Jagat Mehta joined the Indian Foreign Service (IFS) in March 1947 before India became independent. In 1976, at the age of 53, he became India's first foreign secretary without an Indian civil service background. He retired in 1979. In the present book, the author discusses six negotiating assignments that he handled during his diplomatic career, pertaining to Bhutan, China, Uganda, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. The book is a must read for those interested in India's diplomacy and diplomatic practices of the past.

• Arvind Gupta |
• January 2012 |
• Strategic Analysis

China is a thirsty country desperately in need of water—a lot of it. In order to meet its water and energy requirements in the densely populated and fertile northern plains, it is successively making interventions in the Tibetan rivers in the southern part through dams and diversions. While China is well within its riparian rights to do so, a set of externalities involving the principles of water-sharing and lower riparian needs—stretching from Afghanistan to Vietnam—raise concerns.

• Uttam Kumar Sinha |
• January 2012 |
• Strategic Analysis

MJ. Akbar brings his English literature background, writing skills and experience as a journalist with a notable body of work behind him to bear on a topic that has been and remains central to the story of the subcontinent—the past and future of Pakistan. That he prefaces his title with tinderbox reveals his pessimism regarding Pakistan's future. For him, Pakistan can plausibly be characterised as a ‘toxic jelly’.

• Ali Ahmed |
• January 2012 |
• Strategic Analysis

It is now commonly accepted that small island countries are facing an existential threat because of global warming and the consequent rise in the level of the oceans.

• P. K. Gautam |
• January 2012 |
• Strategic Analysis

Within the ever expanding genre of conflict and security-related literature, there is a less investigated field that pertains to futuristic technologies and the harnessing of science for the purposes of mass destruction and targeted warfare. This is the arena of space, the battlefield of major powers and the arena for power expansion into the extra-terrestrial.

• Ajey Lele |
• January 2012 |
• Strategic Analysis

Rajiv Nayan's article is both important and interesting. It is important because nuclear weapons pose a threat to humanity and the planet that in magnitude, severity and immediacy is the gravest of all known risks confronting us today.

• Ramesh Thakur |
• January 2012 |
• Strategic Analysis

Science and the Baconian spirit of scientific rationality have long inspired Indians, many of whom, including the country's first prime minister, regarded the superiority of Western science as the root cause of the subcontinent's subjection to foreign rule.

• Jayita Sarkar |
• January 2012 |
• Strategic Analysis

As a founding member, India has been a firm supporter of the principles and purposes of the United Nations. Enshrined as its central aim, the UN Charter states that the United Nations: ‘maintains international peace and security and to that end, takes corrective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to peace, and the suppression of acts of aggression.’ 1 Towards supporting and furthering world peace, India has participated in some of the world's most difficult peacekeeping missions over 61 years.

• Vinay Bhatnagar |
• November 2011 |
• Strategic Analysis

The world has changed significantly since the founding of the United Nations and so have its conflicts. During the mid-twentieth century, the pre-eminent challenge for multilateral cooperation was the awesome prospect of a Third World War. Today, in the aftermath of the Cold War, we see a more elaborated focus on the prevention of conflict and the protection of communities and peoples—both as a sovereign responsibility of the modern nation-state as well as a central focus of the United Nations peace engagements.

• Vijay Nambiar |
• November 2011 |
• Strategic Analysis

Does the changing nature of the international order in the 21st century influence the nature and forms of multilateralism? And if yes, how does it impact the United Nations, an institution at the apex of the multilateral process, but which in some crucial respects still reflects the international order of the mid-twentieth century? This is the question that this paper attempts to explore.

• B.S. Prakash |
• November 2011 |
• Strategic Analysis