Happy to announce my new book, Original Sin: Israel, Palestine and the Revenge of Old West Asia. Will release the book on December 15 at the Bangalore Lit Fest, with @HarperCollinsIN. You can preorder it here: amazon.in/Original-Sin-Pales…

Never enter into a security pact with a country already at war - very interesting

The balance of power changes when the distribution of power changes. For the distribution of power to change, one needs to be powerful first. So if you want to change the balance of power, focus on (economic and military) power and its strategic deployment, not on balance.

One mistake many in #India made was to believe that it could make itself useful for the Americans as a bulwark against #China as the U.S. and China are pitted against each other for global domination in the 21st century. Washington today is competing with China but is not interested in a confrontation. It wants to manage the competition and build what the Chinese would call strategic stability. They also clearly don’t want to prop up India and help create a third pole. The U.S. is well aware that unipolarity has passed. This G2 approach is not just a trump thing. The DC establishment would prefer a bipolar competition with China, relegating the rest to manageable sub-powers. This effectively downgrades the value of India in DC’s strategic thinking. The Indians should take note of it.

🙏🏾

Rutte is hard-selling Europe’s strategic purpose to the Americans.

Millennial spotted at Iran’s Ghana embassy

trump is clearly in awe of Xi.

77 countries, out of 193 at the UN! This is where netanyahu has led Israel to. Mindless fans might continue to argue that Israel’s wars are a show of strength. But the post-netanyahu political class of this country will have to take some serious course correction, both at home and abroad.

The Economist, which called the war on Iran ‘a stunning aerial success’ in the initial days, now writes ‘American hegemony in the Middle East’ is coming to an end.

G2 with Chinese characteristics

Calling BRICS a failure is short-sighted. Critics make the same argument about the UN over conflicts in Ukraine & Iran. Yet platforms like BRICS and the UN remain vital—they uphold global rules and give opposing sides a necessary forum to deliberate and de-escalate.

News Analysis: With Trump-Xi truce, China looks to reshape Asian order — writes Ananth Krishnan. thehindu.com/news/internatio…

#SaudiArabia is in a tight spot. Not able to export its fuel. Being attacked by the #Houthis. No meaningful support is coming from allies, including #Pakistan. Watch the latest ep of #GlobalFaultlines, where we take a deep drive into the kingdom's woes. piped.video/W31h51s5Ayk?si=Fch8…

Shut your Iran war down first, pliz.

Stanly Johny @johnstanly, the striking question is this: were you describing separate wars—or watching one regional system progressively reveal itself? Read your arguments from 7 October 2023 to 23 September 2026 as one continuous body of analysis, and a remarkably consistent architecture appears. Your central proposition has essentially remained unchanged: Palestine → regional mobilisation → Iran’s network → maritime coercion → direct interstate escalation → Gulf vulnerability → crisis of American deterrence → search for a new regional equilibrium. That continuity is real and documentable. You identified several structural mechanisms early that subsequently became increasingly important.