A political weapon sought and granted
A brief word on the the drones that Robert Gates offered Pakistan during his recent—perhaps worst—trip to Islamabad. The offer was more political theatre than it was of military significance.
Why? Because—as this old post argues—Pakistan does not need armed drones to conduct counter-insurgency operations within its own territory. It [...]
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 [...]
The geopolitical implications of Xuanzang’s round-trip
The Chinese Buddhist monk Xuanzang’s journey to India and back is well-known (see Samanth Subramanian’s review of Mishi Saran’s book in Pragati). What is not so well-known is that his trip led, unintentionally, to a diplomatic spat between the China and India that ultimately resulted in the first Chinese military [...]
Nuclear weapons are doing what high mountains once did
As K M Panikkar noted, while India developed a sophisticated framework of inter-state relations within the natural frontiers of the subcontinent it “lacked interest in the balance of power outside its own national frontiers”. Arrian, the ancient Greek writer, contended that Indian kings refrained from expanding their [...]
US power is bound to decline if it continues to rely on a trans-Atlantic alliance
Henry Kissinger injects a strong dose of strategic wisdom into the squabbly-wobble that is being passed off as an Afghanistan policy review on by the Obama adminstration.
Concurrently, a serious diplomatic effort is needed to address the major anomaly of the Afghan [...]
Why Uncle Sam needs Pakistan (“Because of the Gurkhas” edition)
“Ignorance about India”, Narendra Singh Sarila writes, “was the reason why the Americans came to rely on British advice on questions concerning the subcontinent after its independence.” He quotes an anecdote to illustrate this:
In those days, the Americans’ understanding of India was extremely limited. To take [...]
India should ensure that the main location of Pakistan’s proxy war remains far away from home
Those who believe that the India-Pakistan ‘peace process’ that began in 2004 is responsible for the decline in terrorist violence in Jammu & Kashmir are making the oldest policy mistake—confusing correlation for causation. To understand, take a look at the [...]
Dropping canned food past the expiry date, painting graffiti on boulders—and that we should know now
First, relax. It would be a huge strategic blunder for China to get into a military conflict with India—less initiate one—for two big reasons.
One, nuclear deterrence imposes limits to how much a conventional military conflict can escalate. Even a [...]
China’s ‘institutes for strategic studies’
The website that first published the provocative article had the domain name www.iiss.cn—when that site was up it redirected to chinaiiss.org. In addition there is chinaiiss.com and at least one other site with IISS in it. They do not have anything remotely to do with the London-based International Institute of Strategic [...]
Recent Comments