Iran-Egypt Rapprochement: Compulsions and Realities
Along the short recent journey in discovery of friendly relations, Iran and Egypt have hit roadblocks that are not only ideological in nature but also illustrate their individual compulsions, conflicting national interests and complex regional dynamics.
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India’s Defence Budget 2013-14: A Bumpy Road Ahead
A GDP growth of less than seven per cent combined with the fiscal consolidation path that the Finance Minister has articulated in his budget speech means a lot of pressure on the defence ministry whose plan for current and future expenditure up to 2017 is based on past GDP growth rate of 8 to 9 per cent.
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India’s Defence Budget: Trends Beyond the Numbers
In the larger scheme of things, fiscal prudence is a good trait and the reduction in deficits desirable, yet an overtly ambitious approach of reducing deficits into a number game may lead to developments that may hurt us not only in the security arena but in economic growth as well.
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Countering Terrorism: The Way Forward
A National Counter Terrorism Head needs to be established with the single point authority for all CT activity and with authorization to muster all resources within the country. The authority vested in him will be matched by his accountability to every terrorist strike.
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Economic moorings of the defence budget
While the anguish over the state of modernization of the armed forces, the slow march towards achieving the capability for simultaneous action on two-fronts and rather feeble power projection on a global scale are understandable, what is not understandable is the expectation that the outlays for achieving these objectives would increase exponentially, irrespective of the state of the economy.
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