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Improving Policy Responses to Piracy in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden Region: What Role for India?

The participation of the Indian navy in anti-piracy operations off the Somali coast is perceived by many as a manifestation of India's apparent willingness to take on a larger role on the global stage. This article explores the possibility for India to play a more important role in solving the Somali piracy crisis.

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.

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.

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’.

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.

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.

Biological Weapons Export Controls in India

President Obama, during his India’s visit, announced liberalization of American export controls for India. Later, in a joint statement signed with the Indian Prime Minister Shri Manmohan Singh, he endorsed… Continue reading Biological Weapons Export Controls in India

Rajiv Nayan |
July-December 2010 |
CBW Magazine

India–Nepal Peace and Friendship Treaty (1950): Does it Require Revision?

The Treaty of Peace and Friendship signed between India and Nepal in 1950 has been a subject of debate within Nepal. The issue has been regularly featured in left parties' election manifestos in Nepal and become an agenda item in bilateral talks. India has agreed to review, adjust and update the treaty while giving due recognition to the special features of the bilateral relationship. Nepal's reservations to the treaty are based on the argument that the treaty compromises Nepal's ability to pursue an independent defence and foreign policy.

Putin’s Visit to India: Resetting the Indo-Russian Partnership

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's visit to India on March 11–12, 2010 signifies the beginning of a new phase in Indo-Russian friendship. In fact, this visit needs to be viewed in the context of the changing geopolitical and geo-economic realities in the international system.