An additional dish for the India-Pakistan platter A strategic dialogue mechanism with Pakistan at the level of NSAs, assisted by representatives of the national security establishment including the military on both sides, needs to be initiated to address core questions like the strategic balance and reconciling strategic doctrines. Ali Ahmed | July 05, 2010 | IDSA Comments
Defence Acquisition Process : Oversight Concerns Aspects of cost-efficient QR formulation, RFI and RFP, technical and commercial evaluation including time frames for evaluation, imparting project management orientation to the entire acquisition process including post contract deficiencies were covered in a seminar organised by IDSA on October 27, 2009 seminar. Vinod Kumar Misra | July 2010 | Journal of Defence Studies
The Unconventional Prime Minister: An Assessment of Kevin Rudd While there is no denying the fact that Rudd’s ideas on foreign policy were well-intentioned, one cannot possibly overlook the fact that it all fell apart in the course of practice. Rahul Mishra | July 02, 2010 | IDSA Comments
DPJ likely to struggle to retain control over the Upper House That the Futenma issue is still a sore subject for the ruling DPJ-led government is reflected in the fact that it has decided not to field a candidate in Okinawa in the upcoming election. Pranamita Baruah | July 02, 2010 | IDSA Comments
Name of the Game Is Interdependence Lawrence Summers, United States President Barack Obama's chief economic advisor and formerly secretary of treasury in the second term of the Clinton administration, once said that there was a ‘balance of financial terror’ between the US and its financial creditors, primarily China and Japan. Today, China, holding some $800 billion in US treasury bonds and some $2 trillion worth of currency reserves wields financial terror against the US. Bharat Wariavwalla | July 2010 | Strategic Analysis
India’s Strategic Autonomy and Rapprochement with the US The debate around strategic autonomy offers a conceptual framework to understand how India, as an emerging power, tries to negotiate autonomy in its security and military relationship with the United States. In the context of Indo-US rapprochement, the dynamics of power relations are not commensurate with India's will to keep an acceptable degree of autonomy. Guillem Monsonis | July 2010 | Strategic Analysis
Strategy and Tactics in Countering Left Wing Extremists in India Left Wing Extremism (LWE) presents a serious internal security challenge to India that needs careful and coordinated policy response from both the security front and the development front. For the CPI (Maoists) (Communist Party of India), the main outfit propagating LWE, the plan and execution of this style of people's war against the state is like the Churchillian ‘a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma’. At one level, the LWE can be described as a ‘Democratic revolution through tactical offensive with tactical speed in the protracted people's war of strategic defensive’. Giridhari Nayak | July 2010 | Strategic Analysis
An Overview of South Korean politics While the effect of regionalism has begun to wane, the propensity of youth to vote against specific issues that they deem not beneficial is likely to be the dominant cleavage in South Korean politics. Mohsin Dingankar | July 01, 2010 | IDSA Comments
Signals and Orchestration: India’s Use of Compellence in the 2001–02 Crisis How effective was the Indian government in sending clear, coercive signals and orchestrating them into coherent messages during 'Operation Parakram' in 2001-02? This study finds that compellence was hampered by three factors: (1) the government kept changing its demands; (2) the lack of adequate civil-military coordination; and (3) the government engaged in a dual-track policy of direct coercion of Pakistan, while simultaneously engaging the United States to put pressure on Pakistan. Ultimately, these two policy strands worked at cross-purposes to each other. Patrick C. Bratton | July 2010 | Strategic Analysis
A Growing Technological Gap with China? The drivers for sustaining the decades-long growth of the Chinese economy are the subject of enduring conjecture, controversy and even wonder. From a US$1 trillion economy in the 1980s, China's GDP has crossed the US$4 trillion mark and is vying with Japan for the status of the number two economy in the world. China has now set itself the task of becoming a major research and development (R&D) power in the medium-term, signalling its ‘arrival’ as a major power. Smita Purushottam | July 2010 | Strategic Analysis
