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Watching Pangong Tso, Thinking Doklam
After a brief interval, the roof of the world is once again the venue for tensions between Asia’s continental rivals. Eighteen months on from the withdrawal of forces from Pangong Tso, China has returned to the area and done so…

Climate Change and Conflict Resolution in South Asia’s Highlands
The contested highlands of the Himalaya-Karakoram-Hindukush (HKH) mountain ranges—spanning across South Asia through Ladakh, Aksai Chin, Jammu and Kashmir, and Gilgit-Baltistan—remain highly vulnerable to climate change and kinetic conflict. These highlands are the globe’s third pole, harboring more ice in…

U.S. Foreign Policy and Democratic Erosion in Allied States
The war in Ukraine has underscored the dangers of Russian authoritarianism and the destabilizing potential of totalizing nationalist ideologies. Vladimir Putin’s Russia employs propaganda domestically to justify the invasion, radicalize Russians against the West, distort historical narratives, and prime citizens for war.…

Sri Lanka’s Economic Crisis: Foreign Policy Amidst Domestic Tumult
Since the start of the new year, Sri Lanka has fallen deeper into an economic crisis. The crisis has led to protests across the country, the resignation of its Prime Minister, and its first debt default since independence. Ranil Wickremesinghe…

A Renewed Focus on India’s Border Management
In February, India’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced the new Vibrant Villages program in the Union Budget for FY 2022-23. The policy aims to re-populate and reverse migration from border villages in Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, and Arunachal Pradesh through improved…

The Pitfalls of Great-Power Competition in the Indo-Pacific
Few would disagree that the term “Indo-Pacific” has now found a front-and-center place in diplomatic lexicon and geo-strategic thinking across regional and extra-regional countries, almost replacing the longstanding “Asia-Pacific” conceptualization of the region. The intellectual roots of the term can…