Strategic Analysis

Pakistani Nuclear Use and Implications for India

The robustness of India's nuclear doctrine would face a severe challenge in the case of conventional military offensives into Pakistan in a future Indo-Pak conflict. Such offensives are possible in case Pakistan's nuclear threshold is taken as high and its doctrine one of 'last resort'. However, Pakistani nuclear use options may include lower order nuclear use. In light of this, it recommends that India take a serious look at the Limited War concept as well as revise its nuclear doctrine to 'flexible nuclear retaliation'.

Water a Pre-eminent Political Issue between India and Pakistan

Like in the 1950s, the word ‘riparian’ is back again in the India–Pakistan lexicon, becoming this time intensely political, emotional and divisive. This development is both instructive and unsettling. It is instructive to note how the current water realties of the two countries, which have changed significantly since the Indus Water Treaty (IWT) in 1960, will now determine the treaty's future. With growing populations, inadequate water management techniques and the impact of global warming, water resources are under pressure.

When China Rules the World: The Rise of the Middle Kingdom and the End of the Western World by Martin Jacques

The Strange Unwillingness to Notice Iraq’s Reality

Japan’s Remilitarization by Christopher W. Hughes

Name of the Game is Interdependence: A Comment

Bharat Wariavwalla's ‘Name of the Game is Interdependence’ is a thoughtful and elegantly written essay that has insights for both the theoretically inclined academic as well as the policy wonk. The essay can almost neatly be divided into three parts. The first part focuses on the constraints that are imposed on contemporary great power relations (especially between China and the United States) because of multiple levels of interdependence.

Realism Drives India’s Foreign Policy India’s Foreign Policy: The Democracy Dimension by S.D. Muni

Maintaining Strategic Autonomy in an Interdependent World

As I have understood Bharat Wariavwalla's thoughtful article, and from the current discourse on geostrategic global balance, three central issues can be raised. First, we live in an interdependent world that is the outcome of a globalised economy. Therefore, no country can expect to wield unconstrained power or strategic hegemony, which allows it to disregard either universally accepted behavioural norms or even national sovereignty. Therefore, it is irrelevant to talk of a unipolar world.

Enduring Rivalry China and India: Prospects for Peace by Jonathan Holslag

Name of the Game is Interdependence: A Response

According to Bharat Wariavwalla, the Manmohan Singh-led government ‘believes that the US rules supreme and that the closer we stay with it the better we serve our interests. America will fight terror, secure us in the South Asian region and make us a world power’. In order to battle such a predilection, his article seeks to show the constraints on US power, mostly vis-à-vis the emerging superpower, China, which he implicitly sees as an emerging threat to India.