Strategic Analysis

Re-emerging Powers and the Impasse in the UNSC over R2P Intervention in Syria

The article examines the influence of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) members that acts as an important condition of success for implementation of the three-pillared Responsibility to Protect (R2P) principle in case of Syrian conflict. Analysis has revealed two distinctive features of the BRICS’s positions. Firstly, BRICS has placed particular emphasis on there being a reasonable prospect of success before supporting intervention.

Landlocked and Transit Developing Countries: Nepal’s Transit Route Negotiations with India

There are multiple levels of relationship between India and Nepal. This article deals exclusively with their bilateral transit relations, focusing on their negotiations in the context of Nepal as a landlocked developing country (LLDC). While LLDCs consider their free access to the nearest seaport through a transit country as a natural right, the transit countries often bargain with them from a position of strength.

Modelling Multi-actor Security Dilemma

Regardless of the everlasting debate whether the nature of the international system is anarchic or cooperative, ‘security dilemma’ remains a well-known and oft-cited concept. Intimately connected to it is the phenomenon of the arms race, which continues to play a significant role in global affairs and in determining relationships among countries. The first part of the article follows a dynamic model which reproduces the behaviour of the Cold War bipolar arms race.

Significance of the November 2015 Myanmar Elections

Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) won by a landslide majority in the openly contested elections Myanmar held on Sunday, November 8, 2015.The NLD won a convincing majority with 255 seats in the lower house, 135 in the upper house and 496 seats in the state and regional legislatures. This paves the way for election of President of its choice and forming a government. The election had 33.5 million eligible voters (over 18 years) of Myanmar’s 52 million population.

India–Myanmar Relations: Changing Contours by Rajiv Bhatia

Myanmar is an underrated neighbour with the potential to influence India’s vital strategic and economic interests. To keep track of the pulse of the mystic nation that is India’s closest Southeast Asian neighbour demands not just a scholarly approach but an empathy and an emotional connect. Rajiv Bhatia’s book, India–Myanmar Relations, is timely as it comes during a period when Myanmar is going through a significant phase of transition. Myanmar today stands at a crossroads confronted by a combination of developments on the domestic, regional and global planes.

Right Turn in Indian Polity: Modi on BJP’s Chariot by Yogesh Atal and Sunil K. Choudhary

Actors, events and processes that determine the characteristics of the political scene in contemporary India may rightly be understood via a number of tropes—all equally useful and deficient at the same time. This is especially true in case of the ongoing churning in Indian democracy. If for the decade of the 1990s the tropes were Mandal, Market and Mandir, the tropes to understand contemporary politics in India have acquired the shape of ‘Governance’ and ‘Development’.

Kashmir: The Vajpayee Years by A. S. Dulat and Aditya Sinha

Until recently, most top officials in India who had dealt with very sensitive issues in government refrained from writing about them. The adage they followed was that what everyone wanted to know could not be written, and what could be written was something that no one was interested in. Not surprisingly, even when former civil servants have written anything, it has generally been a self-serving swansong of their accomplishments, which other than them no one really considers accomplishments.

Dynamics of ‘Civil-Military’ Relations in India

The burgeoning scholarship on the army’s role in nation building, or the lack of it, is unsurprising. In the modern political order, a nation without its own army is hardly imaginable. A crucial relationship exists between the two, which is also a reason for the uneasiness about the army’s pro-active involvement in the nation-making process. Political sociologists have been uncovering striking causal relationships that demonstrate the crucial role of the army and its internal ‘organisation’, ‘control’ and ‘function’ for the subsisting units of the modern world system: nation-states.

Applying Human Security in the Indian Context

This article explores the concept of human security and examines the scope for its adoption as a normative and policy framework in India. Human security prioritises non-military methods as a means of achieving security without compromising the priorities accorded to traditional security threats. It requires the fulfilment of people’s basic needs and rights.

Implications of the Dragon’s Rise for South Asia: Assessing China’s Nepal Policy

China has always been an important neighbour to Nepal which has otherwise historically been heavily influenced by India. The ‘rise of China’ has created a more outward-looking Middle Kingdom and so its influence in Nepal has significantly increased within the last decade. As a consequence, Nepal is experiencing growing interest from China. This article aims to give some historical background to Sino-Nepalese relations and to measure the most recent impact of the ‘rise of China’ on Nepal, particularly on its economic, military and political fronts.