Prashant Kumar Singh replies: The so-called Wolfowitz Doctrine was a controversial “Defense Planning Guidance” prepared in 1992 under the supervision of then US Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Paul Wolfowitz.

Abhay Kumar Singh replies: The term ‘Grey Zone Warfare’ has often been used in the strategic discourse in the context of explaining the antagonistic behaviour of feuding states, which may incorporate conventional and non-conventional tools and techniques or may rely entirely on non-conventional tactics, blurring the line between military and non-military actions and the attribution for events. 

Kishore Kumar Khera replies: Defence is a term used for actions or set of actions undertaken by an individual, system, entity, organisation or a state to mitigate damage from an attack or a possible attack. It normally but not necessarily relates to actions against physical aggression. Nowadays virtual dimension too is added in the overarching definition of defence.

Kishore Kumar Khera replies: Deterrence, a psychological phenomenon, based on reason and logic, is often used as a strategic tool in gaming various options in a competitive environment. Although in the domain of nuclear weapons, deterrence often retains the central stage, it is equally applicable in non-nuclear and even in non-kinetic domains. An illustration is a suitable method for understanding various shades of deterrence.

S. Kalyanaraman replies: Deterrence by Denial refers to State A building up requisite military capabilities and devising an appropriate strategy to deny the territorial objectives that State B might seek to achieve through military means and thereby deter B from initiating war for that purpose.

Vivek Chadha replies: The attempt at releasing a public copy of the joint doctrine must be commended for the challenges that it possibly faced. Given the strong views of individual services, the ability to bring out a document that ably encapsulates the same and yet avoids dissonance was the very challenge that the writers unfortunately did not entirely succeed in achieving. The doctrine represents the common minimum agreement of the services on a set of common guidelines, which rarely goes beyond text book fundamentals.