Canada-India relations strained by murder allegation

Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.

What's the future for Canada-India relations amidst the accusation of Sikh leader murder?

Also Canadian citizen, by the way, this is the equivalent of Jamal Khashoggi if he had been assassinated in the United States as opposed to Turkey. It's a big deal. The Canadians have hard intel. They've shared it with all of their top allies. The Americans certainly see it's very credible. This is, frankly, since the Russians invaded Ukraine, US relations with all of their top security partners and allies have only gotten closer and stronger over the last 19 months. This is the single big exception to that. India and Canada, two increasingly strong security partners of the United States with a very major flap. Trudeau called them out directly. There's been, you know, already some diplomats that have been tossed out of each other's countries. Doesn't really matter from an economic perspective. There's very little trade relations between the two countries, but it matters a lot in terms of domestic politics.Indian population in Canada is pretty big, and they have fair political autonomy because they're dominant in a couple of key districts politically. The Indian government views this guy as terrorist that was killed. They also deny it, so they had nothing to do with it. And there's a lot of nationalism. So it's very hard for me to see this getting fixed any time soon. Watch how the Americans respond, because they are between a rock and a hard place in this flap.

Another missing Chinese minister. That's the defense minister. Is this a coincidence or something bigger happening?

Well, we know when we don't hear from ministers for a couple of weeks, we're not going to hear from them going forward. They have been purged. And in this case, it does look like a significant corruption issue, something that the Chinese and the Ukrainians have in common right now, except Ukrainians you still hear from. The Chinese, house arrest or a lot worse. I guess the one positive thing you can say is that with corruption still being a big problem and the Chinese clearing house domestically inside the military, they're not going to be looking to invade Taiwan any time soon. Of course, I didn't think that was going to happen anyway. But there is also the possibility that we could see a breakthrough on US-China defense relations, because this defense minister, one of the reasons the Americans didn't and couldn't see him is because he was sanctioned by the US. That will not likely be true of his successor.

Is Azerbaijan and Armenia on the precipice of full-scale war?

Hard to know whether the Armenians in Armenia will be getting involved, but the autonomous Republic of Karabakh, mountainous Karabakh, 120,000 Armenians inside Azerbaijan. They're in very serious trouble. For years, the Armenians had the upper hand. The Russians were their primary security and defense partner. They had control of their region, also took over Azeri territories, buffer territories, kicked the Azeris out of it. They didn't want to negotiate. Why? They didn't have to. Well, now they do. Now the Russians are in trouble. They're distracted. No one else is going to support them. They're in big trouble. So as a consequence, the Azeris first cut off all the humanitarian aid, cut off the ability to get any food in, any medicine in. And now they've actually invaded. They are in very seriously dire straits. It's a tragedy playing out. And I am hard-pressed to imagine anyone intervening on their behalf. Hate to see it.

Talk to you all real soon.