By Rohan Sharma

The United States’ and India’s commitments are clear: pro-innovation regulation, joint next-generation data centers, and cooperation on advanced compute. But agreements do not operationalize themselves. What is needed is not another forum, but an interface. A jointly staffed mechanism, anchored in implementation agencies, becomes the only viable bridge.

By Vishal Manve

India’s nuclear future is increasingly unfolding along two parallel tracks, one rooted in indigenous strategic capability and the other in internationally integrated commercial innovation. For Washington, understanding and engaging both will be central to the next phase of U.S.–India civil nuclear cooperation.

By Piyush Verma

The conflict in West Asia was not South Asia's war. But South Asia — and particularly the smaller South Asian states such as Nepal, Bangladesh, and Bhutan — are paying the price in fuel queues, kitchen economies, and fiscal wounds that will take years to heal.

By Jhanvi Tripathi and Samriddhi Vij

Countries in the Global South are the fastest growing consumer markets with their growing and increasingly aspirational populations. Fulfilling this potential requires addressing deep connectivity gaps that have implications for the speed and cost of doing business.

By Anit Mukherjee and Caroline Arkalji

If implemented effectively, the Global Biofuels Alliance could help position biofuels not simply as a short-term response to supply disruptions, but as a more strategic pillar of long-term energy security, industrial development, and energy transitions.

By Soumya Bhowmick and Arya Roy Bardhan

For countries across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, the challenge is no longer simply how to engage Washington or Beijing diplomatically, but how to preserve developmental autonomy in an environment where great-power competition is restructuring markets, supply chains, and industrial choices.

By Aleksei Zakharov

China is carefully balancing its position on the war in Ukraine, offering Russia targeted support while avoiding direct military involvement in the form of supplying lethal weapons or deploying troops. Similarly, Moscow would like to avoid getting entangled in China’s conflicting relations with India, Japan, Vietnam, or the United States. This cautious approach on both sides imposes a clear ceiling on their engagement and leaves limited prospects for an alliance-like partnership in the future.

By Rudra Chaudhuri

There is a need for an architecture, such as a Trusted AI Corridor, which can help mitigate the risk that regulators in both the United States and India take steps that could roll back years of investment in a deepening technology partnership.

By Vasabjit Banerjee

China’s economic and military presence in Latin America is expanding, prompting the United States to pursue countermeasures. Other extra-regional actors, ranging from the European Union to countries such as India, are simultaneously deepening their engagement with the region. The United States could strategically leverage these relationships to reinforce its own position.

By Dhruva Jaishankar

The latest Quad joint statement highlights how economic security is receiving priority at this juncture, critical and emerging technologies are being somewhat marginalized by unilateral and bilateral efforts, and efforts of maritime security continue to progress in a more workmanlike manner.

By Kartik Bommakanti

The emerging nuclear competition is increasingly being shaped by a key structural driver: the expansion of Chinese military power.

By Clemens Chay

The reality is that “America First” under the Trump administration has functioned as a structural force rather than empty rhetoric — one that has prompted state actors to exercise agency by prioritizing their own national interests.

By Kabir Taneja

As the global appetite for risk increases drastically, strong bilateral relations such as India and the UAE will need even stronger guardrails to future-proof themselves.

By Rachel Rizzo

As the Arctic region, ocean floor, and space emerge as the new theaters of great-power competition, how major powers navigate this moment, and whether multilateral institutions created in a different era can adapt to the new one, will be the defining questions in the years ahead.

By Andre Nicola

Unlike previous elections where the primary concern was social media manipulation, 2026 will test how Brazil, and other large democracies, respond to this new generative AI challenge. The question is no longer whether AI will shape elections. It is whether governments will build the right safeguards before, rather than after, elections can be manipulated.

By Sapna Suresh

It is not just on trade and market access that Washington and Brussels are competing for favor in India. Their competition extends to defense and security and to migration and mobility.

By Dhruva Jaishankar

Despite Europe’s push for more military self-sufficiency amid tensions with the United States, questions remain as to whether Europe’s political leadership, domestic politics, and social conditions can facilitate the development of true security and strategic autonomy.

By Ammar Nainar

The Iran War has already had a severe impact on the United States’ arms and ammunition inventory. The new demands for arms and munitions come just as India has begun to improve its domestic weapons manufacturing and promote defense exports. In the coming years, this offers opportunities for India and the United States to cooperate in defense manufacturing at scale.

By Andre Nicola

Colombia’s upcoming election is not just a domestic political contest; it will shape whether Colombia remains a closely aligned U.S. partner or evolves into a more autonomous and less predictable actor in the region.

By Dhruva Jaishankar and Piyush Verma

A CTIP could deliver relatively quick wins by supporting joint manufacturing, standards cooperation, and market access to meet Europe’s diversification needs, while deepening India’s role as a global clean energy manufacturing hub. 

By Parul Bakshi and Samriddhi Vij

While the current crisis in the Middle East may not be permanent, Asia’s dependency on Middle Eastern crude is, necessitating a deeper examination of the structure and extent of this vulnerability.

By Anit Mukherjee

The current crisis in the Middle East has demonstrated that ensuring energy security will remain a challenge for policymakers in the foreseeable future, especially for countries like India. At the same time, the current disruption provides an opportunity to initiate and build on energy sector reforms to make sure that countries are better prepared to deal with such shocks in the future.

By Siddharth Yadav and Khush Advani

As AI reshapes economies, militaries, and societies, the nations that control the hardware pipeline will shape the rules of the emerging order. At present, that pipeline runs through a single bottleneck in Veldhoven, Netherlands. For middle powers, the choice is to either accept permanent dependency on a supply chain governed by the strategic priorities of others, or invest collectively in an alternative.

By Rohan Sharma

The effectiveness of U.S.-India AI cooperation will be measured not by the number of joint statements issued, but by whether both countries can build systems that are trusted, interoperable, and deployable across borders.

By Cauvery Ganapathy

Disruptions triggered by the Iranian blockade of the Strait of Hormuz have interrupted global efforts at industrial reshoring, data center-led digitization, electrification, and the reinforcement of defense production lines, while also posing risks to global food security.

By Jeffrey D. Bean

If the U.S. government can facilitate practical, targeted bilateral engagements for mining and processing under the banner of Pax Silica and FORGE, these could support derisking semiconductor, AI, and critical mineral supply chains provided key Global South actors are engaged effectively and equitably.

By Mahdi Ghuloom and Cauvery Ganapathy

What is noteworthy is that the UAE and Bahrain, two countries which have consistently advocated for a diplomatic resolution to the dispute, have now been forced to pivot towards seeking a more proactive approach aimed at securing the Strait under a UN-supported coalition.

By Arnold Musungu, Leigh Mante, and Reem Sagahyroon

The ensuing crisis in the Middle East is intensifying food and water insecurity, climate systems, and agricultural production. The Climate and Energy program from ORF Middle East provides concise analysis of these impacts and reflections on potential pathways forward. 

By Manish Thakre

As local governments increasingly rely on private vendors, building institutional capacity is essential to ensure AI technologies serve the public interest. Decisions about what AI systems to buy, and under what conditions, determine to what extent these systems benefit citizens or produce harmful outcomes.

By Ammar Nainar

Disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz resulting from the conflict between the United States and Israel, on the one hand, and Iran on the other, threaten to create another global energy crisis. India has many reasons to proactively take such action: the closure of the Strait of Hormuz risks exacerbating the country’s energy shortages and food insecurity.