Category: 2. World

The 25th SCO Summit is scheduled to be held in Tianjin, China, from August 31 to September 1, 2025. This much-awaited summit needs to be seen in the context of not only what China is doing but also the geopolitical alignment that India might be seeking. The last time PM Modi of India attended an SCO summit in person was in 2022. The 2023 SCO Heads of State Summit was held virtually, with PM Modi chairing it.

One of the reasons that brings Modi back to SCO and most importantly, to China, the host country, is the 50% tariff snub it got from President Trump. India considered this American act as unjust and irresponsible. Unjust because China is the largest importer of Russian oil, yet it is not sanctioned, but India was. So the diplomatic response by India was in line with how it chose to serve its national interest. We will not be told whom we can buy from and from whom we cannot, said India, thus laying the ground for seeking strategic autonomy. Modi heads to China, understanding the geopolitical weight of the SCO. If India won’t export to the US, it will seek alternative markets of the SCO and BRICs as well as access to their resources and the energy reserves.

India’s refusal to join BRI is based on the fact that such an action would undermine its sovereignty. CPEC is the flagship project of BRI, and India fears that joining BRI might legitimise Pakistan’s claim over the disputed Kashmir territory that India claims and Pakistan holds. If India is seeking a broad geopolitical alignment, which means mending its relations with China despite the territorial and land disputes with it, then the circle of this broad geopolitical alignment will not be complete unless India considers mending its relations with Pakistan as well.

Events shape geopolitical trends. The upcoming Head of States SCO Summit is one such event that will definitely contribute to accelerating the geopolitical trend of the demise of American primacy. This SCO summit is unique in the sense that twenty countries are participating in it – the largest number to have ever participated in an SCO summit. This is the beginning, and with every subsequent year, the number of countries attending may rise. Both SCO and BRICS and their membership are likely to become bigger and larger as their attractive economies suck in more and more countries of the Global South.

There is this old quote that a common enemy brings the adversaries together. In the changing geopolitical structure of the world, the US is likely to stand out not as the common enemy but as a losing global hegemon that may be left stranded because it fails to get its act together. Already, SCO and BRICs together hold 35% of the total share of the global output, which is 8% more than the 27% of the same output that G-7 countries hold.

Global North was considered the core, and Global South was the gap. But given this difference in share of the global output by the countries of the Global South, the rich core of the global economy seems to be gradually shifting towards the Global South. Demographically as well, the US represents 4.5% of the world’s population while China, Russia and India combined represent almost 40% of the world’s population. What SCO and BRICS member countries can initiate as a geopolitical trend is similar to a geopolitical trend that the US initiated after World War II.

Within a week of the Allied forces victory, the US cancelled its Land-Lease Program for Britain and replaced it with a loan on commercial terms that Britain could not afford. The US action clearly suggested that a rising power was capitalising on the demise and loss of status of a declining power. Whatever indignity was left for Britain to suffer, as a declining power, was completed when, in 1956, the Anglo-French invasion was undertaken to retake the Suez Canal, which was nationalised by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. President Eisenhower of the US didn’t like Britain’s idea of undertaking the invasion of a strategically important zone without prior consultation. Britain’s global aspirations ended when it was forced to withdraw its forces. Post Suez Canal withdrawal, the geopolitical trend of Britain’s decline and demise as a great power reached its culminating point.

Currently, there is no Land-Lease agreement between the existing three great powers and India as a rising power. What the major powers in SCO and BRICS can do is understand that there can be differences but not disputes, that there can be competition but not conflict. The US Achilles heel is based on misunderstanding this concept. It has become too powerful to resist the temptation of projecting its power in all the negative ways. India is the only country in the world that has been subjected to 50% tariffs, which is an act that is both humiliating and provocative. By imposing huge tariffs on India, all that the US has done is push India into the Russo-Sino orbit.

Two days after the end of the SCO summit, China celebrates its victory over Japan in a victory day parade. There is also a Modi-Putin Summit scheduled in India later this year. India will also act as the host nation for BRICS in 2026. So, there are many opportunities for one-on-one meetings between these leaders of the Global South.

As the world travels down the geopolitical road, the US stands out as a great power that is a borrower and under $35 trillion in debt, which is way more than the annual output of its goods and services. The tariffs and the sanctions that it has imposed is already bringing together 60% of the world’s population that holds 38% of the world’s GDP. The world is witnessing a change. The SCO Summit and similar events showcase that change. It is not only the aspiration for change but also how that change is brought about, which is more important.

No change can be brought about unless the leaders of great powers create conditions for that change to be put into practice. Under the changing geopolitical conditions, the onus lies with India not only to mend its ways with China but also with Pakistan. If this is done, the road ahead can only be one of regional peace and prosperity.

An Israeli airstrike killed the prime minister of the Houthi rebel-controlled government in Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, the Houthis have said.

Ahmed al-Rahawi was killed in a strike in Sana’a on Thursday along with a number of ministers, the rebels said in a statement on Saturday. Other ministers and officials were wounded, the statement added without providing further details.

The head of the group’s supreme political council, Mahdi al-Mashat, said: “We promise to God, to the dear Yemeni people and the families of the martyrs and wounded that we will take revenge.”

He warned foreign companies to leave Israel “before it’s too late”.

The premier was targeted along with other members of his Houthi-controlled government during a “routine workshop held by the government to evaluate its activities and performance over the past year”, the Houthi statement said.

Thursday’s Israeli strike took place as the rebel-owned television station was broadcasting a speech by Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, the secretive leader of the rebel group, in which he was sharing updates on the latest Gaza developments and vowing retaliation against Israel. Senior Houthi officials used to gather to watch al-Houthi’s prerecorded speeches.

The strike that killed the prime minister targeted a meeting for Houthi leaders in a villa in Beit Baws, an ancient village in southern Sana’a, three tribal leaders told the Associated Press. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared repercussions.

On Thursday, the Israeli military said that it “precisely struck a Houthi terrorist regime military target in the area of Sana’a in Yemen”. The military had no immediate comment on Saturday’s announcement of the prime minister’s killing.

“Yemen endures a lot for the victory of the Palestinian people,” al-Rahawi said after an Israeli strike last week on an oil facility owned by the country’s main oil company, which is controlled by the rebels in Sana’a, as well as a power plant.

On 22 August the Houthis had launched a ballistic missile toward Israel that its military described as the first cluster bomb the rebels had launched at it since 2023.

The prime minister hailed from the southern province of Abyan, and was an ally to the former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh. He allied himself with the Houthis when the rebels overran Sana’a and much of the north and centre of the country in 2014, initiating the country’s long-running civil war. He was appointed as prime minister in August 2024.

Al-Rahawi is the most senior Houthi official to be killed since the US and Israel began their air and naval campaign in response to the rebels’ missile and drone attacks on Israel and on ships in the Red Sea. The US and Israeli strikes killed dozens of people. One US strike in April hit a prison holding African migrants in the northern Sadaa province, killing at least 68 people and wounding 47 others.

Ahmed Nagi, a senior Yemen analyst with the Crisis Group International, a Brussels-based thinktank, called the killing of the Houthi prime minister a “serious setback” for the rebels.

He said the escalation marks an Israeli shift from striking the rebels’ infrastructure to targeting their leaders, including senior military figures, which “poses a greater threat to their command structure”.

The Houthis launched a campaign targeting ships in response to the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, saying they were doing so in solidarity with the Palestinians. Their attacks over the past two years have upended shipping in the Red Sea, through which about $1tn of goods pass each year.

In May, the Trump administration announced a deal with the Houthis to end the airstrikes in return for an end to attacks on shipping. The rebels, however, said the agreement did not include halting attacks on targets it believed were aligned with Israel.

United States President Donald Trump has scrapped plans to attend an upcoming summit of the ‘Quad’ grouping in India amid deteriorating ties between Washington and New Delhi, US newspaper The New York Times (NYT) reported on Saturday.

Relations between the two countries have plummeted, with 50 per cent levies on many Indian imports into the US taking effect this week as punishment for New Delhi’s massive purchases of Russian oil; a part of US efforts to pressure Moscow into ending its war in Ukraine.

As ties between both nations deteriorate, NYT reported on Saturday that the breakdown in relations was caused after a phone call on June 17.

“After telling [Indian Prime Minister Narendra] Modi that he would travel to India later this year for the Quad summit, Mr Trump no longer has plans to visit in the fall, according to people familiar with the president’s schedule,” the NYT reported, citing “interviews with more than a dozen people in Washington and New Delhi”.

The NYT mentioned how Trump’s repeated claims about having ended the recent brief conflict between India and Pakistan reportedly “infuriated” Modi. The paper added that the dispute “dates back more than 75 years and is far deeper and more complicated than Mr Trump was making it out to be”.

India blamed Pakistan for the April 22 Pahalgam attack without evidence, triggering a military escalation. On May 6–7, New Delhi launched air strikes that killed civilians, followed by a week-long missile exchange. A US-brokered ceasefire ended the war.

“During a phone call on June 17, Mr Trump brought it up again, saying how proud he was of ending the military escalation,” the NYT reported.

“He mentioned that Pakistan was going to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize, an honour for which he had been openly campaigning. The not-so-subtle implication, according to people familiar with the call, was that Mr Modi should do the same.”

It added that the “bristled” Indian premier told Trump that American involvement had nothing to do with the ceasefire and the conflict had been settled directly between India and Pakistan.

“Mr Trump largely brushed off Mr Modi’s comments, but the disagreement — and Mr Modi’s refusal to engage on the Nobel — has played an outsize role in the souring relationship between the two leaders, whose once-close ties go back to Mr Trump’s first term,” the report reads, adding that the two leaders have not spoken since the June 17 phone conversation and Trump has only doubled down on taking credit for the ceasefire.

Amid this dispute, India has grown closer to Beijing and Moscow. Modi is currently in Tianjin, China, for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation’s Council of Heads of State summit, where he is expected to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“At its core, the story of Mr Trump and Mr Modi is about two brash, populist leaders with big egos and authoritarian tendencies, and the web of loyalties that help keep both men in power,” the NYT reported.

“But it is also the tale of an American president with his eye on a Nobel Prize, running smack into the immovable third rail of Indian politics: the conflict with Pakistan.”

Bloomberg reported earlier this month that Modi turned down an invitation from Trump to visit the White House after a G7 meeting in Canada, over concerns that he would set up a meeting with Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Field Marshal Asim Munir, who was visiting the US at the time.

Reporting the same, NYT said: “Modi declined an invitation from Mr Trump to stop by Washington before he flew home. His officials were scandalised that Mr Trump might try to force their leader into a handshake with Pakistan’s army chief, who had also been invited to the White House for lunch around the same time. It was another clear sign, a senior Indian official said, that Mr Trump cared little for the complexity of their issue or the sensitivities and history around it.”

The COAS carried out two visits to the US. The first, in June, saw him meet Trump at the White House for luncheon, making him the first sitting army chief to do so.

The field marshal termed his second visit to the US in just one-and-a-half months a “new dimension” in ties between Washington and Islamabad. During this trip, the COAS engaged in high-level interactions with senior political and military leadership, as well as members of the Pakistani diaspora.

Pakistan and the US also finalised a trade deal at the start of August, lowering tariffs to 19pc from the previously announced 29pc and helping develop Pakistan’s oil reserves while trade talks between the US and India have stalled.

Donald Trump suffered the biggest defeat yet to his tariff policies on Friday, as a federal appeals court ruled he had overstepped his presidential powers when he enacted punitive financial measures against almost every country in the world.

In a 7-4 ruling, the Washington DC court said that while US law “bestows significant authority on the president to undertake a number of actions in response to a declared national emergency”, none of those actions allow for the imposition of tariffs or taxes.

It means the ultimate ruling on the legality of Trump’s tariffs, which were famously based on spurious economic science and rocked the global economy when he announced them in April, will probably be made by the US supreme court.

Here’s what to know.

Which tariffs did the court knock down?

The decision centers on the tariffs Trump introduced on 2 April, on what he called “liberation day”. The tariffs set a 10% baseline on virtually all of the US’s trading partners and so-called “reciprocal” tariffs on countries he argued have unfairly treated the US. Lesotho, a country of 2.3 million people in southern Africa, was hit with a 50% tariff, while Trump also announced a tariff of 10% on a group of uninhabited islands populated by penguins.

The ruling voided all those tariffs, with the judges finding the president’s measures “unbounded in scope, amount and duration”. They said the tariffs “assert an expansive authority that is beyond the express limitations” of the law his administration used to pass them.

Tariffs typically need to be approved by Congress, but Trump claimed he has the right to impose tariffs on trading partners under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which in some circumstances grants the president authority to regulate or prohibit international transactions during a national emergency.

The court ruled: “It seems unlikely that Congress intended, in enacting IEEPA, to depart from its past practice and grant the president unlimited authority to impose tariffs.”

Trump invoked the same law in February to impose tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China, claiming that the flow of undocumented immigrants and drugs across the US border amounted to a national emergency, and that the three countries needed to do more to stop it.

Are the tariffs gone now?

No. The court largely upheld a May decision by a federal trade court in New York that ruled Trump’s tariffs were illegal. But Friday’s ruling tossed out a part of that ruling that would have struck down the tariffs immediately.

The court said the ruling would not take effect until 14 October. That allows the Trump administration time to appeal to the majority-conservative US supreme court, which will have the ultimate say on whether Trump has the legal right, as president, to upend US trade policy.

What does this mean for Trump’s trade agenda?

The government has argued that if Trump’s tariffs are struck down, it might have to refund some of the import taxes that it has collected, which would deliver a financial blow to the US treasury.

Revenue from tariffs totaled $159bn by July, more than double what it was at the same point last year. The justice department warned in a legal filing this month that revoking the tariffs could mean “financial ruin” for the United States.

The ruling could also put Trump on shaky ground in trying to impose tariffs going forward. The president does have alternative laws for imposing import tariffs, but they would limit the speed and severity with which he could act.

In its decision in May, the trade court said that Trump has more limited power to impose tariffs to address trade deficits under another statute, the Trade Act of 1974. But that law restricts tariffs to 15% and to just 150 days on countries with which the United States runs big trade deficits.

How has Trump responded

He’s not happy. Trump spent Friday evening reposting dozens of social media posts that were critical of the court’s decision. In a post on his own social media site, Trump claimed, as he tends to do when judges rule against him, that the decision was made by a “highly partisan appeals court”.

“If these Tariffs ever went away, it would be a total disaster for the Country,” Trump wrote. He added: “If allowed to stand, this Decision would literally destroy the United States of America.”

Trump claimed “tariffs are the best tool to help our workers”, despite their costs being typically borne by everyday Americans. The tariffs have triggered economic and political uncertainty across the world and stoked fears of rising inflation.