Mihir Sharma

In Pakistani politics, nothing gets done by halves. A few months ago, one of ex-Prime Minister Imran Khan’s former cabinet ministers, Shahbaz Gill, warned lower-ranking military officers against following “illegal orders” from their superiors. The remarks were taken as an attempt to divide the…

This week, the Democratic Republic of Congo — Africa’s second-largest nation and the sixth-most heavily forested country in the world — is auctioning off large sections of those forests to oil and gas companies. The decision has enraged climate activists: The vast tracts of equatorial forest and…

No single term is as ubiquitous in the strategy documents of the free world today as “Indo-Pacific.” And yet the phrase never appeared in defense white papers or summit readouts two decades ago. The geopolitical, geo-economic, and military links between these two great oceans, as well as the…

India’s attempt to reform military recruitment — which has set off political convulsions that show no signs of abating — once again shows that its aspirations to superpower status are no match for a below-par economy. India’s military — particularly its army — is antiquated in organization and…

In India’s social media-obsessed polity, statements by ministers that do well online are closely watched — and their popularity can even push the government in new policy directions. Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar recently set Indian Twitter alight when he told off a mainly European…

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi often speaks of “trusted” supply chains. At the G-20 last year, he said that global supply chains depend upon “trust, transparency, and timeframes”; he’s made a similar pitch for Japan, the United States and Australia to “trust” India as a trade partner. And…

India, the world’s largest democracy, has abstained in yet another United Nations vote to condemn Russia’s brutal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. Commentators in the United States are beginning to wonder how reliable an ally India can be. The White House and Congress should handle any…

By the middle of this century, India will have 1.6 billion people. That’s when the country’s population will finally start to decline, ending up at perhaps a billion by 2100. While that is still around 250 million more people than China will have then, every time India’s population is projected,…

Supposedly, US President Joe Biden’s “Summit for Democracy” — which begins Dec. 9 — would show America was back as leader of the free world. Unfortunately, the Biden administration isn’t big on either thoughtfulness before the fact, or justification after. And in many parts of the world, including…