Col Anil Athale

Many moons ago, from 1986-90, I was on deputation to Min of Defence in War History division and became friendly with many civil servant colleagues....

Currently all over the developed world, the issue of ‘migrants’ has assumed the centre stage. From US, where it is a major electoral issue, to...

PM Narendra Modi, confident of victory in the ongoing 2024 election has declared that he has already ordered ministers and officials to work on a...

In the current election season, the issue of India gifting the Kachchatheevu is land to Sri Lanka in 1974, has been raised as a poll...

Nothing signified the current international anarchy more than the exchange of missiles and air attacks between Iran and Pakistan on 16th and 18 January 2024....

The National Defense Academy (NDA in short) at Khadakwasla is celebrating its Platinum Jubilee this year. The Academy is justifiably proud of its achievement of...

19 November 1962 was the darkest day in the history of post-independent India. On that day as the famed 4th Indian Division of the Indian...

Yom Kippur War 1.0 began on the 6 Oct 1973 and was a watershed moment in the history of the Middle East. It was the...

The violence that began in May 2023 and seems to continue to date, has the potential to unravel peace in the entire North Eastern region....

The biggest lesson of Indian history is that we are negligent of our own history and do not know much about it and as a...

This essay won a ‘special prize’ in the first Chief of Army Staff Gold Medal Essay competition in 1987. Though dated in some geo-political aspects,...

The unalloyed truth about the Ukraine-Russia conflict is that it is a war that Russia cannot lose and Ukraine cannot win. As long as this...

The last three years saw a major change in India’s national security environment. On the one hand, Pakistan, beset by internal turmoil and economic bankruptcy...

In 1987 as I finished working on the official history of the 1962 Sino-Indian border conflict, one was filled with sadness at the negative impact...

As a longtime student of nuclear warfare, (I began to study it in 1965 as an NDA Cadet, my Staff College dissertation on this subject...

Conditioned by decades of ‘passive’ defence policies, most Indians, including military analysts, tend to see the happenings in South Asia in terms of narrow Indo-centric...

As India completes 75 years of independence, it also creates a new landmark in 5000-year-old history of India. If we count the period under British...

Russian invasion of Ukraine and the war that followed has continued for over 100 days. At the global political level this is a continuation of...

Luckily the ‘Agniveer’ scheme and violence in its aftermath have faded out of the media due to its cyclic nature. This gives us an opportunity...

The selective killings of Hindus and pro India Muslims in the valley are a reminder that war declared on us is not over yet. Right...

There is one constant in Pakistani policy towards India for last 75 years and that is a firm belief that India cannot stay as one...

In a book of the similar title, Prof. Graham T. Allison has analyzed the American decision-making process during the Cuban Missile Crisis of Oct 1962....

The pointless Russian invasion and the images of wanton destruction in Ukraine have been dominating the world stage for last several weeks. Most of us...

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that began on the 24 of February 2022 is yet to end with the military and diplomatic outcome still mired in...

Legislature, executive, judiciary and press are four pillars of a democracy but there is also a fifth one, the armed forces, without which the other...

In the 1960s, “Domino theory’ was a popular phrase used by the Western strategic analysts to justify American intervention in Vietnam. To jog the reader’s...

Arnold J. Toynbee, in his monumental ‘A Study of History’ (12 volumes) predicted in his final volume in 1961 that when the modernization process now...

Despite the Chinese attempts to cover its tracks some things stand out, • Many of the scientists from Wuhan lab have gone missing. • By...

The April 4, 2021, attack by Naxalites in Sukma district of Chattisgad resulted in 22 Policemen being killed. As per early reports around 400 Naxalites...

Indo-Pak relations have seen so many false dawns that one is skeptical that the current moves can yield any different results. On 18 March 2021,...

Ever since the border standoff between India and China along the Line of Actual Control (LAC for short) in Ladakh in May 2020, strategic analysts...

In this year full of pessimism, one is loath to add on to the pile of misery, but reality of last 70 years and our...

In April 2020, China amassed troops on Ladakh frontier with India prospect of a two front war has loomed large on Indian horizon. Two front...

An old Bollywood song (from Dev Anand’s film ‘CID’) ‘Kahin pe nigahe, kahin pe nishana’ (while eyes are fixed on something, the target is somewhere...

Formerly head and Joint Dir. War History division, Min of Defence and co-author of official history of 1962 Sino-Indian Border Conflict.He researched as Kennedy Fellow...

Some days back an ex-Pakistani diplomat had written a hilarious article in which this worthy predicted that in post Covid19 world, Chinese ‘soft power’ will...

Late Army Chief BC Joshi often told me that media is a force multiplier, he was of course talking in context of the ongoing insurgency...

Napoleon had once famously said that ‘morale to the material is like three is to one’. Military history that celebrates the glorious deeds of past...

The second decade of the 21st century has had an inauspicious start in the Middle East. The killing of an Iranian General in American drone...

As world in general begins to move towards widespread use of artificial intelligence (AI for short) authentic data becomes increasingly important. Battlefields of the future...

Pakistan’s PM Imran Khan Niyazi, in a sense outlined the basic contours of Pakistan’s Kashmir strategy. He harped on bloodbath post lifting of curfew. He...

One is not surprised that lazy strategic analysts and clueless media persons have been taken in by the Pakistani canard that it alone will bring...

The abrogation of article 370 by India has put Pakistani army, its ‘real’ ruler, at horns of a dilemma. Indications are that the world body...

There has been much jubilation in Pakistani strategic circles over the US volte face on Taliban. A desperate US are now ready to deal with...

In 1992, a remark by the then Army Chief, General SF Rodrigues that ‘good governance was as much the business of army!’ was deliberately picked...

It has been a long standing demand/suggestion of many military thinkers like late Lt. General Eric A. Vas and Maj. Gen. Keshav Pendse, that defence...

Part-1 As the first IDSA military history research fellow, I was engaged in studying the Anglo-Maratha wars of 18th and early 19th century. During my...

Kashmir has always had a rather unfortunate linkage with Afghanistan. The brief Afghan rule over valley from 1750 to 1819 is universally regarded as ‘dark...

The 26 November 2008 terrorist attack on Mumbai was India’s own 9/11. Immediately in the aftermath of the attack several measures were taken to identify...

As someone who has been involved in study of Kashmir problem since 1991, I was intrigued by the recent media talk of situation having gone...