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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 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
Oct 30 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
“Mr. Mamdani has no substantial political past. Apart from a few demagogic, populist resolutions that are unworkable without the cooperation of the state Legislature, he has no program. Nothing indicates that he is capable of managing a $110 billion budget..” 1/4 “of steering 300,000 municipal employees—in short, of running the state within a state that is the city of Fiorello La Guardia, Ed Koch and Michael Bloomberg.” 2/4
Oct 29 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
"Over the past two years—since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which Khamenei alone among major world leaders openly endorsed—his life’s work has been reduced to ashes by Israel & the US. His closest military & political proteges have been killed or assassinated." 1/10 "His regional proxies have been hobbled. His vast nuclear enterprise, built at staggering cost to Iran’s economy, has been buried under rubble.

The Islamic Republic has sought to turn its military humbling into an opportunity to rally the country around the flag.." 2/10
Oct 28 • 15 tweets • 3 min read
"The U.S.-Indian relationship has not been this chilly since 1998, when the United States sanctioned it for testing nuclear weapons." 1/15
foreignaffairs.com/united-states/… "The causes of the deterioration are different in each case, and some of Washington’s grievances against Brazil, India, and South Africa—global swing states that will help dictate which country leads the world—are legitimate." 2/15
Oct 28 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
“I couldn’t help but think of this when I flew into San Francisco a couple of weeks ago. Artificial intelligence, rather than consumer web pages, drives the exuberance today. But the vibe is the same as it was 30 years ago — there is one story, and everyone is buying it.” 1/8 “AI is highly capital intensive. The dotcom bubble wasn’t. Back then, anyone could throw up a homepage with almost no investment. Today, AI investment represents all the growth in corporate America’s capital expenditure.” 2/8
Oct 27 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
.@gideonrachman: “The hopes of the Chinese Communist party and the fears of the Taiwanese are understandable. But they are also overdone. The likelihood of complete American abandonment of Taiwan is still remote.” 1/9 “And even if Taiwan were left to defend itself, subduing the self-governing island would remain a formidably difficult challenge for Beijing.” 2/9
Oct 27 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
“I cannot see our relations with the US – even if we manage to get a trade deal in the aftermath of our reduced purchases of Russian oil – just go back to where they were before the sanctions were put on India, and also the kind of outreach which has been made to Pakistan..” 1/8 “by President Trump at a time when India-Pakistan relations themselves are under so much tension...” Saran said in an interview anchored by Karan Thapar for The Wire.” 2/8
Oct 26 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
“In 1990, the Sultan of Brunei didn’t have his whims indulged as swiftly as a middle-income person does now.” 1/9 “Over the same period, government did not — could not — emulate this paradise of choice and responsiveness. The services it provides, such as security, healthcare and education, are knottier. It can’t exclude people from them.” 2/9
Oct 26 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
“Privately.. alumni of the Biden & Obama White Houses acknowledge the long-overdue need for an event space like what Trump is creating.. absurd that tents need to be erected on the South Lawn for state dinners, & VIPs are forced to use porta-potties.” 1/5 washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/… “The State Dining Room seats 140. The East Room seats about 200. Trump says the ballroom at the center of his 90,000-square-foot addition will accommodate 999 guests. The next Democratic president will be happy to have this.” 2/5
Oct 25 • 18 tweets • 3 min read
"For the first time in centuries, no country is rising fast enough to overturn the global balance. The demographic booms, industrial breakthroughs, and territorial acquisitions that once fueled great powers have largely run their course." 1/18
foreignaffairs.com/united-states/… "China, the last major riser, is already peaking, its economy slowing and its population shrinking. Japan, Russia, and Europe stalled more than a decade ago. India has youth but lacks the human capital and state capacity to turn it into strength." 2/18
Oct 25 • 19 tweets • 3 min read
Excellent piece covering a lot of ground about 🇺🇸 & 🇨🇳:

"Xi has not only tried to address the symptoms of the problems that germinated in the era of reform & opening. He has also tried to cure what he sees as the underlying ailment by reversing liberalization altogether." 1/19 "can be described as.. a counterreformation—stripping the party down to its Leninist core of political & social control & rewiring it for neither revolution nor reform, but for a disciplined march toward tech-industrial & military might to enhance 🇨🇳's geopolitical position."
Oct 25 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
“today’s malaise feels different — and deeper... Governments performed poorly, but people still believed in the system. The Supreme Court was respected, Congress functional, the press authoritative. People wanted the rules enforced; now, they don’t believe in the rules.” 1/11 “Today, America’s central institutions — courts, media, universities, even elections — are widely viewed as biased. Trust in government has fallen to around 20 percent; congressional approval often hovers in the teens.” 2/11
Oct 23 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
“Trump’s… confidence is misplaced. Tariffs are a far weaker weapon than the president believes. They are a poor substitute for the modern economic pressure tactics that the US pioneered and China increasingly embraces.” 1/9 “Those “wins” with Europe, Japan and South Korea also tell a misleading story. These are close security allies that depend on Washington’s protection. Their concessions reflected strategic dependence, not economic capitulation.” 2/9
Oct 22 • 12 tweets • 2 min read
“When the iPhone debuted, there was relative peace in the world..strong centre ground in almost all western democracies, an entwined 🇺🇸 & 🇨🇳 & a pro-trade consensus. Now, there is a European land war of primordial viciousness, the hard right are in or near national office..” 1/12 “across the west, US-China relations veer from tense to hostile and David Ricardo is in the dog house.

Public life, not private innovation, has supplied the drama of our times. You wouldn’t always know it from the “discourse”.” 2/12
Oct 21 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
“Sergio Gor… is walking into a firestorm. With President Trump levying 50% tariffs on India and Washington imposing a $100,000 fee for new H-1B visa petitions, Indian public opinion has turned sharply against the once-popular American leader.” 1/9 “Worse, many Indians believe that the Trump administration is tilting toward Pakistan. Two White House visits by army chief Asim Munir, the second including Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, sent shock waves across India and left many Indians feeling stunned and betrayed.”
Oct 20 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
“many of those minds — disproportionately the ones in scholar’s gowns — have disappeared into what I call the Bermuda Triangle of talent: finance, management consulting and corporate law.” 1/5 “The tragedy is not that these industries are evil. They grease the wheels of our economic system and their employees contribute generously to the public purse. But they are absorbing some of the best brains of a generation at the very moment we can least afford to lose them.”
Oct 11 • 20 tweets • 3 min read
“While India has indeed grown in strength over the last two decades & has partnered with the US in pushing back on Chinese assertiveness, the larger story is more complex. For all of its achievements, India is not growing fast enough to balance China effectively.” 1/20 “despite its material weaknesses, 🇮🇳 is still obsessed with protecting its strategic autonomy & pursues the goal of promoting multipolarity through multi-alignments at both the Asian & global levels—even though these objectives may not actually serve its strategic interests..”
Oct 7 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Moeed Yusuf, Pakistan's NSA from 2019 to 2022, writing (expectedly polemic) on how Pakistan perceives the threat from India: (1/6)
foreignaffairs.com/pakistan/why-a… "In reality, Washington’s support for India only emboldened India’s decision-makers, especially the present government under Modi, to pursue a more muscular policy toward Pakistan. That support encouraged India to take greater risks than it had in the past." 2/6
Oct 7 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
“Komeito, the LDP’s longtime coalition partner, hates.. Takaichi’s hawkishness and hints at leaving the coalition. Newly influential and feisty right-wing parties criticize the LDP for not being nationalist enough. Powerful forces in the LDP will fight any efforts at reform.” 1/5 “much of Japan’s entrenched bureaucracy will fight change with all the resources and ingenuity at its command. Along with many party elders, the bureaucracy likes its prime ministers weak and conformist.” 2/5