Articles By Vice Admiral Vijay Shankar
A Breakdown of Order: Politico-Military Dynamics in the South China Sea
By: Vice Admiral Vijay Shankar | Date: 19 Mar , 2021
Geopolitical trends are not ‘pop-up’ events. They represent an evolved aggregation of policies that manifest as direction in a state’s world view. The present politico-military dynamics in...
China and the Geopolitical Impact of COVID-19
By: Vice Admiral Vijay Shankar | Issue: Courtesy: IPCS | Date: 16 Dec , 2020
China’s dazzling growth story has been rudely disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic and the consequent chaos it has brought down on global economic systems. Ironically, in the past, its growth...
China and the Korean War: A Cracked Mirror for the (Global) Times?
By: Vice Admiral Vijay Shankar | Date: 25 Oct , 2020
An intriguing Global Times editorial was published earlier in October to mark the PLA’s 70th anniversary of “victory” over US forces in Korea. The analysis, rather economical with facts,...
The Resurrection of Xi ‘Zedong’
By: Vice Admiral Vijay Shankar | Date: 02 Oct , 2020
In 1981, five years after Mao Zedong’s death, China adopted an official verdict on his life. It called Mao a great revolutionary whose contributions outweighed the cost of his mistakes (Zhisui...
China's Curious Wars
By: Vice Admiral Vijay Shankar | Date: 13 Sep , 2020
Never to be undertaken thoughtlessly or recklessly wars are to be preceded by measures that make it easy to win. — Sun Tzu, Art of War (Griffith, p 39) The Chinese tradition of warfare...
Xi’s Disquieting Dream of National Rejuvenation
By: Vice Admiral Vijay Shankar | Issue: Courtesy: IPCS | Date: 01 Feb , 2019
In the run up to the First World War, Germany pursued a combination of overbearing diplomacy and brinkmanship to achieve policy goals, despite the risk of war. Demanding a review of the...
The Value of a Declared No First Use Nuclear Policy
By: Vice Admiral Vijay Shankar | Issue: Courtesy: IPCS | Date: 01 May , 2017
“Can it be a nation’s case to destroy the very purpose that polity sets out to attain; or as Milton put it “Our Cure, To Be No More; Sad Cure!” The sensibility of negotiated agreements to...
The CPEC: Corridor to Chinese Coffers
By: Vice Admiral Vijay Shankar | Issue: Courtesy: IPCS | Date: 01 Apr , 2017
Misshapen Marshall Analogy Deceptive arguments are current that the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) finds historic equivalence in the ‘Marshall Plan’. The Plan was an American...
Jihadi Aggression and Nuclear Deterrence
By: Vice Admiral Vijay Shankar | Issue: Courtesy: IPCS | Date: 11 Dec , 2015
Pakistan’s use of terror organisations as a tool of State policy to wage unconventional war against India (Christine Fair, Fighting to the End) has perverse consequences that link...