.
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.
For eighty years, the cross and the agency have traveled together. Missionaries mapped territories, pacified populations, and laundered political operations as charity. When India asks where was the money used, Washington sends a Secretary of State to make the question stop.
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.
The Hormuz closure wasn't a miscalculation — it was the missing piece. With maritime routes uninsurable and IMEC the last corridor standing, Trump has seized control of global trade infrastructure through a private governance body accountable to no one but its chairman for life.
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.
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.
For eighty years, the cross and the agency have traveled together. Missionaries mapped territories, pacified populations, and laundered political operations as charity. When India asks where was the money used, Washington sends a Secretary of State to make the question stop.
