
Bharat Verma
The Nehruvian Blunder
In any future conflict, New Delhi’s political will and the capabilities of the Indian military should be such that China and Pakistan are hard-pressed to defend Tibet and Lahore respectively…

1962: नेहरू ने देश का किया बंटाधार!
नेविल मैक्सविल ने अपने ब्लॉग पर ‘हैंडरसन ब्रुक्स की जो रिपोर्ट रिलीज की है, वह स्पष्ट रूप से इशारा करती है कि 1962 का भारत-चीन यद्ध, जवाहरलाल नेहरू की गलतियों…

Kargil: Ours must live, enemy must die!
Even as the nation readies itself to pay homage to the extraordinary bravery displayed by the young officers and the men of the Indian Army during the Kargil conflict, the…

Mainstream India’s Military Power
On attaining independence, the first question that should have continually been thrown up was “What are the infirmities in our character that have made India remain under foreign rule and…
India must counter China’s imperial ambitions
First published on IDR print Issue Vol 24.4 Oct-Dec 2009. New Delhi cannot afford to sit around while others plot its destruction. Surrounded with sullied strategic environment and the spreading…
Blueprint to tackle Maoists
First Published on print issue of IDR Jul-Sep 2010 (Vol 25.3) THE BIG PICTURE Confronted with the Maoist menace, Civil Administration’s incompetence is making mountain out of a molehill by…
How to Setup A Modern Defence Industry in India?
Sixty-seven years of Independence and not a single combat aircraft has been produced by India! Despite the word ‘indigenisation’ featuring repeatedly in political rhetoric, one of the reasons is because…
If Pakistan splinters…
If Pakistan splinters, it will hit the biggest stakeholder and benefactor China. In order to safeguard its strategic interests, Beijing therefore will make every endeavor to prevent the breakup of…
Take the war to the enemy
New Delhi continues to fumble while India burns. Pakistan’s superior psychological warfare machinery further tied down the already overstretched Indian security forces in knots. Airports and railway stations are…
The myths on Pakistan
Indians have been spoon-fed for decades that stable Pakistan alone is necessary for India’s growth. Or that united Pakistan poses less threat than fragmented Pakistan. The myth propagated is that…
Pakistan: The Jihad Factory
Pakistan ultimately turned out to be the most dangerous place in the world. After witnessing the massacre of thirty-five innocent Indian citizens in the Valley, the American President travelled to…
Taliban set to takeover Pakistan
In the near future, Taliban and Taliban like groups will impose Afghanistan type Taliban regime on Pakistan. The civil war raging inside Pakistan in search of elusive ‘purity’ of philosophy…
Stable Pakistan not in India’s interest
Indians pose the biggest threat to the union of India. The reason is simple. An average Indian does not constitute a nation but is merely an individual. His personal well-being…
Prepare for the Next Great War
Today, India is ringed by turbulent states – Pakistan (land boundary with India 3,310 kms in the northwest), Nepal (land boundary with India 1,751 kms in the north), Bangladesh (land…
Leapfrog the Technological Gap
India needs to do a China. Beijing has successfully converted China into a low cost manufacturing hub of the world. Similarly, New Delhi should rapidly transform India into a low…
हमारा नहीं पाकिस्तान का हित दांव पर
प्रधानमंत्री नरेंद्र मोदी ने दक्षेस सदस्य देशों को अपने शपथ ग्रहण समारोह में आमंत्रित करने की पहल करके एक साथ कई उपलब्धियां हासिल की है। दक्षेस के मंच पर भारत…
सेना और व्यवस्था में न पनपे आशंका
पाकिस्तान के एक जनरल ने कहा था- ‘अगर भारतीय सेना टूट जाए, तो भारत को तोड़ा जा सकता है।’ यह वह बिंदु है, जिस दिशा में पाकिस्तान लगातार सोच रहा…
Chinese are coming…
After the Mughals and the British, it now appears to be China’s turn to encircle, enslave and make India a surrogate power. Apparently, China firmly believes that two tigers cannot…
‘The P-17 Frigates, heralds a paradigm shift in the design’
Interview with Rear Admiral KN Vaidyanathan, Director General Naval Design Shivalik, the first Ship of the P-17 Class, appears different from earlier designs of IN ships. What are the major…
How Antony’s incompetence has left India’s defences in a mess
In the past seven years Defence Minister A K Antony’s incompetence has ensured that India’s military capability rapidly shrinks. Primarily, the tax-payer spends money on appointing the defence minister to…
The Fake Military Coup
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh should order investigations by a retired Supreme Court Judge into the fake military coup propagated by former Defence Secretary Shashi Kant Sharma maligning and belittling the…
2014 में रक्षा की प्राथमिकताएं
हमारे देश में हर चीज के साथ ही असंगत दृष्टिकोण अपनाया जाता है। हम मुकम्मल तस्वीर देखने के आदी हैं। हम एक बड़ी तस्वीर में बहुत सारा खालीपन छोड़ देते…
Slow Pace of Army Modernization
Strange as it may seem, Indian genius can successfully launch multiple satellites or a spacecraft to Mars but seems hopelessly ill-equipped to develop a basic armament such as a rifle,…
Military: The Grid of Violence
Violence unleashed upon a nation can only be met by developing the capability to counter the violence. In the twenty-first century, unless societies with deep-rooted beliefs in non-violence and pacifism…
Strategy for incremental influence in Asia
In the unfolding geopolitical scenario, two major forces are driving the world today: modernisation and globalisation on one hand and terrorism on the other. The attacks on America on…
The Chinese Game Plan
With the opening of two fronts against New Delhi, Beijing will, in collusion with Islamabad, repeat ‘1962’ in the near future on an enlarged scale. The ‘peace’ witnessed in Kashmir…
China’s ‘New Cold War’ puts democracies in danger
The spread of two authoritarian streams, Chinese communism and the Islamic fundamentalism, in combination or otherwise, threaten the survival of democracies in Asia. First, Beijing deftly sucked in most of…
How India can acquire great power status?
Due to New Delhi’s slavish use of ‘carrot’ since Independence, without any equilibrium with the ‘stick’, the great power potential of India lies in tatters. In fact it threatens to…
End the neglect of the Military
Growing threat perceptions call for urgent sprucing up of the military machine which has been grossly neglected in India so far. The Pakistan Army’s strategy in the near future will…
India’s Shrinking Military Capabilities
Indian military capabilities shrink rapidly while the threats multiply. Instead of removing poverty, the politician turned poverty into business of vote-bank-politics. Result: Sixty-two years later Maoists control forty percent of…
Unmaking of a great power in the making…
Sixty-five years after Independence, the ‘functional anarchy’ is now increasingly becoming dysfunctional as disorder spreads across the Union of India. Midway, even before she could rise and despite the potential,…
2012: Multiplying security threats
India is surrounded with Islamic fundamentalist regimes, a rising communist super power and military dictatorship. The authoritarian regimes in the neighbourhood contradict India’s multi-cultural democracy. China’s primary aim is to…
India’s emerging defence doctrine
India is a unique country, with all the favourable geographical attributes of an offensive orientation. It is separated from the rest of the Asian landmass by the formidable chain…
Pakistan : The Next Battlefield
Ten years later, the forecast made in 2002 by the writer appears to be coming true-Editor. War on Terrorism will zero in on Pakistan as the next battlefield on two…
Pakistan unleashes Cyber War on India
The next generation of warfare, the cyber war can not only disrupt data-links, electronic devices and networks, but can also create panic by use of the social media as we…
The Winnable War!
The British nearly gave up war in Afghanistan recently and instead wanted dialogue with Al-Qaeda. Washington termed it defeatist and subsequently London rescinded the suggestion. The stalemate in the war…
Honeytrap: Media bashing of the Army on false pretext
On July 11, 2012 at approximately 6 pm one of the most responsible news channel in India claimed that an officer of Indian Army was caught in a honeytrap in…
Nervous China may attack India!
China will launch an attack on India before 2012. There are multiple reasons for a desperate Beijing to teach India the final lesson, thereby ensuring Chinese supremacy in Asia…
The danger from China
The multi-dimensional threat between 2011 and 2014 from China is real. Taken aback by screaming headlines in the media that nervous China may attack India in 2012, two former generals who…
Time New Delhi calls Islamabad’s Bluff!
Pakistan once again managed to befool New Delhi and the Indian media through its diversionary tactics. They cleverly diverted the attention from the unfolding big Abu Jindal story, where complicity…
Abu Jundal: New Delhi must change as Islamabad will never!
Prima facie it appears that Abu Jundal and Abu Hamza are assumed names of an Indian citizen, Syed Zabuddin Ansari. Lashkar-e-Toiba normally provides such assumed identities to its operators.…
Why India needs a survival strategy
Imperial China first gobbled up pacifist Tibet and now demands major territorial concessions from pacifist India to protect the flanks of the conquered land. With the imminent withdrawal of the…
India’s Shrinking Influence
Despite India’s pretensions of an emerging great power, its influence is shrinking -both, internally as well as on its external periphery. Internally, Naxalites and insurgent outfits control more than…
Iran-Israel spat: National Interest is Supreme
India appears to be caught in crossfire between Iran and Israel. New Delhi should evaluate the strategic dividends that accrue from Iran and Israel before it responds to the developing…
Pakistan at War with Itself
In the coming years, Islamabad will remain pre-occupied with internal strife without respite due to multiple contradictions arising out of the use of terrorism primarily against New Delhi as a…
Game Plan for Return of Musharraf
There is a clear link between Musharraf’s announcements to fight elections in 2012 and lead his party, propping up of Imran Khan, and Pakistan Army and the ISI. In a…
MoD extends battle winning advantage to the enemy!
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) with its superfluous layers of bureaucracy and the complicated defence procurement procedures, has not only delayed the modernization of armed forces but its inefficient…
Why India is unable to prevent terrorist attack?
The fact that the terrorists could target Delhi High Court twice within months with ease, displays the unprecedented helplessness of the state. Since the High Court is adjacent to the…
Develop Cutting Edge Defense Industries
To develop cutting edge defense industries, New Delhi must eschew the inherent divisive tendencies. Instead of consolidating Aero India 2009 as the foremost Asian aerospace show, we reduced its functional…
The Winnable War
On a scale of 1 to 10, an American editor of a defence newspaper told me that his threat perception on terror attacks inside the United States would merit…