China’s Creeping Maritime Assertiveness The Chinese stance towards the December 15, 2016 incident relating to the seizure of USN UUV by PLA Navy has been extraordinarily ambiguous. Abhay Kumar Singh | January 03, 2017 | Issue Brief
The State of the State of Syria The partial cease-fire brokered and imposed by Russia and Turkey, with Iran’s concurrence, on Assad and the ‘moderates’, might mark a turning point in Syria’s tortuous journey since 2011. K. P. Fabian | January 02, 2017 | IDSA Comments
Modi’s stand-alone visit to Israel? A standalone visit to Israel will not only be in line with Modi’s engagement with the Middle East but would also send a powerful message to the international community that India is no longer apologetic about befriending Israel. P. R. Kumaraswamy | January 02, 2017 | IDSA Comments
A Requiem for 2016 Higher Defence Management, Civil-military relations and force modernisation were three critical areas in which there was little or no movement in the year gone by. Amit Cowshish | January 02, 2017 | IDSA Comments
Smart diplomacy: exploring China-India synergy, by P.S. Suryanarayana In Smart Diplomacy: Exploring China-India Synergy, P.S. Suryanarayana has sought to answer the questions: ‘Will China and India live at peace with each other? Will they be able to overcome the deficit of trust between them? Will they be able to find amicable solutions to their disputes over their borders, Pakistan, Tibet, rivers, and trade, etc.?’ (p. iv). These questions, raised by Ambassador Tommy Koh in his foreword to the book, concern all those who want a stable and productive future for the two countries that Suryanarayana characterizes as the sunrise powers of the 21st century. Prashant Kumar Singh | January 2017 | Strategic Analysis
New south Asian security: six core relations underpinning regional security, by Chris Ogden Theorising about international relations in South Asia is a daunting task for any scholar of International Relations. The challenge lies in explaining the causal forces behind state behaviour, in order to illuminate a pattern for arriving at an understanding of these relations in a parsimonious manner. Medha Bisht | January 2017 | Strategic Analysis
Unheeded hinterland: identity and sovereignty in northeast India, by Dillip Gogoi Partly the result of a political and physical isolation compounded by decades of conflict in the region, Northeast India is often viewed through the prism of security studies, institutional performance or developmental governance. While important contributions in themselves, a state-centric focus often overlooks the complexity of the causes and dynamics. It ignores the consequences of regional societal forces’ articulation of identity, nationalism, separatism and sovereignty that can shape political boundaries in the region, thus overlooking the salience of subaltern narratives. Alex Waterman | January 2017 | Strategic Analysis
Brexit: Harbinger of an Unexpected New World Order The stunning British vote of June 24, 2016, to quit the European Union (EU)—dubbed Brexit—has triggered a major realignment of economic and political forces across the globe, strengthening the template of a new world order tilted towards Moscow, Beijing and the rising powers of Asia and Africa. As Washington nervously recognizes, there will be a decline in the influence of the US, EU and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the latter two having served as instruments of US global domination. Sandhya Jain | January 2017 | Strategic Analysis
The Challenges and Opportunities of a Negotiated Settlement in Afghanistan For the last 15 years, the war in Afghanistan has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and the United States has sent thousands of troops and spent billions of dollars supporting strategies that have been unable to curtail the violence in the country. In addition to deploying over 130,000 troops from 51 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries and its partner nations, the United States alone spent over $686 billion in the ‘Afghan war’. Aref Dostyar | January 2017 | Strategic Analysis
What are India, Iran, and Afghanistan’s Benefits from the Chabahar Port Agreement? Over the last decade we have seen a race to build ports in the Indian Ocean as the two Asian powerhouses, China and India, compete to assert their regional influence. The newest addition to this power struggle is the Chabahar Port, located in Chabahar, a coastal town in the Sistan–Baluchistan region in south-eastern Iran, next to the Gulf of Oman, and at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz (Figure 1). Its strategic importance and economic value have drawn attention from many countries; however, India was the quickest to secure a deal to develop the port. Shawn Amirthan | January 2017 | Strategic Analysis
