Interviews and Spotlights - Indian Defence Review

Interviews/Spotlights

One India & One China

By: B Raman | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 12 Apr , 2012

The strong economic relations between India and China and their co-operation in multilateral for a such as the recent Copenhagen summit on climate change should not blind one to the fact that the...

Iran's NBC and Missile Programme

By: RSN Singh | Issue: Book Excerpt: Asian Strategy and Military Perspective | Date: 09 Apr , 2012

Iran embarked on a comprehensive missile programme during the Iran-Iraq War. During the post war period, it has made a determined bid to enhance its missile arsenal and capabilities by reaching...

Subterranean threats to India-Sri Lanka relations

By: Col R Hariharan | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 05 Apr , 2012

According to a news item in the Colombo daily “The Island,” Sri Lanka intelligence services have received information that around 150 terrorists who returned to Sri Lanka from India were now...

Third Naval Base at Karwar

By: Vice Adm (Retd) GM Hiranandani | Issue: Book Excerpt: Transition to Guardianship: The Indian Navy 1991-2000 | Date: 26 Mar , 2012

During the 1970s, the conceptual requirement for a ‘Third Naval Base’ on the West Coast, in addition to Bombay and Cochin, crystallised. The requirements were: Large waterfront with...

Strategic Significance of Maldives

By: RSN Singh | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 24 Mar , 2012

Strategically significant and geopolitically sensitive, Maldives, a chain of 1192 islands 199 of which are inhabited and home to 3,15,000 people, has recently been brutalized by violence and coup,...

Taking Nuclear War-Fighting Seriously

By: Ali Ahmed | Issue: Vol. 27.1 -Mar 2012 | Date: 19 Mar , 2012

What are the implications of a nuclear battlefield? Since the early eighties, this question has been posed since Sundarji’s postal seminar on nuclear conflict while he was in command of the...

Afghanistan: All is not yet lost

By: B Raman | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 16 Mar , 2012

All is not yet lost in Afghanistan. The Taliban and its affiliates such as the so-called Haqqani Network are alive and active not only in the interior provinces, but even in Kabul. They still...

Tibetan unrest spreads from Sichuan to Qinghai

By: B Raman | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 16 Mar , 2012

The Tibetan unrest against the repressive policies of the Chinese authorities has spread from the Tibetan areas of Western Sichuan to Qinghai. According to details received late, Qinghai has...

Counter-Terrorism: The NCTC Controversy

By: B Raman | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 06 Mar , 2012

India has been facing the evil of terrorism since 1971 when two members of the Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) hijacked an Indian Airlines plane to Lahore and set it on fire after asking...

China: Better to counter microblogs than to block them

By: B Raman | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 25 Feb , 2012

According to Radio Free Asia, funded by the US State Department, Zhu Mingguo,deputy leader of the Guangdong provincial Government in China, which witnessed a people’s revolt in the village of...

National Counter Terrorism Centre Fiasco

By: B Raman | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 23 Feb , 2012

Before 9/11 the assessment in the US was that terrorist threats to the US from abroad would be more serious than home-based threats.The responsibility for co-ordinating preventive action was,...

The Tibetan Satyagraha

By: B Raman | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 18 Feb , 2012

The recent hard-line statements from the Han rulers of Tibet expressing concern over the situation in Tibet and their determination to crush the so-called splittist movement is a reflection of...

India-Iran Defence Cooperation

By: Dr Monika Chansoria | Issue: Vol 25.1 Jan-Mar 2010 | Date: 17 Feb , 2012

As Asian Nations work towards integrating familiar areas of mutual interests, defence cooperation by and large, serves as a significant tool that complements diplomatic enterprise. Collaboration...

Navies in the Indian Ocean

By: Vice Adm (Retd) GM Hiranandani | Issue: Book Excerpt: Transition to Guardianship: The Indian Navy 1991-2000 | Date: 17 Feb , 2012

To understand the role of the Navy in the 90s it may be important to review the circumstances in which the Navy was required to operate in that time “” especially with regard to the...

Countdown to China's first Aircraft Carrier

By: Maj Gen Sheru Thapliyal, PhD | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 17 Feb , 2012

< !DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> The issue of the Chinese aircraft carrier, the former Russian Varyag, has re-emerged in the last few days. Both the United States and Japan have asked China to “˜explain its perceived need for...

India's Role in Afghanistann - I

By: Bhashyam Kasturi | Issue: Courtesy: Aakrosh | Date: 17 Feb , 2012

Any study that seeks to understand the dynamics of Indias “presence” in Afghanistan with the application of soft power must realise that it is a carefully crafted piece of...

India and its neighbours

By: Kanwal Sibal | Issue: Vol 25.1 Jan-Mar 2010 | Date: 16 Feb , 2012

< !DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> It is considered almost axiomatic that management of relations with neighbours should be the first priority of any countrys foreign policy. The stakes are always high as conditions in its...