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Gokul Sahni Profile picture
Gokul Sahni
@Gokul_Sahni
Geopolitics, geoeconomics, & Cold War(s) - India’s viewpoint | MA Modern War @WarStudies King’s; MSc IR @RSIS_NTU; MBA @UniofOxford | Own views.
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.”
Nov 8 • 20 tweets • 3 min read
“debate within the Democratic Party about whether to move left on economics or right on culture. That debate misses a deeper shift in 🇺🇸 life. The largest chunk of voters still say the economy is their top concern — but they increasingly view it through a partisan lens.” 1/20 “When their party is in power, they think the economy is strong; when the other side takes over, that same economy suddenly looks dire. In effect, politics now shapes people’s sense of economic reality, not the other way around.” 2/20
Nov 7 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
“South Asia’s largest economy is surprisingly stable. This year the country has been both a victim of.. Trump’s trade war, singled out for especially punitive tariffs owing to its purchases of Russian oil, and a participant in a shooting war with nuclear-armed Pakistan.” 1/9 “Its economy has barely noticed. Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka are all participating in IMF programmes, along with 🇵🇰.. India’s ten-year government bonds yield less than 7%, down slightly from the start of the year and far below the 12% that 🇵🇰 and 🇱🇰 are forced to cough up.”
Nov 6 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
“Less than a year ago, his own team had put the odds of his victory at about three per cent. Back then, he was just polling at one per cent.” 1/11 “These apparently “corrupt candidates” representing an increasingly delegitimised political establishment were not going to stand a chance against Mamdani’s uber progressive platform, which promises to tackle the city’s affordability crisis.” 2/11
Nov 5 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
“We should expect big cities to be more liberal than the national average. But the gap used to be modest and therefore no threat to cohesion. Some time around the millennium, it began to widen.” 1/10 “Perhaps the fall in crime that started in the 1990s freed urban voters to prioritise issues on which their instincts were more leftwing. Or immigrants reached such a critical mass in cities that conservatives, with their nativist bent, could no longer command a hearing there.”
Nov 1 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
“There is such a thing as a cosmopolitan conservative. When I want to discuss Dubai — and when do I not? — I have to turn to apolitical or right-leaning acquaintances. With liberals, the conversation starts and ends with muttered distaste about human rights in the Gulf.” 1/7 “Good. Nice to see a bit of western moral confidence in these otherwise self-doubting times. But applied consistently, this attitude can amount to a scandalised recoil from much of the rest of the world.” 2/7
Oct 31 • 12 tweets • 2 min read
“… a ceasefire in the trade war. But that is not the same as a peace deal — a longer-term framework to manage the world’s most consequential relationship. It paused escalation and bought time for both sides. The crucial question now is how America will use that time.” 1/12 “Over the past 10 years, Washington’s response to China looks like an effort to beat Beijing by becoming Beijing — restricting trade, directing supply chains, politicizing investment and wielding tariffs as instruments of presidential will.” 2/12
Oct 31 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Bipolarity emerges?

“Unlike nearly 10 years ago, when Trump’s first trade offensive caught Beijing by surprise, this time a better prepared and economically more powerful China has been able to fight its once far mightier opponent to a standstill.” 1/4 “Since Trump announced his “liberation day” tariffs in April, Beijing has on at least three occasions blocked Washington from carrying out punitive measures and forced it back to the negotiating table.” 2/4