Strategic Analysis

Bhutan’s Foreign Policy Determinants: An Assessment

This article assesses the shifting preferences of Bhutan towards the foreign policy determinants. Three determinants (national security, political culture and economic engagement) have been studied as they play a significant role in shaping Bhutan's policy behaviour. These determinants have been analysed with respect to India, Nepal and China, three countries that have been of critical interest to Bhutan's foreign policy.

Medha Bisht |
January 2012 |
Strategic Analysis

Examining China’s Hydro-Behaviour: Peaceful or Assertive?

China is a thirsty country desperately in need of water—a lot of it. In order to meet its water and energy requirements in the densely populated and fertile northern plains, it is successively making interventions in the Tibetan rivers in the southern part through dams and diversions. While China is well within its riparian rights to do so, a set of externalities involving the principles of water-sharing and lower riparian needs—stretching from Afghanistan to Vietnam—raise concerns.

Climate Change and Conflict in South Asia

It is now commonly accepted that small island countries are facing an existential threat because of global warming and the consequent rise in the level of the oceans.

P. K. Gautam |
January 2012 |
Strategic Analysis

Comment on ‘The Global Nuclear Non-Proliferation Paradigm and India’

Rajiv Nayan's article is both important and interesting. It is important because nuclear weapons pose a threat to humanity and the planet that in magnitude, severity and immediacy is the gravest of all known risks confronting us today.

‘Social Capital’ and its Significance in Reimagining Chindia

Writings on India–China relations in recent years are increasingly seen to be imputing Machiavellian realism to the political and, increasingly, economic sphere of interaction.

China’s Growing Economic Presence in Ukraine and Belarus

China is gradually increasing its economic and commercial presence in Eastern Europe by signing bilateral agreements with countries that are still in transition, some of which are members of the European Union (EU).

India’s Overseas Assets: Do They Contribute to Energy Security?

When a resource-deficient country becomes industrialised lifestyles become increasingly energy intensive, compelling it to seek resources overseas.

India’s Economic Miracle and its Impact on Nepal

For a long time, it was common practice to term the rate of economic growth in India the ‘Hindu rate of growth’—a derogatory term for the low growth rate of the economy.

National Interests and International Commitments: the Problem of Enforcing Sanctions

Recently it has been proposed by the United States that economic sanctions be applied by the international community against the Khomeini regime. Economic pressure is sought to be initiated against the regime in an attempt to force it to change its stand on certain policy matters, more specifically on the issue of holding Americans in Iran as hostages. Once again the whole concept of sanctions has been brought into prominence. The viability of sanctions as instruments of pressure, aimed at bringing about certain internal and/or external changes within the target state is open to debate.

The Unfinished Global Revolution: The Limits of Nations and the Pursuit of a New Politics by Mark Malloch-Brown

Books about the UN, like the politicians who support it, evidently do better when they make little outward mention of that international organisation. While the cover of most editions of this nine-chapter book is adorned with UN blue and those initials are highlighted in the ‘unfinished’ of the title, the United Nations is mentioned nowhere explicitly until a chapter or two in. This is no criticism: the UN is a flawed body that everyone knows but few understand, and smuggling it onto people's reading lists may be one of the few ways to address that.