India

The BRICS in the Era of Renewed Great Power Competition

The BRICS are at a turbulent crossroads as renewed great power competition intersects with countervailing tendencies in the emerging multipolar arena. Their success depends avoiding the external costs and domestic pathologies generated by great power friction. Emerging multipolarity provides opportunities for manoeuvre, but only if outsized China accommodates the other BRICS as it competes against the United States. The BRICS’ strongest common aversion concerns American hegemony and its weaponization of finance.

BRICS and Sovereign Internationalism

The article outlines four types of globalism contending for hegemony today. The struggle of what effectively represents different types of international order is one reason why international politics today looks so disordered. The BRICS association is firmly located as part of one of these orders, that of sovereign internationalism, but is challenged by the disruptive implications of the Trumpian mercantilist order. BRICS and its members as a result are drawing closer to the liberal internationalist model.

Considered Chaos: Revisiting Pakistan’s ‘Strategic Depth’ in Afghanistan

Pakistan’s historical insecurity towards India and the Islamisation of its military raises a curious question of strategy and identity rooted in Pakistan’s political genesis. This article examines the social and geostrategic factors underpinning Pakistan’s Afghanistan approach between its inheritance of security principles from colonial administration after Partition, and the Taliban’s capture of Kabul in 1996 and beyond. This article also critically analyses the existing link between the Taliban and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI).