Shadow Warrior by Rajeev Srinivasan

A version of this essay has been published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/shadow-warrior-from-crisis-to-advantage-how-india-can-outplay-the-trump-tariff-gambit-13923031.html A simple summary of the recent brouhaha about President Trump’s imposition of 25% tariffs on India as well as his comment on India’s ‘dead economy’ is the following from Shakespeare’s Macbeth: “full of s...

A version of this essay was published by Deccan Herald at https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/the-abhimanyu-syndrome-india-and-its-isolation-3650402 Recent events have made it increasingly clear that India is utterly alone. I call this the Abhimanyu Syndrome, in honor of the teenaged Abhimanyu, who only knew how to enter the impregnable Chakravyuha, and who was then murdered, alone, against all D...

A version of this essay has been published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/shadow-warrior-air-india-crash-how-to-spin-doctor-and-peddle-narratives-the-western-way-13912025.html There has been a virtual masterclass lately in the creation and dissemination of biased narratives. Not only in the case of the ill-fated Air India 171 (Boeing 787, June 12, 2025) that crashed, but als...

A version of this essay has been published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/shadow-warrior-zohran-mamdani-and-the-coming-crisis-for-hindus-in-america-13908482.html I have long felt the Deep State works on a single playbook in its foreign policy: regime-change, or what is colloquially called ‘Color Revolutions’. It is a simple routine: in some remote country, declare the ruling...

A version of this essay was published by first post on Jul 14 at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/shadow-warrior-whats-driving-trumps-u-turns-13906527.html There were two good reasons to support Donald Trump for President of the US: one, that he did not go to war in his first term, and two, that he was the very antithesis of the Deep State-controlled former President Biden. Alas, just less than s...

A version of this essay was published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/shadow-warrior-west-asia-hostilities-will-resume-again-only-question-is-when-13903341.html West Asia is again on the boil. Well, to be precise, it has been on the boil for a very long time, but we have the additional spectacle of the Iran-Israel war. Despite the ceasefire, which I hope does hold, there is a...

A version of this essay was published by Deccan Herald at https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/let-s-make-our-own-planes-3607351 June 23rd was a very sad anniversary: it was exactly 40 years ago that Air India Kanishka, Flight AI 182 (Montreal-London-Delhi), a Boeing 747, was blown up in the sky off Ireland, killing all 329 on board. There has never been closure, because the Canadian government st...

The massive attack by Ukrainian forces on very far off Russian airbases using lots of stealth and amazing subterfuge is destined to be a classic military operation. There are good reasons to believe this was not done by Ukraine on its own, and possibly not even by major European powers such as France (via Napoleon) and Germany (via Hitler), both of which have been humbled by Russia in the past, or...

A version of this essay was published by the Deccan Herald at https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/op-sindoor-how-we-won-and-lost-3566189 There are no clear wins in wars these days, especially when terrorizing populations, or nuclear blackmail, is the goal. Pakistan’s war manual may well be The Quranic Concept of War (1979) by Brigadier S K Malik, with its pithy statement: “Terror struck into the...

A version of this essay has been published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/shadow-warrior-india-fights-alone-narrative-wars-western-gaslighting-and-a-missed-opportunity-13891339.html From the 1st of May until the 20th I was traveling in the US, and thus had to depend on western media (mostly Twitter/X) for news about Operation Sindoor and the aftermath. It was self-evident th...

Please note: I wrote this on April 28th, and then was traveling abroad for the last few weeks, so I had no opportunity to post this until now, sorry about that: but nothing I have said here has been rendered wrong by Operation Sindoor and the near-war that happened after I wrote this. Deccan Herald ran a slightly edited version as my regular column on May 4th at https://www.deccanherald.com/opinio...

A version of this essay was published by rediff.com at https://www.rediff.com/movies/column/what-made-shaji-n-karun-a-master-film-maker/20250429.htm Just last week, I read in the local Trivandrum papers about Shaji N Karun receiving an award in the name of J C Daniel, an early pioneer in Malayalam films. That’s when I realized that the master film-maker had named his house ‘Piravi’ in memory of hi...

* Sectors negatively affected. Pharma with $12.72 billion will be affected, textiles $4.3 billion, agri products $2.58 billion, jewelry $11.88 billion, autocomponents $2 billon may face 26%+auto specific 25%, chemicals $5.7 billion. Steel $475 million, with 26%+steel specific 25%, footwear $456 million * Sectors positively affected (supply chain attraction): electronics and telecom $14.39 billion...

Tulsi Gabbard’s visit comes at a time when things are quite fluid not only in the Indo-Pacific but also in the North Atlantic. The Five Eyes are beginning to fray a bit, too. What does all this mean for the future of Indo-US relations? notebookLM-generated AI podcast based on this podcast: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episode...

A version of this essay was published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/shadow-warrior-britains-outsized-malign-role-in-global-chaos-13872084.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social Being a keen observer of the United Kingdom, I have lately noticed a few apparently unconnected events with dismay. If I were to connect the dots, it begins to appear that Britain has had an outsi...

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

A version of this essay was published by the Deccan Herald at https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/the-end-of-the-european-century-3438618 The frenetic activity recently around the Ukraine war has brought into sharp focus several things. One is the irrelevance of the United Nations. Two, the fact that Europe has in effect reverted to being a backwater in the scheme of things. Three, the US may hav...

A version of this essay was published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/shadow-warrior-what-zelenskys-debacle-says-about-us-newfound-clarity-13867967.html The tongue-lashing received by Vladimir Zelensky in the Oval Office, in full view of the media, was a point of inflection. It highlighted something that we had suspected: the end of the ‘European Century’ (or two or three), w...

Exactly a month into his new term, President Donald Trump’s latest major pick, Kash Patel, has been appointed as the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation after a grueling confirmation in the US Senate. Tulsi Gabbard had earlier been confirmed as the Director of National Intelligence. Both these are positive from India’s point of view: they signal that the sinister Deep State may well be...

A version of this essay was published by the Deccan Herald at https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/the-state-of-the-stateless-in-new-america-3396948 There are dramatic developments regarding immigration under the new Trump Administration in the US, and the long-term consequences for Indian-Americans are unclear. The harsh experiences of demographic change in Europe may be influencing lawmakers’ pl...

A version of this essay was published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/greenland-canada-panama-how-trump-2-0-is-going-to-be-a-wild-ride-13852423.html In a week when a staggeringly large wildfire laid Los Angeles low, for which the ‘progressive’ mayor and the governor could be partly to blame, it was also intriguing to see president-to-be Trump’s statements about purchasing Can...

A version of this essay was published by deccanherald.com at https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/h-1b-rape-gangs-and-fact-checks-when-narratives-boomerang-3351471 For students of media, the last week of December and the first week of January have been a treat: a rare occasion to watch narrative wars in real time. The first manufactured narrative was the all-out attack on H1-B Indians. An impartia...

On November 14th every year, I mourn my old friend Varsha Bhosle on her birth anniversary. This year she would have turned 69. Unfortunately she passed away in 2012, and she had ceased being her fiery public self a few years before that when she went into self-imposed exile from her column-writing. When she and I used to write together on rediff.com we used to dream of an India that would “be some...

A version of this essay has been published by Open Magazine at https://openthemagazine.com/columns/shadow-warrior/ I have been thinking about the ongoing vilification of Hindus in the media/social media for some time, e.g. the Economist magazine’s bizarre choice of Bangladesh as its country of the year while Bangladeshis are genociding Hindus. The simplest way I could account for it is as the very...

A version of this essay was published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/shadow-warrior-comrade-kirillov-and-the-art-of-whistleblowing-13846569.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social One of the great Raja Rao’s slighter works is called Comrade Kirillov: it is what Graham Greene would have called an ‘entertainment’, as opposed to the ‘novels’ he wrote on themes of some gravity...