Comment & Briefs

A lot has being made of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif taking his time to select the next army chief and signalling civilian supremacy by picking the number three in the seniority list. Whether Gen Raheel Sharif will remain subservient to civilian authority because ‘Pakistan has changed’ and ‘democracy is here to stay’ remains to be seen.

The State hardly has any `balance from its current revenues` to take on additional internal security expenditure or fund its own development activities. In this backdrop, the State has perforce to depend on the Centre to maintain a security establishment and sustain it on a long-term basis.

This programme was a sincere effort by the MoD to walk the talk on participation of the private industry in defence manufacturing. The success or failure of this programme will have a long lasting effect on MoD’s efforts to strengthen the defence industrial base in the country.

In this final part of the Policy Paper series, P Stobdan deliberates that if India and China make a calibrated move for working together in Afghanistan, the outcome could be more harmonizing than conflicting. So when India reviews its post-2014 Afghan policy, the China factor should not be seen in a zero-sum perception for many in the West may press India playing a countervailing role to China.

China has created a furor by announcing the creation of an Air Defence identification Zone (ADIZ) over the Senkakau/Diayou islands in East China Sea. There is now little doubt that China is displaying a muscular foreign policy and most countries in Asia would be wary of a hard response because of the growing dependence of their economies on China.

In this third part of the Policy Paper series, P Stobdan argues that India should continue to remain engaged in Asia-Pacific for reasons not only confined to mercantile interest but also because it is an arena shaping the major powers behaviour. At the same, a regional rebalancing and attention to equally critical Central and West Asia will broaden India’s prospects for shaping the global order.

The Emperor of Japan and his wife are visiting India. 60-years ago they had laid the foundation stone of India International Centre. The visit will further strengthen India-Japan strategic partnership in the backdrop of major global and regional geopolitical shifts, particularly the rise of China; the US policy of ‘rebalancing’ and “pivot to Asia;” and maritime security challenges in the Indian and Pacific Oceans

In this second-part of the Policy Paper series, P Stobdan suggests that in the recent Indian strategic discourse, commentators have been exulting the US ‘Asia Pivot’ and seriously hoped that the idea will offset China’s regional outreach, for it also appeared similar to India’s own ‘Look East’ policy, which to an extent enabled New Delhi to ruffle a few feathers in the East Asian region.

The interim deal was signed by seven foreign ministers of US, UK , France, Russia, China, Germany and Iran but the deal was not negotiated mainly in Geneva, but in Muscat and other locations where the US and Iran met secretly for months. Essentially, it is a deal between US and Iran and the rest were there to serve a choreographic purpose.

Vikramaditya’s commissioning has re-ignited an old debate on the relevance of aircraft carriers. Proponents argue that it must play a central role in ‘blue-water’ plans while opponents posit that the carrier’s vulnerability and inadequate logistical sustainability render it an obsolete asset.