Strategic Analysis

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.

Fairy Tale of American Decline and China’s Rise

Has the power and influence of the United States declined in recent years? Does the current global recession, the outcome of the US invasion of Iraq and the resilience of the Taliban in Afghanistan provide adequate rationale to profess waning of US influence? Has China's power and influence grown to an extent that can effortlessly put it on the top of the global hierarchy of power? Is the US–China interdependence equitable enough to work as a deterrent against unbolted conflict?

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.

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.

Faithful Education: Madrassahs in South Asia by Ali Riaz

Faithful Education: Madrassahs in South Asia by Ali Riaz
Rutgers University Press, NJ, 2008, pp. 320, $59.95, ISBN 975-0813543459

India’s Diplomatic Infrastructure and Software: Challenges for the 21st Century

Changing World Order: India, EU and US—A Trialogue by B. Krishnamurthy and Geetha Ganapathy-Doré

Changing World Order: India, EU and US—A Trialogue by B. Krishnamurthy and Geetha Ganapathy-Doré
Shipra Publications, New Delhi, 2009, pp. 342, Rs. 950, ISBN 9788175415355

Obama’s Policy towards East Asia

President Barack Obama's foreign policy orientation towards East Asia seems to be characterised by continuity rather than change, and is not so very different from that of his predecessors. With Japan and South Korea, Obama is trying to revitalise bilateral alliances. With China, he continues on his predecessor's policy of greater engagement, though he has offered some concessions during his visit to Beijing in November 2009. However, North Korea remains a real and huge challenge for Obama to test his engagement in East Asia.

Pranamita Baruah , Rajaram Panda , Shamshad A. Khan |
May 2010 |
Strategic Analysis

Journeys to Empire: Enlightenment, Imperialism, and the British Encounter with Tibet, 1774–1904 by Gordon T. Stewart

Journeys to Empire: Enlightenment, Imperialism, and the British Encounter with Tibet, 1774–1904 by Gordon T. Stewart
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2009, pp. 280, $33, ISBN 978-0521735681

Constitutional Impasse in Gilgit-Baltistan (Jammu and Kashmir): The Fallout

The legal status of Gilgit-Baltistan, which is part of Jammu and Kashmir that is under Pakistani occupation, has remained undefined in successive Pakistani constitutions. Pakistan governs the region with ad hoc presidential ordinances, resulting in transitory political arrangements. It was Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto who first introduced the so-called Northern Areas Governance Order of 1994, after shelving the draconian and inhumane Frontier Crimes Regulation, with which Pakistan ruled the region like a colony.