THE Indian Ocean is fast getting converted from a ‘zone of peace’ to an arena of competition and conflict. The US military has given a new name to its Pacific Command (PACOM), it is now called the US Indo-Pacific Command. The change is more than symbolic, it indicates that the American Combatant Command (COCOM) structure, erected to deal with a bipolar world and spread the American hegemony is undergoing transition.

A FRESH round of imperialist bloodletting is on the cards in the Middle-East. They caused complete destruction of Fallujah in Iraq, they bombed hospitals in Afghanistan, and virtually flattened Mosul and Raqqa in Iraq and Syria.Trump and Netanyahu, backed by a set of reactionary monarchical Arab regimes, is out to devour one more nation to feed its insatiable imperial appetite.The US-Israeli war drive against Iran has assumed dangerous proportions.

MODI’S foreign policy is in doldrums. It suffers from fixity syndrome. It refuses to jettison the Cold War mindset. As in the mid- 1950s, New Delhi’s only agenda is to counter China and present itself to the West as a credible competitor to Beijing. It has got into a rat race with China and is splurging money on overseas projects merely to offer a counter to Chinese investments. For example, India’s US$ 300 million investment in Hambantota’s ghost airport.

TRUMP’s flip-flops on Pakistan are no different than Modi’s wild-vacillations on Pakistan front. In August, Trump severely criticised Pakistan; in October, he has praised it as a “fantastic country, fantastic place of fantastic people”. Verbal flowers were bestowed on Pakistan after it helped gain the release of an American woman and her family held captive by Haqqani terrorist group. The family was abducted five years ago while hiking in Afghanistan. Trump’s team is celebrating the intelligence cooperation extended by ISI as a success of its policy to get Pakistan back on track.