2026

High Oil Prices Create an Opportunity for the Global Biofuels Alliance

High Oil Prices Create an Opportunity for the Global Biofuels Alliance

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.

Global South in the Crossfire: Strategic Competition and Managed Interdependence

Global South in the Crossfire: Strategic Competition and Managed Interdependence

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.

Russia-China Defence and Security Partnership: Intensification Amid Constraints

Russia-China Defence and Security Partnership: Intensification Amid Constraints

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.

Securing Access to Frontier AI: The Case for an India–U.S. Trusted Corridor

Securing Access to Frontier AI: The Case for an India–U.S. Trusted Corridor

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.

Latin America: Navigating the Turbulence

Latin America: Navigating the Turbulence

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.

Five Takeaways from the Quad Joint Statement

Five Takeaways from the Quad Joint Statement

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.

Building in the Rupture: The World’s New Alignments

Building in the Rupture: The World’s New Alignments

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.

New Arenas of Great-Power Competition

New Arenas of Great-Power Competition

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.

Brazil’s Ambitious AI Electoral Framework Confronts a Test

Brazil’s Ambitious AI Electoral Framework Confronts a Test

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.

Muscles in Brussels? Europe’s Uneven Rearmament

Muscles in Brussels? Europe’s Uneven Rearmament

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.

India’s Growing Defense Industry Offers Opportunities for U.S. Production

India’s Growing Defense Industry Offers Opportunities for U.S. Production

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.

CTIP: An Avenue for EU-India Clean Industrial Collaboration

CTIP: An Avenue for EU-India Clean Industrial Collaboration

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. 

India’s LPG Shortage: An Opportunity for Energy Subsidy Reforms

India’s LPG Shortage: An Opportunity for Energy Subsidy Reforms

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.

Beyond ASML: Japan-South Korea-UAE-India Cooperation on Semiconductor Sovereignty

Beyond ASML: Japan-South Korea-UAE-India Cooperation on Semiconductor Sovereignty

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.