Books about the UN, like the politicians who support it, evidently do better when they make little outward mention of that international organisation. While the cover of most editions of this nine-chapter book is adorned with UN blue and those initials are highlighted in the ‘unfinished’ of the title, the United Nations is mentioned nowhere explicitly until a chapter or two in. This is no criticism: the UN is a flawed body that everyone knows but few understand, and smuggling it onto people's reading lists may be one of the few ways to address that.

• Ellie B. Hearne |
• November 2011 |
• Strategic Analysis

To paraphrase the mantra of realism—international politics, like all politics, is a struggle for normative ascendancy: the establishment and maintenance of the dominant normative architecture of international order created and maintained by the interplay of power and ideas. As China, India and Brazil emerge as important growth centres in the world economy, the age of the West and its disrespect for the role, relevance and voice of the rest of the world is passing.

• Ramesh Thakur |
• November 2011 |
• Strategic Analysis

Intervention across borders of other states with the intention of protecting the civilian population from atrocities committed against them is not a new phenomenon. According to Thomas Weiss, 1 the evolution of humanitarian intervention precedes the appearance of the current generation of international institutions. After the Second World War, the United Nations Charter under Article 2(1) stipulated that the UN be based upon the sovereign equality of all its members.

• Keerthi Sampath Kumar |
• November 2011 |
• Strategic Analysis

In the aftermath of the Second World War and the horrors of the Holocaust, during which war crimes were committed on an unprecedented scale, the international community came together to declare ‘never again’ and set up the United Nations. Governments agreed that they would cooperate to prevent the commission of genocide and punish the perpetrators.

• Satish Nambiar |
• November 2011 |
• Strategic Analysis

The central focus of this article is to understand the evolution of the Chinese People's Liberation Army's engagement with UN peacekeeping operations in the light of China's military diplomacy. The article underlines that the PLA works as a foreign policy instrument in UN peacekeeping operations and furthers China's foreign policy agenda in many ways.

• Prashant Kumar Singh |
• September 2011 |
• Strategic Analysis

The national security of India rests on two basic and mutually supporting premises. The first, of course, is the internal strength, cohesiveness, and firmness of purpose of the nation. The second is the ability of the country to exist and develop in a changing international environment, the hostility or friendship of which is rarely certain and never absolute. It is with the second aspect that we concern ourselves in this article.

• K. Saigal |
• September 2011 |
• Strategic Analysis

The Chinese territorial claim on the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh has negatively affected India–China relations for many decades now. In recent years, China has become visibly aggressive with regard to its territorial claim by denying visas to Indians from Arunachal Pradesh travelling to China, claiming that they are Chinese citizens and hence do not require visas. China also tried to block ADB aid sought by India for the state.

• Namrata Goswami |
• September 2011 |
• Strategic Analysis

There is general agreement among those concerned with international relations and strategy that for the next fifteen years Asia is more likely to be an area of tension and conflict involving major powers than any other part of the world, now that detente has stabilised the situation in Europe. There is further agreement that China and growing nationalism among the Asian societies will be the foci around which tension and conflict are likely to build up.

• K. Subrahmanyam |
• September 2011 |
• Strategic Analysis

Cyber security cooperation should be a natural area of cooperation between India and the United States for a number of reasons; both countries are democracies, with similar values and economic systems, and both have also been severely affected by threats emanating from cyberspace. The structural complementarities between the two economies, especially in the services sector, which is a major user of cyber networks provides further motive for the two countries to cooperate in this sector.

• Cherian Samuel |
• September 2011 |
• Strategic Analysis

Beginning with partition of the subcontinent in 1947, this book by renowned scholar Stanley Wolpert provides an account of one of the oldest political crisis/conflicts in the world. He simplifies 63 years of complex history, tracing the relationship between the two antagonists. This book is an outcome of his extensive work on South Asia over the last 60 years. In this book, Wolpert explores historical roots of the conflict, assesses different phases of it and the attempts made to resolve it, before recommending potential solutions to it.

• Anwesha Ray Chaudhuri |
• September 2011 |
• Strategic Analysis