Journal of Defence Studies

Arms and the Game: Accepting Competition and Encouraging Cooperation

The article approaches the issue of jointness through new lenses. It first describes how and why arms of the military, the ‘Services’, are different from each other. Airpower is shown to be the emerging technological paradigm, triggering paradigm competition. Next, it draws an analogy between anarchy in international relations (IR) and the existence of the services. It then looks at game theory as used in IR to understand both why inter-organisational competition occurs and how cooperation can evolve with a certain kind of behaviour—reciprocity.

Strategic Direction of the Chinese Navy: Capability and Intent Assessment by Kamlesh K. Agnihotri

Rarely do naval practitioners combine capability and strategy cogently. They are good at explaining technical terminology and its applicability, but insufficient in expounding strategy and analysis. They consider capability in terms of war-oriented applicability, rather than the intention, motivation and strategic outreach of such capability. But if a naval practitioner focuses on strategy and its commensurate capability, he can relatively predict the impact of such capability.

Addressing Maritime Challenges in the Indian Ocean Region: A Case for Synergising Naval Capacities towards Collective Benefits

The vastness and diversity of the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) and its littorals, and difference in the latters’ overall view of regional security, presents a broad spectrum of challenges therein. The maritime capacities of most littoral states are not strong enough to individually address these challenges. However, synergised response strategies, appropriately regulated by one or two collectively mandated apex bodies, would greatly help in managing regional maritime security.

India’s Military Modernization: Strategic Technologies and Weapons Systems, edited by Rajesh Basrur and Bharath Gopalaswamy

The Oxford University Press could not have timed it better with its second part of the two-part project on Indian military modernisation in the field of advanced technologies like cruise missiles, nuclear weapons, anti-satellite weapons, missile defence, and information warfare. The adjoining regional countries of the Indian peninsula are flooded with new research vis-à-vis modern weapons and in utilising technology to develop even more advanced weaponry. It is, therefore, prudent for India to step up and be recognised for the power that it professes to be.

Coalition Warfare, edited by N.B. Poulsen, K.H. Galster and S. Nørby

The book contains 10 articles from presentations made by Western scholars (including officers from the defence forces) at the Royal Danish Defence College, in 2011, and has been edited by N.B. Paulsen, K.H. Galster and S. Nørby. Their historical research brings out that coalition warfare is not a new phenomenon, and has been practised by nations for different reasons. While, in most cases, countries came together when they faced a common threat and did not have the strength (manpower, finances or military power) to counter it, often it was to regain their pride and prestige in the world.

An Indian Maritime Strategy for an Era of Geopolitical Uncertainty

The fractious nature of maritime relations in the Asia-Pacific region is a recognisable feature of international geopolitics today. Following China’s massive reclamation and ‘island-building’ project in the South China Sea recently, many Pacific states have moved to bolster their maritime postures. While Japan has sought legislative amendments to liberate its maritime posture from post-war passivism, Vietnam and the Philippines have been building stronger navies aimed at countering China’s hostile moves in the South China Sea.

China Borders: Settlement and Conflicts—Selected Papers, by Neville Maxwell

This book is a compilation of papers written by journalist Neville Maxwell over a career span of five decades. Those who look at China–India relations closely, notably the border dispute, will know that Neville Maxwell is not new to the India–China border discourse. Accredited to The Times, he was their South Asia correspondent in New Delhi during the tumultuous years from 1959–62, when he extensively covered the Indo-China War of 1962.

‘Arriving in the Nick of Time’: The Indian Corps in France, 1914–15

Today, military historians as well as those dealing with colonial South Asian history tend to overlook the fact that during the First World War, the Indian Army was Britain’s strategic reserve. It vitally despatched over 150,000 troops to the Western Front to shore-up the British sector in the critical period of 1914-1915. To the Indian sepoys who crossed the kala pani to fight, die or be wounded in the trenches there, it was a jarring initiation into modern industrialised warfare.

An Assessment of Organisational Change in the Indian Army

The article analyses military change in the context of the Indian Army, with specific focus on organisational innovation and change. In doing so, it analyses two case studies: restructuring of the army after the Sino-Indian War of 1962; and mechanisation based on the 1975 expert committee recommendations. On the basis of these case studies, the article assesses the drivers and desirables for organisational change in the Indian Army, with the further aim of deriving policy recommendations which are especially apt in light of the ongoing transformation of the army.

Military Education in India: Missing the Forest for the Trees

India’s Professional Military Education (PME) system is weighted towards the tactical level in all stages of professional development. This results in inadequate exposure of its senior leadership to strategic studies, thus inhibiting the provision of qualitative advice at the strategic level. While combat as an instrument of warfare is focused on at all levels, it fails to relate to war as an instrument of politics. It underlines the absence of an effort to build a broader vision that incorporates the entire constellation of forces.