Two projects that are currently under progress are ‘Developments in Pakistan’ and ‘Pakistan Occupied Kashmir’. In addition, individual scholars are engaged in researching various security related aspects pertaining to South Asian countries. The Centre has established bilateral institutional relations with leading think tanks in the region and proposes to undertake joint studies.
This book is about the future of Afghanistan which seems to be rapidly slipping into chaos. It contains perspectives on counter-insurgency and nation-building in Afghanistan. More significantly, the experts sought to answer the crucial question: what can be done to stabilise Afghanistan? This volume is a collection of their insightful papers.
IDSA Asian Strategic Review 2008, the second volume in the series of Annual Surveys revived by the Institute in the previous year, is divided into six sections.
The Indian Armed Forces are intimately linked to Indian society. Their role in national integration is a fascinating inquiry. The book traces the historic evolution of the Indian Armed Forces and then relates it to the extant composition and regimental system of the Indian Army.
The volume, divided into four sections, deals with strategic developments pertaining to Asia. Recognising the diverse 'push' and 'pull' factors impinging on a country's strategic posture, the volume starts off by dealing with issues which the Advisory Committee of Experts guiding this publication felt were of immediate relevance.
Publisher: Manas Publications
ISBN 81-7049-340-4
Rs. 595
Publisher: Manas Publications
ISBN 81-7049-315-3
Rs. 495 [Download E-Copy] [Buy Now]
Publishers: Promilla & Co. and Bibliphile South Asia
ISBN: 81-85002-76-2
Rs. 295
US $ 14.95
Publishers: IDSA and Promilla & Co.
ISBN: 81-86019-50-02
Rs 1175
US $ 45
Publishers: IDSA and Promilla & Co.
ISBN: 81-86019-51-0
Rs 795
US $ 30
Publisher: Roli
ISBN: 81-7436-310-6
Rs 450
Publishers: IDSA and Shipra
ISBN: 81-7541-165-1
Rs 395
US $ 30
Publisher: IDSA and Knowledge World
ISBN: 81-86019-28-6
Rs. 650
Publisher: IDSA and Knowledge World
ISBN: 81-86019-20-0
Publisher: IDSA and Lancer Publications
ISBN: 1-89 7829-44-2
Rs. 495
US $ 28; £ 19.95
Publisher: Genesis Publications
ISBN: 81-7020-680-4
Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK), which is the territory which Pakistan had acquired through aggression way back in 1947, remains as a no-man's-land which the world community seems to have forgotten. Comprising of nearly one-third of the original sovereign state of Jammu and Kashmir, it represents one of the biggest human tragedies of the contemporary political map of the world.
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Pakistan is undergoing political turmoil once again. Once again an elected prime minister was first removed in July 2017, and then barred from fighting elections for life on April 13, 2018.
Of late the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) is receiving sincere attention from its member countries as an organisation that has the potential to transform the region’s political and economic future. This is because there are several bilateral and sub-regional ongoing projects that are seeking to connect the region and bind them together into one economic whole. Apart from this, after the cancellation of the SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) summit in 2017, many would see the BIMSTEC as an alternative to SAARC.
Sri Lankans love to project their country as the land of serendipity. So, when the island country saw the back of a four-decade-old violent Tamil insurgency in 2009, it was expected that it would surge ahead in a serendipitous way. The turn of events ever since has, however, proved that the country has not been that fortunate. In fact, immediately after the conclusion of the war, Sri Lanka (re)lapsed into multiple crises, occasioned by a regime which functioned in an authoritarian manner.
The article argues that the contours of a security architecture are becoming slowly visible in South Asia. This process is nurtured by two developments. First, since the 2000s, India has increased its security cooperation with nearly all its neighbours in South Asia. Second, since 2013 governments in New Delhi have promoted the concept of India as a security provider in the region and the Indian Ocean.
In the aftermath of the 2015 earthquakes in Nepal, China and India immediately sent relief teams. The relief efforts in Nepal showcase a competitive aspect of the two major regional powers, as China seeks to gradually increase its influence in South Asia. This article analyses how these two governments utilised relief efforts to increase influence in Nepal, within the wider context of the contentious Sino–Indian relationship. The Chinese and Indian relief responses after the Nepal earthquakes are extrapolated to assess their strategic utility.
Theorising about international relations in South Asia is a daunting task for any scholar of International Relations. The challenge lies in explaining the causal forces behind state behaviour, in order to illuminate a pattern for arriving at an understanding of these relations in a parsimonious manner.
For the last 15 years, the war in Afghanistan has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and the United States has sent thousands of troops and spent billions of dollars supporting strategies that have been unable to curtail the violence in the country. In addition to deploying over 130,000 troops from 51 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries and its partner nations, the United States alone spent over $686 billion in the ‘Afghan war’.
Over the last decade we have seen a race to build ports in the Indian Ocean as the two Asian powerhouses, China and India, compete to assert their regional influence. The newest addition to this power struggle is the Chabahar Port, located in Chabahar, a coastal town in the Sistan–Baluchistan region in south-eastern Iran, next to the Gulf of Oman, and at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz (Figure 1). Its strategic importance and economic value have drawn attention from many countries; however, India was the quickest to secure a deal to develop the port.
This article has two parts. The first part aims at analysing why nations are increasingly going beyond their multilateral and regional moorings to secure and advance their national interests. In doing so, why and how do they indulge in sub-regional engagements? It has been empirically seen across the board in almost every part of the world that sub-regional growth initiatives play a significant role in regional integration.
This article analyses India’s economic, military and political rise in the international state system. It concludes that India is on the rise in all three power dimensions, underpinned by a larger share of global GDP. However, it also identifies the constraints on the way. On matters concerning its economy, India lags behind in industrial prowess, innovation, socio-economic development and financial strength. While modernising its defence capabilities, it faces obstacles due to budget issues, institutional constraints and a weak defence industry.
India’s current Prime Minister Narendra Modi is often touted as India’s Deng Xiaoping, expected to lead the country on a path of economic reform and accelerated growth.1 While Modi rose to power on an economic mandate, it is his foreign policy that has received the most attention in the media. Modi has been criticised by the media, the public and the opposition parties for taking several overseas trips in his short tenure in office.
India is often perceived as a regional power, but a closer look reveals that it is in a disadvantageous position vis-à-vis China in South Asia. The first reason is that Indian governments never had the political, economic, and military capacities to pursue their regional power ambitions with their neighbours in the long run. South Asian countries could always play the China card in order to evade India’s influence. Second, India’s new South Asia policy with the focus on trade and connectivity has improved regional cooperation since 1991.
This article explores the backdrop of the engagement between the International Community (IC) and the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) over the conduct of the military during the last stages of its engagement with the secessionist Tamil militants which (especially from January to May 2009) led to a humanitarian crisis. The efforts of the IC to persuade the GoSL to halt the military operations and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to concede defeat, to ensure human security, were a failure.
This article argues that while the concept of peace building proved beneficial to Western society, it drew flak in pre-2014 Afghanistan for its inbuilt faults, the overarching US–Taliban conflict and the state failure towards meeting the prerequisites of the coalition strategy. It also argues that peace building in the immediate future of post-2014 Afghanistan is improbable due to the existing and likely conflicts between and among the Afghan government, the Taliban and the newly emerging Daesh or IS group for power, group and ideological domination.
Since the fall of the Mahinda Rajapaksa government, there has been an apparent foreign policy shift in Sri Lanka. There is a growing view that the new National Unity Government (NUG), which came to power in January 2015 with Maithripala Sirisena as President, has shown its proclivities towards India and the US and moved away from China, especially under Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.
India’s engagement with its neighbours received a policy reinvigoration after the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government assumed power and announced its ‘neighbourhood first’ policy. The first sign of this policy was visible when Prime Minister Narendra Modi invited all the heads of state of the neighbouring countries for his oath-taking ceremony, on May 26, 2014. India’s interest and engagement with the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) has also intensified in the past few years – from being a reluctant player to driving the regional economic agenda.
Intelligence sharing by the Pakistani National Security Advisor (NSA) with his Indian counterpart in early March 2016 came up as an interesting outcome of the ongoing engagement between them since December 2015. Such exchange of critical information has raised the levels of expectation among the peaceniks in the subcontinent about the prospects of peace talks between the two countries, after a whole series of false starts since 2008.
In 2015, when India and Pakistan are into their 69th year of independence, this is an occasion to look back on the lost plot of their strategic engagements. The partition of an undivided India, built upon a malicious traction of ‘two-nation theory’ was further firmed-up with Pakistan’s dealings with its neighbourhood through a consistent conflict-ridden worldview. More so, this idea turned into action—and further obsession, when matters would relate to India.
There are multiple levels of relationship between India and Nepal. This article deals exclusively with their bilateral transit relations, focusing on their negotiations in the context of Nepal as a landlocked developing country (LLDC). While LLDCs consider their free access to the nearest seaport through a transit country as a natural right, the transit countries often bargain with them from a position of strength.
The military and scientific leadership of Pakistan has given clear signals that tactical nuclear weapons have a vital role in Pakistan’s nuclear weapons policy. Developed to lower Pakistan’s nuclear threshold, these weapons may further deter India from launching a conventional strike to punish Pakistan for its sub-conventional war against India. This has led to a debate on the possible doctrinal responses that India could adopt to counter Pakistan’s tactical nuclear weapons.
The domestic politics of the Maldives might significantly change if the position of the MDP government weakens. It might change the flavour of India–Maldives bilateral relationship and will also have an impact on the security environment in the Indian Ocean region.
The Russia–Myanmar relationship is gathering strength. Bangladesh wants to use the increasing bonhomie between Russia and Myanmar to start a tri-lateral process to reach an amicable solution to the Rohingya refugee crisis.
The attack on Mohamed Nasheed has exposed Maldives’ vulnerability to acts of terrorism. The biggest test for President Solih is to overcome the challenges to tackling national security threats and address the concerns of the liberal Maldivians.
The public faith in the constitution and political system in Nepal has eroded drastically in last one year. However, for now, all eyes are set on whether the Supreme Court would validate the President’s May 22 action.
Chinese Defence Minister Wei Fenghe’s visit to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka highlights Beijing’s deepening security engagement with South Asian countries.
Imran Khan’s overemphasis on further mainstreaming the religious education might result in increased conflict between his government and the opposition and also the civil society in Pakistan.
Nepal’s Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli faces tough challenges as he tries to cobble a majority in the House of Representatives.
The ban imposed on the Tehrik Labaik Pakistan (TLP) by the Pakistan government will not defang the religious radicalism that forms its core strength.
India’s stand at the United Nations Human Rights Council on the resolution relating to human rights situation in Sri Lanka should be based on its long-term interests in the teardrop island.
Even as the India-Pakistan ceasefire decision on the LoC is in effect, India has affirmed that there would not be any let-up in its counter-terrorism efforts.
The rapidity and selflessness with which India rolled out millions of doses of vaccines as aid despite the massive requirements of its own vaccination drive, is being particularly appreciated by world leaders and observers.
While Imran Khan’s efforts to build legitimacy around his ‘personality’ as a religious person and a crusader against corruption do not seem to have convinced many people, his government’s inability to bring the much-promised tabdeeli (‘change’) to Pakistan is beginning to hurt him politically.
India and Bangladesh fought together “in the defence of human liberty”, in the words of Sheikh Mujib ur Rahman, to liberate Bangladesh, fifty momentous years ago.
The street power of the ulema groups in Bangladesh is pushing the government to further Islamise the social sphere, which will pave the way for the ultimate political success of the Islamists.
The COVID-19 pandemic, which has revealed the inherent weaknesses in the existing global supply chain and risks of over-reliance on China’s manufacturing industry, presents new opportunities for India to rethink its industrial strategy, especially policies concerning the growth of its manufacturing sector.
There is a need to widely disseminate China’s insidious role as an illegal occupier of Kashmir’s territory, including its territorial grab in the trans-Karakoram tract, in order to raise public awareness of the issue – both in India and at the international level.
Given the assertive foreign policy followed by China and the desperation of Pakistan after the abolition of Article 370, India has to follow a proactive foreign policy. It is only India’s proactiveness that can keep both China and Pakistan in check in Bangladesh.
The growing assertion of presidential executive powers in the absence of parliament poses a critical challenge to functioning democracy in Sri Lanka.
While the ruling elite including army in Pakistan considers CPEC a boon, many analysts view it as a Chinese game-plan to turn Pakistan into a permanent colony, a rentier-cum-client state.
Pakistan has not allowed a genuine democratic system of governance to emerge in PoK, as it interferes with its pursuit of absolute control over the occupied territories.
