…is that we don’t learn from them
Here’s a passage from my review of India & Counterinsurgency: Lessons Learned, a volume of case studies and analyses edited by Sumit Ganguly & David Fidler.
A recurring theme in the book is that lessons that were to be learnt in one counter-insurgency campaign were not learnt, and mistakes repeated [...]
The Pakistani military establishment has its reasons to over-react to General Deepak Kapoor’s remarks
This time, it’s an obscure comment at an internal seminar about a new doctrine that the Indian army is working on. The doctrine is not even ready in draft form. It has not even been endorsed by the Army Headquarters. And, as [...]
A UN mandate might make it easier for India to send troops to Afghanistan
In the July-Sep 2009 issue of Indian Foreign Affairs Journal, Brigadier Gurmeet Kanwal (retd) concludes his scenario analysis of Afghanistan with the following:
A peaceful and stable Afghanistan capable of maintaining its strategic autonomy is a vital national interest for India. It is [...]
What attracts women?
INI’s resident military affairs expert (no, no pun intended) sends in an article with the following bit highlighted:
Young women who don’t join the army have another important role to play. They may opt to marry army officers and encourage their female friends to follow suit. If pretty young women in large numbers come [...]
An unsatisfactory assessment
The attackers scored the moment they penetrated the outermost cordon of the Pakistani army’s General Head Quarters (GHQ) complex. They broke a psychological barrier by striking at the heart of the Pakistani military-jihadi complex. That they probably didn’t get anywhere near the innermost sanctums does not matter: they hit the beast in its [...]
Understanding the Pakistani military establishment’s objections to the Kerry-Lugar conditionalities
If it’s hard to determine the exact cause of the uproar in Pakistan over the Kerry-Lugar Bill, it is because there are many. Simply put, every quarter in Pakistan is using it as a stick to beat its opponents. While all the outrage over being insulted [...]
Mistaken nuclear strategy or mistaken media management?
It might well be that General Deepak Kapoor’s remarks on Pakistan’s fast-expanding nuclear arsenal were blown out of proportion by the media. A Times News Network (TNN) headline in the Times of India yesterday said that India “(may) have to revisit nuclear no-first use policy: Army chief” but the [...]
Shouldn’t India nail that canard?
Here’s a thought: almost everyone in Pakistan, and many thinking people in the United States still believe in that story about why having to face a stronger army on its eastern border makes the Pakistani army less able to throw more resources into the fight against the Taliban (see this post [...]
Tamil chauvinism must be prevented from taking an anti-India form
It is repugnant, but legitimate, for political groups in India to support the LTTE. It is repugnant, but legitimate for them to engage in lawful political activism to promote their cause. But it is wholly illegitimate and totally unacceptable for them to attack an Indian army [...]
How the LTTE damaged the Sri Lankan Tamil cause
More than a generation has grown up without knowing what the Indian intervention in Sri Lanka in 1987 was all about. Shekhar Gupta does well to remind us just why there is no need to shed any tears for the LTTE:
Bipin Joshi and I had many conversations [...]
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