Strategic Analysis


China’s Wars and Strategies: Looking Back at the Korean War and the Sino-Indian War

This article explores China’s war experiences in the Korean War and the Sino-Indian War and analyses China’s strategic decisions at the time of its national establishment. This article suggests that China pursued the strategic goal of protecting its frontiers and ensuring its territorial integrity in both wars, while executing dissimilar strategies. The article associates the modernisation of People’s Liberation Army after the Korean War with the outcome of the following war with India.

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Australia’s Counter-Terrorism Policies Since September 11, 2001: Harmonising National Security, Independent Oversight and Individual Liberties

Australia has remained insulated from mega terrorist attacks, but post-September 11 its involvement in the war on terror in Afghanistan, Iraq and against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has brought terrorism into its backyard. In the wake of these emerging threats, particularly home-grown terrorism (HGT), successive governments have introduced changes in the counter-terrorism (CT) laws, and expanded the Criminal Code Act 1995 (Commonwealth-Cth) at the recommendations of the Council of Australian Governments (COAG).

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India in Australia’s Strategic Framing in the Indo–Pacific

The world is witnessing a geopolitical shift from the North Atlantic to the Indo–Pacific region. US power is in relative decline with a steady build-up of Chinese power, wealth and influence. The last 15–20 years have also seen the rise of India. Against this backdrop, Australia’s reconceptualisation of its strategic frame as the Indo–Pacific widens its geopolitical canvas and elevates India’s importance for multiple Australian interests and objectives.

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How Sri Lanka Walked into a Debt Trap, and the Way Out

Sri Lankans love to project their country as the land of serendipity. So, when the island country saw the back of a four-decade-old violent Tamil insurgency in 2009, it was expected that it would surge ahead in a serendipitous way. The turn of events ever since has, however, proved that the country has not been that fortunate. In fact, immediately after the conclusion of the war, Sri Lanka (re)lapsed into multiple crises, occasioned by a regime which functioned in an authoritarian manner.

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India’s Bilateral Security Relationship in South Asia

The article argues that the contours of a security architecture are becoming slowly visible in South Asia. This process is nurtured by two developments. First, since the 2000s, India has increased its security cooperation with nearly all its neighbours in South Asia. Second, since 2013 governments in New Delhi have promoted the concept of India as a security provider in the region and the Indian Ocean.

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Asia in international relations: unlearning imperial power relations

The discipline of International Relations (IR) is deeply enmeshed in the history, intellectual traditions and agency claims of the West, thus obscuring the contributions from the non-Western world. IR theory fails to take cognisance of the global distribution of the various actors along with their contribution to a heterogeneous and rich discipline. There is a pressing need for a departure from IR’s historic complicity with marginalisation and the silencing of alternative epistemologies, thereby making its process of knowledge production truly global and democratic.

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Gas Pipelines—Politics and Rivalries

In 2012, the International Energy Agency (IEA) in its ‘World Energy Outlook’ said that the world was entering a ‘Golden Age of Gas’. With its lower carbon-emitting properties, gas seemed poised to claim its rightful place in the global energy mix as a bridge between polluting hydrocarbons and green renewables. Moreover, it has all the ingredients to make it as worthy a contender in the energy geopolitical game as did oil a few decades ago.

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Analysing the Impacts of Drug Trafficking on Human Security in Central Asia

The international security environment has undergone many changes since the end of the Cold War. There has been a need to adapt the concept of security with the changing conditions and new security situations emerging in different geopolitical locales of the world. The concept of human security gained currency in the wake of international developments in the 1990s following the end of the Cold War. New security threats were identified by scholars and analysts the world over. There was a shift in the way security was conceptualised, i.e.

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