In November 2014, this author was a member of the Indian delegation for a Track II Dialogue with Myanmar. The delegation had among others, a very senior former diplomat who had headed a particular prime minister’s Policy Planning Committee in 1984 and a former Army Commander. The author had earlier represented India in Track II …
Ambivalence is neither Strategic Ambiguity nor Autonomy
Nehru believed that he was neither ambivalent nor ambiguous, but on the side of ‘non-alignment’, whatever that was intended by him to be in practice. Friendship is tested in times of stress. In the1962 Sino-Indian conflict, offers of assistance came only after the PLA had demolished the illusion of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and …
China’s Belligerence over Arunachal Pradesh: Imperatives for India
The issue of China’s bizarre visa policy towards a section of India’s citizenry had come to the fore almost a decade ago when two sportsmen from Arunachal Pradesh were prevented by Indian immigration authorities from boarding a flight from New Delhi to Beijing in order to attend the Weightlifting Grand Prix that was to be …
Peace and Stability in Bangladesh are Tenuous
Even as Bangladesh completed thirty glorious years of independence on 26 March this year, the issue of the erstwhile East Pakistan’s relationship with its biggest neighbour remains complex. To that end, the single most pertinent question pertaining to Indo-Bangla relations that continues to be raised is as to how a country whose liberation was ably …
BIMSTEC: A Catalyst for India’s Blue Growth?
Advancing Blue Economy (BE) goals is a resonant theme among of the Bay of Bengal littoral states. The regional integration to enhance blue growth serves as a catalyst for regional growth and development. Despite multiple government efforts to promote blue growth, there is yet no comprehensive agenda for marine governance of the littoral states. The …
Blockades in Manipur: Symptoms of a Larger Malady
Attempting to provide an illustration about the non-homogenous character and artificiality of the North East construct, the author had written in the introduction to one of his edited collections [Frontier in Flames: North East India in Turmoil (Penguin, 2008)] that, “The (North East) region, is not a composite whole, and an Ao of Nagaland …
Impasse: Post-Disengagement at Pangong Tso
Please refer to my earlier article on the issue titled “Philosophy Alone Cannot Win Wars: Where is our National Security Strategy?” in which I had stated that the only thing that unnerved China was our occupation of Kailash Range. It is not merely the territory that China is worried about, but the tremendous observation potential, both visual …
Quad Leaders Led by Biden, Modi Overcome Hostile Lobbies to Script History
The purpose of the Quad is not to cause a war but to prevent a conflict by demonstrating even to the military-minded Xi Jinping that such a war will end badly for the PLA and its army of soldiers who have never seen battle except recently across the Himalayas. Despite a lobbying effort that …
Euro-Atlantic Quad takes shape under Macron
A ‘coalition of the willing and the able’ should be formed from within the European members of NATO that would, in effect, form a Euro-Atlantic version of the Quad. The Quadrilateral Alliance, a partnership that dare not speak its name in public, was formed in recognition of the need for select countries in the …
No, Minister
Even teams led by experienced and expert captains suffer from occasional self-goals. These are usually a consequence of the best of intentions, but end up as embarrassments. There was in the recent past a stray statement by a Union Minister that the gallant soldiers of the Indian Army had moved several more times in the …