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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.
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
Oct 7 • 12 tweets • 2 min read
“India’s Chief of Defense Staff  General Anil Chauhan said on August 26, 2025, while speaking about the evolving nature of warfare. “Precision strikes create very little collateral damage, hence the cost of war for nations is less..” 1/12 “Air power, once considered escalatory, has been normalized. Paired with long range precision weapons, air power presents compelling options to expand the threshold under the nuclear overhang.” 2/12
Oct 6 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
“if it now pays to be America’s rival, and hurts to be a friend, then something fundamental is going wrong with Trumpian diplomacy.” 1/7 “China appears in a new light. While the US reprimands and insults its partners, China’s “wolf-warrior” diplomacy has taken a sweet turn. While the US tramples on the multilateral institutions that it had once led, China presents itself as their upholder and protector.” 2/7
Oct 3 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
.@stenrynning: "NATO must temper its aspirations with geopolitics. High aspirations centred on democracy versus dictatorship offer a compelling narrative, but all can too easily become another runaway ambition. Behind Russia there is China, and China is a global.." 1/4 Image "and multifaceted competitor. But NATO has a geography, and it should not go global. NATO is Atlantic: it links North America to Europe's order. Whatever the allies do on the question of China, NATO should stick to the underlying imperative of building a Europe that is.." 2/4
Oct 2 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
“Pimco Vice Chairman John Studzinski’s. He sees Prime Minister Narendra Modi as “leader of the transactional movement” in a world where tactical alliances will prevail over ideological alignment.” 1/9 “If you look around the world, India has had leadership in place. Prime Minister Modi has got a background having been transformational with Gujarat. He is a leader who I think is probably not going anywhere for the foreseeable future.” 2/9
Sep 29 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
.@gideonrachman: “Israel’s bombing of Qatar — aimed at killing the leaders of Hamas — was a major mis-step by the Netanyahu government. The attack frightened and infuriated the Qataris — who are very influential in Washington.” 1/7 “Qatar is the site of a large American air base and has also hosted talks with the Taliban and Hamas, on behalf of the US.. And they regularly discuss business with Trump’s inner circle — including with the family of Steve Witkoff, Trump’s Middle East envoy.” 2/7
Sep 28 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
In 'The Devil's Alternative', written in 1979, Frederick Forsyth foreshadows the eventual disintegration of the Soviet Union as one of the book's characters, a Ukrainian nationalist, launches into a diatribe against Russian imperialism and expansionism: (1/5) Image “What kind of patriotism is it that can only feed on the destruction of other people’s love of homeland? What about my patriotism, Larsen? What about the Ukrainians’ love for their enslaved homeland? What about Georgians, Armenians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Latvians?” 2/5
Sep 28 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
“Trump is raising the cost of India’s autonomous foreign policy and forcing New Delhi to pick a side. In the US president’s transactional worldview, for India to reap the benefits of aligning its economy with America’s in a web of complementarity, it must either accept..” 1/9 “America’s vassalage, pay appropriate suzerainty (of the kind paid by a Japan or South Korea) or be prepared to cough up a steep price for adopting an independent, multi-aligned foreign policy.” 2/9
Sep 27 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
“While the US under any president will value India for its size, stature, growth, stability and rising comprehensive national power (CNP), it knows India will never be what the sole superpower always needs: a client state. Pakistan has been one since 1954…” 1/5 “To understand how Pakistan thinks, ask yourself how come its people keep electing leaders… and then not only accept the generals firing them, but welcome it. The nation, its ideology and its sense of being and national pride are pre-designed for military autocracies.” 2/5
Sep 27 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
“rise of populism, discontent with various establishments & angry political rhetoric, the U.S. appears to have moved further than any other down the path of illiberal democracy, where constitutionalism & the rule of law are being steadily undermined.” 1/4 washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/… “Steven Levitsky, one of the foremost scholars of democratic collapse and co-author of “How Democracies Die,” told me that perhaps.. most important reason for the institutional decay is that America has been so successful over the years that it has never seen the need to change.”
Sep 23 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
“Propagandists on all sides have sought to use the.. suffering.. to shape political realities in Gaza, Israel and around the world.

If the Israelis are winning the battles on the ground, the Palestinians have been more successful globally in the war for hearts and minds.” 1/9 “In the U.S., the war has contributed to increasing alienation from Israel among Democrats. It also is stoking waves of ugly antisemitism across the left and the far right.” 2/9
Sep 21 • 29 tweets • 5 min read
Subhas Chandra Bose’s life is well covered in this 2022 biography by @chandrachurg, ‘Bose – The Untold Story of An Inconveinent Nationalist’. Some interesting excerpts: (1/29) Image (1928): “Subhas explained.. how insulting the setting up of the (Simon) Commission had been would become clear if second Indians were sent to England to pass a judgement on whether the British were capable of self-government.” 2/29
Sep 21 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
“The emotional tone of global politics has reached fever pitch. Anger is driving out compassion. Self-righteousness is strangling debate. And emotion is smothering reason, invading areas of statecraft once reserved for cool-headed professionals, most notably foreign policy.” 1/11 “Why is emotion taking over politics? The.. answers.. start with economic stagnation and growing inequality. Social media not only gives a platform to people with toxic views but also encourages regular people to post instant and emotion-driven responses to unfolding events.”
Sep 18 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
“What we are seeing today is the accelerating dissolution of the post-1945 world order. It isn’t merely that the old order’s foreign opponents have combined more effectively to disrupt it. The order’s defenders are flailing.” 1/7 “There are many reasons for the West’s poor performance. The current tranche of leaders for the most part can neither defend their countries from foreign foes nor defend the political status quo from populists at home.” 2/7
Sep 17 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
“The China-India rivalry will likely persist due to fundamental disagreements and distrust over economic coercion, border aggression, Pakistan relations, and technology stacks.” 1/9 “Meanwhile, the US-India relationship is likely to stabilize and rebound due to a much deeper and more substantive defense partnership.” 2/9
Sep 17 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
"Some pressures had been building within this system before Trump’s ascent. But particularly in his second term, Trump has switched the United States’ role from global insurer to extractor of profit." 1/10
foreignaffairs.com/united-states/… "Instead of the insurer securing its clients against external threats, under the new regime, the threat against which insurance is sold comes as much from the insurer as from the global environment." 2/10
Sep 16 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
“after a week-long visit to Washington… I came away with a strong sense that there are dramatically divergent views in New Delhi and DC on the state of the bilateral relationship, and that the strategic partnership is perhaps more fragile than ever.” 1/8 “While the sentiment in New Delhi is that Washington under President Trump has severely damaged the India-US strategic partnership for no credible or justifiable reason, the feeling in DC is that India has not done enough to save the relationship and has been slow to react..” 2/8
Sep 15 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
.@gideonrachman: “predictive pattern breaks down when it comes to Ukraine and Gaza. Among commentators — and even governments — you can find groups that are pro-Israel and pro-Ukraine; pro-Ukraine and pro-Palestine; pro-Russia and pro-Israel; and pro-Russia & pro-Palestine.” 1/7 “The “pro-Ukraine, pro-Israel” crowd closely correlate with the group once known as neoconservatives. They see both Ukraine and Israel as democracies under attack that deserve support.” 2/7