Strategic Analysis

China’s Post-1978 Maritime Relations with South Asia: Towards Greater Cooperation

The objectives of this article are, firstly, to identify the place occupied by the Indian Ocean and South Asia in China's maritime strategy, and secondly, to identify the appropriate means of dealing with the global and regional maritime security concerns arising from China's maritime strategy as far as the Indian Ocean and South Asia are concerned.

The Creation of Indian Integrated Commands: Organisational Learning and the Andaman and Nicobar Command

India took an unprecedented step 10 years ago by setting up a joint theatre operational command for the Andaman and Nicobar Islands (ANC). This article seeks to examine the following questions: why did India decide to establish its first joint operational command? Why has the creation of this and other unified commands been so incremental in the Indian context? What are the arguments for and against jointness, integration and joint operational commands in the Indian context?

Maritime Developments in the South Western Indian Ocean and the Potential for India’s Engagement with the Region

The Indian Ocean region, being a vast geographical entity, is composed of various regional and sub-regional entities. This article addresses prominent maritime developments in the South Western Indian Ocean (SWIO) region of the Indian Ocean Rim and highlights the multi-dimensional growth of strategic maritime activities in the region.

India’s Maritime Core Interests

While the maritime doctrine was published by the Indian navy in 2004 and improved upon in 2007, the core interests identified were as seen through the prism of the navy. The national maritime interests of India are distinctly different from the ones identified by the Indian navy and need to be analysed to understand the nuances and the dimensions of such interests so as to promote India's maritime power potential.

Charting a Maritime Security Cooperation Mechanism in the Indian Ocean: Sharing Responsibilities among Littoral States and User States

The main objective of this article is to highlight the challenge of maritime security in the region geographically bounded by the Indian Ocean. It studies the current status of maritime security in the region from both the traditional and non-traditional points of view. From the traditional security perspective, it examines the strategic interests of the major Indian Ocean players—the China–India competition and India–US relations in particular—in addition to the existing maritime disputes among the littoral states.

Political Islam: A Critical Reader by Frederic Volpi

At the dawn of the 21st century, political Islam has become an influential religious and social force in many post-colonial states, from North Africa to South East Asia. In the context of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the ‘War on Terror’, much has been written. Little has been written, however, to enable a holistic understanding of political Islam. Though some work has been done by Western scholars like Olivier Roy, the post-9/11 world has a different dynamic in which political Islam is used by terrorists to set the global discourse on the West's treatment of Muslims.

Vision for a Secular Pakistan?

This article will bring to light the transformation of the Pakistani state from a relatively tolerant to an unstable state dominated by militancy and violence. In the formative phase of Pakistan, the notion of religious extremism was almost non-existent as the founder of the country, Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, made it clear that the new state would not be theocratic in nature.

Maoist and Other Armed Conflicts by Anuradha Mitra Chenoy and Kamal Mitra Chenoy

In one of the most well-written and extensively researched books on the subject, Anuradha Chenoy and Kamal Mitra Chenoy attempt to holistically examine the state of armed conflicts in India. In their own words, the book has the modest aim of understanding the roots, the nature and the impact of the armed conflicts in India. However, the title gives the reader the erroneous impression that the Maoist conflict will be the central theme while other conflicts will be peripheral.

Pakistan’s Pashtun Challenge: Moving from Confrontation to Integration

The Pashtun populations of Afghanistan and Pakistan have long been a source of bilateral contention, with each government inciting Pashtun tribals against the other. Now that the majority of Pashtuns live in Pakistan, Islamabad is using its Pashtun connections to project influence into Afghanistan. As a result, both Afghanistan and Pakistan are threatened by runaway Pashtun militancy. Peace and stability in both countries will be impossible until political reforms have been implemented in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan.

A Metahistory of the Clash of Civilisations: Us and Them Beyond Orientalism by Arshin Adib-Moghaddam

Arshin Adib-Moghaddam is Reader in Comparative Politics and International Relations at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Born to Iranian parents in Istanbul, he grew up in Hamburg. He later obtained his doctorate from Cambridge University. His personal and academic background are recounted here to show that he has a deep knowledge of the two civilisations that are supposedly in ‘clash’.

Ali Ahmed
March 2012 |
Strategic Analysis