Getting Saudi Arabia to take responsibility for Pakistan’s actions is in India’s interests
At a recent conference in Abu Dhabi on emerging powers and the Middle East, one of the arguments I made was that a stable Afghanistan requires a balance of two distinct sets of powers—India-Iran-Russia on the one hand, and China-Pakistan-Saudi Arabia on the [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Joint India-US planning is a must given the asymmetric risks of snatch operations
The only interesting new thing in Seymour Hersh’s New Yorker report on the issue of the security of Pakistan’s crown jewels is that a US nuclear emergency response team was activated recently but asked to stand down before it landed in Pakistan. The [...]
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 realist appraisal of the trans-Himalayan context
In today’s Mint Sushant and I argue that more than worrying about an unlikely Chinese invasion, India ought to focus on managing the armed co-existence along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) between India and China. Excerpts:
Chinese scholars have suggested that this is due to Beijing’s assessment that no [...]
The dangers of elevating humans to superhuman status
Over on his blog, Manoj Joshi posts his Mail Today article on how the legend of APJ Abdul Kalam resulted in poor technological choices and ultimately, as sub-standard missile arsenal. Excerpts:
Whatever may have been his successes as SLV-3 project manager, his tenure as DRDO chief has been something [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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