Articles By Col Anil Athale
Preserving the Autonomy of Logic of Force
By: Col Anil Athale | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 03 Oct , 2021
Legislature, executive, judiciary and press are four pillars of a democracy but there is also a fifth one, the armed forces, without which the other four may not exist. Armed forces are the...
Afghanistan: From the Perspective of Counterinsurgency
By: Col Anil Athale | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 27 Aug , 2021
The collapse of Afghan army without offering any resistance marks the end of American counterinsurgency operations. After a similar collapse of South Vietnamese Army in 1976, this is a second...
Is Afghanistan the First Domino?
By: Col Anil Athale | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 25 Aug , 2021
In the 1960s, “Domino theory’ was a popular phrase used by the Western strategic analysts to justify American intervention in Vietnam. To jog the reader’s memory, the said theory postulated...
India’s Tryst with Military History: Glass is half full!
By: Col Anil Athale | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 17 Jun , 2021
Defence Minister Shri Rajnath Singh’s announcement that the Defence Ministry will follow a policy of writing war history within 5 years of the conflict and most documents will be declassified...
Rise of China: A Historians Perspective
By: Col Anil Athale | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 22 May , 2021
Arnold J. Toynbee, in his monumental ‘A Study of History’ (12 volumes) predicted in his final volume in 1961 that when the modernization process now going on in India and China reaches its...
Decoding China’s Covid-19 ‘Miracle’!
By: Col Anil Athale | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 14 May , 2021
Despite the Chinese attempts to cover its tracks some things stand out, • Many of the scientists from Wuhan lab have gone missing. • By February 2020, the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) took...
Anti-Naxal Operations: How not to Fight a Guerilla War!
By: Col Anil Athale | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 11 Apr , 2021
The April 4, 2021, attack by Naxalites in Sukma district of Chattisgad resulted in 22 Policemen being killed. As per early reports around 400 Naxalites executed an ambush on a section of divided...
Will Indo-Pak Relations be Re-set?
By: Col Anil Athale | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 28 Mar , 2021
Indo-Pak relations have seen so many false dawns that one is skeptical that the current moves can yield any different results. On 18 March 2021, Pakistan’s Army Chief General QamarJaved Bajwa...
Genius of Shivaji the Great
By: Col Anil Athale | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 19 Feb , 2021
In 1987 as I was attending the Senior Command course at the College of Combat, Mhow, we had an officer from Bangladesh also as a fellow student officer. Once during a casual conversation, I asked...
My Wellington Days
By: Col Anil Athale | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 23 Dec , 2020
Admiral Arun Prakash (Retd) was the course senior of the 34th Defence Services Staff College Course (DSSC) of 1979 that I also attended. Arun Prakash has written a very thoughtful column (Indian...
Ladakh Standoff: Brinkmanship Gone Wrong
By: Col Anil Athale | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 02 Dec , 2020
Ever since the border standoff between India and China along the Line of Actual Control (LAC for short) in Ladakh in May 2020, strategic analysts have been struggling to decipher the Chinese...
Chimera of Atmanirbhar Defence
By: Col Anil Athale | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 29 Sep , 2020
In this year full of pessimism, one is loath to add on to the pile of misery, but reality of last 70 years and our Ostrich like attitude makes it likely that the dream of defence self-reliance is...
Two Front War Threat: A Historian’s Perspective
By: Col Anil Athale | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 15 Sep , 2020
In April 2020, China amassed troops on Ladakh frontier with India prospect of a two front war has loomed large on Indian horizon. Two front war situations are brought about by geo-political...
Decoding Chinese Strategic Intent!
By: Col Anil Athale | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 24 Aug , 2020
An old Bollywood song (from Dev Anand’s film ‘CID’) ‘Kahin pe nigahe, kahin pe nishana’ (while eyes are fixed on something, the target is somewhere else) best encapsulates the Chinese...
Bursting Myths of 1962
By: Col Anil Athale | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 23 Jul , 2020
Formerly head and Joint Dir. War History division, Min of Defence and co-author of official history of 1962 Sino-Indian Border Conflict.He researched as Kennedy Fellow at Presidential Archives in...
The Coming Geo-Political Earth Quake!
By: Col Anil Athale | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 05 May , 2020
Some days back an ex-Pakistani diplomat had written a hilarious article in which this worthy predicted that in post Covid19 world, Chinese ‘soft power’ will help in gaining ascendance over the...
War against Covid-19: Role of Media
By: Col Anil Athale | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 25 Apr , 2020
Late Army Chief BC Joshi often told me that media is a force multiplier, he was of course talking in context of the ongoing insurgency in Kashmir. I had a firsthand experience of the power of...
Red Flag over Kabul
By: Col Anil Athale | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 05 Mar , 2020
As has been the practice over the years, attention of the entire Indian strategic community is focussed on the effect of US Taliban deal in terms of the threat the emboldened Taliban will pose to...
Role of Military History
By: Col Anil Athale | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 23 Feb , 2020
Napoleon had once famously said that ‘morale to the material is like three is to one’. Military history that celebrates the glorious deeds of past can boost the morale of soldiers and citizens...
Middle-East Conundrum and Indian National Security
By: Col Anil Athale | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 24 Jan , 2020
The second decade of the 21st century has had an inauspicious start in the Middle East. The killing of an Iranian General in American drone strike has raised the temperatures in the Middle East to...