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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.
Apr 28 • 12 tweets • 2 min read
“Global governance… has recently been having an especially hard time. Everyone believes in a rules-based system, but everyone wants to make the rules and dislikes it when the rules work against them, saying that they infringe on their sovereignty and their freedom.” 1/12 “The promise that this liberalization would lead to faster growth from which all would benefit never materialized. Under these doctrines that have prevailed for more than four decades, growth has actually slowed in most advanced countries.” 2/12
Apr 26 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
“We need to start with strategic realities.   

First, India is going to be one of the world’s great powers of the 21stcentury. With a population which now exceeds China’s, and increasing growth rates, IMF predictions suggest India will be the third largest economy by 2027.” 1/14 “India’s economic growth is increasingly matched by a growing ambition on the world stage. Once a leader of the Non-Aligned Movement, India now aspires to a more assertive “strategic autonomy”.” 2/14
Apr 25 • 22 tweets • 4 min read
Some interesting points in this from the Polish foreign minister:

"The previous government’s wilfulness resulted from the fact that it pursued its foreign policy in a “world of projections”: an imaginary space built on myths and illusions sustained by pushy propaganda." 1/22 "The first myth concerned the European Union. We joined it after years of effort and following a decision taken by the People in a two-day referendum, with endorsement and blessing from a Polish Pope." 2/22
Apr 25 • 25 tweets • 4 min read
"Starmer’s Labour Party seeks to win power from the Conservative Party for the first time since 1997. It is difficult to overstate how much the world has changed.. Tony Blair entered Downing Street 27 years ago.. British economy was larger than India’s & China’s combined." 1/25 "UK still administered a major Asian city, Hong Kong, as a colony. The increase in global temperatures from the long-term average was less than half what it is today. & 🇺🇸 dominance was so striking that some people saw the spread of the liberal democratic model as inevitable."
Apr 25 • 12 tweets • 2 min read
“India is seen as part of the democratic world but with caveats. These caveats are expressed without restraint by the Western media, think tanks, academics, human rights organisations and other components of civil society.” 1/12 “At the official level too, the standards of Indian democracy are questioned in direct statements or reports issued by state organisations.” 2/12
Apr 24 • 25 tweets • 4 min read
"What Western officials and other decision-makers need to do.. is to consider a set of scenarios.. that can facilitate contingency planning... five possible futures for Russia are currently imaginable, and the United States and its allies should bear them in mind." 1/25 "(1) RUSSIA AS FRANCE

Russia’s geographical expanse dwarfs France’s, enmeshing the country in Europe but also the Caucasus, Central Asia, and East Asia. Very few countries have much in common with Russia. But France has more than perhaps any other." 2/25
Apr 23 • 12 tweets • 2 min read
.@AkhiPill: “In truth, most Indians do not care about the occasional raid against a journalist or a magazine – a very narrow elite concern – but do care about a party’s overall performance, ability to deliver development, and vision.” 1/12 “It seems that both at the popular level and the elite level, Indians have largely concluded that the BJP, and Modi in particular, is the best bet for leading India. Modi is seen as a strong leader who can make decisions..” 2/12
Apr 23 • 12 tweets • 2 min read
.@jamescrabtree: “There are senior figures in Germany with a hard-headed, strategic view of China, not least Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock. But neither were in Beijing.” 1/12 “Instead, Scholz took ministers in areas such as agriculture, who favor close cooperation with Beijing, along with a bevy of industrial CEOs promoting Sino-German trade and investment.” 2/12
Apr 20 • 30 tweets • 5 min read
Learned a lot about the build-up and the aftermath of Goa's integration into India in "Goa, 1961' by Valmiki Faleiro who sadly passed away last year. The book shows a bumbling and inept foreign policy by Nehru's government as well as clear hypocrisy from Western nations. (1/30) Image "In 1962, one of (Krishna) Menon’s successful platforms was the heavily publicized ‘Liberation of Goa’. Menon presented the prime minister with a fait accompli after Operational Vijay had begun. The operation was over in a day with the surrender of the Portuguese forces." 2/30
Apr 20 • 21 tweets • 3 min read
“Go to New York, New Delhi, Nairobi, Naples, Nottingham, Nagoya, or any other alliterative large city worldwide, and you will meet people who bow to this now global Blue Tribe ideology.” 1/21 “Whether they were converted by their university, an intelligence apparatus masquerading as an NGO, or Netflix, they genuinely believe in this set of left-wing ideals to further themselves or their people forward.” 2/21
Apr 16 • 16 tweets • 3 min read
“As for the economy, it is true that the Chinese experience of the last 40 years was a very specific type of miracle that is unlikely to be replicated. Even so, there is a case for India because it is no longer the economically constrained giant that it once was.” 1/17 “The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has built roads, ports, airports, railways, power, and telecommunications, in such quantities that it has rendered the country almost unrecognizable from what it was just a few years ago.” 2/17
Apr 11 • 19 tweets • 3 min read
"Unlike during past campaigns, India’s global role is now a central issue in politics. Today, more Indians care about their country’s place in the world than did.. a decade ago, & the aspirations of average citizens are mirrored in their nation’s fortunes like never before." 1/19 "if the party can catapult an “ordinary citizen” such as Modi to global prominence, it can do the same for a country that has languished in poverty and weakness. Similarly, if Modi can make India secure, prosperous, and widely respected, he can do the same for the Indian voter."
Apr 11 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
"Today.. advanced democracies are more unified than at any time in decades.. Biden has aligned the essential goal of U.S. strategy, defending an imperiled liberal order, with.. partners used to pursue it. Yet across Eurasia’s 3 key regions.. messier realities of rivalry.." 1/11 "NATO is mostly an alliance of democracies. But holding that pact together during the Ukraine war has required Biden to downplay the illiberal tendencies of a Polish govt that—until its electoral defeat in October—was systematically eroding checks & balances." 2/11
Apr 10 • 17 tweets • 3 min read
“We are a democracy, not only because our Constitution says so, but also because it is in our genes.” 1/17 “There are a few people in India and in the West who have lost [connection with] the people of India—their thought processes, feelings and aspirations. These people also tend to live in their own echo chamber of alternate realities.” 2/17
Apr 9 • 12 tweets • 2 min read
“The coordination and collaboration between the world’s longest standing democracy and its largest democracy will have far-reaching regional and global implications.” 1/12 “the US-India partnership represents a strategic convergence between emerging allies driven by shared interests and values. Both countries realize that they are stronger together in deterring Beijing’s hegemonic designs, which are inimical to both US and Indian interests.” 2/12
Apr 8 • 21 tweets • 4 min read
A very good essay by @sanchirai on a fascinating topic - who succeeded British India?

"Before independence, stakeholders debated whether India and Pakistan should be regarded as two new states, or was India a continuation of British India, with Pakistan seceding from it?" 1/21 "In the former scenario, the earlier ‘India’ would have ceased to exist. The paper focuses on two clear lines of inquiry. Firstly, and perhaps counterintuitively, India’s keenness to become the legal successor to British India and accept the consequent treaty obligations." 2/21
Apr 8 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
Ruchir Sharma: “Having covered Indian elections since the 1990s, I have never seen a contest more predictable than the one beginning later this month. The only point still in debate is how big Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s re-election victory will be.” 1/12 “Modi’s critics say he has mobilised the machinery of the state to stack the election in his own favour… Yet there seems to be little public backlash over these methods, raising a larger question: how did such a vibrant democracy come to accept strongman rule?” 2/12
Apr 6 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
“From the start, the odds were massively stacked against Russia’s rapid and smooth transition to a market democracy. Moscow’s reformers, unlike those in East Central Europe, were dealing with the legacy of a far more entrenched command-administrative, non-market system.” 1/11 “only previous effort to establish democracy in 🇷🇺 was in 1917.. magnitude of the failure of these 2 brief episodes in 1917 &.. 1990s only encouraged 🇷🇺 citizens to view democracy.. more skeptically & to fall back on their hard-wired proclivity to accept centralized autocracy.”
Apr 6 • 12 tweets • 2 min read
“Once he did become a politician, however, Jaishankar went all in, spearheading an Indian foreign policy that has been a marked departure from that of previous governments at least in style, if not necessarily always substance.” 1/12 “That style is confident, assertive, proudly Hindu, & unabashedly nationalist, intended to convey that 🇮🇳 is taking its rightful place among the major powers. Jaishankar has become known for publicly sparring with Western counterparts.. when 🇮🇳s positions don’t align with theirs”
Apr 4 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
"after the Cold War ended, most Western policymakers seemed to expect that developing countries would, over time, embrace the Western approach to democracy and globalization. Few Western leaders seemed to worry that non-Western states might bridle at their norms or.." 1/14 "perceive the international distribution of power as an unjust remnant of the colonial past. Leaders who voiced such views, such as Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, were dismissed as eccentrics, their ideas behind the times." 2/14
Apr 3 • 42 tweets • 8 min read
‘Friends with Benefits’ is an excellent account of the US-India relationship by @seemasirohi, who lucidly writes about the bilateral relationship from the early 1990s onwards.

Thoroughly recommend this book – it’s easy to read, full of interesting stories & unputdownable. 1/42 Image “It is a fact that China improved the range of its missiles & bombers with US technology. Corporate greed, political misjudgment, corruption and an underlying certitude that a non-Western power would not be able to best the US blinded policymakers & gave China a free ride.” 2/42