Strategic Analysis

China’s Wars and Strategies: Looking Back at the Korean War and the Sino-Indian War

This article explores China’s war experiences in the Korean War and the Sino-Indian War and analyses China’s strategic decisions at the time of its national establishment. This article suggests that China pursued the strategic goal of protecting its frontiers and ensuring its territorial integrity in both wars, while executing dissimilar strategies. The article associates the modernisation of People’s Liberation Army after the Korean War with the outcome of the following war with India.

Australia’s Counter-Terrorism Policies Since September 11, 2001: Harmonising National Security, Independent Oversight and Individual Liberties

Australia has remained insulated from mega terrorist attacks, but post-September 11 its involvement in the war on terror in Afghanistan, Iraq and against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has brought terrorism into its backyard. In the wake of these emerging threats, particularly home-grown terrorism (HGT), successive governments have introduced changes in the counter-terrorism (CT) laws, and expanded the Criminal Code Act 1995 (Commonwealth-Cth) at the recommendations of the Council of Australian Governments (COAG).

The Belt and Road Initiative: Exploring Beijing’s Motivations and Challenges for its New Silk Road

This article argues that Beijing’s ambitious ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ (BRI) is driven by the convergence of Innenpolitik and Aussenpolitik motivations including a desire: to counterbalance perceived American predominance

India in Australia’s Strategic Framing in the Indo–Pacific

The world is witnessing a geopolitical shift from the North Atlantic to the Indo–Pacific region. US power is in relative decline with a steady build-up of Chinese power, wealth and influence. The last 15–20 years have also seen the rise of India. Against this backdrop, Australia’s reconceptualisation of its strategic frame as the Indo–Pacific widens its geopolitical canvas and elevates India’s importance for multiple Australian interests and objectives.

Asia in international relations: unlearning imperial power relations

The discipline of International Relations (IR) is deeply enmeshed in the history, intellectual traditions and agency claims of the West, thus obscuring the contributions from the non-Western world. IR theory fails to take cognisance of the global distribution of the various actors along with their contribution to a heterogeneous and rich discipline. There is a pressing need for a departure from IR’s historic complicity with marginalisation and the silencing of alternative epistemologies, thereby making its process of knowledge production truly global and democratic.

Gas Pipelines—Politics and Rivalries

In 2012, the International Energy Agency (IEA) in its ‘World Energy Outlook’ said that the world was entering a ‘Golden Age of Gas’. With its lower carbon-emitting properties, gas seemed poised to claim its rightful place in the global energy mix as a bridge between polluting hydrocarbons and green renewables. Moreover, it has all the ingredients to make it as worthy a contender in the energy geopolitical game as did oil a few decades ago.

Shebonti Ray Dadwal , Chithra Purushothaman
January 2018
Strategic Analysis

Analysing the Impacts of Drug Trafficking on Human Security in Central Asia

The international security environment has undergone many changes since the end of the Cold War. There has been a need to adapt the concept of security with the changing conditions and new security situations emerging in different geopolitical locales of the world. The concept of human security gained currency in the wake of international developments in the 1990s following the end of the Cold War. New security threats were identified by scholars and analysts the world over. There was a shift in the way security was conceptualised, i.e.

China’s Mediation Efforts in the Middle East and North Africa: Constructive Conflict Management

Mediation diplomacy has emerged as one of the central pillars of China’s foreign policy objectives and practice, with Beijing deliberately positioning itself as a peacemaker in the MENA region. This study evaluates China’s role as a regional peacemaker by examining Beijing’s growing engagement with bringing about a peaceful resolution to the MENA disputes. Specifically, this study seeks to examine whether or not China’s mediation efforts in the MENA region augur a shift in China’s non-intervention principle and practice.

India’s Bilateral Security Relationship in South Asia

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.

India–US Defence Cooperation: Assessing Strategic Imperatives

Over the last decade or so, especially during much of Barack Obama’s presidential tenure, the defence sector has become the focus area of cooperation between India and the US. India’s engagement with the US in the area of defence is riding on a new-found realism that drives both countries’ strategic aspirations.