Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk met with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Defense Minister A.K. Antony in New Delhi last month while Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi visited Poland around the same time to meet with Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski. In an e-mail interview, Patryk Kugiel, an analyst at the Polish Institute of International Affairs, explains the context for recent developments in Poland-South Asia relations. WPR: What have Poland’s ties with Asia in general and South Asia in particular been historically? Patryk Kugiel: Poland’s first links with South Asia date back to the 16th century, but significant [...]
Ajai Shukla builds a strong case for why an immediate American withdrawal from Afghanistan would serve India’s interests, despite concerns in New Delhi to the contrary. The case rests on three major arguments. First, the vacuum created by the U.S. withdrawal would splinter the insurgent factions, and set them at odds not only with each other but also with their Pakistani handlers. Second, the epicenter of terrorist safe havens is no longer Afghanistan, but Pakistan, and a U.S. withdrawal would free Washington’s hands to target them by removing its dependence on Pakistani supply routes for the war effort. And finally, [...]
According to Sourabh Gupta, we’ve all been a bit quick to label China the neighborhood bully when it comes to the recent standoff over a Chinese trawler captain that Japan detained for fishing in coastal waters of the disputed Senkaku Island chain. The reason? The two countries already have in place coastal fisheries agreements that explicitly and wisely decouple fisheries disputes from any larger territorial disputes, for the express purpose of preventing them from triggering the kind of diplomatic incident that ultimately took place. And those agreements clearly give legal jurisdiction over any infractions off of the Senkaku Islands to [...]
