First check if there is better than here
The professor has set the question paper. And it’s not an easy exam.
The desirability of a world without nuclear weapons, Thomas Schelling argues in a brilliant essay in Daedalus, is being treated as axiomatic, and “hardly any of the analyses or policy statements that I have come across [...]
Being prepared to press the red button ensures that it doesn’t have to be pressed
So Bill Clinton has revealed that “Indian officials spoke of knowing roughly how many nuclear bombs the Pakistanis possessed, from which they calculated that a doomsday nuclear volley would kill 300 [million] to 500 million Indians while annihilating all 120 million [...]
It’s not so much about bigger bombs. It’s about improving command & control.
In an op-ed in The Hindu today, K Santhanam & Ashok Parthasarathi make a compelling case that the thermonuclear bomb tested in May 1998 at Pokhran was not only fizzled, but “actually failed”. They also go on to conclude that “no country having [...]
A metaphor the the India-Pakistan nuclear deterrence relationship
It is not unusual for commentators to use the term “mutually assured destruction” or MAD while discussing nuclear weapons in the India-Pakistan context. This is a direct reuse of a Cold War-era metaphor to describe the nuclear game in the subcontinent. It is also an inaccurate and inappropriate [...]
The idea of ’surgical strikes’ has gained popularity in drawing room and public house conversations after the terrorist attacks on Mumbai. Srinath Raghavan & Rudra Chaudhuri explain why they are not such a good idea (linkthanks Dhruva).
‘Surgical strikes’, we are told, could go a long way in destroying terrorist camps and infrastructure located in [...]
…shouldn’t be an objective in itself
R Vaidyanathan, a professor of finance at the Indian Institute of Management – Bangalore, suggests twelve steps to shock and awe the Pakistani economy. Many of them are, in and of themselves, powerful instruments to destabilise Pakistan. Many of them can make credible threats, because carrying them out will hurt [...]
That is now a very important question
Pakistan’s president, Asif Ali Zardari, used a Q&A session at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit to announce that Pakistan “will not be the first country ever to use (nuclear weapons). I hope that things never come to a stage where we have to even think about using nuclear weapons”.
On [...]
Tit for tat?
A Pakistani prisoner died in an Indian jail in February. An Indian prisoner died in a Pakistani prison today—he was electrocuted while on his way to wash his clothes.
Coincidence, perhaps. But given the history, it could well be tit for tat.
Teachers preclude anarchy in the kindergarten
“Remember the new girl in my class?” the kindergartener said. “She hit me.”
The father, being a student of conflict, was naturally interested in conflict among students. The kindergartener had caught his attention.
“And what did you do then?” he asked.
“I told the teacher. And the teacher scolded her,” the kindergartener [...]
China’s unfriendliness is revealing
A sign of the nature of a relationship between countries is the manner in which they officially communicate displeasure. So when the Chinese government calls in the Indian ambassador at 2am, to hand her details of plans by Tibetan protesters to disrupt the movement of the Olympic torch in India, you know [...]
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