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.
North Koreans say that as long as there are US troops in South Korea, Japan and Guam, Washington will not initiate hostilities against Pyongyang.
As the world confronts the threat of North Korean nuclear weapons, a peak into the history of its nuclear weapons and missile programme displays evidence of funds and technology having flown out of an American ally in the region. Japan, a US ally since the end of World War II, fell victim to Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s (DPRK) intelligence and subversive attacks that led to the flow of financial and technical assistance to the latter’s nuclear and missiles programme.
The US President Donald Trump’s announcement to withdraw from the Paris Agreement has certainly given a setback to global action on climate change. After all, it is after years of arduous negotiations that the international policy community had reached this agreement.
The Korean Peninsula was always strategically important for China as a geopolitical buffer. At certain phases during its imperial era, China had exercised varying levels of control over the territory – from suzerainty to occupation, under dynasties like the Han, Tang, Yuan, Ming and Qing. The territory helped China keep Japan’s expansionist ambitions away from the Chinese mainland. At the same time, it acted as a bridgehead to project China’s cultural influence on the island nation and integrate it with the Sinocentric East Asia.
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.
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.
Pakistan’s Islamic Identity
Since 12 May 2017, WannaCry has claimed over 300,000 victims across 150 countries. Dubbed as one of the biggest ransomware attacks, WannaCry has unveiled a new face of crime in the digital age. But, more than a criminal activity, the malware has been a nuisance as it has disrupted numerous businesses and organizations worldwide. The malware exploits vulnerability in the Server Message Block (SMB) service of Windows operating system, published by “The Shadow Brokers” in April.
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.
