Journal of Defence Studies

Promotion System in the Army: Dealing with Peacetime Atrophy

In practice, it has been found that a peacetime army tends to atrophy and lose its war fighting orientation. It develops a lopsided emphasis on peacetime routine, spit and polish. In fact, a wartime army may well be the very anti-thesis of a peacetime army. Years of non-use of the military instrument sometimes results in the rusting of its value system and ethos.

Managing Supersession in the Armed Forces: An HRM Approach

Supersession is too important an aspect of organizational existence to be dismissed lightly. It is a situation to be managed jointly by the organization and affected individual with the clear understanding that organizational interests are overriding. The Human Resources Management (HRM) approach aims to ensure that staffing manning of an organization effectively meets the quantitative and qualitative aspects at all times to ensure efficiency and effectiveness. An important element of HRM is Human Resource Planning (HRP).

Revoking AFSPA Blown Out of Proportion

The current spurt in violent activities in valley and death of civilians in police actions against unruly mobs is a cause of serious concern and requires introspection not only by the government but also by the political parties including the separatists. The demands of separatists to revoke AFSPA and Public Safety Act from the valley and release of all political prisoners in the prevailing circumstances is neither justifiable nor in the interest of Kashmiri people. Such demands will only aid anti-national motives of terrorist outfits and external forces.

Declining Naxalism from Central Bihar

The Naxal problem has become the biggest internal threat to the country. Especially after the comments of the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2007, it has become a matter of concern as well as a subject of academic debate. The new thought, innovative ideas and fresh planning have been developed to address this issue extensively and intensively. In this backdrop, a case study of Central Bihar becomes relevant to focus the light on this issue. It is an established fact that Naxalism in Bihar had made its route through Central Bihar.

India and Japan: Exploring Strategic Potentials

The strategic environment of the world, particularly in Asia, is in a state of dramatic flux. The overwhelming economic and military presence of the United States in Asia is on the wane. China is a rising power, both economically and militarily, and its power projection capabilities are causing concern amongst its neighbours. Though the United States is a declining power, China is not the logical successor, not at least in the near term. These developments have led to realignment of power equations between countries in Asia.

The New Great Instability: Afghanistan after the American Exit

The present paper discusses about the new great instability in Afghanistan which had emerged after 2001. It builds four scenarios by looking into the impending American withdrawal from Afghanistan and states that for President Obama, a stable and democratic government is most desirable but it would prefer to leave it after building a coalition government with local actors as the US is more worried about a stable government in Afghanistan, not necessarily a democratic one.

Human Resources in Security Sector: An Integrated Model for the 21st Century

The challenge of management of human resources may be the most profound in the security sector in the years ahead given transformations happening globally and enhancement of human potential and opportunities for individual growth. The national security sector extending from the military to private security guards denotes the plethora of skills sets required which vary from that of handling highly sophisticated and lethal missile arsenal, to commandeering large aircraft carriers and submarines to securing public space in metropolitan cities.

Erik Seedhouse, The New Space Race: China vs. the United States

In wake of the increasing attention received by China’s space programme, it has been posited by some that a new space race, akin to the space race between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, has already begun between China and the US. Erik Seedhouse in his book explores the various elements of the space programmes of both countries with a view to assess the
possibility of a space race between them.

Cold Start and ‘The Sehjra Option’

The Cold Start doctrine is an innovative exercise. While Cold Start discusses how to start the campaign, equal thinking needs to attend how to end it. On the conventional level, the learning is that the Cold Start offensives of the integrated battle groups need to be delinked from those of the strike corps. Plausible political aims cannot be visualised that make nuclear risk of launch of strike corps offensives worth running. On the nuclear front, fallout of the scenario considered is on the doctrine of ‘massive’ nuclear retaliation.

Salient Issues Affecting Defence Manpower in India

Manpower costs are increasingly becoming unmanageable and are driving national security planners towards thinking creatively about what used to be called ‘affordable defence’. Despite leap-frogging from third to fourth generation weapons technologies in the short span of about two decades, modern armed forces are still far from being able to effect substantive reductions in manpower by substituting fighting personnel with innovative technologies while ensuring operational effectiveness.