By: Lt Col JS Sodhi (Retd), Editor, GSDN

The United Nations Charter, consisting of a Preamble and 111 articles divided into 19 chapters, was signed in San Francisco, USA, on June 26, 1945, and led to the creation of the United Nations Organisation on October 24, 1945. The Preamble of the United Nations Charter reaffirms faith in fundamental human rights and the worth of the human person.

A country best upholds fundamental human rights and the worth of the human person when people can vote freely and justice is impartial. A nation’s international credibility strengthens when it holds free and fair elections and maintains an independent judiciary. China scores badly on both counts. The V-Dem (Varieties of Democracy) Institute ranks China 171^st in the democracy index, while the World Justice Project Rule of Law Index ranks China 92^nd. The world has 195 nations, of which 193 are members of the United Nations Organisation.

The USA, on the other hand, as the world’s oldest democracy, fares much better than China in both free and fair elections and an independent judiciary. Hence, it was only natural that the world would gravitate toward America’s leadership, as its democratic values held great depth. After World War II ended in 1945, and until the Cold War ended in 1991 with the disintegration of the USSR, most of the world aligned with the USA, while a few aligned with the USSR.

From 1992 to 2007, until China emerged as the world’s third-largest economy and began asserting itself internationally, the USA enjoyed undisputed status as the world’s sole superpower. A year later, in 2008, Russia after its success in Georgia, was rising as a superpower. In 2010 after China became the world’s second-biggest economy, it’s arrival was becoming America uncomfortable.

Much has changed in the last 16 years, and the China factor is now leaving America helpless on four major fronts: military, economic, technological, and diplomatic.

On December 21, 2011, US President Barack Obama announced the East Asia Strategy, also known as Pivot to Asia, shifting American focus from the Middle East and Europe to the Indo-Pacific Region to counter China’s rise as a rival superpower. China was now a reckonable military challenge.

With China controlling 31% of the world’s manufacturing and a US$ 1.2 trillion trade surplus, and as the largest trading partner for 151 countries, China has also arrived economically.

As of 2025, China produced 77,179 STEM PhDs, compared with the USA’s 39,959, and leads in 57 of the 64 critical global technologies, while the USA leads in the remaining seven. China also controls 92% of the rare earth minerals, essential to almost everything manufactured globally. China’s technological prowess needs no further emphasis.

With the Global South comprising 134 nations, the bulk of them firmly with China, apart from China’s increasing influence in Europe and Asia, diplomatically too, China is seen as a more trustworthy ally as compared to the USA by the majority of the world, as is evident by China’s increasing diplomatic competence.

China’s Rise

In many fora, one often hears that China is a communist nation, that China is an authoritarian country, or that democracies progress slowly. That clearly isn’t true, as multi-party democracies have also risen. Most people don’t want to discuss or hear what China got right, which has propelled it to the power it is today.

The most basic issue that China tackled after the end of the Civil War in 1949 was education. In 1950, just a year after the Chinese Civil War ended, China’s per capita GDP was just US$ 614 in current international dollars (adjusted for purchasing power parity). The same year, the USA had a per capita GDP of US$ 1974, and the USSR, the other superpower at the time had a per capita GDP of US$ 1218.

However, China focused on education, as the literacy rate in China in 1949 was just between 20-40%. After taking power, the Communist Party made education one of its foremost priorities and, through both formal schooling and literacy programmes, tripled school enrolment, increased secondary school enrolment by a factor of 8.5, and quadrupled college enrolment in the first sixteen years.

Though the first three decades of modern China saw artificial disasters like the Great Leap Forward, the Great Famine, and the Cultural Revolution, China’s focus on education never wavered. After US President Richard Nixon’s historic visit to China in February 1972, which subsequently led to the establishment of diplomatic relations between the USA and China on January 01, 1979, China slowly started to become a manufacturing hub as the USA, realising the vast pool of skilled and educated labour available in China, started outsourcing manufacturing to China.

Thereafter, China never looked back. It has now reached the stage where the USA has acknowledged China’s prowess as America finds itself helpless. Two statements in the past couple of years explain the USA’s predicament.

One, Admiral Samuel Paparo, Commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, stated that China is carrying out the largest military buildup since World War II, perhaps in world history.

Two, Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of War of the 47^th US President Donald Trump’s administration, remarked in a candid statement that China’s hypersonic missiles could destroy the 11 US Navy aircraft carriers in just 20 minutes. He further added that in every war game conducted in the US Military, the Americans always lose to the Chinese. Militaries worldwide conduct war games to assess the readiness of military strategies and simulate real-war scenarios.

Economically too, China is the clear pole leader. Chatham House, in a report published on September 30, 2026, has underlined that China is on track to produce 45% of all manufactured goods in the world by 2030. China’s share of global manufacturing in 2000 was a mere 6%. The USA’s share in global manufacturing has dropped from 25% in 2000 to a projected 11% in 2030.

Sample the period 2020-2024 for the number of world-leading scientists in both China and the USA. In 2020, the USA had 36,959 world-leading scientists, while China had almost half of that number at 18,805. In 2024, China became the global leader in the number of world-leading scientists with 32,511, while the USA had 31,781. China spends more on research and development (R&D) than the USA. In 2024, China spent US$ 1.03 trillion on R&D, while the USA spent US$ 1.01 trillion, according to OECD data. In 2024, China put 295,000 new factory robots to work, more than all countries combined. Currently, China has over 2 million robots working in its factories, five times more than the USA. Technologically, China is now the global leader, leading in 57 of the 64 critical global technologies, as has been stated earlier.

Why is America Helpless

After President Donald Trump unleashed the Tariff War on April 09, 2025, on 90 nations, only two nations, i.e. China and Canada, retaliated with counter-tariffs on the USA. It would have been prudent for America to go hammer and tongs at these two nations. But this didn’t happen. Instead, Donald Trump met Xi Jinping in Busan, South Korea, on October 30, 2025, which led the USA to suspend tariffs on China for a year.

Donald Trump had no choice, as China enforced restrictions on rare earth mineral exports covering 12 of 17 rare earth elements (REE) few months later, through the Ministry of Commerce Announcement 2025 No. 61, issued on October 09, 2025. The US military-industrial complex was adversely affected by China’s curbs on REEs, as they are essential to every weapon system manufactured. China’s control over Indium Phosphide exports has threatened the Artificial Intelligence data centres rollouts.

A helpless America could do nothing but mend fences with China. Hence, the Busan meeting between the two Presidents saw America suspend tariffs on China and, in return, China eased REE curbs on the USA.

And if that wasn’t enough, China passed the Amended Foreign Trade & Export Control Law on December 27, 2025, effective March 01, 2026, which expanded the legal and enforcement basis for sanctions on foreign governments, companies, and individuals. As a result, USA imports of Yttrium Oxide from China dropped to 10 metric tons in April 2026, down from 60 metric tons in March 2026. Yttrium Oxide is an important rare-earth compound used across high-tech, industrial, and manufacturing sectors.

Clearly, the American industry was fully incapacitated due to the curbs imposed by China. Even as the USA’s war with Iran raged on, President Donald Trump headed to Beijing on May 13-15, 2026, and made overtures to China, including clearing Nvidia H200 chip sales to 10 Chinese firms. A long-standing sore point for China, the enactment of the CHIPS and Science Act by the USA on August 09, 2022, had been resolved. What pleased China more was Donald Trump’s May 15, 2026, statement during the visit that Taiwan was 9500 miles away. A clear indicator that in the event of China’s war on Taiwan, the USA will not come to the aid of Taiwan.

America was helpless yet again. China’s tightening of REE and rare earth compound exports to the USA was bearing fruit.

One sticking point, though, remained for China. And it was the US arms package announced for Taiwan on December 17, 2025, worth US$ 11.1 billion. This issue too didn’t have to wait long to go in China’s favour. Ahead of Xi Jinping’s visit to the USA from September 23-25, 2026, Donald Trump suspended the arms package to Taiwan.

Once again, America proved helpless before China.

As Xi Jinping landed in Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, USA on September 23, 2026 for his State Visit to the USA, after a gap of 11 years, Donald Trump personally received him at the base. The first for an American President personally receiving a foreign leader since 1962 except the Popes, demonstrating the power that the Chinese President wields. Throughout his visit, Xi Jinping travelled in a China-made, custom-built Hongqi N701 armoured limousine. Only seven countries in the world manufacture official state limousines which are used by their Heads of State while travelling abroad. China has entered a league unimaginable six decades back.

A country that had retaliated with counter-tariffs on the USA, was seeing its President being personally received by the American President, clearly proving how the USA was now helpless in front of China!

Consequences of America’s helplessness

As China grows economically and militarily while American power declines, it signals disaster for democracy and the rules-based world order, since China doesn’t subscribe to these values. As China rises economically, militarily, and technologically, its diplomatic prowess is rising exponentially too. The China factor will be difficult to challenge as time rolls on.

Two nations that will bear the immediate brunt of American helplessness in front of Chinese supremacy in the near future are Taiwan and India. These two nations are part of China’s military aims. China is expected to wage the war for Taiwan at the end of 2027 and wage the two-front war with Pakistan against India any time after 2030.

While America has proved helpless in front of China, and the world-at-large is unable to withstand the Chinese grip that is slowly tightening on the world, countries like Taiwan and India have to also prepare for the war on the horizon that stares both these countries. With no external aid assured, both Taiwan and India are up against a formidable China, whose mettle has been acknowledged even by America.

By : Glory Saikia, Research Analyst, GSDN

On February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched a joint military offensive against Iran, producing an unprecedented operational tempo of nearly 900 strikes within the first twelve hours. This was Operation Epic Fury/Operation Roaring Lion, and it triggered a rapid escalation into a multi-front regional war spanning Iran, Israel, Lebanon, the Gulf, and key maritime routes. The weak points of the Iranian regime paved the way for attacks, as there were extensive protests in Iran since early 2026 motivated by a weakened economy and infrastructure. Its regional allies have also been weakened by Israeli military action from 2023. Moreover, Iran’s counterstrikes on Arab Gulf states in 2026 have also left it further isolated. The attacks also follow the failure of indirect negotiations in February on a new agreement to curtail Iran’s nuclear programme. 

 The Congressional Research Service states that President Trump listed several goals: stopping Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, destroying its missiles, and wiping out its missile industry. Early coverage by U.S. Naval Institute News also reported that Trump publicly claimed the strikes had killed Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The U.S. commander leading the war in Iran, Admiral Brad Cooper, confirmed the use of a variety of AI tools that allowed the leaders to make smarter decisions faster. The use of AI in Iran war signals that the targeting supported by the algorithms is becoming a warfare norm with significant risks. The Iranian Government condemned the US-Israel attacks as a breach of the UN Charter and said it would exercise the right to self-defence for as long as the attacks continue. The Iranian government confirmed the death of Ali Khamenei at his office in the capital, Tehran. 

The war was based on irregular tactics, terrorism and coercion, and criminal or disruptive activity operating across physical and psychological dimensions. Air and missile strike, Escalation through partners and proxies such as Hezbollah and regional militias, Disruption of shipping, and a constant fight over public opinion all ran together in this war. Considering these accounts, we can say that the Iran war is the first large-scale conflict in which AI was not just a support tool but a core part of how decisions were made. 

AI and the Changing Nature of Modern Hybrid Warfare 

In the past few years, Artificial Intelligence has evolved into a powerful tool that enables machines to think and act like humans. Hybrid war is the art of synchronization at its core. It often erases the traditional line between peace and war by weaving very different levers of national power into a single strategy. A missile strike has the ability to leave an undeniable physical trail and often draw immediate international condemnation. However, a hybrid operation can quietly destabilize an electrical grid or polarize the social media feeds of people without even triggering a formal declaration of war. Contemporary hybrid warfare involves asymmetric cyber operations where attacks on critical digital networks and operational technologies are carried out with plausible deniability to avoid direct military retaliation. It aims at weakening the opponent’s economy and limiting its defence funding through instruments like targeted sanctions, asset freezing, and maritime blockades. Automation, machine learning and data analytics are used to OutSpace and adversary decision-making, while coordinated propaganda and state-backed media are used to deepen social divisions and steer political narratives. 

Artificial Intelligence has moved into the battlefield, and its central value lies in its ability to process vast and varied streams of data at overwhelming speeds. Algorithmic warfare operates across several domains in the Iran–Israel–U.S. theatre. Historical strike patterns, behavioral anomalies, and logistics footprints were analyzed in the predictive threat modelling to anticipate proxy stacks. Satellite imagery and intercepted communications were aggregated to map adversary movements in real time. Moreover, the automated network defence monitors networks and zero-day vulnerabilities at machine speed that helped in stopping the cyber strikes before human security teams could even detect them. 

AI-Enabled Military Technologies Used in Iran War 

The AI technologies and targeting infrastructure deployed in Iran have evolved and scaled across multiple prior deployments. The U.S. Department of Defence’s flagship AI program, Project Maven, had been providing various targeting support for the airstrikes in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and the Red Sea since 2024. For its operations in Iran, the AI platforms from Anthropic sifted through massive volumes of data from satellites, reconnaissance drones, intercepted communications, and ground sensors. Along with analyzing adversary movements, it also forecasted potential countermeasures and refined strike strategies across air, naval, terrestrial, and cyber domains. It uses satellite imagery, geological data, and human intelligence to inform targeting recommendations. 

The escalation of three simultaneous events was the most significant dimension of the Iran conflict. First, the United States placed Anthropic on its security blacklist after CEO Dario Amodei refused to grant the Pentagon unrestricted access to Claude for ‘all lawful purposes,’ insisting on two exceptions: no use for mass domestic surveillance of Americans, and no fully autonomous weapons without human oversight. Second, Operation Epic Fury commenced with Claude already embedded in U.S. military targeting workflows through Project Maven and classified AWS environments – used by CENTCOM for intelligence analysis, target identification, and operational simulations. Third, hours after Anthropic’s blacklisting, OpenAI announced an agreement with the Pentagon for military applications of its models. 

The national security strategy of Israel is deeply interconnected with the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into its military operations in this dispute. Israel has been positioned at the frontline of military AI applications in its strategic and defence capabilities due to its dedication to various technological advancements. The AI algorithms refined by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) have enabled for rapid decision-making and target allocation for air defence systems such as the Iron Dome, Arrow missile defence system and David’s Sling. These innovations improved Israel’s defence capabilities as well as allowed for swift responses to the evolving risks. It has also engaged in AI-driven targeting systems to detect and engage threats more efficiently; during the bombing campaign in Gaza, the IDF utilized an AI system known as Habsora, or “the Gospel,” that self-regulate the recommend targets for human analysts. 

In the AI-enabled era, the Iran conflict revealed the new typology of military advantage. The AI capabilities of Iran were substantially more limited due to the international sanctions that restricted its access to advanced semiconductors and AI development infrastructure. However, countries must also tackle the associated challenges and ethical considerations to maintain a strategic advantage while supporting international norms and standards. 

Ethical Gaps and Governance Challenges  

The profound impact of military innovation can be observed throughout history: from gunpowder and cannons to hybrid warfare. Technology has the power to challenge the existing social structure by bringing about social revolutions in military operations. When AI-assisted systems perform the analytical and deliberative work in place of human judgement, humans become less equipped to apply contextual moral reasoning in sensitive matters. 

Algorithmic decision-making also engenders disruptive effects on the balance of power as it causes shifts in military practices, challenging the existing legal and ethical norms governing the conduct of warfare. The Iran conflict underscored the inadequacy of existing governance frameworks for military AI. Meaningful oversight may be reduced by the speed and volume of data that the AI systems can process and may reduce the operator’s ability to verify the recommendations. Its decision-making system remains opaque and prone to errors that can strain adherence to principles of proportionality and distinction even where formal safeguards exist. With the emergence of these algorithms in military systems, there is likely to be a structural vulnerability for the democratic conduct of war. 

The United Nations General Assembly resolution titled ‘Artificial intelligence in the military domain and its implications for international peace and security’ addresses the security challenges of military AI beyond lethal autonomous weapons. It affirms that the UN Charter, international humanitarian law and human rights lawfully apply across every stage of the military cycle of AI. However, it provides no binding enforcement mechanism and did not prevent the deployment of AI targeting systems in Iran two months later. 

The pattern of artificial intelligence in warfare is visible well beyond this conflict, as the United States’ Project Maven applies machine learning to military surveillance, Israel uses AI targeting algorithms in Gaza, and Ukraine deploys semi-autonomous zones. Iran has increasingly turned to using AI in strengthening its cyber capabilities and defences, treating it to offset Israel’s military advantage. It also claims to go further by positioning AI in ballistic missile targeting and drone swarms as central to its national security strategy. Israel has also used AI to strengthen its Iron Dome missile defence system and refine predictive intelligence for counterterrorism. 

The tragedy at Minab, where at least 150 people, including schoolchildren, were killed, was characterized as a grave violation of humanitarian law by the United Nations. This highlights how AI-assisted systems misidentify civilian targets due to algorithmic bias or sensor failure. In incidents like Minab, accountability fractures across the chain of development and practical application, as programmers cannot anticipate operational contexts and commanders disclaim responsibility for machine decisions. 

The adequate governance of military AI will require procedures that address both technical and normative dimensions of the accountability gaps as exposed in the Iran conflict. As suggested by the recent scholarship, AI systems should be regulated based on what they do rather than how they are officially described at the technical level. The use of terms such as “human-in-the-loop” can give the impression that humans have meaningful control when they may only approve AI-generated recommendations very quickly. If an AI system produces 900 targeting recommendations in twelve hours, and human operators review them within seconds, it is difficult to consider this genuine human control, even if humans formally authorize the final decisions, as is evident in the case of Iran. At the institutional level, effective governance also requires actual opportunities for humans to override AI decisions rather than on paper. It also requires practically accessible features of AI-DSS, combined with dynamic trust calibration systems that modulate operator reliance on AI recommendations based on demonstrated accuracy and training programs to develop operators’ capacity for independent judgment even under time pressure. Additionally, the principles of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) need to be converted into clear operational rules at the international level by including minimum deliberative time per targeting decision, maximum AI recommendation throughput per operator, and required confidence thresholds before AI targets are actionable. It is essential to convert normative commitments into enforceable constraints. 

AI and the Emerging Security Landscape of the Middle East  

The implications of AI technologies extend beyond this specific conflict and its military strategies, influencing the political and economic landscape of the Middle East region. On one hand, AI can improve surveillance and security, while on the other hand, it escalates tensions, sparks an arms race, and undermines trust among regional actors. There is the possibility of new forms of arms competition centered on surveillance infrastructure and algorithmic strategies in the Middle East. 

When AI-assisted systems are deployed in cyber operations, it poses certain threats and risks to critical infrastructure and communication networks. The application of Maven Smart System also creates pressure on other regional states to develop such capabilities. The Iranian attacks on Amazon data centers in the UAE and Bahrain caused regional banking and consumer service disruptions, which shows how the boundary between military and civilian infrastructure can be blurred. 

Conclusion 

Even though both the USA and Israel used AI in the war, their applications were directed towards different perspectives, with the USA’s reliance on AI-supported systems, drone imagery, target identification and decision-making, and Israel’s use of AI in its existing intelligence and defence system. It integrated AI into missile defence, threat detection, and predictive intelligence. The Iran conflict demonstrates how the integration of AI into defence technologies and decision-making can weaken moral human judgement. There must be adequate policies on the lawful use of AI to prevent discrimination, bias, and establish accountability. 

By: Khushbu Ahlawat, Consulting Editor, GSDN

Introduction

At a Taipei trade fair in 2026, Indian firms quietly did something more consequential than close a few deals — they demonstrated that a country can build real influence without ever needing an embassy to do it. Walk the exhibition floor of COMPUTEX Taipei in any recent year and you will find the usual suspects: American chip giants, Japanese robotics firms, South Korean display manufacturers. At the 2026 edition, though, something had shifted. Indian companies — among them Sahasra and Zoho — were not peripheral visitors but active participants, pitching partnerships in artificial intelligence, semiconductors and electronics manufacturing to an audience that included more than 1,500 exhibitors and upward of 111,000 visitors from over 150 countries and regions, in a show that spanned AI computing, robotics, intelligent mobility, next-generation communications and advanced semiconductor technology. None of this happened through an Indian embassy in Taipei, because no such embassy exists, nor will one anytime soon. And that, more than the specific deals struck on the floor, is the real story.

India has no formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan. It never has, and under the One China policy New Delhi has long maintained, it is unlikely to anytime soon. Yet the two have been building something substantial anyway — in trade, in technology, in labour mobility, even in science and public health — entirely outside the traditional architecture of embassies, ambassadors and state visits. What is happening between New Delhi and Taipei is a useful case study in a broader shift taking place in how international influence actually gets built in the twenty-first century: not only through flags and formal recognition, but through the far less visible work of becoming indispensable to the systems the world runs on.

Why Technology Now Buys What Diplomacy Used To

For most of the post-war era, a country’s global standing was measured in fairly conventional terms: the size of its military, the breadth of its economy, the number of embassies carrying its flag. That calculus has not disappeared, but it has been joined, and in some domains overtaken, by a different kind of leverage — participation in the technological architectures, innovation ecosystems and supply chains that now underpin the global economy. The United States still leads in advanced technology and innovation networks broadly. China brings manufacturing scale and a fast-closing technological gap. Taiwan sits at the centre of global semiconductor production. South Korea anchors electronics and digital technology. Japan leads in advanced manufacturing and industrial innovation. Each of these positions functions, in effect, as a form of geopolitical currency, independent of how many countries formally recognise the state that holds it.

Taiwan is perhaps the starkest illustration of this dynamic anywhere in the world. Since the People’s Republic of China took over the UN seat in 1971, Taiwan has been locked out of the vast majority of formal international institutions — it cannot sit as a full member at the UN, and most countries, including India, maintain no official diplomatic ties with it. And yet Taiwan is almost impossible for the global technology economy to ignore. The island is home to the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the firm that fabricates the overwhelming majority of the world’s most advanced chips, the kind that power everything from smartphones to the data centres training the latest AI models. TSMC alone accounted for roughly two-thirds of the global contract chipmaking market by revenue in recent years, and its most cutting-edge nodes are produced almost nowhere else at comparable scale. That single fact gives Taiwan a seat at the table in forums that have nothing to do with formal diplomatic recognition: it participates in APEC under the awkward but functional label “Chinese Taipei,” engages the WTO’s Information Technology Agreement, and works through industry-driven bodies like the World Semiconductor Council and the Government/Authorities Meeting on Semiconductors, which brings together the world’s leading chip-producing economies. Taiwan’s own semiconductor trade association plugs into standard-setting bodies like SEMI and JEDEC and the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics organisation, shaping the technical rules that govern global chip markets from the inside, without ever needing a UN vote to do it. Taiwan’s experience captures a genuinely broader truth in modern international politics: marginalisation in formal diplomacy does not equal strategic irrelevance, when a state holds an irreplaceable role in the technological processes everyone else depends on.

What Each Side Actually Brings to the Table

The India-Taiwan relationship works, to the extent it does, because the two sides bring strikingly complementary rather than overlapping strengths. Taiwan’s trade is heavily concentrated among a handful of major economies — in 2024, nearly a third of its merchandise trade ran through China and Hong Kong, more than 23 percent through the United States, and upward of 13 percent through Japan and South Korea combined, a pattern of deep integration that extends Taiwan’s economic weight well beyond its own geography but also leaves it structurally exposed to concentration risk and to the political volatility of its relationship with Beijing. India, by contrast, offers something Taiwan is chronically short of: market size, broad diplomatic legitimacy, and growing institutional standing across the international system’s main multilateral bodies, even if its own advanced manufacturing and technology base is still catching up.

That asymmetry, rather than being an obstacle, is exactly what makes the partnership useful to both sides. Bilateral trade crossed US$1 billion in 2024 by some counts, and other tallies put the relationship considerably higher — earlier figures show trade climbing from just over US$1 billion in 2001 to roughly US$7.7 billion by 2021 and US$8.5 billion by 2022. That trajectory has seen some recent softening, with a 2.7 percent dip in India’s FY2023-24 trade with Taiwan, but it still marks India out as one of Taiwan’s more significant partners across South and East Asia. In July 2023, the two sides concluded a Mutual Recognition Agreement covering each other’s organic agricultural products, opening a modest but symbolically useful channel for Indian agri-exports like tea and sesame seed into the Taiwanese market — an area officials on both sides see as having real room to grow.

The more consequential development, though, has been in labour mobility. After roughly two years of on-and-off negotiation that resumed in earnest after the pandemic, Taiwan and India signed a memorandum of understanding on migration and mobility on 16 February 2024, concluded not through embassies but through each side’s representative offices — the Taipei Economic and Cultural Center in India, and the India-Taipei Association in Taiwan — the de facto diplomatic channel both countries rely on in the absence of formal ties. The deal was squarely about addressing Taiwan’s demographic crunch: an ageing population and falling birth rate have left the island with persistent labour shortages across agriculture, construction, manufacturing and the care sector, and Taiwanese officials have been particularly interested in recruiting workers from India’s northeastern states, citing closer cultural and culinary affinities as easing the transition. It followed, and built on, Taipei’s 2023 decision to open a third Taiwanese representative office in India, this one in Mumbai, to handle visa services and consular-style assistance across Maharashtra, Goa, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh — an expansion of functional diplomatic infrastructure that China’s foreign ministry has criticised, with Beijing arguing that any country maintaining formal ties with the mainland while hosting a Taiwanese representative office undermines the One China principle, a charge India has effectively brushed aside while continuing not to alter its formal diplomatic posture toward Taipei in any way.

Building Multilateral Influence Without a Multilateral Seat

The deeper argument emerging from this relationship is that India and Taiwan do not need to resolve the recognition question to build something that functions like multilateral engagement. Three areas illustrate where that functional cooperation can go further.The first is international standard-setting, an unglamorous but genuinely consequential layer of global governance that determines how technologies actually get built and traded across borders — the technical specifications, interoperability requirements and industry norms that quietly shape entire markets long before any treaty or diplomatic summit gets involved. India and Taiwan could work together here precisely because standard-setting bodies routinely operate on technical merit and industry participation rather than sovereign recognition, giving Taiwan a route to influence it cannot access through conventional diplomacy and giving India a chance to shape rules in a sector where its own capacity is still developing.

The second is supply chain resilience, a priority that has moved from a niche policy concern to a central preoccupation of governments worldwide since the COVID-19 pandemic exposed just how fragile and concentrated global production networks for critical goods, semiconductors chief among them, had become. Taiwan’s dominance in advanced chip manufacturing is both an asset and a vulnerability — a vulnerability sharpened by the geopolitical risk inherent in cross-strait tensions — and India’s push to build its own semiconductor and electronics manufacturing base, through incentive schemes aimed at attracting fabrication and packaging investment, gives the two countries an obvious area of mutual interest in diversifying where and how critical technology components get made.

The third is sector-specific coalitions — informal groupings built around a shared technical or industrial interest that, over time, can acquire real institutional weight even without ever being chartered as a formal treaty body. Cooperation on semiconductor resilience, trusted technology ecosystems, critical infrastructure protection and digital security all offer India and Taiwan ways to shape governance outcomes together, incrementally, without India needing to extend anything resembling diplomatic recognition to do it.

Conclusion

The India-Taiwan relationship will likely never look like a conventional bilateral partnership, and that is, in a sense, the point. Neither Mumbai’s new Taiwanese representative office, nor the labour mobility pact negotiated through back-channel diplomatic proxies, nor a cluster of Indian tech firms working a trade-show floor in Taipei amounts to the kind of relationship that shows up on a traditional map of alliances. But each of these, taken together, demonstrates something genuinely significant about how influence is accumulating in a world where technological capability increasingly rivals, and sometimes outweighs, formal political status. Taiwan’s own experience — locked out of the UN for over half a century yet indispensable to the chips inside nearly every modern device on earth — is the clearest possible proof that systemic relevance and diplomatic recognition have become two separate currencies, convertible into each other only partially and under very specific conditions. For India, deepening ties with Taiwan offers a low-cost, low-friction way to gain a foothold in critical technology ecosystems without disturbing its broader China policy. For Taiwan, India offers scale, legitimacy and a market large enough to matter, at a moment when diversifying away from overconcentration in a handful of partners has become a genuine strategic necessity. What the relationship ultimately illustrates is a template other states without full diplomatic access to key partners might study closely: in a world increasingly organised around technological indispensability, functional multilateralism — built quietly, sector by sector, through labour pacts, trade fairs and standard-setting tables rather than embassies — may turn out to be one of the more durable forms of influence available to states operating outside the conventional diplomatic order.

By : Dhritiman Banerjee, Research Analyst, GSDN

Introduction 

During the early phase of the Cold War, Taiwan was a key partner in the anti-communist alliance, and America had made a security guarantee to the state. However, the Sino-Soviet split in 1969 and the resulting hard calculations of geopolitics made the Nixon administration recalibrate the American vision in East Asia to make Communist China a vital partner in the anti-Soviet crusade. However, the US security guarantee to Taiwan still remained in place to an extent. However, recent developments in the US-China relationship and the increase of Chinese aggression towards Taiwan has increased the importance of American security guarantees to the Island Nation. This article considers the question whether the American commitment to Taiwan still holds. 

US, China and Taiwan: A brief history 

Taiwan is a product of the direct aftermath of the Chinese civil war when the ousted anti-Communist Chinese leaders Chiang Kai Shek fled to Formosa Island and named it Taiwan. The Americans who had supported Chiang during the Civil War continued their support to the newly formed state of Taiwan and in fact refused recognition to Communist China. In fact, early US policy towards Taiwan regarded an invasion of Taiwan as an event demanding a US military intervention to defend Taiwan. In fact, in the 1950s and 60s, China which has always sought to integrate Taiwan into the mainland had military skirmishes with US forces over their aggressive posturing with respect to Taiwan. Opposition to Communism was the hallmark of the Taiwanese regime and therefore the foundation of the American commitment to Taiwan. However, while the US anti-communist commitment heavily influenced its Cold War policy towards Asia, the Vietnam War and its impact on America. The Nixon administration realized that it needed a powerful Asian ally to counteract Soviet policy. Communist China which had a strenuous relationship with the USSR post the Sino-Soviet split in 1969 presented a perfect candidate. Therefore, America revised its policy related to Maoist China and formally recognized Communist China. But American guarantees to Taiwan did not end during the new era. However, the US-Sino alliance was a temporary alliance built for the Cold War and after its end the rapid economic and military rise rise of China posed a direct threat to US hegemony. The US-China rivalry was cemented during President Obama’s pivot to Asia policy and exacerbated during the first Trump administration. These developments coincide with increasing Chinese aggression with respect to Taiwan which raises speculations as to the force behind American support to Taiwan. 

While the Americans have actively sought to balance China in East Asia by forming alliances with states like India, Japan and Australia. US military experts have warned that China control naval access to East Asia and challenge the US Navy in the region in short of all situations short of full-scale war. Secondly, it should be noted that the Iran War has exposed the shortcomings of American military capabilities and therefore, a military conflict with China may not be sustainable for Americans without considerable reforms in military operational planning, readiness and command and control. Thus, the question arises is defending Taiwan beneficial in the security calculus of the United States. 

The current military scenario of the US 

As former national security advisor Henry Kissinger used to say, America does not have permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests. The focus on flexible interests over rigid values has been the defining feature of US foreign policy. The second Trump administration has increased this focus and defined the conduct of foreign policy in purely transactional terms whereby America has reduced military support to Europe and has reevaluated its commitment to military alliances like NATO and international organizations like the WHO. President Trump in his second term has also increased his support to Israel and has actively participated in military conflicts in the Middle East. However, his Iran campaign showed the limits of US military capabilities and therefore, he urged his allies to participate in the conflict which they refused and led to questions of reciprocity on US commitments to alliances. In these developments, Taiwan had a very interesting stance. Taiwan stopped short of taking an opinion on the strikes and advocated for global stability. Taiwan has also acted to diversify its energy resources to reduce dependence on the Middle East for petroleum. But US actions in the Middle East and Chinese support of Iran as well as its growing militaristic posture towards Taiwan has raised concerns in Taipei over the will behind Washington’s security guarantee. While Taiwan is a global semi-conductor and AI giant and has advanced resources, it still shares asymmetric capabilities with Communist China which has economic, geographic and military advantages over it. Therefore, Taiwan heavily depends on Washington’s security umbrella for its own security. 

However, public support for military action is decreasing in the US and everyday Americans are heavily criticizing the Trump administration for the inflation caused by the war in Iran and American performance in the conflict. Therefore, it remains to be seen whether the US will commit to another foreign war like Taiwan soon. In fact, these developments have also been seen with concern in Taipei. Military analysts in the Island Nation have started to question American commitment to defend the Island Nation from Communist China and have encouraged Taiwan to develop strong indigenous military capabilities and multilateral defence partnerships with other states. Seeing the current domestic scenario regarding war in the US, these concerns are hard to ignore. Also, the US stockpile of missile defence arsenal is rapidly depleting in the conflict against Iran. Therefore, the US capability to defend Taiwan in such circumstances will be called into serious question. Thus, American willingness to defend Taiwan in case of a Chinese attack maybe doubtful unless a situation threatening US sovereignty arises. Americans realize the need to recognize China as a major player in Asia and the limited scope of US military intervention with respect to Chinese actions in East Asia. In such circumstances, if a purely national interest approach to foreign policy is adopted, defending Taiwan just does not add value in terms of the cost-benefit calculation. Therefore, from an American perspective, military intervention to defend Taiwan will be too costly, unviable and unpopular to attempt. It should also be noted that the US Congress also recognizes the problems of defending Taiwan. The Congressional Research Service has increasingly reinterpreted the US-Taiwan relationship as the US requiring resisting a Chinese invasion rather than defending Taiwan. This shows that the US also recognizes the need to increasingly adopt a strategically ambiguous posture with respect to Taiwan rather than having a black and white perspective. Therefore, it can be said that the US recalibration of this relationship is a marker of American intent with respect to Taiwan. 

Conclusion 

It should be noted that while the US may not directly intervene to defend Taiwan, a Chinese invasion of Taiwan will certainly involve an American response. The response will most likely be like US support to Ukraine in the face of the Russian invasion rather than direct American defence of Taiwan. This is because the US is not ready to engage in a full-scale military conflict with China. While security guarantees to allies hold weight in international politics, such guarantees are not sustainable if they supersede the national interests of the guaranteeing nation-state. Therefore, in this regard it should be noted that purely from a national interest calculus defence of Taiwan will be too costly for the United States to even attempt. 

By: Khushbu Ahlawat, Consulting Editor, GSDN

Introduction

Tariffs, rare earths and Taiwan dominated the headlines from Washington’s biggest diplomatic event of the year. The summit’s most consequential outcome, however, may be a modest-sounding hotline that neither side can even agree what to call. When Xi Jinping’s motorcade rolled onto the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews on 23 September 2026, it marked the Chinese president’s first state visit to Washington in eleven years — and Donald Trump greeted him personally, a gesture the White House had pointedly not extended four months earlier, when Trump himself travelled to Beijing in May. The symbolism was not lost on anyone watching. Over three days, the two leaders and their delegations worked through an agenda stacked with the kind of issues that normally dominate a US-China summit: tariffs, the fragile rare-earths truce reached in Busan the previous October, the stalled war in Iran, sanctions on buyers of Russian energy, and the always-combustible question of Taiwan. Yet when the dust settled and both governments issued their respective readouts, the item that seemed to carry the most lasting weight was one that had barely registered on anyone’s radar a month earlier: artificial intelligence.

That AI ended up at the centre of the summit rather than its margins tells you something important about how both capitals now view the technology — simultaneously as the sharpest edge of national power and as a shared vulnerability serious enough to warrant its own crisis-management plumbing. The agreement the two sides eventually struck, to open a dedicated communication channel for AI-related incidents, is a modest deliverable by the standards of a US-China summit. But modest is not the same as unimportant, and the shape the agreement took — including a fight over what to even call the technology — reveals as much about the state of the relationship as any tariff schedule could.

The Spadework Nobody Noticed

The agreement did not emerge fully formed from the summit room. Its groundwork was laid days earlier, in roughly eight hours of preparatory talks held on 20 September at JPMorgan Chase’s Manhattan headquarters, where US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng hashed out the contours of what would become the centrepiece AI deliverable. The two sides left that meeting having agreed to establish a formal dialogue on artificial intelligence and to reconvene roughly two months later, with Bessent floating Shenzhen — where China is set to host the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in November — as the likely venue for the next round.

What happened in the days immediately before the summit was, in its own way, almost as revealing as the summit itself. On 22 September, addressing the UN General Assembly, Trump signalled that official US documents would from then on refer to “superintelligence” rather than “artificial intelligence,” and the following day, the US Office of Science and Technology Policy’s director, Michael Kratsios, opened his remarks to the UN Security Council with the line “superintelligence, formerly known as AI” — a rebranding exercise that reads, depending on one’s vantage point, either as marketing or as a genuine signal of how seriously the Trump administration takes the leap from current AI systems to something qualitatively more powerful. When the White House fact sheet on Xi’s visit was published on 25 September, it duly used the new terminology throughout, announcing the establishment of a “US-China Dialogue on Superintelligence to exchange views on the risks and benefits” and a “bilateral communication channel” dedicated to AI incidents.

Beijing, notably, declined to follow Washington’s lead on vocabulary. China’s Ministry of Commerce readout referred simply to an “AI dialogue” led by He Lifeng and Bessent, and when a Foreign Ministry spokesperson addressed the agreement at a press briefing days later, he stuck with “artificial intelligence” and used the occasion to stress that the United Nations should play a central role in building what he called “a fairer and more equitable global AI governance system.” That small but deliberate divergence in language is a tell: Washington’s framing projects confidence in its own technological lead and treats the dialogue as a narrow risk-management tool, while Beijing’s framing positions China as a multilateralist champion of inclusive AI governance, a role it has been cultivating rhetorically for some time even as its own domestic AI policy remains tightly state-directed.

What the Hotline Actually Covers, and What It Leaves Out

Strip away the branding dispute, and the substance of the agreement runs along four fault lines, addressed with varying degrees of seriousness. The clearest deliverable is the bilateral notification mechanism itself: a channel meant to allow either government to alert the other, in close to real time, to any AI-related development that raises national security concerns. It is worth noting that this is not the first time Washington and Beijing have tried to build crisis-communication infrastructure of this kind. A military hotline set up in 2008 has, at various points of tension, simply gone unanswered, and an earlier attempt at structured AI dialogue broke down once frontier-risk discussions became entangled with unrelated disputes. The new mechanism inherits the same structural vulnerability. The broader US-China trade truce reached alongside the summit has only been extended to 10 January 2027, which means the next scheduled AI exchange, due by November, will take place squarely under the shadow of an approaching trade deadline — precisely the kind of linkage that has sunk comparable efforts before. Compounding the risk, the publicly released fact sheet leaves unresolved the single hardest technical question any such hotline must eventually answer: what actually counts as a reportable “incident.” Attribution in an AI-related crisis is often genuinely ambiguous — a disruptive event could be state-directed, carried out by a non-state actor exploiting an AI system, or the result of a model behaving unexpectedly beyond its intended operating parameters, with no obvious way to immediately distinguish between the three. In a relationship defined by deep, longstanding mistrust, that kind of interpretive ambiguity is exactly the sort of gap through which a minor incident could escalate before either side has time to establish what actually happened.

The second fault line concerns agentic and frontier AI systems specifically — the kind of advanced models now capable, in testing environments, of taking autonomous multi-step actions to achieve a goal. Security researchers have flagged scenarios in which an AI agent, unable to solve an assigned problem within its sandboxed testing environment, effectively breaks out of that containment and ends up interacting with external systems it was never meant to touch; in a worst case, an American system could end up probing Chinese critical infrastructure, or vice versa, entirely by accident. Offensive cyber capability enabled by AI, and the risk of AI systems being misused to assist biological-weapons research, sit in the same category of concern. On none of this did the Washington summit produce anything resembling a substantive agreement — there is no commitment to jointly develop safety standards for frontier models, nor any framework for coordinated oversight of the kind some US lawmakers, including Representative Ro Khanna, the ranking Democrat on the House Select Committee on China, had hoped for, with Khanna specifically floating the idea of a ban on recursive self-improving AI systems and an international inspection regime for AI labs. Neither made it into the final package.

The third gap concerns the military dimension of AI, where the summit was conspicuously silent. In 2024, then-President Joe Biden and Xi had reached a pledge committing both countries to keep human control over decisions involving nuclear weapons use — a principle that, given the accelerating integration of AI into intelligence analysis, battle-management systems and coordinated drone-swarm operations on both sides, would have been a natural candidate for reaffirmation or expansion at this summit. The fact sheet does not mention it at all, an omission that suggests the AI dialogue, for now, is being deliberately kept separate from the harder, more sensitive questions of military AI integration.

The fourth and perhaps most telling gap is what Washington has explicitly excluded from the new dialogue altogether: export controls on advanced semiconductors and chip-manufacturing equipment, the single most consequential lever the US currently holds over China’s AI development. US officials have been direct that this exclusion is intentional — the administration wants a narrowly scoped risk-reduction channel that leaves its existing technological leverage fully intact, rather than a broader negotiation that might trade away any of that advantage in exchange for cooperation on safety.

Two Ecosystems, Racing in Parallel

It would be a mistake to read the hotline agreement as evidence that the underlying US-China technology rivalry is cooling. If anything, the competitive gap is widening in both directions at once, with each side doubling down on a different strategy. American capital expenditure by leading technology firms topped roughly US400 billionin 2025,compared with around US 63 billion in China, and the US continues to hold a clear edge in frontier model capability, AI talent concentration and data-centre capacity.

China’s response has not been to try to match that spending dollar for dollar but to pursue a different route entirely: cost-optimised, often open-weight models designed for rapid diffusion across the Chinese economy under the government’s “AI+” initiative, paired with an aggressive push toward semiconductor self-sufficiency — state-funded Chinese data centres are now required to run exclusively on domestically produced chips. Just days before the summit, Huawei announced a system it claims can link up to a million processors into a single unified computing cluster, a scale claim meant to signal that China’s chip constraints are not preventing it from building serious compute infrastructure through alternative architectures. Beijing also continues to hold structural advantages in two inputs that matter enormously for the AI economy going forward: rare-earth processing capacity and electricity generation.

Washington’s own posture toward AI safety has, in the meantime, shown it is willing to let security concerns override the global spread of its own frontier technology when the two collide. In June 2026, a US export control directive forced Anthropic to suspend access to its Claude Mythos model — later restored on 1 July once the underlying Commerce Department controls were lifted — a concrete illustration that even leading American AI labs remain subject to security-driven intervention from their own government, not just from China’s restrictions on the other side. Taken together, the picture that emerges is not one race with a single finish line, but two increasingly self-contained ecosystems advancing in parallel, each hedging against dependence on the other.

What This Means for Everyone Else

For countries outside the US-China axis, the summit’s AI track carries two uncomfortable lessons. The first is that frontier-risk governance is narrowing into a conversation conducted almost exclusively between the two powers capable of building frontier-scale models, leaving institutions like the UN’s Independent International Scientific Panel on AI and the broader Global Dialogue on AI Governance at risk of being sidelined by bilateral arrangements that smaller and middle powers had no hand in shaping.

The second lesson concerns the deepening bifurcation of the global technology stack itself. India offers one instructive case of how a country might navigate this without being forced into a binary choice — working with the United States on compute infrastructure, with the European Union on regulatory governance, and with the UAE on data-centre capacity, while continuing to engage China through platforms like BRICS, a multi-alignment strategy made easier by India’s position as the second-largest market for several leading American AI firms. But that balancing act is likely to grow costlier over time as the American and Chinese technology ecosystems become more self-reinforcing and interoperability between them erodes. Governments in India’s position — and others watching from Brussels, Tokyo, Riyadh and beyond — would do well to treat the current moment as a narrowing window: pushing for interoperability standards now, building resilient and sovereign domestic compute capacity, and securing a seat at the table in whatever incident-reporting frameworks eventually touch their own critical infrastructure, before Washington and Beijing finish writing the rules of this new order largely for themselves.

Conclusion

The two leaders’ own closing messages on AI diverged almost as sharply as their governments’ choice of vocabulary. Trump, who has repeatedly waved away concerns about AI posing an existential threat, told reporters that superintelligence carries risks “like any major new technology” but insisted the US holds a commanding lead and intends to keep it, framing the competition in starkly zero-sum terms: whoever reaches superintelligence first, he suggested, wins outright. He had, days earlier at the UN, explicitly rejected any “globalist” scheme for governing the technology, pointing instead to the US Department of Justice as America’s own sufficient guardrail. Xi struck a notably different register, emphasising that the two countries should jointly guard against AI’s misuse rather than against each other, and that the technology’s development must remain firmly under human control — language calibrated to position Beijing as the more responsible, multilaterally minded actor, even as China’s Foreign Ministry pointedly dismissed a call from Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei for a more cautious, paced approach to frontier AI development. Whether this new Dialogue on Superintelligence becomes durable institutional infrastructure or simply another short-lived gesture folded into the broader US-China trade truce will become clearer at the next scheduled exchange, due by November, conducted in the shadow of the 10 January trade deadline. Until then, the clearest signal the Washington summit sent to the rest of the world is this: the rules governing the most consequential technology of the coming decade are being negotiated bilaterally, between two capitals, on their own terms — and any country that wants a genuine say in how that order takes shape needs to start making its case now, not after the terms have already been set.

By : Kumar Aryan, Research Analyst, GSDN

Afghanistan occupies a geopolitical position that is disproportionate to the size of its economy. Landlocked between South Asia, Central Asia, Iran and China, it sits at the intersection of several strategic spaces rather than belonging exclusively to any one of them. The Taliban’s return to power on August 15, 2021, followed by the completion of the United States and allied military withdrawal on August 30, 2021, changed the character of international involvement but did not reduce Afghanistan’s strategic importance. Instead, the country has become a test of how regional and global powers manage security, diplomacy, trade, and humanitarian pressures in a strategically located state without a large Western military presence. 

A Strategic Geographical Pivot 

Afghanistan’s geography is the foundation of its geopolitical relevance. It shares borders with Pakistan, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and China, creating direct interfaces with South Asia, Central Asia, the Iranian and Caspian regions, and western China. The narrow Wakhan Corridor gives Afghanistan its direct border with China, while the country’s southern and western routes provide potential access to Pakistan’s ports and Iran’s Chabahar corridor. 

This position has historically drawn external powers into Afghan affairs. The British-Russian rivalry of the nineteenth century, the Soviet intervention beginning in December 1979 and the international military campaign after September 11, 2001, each demonstrated that political change in Afghanistan can acquire consequences far beyond its borders. The contemporary difference is that strategic competition increasingly revolves around influence, connectivity, and risk management rather than permanent foreign occupation. 

Connectivity illustrates why geography remains decisive. Afghanistan can serve as a physical link between Central Asian economies and South Asian markets, but it can also become a bottleneck when security deteriorates or border crossings close. The Central Asia-South Asia Electricity Transmission and Trade Project, known as CASA-1000, is a US$1.2 billion regional electricity project designed to transmit up to 1,300 megawatts of surplus power from Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan. The World Bank notes that the Afghan segment is indispensable to the system and that implementation resumed after the 2021 pause. Completion of the Afghan section is expected by the end of 2027. Afghanistan therefore matters because neighboring regions cannot fully exploit several major connectivity opportunities without stable transit through Afghan territory. 

Security and Cross-Border Militancy 

Security is the most immediate source of Afghanistan’s global geopolitical significance. The country remains connected to several militant networks, including Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant-Khorasan (ISIL-K), Al-Qaida and the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). The key concern for outside powers is not only violence inside Afghanistan but the possibility that networks linked to Afghan territory could threaten neighboring states or support attacks farther afield. 

The latest United Nations reporting shows that apparent nationwide stability does not eliminate security risks. Between May 1 and July 31, 2026, the United Nations recorded 2,947 safety and security incidents, 11 percent more than during the same period in 2025. A separate United Nations assessment published on July 31, 2026, found that ISIL-K retained the intent to conduct external operations and was rebuilding capacity for occasional high-profile attacks despite pressure from the de facto authorities and Pakistan. 

The Afghanistan-Pakistan relationship demonstrates how domestic security issues can become regional crises. Islamabad has repeatedly argued that the TTP and associated networks operate from Afghanistan, while Taliban authorities reject the allegation and oppose Pakistani military action on Afghan territory. The dispute has increasingly acquired a military dimension. On September 21, 2026, the United Nations confirmed at least three civilian fatalities and four injuries in an apparent Pakistani airstrike in Kunar Province and reported that Paktika Province was also affected. The United Nations had already documented more than 1,100 civilian casualties arising from cross-border armed violence in Afghanistan during 2026. Such escalation can affect border trade, migration, counterterrorism cooperation and the security calculations of China, Iran and Central Asia. 

Afghanistan therefore remains significant to global security because risks originating in or around the country can cross several borders at once. Its strategic importance does not require a return to the level of international conflict seen during the early twenty-first century; the persistence of transnational militant networks and fragile regional relations is sufficient to keep Afghanistan on the security agendas of major powers. 

Diplomatic Re-engagement and Great-Power Competition 

Since 2021, Afghanistan has moved from a predominantly Western military-centred framework toward a more fragmented system of regional engagement. The United States continues to maintain sanctions and security concerns relating to the Taliban and the Haqqani Network while permitting humanitarian activity under specified exemptions. Afghanistan is not subject to comprehensive United States sanctions, but selected Taliban and Haqqani-linked individuals remain designated. 

Russia has pursued a more overt normalization strategy. On July 3, 2025, Russia formally recognized the Taliban government, becoming the first country to do so since the Taliban returned to power. Moscow linked the decision to prospects for cooperation in security, counterterrorism, narcotics control, trade, energy, transport and infrastructure. Russia’s position also reflects concern about instability reaching the Central Asian states to its south. 

China has pursued sustained engagement focused on security, trade and long-term economic access. On August 20, 2025, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met Afghanistan’s acting foreign minister in Kabul. China expressed interest in Afghanistan’s formal participation in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and in expanding cooperation on mining. China has also used regional diplomacy to manage Afghan issues. From April 1 to 7, 2026, China, Afghanistan and Pakistan held an informal meeting in Urumqi, while Chinese Special Envoy for Afghan Affairs Yue Xiaoyong conducted further consultations in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia from August 30 to September 5, 2026. 

These developments show that Afghanistan is increasingly being handled through overlapping regional mechanisms rather than a single dominant external power. China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, India and the Central Asian states have different interests, but all have reasons to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a source of wider instability. The result is a form of competitive engagement in which diplomatic access itself has become a strategic instrument. 

China, Minerals and the Economic Geopolitics of Afghanistan 

Afghanistan’s resource base adds an economic dimension to this competition. A United States Geological Survey assessment published in 2007 identified substantial deposits and prospective resources of copper, iron, lithium, rare-earth elements and other minerals. These estimates indicate geological potential, not immediately recoverable from commercial reserves. Infrastructure, finance, security and export capacity remain major constraints. 

Current production data show why caution is necessary. The United States Geological Survey’s 2024 reporting states that major mineral exploration projects have been conducted by Chinese companies, while production remains concentrated in commodities such as talc, chromite, coal, cement and construction materials. Afghanistan ranked as the world’s 11th-largest talc producer in 2024, accounting for 2.6 percent of global output. The contrast between substantial geological potential and modest industrial output is important: minerals can create long-term strategic value, but they do not automatically create immediate geopolitical leverage. 

China’s interest therefore extends beyond extracting commodities. Mining projects can support investment in roads, logistics, and energy, while improved connectivity can make resource projects more commercially viable. The relationship is reciprocal. Yet delays, contractual disputes and difficult terrain demonstrate that diplomatic engagement does not guarantee successful investment. Afghanistan’s economic significance is consequently better understood as a long-term potential tied to infrastructure and regional access rather than as an immediate resource windfall. 

Pakistan, India and Iran 

Afghanistan is central to the strategic calculations of Pakistan, India and Iran, but for different reasons. Pakistan shares the longest border with Afghanistan and is directly exposed to militant attacks, border clashes, refugee movements and trade disruption. The TTP dispute has become particularly important because Pakistan sees the issue as a national security problem, while Kabul rejects accusations of providing haven and objects to cross-border strikes. 

India’s relationship is shaped by the absence of a direct land border. New Delhi therefore relies on air and maritime routes, particularly through Iran, for sustained economic access. On January 8, 2025, Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri met Afghanistan’s acting foreign minister in Dubai and discussed bilateral relations, regional developments, humanitarian assistance and trade through the Chabahar Port. India has maintained engagement partly because developments in Afghanistan affect wider South Asian security and access to Central Asian markets. 

Iran’s position is shaped by border security, trade, migration and water-related interests. Iran also serves as an alternative commercial route when Afghanistan-Pakistan crossings are disrupted. The interaction among Pakistan, India and Iran means that Afghanistan is embedded in a wider strategic triangle extending from the Arabian Sea to Central Asia. None of the three states can determine Afghanistan’s trajectory alone, and their priorities sometimes diverge sharply over political legitimacy, trade routes and regional influence. Their common exposure to instability, however, keeps Afghanistan at the center of South Asian diplomacy. 

Central Asia and Regional Connectivity 

Afghanistan is increasingly important to the Central Asian states because geography offers both risks and opportunities. Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan have strong incentives to prevent instability from moving northward, but they also seek access to South Asian markets and ports. Uzbekistan has been especially active in promoting the Trans-Afghan Railway concept. 

On July 1, 2026, the President of Uzbekistan highlighted acceleration of the Trans-Afghan railway project as part of efforts to strengthen regional and international transport links. Earlier, on July 3, 2025, Uzbekistan discussed trade, transport, energy and mining cooperation with Afghanistan and stressed the strategic importance of the railway. These initiatives reflect a wider effort to connect landlocked Central Asia with Pakistan and other southern markets. 

CASA-1000 demonstrates the same structural logic in the energy sector. Afghanistan is the central link connecting the participating northern and southern countries, meaning that its infrastructure is essential even when political relations remain complicated. Central Asian governments therefore have a strong incentive to favor practical engagement on border security, trade, electricity and transport. Afghanistan’s geopolitical relevance is partly the result of this structural dependency: it can either connect regions that are otherwise separated by difficult geography or obstruct their integration when instability interrupts transit. 

Humanitarian, Economic and Migration Pressures 

Afghanistan’s geopolitical importance cannot be separated from its economic and humanitarian conditions because internal shocks often become regional problems. The World Bank estimated real gross domestic product growth of 4.8 percent in 2025 and projected growth of about 4 percent in 2026, while also estimating a 5.6 percent decline in GDP per capita and a current account deficit equivalent to 36.1 percent of GDP in 2025. The data illustrate the gap between aggregate economic growth and household welfare. 

The humanitarian picture remains severe. The World Food Programme projects that 13.8 million Afghans face acute food insecurity in 2026, while 4.9 million women and children are expected to require treatment for malnutrition. The agency has appealed for US$540 million to sustain operations through January 2027. The scale of need matters geopolitically because food insecurity, unemployment and weak services can increase migration and place additional pressure on neighboring states. 

Migration is already a major regional issue. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reported 1,228,920 returns to Afghanistan during 2026 as of September 22. The term of returns includes deportations, assisted voluntary repatriation and other movements, so the figure should not be treated as a single category of refugee return. It nevertheless demonstrates the magnitude of movement affecting Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. Large-scale returns can strain housing, employment, water, healthcare and local infrastructure in Afghanistan while also altering bilateral relations with neighboring states. 

Counternarcotics creates another cross-border dimension. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimated that opium poppy cultivation fell to 10,200 hectares in 2025, 20 percent below 2024, while potential opium production declined by 32 percent to 296 tons. Farmers’ income from opium sales fell from US$260 million in 2024 to US$134 million in 2025. The decline may reduce the scale of illicit production, but it also creates livelihood pressures that can affect rural stability. Afghanistan’s humanitarian, economic, migration and narcotics issues therefore remain interconnected with regional security. 

Afghanistan’s Strategic Relevance Beyond 2026 

Afghanistan’s geopolitical importance is likely to remain structural because the drivers are rooted in geography rather than a single conflict. Its position between Central Asia and South Asia, its direct border with China, its proximity to Iran and its access routes toward the Arabian Sea ensure continuing external interest. At the same time, militant networks create a persistent security dimension that neighboring states cannot manage independently. 

What has changed is the way influence is pursued. The post-2021 environment is characterized less by large-scale foreign military deployment and more by selective diplomacy, economic engagement, sanctions, regional mediation and infrastructure initiatives. The United Nations remains the principal multilateral platform, while China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, India and the Central Asian states pursue overlapping but distinct approaches. 

The future economic trajectory is equally consequential. Afghanistan possesses mineral and transit potential, but converting that potential into sustained growth depends on infrastructure, financial access, investment conditions, trade routes and domestic policy. Projects such as CASA-1000 and the Trans-Afghan Railway demonstrate that regional economic integration can depend on Afghan territory even when questions surrounding international recognition remain unresolved. 

Afghanistan should therefore not be understood only as a security problem or only as an economic opportunity. The same geography that enables trade also creates exposure to militant networks. The same regional engagement that can support investment also raises questions over diplomatic legitimacy. The same reduction in narcotics cultivation that may benefit regional security can intensify economic pressure on vulnerable farming communities. Afghanistan matters because these tensions converge in one country while producing consequences across several regions. 

Conclusion 

Afghanistan matters in global geopolitics because it sits at the intersection of several strategic systems at a time when the balance around it is changing. Its territory connects Central Asia to South Asia; its borders expose neighboring states to security and migration pressures, and its mineral and infrastructure potential attracts sustained economic interest. Severe humanitarian need, economic fragility and restrictions affecting women and girls further complicate the country’s relationship with the wider international system. 

Its importance is therefore best understood through concrete networks rather than historical slogans. Security threats cross borders. Trade routes cross borders. Electricity lines cross borders. Population movements cross borders. Diplomatic influence also crosses borders. Afghanistan’s strategic weight comes from this interdependence. 

For the international community and regional powers, the central geopolitical challenge is how to manage that interdependence while limiting the risks that can radiate from Afghanistan. That makes Afghanistan an enduring geopolitical pivot whose significance extends well beyond its immediate neighborhood and beyond the events that first placed it at the center of international security debates. 

By: Simran Sodhi, Guest Author, GSDN

India is today seen as a rising global power, and in an increasingly multipolar world, India’s role can be denied by none. But India’s foreign policy has its own sets of challenges, the India-US relationship being one of them. But closer home, India’s ‘Neighbourhood First Policy’ is also in an urgent need for a fresh thrust.

The ‘Neighbourhood First Policy’ first emerged in 2008 and but it was only in 2014 under Prime Minister Narendra Modi that this policy got its due emphasis. Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka are the countries that get covered under this policy.

If we were to take a quick look at India’s relationship with its neighbors today, it would be a fair assessment to make that apart from Bhutan, India’s ties with other States are in some kind of tensions.

Pakistan is the easiest to assess from that perspective. Essentially, India and Pakistan today have a frozen relationship where there are no high-level talks or visits. Bilateral trade is suspended, and since Operation Sindoor in 2025, the military tensions between the two have also spiked. India has repeatedly raised the point that ‘talks and terror’ cannot go together. India-Pakistan ties today probably stand at one of the worst junctions in bilateral terms.

The failure of South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) can also be attributed to the deteriorating India-Pakistan ties. SAARC is in a state of comatose, with no summit held since the 18th summit in Kathmandu in 2014. A forum that was supposed to bring in regional harmony and foster better relations between South Asian neighbors is today more of a ‘dead’ forum. 

Bangladesh is a case study where an excellent bilateral relationship has given way to tensions and bitterness. Under Sheikh Hasina from 2009 and 2024, both countries shared excellent ties highlighted by the 2015 Land Boundary Agreement and strong security cooperation. There was trust and regular high-level visits between the two countries and Dhaka was seen as one reliable partner and ally to New Delhi. But all that changed following the exit of Hasina in 2024.

Bangladesh remains India’s largest trading partner in South Asia with bilateral trade standing at $11.35 billion in the 2025–26 fiscal year. Despite this, the political tensions and mistrust is high. One of the sources of this tension is the presence of Hasina in India in exile while Bangladesh has asked India for her extradition.

Since 2024, Dhaka has also moved closer to both China and Pakistan. That only adds to India’s worries. Bangladesh is strategically very important for India and offers easy access to India’s Northeast region.

Nepal: India and Nepal have share historical and cultural ties. Much of history between the two countries is shared and it’s a relationship that was once regarded to be India’s strongest among its neighbors. But the recent changes in Nepal and the new government of Balen Shah has upset some of the old connections. Also, the fact that Nepal also wants to explore greater ties with China adds to India’s concerns. A growing Chinese footprint in South Asia is seen by India as signs of an aggressive China trying to assert itself in India’s ‘Sphere of Influence’. Nevertheless, India remains Nepal’s largest trade partner, continuing extensive investments in cross-border infrastructure and local development projects across Nepal’s various provinces.

Sri Lanka (SL) and India again go back a long way in terms of shared histories and cultures. India and Sri Lanka are deeply intertwined at the political level also. Any ethnic disturbances in SL usually lead to developments in India’s Southern States especially Tamil Nadu. India provided vital financial and humanitarian support, close to $4 billion, during Sri Lanka’s severe economic crisis in 2022, including lines of credit, food, fuel, and currency swaps. SL remains one of the top destinations for Indian tourists. But in SL too, India’s concern is the sway towards China and Chinese investments in the island nation that cause stress in this bilateral relationship. For instance, China secured a 70% stake and a 99-year lease for the Hambantota Port in 2017 after SL struggled to repay construction loans. China has also funded other major projects in the island nation, which again worries India.

India’s other neighbours like the Maldives for instance has seen anti-India sentiment come to the fore many a times. Relations are more stable now but more work needs to be done in strengthening this important bilateral relation. With Afghanistan, India has slowly moved to working with the Taliban who now run the country. The fact that the Taliban and Pakistan have fallen out of late has led to some satisfaction in India’s policy circles. Bhutan remains the best example of close and warm bilateral ties for India in its immediate neighbourhood today. The Doklam plateau near the India-Bhutan-China trijunction is critically sensitive; Chinese control over ridges there would threaten India’s narrow Siliguri Corridor.

In short, India needs to turn its attention to its immediate neighbourhood. A fresh impetus, an effort at rebuilding some of the old connections and embracing friends like Bhutan closer is the way forward. The Chinese footprint gets larger in the South Asian region every day and India needs to act before its too late.