Editorial: World Grows When India Grows, World Transforms When India Reforms
For third consecutive year in a row, and his fourth since he was elected in 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his address on 25th September 2021 to the 76th session of United Nation General Assembly, spoke on a host of issues including extremism, open sea, and effectiveness of the United Nations (UN), outlining his outlook on India’s place in the world. He reaffirmed India's commitment to democracy, highlighted its great strides in developing and manufacturing COVID-19 vaccines, and warned against “countries with regressive thinking.” Read More
Misplaced Priorities- America’s options in a new order
It took two great wars to enable the United States (US) to cast away its self-declared isolation (Norwich University 2017; Boyle 1972) and embrace politicking on a global level, ushering in a competitive joust for space in a highly contested world. Events such as the sinking of the Lusitania was the immediate provocation (Trommler 2009) for the US entering the First Great War. In a similarly eerie fashion, the attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor thrusted the Roosevelt administration into joining the Allied powers in the Second Great War (Vidyalankar 1980). As we delve further, successive American administration were compelled to participate in important global events if not by choice then due to compulsion. Be it the Korean and the Vietnam War, countless military interventions in Latin America and Africa or even its experiments in the Middle East (Park 1983), the decisions makers in Washington after tasting a shot of power were reluctant to allow other regional powers, be it the European Union (EU) or any other to take charge of affairs. Colloquial monikers which attributed the US to the Global Policeman did not go down in vain (Fordham 2008). Read More
India United States Defense Cooperation in the light of the larger Partnership
India and United States are co-partners in a fulsome relationship which means multiple scales for the larger international system and India’s rise in the similar ecosystem. The global polity was bi-polar in nature before the End of history phase but that soon diluted away into the grandiloquent Unipolarity with the withering away of the Soviet Union and the unification of Germany. The quintessential lore of the India-US Bilateral partnership has been explained away as, “Cooperative Engagement” since the times of President Bush Junior. In more ways than one, in the contemporary context of Global geo-economics, the age of Globalization, convergence and interdependence entails the rising significance of the geo-economics in the bilateral partnership where-in, it has been objectified by the twin Democracies to raise the quantum of bilateral trade to 500 billion dollars which is much higher figure above what gets transacted in the current context. There have been bottlenecks in the relationship of the order of nuclear proliferation and the debate surrounding Indian partnership in the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the hyphenation of India and Pakistan and the Kashmir tangle, to name a few divergences in the larger rubric of the relationship. Read More
U.S. Foreign Relationships
Forgetting the words of its 1st President, General George Washington; who in 1789 had given advice to his country regarding relations with other nations: "avoid entangling alliances"; the United States has been embroiled in world politics throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, embracing a foreign policy that takes up a great deal of its government's time, energy, and money. Read More
India - U.S. Bilateral Relations in Non-Defence, Non-Security and Non Nuclear Space – Perspectives, Challenges and Prospect
Today, the U.S. – India relationship encompasses the most intense bilateral engagement that New Delhi enjoys with any nation. Given the steady expansion of bilateral partnership over last two decades, the range of joint activities today is breathtaking: from frequent bilateral summits between heads of government to regular senior-level dialogues, the US and India today engage in numerous strategic consultations, wide-ranging defence, counterterrorism, homeland security, cybersecurity and intelligence cooperation, as well as myriad activities in energy, education, science and technology, public health and culture (Tellis, 2018). Read More
The Great Game of Snooping: Where is India’s Stance?
National security to sustain, there is nothing immoral in surveillance or snooping, the agencies must be empowered with all espionage capacities to do snooping in the larger national interest. The cyber-electronic (CybEL) snooping and counter-snooping capacity of all intelligence services need further strengthening so that the hybrid intent of the adversaries ‘within’ as well as ‘operating from outside’ can remain under smart surveillance- unremitting. Forthrightly, Intelligence Agencies in the country must be encouraged to snoop into all potent forces irrespective of their rank and affiliations in the larger interest of the nation- precisely the way India’s great sage Chanakya has prescribed. Read More
Water and India’s National Security Strategy: Why Should India be Conscious?
Water is an essential aspect of human livelihood. It is also an important aspect of a country’s socio-economic developmental strategy for short-term and long term process. This developmental strategy includes multidimensional aspects from traditional to non-traditional security challenges that have a direct or indirect impact on national security strategy. India’s national security strategy towards water security is based on these aspects of traditional and non-traditional security challenges. This essay addresses the threat perception to India’s national security strategy with an emphasis on traditional and non-traditional security perspective. Emerging issues related to transboundary river water sharing with its neighbourhood and its impact on geopolitics and strategy are the innermost challenges for India’s security strategy. The essay is an attempt to argue the logic of issues that why India should be conscious about. Read More
China and UAVs
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is an emerging technology in modern warfare. Major countries like the US, China, Russia, France, India have integrated this technology into modern warfare doctrines. The armed forces are integrating UAVs into their strategy for tactical operations like surveillance, reconnaissance, medium strike, logistic management, S&R (Search and Rescue) etc. It is a dual-use technology. Armed forces can use it for actual ground warfare or it can also be a part of the role of the services. China is using UAVs (drones tech) in the People's Liberation Army (PLA) for multiple uses and has significantly enhanced operational capabilities. Read More
Good Governance in Indian Statecraft, Diplomacy and Polity through Prism of Ancient Indian Literature
Good governance refers to task of running the government in an effective manner. Good governance has eight characteristics: Participation, Strategic vision, Rule of Law, Transperancy, Responsiveness, Consensus Orientation, Equity Building, Effectiveness and Efficiency, Accountability. The concept in Indian Statecraft, Diplomacy and polity of rulers being bound by dharma was that of ensuring good governance to people. Rajdharma was code of conduct that was superior to will of ruler and governed all his activities. Good governance as mentioned in ancient Indian scriptures in Sanskrit and Pāli like Bhagvad Geeta, Vedas, Mahabharata, Shantiparva, Nitisar, Ramayana, Arthashastra, Dīgha Nikāya, Jātaka are discussed. Read More
Book Review: India and Asian Geopolitics: The Past, Present
Independent India’s foreign policy, according to Shivshankar Menon, has gone through three geopolitical phases and their transitions. From 1947 to the 1960s, a bipolar Cold War world; from the early 1960s to the mid-1980s, rapid changes in its neighbourhood such as China falling out with the Soviets and moving to the U.S. side; and the post-Cold War world when the U.S. emerged as the sole superpower in a unipolar world order. Menon, who was the Prime Minister’s National Security Adviser and Foreign Secretary, is exploring these phases in their historical context to tell the story of how India weathered the geopolitical storms of the past in his book, India and Asian Geopolitics: The Past, Present. Shivshankar Menon outlines the story of India and its quest since independence in a changing Asia and traces changes in India’s foreign policy, maps its present-day challenges and suggests prescriptions for future. The book attempts to capture modern India’s navigation of regional geopolitics to pursue its foreign policy goals. Read More
