'All the government needs to do is to identify clear political and strategic objectives and to give the military planners a free hand,' asserts Ajai Shukla.
'India's military posture has become significantly stronger than China's on the 3,500-kilometre Line of Actual Control.' 'This is enhancing confrontation between the two sides,' points out Ajai Shukla.
China plans to divert about 200 billion cubic metres of water annually from the Brahmaputra at its highest point, namely the Great Bend, where it turns into India. China's Brahmaputra dam will severely impact India, warns former senior RA&W officer and China expert Jayadeva Ranade.
Thimpu apparently didn't think it necessary to take Delhi into confidence. Bhutan is loathe to getting dragged into the geopolitical rivalry between India and China. And for Beijing, this was too good an opportunity to be missed to thumb its nose at the powers-that-be in Delhi, points out Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
In all likelihood, the next conventional Chinese attack on India would be preceded by a massive cyber attack designed to cripple Indian networks and interfere with our disaster-relief programmes.
Besides IOC, ONGC Videsh Ltd has also sought two discovered fields from the 16 fields that Iran is likely to put on auction shortly
India will pay Iran $900 million in two tranches beginning next week to clear part of the past dues for crude oil it buys from the Persian Gulf nation.
'At this point, neither the army or the IAF has that immediate, punitive deterrent power against Pakistan.' 'Forget a three-week war; on the LoC, where the action is, Pakistan has until now fielded better infantry weapons, body armour, sniper rifles, and matching artillery' points out Shekhar Gupta.
India has asked refiners that owe about $6.5 billion to Iran for oil imports to build up dollar and euro balances to avoid downward pressure on the rupee if six world powers and Tehran reach a final nuclear deal.
On December 10, Kissinger began to encourage the Chinese to take action against India: 'If the People's Republic were to consider the situation on the Indian subcontinent a threat to security, and if it took measures to protect its security, the US would oppose efforts of others to interfere with the People's Republic.' On the 50th anniversary of India's greatest military victory, Claude Arpi recalls how the US suggested that China intervene militarily on Pakistan's side.
'When armies start attacking with clubs and batons, then at some point this can take an escalatory spiral and spin out of control.'
It is the country's second aircraft carrier, after the Liaoning, and the first to be made domestically.
The UAE central bank will then make payments in dirhams to Iran.
'The combination of the LeT and the ISI is the most dangerous terrorist challenge in the world because it carries a real and present danger of provoking nuclear war.'
Narrowing of differences on competing territorial claims along the un-demarcated LAC might take weeks, if not months, of hard-nosed negotiations. Without some give and take on both sides, the impasse will be hard to resolve, observes Virendra Kapoor.
It is time the new government, unencumbered with the burden of past, initiates a wide ranging review and open debate on the security issues to rectify our short term and long term shortcomings. It has taken some wise steps but has to go beyond this to identify the structural weakness and create systems, says Colonel (retd) Anil Athale.
'While China has been hiking its defence spending, India has done precious little in implementing the Manmohan Singh government's decision of raising a 90,000-strong China-centric Mountain Strike Corps,' says Rajeev Sharma.
India's Iran imports rise to 276,800 bpd vs 195,600 bpd in 2013.
'The Chinese are only about 160-170 km behind.' 'It will not take much time for them to bring their troops back, considering that they have better infrastructure -- and the weather is now favourable.' 'They can move in much faster as the terrain favours them.'
'If the jihadi infiltration attempts are assisted by the Pakistan army, the Indian Army will retaliate strongly.'
India's imports from Iran rose to 250,200 barrels per day
'The military aim in a future conflict, if it can't be avoided, should be to cause maximum damage to the adversary's war waging capability and capture limited amount of territory as a bargaining counter,' says Brigadier Gurmeet Kanwal (retd).
As many as 17 three star generals will retire before General Bajwa hangs his boots, says Rana Banerji, who headed the Pakistan desk at the Research and Analysis Wing, India's external intelligence agency.
'What we are actually missing in India is a platform wherein the government engages with cybersecurity experts, gets them employed and then utilises their capability to deter such attacks.'
The Pakistani military may shortly give Imran Khan the boot, substituting him with another puppet, predicts Lieutenant General Prakash Katoch (retd).
The failure to restructure our armed forces in line with contemporary needs 14 years after the Kargil war will impose strategic costs beyond just delays and scandals, says Nitin Pai
'The Chinese fault lines are tremendous and we need to exploit them.'
'If one puts the context of what Xi Jinping said at the UN about not wanting a 'hot or cold war with any country', one realises that his speech was quite bizarre.' 'The world does not expect such statements from China, a nation aspiring to be a superpower.
'The fact that a rural Kashmiri boy was brainwashed into killing himself and others means there is an active programme that exists which does such recruiting and there will potentially be other such individuals out there,' warns Aakar Patel.
Oil Minister M Veerappa Moily has suggested pricking the ballooning oil bill with everything from a street theatre campaign encouraging lower fuel use, to shutting fuel stations, to increasing imports from Iran.
The PM's vision of a lean, agile, mobile and technology driven force requires more than 1.7 percent of GDP that it now gets.
'Pakistan's recent utterances and tendency to use pinpricks to try our patience appear reminiscent of 1965. We are a strong nation, emerging stronger,' says Lieutenant General Syed Ata Hasnain (retd).
'Stand-alone' trip to North American nation and a strong track record in Gujarat open doors to business.
Did Xi deliver a message to Modi at Mamallapuram, which though couched in a velvet glove was time-bound? What was that message? It is clear Indian/Israeli/US spy satellites would not have missed detecting Chinese troop movements towards the Ladakh-Tibet frontier. Then why did some important functionaries in the Government of India choose to only ask the Russians about this in April 2020? Was Russian reassurance of Chinese troop movements being part of a routine exercise the reason that the Leh-based XIV Corps did not mobilise itself for its annual summer exercises near the LAC? A fascinating excerpt from Iqbal Chand Malhotra's new book Red Fear: The China Threat.
'The range of purchases throw a light on India's threat perception as also its perceived role of being a stabilising influence in the region,' says Brigadier S K Chatterji (retd).
'New Delhi showed itself willing -- at least for a period -- to tolerate the risk of conflict and to withstand Beijing's implicit and explicit threats.' 'But it also continued to try to cut some kind of deal with China to reduce tensions.'
India must break out of this strategic triangulation between China and Pakistan. We need to settle our issues with one of the two, notes Shekhar Gupta.
Subrahmanyam Jaishankar's worldview sets him apart
The defence ministry has signed off on a national security plan that it cannot fund. Ajai Shukla reports
What India has failed to acknowledge is that sub-conventional war is the name of the game and irregular forces have emerged with greater strategic value over conventional and even nuclear forces, and reliance purely on conventional force and diplomacy is grossly inadequate, says Lt Gen Prakash Katoch (retired).
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