India-China Relations: 1947–2000 – A Documentary Study (5 Volumes) Generations of scholars and analysts working on India-China issues will be grateful to Mr. Avtar Singh Bhasin for the extraordinary service he has done to them by bringing into the public domain, in five volumes, important texts on the subject—over 2,500 of them—including many that are still not declassified by the Ministry of External Affairs and transferred for public access to the National Archives of India. He was able to do so because he got ready access to material classified as ‘secret’ or ‘top secret’ in the papers lying with the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. Jayant Prasad | July 2019 | Strategic Analysis
Connectivity is No Panacea for an Unprepared Northeast India In the apparently lackadaisical environment of North East India, ‘connectivity’ is the new energiser. From Manipur bordering Myanmar, to Assam bordering Bhutan and Bangladesh; everyone is looking to connectivity with ASEAN and the immediate neighbourhood in the East, as a vehicle of growth. Pratim Ranjan Bose | July 2019 | Strategic Analysis
Political Indifference and State Complicity: The Travails of Hazaras in Balochistan Pakistan is a forbidding place for minorities—confessional, sectarian and ideological. Violence, direct and structural and exacted with eerie regularity has ghettoised minority communities and forced them to flee. Among them, no other community is being subjected to such annihilatory violence as the Hazaras in the Balochistan province. Hazaras are an ethnic group predominantly based in Afghanistan, but also with a sizeable population in Pakistan, with estimates ranging between 650,000 and 900,000. Shakoor Ahmad Wani | July 2019 | Strategic Analysis
Terrorism Can and Should be Defined. But How? The debate over what constitutes terrorism spans a wide, diverse and largely a competing body of intellectual strands. In particular, the lack of consensus on the need (or otherwise) for a universally acceptable definition or no definition at all characterizes the discursive dynamics of the definitional subfield. Conversely, there is a persistent tendency of circumspection to embrace methodologies, e.g. case study frameworks, that can prove to be more helpful in conceptualizing terrorism. Muhammad Feyyaz | July 2019 | Strategic Analysis
Considered Chaos: Revisiting Pakistan’s ‘Strategic Depth’ in Afghanistan Pakistan’s historical insecurity towards India and the Islamisation of its military raises a curious question of strategy and identity rooted in Pakistan’s political genesis. This article examines the social and geostrategic factors underpinning Pakistan’s Afghanistan approach between its inheritance of security principles from colonial administration after Partition, and the Taliban’s capture of Kabul in 1996 and beyond. This article also critically analyses the existing link between the Taliban and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI). Aidan Parkes | July 2019 | Strategic Analysis
Ethnicity and Violent Conflicts in Northeast India: Analysing the Trends This article is a moderate attempt to understand the various ideas associated with ethnicity and ethnic conflicts, and to study the nature, trends and typology of ethnic and insurgent conflicts in the North East Indian states (viz. Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Manipur, Nagaland and Tripura) from 1990 to 2016, using the UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset. Deborshi Brahmachari | July 2019 | Strategic Analysis
India–Africa Co-Operation on Maritime Security: Need for Deeper Engagement With approximately 74 million Sq Km and 20per cent of the global ocean, the Indian Ocean is the third largest ocean in the world. Alarmingly, this area has over the last two decades been plagued with unprecedented grave maritime security challenges. Dauntingly, these problems are dynamic and cross-jurisdictional. Consequently, combating them necessitates combined efforts among states. This article explores the efficacy of the maritime security architecture within the Indian Ocean rim countries, focusing on the co-operation between India and African states. Njoki Mboce | July 2019 | Strategic Analysis
Indo-US Defence Partnership: Future Prospects Given India’s evolving procurement system, efforts should be made to enhance compatibility of technology from various sources. This may require greater cooperation with the US since many of India’s suppliers other than Russia depend on US technologies for their products. Amb. Sujan R. Chinoy | June 26, 2019 | IDSA Comments
Line on Fire: Ceasefire Violations and India–Pakistan Escalation Dynamics, by Happymon Jacob While contending the prevailing realists’ explanation of war happening because of power struggle, John Vasquez argues in his book, The War Puzzle Revisited, that a majority of wars are fought over territory, either to defend or occupy it. According to Vasquez, territorial disputes between two countries are ‘much more war-prone’ than others. Nazir Ahmad Mir | July-September 2019 | Journal of Defence Studies
Defence Agenda for Modi Government 2.0 Implementing the outlined 27 reform measures in four broad areas – Planning, Defence Budget, Acquisition and Make in India – would strengthen defence preparedness and build a credible defence industrial base. Laxman Kumar Behera | June 06, 2019 | Policy Brief