Whose Liberation Is It Anyway: The U.S. Intervention Playbook

For decades, US foreign policy has adopted the pattern of ‘selective liberation’—the deployment of human rights language when aligned with US strategic interests and its relative absence when it conflicts with them

Mrinalini Dhyani
Updated on: 11 March 2026

OUTLOOK INDIA


Lives, Disrupted: A US military tank next to a mosque in Baghdad in 2003 | Photo: Imago/AbcaPress

Summary of this article

U.S. military interventions—from Iraq and Afghanistan to Libya and Iran—have often been framed as missions of freedom and democracy, but critics say this rhetoric appears selectively depending on Washington’s strategic interests.

Regime-change interventions have frequently produced prolonged conflict or political instability, as seen in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, raising questions about whether democracy can be imposed through military force.

Analysts argue that the U.S. invokes human rights and liberation against adversaries but rarely uses the same language in conflicts involving allies, shaping global perceptions of American power and credibility.


On March 19, 2003, as American forces crossed into Iraq, President George W. Bush addressed the world from the White House.

“The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder. We will pass along to our children all the freedoms we enjoy, and chief among them is freedom from fear,” he said.

Within weeks, Baghdad fell. Statues of Saddam Hussein were pulled down in scenes broadcast globally as visual shorthand for liberation. But by the end of that year, Iraq had descended into insurgency.

For decades, the United States has framed key foreign interventions as missions of liberation, to free people from dictatorship, terrorism or repression. From Baghdad to Kabul, American leaders have spoken of democracy, women’s rights and human dignity. Yet in other conflicts, particularly Palestine, Washington’s posture has been markedly different, relying on strategic alliances or limited military engagement without invoking the same liberation rhetoric.

Critics call this pattern ‘selective liberation’: the deployment of human rights language when aligned with US strategic interests and its relative absence when it conflicts with them.

The idea resurfaced sharply on February 28, 2026, when a joint US-Israeli military campaign struck targets across Iran. Within hours, Iranian state media confirmed that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had been killed in the strikes.

The death of a sitting supreme leader at the hands of foreign militaries was unprecedented in the modern history of the Islamic Republic and immediately triggered geopolitical shockwaves. Protests erupted across West Asia and South Asia. Demonstrators gathered in Karachi, Baghdad and Tehran, while anti-war rallies also took place in Washington and New York.

One protester in Washington told The Guardian, “We’ve seen this play out before; regime change doesn’t end conflicts, it just creates new ones.”


The US justification for the operation rested partly on concerns about Iran’s nuclear programme. Yet Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, appeared to complicate that narrative, noting that inspectors had not found evidence that Iran was actively building a nuclear bomb, even though concerns remained about enriched uranium stockpiles.


As many as 1,332 people have been killed so far, according to the Iranian Red Crescent. Nearly 168 schoolgirls and staff were killed in the attack by the Israeli missile on the Shajareh Tayyebeh school. Most of the victims were students aged seven to 12 years old.



The episode revived a long-standing debate among analysts about how the United States frames its military interventions.


“The United States has always relied on very high-sounding principles to justify power politics,” says Talmiz Ahmad, a veteran diplomat and West Asia expert. “During the Cold War, the rhetoric was about defending the ‘free world’ against authoritarian communism. Today, it is about democracy confronting authoritarian rule. The language changes, but the logic of power remains the same,” he adds.

According to Ahmad, the gap between rhetoric and reality has been a defining feature of American foreign policy for decades. “If you look historically, very few countries have become stable democracies as a direct result of US military intervention,” he says.

The invasion of Iraq remains the most widely cited example of liberation rhetoric colliding with geopolitical reality. In 1998, the US Congress passed the Iraq Liberation Act, formally declaring that removing Saddam Hussein and promoting democracy in Iraq was official American policy. After the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration framed regime change as both a strategic necessity and a moral imperative.

Bush repeatedly described the war as an effort to free Iraqis from dictatorship. “The Iraqi people are worthy and capable of self-government,” he says.

No stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, one of the central justifications for the invasion, were ever found.

According to the Costs of War Project at Brown University, the war led to roughly 268,000 to 295,000 deaths between 2003 and 2018, including more than 180,000 civilians. Sectarian violence tore through Iraqi society, millions were displaced and the collapse of state institutions helped create conditions for the rise of ISIS.

“We wanted freedom. We did not want chaos,” an Iraqi civil servant told The New York Times in 2004, a sentiment that came to define how many Iraqis viewed the aftermath of the invasion.

Two years earlier, the United States had launched another war framed through the language of liberation.

After the September 11 attacks, Washington invaded Afghanistan to dismantle al-Qaeda and remove the Taliban government that had sheltered the group’s leadership. The intervention initially enjoyed broad international support.

But as the war expanded into a two-decade nation-building project, American rhetoric increasingly emphasised democracy and women’s rights.

In a radio address in 2001, First Lady Laura Bush declared that the fight against terrorism was also “a fight for the rights and dignity of women.”

Girls returned to school, billions in aid flowed into reconstruction projects and elections were held under a new constitution.

Yet, the Taliban were never fully defeated. When US troops withdrew in 2021, the Afghan government collapsed within weeks and the Taliban returned to power. “They spoke of liberating us,” an Afghan women’s rights activist later told the BBC. “But liberation without security is temporary.”

Historian Vijay Prashad, director of the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research, believes the pattern is deeply embedded in American foreign policy. “The United States has never been genuine about its use of terms such as human rights or its concern about Iran’s nuclear programme. Since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the project has essentially been the overthrow of the Islamic Republic,” he says.

To Prashad, the rhetoric surrounding Iran today echoes language used in earlier interventions. Washington frequently presents conflicts as struggles between freedom and tyranny, yet its alliances rarely follow those same moral lines. “Terms like ‘human rights’ or ‘democracy’ appear when governments opposed to the United States come to power. When friendly regimes rule, the same language disappears,” he argues.

Nowhere is that rhetoric more conspicuously absent than in the Israel-Palestine conflict.

While the United States officially supports a two-state solution, it has also remained Israel’s closest strategic ally, providing billions in military assistance and shielding it diplomatically at the United Nations.

Human rights organisations, including Human Rights Watch, have documented alleged violations in the occupied Palestinian territories, including settlement expansion and restrictions on movement.

Since October 2023, Gaza has witnessed devastating violence. According to Palestinian health authorities, tens of thousands of people have been killed during the conflict. Yet, Washington rarely frames the crisis in terms of Palestinian liberation.

“Israel is the United States’ most important strategic ally in West Asia,” says senior journalist Seema Sirohi. “That is why you see a very different approach. The US supports a two-state solution in principle, but it has never really put the kind of diplomatic muscle behind it that might force a settlement,” she adds.

In 2011, the United States joined NATO’s intervention in Libya during the uprising against Muammar Gaddafi. The operation was framed as a humanitarian effort to prevent civilian massacres.

The intervention succeeded in toppling Gaddafi but left Libya fractured between rival governments and militias. Former US President Barack Obama later described the failure to stabilise Libya after the war as the “worst mistake” of his presidency.

This, Max Abrahms, a scholar of US foreign policy and terrorism, says, is a way for American leaders to frame interventions differently depending on political circumstances. “The stated rationale for intervention can change depending on what is politically acceptable at the time. The United States said it was intervening to protect civilians, but the real outcome was regime change,” says Abrahms.


In Sudan, decades of sanctions and diplomatic engagement have failed to prevent the country’s descent into another devastating civil war.

For Ahmad, these examples illustrate the limits of external intervention as a tool for democratic transformation. “Change cannot be imposed through military power. Real political transformation has to emerge from within societies themselves,” he says.

Iranian author and historian Arash Azizi says the reaction among Iranians themselves has been deeply divided. “Many anti-regime Iranians believed Donald Trump when he said help was on the way and thought the United States could play an emancipatory role. But now they are faced with rising civilian casualties and no clear path to the regime change they hoped for,” he says.

Azizi adds that the Gaza war has also reshaped how Iranians view American power. “Israel’s assault on Gaza, with full US support, has tarnished the American image around the world. Iranians have complex views of the conflict because of their own government’s support for Hamas, but the perception of US double standards is widespread,” says Azizi.

In Venezuela, Washington recognised opposition leader Juan Guaidó as the country’s legitimate president in 2019 and later conducted a controversial operation that resulted in the capture of President Nicolás Maduro. The intervention was justified as a response to narcotics trafficking and authoritarian rule, but critics argued it violated international law.

In each case, the outcomes have been contested and unstable. The recurring pattern raises a fundamental question: can liberation ever be imposed from outside?

Prashad believes history suggests otherwise. “Change cannot come with a destructive war from outside that then tries to enforce something. We have no successful examples of that. Transformation must come from within societies themselves,” he says.

The contradiction between rhetoric and reality continues to shape global perceptions of American power. When liberation is invoked selectively, loudly in some conflicts and absent in others, the language of freedom itself begins to lose credibility.

Across Iran, Afghanistan and Iraq, military operations are shaped by geography. Much of Afghanistan and western Iran is dominated by rugged mountain systems such as the Hindu Kush and the Zagros Mountains, where steep slopes and narrow passes restrict troop movement, complicate supply lines and offer natural cover for ambushes and guerrilla tactics. These landscapes then transition into deserts and plains across Iraq and parts of Iran, allowing easier movement for mechanised forces but exposing troops to long-range attacks and difficult urban warfare.

Against this backdrop, Ahmad argues that a large-scale ground war remains unlikely for now. Drawing on the experience of US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, he says Washington has learned that “boots on the ground” turn soldiers into direct targets, which is why military objectives are more often pursued through bombardment rather than a land invasion. Any attempt at war, he suggests, would face strong domestic pressure if casualties begin to mount in the United States.


“So long as there are no casualties, the US can get away with mass murder,” says Ahmad.

Mrinalini Dhyani is a senior correspondent at Outlook. She covers governance, health, gender and conflict, with a strong emphasis on lived realities behind policy debates.

This article is part of Outlook 's March 21 issue 'Bombs Do Not Liberate Women' which looks at the conflict in West Asia following US and Israel’s attacks on Iran leading to the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, while the world wondered in loud silence, again, Whose War Is It Anyway?

Sudden Glacier Collapse, Fastest Ever

Robert Hunziker

March 6, 2026

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Image by Robert Wong.

Hektoria Glacier (Antarctica) retreated 8 kilometers (5 miles) in only two months; one-half of the structure collapsing in record time. This is the fastest glacier collapse ever, and the message to the world is very clear: Global Warming looks like it’s ahead of schedule. (Antarctica Just Saw the Fastest Glacier Collapse Ever Recorded, ScienceDaily d/d February 26, 2026)

The world climate system is starting to unravel faster than expected. Sea level rise estimates by major institutions such as the IPCC should probably be tossed out the window. Global warming is not waiting around for guesstimates. Hektoria Glacier is real time evidence that the consequences of global warming are ahead of expectations.

A few more warnings like this and the mayors of mega-coastal cities New York, London, Manila, Tokyo, Shanghai, Mumbai, Lagos, Jakarta, Karachi, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Guangzhou, Osaka, Istanbul will demand answers, red-faced, pounding the table with clenched fists, as to why countries like the United States ignorantly promote fossil fuels, kill climate science, and destroy clean renewable policies when nearly 100% of the world’s scientists agree fossil fuels are the primary cause of destructive global warming. “More than 99.9% of peer-reviewed scientific papers agree that climate change is mainly caused by humans, according to a new survey of 88,125 climate-related studies.” (Cornell Chronicle)

According to ScienceDaily: “Antarctica’s Hektoria Glacier stunned scientists by retreating eight kilometers in just two months, with nearly half of it collapsing in record time… Satellite and seismic data captured the dramatic chain reaction in near real time. The findings raise concerns that much larger glaciers could one day collapse just as quickly.”

Indeed, scientists were taken aback: “When we flew over Hektoria… I couldn’t believe the vastness of the area that had collapsed,’ said Naomi Ochwat, lead author and CIRES postdoctoral researcher. ‘I had seen the fjord and notable mountain features in the satellite images, but being there in person filled me with astonishment at what had happened,” Ibid.

According to senior research scientist Ted Scambos, University of Colorado/Boulder: “Hektoria’s retreat is a bit of a shock — this kind of lightning-fast retreat really changes what’s possible for other, larger glaciers on the continent… If the same conditions set up in some of the other areas, it could greatly speed up sea level rise from the continent,” Ibid.

In a very real sense, the Hektoria incident is fortuitous because the glacier is only 115 square miles, or roughly the extent of a large city, not one of the large glaciers. It therefore gives scientists a solid glimpse of a new danger, meaning, this is real time evidence, if large glaciers collapse as quickly as Hektoria did, then global sea level rise could be severe, catching the world unaware, unprepared. As such, according to polar scientists, Hektoria is a commanding siren signal to get off fossil fuels as soon as possible.

According to a recent Antarctic study by the prestigious Potsdam Institute For Climate Impact Research d/d Feb. 16, 2026:”Ricarda Winkelmann, just returning from several weeks of fieldwork in Antarctica, adds that seeing how rapidly some regions in Antarctica are already responding to anthropogenic climate change, how extreme weather events are not only becoming more frequent but lead to subsequent changes in the ice dynamics, really puts into perspective the vulnerability of this vast ice sheet. Our mapping of potential regional tipping points shows where the greatest risks lie on the long term, and which regions of the Antarctic Ice Sheet need closest monitoring. Cutting greenhouse gas emissions rapidly is imperative to prevent further destabilization of ice basins.”

Polar scientists have gone public about acceleration of Antarctica’s glaciers for a couple of years now and have issued warnings to the public about the tenuousness of the situation, to wit: In August 2024 at the 11^th Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research held in Pucón, Chile attended by 1,500 scientists: “Antarctica’s glacial melt is advancing faster than ever before in recorded history.”

Gino Casassa, PhD, an attendee glaciologist Head of the Chilean Antarctic Institute stated: “Based upon current trends, sea levels will be up 13 feet by 2100,” which begs the obvious question of the level by 2035-40, assuming Dr. Casassa is correct, after all, 13 feet won’t all happen in 2099 (there’s no public record of any other scientists with such an aggressive forecast).

Additionally. in November 2024, 450 polar scientists held an emergency meeting at the Australian Antarctic Research Conference to announce, via a press release: “If we don’t act, and quickly, the melting of Antarctica ice could cause catastrophic sea level rise around the globe within our lifetimes.” Moreover, “we’ve found immense global warming induced shifts in the region.” This was an appeal to the general public to take preventative measures: “Drastic action is necessary… CO2 emissions must stop.”

“Antarctica is melting ice more than six times faster than it was 20 years ago, according to satellite imagery… Runaway ice loss causing rapid and catastrophic sea-level rise is possible within our lifetimes. Our societies must set and meet targets to ‘bend the carbon curve’ as quickly as possible.” (Australian Antarctic Research Conference, 2024)

Large Methane Leaks Discovered in Antarctica, Polar Journal d/d March 2025

In March 2025, a Spanish scientific expedition announced discovery of “large scale” methane CH4 plumes erupting from the ocean floor off the coast of the Antarctic Peninsula.  “Methane has a high climate impact, which is 20 to 40 times higher than that of carbon dioxide. If large quantities of the gas were released, this could contribute significantly to global warming – to an extent not yet taken into account by climate models,” Ibid. One member of the expedition said: “It could be an environmental bomb for the climate.”

As for the above-mentioned scientists, the Hektoria Incident is most likely not a complete surprise other than the surprising rapidity of collapse, which concerns polar scientists a lot. In fact, it follows in the footsteps of the warnings they’ve issued over past years.

Significant Terrestrial Glacier Meltdown Underway

But the dangers of unanticipated sea level rise may be even worse yet. Far beyond Antarctica, a massive worldwide terrestrial glacial meltdown is underway that also directly impacts sea level rise, a threat not included in most analyses of potential sea level rise.

A 20-year study by 35 international teams of worldwide terrestrial glacier meltdown published in Nature (February 2025 issue) claims terrestrial glacier loss is “greater than Greenland and Antarctica.” The study discovered “staggering volumes of ice loss,” e.g., 273B tons ice loss per year over a 20-year study. Of concern, momentum is accelerating. For example, the first half of the study, or 10-years, registered 231B tons per year. The second half registered 314B tons/year or an increase of nearly 40% acceleration. The study identifies future risks as “entire countries erased” via sea levels rising much higher/faster and GLOFs (glacial lake outbursts floods). (World’s Glaciers Melting Faster Than Ever Recorded, BBC d/d Feb. 19, 2025)

There are already examples of erasure of communities, for example, on May 28, 2025 the Swiss village of Blatten was buried by ice and mud following collapse of the Birch Glacier. This is the impact of GLOF. And a GLOF June 3, 2025, in Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan completely destroyed homes in six villages.

The Third Pole Hotspot

Of special concern, according to a UN study, Glacial Lake Outburst Floods: A Growing Climate Threat: The Third Pole is the world hotspot for GLOF risks. “The Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) region, comprising the mountains of Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, China, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Myanmar, contains the largest concentration of snow and glaciers outside the Polar regions and is therefore called the ‘Third Pole’. This region is a global hotspot for GLOF risks. Between the mountains themselves and the valleys downstream, around two billion people are exposed to these risks.”

Therefore, it is not at all surprising that both China and India are taking a diametrically opposite approach to the United States on global warming, fighting it, embracing renewables. When GLOFs intensify, one has to wonder whether China and India will demand a scientific-based explanation from the United States regarding its careless overarching promotion of fossil fuels and destruction of climate science/renewables. Oops! That may not be possible as the U.S.is ditching environmental science, so it may not have the data base still available to provide a science-based answer.

Ever since the first major scientific study (early 1990s) officially connecting the dots of fossil fuel emissions to global warming, it seems as if scientific warnings have been echoing in an enormous vast empty chamber, silently haunting the future. (Of historical note: Eunice Newton Foote first discovered the CO2 connection to global warming in 1856) Now, it has been three decades that nations of the world have mostly ignored scientists’ warnings. As of today, those echoes 0f the past are becoming real by coming home to roost, and it’s not a pretty picture; it’s much worse than the all of warnings of the past 30 years.

Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

Melting Glaciers, Moving People: Nepal’s Climate-Induced Migration – Analysis



November 12, 2025 

Observer Research Foundation
By Anasua Basu Ray Chaudhury and Sreedipta Roy

Recent protests in Nepal reflected youth anger over political stagnation, soaring living costs, and deepening mistrust in governance, with corruption at the core. Yet, an even graver threat looms large: climate change, already evident through erratic weather, melting glaciers, and rising natural disasters that endanger the fragile Himalayan ecosystem and the livelihoods it supports.

For a country that is among the ones to contribute least towards global emissions, Nepal faces a disproportionate burden of climate change as Himalayan glaciers face the imminent threat of disappearing, and an increase in natural calamities plagues the nation’s fragile ecosystem and vulnerable communities. Almost 80 percent of the Himalayan glacial reserve faces a risk of extinction by 2100 if global emissions continue to increase. Even with efforts to keep the global temperature increase to 1.5°C, up to 30 percent of glaciers would still be lost. In the last twelve years, 44,000 reported incidents of floods, landslides, and storms have taken place in Nepal, claiming the lives of 5,667 individuals and resulting in US$367 million in losses.

With a fragile and unpredictable environment at play, many people turn to migration as the only pathway to a stable and secure life. For instance, indigenous communities continue to shrink in the village of Dhye, as several members out-migrated when water became too scarce. Between 2001 and 2021, the Panchakanya village in Terhathum district witnessed a 40 percent reduction in its population, while the Thoklung village lost 42 percent of its population. It is estimated that the loss of glaciers in the future can lead to severe water shortages for the 250 million people living in the Hindu Kush Himalaya region, affecting another 1.6 billion people downstream. This doesn’t just impact the trajectory of Nepal but also of South Asia, especially as densely populated countries like India and Bangladesh face the imminent threat of mass migration and a threat to the livelihoods of billions who depend on the glacial system for several reasons.

In this context, this essay seeks to examine how climate change influences migration patterns in Nepal, and to analyse better how climate change in the Himalayas impacts indigenous communities. By situating it within the broader discourse on climate-induced displacement, this essay emphasises the urgent need for collaboration at the regional level to protect at-risk communities and to enhance the climate resistance of the Himalayas.
Factors Driving Migration

It is important to understand the ways in which climate change disrupts the everyday lives of ordinary people, forcing them to relocate. Over 60 percent of the population in Nepal depends on agriculture as their means of income, with the Terai region being the most agriculturally productive. Due to the late arrival of monsoons, droughts have become more frequent, particularly in the winter months and in the western Terai plains. The average annual rainfall has decreased by 3.7 mm per month every decade since 1960.

In the coming years, the number of rainy days will likely decline along with an increase in the intensity of rainfall. This, in turn, will impact water, agriculture, health, livelihood, energy, biodiversity, disaster management, and urban planning. An estimation in 2015 suggested that due to the impact of climate change on agriculture, Nepal’s GDP will drop by 0.8 percent each year by 2050. The study also associated changes in crop production with changes in precipitation patterns during the period, affecting Nepal’s water resources availability and variation. Too little rainfall will reduce rice and maize cultivation, which are the main food crops for much of the country’s population, while high-intensity rainfall will destroy crops and increase topsoil erosion.

In Nepal, there is a direct link between climate change, farming, and migration. The indigenous Tibetans of the upper Himalayas, who have long adapted to one of the world’s harshest environments, are now being compelled to migrate. The people of Upper Mustang remain among the few preserving the remnants of traditional Tibetan spiritual culture. Upper Mustang’s economy has collapsed as grazing lands erode and rivers dry, with a 4.3 percent loss of plant cover over 30 years, causing severe soil erosion. In villages like Samdzong, once fertile lands now face drought, erratic water, and migration. Despite emission cuts, glacial retreat persists, threatening Nepal’s high-altitude communities with displacement and loss.
The Effect of Out-Migration

This migration often takes place to urban cities, which means a tougher life for many. The absence of social networks and marketable skills funnels individuals into low-paying, unstable jobs, making them susceptible to repeated cycles of exploitation and poverty. Overseas labour migration is increasing, especially among the youth. Although remittances help strengthen rural economies, migrants often face hazardous working conditions, long periods of family separation, and inadequate protection. Even greater challenges are faced by women and indigenous peoples alike, and these groups represent sections of society that are often ignored in decision-making, while they also bear the burden of waiting for food and water security to be restored in their homes. The resultant impacts clearly indicate that the impacts of climate-related migration must be managed not only from an environmental perspective but from a social one as well. If affected families do not receive proper support and investment for climate adaptation, they will continue to suffer. Creating sustainable livelihoods and helping displaced families is essential. Without these efforts, migrants from the Nepali Himalayas will gradually lose their dignity and sense of identity as they struggle to survive away from their mountain homes.
Addressing Policy Gaps and the Need for Regional Coordination

Even as Nepal has begun to recognise and include climate-induced mobility in its national framework, its integrated mobility response still faces significant policy implementation gaps. These gaps are compounded by the absence of cohesive cross-border cooperation in the South Asian region. While Nepal’s National Adaptation Plan draws attention to climate-induced migration, loss of livelihoods, and the need for adaptation tracking data systems, issues pertaining to funding, fractured mandates across tiers of government, and the absence of migration-specific legislations (such as social protection and planned relocation frameworks) render the implementation of such proposals ineffective.

Gacial systems, climate change, and human mobility are transboundary issues and thus should be addressed at the regional level. However, South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) collaboration is sporadic; experts cite stalled projects, insufficiently funded joint projects, and a tendency to “securitise” climate challenges, which hinders productive collaboration on shared river basins, climate services, and early warning systems.

At the eighth edition of the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction held in June 2025, a high-level event was organised by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) and the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC). Nepal’s Home Secretary Gokarna Mani Duwadee called for the establishment of a cohesive BIMSTEC disaster mechanism that would synchronise risk evaluations, supervise Sendai Framework enforcement and the formation of a specific regional Disaster Risk Reduction fund. Climate action takes priority for BIMSTEC as it hosts a workshop in Kathmandu, thereby highlighting the necessity of climate policies rooted in principles of gender equality and social inclusion.

Because of the direct effect on water security and cross-border displacement, changes in glacial flow and snow will require coordinated action in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region. The Glacier and Snowassessments of the Hindu Kush Himalaya mandate cooperation across the entire Hindu Kush region through open data, harmonised risk monitoring, and planning across entire basins. Recent reports highlight the urgency in dealing with floods and infrastructure breakdowns that are hampering trade and energy networks in a manner that no single country can combat.

To address these issues, climate-induced displacement should be incorporated into both national and local budgets, as well as social protection strategies, aligning actions in the NAP with earmarked funding and voluntary, rights-based relocation guidelines. Planning should be based on policy-relevant, open climate risk and migration data, and regional platforms should be reinvigorated with periodic data exchange agreements and shared drought management, early warning, and GLOF (glacial lake outburst floods) risk reduction funds. With international agreements still non-binding, a regional soft-law instrument (or protocol) to protect cross-border environmental migrants by clarifying their rights to assistance, employment, and admission should be put in place. If these steps are ignored, the forecasted climate displacement in Nepal will trigger a sequence of crises affecting the South Asian labour markets, waterways, and urban centres, resulting in irreparable damage to the region’s economy and livelihood.

About the authors:Anasua Basu Ray Chaudhury is a Senior Fellow with the Neighbourhood Initiative at the Observer Research Foundation.

Sreedipta Roy is an Intern at the Observer Research Foundation.

Source: This article was published by the Observer Research Foundation.


Observer Research Foundation

ORF was established on 5 September 1990 as a private, not for profit, ’think tank’ to influence public policy formulation. The Foundation brought together, for the first time, leading Indian economists and policymakers to present An Agenda for Economic Reforms in India. The idea was to help develop a consensus in favour of economic reforms.

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EMPIRE - Monoskop

4.3 The Multitude against Empire. 393. Notes. 415. Index. 473. Page 11. PREFACE. Empire is materializing before our very eyes. Over the past several decades, as ...

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Multitude: war and democracy in the Age of Empir

India's Neocons Celebrate Donald Trump’s Humiliation: Why It Matters – OpEd

October 12, 2025 

By M.K. Bhadrakumar


I still miss the inimitable tag line, Tukde Tukde Gang, literally meaning ‘fragments’, after all these eleven tumultuous years of Indian politics. It was the political catchphrase invented by India’s ruling party, Bharatiya Janata Party, revelling in the sheer exuberance of its magnificent 2014 election victory to storm the citadel of power in Delhi, which it is still occupying, to mock at India’s neocons who blindly imitated the liberal international globalist agenda in the West, principally America, and were manifestly out of touch with Indian realities but nonetheless wielded a larger than life presence in urban India primarily due to their fluency and felicity of expression in English language and their communication skills and social connections — plus lavish western patronage, of course.

India’s neocons are far from an extinct species. They come out of the woodwork to present their antithesis at defining moments. The arrival of foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi from Kabul on a five-day official visit currently has been one such moment, as they come out to show their irritation that Modi government is according virtual recognition to the Taliban government in Afghanistan while women folk in the Hindu Kush do not enjoy the sort of ‘freedom’ that is in there in America.

Their argument is that unless women’s rights are recognised by the Taliban, it is premature to accord recognition, little realising that by such a yardstick, India too may have a problem of legitimacy even after seven decades of independence where the centuries-old Hindu caste system still prevails, which is, we all can agree, the apogee of man’s cruelty to man.

India’s neocons are celebrating as joyfully as Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton would be doing in North America that President Donald Trump lost the race for the Nobel Peace Prize to an obscure Venezuelan agitator. The Nobel panel has once again placed politics over peace, true to its tradition. Indeed, the Swedish Committee cannot claim a single instance in its history of honouring a left-wing socialist battling autocratic / fascist regimes anywhere in the world.

In a curious twist to the tale, in this case, Venezuela’s Maria Corina Machado, to celebrate her Nobel, acknowledged truthfully in an X post: “I dedicate the prize to the suffering people of Venezuela and to President Trump for his decisive support to our cause!”

Machado qualifies as the candidate of the Deep State in the US. She was at the forefront of the CIA’s attempted coup in 2022 against Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro (which almost succeeded) and subscribed to the so-called Carmona Decree dissolving overnight the country’s constitution and every public institution.

She is an ardent supporter of Trump’s ongoing regime change project in Venezuela under the pretext of ‘combatting narcotrafficking’; she advocates US military intervention in her country; she fully backs the US sanctions to cripple her country’s economy that brought untold hardships to the poor people; she recommends the reopening of the Venezuelan embassy in Jerusalem; she argues for the ‘privatisation’ of Venezuela’s oil industry so that Big Oil can return (Venezuela has the world’s largest reserves exceeding Saudi Arabia’s).

Plainly put, Machado is a blind supporter of Trump’s obnoxious, illegal, futile regime change project aimed at overthrowing the elected socialist government of Maduro where he and the Deep State are on the same page. By the way, Trump has also imposed 50% tariffs against Brazil to undermine the progressive politics of President ‘Lula’. Both Maduro and Lula are charismatic figures and their countries’ lodestars in the vicious class struggle under way in Latin American society. They symbolise the rise of the working class to the corridors of power in Caracas and Brasília. Madura was a truck driver by profession; Lula honed his political skills as a tough trade union leader.

India’s neocons probably never heard of Maduro or Lula, or couldn’t care less. It is another matter, though, that the Nobel Committee’s choice of Barack Obama in 2009 thrills India’s neocons although it remains ‘a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma’, to borrow Winston Churchill’s phrase to describe a situation that is difficult to comprehend.

Can anyone tell what contribution Obama, who is qualified to enter the Guinness book of world records as the statesman who resorted to maximum number of missile strikes against foreign countries, to world peace? He didn’t even keep his electoral pledge during his 8 years as president to shut down the infamous Guantanamo detention camp where prisoners are kept in horrible sub-human conditions, including the common use of bell and chains as a correctional strategy, with no hope on earth for justice or even the milk of human kindness.

The stony silence of the neocons, be it in India or North America, vis-a-vis Guantanamo Bay, or the regime change projects in Venezuela and Brazil, only underscores the depth and intensity of their ideological dogmatism and moral depravity to mouth values they themselves do not practice. Why wouldn’t the Nobel Committee take a look at what is happening in Moldova currently — how the country’s president Maia Sandu manages to remain in power? Because, she’s an American citizen and an American proxy in a strategically important country which is to be ripened as Ukraine 2.0 in the Black Sea region?

Now, one may argue that Trump is no different than Machado. But that is not true. The cardinal difference is, Trump holds power and leads a superpower which is still the world’s number one military power. And he is a mercurial personality known to be capable of making wild swings in his public stance and policies. Machado’s main virtue, in comparison, is that she is a consistent right-wing reactionary who is a camp follower of the US in her politics.

In sum, Trump may use his power between now and January 2028 to strengthen peace or push the world situation even more into anarchical conditions than they are today. To my mind, a Nobel would have served the noble purpose of shackling Trump, so to speak — imprisoning him, making him captive as an apostle of peace, a cause he espouses at times. The world desperately needs such a Trump, since the US’ decline is irreversible but its obsessive desire to hold on to its hegemony is all too evident.

Unfortunately, the Nobel Committee has exposed its prejudices and confirmed all over again what many suspected all along, namely, that its decisions carry the imprimatur of the US Deep State. For, make no mistake, this is not only an insult to Trump but a retaliation against his politics — being overlooked in favour of a minion of the US Deep State.

As an embittered man who would know by now that he will never get the Nobel in his life, Trump can be more dangerous than a woman scorned going forward. Such a mindless decision with no sense, logic or merit should not have been taken in Oslo behind closed doors by a clutch of people without assessing its potential impact on the world situation at such a critical juncture when international security is at a crossroads with no certainty which way it leads to — a catastrophic Armageddon or, peace and a readiness to live and let live.

“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” The neocons, in their deep, visceral hatred towards Trump, are missing the woods for trees. Warts and all, Trump has been a man of peace, the best ever after Dwight Eisenhower, and the White House is unlikely to get another one like Trump for a very long time to come.

M.K. Bhadrakumar

M.K. Bhadrakumar is a former Indian diplomat.