Publications : Opinion & Commentary
Topic
Govt Must Rethink the Role of Defence Attaché
With growing capabilities and interests, India needs to reconsider the current terms of the partnership between the military and our diplomats.A Renewed Focus on Emerging Technologies
Fully realising the potential of emerging technologies in the military requires altering existing organisations and approaches.In Defence, The Twin Transformations
The country’s political leadership took a leap in reimagining the military. But it must pay attention to structural issues.1971 War Tilted Balance in India’s Favour
Bangladesh today is a development success story as that country overtook India and Pakistan in terms of per capita income and human development indicators.India and US have certain congruence in maritime security through IPS
"I think India and the US have a certain congruence in maritime security through the Indo pacific in keeping those sea lanes open, safe, free but I don’t think either side has linked that to whether India has a permanent seat in the UN security council or not."India’s civilian leadership must step up
Between the Indian Army’s ‘supremo syndrome’ and IAF’s ‘all is well’ syndrome, India’s military effectiveness is compromisedBook Review: The Absent Dialogue
There is a constant search for harmony among the three principal stakeholders of national security.India, China, and the stalemate beyond Ladakh
Behind the ongoing military stalemate at the LAC lies a stifling political stalemate between India and China.The great churning: Modi’s transformation of the Indian military
India’s current military transformation requires greater civilian participation and expertise in defense matters.A name upon a grave: India needs a proper account of the army’s war dead
If we are unable to reconcile the numbers of war dead, then naming and properly honouring every single one, and looking after their next of kin, is not possible.India needs to invest in regional disaster relief mechanisms
Building capacities through training and joint exercises and coordinating comparative advantages for collective action will help India leverage goodwill among its neighbours through its disaster relief programmes.China’s Frankenstein: ‘Rocket Man’
The successful test of the Hwasong-15 missile by North Korea has triggered several consequences, intended and unintended: First, Kim Jong Un has demonstrated the capability to potentially strike the US mainland with nuclear weapons. Second, the achievement has made the moniker of ‘Rocket Man’ (disparagingly used by US President Donald Trump) a ...Warring over disarmament in the UN
For most people the UN is the venue of an annual kabuki theatre where world leaders come to make sonorous speeches and snipe at each other to score points with populations back home. While these theatrics, played out every September from the UN General Assembly (UNGA), make for high entertainment, they do ...The birth of the new Nuclear Prohibition Treaty
The 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is based on three myths: first, that nuclear weapons are an entitlement bestowed upon only a handful of countries that had tested a nuclear weapon before the treaty entered into force in 1970. Second, that the security of most of the world’s nations indeed world order ...Moving forward on defence and security
When Prime Minister Narendra Modi meets US President Donald Trump for the first time, the focus will be on establishing a good rapport between the two leaders. There remain concerns that their two governments’ objectives are not compatible: that Trump’s “America First” approach, which conceives of US interests in narrow, transactional terms, ...Joint Doctrine for Armed Forces: the single-service syndrome
Last month the three service chiefs released the latest iteration of the Joint Doctrine for the Indian Armed Forces. In the foreword the Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, Admiral Sunil Lanba, wrote that that the Joint Doctrine “provides foundations for greater integration and interdependence, to achieve higher inter-operability and compatibility ...Should India Inc. bid for Westinghouse?
George Westinghouse and the company he founded in 1886 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, pioneered the commercial production and transmission of a scientific marvel called electricity, which has since powered and revolutionized the modern world. With the dawn of the nuclear age, Westinghouse Electric Company went on to develop pressurized water reactors (PWRs) for ...Can unarmed states prohibit nuclear weapons?
Guess what terrifies nations armed with the most powerful weapons ever invented? Believe it or not a mere UN conference to ban them, which began on 27 March in New York. This gathering of nations without nuclear weapons to negotiate a “legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total ...Can unarmed states prohibit nuclear weapons?
Guess what terrifies nations armed with the most powerful weapons ever invented? Believe it or not a mere UN conference to ban them, which began on 27 March in New York. This gathering of nations without nuclear weapons to negotiate a “legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total ...China benefits from nuclear disorder
The rise in global nuclear disorder and its increasing disconnect from world order is epitomized in the nuclear weapon programmes of two weak and potentially failing states Pakistan and North Korea. While both these countries might understandably perceive some advantage to having acquired nuclear weapons, the real beneficiary is China. Beijing’s ...A disrupter’s guide to India’s defence budget
While India’s defence budget is now the fourth largest in the world, it is not providing adequate bang for the buck The latest Union budget unveiled on 1 February by finance minister Arun Jaitley has been widely commended as a “defining” and “watershed” moment, as providing “stability and predictability”, and as being ...Brexit, missile control and India
A diminished England, sans nuclear weapons, coupled with a fragmenting Europe, is unlikely to play its traditional role of shaping norms Two recent though unrelated events are likely to significantly impact the evolving global order and India’s role in it. The first was the unfortunate and histrionic referendum, which will lead to ...Critical Seoul NSG meet will have reverberations for India’s...
NSG meeting is no less important, for the potential implications it could have for relations between India and China writes Dhruva Jaishankar A decision by the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) on June 23-24 – as to whether to include India as a member – may be overshadowed in international media by other ...What the Nuclear Security Summits mean for South Africa
WPS Sidhu provides an in-depth analysis of South Africa’s nuclear position and the ramification of Nuclear Security Summits on South Africa The Nuclear Security Summit (NSS) process – to prevent non-state actors, particularly terrorists, from acquiring nuclear material – was launched with fanfare in 2010 by US President Barack Obama with a single ambitious objective ‘to ...UN missions bedrock of India’s military engagement and assistance to...
India must have a serious dialogue with African countries on its role in future peacekeeping operations on the continent. India’s participation in the United Nations Peacekeeping Operations (UNPKO) is probably without parallel; it has been one of the largest contributors of peacekeepers and has suffered the most casualties in the process. Eighty per ...Space: securing India’s final frontier
The launch of the GSLV–D6 powered by an indigenous cryogenic engine is a game-changer Even as the country was agog with a salacious society murder and an indefensible regional protest over reservations, which hogged the electronic bandwidth and the print media, an event of strategic import crucial to secure India’s space frontier ...Keeping peace among peacekeepers
The word peacekeeping does not appear anywhere in the Charter of the UN. Yet, ever since the first peacekeeping operation was launched in May 1948 in the Middle East, that one word evokes the very raison d’etre of the world body. Since then the UN has deployed 70 peacekeeping operations with some ...The merits of going nuclear with China
This column first appeared in Mint, on September 15, 2014. Like other products of the Brookings Institution India Center, this is intended to contribute to discussion and stimulate debate on important issues. The views are solely those of the author. The maiden visit of Chinese President Xi Jingping to India this week, following close on ...A brave new nuclear deterrence world?
Since the dawn of nuclear weapons in 1945 two axioms have dominated the discourse: one, only nuclear weapons could deter other nuclear weapons. Two, as conventional conflict would inevitably escalate to a nuclear level the primary objective of the military in nuclear-armed states was to avert wars. Thus, Cold War relations were ...Updating India’s nuclear doctrine
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will “study in detail India’s nuclear doctrine, and revise and update it, to make it relevant to challenges of current times.” (Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat, BJP’s 2014 election manifesto). Unsurprisingly, these words have perturbed international strategic experts. Everyone remembers how the party delivered on its 1998 manifesto ...Perils of preserving the ancien régime
The old order changeth yielding place to new… (The Passing of Arthur) Despite the veracity of this maxim, existing members of the old nuclear order, which is closely intertwined with the world order even today, are challenging the inevitability of this line from Alfred Tennyson’s classic poem. In doing so, the original ...