Anil Wadhwa Indian Foreign Service & GCTC Executive Board Member     India has always maintained a good working relationship with North Korea. Our bilateral trade, in recent years at best has been in the range of US$ 200-250 million but North Korea has always valued Indian food aid which was made available at regular intervals until recently. For the past few years, this aid has not materialised due to North Korea’s nuclear and missile related activities and due to sanctions imposed through the UN which were pushed by the US. Our agricultural cooperation has been of use to North Korea, both in terms of training of experts and collaboration…

Anil Wadhwa Indian Foreign Service & GCTC Executive Board Member     The fact that the much talked about Summit meeting between President Trump and Chairman Kim happened on June 12 in Singapore is an achievement by itself. The world would have been on edge without it. The short document signed, even though shorn of crucial details after the Summit, raises hopes for the future of the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula. The United States (US) has attempted many peace deals in the past in order to halt the nuclear and missile capabilities of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) or North Korea, but the latter has continued with…

Anil Wadhwa Indian Foreign Service & GCTC Executive Board Member     The primary geopolitical challenges in 2019 in the Indo-Pacific will arise due to the changing relations between the USA and China. India, Japan, Australia, Islamic republic of Iran, Saudi Arabia and the Russian Federation will all contribute their bit into the evolving security matrix in the region. The US is likely escalating its strategic offensive against China through tariffs, sanctions, regulatory buffers around emerging technologies, stronger backing for Taiwan and a more assertive posture in the South China Sea. For this, it will rely on countries like Japan, Australia, South Korea and Taiwan to erect stronger barriers to…

Anil Wadhwa Indian Foreign Service & GCTC Executive Board Member     Union Budget 2019 India: Analysis reveals some notable facts: the MEA budget, from being close to 0.1% of India’s GDP in 2012-13, declined to 0.08% in 2018-19. Union Budget 2019 India: As the stature of India rises internationally, its diplomacy, implemented through the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), needs a higher budget outlay for the projection of its geo-strategic objectives, win friends for much needed technology and investments at home, create a peaceful environment for uninterrupted growth, promote its exports and create favourable conditions for its businesses abroad. Despite limited resources at its disposal, the MEA has done…

Anil Wadhwa Indian Foreign Service & GCTC Executive Board Member     After seven years of negotiations, the 16 participating states in the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement issued a statement on 4 November 2019 at Bangkok, conveying that 15 of the participating states had concluded text-based negotiations on 20 chapters of the agreement and will proceed to sign this agreement in 2020. The statement mentioned that India has significant outstanding issues, which remain unresolved and that all RCEP participating countries will work together to resolve these outstanding issues in a mutually satisfactory way. India’s final decision, the statement read, “will depend on satisfactory resolution of these issues”. The…

Anil Wadhwa Indian Foreign Service & GCTC Executive Board Member     Connected by the Indian Ocean, Commonwealth, the English language and shared democratic values, Australia has never loomed larger in the Indian consciousness than in the last decade. The relationship has seen its highs and lows but here has been a steady improvement in the quality and intensity of the political, commercial, cultural, educational and technological engagement between the two nations. The Indian diaspora, now close to 700,000 in a nation of just 25 million and the Indian student community which is close to 100,000, have ensured that Indians are the fastest growing community in Australia, and their views…

Anil Wadhwa Indian Foreign Service & GCTC Executive Board Member     On 17 June, India was comfortably elected to the non- permanent seat of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) for the period of two years starting January 2021, receiving the endorsement from 184 out of the 192 countries who voted. In its last bid for the UNSC seat in 2010, India has secured 187 votes. Each year the General Assembly elects five non – permanent members (out of 10 in total) for a two-year term. The 10 non-permanent seats are distributed on a regional basis – five for African and Asian states, one for Eastern European States, two…

Anil Wadhwa Indian Foreign Service & GCTC Executive Board Member   The Strategic Partnership between India and EU was forged in 2004. The precursor to this partnership was a Joint Political Statement (1993) and a cooperation Agreement (1994)both of which laid the basis of this partnership. India and EU also agreed on a Joint Action Plan in 2005 which was later upgraded in 2008 when the two sides decided to expand their cooperation in the fields of nuclear energy and environmental protection and deepen this strategic partnership. The 15th Summit between India and EU finally took place after a gap of two years on 15 July 2020 between Indian Prime…

Anil Wadhwa Indian Foreign Service & GCTC Executive Board Member     India Italy Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, right, shakes hands with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte after later’s speech at the India Italy Technology summit in New Delhi, India, Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2018 AP Photo Given the preoccupation of Italy with its budgetary tussles with the European Union, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte was in India on a short visit – effectively just 30th October; but his hours spent in New Delhi were full of substance. Conte held a one to one meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi after a call on by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj,…

Anil Wadhwa Indian Foreign Service & GCTC Executive Board Member     Prime Minister Narendra Modi shakes hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin after delivering a joint press statement, at Hyderabad House in New Delhi. PTI Photo President Putin has just concluded another successful Summit meeting with PM Narendra Modi from 4-5 October in New Delhi. Despite the threat of CAATSA sanctions by the USA, the two sides went ahead and inked the agreement for the purchase of 5 sets of batteries of S-400 missile defence systems. As a matter of fact, Indo Russian relations are nowadays seen mainly from the prism of a buyer seller relationship in the defence…