Brahma Chellaney is a geostrategist, scholar, author and commentator. He brings a rigorous and interdisciplinary lens to global strategic issues, including natural-resource geopolitics. He is presently Professor of Strategic Studies at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi; a Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow of the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin; and an affiliate with the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization at King’s College London. He has served as a member of the Policy Advisory Group headed by the foreign minister of India. Before that, he was an adviser to India’s National Security Council, serving as convener of the External Security Group of the National Security Advisory Board.

As a specialist on international strategic issues, he has held appointments at Harvard University, the Brookings Institution, the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, and the Australian National University. He has also been a fellow at the Nobel Institute in Oslo and at The Transatlantic Academy in Washington, DC. His numerous peer-reviewed papers have been published in major journals, including International Security, Orbis, Survival, Terrorism, Washington Quarterly, Nature, Security Studies, Asian Survey, Politique Etrangere, Disarmament, and Australian Journal of International Affairs. He received his Ph.D. in strategic studies.

In addition to being a strategic thinker, author, and commentator, he is a columnist, including for Project Syndicate, The Hill, Nikkei Asia, and The Japan Times. His work for Project Syndicate is translated into several foreign languages (none of which he understands). He has also contributed opinion articles to The New York Times, Le Monde, Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Times of India, La Vanguardia, South China Morning Post, The Hindu, The Guardian, The Australian and other important newspapers. And he has often appeared on CNN and BBC, among others.

He also sits on a number of international organizational boards, including the academic council of The Henry Jackson Society, London, and the advisory boards of Worldcoo, Barcelona, and the European Centre for Energy and Resource Security (EUCERS) at the King’s College London. He is also a member of the Global Strategic Advisory Group of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, headquartered in Berlin. He is a frequent lecturer at universities, think-tanks, military war colleges, and public forums across the world. He has addressed the annual conference of German ambassadors in Berlin and international business forums such as the Global ARC, Pacific Pension Institute annual roundtable, In the Zone conference, Asian Development Bank Evaluation Event, CLSA Investors’ Forum, Shell Powering Progress Together conference, and FutureChina Global Forum.

He has also participated in high-powered initiatives like the Bergedorf Roundtable, the World Economic Forum at Davos, the Doha Forum, the Berlin Foreign Policy Forum, the Singapore Global Dialogue, the Falling Walls Conference, and the Robert Bosch Annual Forum. He has taught professional and international seminars in the United States, Japan, Austria, Singapore, Australia, South Korea, Germany, Hong Kong, Britain, South Africa, Brazil and France.

He is the author of nine books, including an international bestseller, Asian Juggernaut: The Rise of China, India, and Japan (Harper Paperbacks, New York, 2010).

His latest books focus on the geopolitics of water resources: the 2015 launched paperback edition of Water, Peace, and War: Confronting the Global Water Crisis (Rowman & Littlefield); and Water: Asia’s New Battleground (Georgetown University Press), the winner of the 2012 Bernard Schwartz Award. A new edition of this award-winning book in paperback was released in 2014. You may read parts of the book here. He received the Bernard Schwartz Award at a luncheon event on January 23, 2013, at the New York headquarters of Asia Society.

Water, Peace, and War has received rave reviews from the experts; here is a sample. Among his other recent publications is Controlling the Taps, a “blue book” for international institutional investors on water-related risks and opportunities that was published in 2012 by CLSA, a wholly owned subsidiary of Credit Lyonnais SA. The Transatlantic Academy in Washington, DC, published in mid-2012 his study titled From Arms Racing to “Dam Racing” in Asia. In late 2012, the Brazilian publishing company Editora Acatu released his new book in Portuguese, A ascensão da Ásia e seu impacto global, which examines the impact of Asia’s rise on international relations. His first book, Nuclear Proliferation: The U.S.-India Conflict, dates back to 1993.

Photo on the website head courtesy of Laura Guerrero, La Vanguardia, Barcelona.
Photo on this page courtesy of Robert Bosch Academy/David Ausserhofer; taken on October 19, 2023.