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Doval’s Riyadh visit and I2U2’s steady progress demonstrate a nimble, pragmatic and business-like foreign policy.

The message in the murder is the obvious one. Kashmir’s terrain has changed, all the past verities no longer prevail. In the new situation, you are either for us, or against us, there is no middle ground.

The recent New Delhi visit of Singapore President Tony Tan Keng Yam, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the diplomatic relations, was very much fruitful to give a boost to Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj's 5s vision and enhance the skill development and cultural ties between the countries.

Lt Gen (retd.) David Barno, Director, Center for North-East and South Asia (NESA) at the National Defense University, Washington, D.C. along with Col (retd.) Jack Gill, also of the same center, visited ORF on 18 April 2008. LTG Barno made a presentation on "Situation in Afghanistan in the Context of Insurgency and Changing Nature of War".

Confronted with unemployment rather than gainful employment, rising aspirations and growing expectation, impatient youth could turn into a destructive force, giving rise to criminality and terrorism. Thus resultant social unrest may engulf South Asia.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa's choice of Russia for his maiden foreign visit after re-election has outlined the new set of priorities for post-war Sri Lanka

Though the Delhi visit of President Rajapaksa was CW Games-centric, it also caused raising of eyebrows in the strategic community in New Delhi, wondering if the re-elected President, who is scheduled to visit China later this month, is seeking to strike a parity in bilateral relations with the two Asian giants.

The end to ¿Karuna rebellion¿ inside the LTTE, as fast as it commenced in early March also marks the beginning of a new, rather revived pace in the Sri Lanka peace process. Within days of telling the world who was the boss in all the Tamil-speaking areas in the North and the East, the LTTE sat across the table with the Government team, facilitated again by the Norway-led Sri Lankan Monitoring Mission (SLMM),

Independent of the fate of the UNHRC vote this time, the recent referendum in distant Crimea should be a shocking eye-opener to Sri Lankan stake-holders of the 'ethnic issue', 'accountability calls' and all attendant concerns.

Two sets of people are upset with the way India is pursuing the peace process with Pakistan. In the first group are those in Kashmir who are, quite abruptly, faced with the reality of being irrelevant in the entire process. The second group is in Islamabad which is not quite sure about the direction the process is taking and is therefore discomfited.

In keeping the floor very low in the Wage Code Bill, the government seems to have succumbed to external pressure.

Head of the Syrian delegation to the 68th United Nations General Assembly and Foreign and Expatriates Minister, Walid al-Moallem, said that aggressive policies towards Syria must stop for any effective solution to the Syrian crisis to develop.

For both India and South Korea, cooperation in the civilian nuclear sphere is a subject of great importance. Both countries had signed an agreement in 2011 and since then, South Korea has been keen to sell its nuclear reactors to India but without success. Now, Seoul's interest has become stronger as it is competing with Japan.

Even before the hype over US President Barack Obama's visit to Delhi has died down, the Modi government is on the move to enhance its ties with China. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj's ongoing China visit is an important part of this effort.

After Sushma Swaraj's successful visit to Beijing, which managed to create a certain degree of 'warmth' in China's attitude towards India, now all eyes will be on Mr Modi's visit to China in May. But before that the border talks that are going to be held soon will play a key role in determining the course of events.

The message to countries in East and Southeast Asia, as well as India, is clear: Be ready for Beijing’s military intimidation if its unilateral alterations in the status quo are resisted.

Most observers blame a "trust deficit" for the current state of Indo-US relations. Actually, the idea of a "trust deficit" is merely a cover for the real problem - the lack of political will on either side to take the relationship between the two countries to the stage that the rhetoricians have been promising. Blame must be shared by both sides

By declaring that his talks with Pakistani counterpart, Khurshid Mehmud Kasuri would produce nothing dramatic or drastic, External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh might have robbed the event of the avoidable media hype, the like of which had attended on the ¿Agra summit¿ earlier. At the end of it, the two-day ministerial meeting in New Delhi was a cup that was not half-full. Nor was it half-empty. In turn, this indicated that the two Gover

The ORF conference stressed that the Sri Lankan state must be very sensitive towards creating the right perceptions about its policy of inclusiveness towards the Tamil minority

Two years after the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan, the debates around whether the group remains intact or has become divided have surfaced once again. In the immediate aftermath of the fall of Kabul in August 2021, there were speculations that the country could be going into a civil war or the Taliban would eventually come to a split. This brief analyses the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’s resurgence in Kabul and weighs in o

In the aftermath of the serial train blasts in Mumbai on July 11, the question uppermost in public mind has been, ''Why has India become the most affected target? Are we in a no-win situation against terrorism?''

In this shadowed theatre of subcontinental power, the art of war must be tempered by the craft of diplomacy.

Wargaming can aid in strategic thinking and operational preparedness and help assess potential outcomes in a conflict or a battlefield. In recent years, modern militaries have been moving to technology-based wargaming by developing better modelling and simulations and running AI-generated plausible scenarios to enhance understanding of threat environments and operational realities. This paper analyses the merits of technology-based wargaming and

Under the garb of a trade war, this is a high-stakes strategic conflict between a power which wants to preserve the status quo in its favour and one which wants to usurp that throne.

The rapid growth in military cyber capabilities of the countries in the Indo-Pacific combined with the use of assets from the cyberwarfare toolbox—in domestic and interstate contexts—is adding uncertainty to already competitive political, military, and economic relations. This issue brief assesses the cyberwarfare context in the Indo-Pacific, and reviews the military cyber capabilities of the region’s countries and their commitment to inter

The rapid growth in military cyber capabilities of the countries in the Indo-Pacific combined with the use of assets from the cyberwarfare toolbox—in domestic and interstate contexts—is adding uncertainty to already competitive political, military, and economic relations. This issue brief assesses the cyberwarfare context in the Indo-Pacific, and reviews the military cyber capabilities of the region’s countries and their commitment to inter

The proverbial Global South seems to be showing a fragmented approach to the crisis

The idea was to capture the different dimensions of the war on terror as has been perceived and to locate the war in the larger geo political context in order to appreciate and understand the consequences, according to Dr Ashley Tellis, a well-known senior US policy analyst.

There has rarely been a period in modern history, when the world has not been confronted with terrorism; somewhere or the other, in some form or another, for some reason or the other. As a mean of coercion through violence, terrorism ebbs and flows and keeps undergoing many mutations.

Cyber war is a subject that is highly contested among strategists and experts. This brief assesses the impact of cyber operations against strategic targets and demonstrates that while cyber war is a real phenomenon, it is far from producing decisive outcomes. The cyberspace is a medium to conduct military operations and several countries have made investments in capabilities to both attack and defend against cyber-attacks. The brief evaluates the

In the 1971 war against Pakistan, had Indian forces managed to push beyond Turtok and capture Thang, the subsequent Pakistani adventure in Kargil in 1999 or the threat to Siachen would have been infructuous.

The Indo-Pacific region is increasingly being viewed as a global centre of gravity, both for its economic and demographic potential, and the security challenges that could frustrate those possibilities. India—as a champion of the principle of ‘Free and Open Indo-Pacific’ or FOIP—has initiated engagements with its partners in the region, such as the Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative (IPOI) that aims to ensure the security and stability of the

The US wants to thwart China’s technological ambitions as much as Beijing wants to foster them. The US delegation that went to China earlier this month, clearly signalled that it was not in it for just the trade.

The Russia-Ukraine war has confounded observers, as much as it did the Russians themselves. Since erupting in late February, the war has not shown signs of abating any time soon. This brief argues that by its very nature, the war has lessons not just for the adversaries, but also the NATO alliance that is backing Ukraine, and even geographically distant China and India. For one, the war has both elements of the old eras—such as the mass

The terrorists may be an extreme minority, but they have successfully coerced the majority?or, to be more accurate, enthralled them?into sympathy for them. They have successfully also intimidated a large number of writers, artists, journalists, film-makers, many of whom live in exile.

War porn — like the regular thing — gratifies — never satisfies. It indulges the fantasy of those who think that war is the solution to the many problems they confront, personal and social.