Dr. Brahma Chellaney

In its centennial anniversary issue released today, @ForeignAffairs has a special review section, "Books for the Century." My book, Water: Asia's New Battleground, has been named as one of the six essential Asia-Pacific books published over the century. foreignaffairs.com/reviews/books-…

My column: In most democracies, outsourcing high-stakes diplomacy to family members and business associates would provoke outrage. But Trump has normalized precisely this practice by relying on his son-in-law and his business partner to conduct sensitive diplomacy. He has recast US diplomacy in his own image – personalized, transactional and opaque. project-syndicate.org/commentary/tru…

Canada's main intelligence agency, in its annual report released this weekend, acknowledges that some Khalistan extremists "use Canada as a base to promote, fundraise, or plan violence primarily in India." It said such extremists "pose a national security threat to Canada and to Canadian interests." #toc3" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">canada.ca/en/security-in…

Digging for Gold, Fueling an Insurgency The Baloch insurgency has long been driven by local grievances over the plundering of Balochistan’s mineral wealth. Now, by unveiling $1.3 billion in investments, Trump is reinforcing that perception, especially by coveting the Reko Diq mine, whose vast gold and copper reserves could generate up to $70 billion in profits. A recent uptick in separatist attacks suggests the insurgency — long focused on the Pakistani military and Chinese projects — may now also target U.S. interests. nytimes.com/2026/05/03/wor…

Like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE, Germany allowed the U.S. military to launch attacks on Iran from bases on its territory. Trump’s decision to withdraw 5,000 of the 35,000 U.S. troops stationed in Germany has been framed as a response to Chancellor Merz’s criticism of the Iran war. In reality, the drawdown had been in the works since last year, as part of a broader U.S. strategic shift from Europe to the Indo-Pacific. The move will effectively return U.S. troop levels in Germany to their pre-Ukraine war baseline. Germany, long the hub of the American military presence in Europe, remains the second-largest host of U.S. forces worldwide, after Japan. It hosts the headquarters of both U.S. European Command (EUCOM) and U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) in Stuttgart. Ramstein Air Base in Germany serves as the primary gateway for U.S. personnel and supplies moving into Europe, the Middle East and Africa, while also functioning as a critical hub for drone operations and medical evacuations.

The Israeli military’s tactics in southern Lebanon replicate its “Gaza model,” yet provoke little global outrage. The reason is stark: desensitization. The absence of consequences for Gaza’s devastation has normalized such conduct, stripping it of shock value. There is also a palpable paralysis in international bodies such as the United Nations. nytimes.com/interactive/20…

Trump agrees with Iran's April 21 letter to the UN Security Council:

Trump to Congress, May 1: Hostilities with Iran "have been terminated." Trump to Florida audience, May 1: "You know we’re in a war." @EricaLG nytimes.com/2026/05/01/us/…

The Alternate Universe of Donald J. Trump: Few Americans buy his claim that the U.S. has “already won” the Iran war, “but I want to win by a bigger margin.” That disconnect helps explain his fury at media coverage, from calling @nytimes “seditious” and branding @CNN “the enemy.” Public sentiment is moving the other way. A @washingtonpost poll released yesterday found that 61% of Americans view the war as a “mistake.”

Trump's naval blockade of Iran is obscuring his other blockade — the one against Cuba that has entered its fourth month and is causing a worsening humanitarian crisis marked by blackouts, water scarcity, failing hospitals and food shortages. The current U.S. strategy is the first time a modern superpower has used simultaneous, open-ended naval blockades as a primary coercive tool against two separate nations in different hemispheres during peacetime or while a ceasefire is in effect.

The indictment of a former adviser to Anthony Fauci is the first attempt to bring to justice those that funneled US public funds for dangerous experiments at China’s military-linked Wuhan Institute of Virology, from where the Covid virus may have escaped. wsj.com/opinion/david-…

The Iran war has exposed systemic vulnerabilities in the American way of war, offering China a real-time tutorial in how to exploit them. Iranian reprisals degraded U.S. air defenses, blinded early-warning systems and left many of its 13 regional bases inoperable. Just as consequential is the drain on U.S. munitions, forcing the Pentagon to divert stockpiles from Asia. This has thinned deterrence in the Indo-Pacific just as China’s coercive power expands. Replenishment will take years, not months. And the problem is not just quantity — the war has exposed deeper weaknesses such as vulnerable forward bases, the difficulty of countering drone swarms and how quickly maritime superiority erodes in narrow seas. thehill.com/opinion/intern…

Ghalibaf’s mockery centers on the idea that Trump and his "secretary of war" are geographically illiterate. Of late, the slight to Hegseth's IQ is embedded in Ghalibaf’s posts. Hegseth this week also faced mocking at home from Democratic lawmakers. x.com/mb_ghalibaf/st…

“A blockade is considered an act of war under international law.” If a foreign power was by force preventing ships from entering or leaving our ports, hunting down our ships on the high seas, is there any chance we wouldn’t consider ourselves at war? No. wsj.com/politics/polic…

In my latest column I explain how Trump's China policy has shifted from confrontation to accommodation. A rivalry of near-peers is giving way to something closer to a creditor-debtor dynamic, in which debtor U.S. seeks relief and creditor China sets terms. thehill.com/opinion/intern…

Britain’s Kohinoor “Curse” For centuries, the Kohinoor was more than a rare gem; it was a talisman of power, believed to confer the right to rule India. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani has revived attention to the priceless giant diamond by saying that if he met King Charles privately, he “would probably encourage him to return the Kohinoor” to India. In 1849, the British forced the 10-year-old child king, Duleep Singh, to surrender the Kohinoor during the colonial era. There is a centuries-old Hindu text associated with the Kohinoor that carries a chilling warning: “He who owns this diamond will own the world, but will also know all its misfortunes. Only God, or a woman, can wear it with impunity.” The legend has proved remarkably resilient. Many male rulers who possessed the diamond met violent or tragic ends, including blinding, torture and the collapse of their empires. British power was at its global peak when the Kohinoor was taken from India as a trophy of war. After the diamond reached England in 1850, however, a long imperial decline followed, including the Indian Rebellion of 1857 (the First War of Independence), setting the stage for the empire’s gradual unraveling. About nine decades later, the empire vanished. The irony is striking: To ward off the “curse,” the British, led by Prince Albert, had the diamond re-cut in 1852 to change its “fate” as well as its appearance. In the process, the Kohinoor lost over 40% of its weight, from 186 carats to 105.6 carats. No male British monarch has ever worn the diamond, which has been set only in the crowns of women. Still, the timeline of the Kohinoor’s possession broadly mirrors Britain’s fall from a global hegemon to a diminished regional power. Today, as Britain holds onto the diamond while refusing to return it, its declining standing continues — despite the “curse” serving as a convenient historical rationale for keeping the Kohinoor tucked away in the Tower of London rather than featuring it in active royal ceremonies.

If so, why was the ceasefire announced not by India but by Trump? x.com/ANI/status/204… Mr. Rajnath Singh himself told Parliament on July 28, 2025, that Operation Sindoor was launched at 1:05 a.m. on May 7 by bombing nine terrorist camps in Pakistan and that just 30 minutes later, at 1:35 a.m., India informed Pakistan through military and diplomatic channels of its readiness to call off the operation if there were no Pakistani reprisals. Then Modi told Parliament on July 29, 2025, that India achieved its “objectives” by striking those terrorist camps. The Indian government, regrettably, displayed strategic naiveté — both in assuming its objectives had been met by striking just largely empty terrorist-training camps and in urging Pakistan not to retaliate. After the Pahalgam terrorist massacre, India waited 15 days before launching the short-lived May 7–10 Operation Sindoor, giving Pakistan ample time to disperse assets and empty key camps. Operation Sindoor may have killed “over 100 terrorists,” as Mr. Rajnath Singh claimed last July, but no senior figure on India’s most-wanted list was eliminated. For Pakistan, such state-reared figures are expendable — easily replaced through its vast madrassah network. How, then, were India’s strategic objectives served by targeting only low-level proxies? The operation ultimately underscored a political failure to distinguish between tactical gains and strategic effect. Operation Sindoor was a tactical success but a strategic failure, one that left Pakistan emboldened. The cessation of hostilities after just three days helped rehabilitate Pakistan’s international standing, particularly in the Islamic world, where it was seen as having held its own against a stronger adversary. That perception proved consequential, contributing to the emergence of the Saudi-Pakistan mutual defense pact and Trump’s open embrace of Pakistan.