Archives

Our archives are a repository of original thinking that chronicles two decades of research, analysis, and policy innovation. This collection brings together articles written by SFG’s founders and research analysts between 2005 and 2025, preserving the ideas, and insights that shaped our intellectual journey. These writings reflect the evolution of our thinking as we engaged with some of the world’s most pressing challenges and opportunities.

The archive offers a rich body of material for researchers, policymakers, students, journalists, and anyone interested in understanding complex global issues through a long-term strategic lens. The articles explore a wide spectrum of subjects, including peace and conflict, water diplomacy, international relations, technology, environmental sustainability, governance, security, and the changing dynamics of regional and global cooperation. They also place regional developments within broader international and geopolitical contexts.

Many of these articles anticipated trends and policy challenges that later became central to international discourse. Others document the development of concepts and frameworks that informed SFG’s subsequent research, dialogues, and publications. Together, they provide not only historical context but also enduring perspectives that continue to resonate in a rapidly changing world.

Beyond serving as a research resource, this archive offers a window into the intellectual history of SFG. It traces how our ideas evolved over time, how new policy concepts emerged through sustained inquiry, and how our engagement expanded from regional concerns to global challenges. Readers can follow the progression of our work across changing geopolitical landscapes and appreciate our evidence-based approaches to peace, security, and international cooperation.

Whether you are revisiting landmark analyses, exploring the origins of key policy ideas, or discovering our work for the first time, we hope these archives provide valuable insights, stimulate informed debate, and inspire fresh thinking about the future.

A Renaissance Long Overdue

  • By Anisa Virji
The Arab civilization, like many other civilizations, once reigned at a cultural and intellectual apogee, but subsequently lost this position and found itself close to the lowest rungs of the civilizational hierarchy. However, the civilization has not completely lost the spirit that once made it indisputably great. If the region has lost its bearings in the turbulent contemporary world of technological unfamiliarity and moral ambiguity, then it needs to reach out to its past and bring back the principles of free enquiry and tolerance advocated by its faith, and find its way once again to the shore.
Read More

What’s right with Islam IS What’s Right with America

  • By Devika Mistry
One of the most vital, yet elusive questions of our time is what went wrong in the relationship between the Muslims and the West.
Read More

Age of Inconclusive Wars

  • By Sundeep Waslekar
We have entered the age of inconclusive wars, said Ambassador Hesham Youssef, a key official of the League of Arab States. He was speaking at a workshop Strategic Foresight Group had jointly organised with SMWIPM Institute of Peace Studies at Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt in August this year. The war in Lebanon had sparked massive rage all over the Middle East. The US might have declared victory in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but they are still very active killing fields. Most significantly, there is a war of terrorism and a war on terror.
Read More

Ferguson’s Fears

  • By Sundeep Waslekar
About a year ago, I read an interesting article by Prof Niall Ferguson, drawing parallels between the period leading to the First World War and the current global scenario. More recently, I read his book The Pity of War, which analyses factors contributing to the First World War, including some reasons which have not been discussed much but which are very convincing. He makes a very persuasive argument that the First World War was a major error of the modern era. More significantly, it was an error that could have been avoided.
Read More

Neil Fergusson, Collosus

  • By Sundeep Waslekar
Prof Niall Ferguson's Colossus is very strong in intellectual vigour. It is rather weak in its moral persuasion.
Read More

Eliot Weinberger, 9/12 New York After

  • By Anisa Virji
Eliot Weinberger's book 9/12: New York After is a series of essays, which he refers to as snapshots, of his personal impression; and the political reactions and consequences he expected in the days after 9/11.
Read More