The Winnable War

On a scale of 1 to 10, an American editor of a defence newspaper told me that his threat perception on terror attacks inside the United States would merit an eight.  A German minister rated it at four adding that war against terrorism was difficult to win “as they were far too many”.  An Indian [...]

Pakistan’s Fault Line

The so-called land of the pure, Pakistan, on its creation in 1947 had approximately 13 percent minorities residing within an Islamic population of 76 million. In its unholy fervour to achieve physical instead of the spiritual purity, the minorities were reduced to 2.5 percent even as the country’s population soared to 156 millions by the year [...]

Gilgit and Baltistan – Strategic Relevance

Gilgit and Baltistan are parts of India, as much as the rest of the J & K state is, but this region does not seem to figure too prominently on our collective radar screen. Instead, we seem to have made the sanctity of the LOC an article of faith and never “violate” it even though [...]

FDI in Defence Industry

The Government of India has been taking a number of steps to achieve the target of procuring 70 per cent of its defence requirements from indigenous sources by 2010. Despite its best efforts over the last two decades, India is nowhere near that objective as yet. We continue to depend on imports for all our [...]

C I Operations in the Northeast

Prior to 20th century guerrilla warfare was regarded as purely military form of waging war. It was the weapon of the weak against the strong. The guerrillas employed ‘hit and run’ tactics against their adversaries. This form of warfare was also applied to the role of irregular troops acting as partisans in support of conventional [...]

The Chinese Way

Just ten days before the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), on 21
September 1949, in his opening address at the First Plenary Session of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, Mao Zedong proclaimed, “The Chinese People Have Stood Up!” Some of the significant utterances in his speech are as follows:
Ours will no longer [...]