Opinion

China’s Emergence as a New Arbitrator

India-China relations are complex and will be getting even more complex as time passes by. For a successful engagement, a nuanced and cool-headed handling of this relationship is needed. This is primarily because the nature of relationship between India and China will determine the future of Asian security and the architecture of the Indo-Pacific region.

Pakistan’s candidature for the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) membership and its claim as “a prospective member of the cartel on its own merit…with the possibility of strengthening the non-proliferation regime” warrants a serious scrutiny.

North Koreans say that as long as there are US troops in South Korea, Japan and Guam, Washington will not initiate hostilities against Pyongyang.

Pakistan has been very proud of its nuclear weapons programme and its dependence on the weapons has enhanced tremendously with the continuing instability within the country and rising Islamic extremism in the region. Islamabad has long tried to balance its domestic vulnerabilities with the nuclear weapons which it treats as the ultimate guarantor of its survivability and security.

Pakistan’s Islamic Identity

Pakistan as Proliferator of Terrorism

Pakistan, on realising that she would not be able to defeat India in a conventional war, decided to use terrorism as an instrument of state policy to avenge her defeat by India.  The concept of non-state actors was started by the US, when she poured billions of dollars of arms and resources to Afghan Mujahedeen to fight the Russians in Afghanistan.  

India’s response to Pakistan henceforth will have to form a ceaseless continuum from the local response to the global. At the local level, India’s response would have to be methodically splintered between external threats from across the border and the consequent internal security situation generated in the state of Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) due to Pakistan’s cross-border shenanigans. At the global level India should relentlessly strive to strengthen and institutionalize its anti-terror narrative.

India was a saviour for every Maldivian on 3 November 1988. The timely intervention by India helped the Maldivian President and the country as a whole to survive a coup by around 80 Sri Lankan terrorists. The Indian Army’s 6 Parachute Regiment landed within hours of an SOS call, even without having the maps of Malé. The coup was quelled within two days and normalcy was restored. India’s actions received international accolades.

The US-led Iraqi invasion of 2003 under the pretext of thwarting an ongoing Iraqi quest for weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) turned into a major debacle when the operations concluded with no evidence to prove their war objectives. Although the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom were embarrassed with the mishap, their respective intelligence agencies had to shoulder the criticisms for providing flimsy intelligence on which the decision to intervene was made.