Strategic Analysis

India, Pakistan and the Bomb: Debating Nuclear Stability in South Asia is a strategic debate between the optimists and pessimists on whether the nuclearisation of South Asia has stabilised the subcontinent or whether proliferation has rendered it more dangerous. Authored by Sumit Ganguly and S. Paul Kapur, the book examines the question as to whether the decision to exercise the nuclear option by India and Pakistan was a prudent one: Did India's nuclear capability accord it a great power status? Did the Pokhran II tests of May 1998 make India more secure?

• Reshmi Kazi
• September 2011 |
• Strategic Analysis
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India shares 4095 kilometres of land and river boundaries with Bangladesh. The border is porous, criss-crossed by rivers and hilly and mountainous terrain which has made the guarding of this border extremely difficult. Border is a political construction. People living in the villages adjacent to the border do not subscribe to any concept of nationality or recognise the boundaries of the nation state. For the people living in the ‘borderlands’, a non-existent line bars them from leading the natural existence they have led for centuries.

• Smruti S. Pattanaik
• September 2011 |
• Strategic Analysis
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Does India have a strategic culture? The conventional answer is ‘no’, especially since George Tanham said so. Jayashree Vivekanandan contests this view, the roots of which she traces to the ‘Orientalist’ construction of Indian culture.

• S. Kalyanaraman
• September 2011 |
• Strategic Analysis
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• Rukmani Gupta
• September 2011 |
• Strategic Analysis
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Much water has flown down the Mahaveli since the elimination of V. Prabhakaran and decimation of LTTE, the terror outfit he led, in Sri Lanka in May 2009. President Mahinda Rajapaksa cashed in on the situation well; he called for a new presidential election two years before expiration of his term and won it convincingly in January 2010. His party secured an easy and emphatic victory in the subsequent parliamentary elections, short of a two-thirds majority, in April 2010.

• Ashok K. Behuria
• September 2011 |
• Strategic Analysis
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Verghese, B.G. has written several books in his multifaceted career, spanning over six decades. His latest work First Draft: Witness to the Making of Modern India is somewhat unique and is a summing up of his variegated experiences. It is a valuable addition to the body of work on India's modern ‘general history’ on which, according to the author, little work has been done (p. xii).

• Priyanka Singh
• September 2011 |
• Strategic Analysis
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Talmiz Ahmad is an Indian Foreign Service officer who has seen extensive service in West Asia. It is apparent his long stint there gave him an opportunity to observe, learn and reflect. The book is an outcome. His thesis is that there has been considerable influence of historical and cultural factors in their interplay on the contemporary situation in West Asia, explained best by his choice of title for his book.

• Ali Ahmed
• September 2011 |
• Strategic Analysis
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The subject assumes significance in view of the politics evolving around the idea of negotiating peace, especially with the Taliban, as the West plans to withdraw bulk of their troops by 2014. Though often regarded as flawed, ill-timed, regressive, wobbly, dangerous and unworkable, the idea has nevertheless come to dominate the discourse on the Afghan war. However, principal Afghan opposition forces and networks operating from Pakistan continue to publicly rebuff and mock at the government's initiative.

• Vishal Chandra
• September 2011 |
• Strategic Analysis
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Three broad policy determinants can be discerned in Indian reactions to the Iranian nuclear issue. These include: ‘strategic autonomy’ as it relates to Indian foreign policy decision making

• S. Samuel C. Rajiv
• September 2011 |
• Strategic Analysis
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The central focus of this article is to understand the evolution of the Chinese People's Liberation Army's engagement with UN peacekeeping operations in the light of China's military diplomacy. The article underlines that the PLA works as a foreign policy instrument in UN peacekeeping operations and furthers China's foreign policy agenda in many ways.

• Prashant Kumar Singh
• September 2011 |
• Strategic Analysis
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