ICYMI#TheTribuneOpinion: Putin visit highlights India’s role in a multipolar world

The 23rd India-Russia summit on December 4-5 is a watershed moment. After a long time, this week it seemed as if India had come into its own as Russian President Vladimir Putin visited India. In her weekly column The Great Game The Russia hand, Editor-in-Chief Jyoti Malhotra reiterates the fundamental lessons in geopolitics: there are no permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests; and that it is possible to stand up to powerful opponents, as long as you have the strength to do so. PM Modi greeted President Putin with the familiarity of an old friend, but kept an eye out for the other friends in the room, she writes. In this brave, new mixed-up world in which big powers carry large imprints, smaller powers like India must learn to negotiate, sidestep, circumvent and broker, she says. The message of multi-polarity — or non-alignment — was clear to see.

Former Ambassador Asoke Mukerji, too, highlights the same in his article India’s Russia ties shield its interests. Today, as the US and China are forging "spheres-of-influence" based on G-2 relationship, engaging with Russia on how to sustain indivisible security in a multi-polar Asia should be a priority for India, he writes.

In her article Balancing China with the India pivot, Nivedita Kapoor, Faculty of World Economy & International Affairs, HSE University, Moscow, writes that Moscow needs partners who will support it in shaping the global system, so it seeks to secure Indian support for its multilateral agenda in non-Western institutions.

An Afghan refugee Rehmanullah Lakanwal shot two members of the US National Guard in the US capital last month. A member of a highly trained Afghan military unit during the US' intervention in Afghanistan, he and his family were evacuated to the US immediately after the collapse of the Afghan Republic in 2021. Now, after this incident, Trump announced the suspension of visas for all Afghan nationals reinforcing his rhetoric against immigration. Former MEA Secretary Vivek Katju warns in his Op-Ed article Lessons for India from America’s Afghan evacuee crisis that many Indians who may still be tempted to go illegally to the US should take note that Trump is willing to go to any length on the immigration issue.

Last month, Prema Wangjon Thongdok, a 38-year-old woman from Arunachal Pradesh, was detained for 18 hours at an international airport in China, claiming the part she came from in Arunachal was Chinese territory, not Indian. Giving vital nuggets of information on Chinese incursions in Tawang, ORF Distinguished Fellow Manoj Joshi writes in his Op-Ed article Why China is insisting on the Arunachal tract that in the 1962 war, Indian forces in NEFA were routed, the Chinese captured Tawang, and reached the plains of Assam. But after ceasefire, they announced they would return to their side of the "illegal" McMahon Line. Now, Beijing's insistence on the Tawang tract is driven by strategy, history and the Dalai Lama question, he writes. China has mastered the art of turning minor disputes into diplomatic pressure points, he avers.

A Christian officer, Lt Samuel Kamalesan, refused to enter the unit temple or gurdwara for mandatory functions. We must examine Kamalesan’s case not from the point of religious identity and religious freedoms, but of its impact on the military’s ethos and values, and the relationship between the officer and his soldiers, says former northern army commander Lt Gen DS Hooda (retd) in his Edit piece Religious rigidity can hurt military ethos.

While Lt Samuel Kamalesan has paid the price for breaching discipline, the episode highlights tensions between an individual’s faith, tradition and the Indian Army’s institutional culture amidst the current social churn. If exhortations to cast off our “colonial heritage” and overcome the “slave mentality” are to have any meaning, then a reappraisal of the Army’s inherited organising principles should get priority, writes former chief of naval staff Admiral Arun Prakash (retd) in his Edit piece A chance for the Army to look within.

The Red Fort car blast was shocking and its audacity was bone-chilling. But the new and surprising factor is that it is the first time it has been alleged that terrorists went to Turkey to meet their handlers, writes former Manipur Governor and J&K ex-DGP Gurbachan Jagat in his Edit piece Red Fort blast — some questions, lessons. Internally, we have to strengthen our vast network of police stations and all parties must evolve a national consensus on how to face such a situation. Meanwhile, repeat telecasts of audio-visuals of the Red Fort car blast suicide bomber's "confession video" are unintentionally magnifying the seeds of radicalisation, writes Defence analyst Brig Brijesh Pandey (retd) in his article When media coverage helps terrorists. Each replay subtly blurs the moral boundaries, violence becomes justified and normalised, he writes.

After suicide cases of several block-level officers during the SIR exercise in West Bengal came to light, there has been fear and anxiety among ordinary citizens. We are trapped in a never-ending cycle of fear, forced to prove who we are again and again, writes sociologist Avijit Pathak in his article The silent panic behind SIR. This act reduces your human essence into your biometrics or your identity proof — ration card or the utility bill causing a severe damage to what makes us humane — the therapeutic power of trust, he writes.

Brazil hosted the UN climate change conference COP30 recently. The summit was billed as the “COP of Truth” and the “COP of Implementation.” But, the truth is that even the much-diluted commitments of the 2015 Paris Agreement have not been achieved nor can one say that the stage has been set for their implementation, says former Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran in his Edit piece Dilution of goals ails global climate action. The Trump-led US is committed to the revival of the fossil fuel industry and calls climate change a hoax, he writes. The truth is that in a divided and fragmented world, climate is not a priority, he says.

Two books 'Obligate Carnivore' and 'Angel Train' were disqualified from consideration for the 2026 Ockham Book Awards due to the use of artificial intelligence — not in their writing but in their cover designs. The question is of how much AI use is acceptable in the context of creativity in this AI era, where is the lakshman rekha, asks Indian Statistical Institute Professor Atanu Biswas in his interesting Op-Ed piece Art, books and awards: The new AI fault line. We have an obligation to protect human creativity from serious contamination until AI eventually opens the way for a new kind of art that is distinct from the long-standing human art forms, he writes.