Dr S Samuel C Rajiv is Research Fellow, Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA), New Delhi. Prior to joining MP-IDSA in November 2006, Dr Rajiv worked at the publication India’s National Security Annual Review (from 2002-2005) and was a Visiting Scholar at the BESA Centre for Strategic Studies, Bar Ilan University, Israel (October 2005-September 2006). Dr Rajiv earned his PhD from the School of International Studies, JNU. He has published on issues related to India’s foreign and security policies in Strategic Analysis, Foreign Policy, Business Standard, The Jerusalem Post, among other publications. He is the author of The India-Israel Strategic Partnership: Contours, Opportunities and Challenges (Pentagon Press, 2023) and Co-Editor of India-Israel: The Making of a Strategic Partnership (Routledge, 2020). Dr Rajiv is a recipient of the President MPIDSA’s Award for Excellence for Young Scholars in 2013, 2014 and 2017, for the best peer-reviewed articles published in Strategic Analysis. He has been a member of the MPIDSA Website editorial team since August 2016 and Editor, MPIDSA Website, since January 2023. His current fellowship project is on ‘India’s Defence Exports: Issues and Challenges’.
Associate Fellow, Manohar Parrikar IDSA, S. Samuel C. Rajiv's review of ‘Israel's Mediterranean Gas: Domestic Governance, Economic Impact and Strategic Implications’, (Routledge, 2019) has been published in International Studies, Vol. 57, No. 4, 2020, pp. 409-412.
India and Israel contextualises the varied aspects of the partnership between India and Israel, with a specific focus on the dominant driver — the defence engagement between the two sides, forged in the context of mutual complementarities.
India’s broad-spectrum relationship with Israel transformed into a strategic partnership in 2017, a quarter century after the establishment of full diplomatic ties. India and Israel have successfully steered the relationship forward, despite the baggage of fraught and convulsive neighbourhoods. The contributors to this volume include policy makers and military leaders who played an important role in the growth of the relationship, as well as academics who have closely followed its growth, shedding important light on the transformation of the India-Israel bilateral relationship into a strategic partnership over the course of past tumultuous 25 years. Chapters highlight Israel’s increasing engagement with India’s diverse federal polity, the de-hyphenation of the India-Israel ties from India’s relationship with Palestine, as well as the role played by US non-state (pro-Israel US-based interest groups) and sub-state (US Congressmen) actors in shaping India-Israel ties. The concluding chapter examines Israel’s relationship with the Peoples Republic of China (PRC), given that both the PRC and India established diplomatic ties with Israel almost simultaneously.
India and Israel will be of great interest to scholars of strategic studies, international relations, Middle Eastern Studies, Asian Studies, as well as those working in diplomacy, government and the military. The chapters were originally published as a special issue of Strategic Analysis.
Associate Fellow, Manohar Parrikar IDSA, S. Samuel C. Rajiv’s article ‘Iran Nuclear Deal: A pact in Jeopardy’ was published in ‘The Indian Express’ on July 20, 2020.
The article analyses Iran-IAEA contentions and their implications for the strategic stability of India’s neighbourhood.
Apart from the United States, India's nuclear cooperation agreements with Japan and Australia have been the most contentious domestically within those countries. The 'slow embrace' of India's civil nuclear credentials by Japan — given the four years for negotiations to begin (after the December 2006 Joint Statement which talked about discussions regarding such an agreement with India) in addition to the six years it took for negotiations to bear fruit — took place despite the strategic context of increasingly closer economic, political, and security ties.
In India in Nuclear Asia, authors Yogesh Joshi and Frank O’Donnell do a rigorous job of unpacking the layers that have constituted India’s nuclear journey, especially since going overtly nuclear in May 1998. They distil the key aspects pertaining to India’s nuclear force developments, the evolution and challenges facing its nuclear doctrine and the key rationales as they see underpinning New Delhi’s non-proliferation policies.
Associate Fellow, IDSA, S. Samuel C. Rajiv’s review of the books ‘Born to be Hanged’ and ‘Special Star: Benazir Bhutto's Story’, titled ‘Pakistan's Tortuous Political History’ was published in Vol. XLII, No. 6 of The Book Review on June 2018.
While Iran and its European interlocutors (along with Russia and China) can be expected to mount a tough challenge to continue to make the JCPOA work in the light of Trump’s May 8 decision to ‘withdraw’ from the agreement, it remains to be seen to what extent they can succeed.