Stagecraft and Statecraft

Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Trump pose for photographers as they arrive to view documents at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., on Friday, September 25, 2026, as a part of Xi’s state visit. By Brahma Chellaney, The Hill China has long sought peer validation from the only country whose recognition would carry decisive strategic weight — the U.S. President Trump has now handed Beijing that prize.

By Brahma Chellaney, The Hill One of the biggest geopolitical stories of the 21st century is the emergence of a broad coalition of countries determined to dilute the West’s monopoly on global governance. That coalition is officially known as BRICS, an acronym for its five original members: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Although BRIC began as an investment term for four emerging economies, the group expanded to include South Africa and held its first BRICS summit in 2011.

Brahma Chellaney, OPEN magazine China’s own scientists are warning the world about the serious risks posed by the colossal Chinese super-dam rising just miles from India’s border on the upper reaches of the Brahmaputra. Why has India been loath to leverage those scientific warnings?

If the promise of the BRICS was to establish a monetary union, a single market, or a tightly integrated political alliance, it has not been fulfilled. But if it was to build a platform for emerging economies to cooperate while advancing their own strategic autonomy, the BRICS has exceeded expectations.

The Nepal-Tibet catastrophe unfolded just as two international scientific studies had anticipated by modelling how flood surges behave as they emerge from engineered corridors in the Tibetan border region into downstream Nepal. Debris from a bridge damaged by flash flooding lies along the banks of the swollen Trishuli River at 1 Number Pul, in Nepal’s Nuwakot district. AP Photo.

The latest evidence suggests that the Chinese scientific establishment understands the dangers of the under-construction Himalayan dam—the world’s largest—more clearly than its political leadership is willing to acknowledge. With the livelihoods of two billion people at stake, the international community needs to weigh in. By Brahma Chellaney, Project Syndicate The world’s largest dam is rising in one of the world’s most geopolitically treacherous and seismically unstable regions.

Taipei Times The Iran and Ukraine wars are rewriting modern military strategy. These conflicts are demonstrating that a less conventionally powerful state, by leveraging asymmetric capabilities, can impose major costs on an aggressor and fundamentally reshape the outcome of conflict. Taiwan is not only drawing lessons from those conflicts, but also translating them into practice.

Upstream engineering and missing warnings may have magnified the natural disaster A damaged section of a highway in Nuwakot, central Nepal, is seen on August 27, 2026, following a cryospheric collapse in the Himalayas. © Getty Images Brahma Chellaney Nikkei Asia The devastating flash floods that tore through Nepal’s Trishuli and Koshi river valleys should not be seen as simply another Himalayan tragedy.

By Brahma Chellaney, The Hill From left, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif pose after signing a trilateral defense agreement in Mecca this month. Photo: Saudi Press Agency via AP America’s traditional allies in the Islamic world are not walking away from it, but they are no longer betting everything on Washington.

Then‑Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, then-U.S. President Joe Biden and other Group of Seven leaders and officials visit Itsukushima Shrine during their summit in Hatsukaichi, Hiroshima Prefecture, in May 2023. | Japan’s Foreign Ministry / via REUTERS By Brahma Chellaney The Japan Times Nearly half a century after Edward Said published his landmark book “Orientalism,” his central insight remains strikingly relevant.