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  • Monthly Review Essays

About M. K. Bhadrakumar

M.K. Bhadrakumar is a former Indian diplomat.
  • WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus announced approval for China’s Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine, Geneva, May 7, 2021

    China on the horizon as ‘world’s pharmacy’

    Originally published: Indian Punchline on May 10, 2021 (more by Indian Punchline)  |

    The World Health Organisation’s approval Friday for China’s COVID-19 vaccine known as Sinopharm dramatically transforms the ecosystem of the pandemic.

  • The viral picture that defines India’s Covid distress — an exhausted Chandrakala Singh, sitting stone-faced in an electric rickshaw with the body of her son Vineet Singh (cropped out) by her feet on a busy street in the city of Varanasi in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, emblematic of the plight of Indians trapped between a raging pandemic and a healthcare system on the brink of collapse, April 22, 2021 (Photo by BBC)

    Modi Govt’s vaccine diplomacy unravels—within India and abroad

    Originally published: Indian Punchline on April 24, 2021 (more by Indian Punchline)  |

    The German Chancellor Angela Merkel has faulted India for not fulfilling its obligation to supply COVID-19 vaccines to Europe. The Politico paper quoted Merkel as saying,  We now have a situation with India where, in connection with the emergency situation of the pandemic, we are worried whether the pharmaceutical products will still come to us. […]

  • US President Joe Biden departs after delivering remarks on Russia in the East Room at White House, Washington, DC, April 15, 2021

    U.S. expects Russia to submit. Will it?

    Originally published: Indian Punchline on April 17, 2021 (more by Indian Punchline)  |

    In his landmark foreign policy speech delivered from the U.S. state department on February 4, President Joe Biden had proclaimed that “America is back. Diplomacy is back at the centre of our foreign policy.” That maxim was put to test last week. And it failed to make the grade.  

  • US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Porter sails in the Bosphorus, Istanbul, on its way to the Black Sea, January 28, 2021

    Frozen conflict is hotting up

    Originally published: Indian Punchline on April 3, 2021 (more by Indian Punchline)  |

    The terrible beauty of “frozen conflicts” is that it takes hardly any effort to turn up the heat and re-escalate them into hot violence, but pressing the “pause” button later would need consensus, which is not so easy.

  • Syria in ruins after ten years of conflict (File photo)

    Ten years on, Syria is almost destroyed. Who’s to blame?

    Originally published: Indian Punchline on March 20, 2021 (more by Indian Punchline)  |

    In George Orwell’s novel Animal Farm, the ruling pigs led by Napoleon constantly rewrote history in order to justify and reinforce their own continuing power. The rewriting by the western powers of the history of the ongoing conflict in Syria leaps out of Orwell. 

  • Poverty is the ultimate denial of human rights

    U.S. Exceptionalism Surges Again. Will It Fly?

    Originally published: Indian Punchline on February 27, 2021 (more by Indian Punchline)  |

    In a statement marking the “return” of the United States to the United Nations Human Rights Council on Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken disclosed that the Biden Administration is placing democracy and human rights at the centre of American foreign policy. 

  • Disengagement between Chinese and Indian forces at the banks of the Pangong lake in Eastern Ladakh

    India’s forever wars and forever warriors

    Originally published: Indian Punchline on February 19, 2021 (more by Indian Punchline)  |

    Looking ahead, pre-conditions now exist for a positive turn to the India-China bilateral relationship.

  • Protests in Myanmar’s central plains after the military coup.

    U.S. reboots Quad in unseemly hurry

    Originally published: Indian Punchline on February 10, 2021 (more by Indian Punchline)  |

    The Japanese news agency Kyodo reported from Washington Sunday quoting “a source” that the Biden Administration had proposed to New Delhi, Tokyo and Canberra the idea of holding an online summit meeting of the leaders of the “Quad”. 

  • In this file photo dated Dec. 2, 2015 Myanmar military chief General Min Aung Hlaing (L) and National League for Democracy party leader Aung San Suu Kyi (R) shake hands after their meeting at the Commander in-Chief’s office in Naypyidaw.

    India needs course correction on Myanmar

    Originally published: Indian Punchline on February 7, 2021 (more by Indian Punchline)  |

    The ASEAN Chair’s statement of Feb, 1 recalled the “purposes and the principles enshrined in the ASEAN Charter” which include respecting the principles of sovereignty, equality, territorial integrity, non-interference, consensus and unity in diversity.” 

  • The 13th National Congress of the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam got under way in Hanoi on January 25, 2021

    China cherishes Hanoi’s nay to ‘Quad’

    Originally published: Indian Punchline on January 25, 2021 (more by Indian Punchline)  |

    The 13th national congress of Vietnam’s ruling communist party, which began in Hanoi on Monday is an event of exceptional significance for the country’s internal politics and future trajectory of development, regional politics and the geopolitics of the Asia-Pacific.

  • Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny was detained at the airport in Moscow upon arrival from Germany, January 17, 2021

    U.S. makes aggressive opening move on Russian chessboard

    Originally published: Indian Punchline on January 18, 2021 (more by Indian Punchline)  |

    A regime change project in Russia was launched on Sunday with the return of political activist Alexei Navalny to Moscow. It was a highly symbolic event—except that Navalny was traveling by an airplane from Germany and not in a sealed train.

  • Russia’s pipe-layer crane ship Fortuna, capable of laying about 1km of undersea pipe a day (File photo)

    Germany draws another line in the sand for the U.S.

    Originally published: Indian Punchline on January 12, 2021 (more by Indian Punchline)  |

    Maas underscored that Berlin “does not need to talk about European sovereignty if that is understood as us (Germany) doing everything in future the way Washington wants.”

  • A container ship at Shenzhen Port, China (File photo)

    India’s farewell to ASEAN as it boards RCEP train

    Originally published: Indian Punchline on November 14, 2020 (more by Indian Punchline)  |

    It comes in the specific context of the signing of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership [RCEP] on Sunday—the mega free trade agreement centred on the ASEAN plus China, Japan and South Korea. 

  • Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) signed the statements on the “comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for a new era” and on “strengthening contemporary global strategic stability”, Moscow, June 5, 2019

    The Sino-Russian Alliance Comes of Age — Part 3

    Originally published: Indian Punchline on September 22, 2020 (more by Indian Punchline)  |

    Soon after becoming the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping is known to have spoken about the former Soviet Union. The first time was in December 2012, when, in comments to party functionaries, he reportedly remarked that China still had to “profoundly remember the lesson of the Soviet collapse.”

  • Yevgeny Khaldei’s iconic photo of the Red Army soldiers raising the Soviet flag on top of the Reichstag building in Berlin, May 1945.

    The Sino-Russian Alliance Comes of age — Part 1

    Originally published: Indian Punchline on September 14, 2020 (more by Indian Punchline)  |

    The joint statements between two countries are usually riveted on a particular event but in extraordinary circumstances involving great powers, it could assume an epochal character and can be viewed as diplomatic communication that reflects what the Germans call the zeitgeist

  • The Hindu Russia's realpolitik on Libya - The Hindu

    Turkey’s big bet has put Libya in center of a global power struggle

    M. K. Bhadrakumar

    The series of debilitating military setbacks that Libya’s renegade general Khalifa Haftar suffered in recent months have spurred diplomatic activities over the conflict in the country. But the war is far from over.

  • Unian NATO tells Russia to stop meddling, in first talks since Skripal

    NATO returns to Libya to challenge Russia

    M. K. Bhadrakumar

    The great game in Libya has begun surging with the United States shedding its strategic ambivalence and resorting to a proactive role. At the end of May, the Pentagon marked a dramatic escalation by accusing Moscow of bolstering “Kremlin-linked mercenaries” who are allegedly helping Khalifa Haftar, the eastern warlord in Libya.

  • Pexels Free stock photo of #Aleppo #Homs #Ghouta #Daraa, russia, Syria

    How Russia is botching its alliance with Syria

    M. K. Bhadrakumar

    Russia’s relationships with its client states have never been easy. Of course, managing client states is always a complicated exercise. The Kremlin’s cupboard is full of skeletons—Hungary (1956), Czechoslovakia (1968), Cuba (1962), Afghanistan (1980), Ukraine (2014) and so on.

  • Sanitising the shrine of Hazrat Masoumeh against the coronavirus in the holy city of Qom, Iran, February 25, 2020. File photo

    Pompeo and the capricious virus

    Originally published: Indian Punchline on May 4, 2020 (more by Indian Punchline)  |

    Iran has delivered a devastating blow to the ego of the Trump administration, puncturing it beyond repair, by its announcement Sunday that mosques will start reopening in low-risk areas of the country from May 5. 

  • Richard Lugar Public Health Centre in Georgia, which Russia alleges to be a Pentagon laboratory for biological weapon development. Beijing has called on the US to respond to Russian concerns.

    Russia-China entente deepens in the shadow of the pandemic

    Originally published: Indian Punchline on May 2, 2020 (more by Indian Punchline)  |

    The Russian-Chinese entente emerged as one of the most significant templates of international politics in the recent period since the hugely consequential developments in Ukraine in 2014 that led to western sanctions against Moscow, which in turn galvanised the latter’s ‘pivot to Asia’. 

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    Editor Cuban Flag, Museum of the Revolution, Havana, Cuba, 2012

    I have 2 favourite sayings. One draws upon the dialogue in Shakespeare’s Henry the VI part 2 when Jack Cade envisions that the effect of his plot will be that “all the realm shall be in common.” To this, comrade Dick responds, “the first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”

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