India and China are working towards stacking up more confidence building measures (CBMs) during a period of frequent consultations that could lead to the first-ever back-to-back visits by the two Prime Ministers, in coming months. Both sides, according to informed sources, are currently finalising details of a visit by the new Chinese Premier, Li Keqiang, […]
Contemporary developments in India’s foreign policy are often based on perceptions and not facts, views divorced from reality and political advocacy based on make-believe. India’s approach to the Sri Lankan issue and the vote in the Human Rights Council (HRC) is a case in point. Variously described as a “new low” in our foreign policy […]
Recent newspaper reports of China having entered into a secret agreement with Pakistan for constructing a third 1000 megawatt nuclear reactor at Chashma in Punjab province has stirred up a sense of urgency in Washington and New Delhi’s diplomatic circle to find suitable ways and means of preventing any breach of international protocol concerning nuclear […]
For the past several weeks, thousands have rallied around a single issue: bringing to justice the collaborators who, in early 1971, helped the Pakistani military put down the Bengali nationalist movement. The timing might seem strange, since the demands for justice are coming well over four decades after the tragic events. But they are part […]
When President Pranab Mukherjee lands in Mauritius on Monday, he will be buttressing a relationship with an Indian Ocean nation that is so central to India’s security interests that it went to the extent of planning military intervention to ensure an Indian-origin Prime Minister remained in power there. The Top Secret ‘Operation Lal Dora’ — […]
While India focuses on China’s strategic modernisation programmes, Pakistan competes with India. This triangular nuclear interaction is too complex for traditional arms control and too dynamic for laissez-faire policies. Beijing and New Delhi have adopted a relatively relaxed approach to implementing the requirements for nuclear deterrence. In both countries, national security is equated primarily with […]
Do British people feel proud of the Empire? Are they indifferent to it? Or have they been persuaded by the teaching of history, so influenced by the Left, that the British Empire was purely oppressive, racist and bad? These questions arise from David Cameron’s visit this week to India. He arrived, begging bowl in hand, […]
On India’s Navy Day in December, Indian Chief of Naval Staff D.K. Joshi declared that the Indian navy was prepared to operate in the South China Sea if called upon to do so. The government subsequently downplayed Joshi’s remarks, but the fact remains that the South China Sea has emerged as a vital sea corridor for India, […]
India is bolstering its defences vis-a-vis China in a big way and is set to spend at least $15 billion for China-specific military activities by 2017. Though the scale of the Indian military preparation is grossly small compared to what China has already done with regard to India, it gives a sense of how much […]
For the past few years, as China’s emergence has cast an increasing shadow over the region, Canberra’s strategic thinkers have tried to interest New Delhi in the concept of the “Indo-Pacific” as the two former colonies of Britain, now two leading democracies, find common ground. Those strategists in Australia, the shores of which are washed […]
looking beyond borders 