India’s space program has grown and evolved significantly in the last five decades. The program originally focused on developing space assets that provided direct developmental benefits, for example telecommunications and remote sensing satellites that helped both in improving communication facilities and giving direct assistance to India’s farmers. But over time, India has shifted a part of its focus towards space exploration and other high-profile missions that do not have as clear a developmental purpose as earlier. This includes, for example, India’s Mars and Moon exploratory missions. Overall, India has been fairly successful in these efforts and its space program has become a comprehensive one that includes not only a robust launch capacity and very large remote sensing satellite systems, but also a very well rounded scientific and deep space exploratory program.

France’s recently launched Indo-Pacific strategy has attracted many critical and sarcastic comments.

South East Asia is an area of utmost importance for Japan’s economic, political and security interests, amounting to “a core strategic interest” for Tokyo.

Russia’s Energy Strategy to 2035 (ES-2035) enters, finally, the home stretch. The Ministry of Energy submitted its version of the document to the Russian Government in early October 2019.

What is the role of law in international relations today that increasingly seem to favour assertions of power?

From the 2000s, the United States has developed an extraterritorial legal policy that began with fighting corruption but has since broadened considerably.

The numerous commitments made in the Aachen Treaty concealed a wide range of disagreements over defense, the future of the European Union, economic policies, relations with Russia, and so on.

South Africa held general elections in May 2019. The African National Congress (ANC) emerged victorious, but failed to win over a majority of registered voters.