In the last decade, there have been fundamental changes in the nature, form and variety of peace operations. In fact, the very coining of a new term, ‘Peace Operations’ (PO), as distinct from the earlier ‘Peacekeeping Operations’ (PKOs), illustrates a new degree of diversity and complexity in these operations. India has been, and continues to be, a major player in UN Peacekeeping Operations (UNPKOs). It has participated in 41 of the 59 UN Missions established so far and has contributed more than 70,000 personnel.

India and Pakistan have fought four wars over Kashmir and have held several rounds of talks to resolve the 57-year-old issue, but without any tangible success. The only progress thus far has been that India has agreed to discuss the issue as part of the composite dialogue process and Pakistan has shown willingness to explore options other than the UN resolutions on Kashmir. Although both India and Pakistan appear trying to breakaway from the past and think afresh on Kashmir, yet both fail to bring about any significant policy shifts.

September 11, according to the Commission that investigated that catastrophic event, was a result of a failure of imagination. Iraq’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, on the other hand, could be characterised as a case of fertile imagination exhibited by US intelligence and the George W. Bush Administration. Intelligence failure is the facile answer given to describe what went wrong in both cases. This article offers a more nuanced answer that takes into account the political context in which the threat posed by Osama bin Laden was analysed and acted upon.

The paper seeks to study the challenges faced by the Pakistani state from the perspective of its vast ethno-cultural diversity which problematises the process of-nation building attempted by the Pakistani leadership since its very inception. The paper starts with a rudimentary definitional view of the concept of ethnicity and nationalism, and isolates the areas of friction in the way the Pakistani nation has been conceptualised and the way diverse ethno-cultural groups have evolved their identity through history

An attempt has been made in this article to assess the arguments in favour of a fundamental shift in Indo-US relations by revisiting the history of their bilateral relations since its formative period and comparing it with the present period. The paper strongly argues that the Indian decision to go nuclear in May 1998 played a catalytic role in bringing the two democracies together. It was Shakti 1998, which changed the entire scenario and augmented for a changed US policy towards South Asia, especially towards India.

The conceptual discourse, contributed to in the main by Western scholars, on the security and strategic stability of new nuclear weapon states like India and Pakistan seems alarmist. In reality, however, India and Pakistan have been mutually deliberating on various aspects of nuclear confidence-building measures (CBMs). This article is an effort to identify the issues of nuclear security concerns in two spheres – academic and policy formulations. The emphasis is more on the nuclear thinking of the two countries and the diplomatic challenges ahead particularly on the nuclear CBMs.

The paper examines the salient features of the principal statutory authority, the Export Administration Act (EAA), that is, at present, governing dual-use technology control in the US, and the frontiers of dual-use export control after the enactment of the new Act. An analysis of different provisions of the bills for the new Act indicates mixed features. It does not completely liberalise the control of dual-use technology, and continues to have in place a number of curbs.

Pakistan seems to have realised that with the silting of Tarbela Dam (it has lost more than 30 per cent of its storage capacity), it needs to build at least one, if not two, mega dams on the Indus at the earliest. President Musharraf has made an impassioned plea for the construction of new reservoirs and canals to ensure sustainable agricultural development

On March 1, 2005, Afghan President Hamid Karzai appointed Uzbek militia commander Abdul Rashid Dostum as Chief-of-Staff to the Commander-in-Chief of the Afghan armed forces – a post which he holds.1