Managing India’s Land Borders: Lessons from the US Experience

India has been grappling with the problem of devising an efficient border management strategy that would prevent the entry of dangerous elements while at the same time allowing the legitimate flow of goods, services and people. Given that it has always been vulnerable to cross-border threats and challenges such as illegal migration, drug and human trafficking, gunrunning, smuggling of commodities and cross-border terrorism, India has taken a largely unilateral approach towards border management whereby security of the borders is accorded primacy over the free movement of people and goods.

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Bhutan’s Foreign Policy Determinants: An Assessment

This article assesses the shifting preferences of Bhutan towards the foreign policy determinants. Three determinants (national security, political culture and economic engagement) have been studied as they play a significant role in shaping Bhutan's policy behaviour. These determinants have been analysed with respect to India, Nepal and China, three countries that have been of critical interest to Bhutan's foreign policy.

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Examining China’s Hydro-Behaviour: Peaceful or Assertive?

China is a thirsty country desperately in need of water—a lot of it. In order to meet its water and energy requirements in the densely populated and fertile northern plains, it is successively making interventions in the Tibetan rivers in the southern part through dams and diversions. While China is well within its riparian rights to do so, a set of externalities involving the principles of water-sharing and lower riparian needs—stretching from Afghanistan to Vietnam—raise concerns.

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National Interests and International Commitments: the Problem of Enforcing Sanctions

Recently it has been proposed by the United States that economic sanctions be applied by the international community against the Khomeini regime. Economic pressure is sought to be initiated against the regime in an attempt to force it to change its stand on certain policy matters, more specifically on the issue of holding Americans in Iran as hostages. Once again the whole concept of sanctions has been brought into prominence. The viability of sanctions as instruments of pressure, aimed at bringing about certain internal and/or external changes within the target state is open to debate.

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