Publication Filter

The Arctic is beginning to test the stage-managed optics of China and Russia’s ‘strategic partnership’. Friction was most recently on display after the Arctic Council’s May 2013 decision to confer permanent observer status on Beijing. The Chinese media celebrated the move as an affirmation of the nation’s ‘legitimate rights’ in Arctic affairs.1 Russian officials were much less enthusiastic.

• Lincoln E. Flake
• November 2013
• Strategic Analysis

India–US strategic dialogue was initiated in 2009, and is organised annually in different capitals. The first round of dialogue took place against the backdrop of pessimism in the bilateral relationship. For about six months after the new Obama administration was formed, strategists in Delhi were suspicious about the durability of an India–US strategic partnership that had been painstakingly nurtured by President George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

• Chintamani Mahapatra
• November 2013
• Strategic Analysis

The May 2013 parliamentary elections in Pakistan led to a stable government under the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N). Prime Minister Sharif promised a shift of the country’s India policy. Given his track record, the current pressing economic and security imperatives and recent improvements in Indo-Pakistan trade relations, the popular optimism is understandable and the first steps of rapprochement are to be expected.

• Ishtiaq Ahmad , Hannes Ebert
• November 2013
• Strategic Analysis

The avro replacement is not a design and development programme which will involve extensive use of the airfields for test flights. It is an aircraft that is already flying and will be built as per the OEM’s specifications that will go into manufacture of the aircraft in India.

• Amit Cowshish
• October 31, 2013
• IDSA Comments

The new architecture admittedly is a rehash of previously signed (1993, 1996, 2005 and 2012) de-escalatory measures. Most of the Clauses outline mechanisms for exchanging information, consultations about military activities and enhancing communications between border personnel and headquarters.

• P. Stobdan
• October 29, 2013
• IDSA Comments

The emergence of the third political candidate Qasim Ibrahim of the Jumhoory Party has made the present political landscape in Maldives intensely competitive and antagonistic with petitions and counter allegations over the election process. This in all possibility might lead to a long period of political instability.

• Anand Kumar
• October 26, 2013
• IDSA Comments

Chinese would be very aware that India heads to general elections in seven months time. They would have taken cognizance of various ‘surveys’ as well as soundings of the political scene that would indicate that it is entirely possible that there would be a change of government following the elections.

• R. S. Kalha
• October 25, 2013
• IDSA Comments

The double-speak of Nawaz Sharif has led many in India to doubt his sincerity on improving relations. Questions are also being raised on whether Sharif is still living in the 1990s when he followed a twin track approach of talks and trade proceeding in parallel with terrorism, something which India finds unacceptable today.

• Sushant Sareen
• October 24, 2013
• IDSA Comments

Though the Pakistan army denies its involvement in raising violence levels along the LoC, the international boundary and in the hinterland, it is understood well that without the active support of the army and the ISI, no serious attempt can be made by the terrorists to infiltrate.

• Gurmeet Kanwal
• October 23, 2013
• IDSA Comments

A solution to the Syrian crisis is unlikely to emerge with either Assad in power or in the existing circumstances of the military stand-off. A political solution will have to be imposed from outside, possibly an understanding between the US and Russia with tacit consent of China.

• Gautam Sen
• October 22, 2013
• IDSA Comments