Comment & Briefs

State Assembly Elections held in Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura in February 2013 threw up a clear mandate in favour of the ruling (coalition) parties in Tripura and Nagaland, although a fractured one in Meghalaya. Political analysts suggest that these results stand testimony to the people’s desire to maintain the status quo.

The war crime trials should be taken to their logical conclusion to create a precedent that will discourage the extremist and radical elements. But the government must also act swiftly to maintain law and order so that the situation is not used by extra-constitutional forces to thwart the whole exercise.

A ‘pearl’ could be viewed as a sphere of influence seeded, secured and maintained through the use of economic, geopolitical, diplomatic or military means. The ‘string of pearls’ is about China’s unambiguous maritime strategy that investments in increasing its sea power. This is essentially a multi-pronged strategy that challenges dominant US interests in the Indian Ocean and sends a clear message to India that the Indian Ocean is not India’s ocean by increasing the dependence of the littoral states in the region on China.

Indian planners would be cautious about an open US embrace as India does not want to be drawn into a US containment policy, which is how China perceives US rebalancing.

An analysis of these exercises reveals some interesting insights into the People's Liberation Army (PLA) thinking, its priorities, areas of interest and countries of concern.

India must vote against Sri Lanka in the UNHRC in order to force the latter to set up its own enquiry commission on war crimes, implement the recommendations of the LLRC pertaining to the rights of Tamils, and evolve its own ‘home grown’ solution to the ethnic issue.

Chavez’s significance lies in his attempts to liberalise the international monetary system with regard to credit support for poverty alleviation schemes in Latin America outside the ambit of the IMF by setting up the Caracas-based “Bank of the South”, which was lauded by eminent economists like Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz.

India must develop comprehensive and workable proposals to not just tone down the present Indo-Pak standoff on the glacier and the international attention it may be inviting, but also to ensure reasonable security arrangements against treachery by any third country.

For the Arabs, India’s caution, slow responses and long periods of situation assessments re-affirmed stereotypes about its inability to assume a leadership role in international affairs. However, given the volatility, the most effective way is to “think regionally but act bilaterally”.

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