Brahma Chellaney is an Indian geostrategist and columnist. He is a professor of strategic studies at the Centre 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 was a member of India’s National Security Advisory Board and an author of its draft nuclear doctrine. He is a regular columnist for Project Syndicate, and writes for numerous other international publications.

Chellaney was described in The New York Times in 1999 as “one of the independent experts who helped draft India’s proposed nuclear doctrine”. The country’s draft nuclear doctrine was publicly released in August 1999. The institutions where he has held appointments include Harvard University, the Norwegian Nobel Institute, the Brookings Institution, the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at the Johns Hopkins University, and the Australian National University. Graham Tobin from the University of South Florida has as described Chellaney’s geopolitical analyses as astute and critical.

Chellaney coined the term debt-trap diplomacy to describe how the Chinese government leverages the debt burden of smaller countries for geopolitical ends. He saw ‘debt trap diplomacy’ in China’s handling of Sri Lanka’s debt distress by taking over its Hambantota port on a long-term lease. The thesis caught on and began to be used widely, becoming “something approaching conventional wisdom”, especially in Washington DC. Other scholars have disputed the assessment, and the “myth of debt trap”, arguing that Chinese finance was not the source of Sri Lanka’s financial distress.