Security personnel

The emphasis is on the descriptive aspects of India's national security system

A national security primer

Business Standard

One chapter in the book focuses on how Pakistan acquired nuclear deterrent; it then proceeds to explain Pakistan's proliferation links with Iran, Libya, North Korea

How Pakistan got the Bomb

ASEAN

ASEAN Miracle

The proposition forwarded in this book is intriguing but the editors may be overstating the case

The ASEAN Miracle review: Does the grouping deserve the Nobel Peace Prize?

Not War, Not Peace? is a vital read for anyone interested in the protracted India-Pakistan conflict

Borderline strategies against jihad

Rarely did the left-wing Praja Socialist Party (PSP), the Hindu nationalist Bhartiya Jana Sangh (BJS), and the liberal Swatantra Party ever find common ground throughout their existence. Fewer still were occasions when the survival of the Indian government in the Lok Sabha was contested due to conflicts taking place far way from India. And only once did India recognise a state and yet defer diplomatic ties for as long as 42 years. Such is the enigma of India's foreign policy towards Israel that it has been the cause of all these three rare occurrences.The Evolution of India's Israel Policy is a scholarly work in which the author Nicolas Blarel, an Assistant Professor of Political Science in Netherlands, develops a framework to explain the change in India's relationship with Israel. What he provides here is a dispassionate and analytically rigorous account of India's policy in West Asia.The objective of this work is to raise and answer some key empirical questions. Why did India not est

India's balancing act in West Asia

Russia is at the forefront of geostrategic power shifts again. After witnessing impressive economic growth over the past 15 years, the Russian rouble has seen a dramatic fall, fuelling fears of a deep recession. This decline can be attributed to falling global oil prices and the European Union/United States sanctions in the wake of Russian aggression in Ukraine. The falling oil price has hit oil and gas export economies, like Russia, Iran and Venezuela, far worse than it has affected the nascent shale gas economy in the United States. On another front, Russia has also adopted a revised military doctrine that labels the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) build-up in East Europe as a "violation of international law".At such a precarious juncture, The New Cold War gives an insight about the ideology, domestic political situation and foreign policy of Vladimir Putin's Russia. The author, Edward Lucas, is a senior editor at The Economist who has covered Central and Eastern Europe for

Geopolitics of the New Tsarism

India's Afghan Muddle is set against the backdrop of the imminent withdrawal of United States forces in Afghanistan and attempts to highlight India's options in the emergent geopolitical scenarios in the region. The author, a professor of international relations at King's College London, has been a long-time observer of South Asian politics and security issues. In this work, Mr Pant has relied on news reports and independent analyses, from India and elsewhere, to construct an Indian narrative on the Afghanistan imbroglio.The objective of this work is threefold. First, the author draws attention to the urgency of the situation. He makes a case for India playing a proactive role in Afghanistan considering that a power vacuum will embolden forces that will inflict great damage to the Indian national interest. The second objective is to review the trajectory of India's Afghanistan policy to demonstrate how "India has largely been reactive in a strategic environment shaped by other actors".

India's Afghanistan predicament

The Permanent Court of Arbitration verdict on the India-Bangladesh maritime dispute, which largely upholds the Bangladeshi claim, has important lessons for India's Saarc policy

Pranay Kotasthane: The lure of legalising bilateral disputes

Part ethnographic account, part historical narrative, this work analyses the problems that have consistently plagued this ethnic group

The pashtun conundrum

Tibet: An Unfinished Story  offers a sympathetic Western perspective on Tibet