By Piyush Verma
India’s latest Union Budget marks a subtle but important shift in how the country is framing its energy priorities. Rather than centering the narrative solely on clean energy targets or renewable capacity additions and relevant policy support, the Budget signals a broader and more mature emphasis on energy security.
By Dhruva Jaishankar with Pratnashree Basu, Kartik Bommakanti, Lindsey Ford, and Kabir Taneja
The re-election of Donald Trump in the United States (US) has introduced a wave of turbulence to the international system, reversing certain pre-existing trends while accelerating others. Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine continues to contribute to Europe’s rearmament. Israel’s strikes in Iran, Syria, Qatar, and Yemen reflect broader upheaval spreading across the Middle East and beyond. China’s competition with the US persists, extending across multiple domains and regions. Amid this backdrop, at least five major geopolitical megatrends are likely to unfold.
By Marta Bengoa
The India-EU free trade agreement will connect over two billion people across a market representing nearly a quarter of global GDP. But the real story isn't about size. It's about timing. After seventeen years of false starts and negotiations, both parties finally grasped what's at stake: in a world fragmenting between Washington's capricious tariffs and Beijing's economic coercion, this deal is economic insurance.
By Holly Stevens and Siddharth Sharma
As demand for electric vehicles, battery storage, clean energy systems, and advanced technologies continues to accelerate, Australia’s resource base and mining history, Canada’s resource base as well as its mining and industrial capabilities, and India’s market scale and commitment to value-added manufacturing could support diversification across multiple stages of the value chain.
By Marta Bengoa
Speaking at Davos, Trump first ruled out using military force to acquire Greenland (after weeks of refusing to do so), then hours later announced what he called a "framework of a future deal" with NATO on Arctic security. Whether the framework leads to substantive Arctic security cooperation or remains another example of Trump declaring victory without achieving objectives, the damage to transatlantic economic relations has been done.
By Piyush Verma
India’s latest Union Budget marks a subtle but important shift in how the country is framing its energy priorities. Rather than centering the narrative solely on clean energy targets or renewable capacity additions and relevant policy support, the Budget signals a broader and more mature emphasis on energy security.
By Marta Bengoa
The India-EU free trade agreement will connect over two billion people across a market representing nearly a quarter of global GDP. But the real story isn't about size. It's about timing. After seventeen years of false starts and negotiations, both parties finally grasped what's at stake: in a world fragmenting between Washington's capricious tariffs and Beijing's economic coercion, this deal is economic insurance.
By Holly Stevens and Siddharth Sharma
As demand for electric vehicles, battery storage, clean energy systems, and advanced technologies continues to accelerate, Australia’s resource base and mining history, Canada’s resource base as well as its mining and industrial capabilities, and India’s market scale and commitment to value-added manufacturing could support diversification across multiple stages of the value chain.
By Marta Bengoa
Speaking at Davos, Trump first ruled out using military force to acquire Greenland (after weeks of refusing to do so), then hours later announced what he called a "framework of a future deal" with NATO on Arctic security. Whether the framework leads to substantive Arctic security cooperation or remains another example of Trump declaring victory without achieving objectives, the damage to transatlantic economic relations has been done.
By Ammar Nainar
For the first time in a defense framework agreement, India and the United States specified “operational coordination” as an objective for enhancing collaboration in Professional Military Education (PME) and training. While earlier exchanges largely involved India borrowing best practices from the United States, recent cooperation between the two countries has emphasized greater joint activities and operations.
By Krishnaveni Palanivelu
Cybersecurity must be treated as a shared economic security challenge. By aligning standards, strengthening cooperation, and embedding cyber resilience into trade, infrastructure, and foreign policy, democracies like the United States and India can better protect their digital foundations and sustain long-term economic stability.
By Ashwini Thakre and Piyush Verma
No single country can efficiently develop the entire critical minerals value chain on its own, particularly for rare earths and battery materials. Cooperation among the United States, Australia, Japan, and other Indo-Pacific economies reflects a growing recognition that resilience lies not in isolation, but in diversified and trusted networks.
By Caroline Arkalji
For utilities and developers, a robust U.S. battery-storage industry would reduce dependence on overseas suppliers, cut logistical and tariff-related costs, and accelerate project deployment. If the United States seizes this moment, it can position itself as a global leader in grid-scale battery manufacturing and deliver a more reliable, competitive, and secure energy system for the decades ahead.
By Marta Bengoa
Rather than reviving American manufacturing and boosting employment, the data from Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs tell a story of job losses in manufacturing, stagnant productivity in that sector, higher inflation across the economy, and economic uncertainty on a scale not seen in decades.
By Ashwini Thakre and Piyush Verma
China’s diplomatic control over sector may become the very trigger that unwinds its dominance. By weaponizing concentration, Beijing accelerated diversification efforts that many democracies had treated as optional. The shock exposed the liabilities of a system built on single-country dependence and encouraged a coordinated wave of investment across the United States, Europe, Japan, South Korea, and Australia.
By Benjamin Tkach and Vasabjit Banerjee
Submarine production difficulties affect the global marketplace and place a premium on domestic production. India’s pursuit of untested technologies elevates its risk, while Taiwan’s domestically produced system relies on foreign components. Both, therefore, have a lot to benefit from engineering and design cooperation in submarine production.
By Dhruva Jaishankar
The prospects of a major war involving China and the United States, and a limited war between Pakistan and India, are perhaps higher in the next three years than they have been over the preceding quarter century. Moreover, these two scenarios are connected by an increasingly intertwined China-Pakistan military relationship, which now extends beyond arms transfers to shared networks and emulated doctrines.
By Anit Mukherjee
The fact is that there have been few concrete proposals to address the twin challenges of debt sustainability and the rising demands for additional resources for sustainable development. In a world coming to terms with the radical changes in the development finance landscape over the past months, the leadership of the developing world to advance sustainable development is more critical than ever.
By Piyush Verma
Strengthening the EU-India energy partnership would unlock significant economic opportunities for both regions, fostering innovation, job creation, and strengthening security. How India and the EU align their energy strategies through their trade agreement will have far-reaching consequences for the world’s future.
By Dhruva Jaishankar and Ammar Nainar
As China and the United States jostle for position, India has a modest but meaningful role to play as a security provider in the Western Pacific. Beyond the Indian Ocean, its ability to improve interoperability with willing and capable partners and assist in capacity-building efforts have only increased, notwithstanding the tenor of relations with the United States.
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