Comment & Briefs

The Indian Government, and the Foreign policy establishment in particular, can do more to leverage the vast collective experience of Indians in Indonesia and channel it towards the larger ends of bilateral cooperation.

Political, economic and strategic factors in the post-Cold War period call for expanded co-operation between India and Indonesia.

How India and Indonesia look at each other, the region and the world at large will determine the course of their relationship in coming years.

Like in the space arena, India has the capability to offer its expertise to other countries in the field of nuclear power and non-nuclear applications.

The cultural linkages between India and Indonesia have to be leveraged, as a foreign policy tool, to take India-Indonesia relations to the next level.

Gates has steered Japan and South Korea towards aligning their shared threat perceptions about North Korea and China.

By concentrating only on the inequities of the blasphemy law, Pakistani ‘moderates’ and commentators elsewhere are missing the point that the real battle is against radical Islamic thought.

A shift in strategic thinking over the past two decades has now led to India being poised between the strategic doctrines of offensive and defensive realism.

North Korea’s offer of a dialogue is unlikely to elicit a positive response from South Korea which instead is militarily drawing closer to Japan to enhance deterrence.

After Lisbon, the next step for NATO and Russia should be addressing issues relating to deployments of arsenals and arms control.