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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.
Dec 20 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
“The U.S. is the most powerful country in history, and that power has actually grown in the last three decades, as its companies and technologies dominate the globe. It cannot limit itself to what is going on in its own backyard without massive consequences..” 1/6 “the era when President James Monroe declared his eponymous doctrine in 1823. The U.S. was a small agricultural republic of about 10 million people and 24 states, mostly east of the Mississippi River. Its share of global GDP was 2.6 percent, about a tenth of what it is today.”
Dec 19 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
“Leftist ideology—especially the ultra-Left variant that speaks of an ideal, perfectly just world—often feels utopian. While such ideas strongly appeal to sensitive and idealistic minds, they tend to strike the general public as unrealistic.” 1/5 “when the Left itself is losing political ground and its narrative has limited appeal, the disproportionate influence of Left-leaning leaders and their ideas on the Congress’s top leadership—particularly Rahul Gandhi—often appears to pull him away from core, ground-level issues.”
Dec 19 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
“Today... Women walk freely in the streets without Islamic hijab. A young generation that sees no future amid economic hardship and international isolation refuses to surrender social freedoms, such as how to dress and what kinds of fun to have.” 1/8 “What is happening in Tehran surprises its older residents daily. We check the dateline of viral videos to see if they show the expatriate community in Dubai.. only to see that these events are unfolding here at home. Street music events now happen openly, and women sing solo.”
Dec 18 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
“the real alarm lies in the paradox this recoil exposes. Europe talks about defending Ukraine and confronting Russia. It has not made the psychological leap that must precede a society truly preparing for conflict.” 1/7 “In most historical cases, governments preparing for war begin by organizing their societies, shaping expectations... Europe is doing something different, something I find strange since it is rebuilding armies and supply chains while leaving the public in a peacetime mindset.”
Dec 18 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
“Two decades of 7.2% growth would bring India to $48,609 — about as rich as Hungary or Portugal today.

In other words, if India keeps growing as fast as it’s growing right now, it will be a developed country before kids born today are out of college.” 1/8 “another reason I’m bullish on India is that there’s still a huge amount of room for manufacturing to grow. Right now, despite being the world’s fifth-largest manufacturer, India is still a service-intensive economy — manufacturing is only 13% of the country’s GDP.” 2/8
Dec 16 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
“The United States has assembled the most sophisticated apparatus for economic competition in its history—export controls.. investment restrictions.. and alliance networks spanning every continent. Yet Washington cannot articulate what this machinery is meant to produce.” 1/14 “It alienates allies asked to bear economic costs for undefined objectives and inflicts tremendous pain on American industry, which must restructure supply chains for goals that shift monthly.

Refusing to set goals is not strategy—it is abdication.” 2/14
Dec 16 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
“Having spent a good deal of my career tracking malign foreign actors who undermine democracy around the world and coming up with strategies to defend against them, this was a rude reality check. I had to ask myself: “Wait, are we the bad guys?” 1/6 “It would be naive to suggest that the US has always been a good faith actor, defending global democracy throughout its history. After all, America has meddled in many countries’ internal struggles, supporting leaders who didn’t have their people’s well-being or freedom in mind.”
Dec 16 • 12 tweets • 2 min read
“Gone are the traditional channels of advice and oversight and the “hierarchy of policy engagements” that once governed this space, says one former US official... Gone, too, are the subject matter experts and the experience of decades of practised diplomacy.” 1/12 “The circle of people is just so shockingly small,” says the former official… If you’re an old real estate buddy, like Steve Witkoff or Tom Barrack, those are principals. Ivanka and Jared, those are principals,” he says of Trump’s daughter and son-in-law.” 2/12
Dec 16 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
“If adopted, the plan would usher in some of the most significant changes at the military’s highest ranks in decades, in part following through on Hegseth’s promise to break the status quo and slash the number of four-star generals in the military.” 1/5 “It would reduce in prominence the headquarters of U.S. Central Command, U.S. European Command and U.S. Africa Command by placing them under the control of a new organization known as U.S. International Command, according to five people familiar with the matter.” 2/5
Dec 12 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
“In the rest of Asia — & what, until now, Washington has called the Indo-Pacific — the dominant emotion is uneasiness. There are words, phrases, and entire sections in the document that are exactly what we want to hear. But..underlying worldview is at odds with its rhetoric.” 1/8 “The strategy promises that the US will build a military capable of deterrence in the First Island Chain and the Taiwan Strait, & an insistence that the South China Sea cannot be controlled by any one actor. There is a promise to defend “global and regional balances of power,”..”
Dec 11 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
“the prime minister has begun talking about the damage done by Brexit. Both his economic adviser, Minouche Shafik and David Lammy, his deputy, have made the case for rejoining the customs union.” 1/8 “It would not be simple. The customs union alone would not be a panacea; rejoining the single market could threaten the UK’s light touch AI regulation and other sectors. The EU is a hard negotiator, offering little help to Starmer in his reset of relations.” 2/8
Dec 11 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
“Had he lived to this day, however, Huntington would be taking as much flak as poor Francis Fukuyama does for getting the world all wrong. The important conflicts now are within, not between, civilisations.” 1/10 “Look at the world’s trouble spots. The war in 🇺🇦 is a war within the “Orthodox” Christian civilisation, at least as Huntington classified it. The periodic stand-off between 🇨🇳 & 🇹🇼 is another example of a tussle inside a cultural bloc — what Huntington called the Sinosphere.”
Dec 9 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
“Conventional takes on national security centre on military and economic imperatives. The new NSS trudges dutifully through these issues. But one senses that the author’s heart is not in it.” 1/7 “A passage on the critical issue of Taiwan asserts flatly: “Deterring a conflict over Taiwan . . . is a priority. We will also maintain our longstanding declaratory policy on Taiwan.” That is the very definition of a holding statement.” 2/7
Dec 7 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
.@EmilyHardingDC: “the democracy agenda is clearly over. Foreign policy choices will be made based on what makes the United States more powerful and prosperous.” 1/9 “That’s fair, and clearly what the American people voted for, but today’s self-interested choices may lead to a far lonelier, weaker, more fractured future. This is a truly pivotal moment in the way the world works.” 2/9
Dec 7 • 15 tweets • 3 min read
🧵 “it looks like the West will not survive Trump 2.” 1/15 “the West has been a Christian notion, an imperial notion, and a white racial notion, but it really became a “thing” during the Cold War, during which the West came to be synonymous with 🇺🇸 & its European NATO allies, plus 🇯🇵 and a few former European colonies, 🇦🇺, 🇳🇿and 🇨🇦.”
Dec 7 • 13 tweets • 2 min read
“it reads like a manifesto for a radically different American project. It is narrower, more partisan, more inwardly focused, and more personalized than any of its predecessors.” 1/13 “It criticizes “American foreign policy elites” for chasing “permanent American domination of the entire world” and for tying the US to “so-called ‘free trade,’” globalism, and “transnationalism” that allegedly hollowed out the American middle class and eroded sovereignty.” 2/13
Dec 6 • 16 tweets • 3 min read
“Ireland is like a small child in geopolitical terms, unable to defend itself and not a member of NATO, but we are the vulnerable backdoor into Europe for Russia, and we are sitting on unprotected digital gold.” 1/16 “Roughly three out of every four undersea data cables in the entire northern hemisphere are obliged to meander through Ireland’s vast liquid backyard, which is 10 times our land mass.” 2/16
Dec 5 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
“While the Indian government has been fairly restrained in its response to recent US policies, there is no doubt that Washington’s credibility as a stable partner—never guaranteed in the best of times—has taken a severe hit.” 1/8 “the second Trump administration has appeared to care little about India’s potential. Openly putting the squeeze on India as a leverage play against Russia showed just how little Trump worries about losing India’s favor.” 2/8
Dec 4 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
“plans to impose sanctions on the spy agency — and contractors it is allegedly using to conduct a hacking campaign against US telecom networks called “Salt Typhoon” — were put on hold to avoid undermining the US-China détente.” 1/6 “But the decision not to impose sanctions over Salt Typhoon, which has successfully targeted the unencrypted communications of top US officials, has sparked frustration among China hawks in the government who think Trump is sacrificing national security for trade deals.” 2/6
Dec 4 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
“As the global economy confronts the changes driven by technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, and shakes off ideological preoccupations around green energy, the President is prepared to lead the way.” 1/6 “Poland, a nation that was once trapped behind the Iron Curtain but now ranks among the world’s 20 largest economies, will be joining us to assume its rightful place in the G20.” 2/6
Dec 3 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
"now, India must reassess its American gamble. Since the summer, Trump has departed from the policy of recent US administrations and sought to pressure India. He increased tariffs to 50% on India in August, ostensibly as a penalty for its ongoing purchases of Russian oil." 1/14 "the path that India seems to be taking—and, indeed, should be taking—is a form of what its foreign policy establishment often calls “multialignment,” an orientation designed to build stronger ties with many countries, even if those states have contradictory interests." 2/14