North Korea has been a conundrum for both China and the U.S. With sophisticated missiles and nuclear weapons, Pyongyang is believed to be “on the verge of a strategic breakout – quantitatively (by ramping up its warhead numbers) and qualitatively (through mastery of warhead miniaturization and long-range ballistic missiles) – that directly threatens the U.S.
Many, who had sounded the death knell to Russia after the disintegration of the erstwhile Soviet Union in 1991, have been proved wrong. Some even thought it was the beginning of Russia’s ‘Monroe Doctrine’? However, with 12.5 percent of the landmass of the earth’s land surface as its sovereign territory, encompassing two continents bounded by two oceans and sharing its borders with over a dozen countries; it has little choice but to get involved in the rough and tumble of the world’s geopolitics.
Narendra Modi's 'Act East' through the Northeast is a bold move to situate the country's long-troubled far frontier region at the heart of the country's geo-economic outreach into South-east and East Asia, whose Tiger economies provide one of the best long-term option for India’s economic future.
Nuclear weapons have been shaping the conduct of power politics in South and Southern Asia particularly since Indian and Pakistan tested nuclear weapons in 1998. Pakistan-India-China is a unique triangle in the world where all these three nuclear weapon states share the geographical boundaries with each other. These states do have reasonable missile capabilities too. There are some variations amongst these states in regards to their nuclear weapons holdings however; every state is anticipated to have a minimum of around 100 weapons each.
The 1950–53 Korean War ended in a stalemate because the United States followed the same strategy of what may be termed “truncated objectives” that was in play during the 1990–91 campaign by mainly the US forces against the Iraqi armed forces led by Saddam Hussein. That campaign deliberately stopped short of occupying the country and removing the Baghdad-based dictator from power, exactly as the Korean War ended with Kim Il Sung still in power in Pyongyang.
China has gone around Asia, particularly, Southeast Asia telling countries to behave because they are smaller than China. Beijing however, is strangely more diffident when it comes to Pyongyang’s consistently cocking a snook at it and also complicating China’s regional security environment at the same time.
When Barack Obama won the American Presidential elections in 2008, there was not much enthusiasm among most of the Indian strategic community. This was partly because of his views on outsourcing, but mostly because of a popular assumption in the community that Republican Presidents are better for India than Democrats. Those who propagate this assumption of course conveniently forget President John F Kennedy’s help during the Sino-Indian War and President Richard Nixon’s infamous ‘tilt’ towards Pakistan and his rapprochement towards China.
The year 2016 closes without India having gained entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). The expectations for this had reached a crescendo around the middle of the year when the Indian application was taken up at the plenary meeting in June in South Korea. However, China did not allow this to happen, burdening the Indian case for membership with several technical, procedural and political issues. Some other nations had a few issues too.
On 18 September 2016, four terrorists stormed the Indian Army brigade headquarters in Uri killing 19 soldiers before being gunned down. Within a span of three months, terrorists have carried out a similar fedayeen style attack on XVI Corps headquarters in Nagrota, Jammu.
