'The purposes of our document are three-fold: To lay out the opportunities that India enjoys in the international sphere; to identify the challenges it is likely to confront; and to define the broad approach that India should adopt as it works to enhance its strategic autonomy in global circumstances that are likely to remain volatile and uncertain for some time to come.'
One of the chapters in the document titled 'Asian Theatre' has quite elaborate comments on China, and opines that India's China strategy has to strike a careful balance between cooperation and competition, economic and political interests, bilateral and regional contexts. Rediff.com publishes verbatim a part of the chapter 'Asian Theatre'.
In 2020 India was compelled by China to change its national security strategy. From counter-insurgency, which the army has been focussed on for years, we shifted to conventional war, observes Aakar Patel.
'It is astonishing that such a serious issue be handled in so casual and cavalier a fashion, but this has become what is expected of this government,' observes Aakar Patel.
The Narendra Modi government on Monday appointed Arvind Gupta, a former Indian Foreign Service officer, of the 1979 batch, as Deputy National Security Advisor. This appointment comes within days of Nehchal Sandhu quitting as deputy NSA, citing personal reasons.
'Our strategy should be to 'hold the line' in the north on the Sino-Indian land frontier, but maintain and, if possible, enlarge India's current edge in the maritime south.'
India has consistently asked China to open up its market for IT and pharmaceuticals.
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