From Deckplates to Think Tanks: Holding a Compass in a Spinning World

The Nobility of Silence

From deckplates to think tanks, I have seen power in motion. At sea, it moves with the steel of hulls and the rhythm of deployments. In classrooms and strategy rooms, it moves with ideas, models, and narratives. Both are real, both shape our world, and both demand a steady hand on the compass.

In 2025, that compass seems to be spinning wildly. Alliances fracture, blocs consolidate, technologies redefine sovereignty, and entire regions are rewriting their place on the global chart. For a world conditioned by familiar coordinates of power, the sudden tilts of this multipolar order feel disorienting. How then does one navigate? The answer lies in bringing together lived experience, historical memory, and critical thinking — in calibrating a compass that can hold steady even as the gyro spins.

Lessons on Power in Motion

My first education in geopolitics was not in lecture halls or policy papers but on the deckplates of naval ships. There, in the humid winds of the Indian Ocean and the sharp chill of northern seas, I learned that global politics is not an abstraction. It is convoy escorts, maritime patrols, and port visits that signal presence, deterrence, or solidarity.

Maritime chokepoints taught me this viscerally. The Strait of Hormuz, where a narrow passage carries a fifth of the world’s oil. The Malacca Strait, lifeline of Asian trade. Bab el-Mandeb, gateway to the Red Sea. Each chokepoint is a reminder that sovereignty and security are not theoretical - they are exercised by hulls in the water, radar on watch, and sailors at their stations.

From the deckplates, one sees power in motion. A fleet maneuver is not just tactical; it is a message in steel. A port call is not just logistics; it is diplomacy with flags and uniforms. A naval exercise is not just practice; it is assurance to partners and warning to rivals. These early lessons have never left me. They taught me that strategy is experienced before it is theorized.

The Horizon of 2025: New Fleet Formations

Looking across today’s horizon, I see familiar patterns, fleets forming, converging, colliding, but in very different seas.

China’s flagship sails high. At the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Tianjin this year, Beijing pushed for a yuan-denominated energy corridor, an SCO development bank, and greater technological integration through the BeiDou satellite system. Alongside Russia, Iran, and North Korea — the so-called CRINKs — China is building a bloc that challenges the dominance of Western-led institutions. The imagery is striking Xi, Putin, and Kim sharing a stage at Beijing’s military parade. A choreographed reminder that authoritarian powers are no longer shy of being seen together.

The U.S. and India collide in contested waters. Despite being called natural allies, 2025 has seen frictions: Washington’s steep tariffs on Indian imports, India’s strategic autonomy in energy sourcing, and the balancing act of being in Quad exercises while engaging with BRICS expansion. Like ships maneuvering too close in narrow seas, these collisions do not mean hostility, but they underscore the difficulty of coordination when priorities diverge.

Europe arms itself into a new battle group. After decades of relying on transatlantic guarantees, the European Union has turbocharged its defense posture with an €800 billion plan. The message is that Europe is no longer content to be a dependent convoy; it seeks to steam ahead as an independent task force.

Technology fleets dominate the new sea lanes. AI systems, digital sovereignty, and energy technologies are the new carriers and destroyers. Control over data flows and algorithmic governance is fast becoming as decisive as naval dominance once was in the Indian Ocean. Technology giants increasingly resemble digital sovereigns — not just tools of states but actors shaping public discourse and strategic choices. These new “fleet formations” reveal the reality of 2025: multipolarity is not theoretical anymore. The world’s task forces are assembled, but their rules of navigation are not yet agreed.

On to Seminar Rooms: Thinking About Power

If the deckplates taught me what power looks like in motion, the seminar rooms and think tanks taught me what power looks like on paper. War games, strategy models, policy briefs — all attempt to capture the motion of power in diagrams, projections, and scenarios.

Yet here, an epistemic perspective is useful: Who decides what counts as authoritative knowledge in geopolitics?

● For decades, knowledge was hierarchical. States, militaries, and their think tanks defined the narratives.

● Today, new knowers enter the room: AI systems producing simulations, grassroots movements reshaping agendas, regional blocs like BRICS or the Alliance of Sahel States asserting alternative discourses.

● Expertise itself is contested. Is a naval officer with lived deployments more credible than a policy analyst with datasets? Is an AI forecast a knowledge claim or a statistical guess? TOK reminds us that knowledge is not only what is said but who says it, and who accepts it.

The risk is that think tanks become echo chambers, reinforcing their own assumptions, while AI systems produce outputs without human judgment. The challenge is not to abandon theory, but to ensure that experience, history, and epistemic humility guide how we interpret models.

India’s Bearings in a Multipolar Sea

In this turbulent ocean, India finds itself both a ship in the fleet and a potential provider of bearings.

Historically, India has been a maritime civilization, with the Indian Ocean as its crossroads of trade and encounter. Culturally, it has navigated pluralism, balancing multiple faiths and traditions. Strategically, it has guarded its autonomy, resisting being a camp follower in global blocs.

In 2025, India faces difficult waters. U.S. pressure on trade and energy, Chinese assertiveness along borders and seas, and Russian ties that are both legacy and liability. Yet India’s civilizational ethos, of dialogue, diversity, and knowledge, offers more than just another ship in the lineup. It offers a compass. India does not need to merely balance blocs. It can articulate a perspective that sees power not only as coercion or currency but as responsibility, responsibility for stability, for freedom of navigation, for inclusive development, and for critical thinking. If the world is spinning, India can be an anchor, not because it is flawless, but because it knows what it means to navigate contradictions.

Mentorship as Compass Calibration

As I turn sixty, I am mindful of the responsibility not just to read the compass but to hand it down calibrated. The greatest danger in a spinning world is not disorientation but the absence of guides who can steady younger hands.

Every classroom I teach in, whether Global Politics or Theory of Knowledge, is a miniature think tank. There, I see students wrestling with concepts of power, justice, sovereignty, and human rights. There, I see the temptation of quick answers and the allure of simplistic narratives. And there, I see the opportunity to equip them with intellectual compasses that will help them navigate beyond exams into life.

Mentorship is not about dictating routes. It is about teaching how to read bearings, how to question assumptions, how to balance reason with empathy. Just as a naval navigator must constantly correct for drift and current, so must young scholars learn to adjust their course without losing their destination.

The compass we hand down must be ethical imagination — the capacity to see not only where power lies, but where responsibility lies.

Holding a Compass in a Spinning World

In 2025, the gyrocompass spins wildly. The CRINKs bloc parades its defiance, Western alliance’s strain, AI redraws sovereignty, and the Global South asserts new alignments. For many, the world seems unmoored, without fixed bearings.

Yet clarity is possible. History shows us patterns, lived experience shows us consequences, and critical thinking shows us questions worth asking. From deckplates to think tanks, I have seen power in motion. But motion without bearings is drift.

The greater task before us is not to predict every wave but to hold the compass steady. To teach, to mentor, to guide — so that in the spinning world, a generation of navigators will emerge who can chart courses responsibly, with wisdom and courage.

The seas are uncertain. The compass may spin. But the responsibility to navigate remains ours.

This article was published in FINS e-Bulletin, Volume 6, Issue 5, 1st October 2025.