Even after four years wait for the newly elected Constituent Assembly to draft a constitution, Nepal’s squabbling political parties have not been able to agree on the shape of a Constitution or even what the future of this small Himalayan nation would be. The situation in Nepal becomes more obscure with the elections which were scheduled on November 22 being postponed due to refusal of political parties to participate unless current Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai… Read More »Deepening crisis: Political impasse in Nepal

Amid Chinese Prime Minister’s decision to land on Indian soil on his first foreign trip on 20th May, 2013 and the warmth displayed by the new Chinese President Xi Jin Ping during his meeting with the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during the Durban BRICS Summit, the 15th April incident of incursion by a platoon strength of Chinese PLA in the Depsang valley of the eastern Ladakh has poured cold water over the new euphoria being… Read More »Testing patience: Nefarious games at the LAC and Li visit

The tumultuous welcome and Head of State like reception extended to the opposition democratic leader Aung San Suu Kyi in India and a week later the visit of the US President Barack Obama to Naypyidaw in mid November, has put Myanmar in centre stage of world politics. Till last year considered a pariah State by the US and West, Myanmar is now being hugged openly in the expectation that the country will witness real democratic… Read More »Back in focus: Bumpy road to full democracy

For a nation as obsessed with “strategic depth” as is Pakistan, its Achilles heel will forever remain within India’s reach. The troubled province of Sindh and the commercial hub of the nation, Karachi, lie well within India’s reach as was shown up so dramatically on December 4, 1971, when the Indian Navy attacked Karachi sinking several warships and destroying harbor installations including fuel storage tankers that burned for nearly a week enveloping the port city… Read More »Hurting efficiently: Keeping Pakistan in search of strategic depth

Wikileaks going public, since December 2010, on US State Department confidential cables is more than just stifling embarrassment for the Obama Administration because it is neither the precipitation of the historic era of cyber war-fare in full media glare, nor the challenging of a century old world order premised on state supremacy. The resultant ‘Big-Brother’ techniques employed as the instruments of state-power and authority could be the very beginning of the supremacy of the individual… Read More »Beyond exposure: Information revolution and Wikileaks

From the very first Nuclear explosion in 1974 India became a target of US administrations which imposed many export controls on India for high technology goods and the intense Cold War between the US and Russia led further isolation of India, which became severe in the post 1998 Pokhran nuclear explosion. However, the US side very soon realized the importance of India which cannot be ignored and treated like a rogue state at its own… Read More »A clove hitch: Old mindset still persists

Conventional wisdom would suggest that demolishing China’s dug-in positions along the Line of Actual Control would deter, disperse and dissuade the People’s Liberation Army from carrying out its emerging policy of territorial aggrandizement all along its periphery at carefully selected moments. It appears that at the moment China believes that it is auspicious and appropriate to exert its territorial claims in the disputed South China Sea group of islands. The effect of such a policy… Read More »Assessing strength: India should be prepared to counter China’s ambitious moves

India has extended its defence cooperation agreement with Mongolia by another ten years. The two countries had signed the defence agreement for a decade in 2001 and President Pratibha Patil’s visit to Ulanbaatar was very appropriately timed to ink the defence cooperation pact for another decade. The renewal of defence cooperation agreement with Mongolia will give a boost to India’s disguised policy of engaging with the neighbors of China in a more discreet manner. The… Read More »Foothold in steppe: India expands defence cooperation with Mongolia

The revelations about Chinese Navy challenging Indian warship INS Airavat in South China Sea, while returning from a goodwill visit to Vietnam, has once again drawn international attention on the hardening attitude of China on the South China Sea and raised concerns that this will raise tensions in the maritime region. Though Indian Navy and the Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) have simultaneously denied any confrontation with the Chinese Navy, Indian MEA spokesman has… Read More »Rising tension: India asserts its presence in South China Sea

With the reemergence of India friendly Shinzo Abe as the Prime Minister of Japan along with sinking Sino-Japanese ties over the Senkaku-Diaoyu islands and a very assertive behavior of China in the South and East China Sea, the strategic community would be keeping a close watch over the evolving India-Japan relations. Japan till the end of last century lived under the shadow of cold war equations and maintained a very neutral relation with India limited… Read More »Strong alliance: India-Japan strategic relations