There are moments in the long march of international affairs when a summit, otherwise destined for the archives of routine diplomacy, acquires the resonance of a turning point. The BRICS Summit convened
It has been slightly over a month since former President Donald Trump’s imperious pronouncement to expel China from its interests in the Panama Canal Zone. At the time, Trump had yet to
More
Donald Trump returned to the White House with a loud thump. His staff threw executive order upon executive order on his desk, which he signed with a flourish and then got on
More
Sri Lanka was shocked when a series of bombings ripped through on Easter Sunday in April 2019 since it had been lulled in a sense of complacency after the end of 30-year-old
More
The first weeks of Donald Trump’s second term have been marked by a sense of optimism about the president’s ability to get a deal with China. And frankly, I understand where it’s
More
For two centuries, archaeologists, historians, and social scientists studied human societies in search of the origins of hierarchy—a layered structure where power and privilege are concentrated in the top layer. Realizing that
More
Seldom, if ever, one gets to pick up the threads of what one had written 3 days back as conjectures. But my prognosis that “the sea side view” of Gaza is mesmerising
More
In Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh is de jure numero uno. He sits next to him at meetings and in Parliament and like most another minister, regularly invokes
More
The fragility of U.S. power was clear when a small Chinese startup released the DeepSeek machine learning program. The U.S. stock market Nasdaq shuddered, with technology stocks collapsing. This collapse is not a
More
Two conflicting reports on Iran’s nuclear weapons program were disclosed this week. Both reports offer important insight in just how Tehran is speeding up work on nuclear weapons. The first report is
More
Sri Lanka may not be the richest, but will build a nation of richest spirit ~ President Anura Kumara Dissanayake On February 4, 1948, Sri Lanka was granted its long-sought independence, marking
More
Five years may seem insignificant in historical terms, yet January 2020 already feels like the distant past. The Covid-19 pandemic reshaped not only our daily lives but also the global socio-political landscape,
More
Eighty years ago, on February 4, 1945, the leaders of the victors of World War II − the Soviet Union, the United States, and Britain − opened the Yalta Conference to determine
More
In my books “The Next 100 Years” and “The Storm Before the Calm,” I introduced a model of U.S. history consisting of political cycles and socio-economic cycles – the former tracking presidential
More
President Anura Kumar Dissanayake started the new year with some tight rope walking both externally and internally. It did not matter that he was following up what was contemplated earlier by his
More
“Once you have tasted the taste of Sky, you will forever look up” ~ Leonardo da Vinci “Daring Sky Divers from Lotus Tower in Colombo carried out parachute jumps with much amusement
More