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Gokul Sahni Profile picture
Gokul Sahni
@Gokul_Sahni
Geopolitics, geoeconomics & Indian foreign policy. The Cold War. Cricket & spy fiction | MA @WarStudies King’s; MSc IR @RSIS_NTU; MBA @UniofOxford | Own views.
Nov 30 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
“Some current and former U.S. officials and law-of-war experts have said that the Pentagon’s lethal campaign — which has killed more than 80 people to date — is unlawful and may expose those most directly involved to future prosecution.” 1/4 washingtonpost.com/national-secur… “The alleged traffickers pose no imminent threat of attack against the United States and are not, as the Trump administration has tried to argue, in an “armed conflict” with the U.S., these officials and experts say.” 2/4
Nov 28 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
“I found myself posing the same question.. “Trade is an exchange. You provide something of value to me, and in return, I must offer something of value to you. So what is the product, in the future, that China would like to buy from the rest of the world?” 1/9 “The answers were revealing. A few said “soyabeans and iron ore” before realising this was not much help to a European. Some observed that Louis Vuitton handbags are popular and then went on to talk about the export prospects for fast-rising Chinese luxury brands.” 2/9
Nov 27 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
“then 🇺🇦’s foreign minister... “Here is Europe’s problem,” he replied. “You will not understand what war is until it gets under your skin. Mobilisation may be tearing our society apart, but wait until 🇫🇷 mothers have to send their sons to defend a Nato country bordering 🇷🇺.” 1/6 “Suddenly, France, at peace for the past 80 years and further away from Russia than Poland or Estonia, is debating war, death and sacrifice. Though public support for sending aid to Ukraine is still strong, until now that war was seen as a distant tragedy.” 2/6
Nov 25 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
“Across each city we visited, Chinese policymakers and industrialists seemed to have convinced themselves… the idea that the United States and China have reached an inversion point in their relative power, and the arc of history is bending in Beijing’s favor.” 1/9 “You could hear it in how they spoke about American policy and President Trump — as punchlines betraying dysfunction, malice, or incoherence. Chinese scholars were direct in their assessments of U.S. shortcomings in everything from shipbuilding to social cohesion.” 2/9
Nov 25 • 16 tweets • 3 min read
“I compiled here my observations on the culture, politics, and economy of India, the nation I came to see as perhaps the most striking experiment in democratic history.” 1/15 “These remarks are certainly superficial and crude, but in my defense, one of the mantras about India is that anything you can say about India, the opposite is also true.” 2/15
Nov 25 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
“there was a notable absence at the core of the conference that undercut its premise. In years past, the US delegation included senior administration officials, generals and admirals. This year, the Trump administration stayed home and forced the US military to do the same.” 1/11 “This isn’t an aberration: Also over the weekend, the administration boycotted the Group of 20 summit in South Africa. How does the Trump team expect to win any diplomatic victories when it’s not even on the field?” 2/11
Nov 25 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
“what is unfolding now in Washington is more than a corrective; it is a purge. The Trump administration’s contempt for the foreign service is manifest in its lackadaisical approach to appointments..” 1/7 “Instead, America has moved into the age of the envoy. The current handling of the Russia-Ukraine talks embodies this shift. Joining Steve Witkoff, the real estate developer.. who has been America’s lead negotiator with Russia, in the latest round of talks is Jared Kushner..”
Nov 22 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
“…India’s principal Opposition party retreated into its make-believe world in which it is a noble victim. Dedicated to perpetuating the preeminence of one family, it refused to subject itself to sincere self-assessment. It acted in erratic ways.” 1/5 “It taunted Modi in one breath for losing his majority and cast itself as the casualty of his machinations in the next. Modi was simultaneously derided as a loser and decried as a dictator; the system that had deprived his party of a majority was also accused of being rigged..”
Nov 22 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
“US army secretary Daniel Driscoll told European ambassadors and western officials at a volatile meeting in Kyiv late on Friday that he was “optimistic that now is the time for peace” — but warned that Washington would show little flexibility.” 1/5 “We are not negotiating details,” he said, according to a senior European official in the meeting at the Kyiv residence of US Chargé d’Affaires, Julie Davis. One senior European official described the tone of the meeting as “nauseating”.” 2/5
Nov 21 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
“After decades of deindustrialization, a poorly prepared United States would not — or could not — respond.

If historians someday try to identify exactly when China became America’s geopolitical equal, they might point to the outcome of Mr. Trump’s ill-considered trade war.” 1/10 “Mr. Trump’s team is moving urgently to bring manufacturing back to the United States, rebalance trade and rebuild the defense industrial base.

The outcome of the recent summit could undercut those important efforts.” 2/10
Nov 20 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
“In reality, India has too many reckless left-wing populists who don’t understand basic economics and woo voters with fiscally irresponsible promises. This helps explain why India’s economy is far behind China’s.” 1/4 “In a campaign debate, Mr. Mamdani suggested he was focused on New York’s problems rather than on foreign countries. In reality, he’s deeply in the weeds of domestic politics in distant lands. On both Israel and India he has staked out starkly partisan positions.” 2/4
Nov 20 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
“Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif is very conscious that he serves at Munir’s pleasure, not the National Assembly’s. As is… President Asif Zardari. In recent years, they have surrendered civilians’ hard-won privileges back to the army, and to Munir in particular.” 1/7 “Now the army chief has been raised above the leaders of the other two forces, and put in sole charge of the country’s nuclear weapons systems. As Chief of Defense Forces, the clock on Munir’s tenure has been reset… he will serve out a fresh five-year term in his new post.” 2/7
Nov 19 • 12 tweets • 2 min read
Interesting piece by @thomaswright08:

“President Trump has shown that a nationalist, protectionist, and transactional approach to global affairs can be sustained without immediate calamity.” 1/12 “Calamity could still arrive before November 2028... But if no bill has yet come due by the next election, Trump’s opponents will need new arguments to convince Americans that might does not make right.” 2/12
Nov 19 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
“While no previous Japanese leader had put things quite so clearly, there was no real change in Japan’s underlying position. A Chinese attack on Taiwan would pose a massive threat to Japan.” 1/9 “In the short term, war would disrupt trade, blocking imports of food and energy without which Japan couldn’t survive, and placing tens of thousands of Japanese visitors, students and businesspeople in Taiwan at risk.” 2/9
Nov 18 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
“In recent years, the pace and scale of illegal migration has been profound. In an increasingly volatile and more mobile world, huge numbers of people are on the move. While some are refugees, others are economic migrants, seeking to take advantage of the asylum system.” 1/5 “The pressure placed on local communities has been profound. The burden borne by taxpayers has been unfair. More than 100,000 people now live in asylum accommodation, funded by the taxpayer.” 2/5
Nov 18 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
“Leftward bias at the BBC—as at most major media organizations—has been endemic for ages. One of my strongest memories from my time there was the day Margaret Thatcher resigned as British prime minister in 1990. The mood in the building recalled Paris in August 1944.” 1/5 “in the past 10 years, it has, like other institutions worldwide, been captured by the cultural revolution that has swept the world of graduate-level work, seized by an activist class not content to report the news but insisting instead on telling people what to think.” 2/5
Nov 18 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
“photo taken at Turnberry golf course at the end of July captured the situation.. von der Leyen was pictured smiling weakly, with her thumbs-up, next to a beaming Donald Trump. 🇪🇺 had just meekly agreed to accept a 15% base tariff on EU exports to 🇺🇸 without hitting back.” 1/12 “The moment was all the more chastening because trade was thought to be the one area where the EU could stand toe-to-toe with global superpowers. The European single market is comparable in size to the economies of China or the US. The EU acts as a single unit on trade issues.”
Nov 16 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
“The State Department had deleted history.. Since 1991, the department has been required by law to publish “a thorough, accurate, and reliable” history of U.S. foreign policy within 30 years of the events. It does this in the Foreign Relations of the United States series..” 1/4 “This January, the State Department did just that when it republished on its website a volume about the Reagan administration — without 15 pages on the risk of inadvertent nuclear war sparked by a 1983 NATO exercise.” 2/4
Nov 16 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
“chief minister of Bihar morphed into the Joe Biden of India, rolled out for speeches but otherwise cloistered behind aides alarmed by his gaffes, blank stares and memory lapses. Only Nitish Kumar, 74, won, despite more obvious infirmities than Biden.” 1/8 “I was expecting Kumar’s health and stalled progress to be major issues. Instead, I found deeply traditional Kumar backers still grateful for all their long-standing chief minister has done for them. They consider it rude to discuss his health, much less vote him out.” 2/8
Nov 10 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
“Is President Donald Trump a peacemaker or a warmonger? An interventionist or an isolationist? The answer is: yes. He contains multitudes, and it’s nearly impossible to sort out or explain the disparate strands of his foreign policy.” 1/6 “Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) said on CNN last week that Trump’s “nonstop tours around the world and nonstop meetings with foreign leaders is not America First. It’s just not. I think domestic policy should be the most important issue.” 2/6
Nov 9 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
“laced with identity politics and seething with resentment, Mamdani abandoned his cool disposition and made clear that his view of politics isn’t about unity. It isn’t about letting people build better lives for themselves. It is about identifying class enemies..” 1/5 “from landlords who take advantage of tenants to “the bosses” who exploit workers — and then crushing them. His goal is not to increase wealth but to dole it out to favored groups. The word “growth” didn’t appear in the speech, but President Donald Trump garnered eight mentions.”