Strategic Analysis

All Roads Lead to North: Nepal’s Turn to China

Amish Raj Mulmi’s All Roads Lead to North vividly and eloquently captures the growing Chinese inroads into Nepal. Growing Chinese influence is visible not just in the northern-most border villages and transit checkposts of the Sino-Nepalese border at Tatopani, Rasuwagadhi or Humala in the rugged Himalayas, but also in the palace, parliament and the lives of people on the streets of Kathmandu. The author has diligently and skilfully recorded this enormous yet invisible process in its minutest detail, exposing how it is exerting pressure on the tranquillity of Nepali life.

Cyber Technological Paradigms and Threat Landscape in India

In a discipline struggling to define even fundamental concepts like cyberspace and cyber threats, Ramnath Reghunadhan’s Cyber Technological Paradigms and Threat Landscape in India is a remarkable work to make sense of India’s efforts and challenges in cyberspace. The book by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras scholar is explanatory in nature and provides rich, collated, and specific information for cyber researchers working on India’s cyber policy.

China and South Asia: Changing Regional Dynamics, Development and Power Play

China and South Asia is a collection of essays on Chinese foreign policy in South Asia and the Indian Ocean Region. It covers China’s diplomatic, political, economic, social, and cultural interactions with the South Asian states, the regional balance of power and power asymmetries, and cooperation, competition and conflicts in the region. China’s rise as an economic power has led to increasing interactions in infrastructure development and connectivity as well as trade and investments with the regional countries.

Salafism and Political Order in Africa

In recent decades, Africa has emerged as one of the epicentres of jihadi terrorist groups. Scholars, analysts and policymakers have sought to unravel the factors underlying the presence, growth and spread of these groups. They have raised concerns about the spread of Salafi-jihadism, especially in sub-Saharan Africa.

Contested Lands: India, China and the Boundary Dispute

Maroof Raza’s new book Contested Lands: India, China, and the Boundary Dispute documents the evolution of India’s boundary with China, an issue that predates independence and annexation of Tibet. The key question that has metamorphosed into the dispute with China is the differing interpretation on both sides. The genesis of the current dispute lies in the interpretative differences between the British, the Tibetans and the Chinese on the three sets of lines drawn by the British: (a) Johnson Line in 1865, (b) Johnson-Ardgah Line in 1897, and (c) McCartney MacDonald Line in 1899.

Kathmandu Dilemma: Resetting India-Nepal Ties

The book Kathmandu Dilemma: Resetting India-Nepal Ties by Ranjit Rae, a former Indian Ambassador to Nepal (September 2013 to February 2017), is timely, given that bilateral relations have been marred by numerous controversies in the recent past. Nepal has sent two diplomatic notes—September 2021 and November 2019—to India in the last few years. Accusations in Nepal of India meddling in its internal affairs during the 2021 constitutional crisis, have further vitiated the atmosphere.

Securing India in the Cyber Era: Sameer Patil, Routledge, New Delhi and Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations, Mumbai, 2022, 82 pp., £16.99 (E-Book), ISBN 9781003152910

Cyberspace has become the most prominent arena for geopolitical contestation. As conflicts move to another dimension, countries are manipulating cyberspace to exploit vulnerabilities of adversaries to conduct espionage, data theft or make inroads into critical infrastructure to trigger cyber-attacks on critical infrastructure of a nation. Online criminal gangs, mostly with state patronage, are using sophisticated technologies to get the better of security apparatuses in cyberspace.

The Fractured Himalaya: India, Tibet, China, 1949-1962: Nirupama Rao, The Fractured Himalaya: India, Tibet, China, 1949-1962, Viking (Penguin), Gurugram, 2021, 609 pp., Price: INR 999.00 (Hardback), ISBN: 9780670088294

The Fractured Himalaya covers India-China relations during the initial 13-year period (1949–1962) of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The author, Nirupama Rao, a former member of the Indian Foreign Service, served as Ambassador to China, thereafter as Foreign Secretary of India and eventually became Ambassador to the United States. Post-superannuation, she received the Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship following the Meera and Vikram Gandhi Fellowship at Brown University, to conduct research on Sino-Indian relations. The author’s credentials have equipped her adequately to write this book.

Assessing the China Factor in the India–Australia Strategic Partnership after COVID-19

The article argues that India and Australia have a significant role to play amidst China’s expanding maritime footprint in the Indian Ocean and growing influence in the South China Sea. With worsening relations between India and China as well as Australia and China, both New Delhi and Canberra have been deepening their connections, particularly after the COVID-19 pandemic.

GCC at Crossroads: Challenges Amidst Unrest in the Arab World

The Arab unrest had a severe impact on the GCC, as it uncovered the existing internal fissures and limitations of the organization. Despite their success in integrating themselves on vital economic, security and political issues, divergent policies adopted by the individual member states on a number of regional issues in the aftermath of the Arab unrest was the main reason for the widening cracks within the organization.