To tackle the China threat, Taiwan has imported significant amounts of defence equipment from the US, among other countries, while also strengthening its domestic defence industrial base.
The negative list of embargoed defence items is one more step towards creating a strong domestic arms industry and making India self-reliant in defence production.
The SIPRI report on the volume of international arms transfers during 2015-19 highlights the strengths of key strategic partnerships such as Russia-India, US-Japan and China-Pakistan, reinforced by arms trade.
Ever since India and Pakistan conducted their nuclear tests in 1998, it has been the favourite pastime of many analysts writing on nuclear issues to cast the strategic stability in South Asia in dark tones. This urban myth is primarily a Western invention although at times writers in the subcontinent as well have taken some part in it.
The challenge lies in demonstrating to potential importers that India, currently the world’s largest arms importer, has the capacity to manufacture and export the equipment required by their armed forces.
While the intended targets of the Maoists are security forces personnel, often civilians and animals become casualties in blasts triggered by pressure mines.
Besides military targets, a number of strategic civilian targets, like urban data and communication centres, stock exchanges, factories and other centres of gravity could also be attacked by e-bombs.
Given the advertisement surrounding the use of MOAB, it is possible that the Trump administration is signalling to its adversaries the very lethal weapons in its arsenal and its willingness to use them.
Time and again, civilian masses the world over have been at the receiving end of legions of conventional weapons systems leaving destructive direct and indirect consequences in their wake. The copious arms -and their ammunition- currently in circulation range from assault rifles, rocket launchers, anti-aircraft weapons to pistols, machine guns as well as missiles, grenades and other explosive ordnances.
