China’s growing regional dominance is driving India to bolster its own economic, security and political ties in Southeast Asia. But unlike Beijing, New Delhi lacks the deep pockets or military might to pursue its “Act East” agenda alone.
Recent history indicates that despite its global networks and ambitions, Iran is a far more formidable threat closer to home.
India's leaders have long espoused secularism as a means of knitting together a diverse array of peoples and faiths. The current government's privileging of Hindu nationalism, however, risks unraveling the country's fabric.
The history of calendrical reform has been shaped by the egos of emperors, disputes among churches, the insights of astronomers and mathematicians, and immutable geopolitical realities. Geopolitical themes are present both in the creation of the Gregorian calendar and its permanence, and its ascendance and enduring primacy tells us much about the nature of the international system.
Whether and how people celebrate Christmas is clearly a complicated affair, bearing only a subtle relationship to Christianity itself. The contemporary, increasingly international version of Christmas is less a religious festival than a celebration of affluence, modernity, and above all Westernness. Without anyone willing it, Christmas has become part of a package of Western soft power.
By Ian Morris
Everything that informs geopolitics can be found in South Asia: challenging demographics, geographic diversity, and contentious, ill-defined borders. The Himalayan Mountains form the northern border of South Asia, whose two main rivers, the Indus and the Ganges, support the region’s great population centers. India is the region’s dominant country, home to the world’s fastest growing economy. But its rivalry with neighboring Pakistan, a fellow nuclear power and growing consumer market, has made South Asia one of the world’s most dangerous nuclear flashpoints. The region is also a testament to how militancy and militarism can undermine the regional integration needed to unleash higher economic growth.
