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In recent decades, China and Russia decades have adopted accommodation, normalisation and convergence strategies that transformed their cooperation into a comprehensive strategic partnership. Despite having this strategic alignment, several issues still constrain their long-term relations, such as divergent views and assessment of the world order, imbalance in bilateral trade and investment, competition in their respective spheres of influence, Russians' fear of a Chinese immigrant onslaught, ideological cleavages, and asymmetrical power distribution between the two. This study explains the factors behind their convergence and divergences of interests and its implications for their future relations. While utilising content analysis as the research methodology this study hypothesizes that though the two are engaged in strategic and other partnerships, yet the structural differences will inhibit their long-term cordiality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though Iran claims that its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes, yet it may decide to pursue nuclear weapons while taking into consideration the complex geostrategic matrix of the region - a situation that may result in further horizontal proliferation. The permanent five UN Security Council members and Germany (P5+1) signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran in 2015 with the objective to curtail its nuclear ambitions. Since then, it has become a challenge for the European powers - France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the European Union (E3 + 1) to maintain trust and keep the deal going. Coercive measures like sanctions on the part of the US against Iran have created a huge trust deficit and resultantly have put the new administration of Joe Biden in a situation of few choices to revive the deal to tackle the Iranian nuclear issue. Sanctions also bittered American European allies especially France, whose companies have big business interests in Iran. This article aims at addressing the issues of the Iranian nuclear program, its nature, purpose, and interests. It also deliberates the European and the US concerns before and after the deal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The political rise of Hindutva, under the tutelage of Narendra Modi, has heralded an era where the life, liberty and property of religious minorities especially Muslims are under grave threat. Modi's India continues to lose its secular credentials. Minorities are presented as 'them' who can be subjected to physical attacks, state persecution and neglect with impunity. What are the root causes of this anger against the minorities and why did Hindutva construct the binaries of us and them? While employing qualitative process tracing methodology and using the lens of Chosenness-Myth-Trauma (CMT) Syndrome as a theory this study finds that the identity construction process, along the lines of Hindutva, had been set into motion even before 1947 and continued after the partition of the Subcontinent into India and Pakistan. Supporters of Hindutva presented the historical experiences and representations - they being ruled by the Muslims as an example of the trauma, thus 'othering' the Muslims, which automatically led to the creation of a sense of us versus them. They, having a substantial majority in India, constructed this myth of us being surrounded by them - the enemies, in this case, Muslims and other minorities. They also created the myth of a glorious age where they could transform India into a uniform Hindu society and state. The study examines that with the electoral success of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the process of identity construction started to gather steam in the late 1980s. However, the towering figure of Narendra Modi and his meteoric rise to power provided state patronage to the process. Since Modi has been a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), he successfully implemented its agenda of labelling minorities as 'others' resulting in the rise of anger that ultimately simmered into violence against minorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The demand for new provinces in Pakistan gained traction after the passage of the 18th Amendment to the Pakistani constitution in 2010. All major political parties since then have included in their elections manifestos the need to create new provinces in Pakistan. While the debate on new provinces is manifest on the part of political parties and ethnopolitical actors, there is no large scale research that studies the phenomenon at the mass level. The present article fills the gap by undertaking a survey of respondents from the Punjab, Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces. The survey data highlights that ethnic majorities in these three provinces are opposed to the creation of a new province, whereas, ethnic minorities here are more desirous of new provinces. Secondly, identity and linguistic factors are less salient in the demand for new provinces as opposed to material variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]