21st century ‘Great Game’
Ikram Sehgal
Rudyard Kipling’s 19th-century “Great Game” encompassed mostly the region mow comprising Pakistan and Afghanistan and adjacent areas. It remained an area of turmoil in the 20th century. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and the subsequent events that led to the ouster of Soviet forces and the emergence of the Taliban in Afghanistan in the last decade of the past century brought things to a head.
Robert D Kaplan’s 13th book, Monsoon, expands the area of “the Great Game” in the 21st century and examines the role of the US in the Indian Ocean. The interested powers include China, Russia, India and the emerging countries at the rim of the Indian Ocean. The search for energy and its denial thereof are what drove Japan to battle in the Second World War. The 21st century “Great Game” still has oil and gas as objectives, but the primary riches are greater (and now definable), the untold wealth buried in the triangle where the borders of Pakistan and Afghanistan meet with Iran’s.Read More »21st century ‘Great Game’