Prakash Nanda
Will F-16s follow President Biden to Ukraine?
While US President Joe Biden’s historic surprise visit to Ukraine on the eve of the first anniversary of the Russian invasion of that country and his fresh offer of $460…
Tawang, Tibet and Taiwan
Unlike its aggressive strategic designs that resulted in the major clash with India in Ladakh’s Galwan valley in June 2020, the latest India-China skirmishes in Tawang on December 9 seems…
Eight Lessons of Galwan
One year after the Galwan incident, it is worth analysing the lessons of this clearly avoidable tragedy in which 20 brave Indian soldiers were martyred but not before killing more…
Cracks in Indo-US Bonhomie
It is nothing but hugely embarrassing that India and the USA have exchanged words, though only hours back their Navies were exercising side by side in what was the first…
Modi’s Foreign Policy Moments
In June 2017, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi happened to be the first foreign head of the government whom the then US President Donald Trump hosted in the White House.…
Protecting India’s Air Power
With Bengaluru staging one of Asia’s largest air shows this month, in which international defence and aerospace companies are going to raise the sales pitch, pursuing multi-billion rupees contract opportunities…
Challenges Before Theatre Commands
Will the year 2021 see the realisation of the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Bipin Rawat’s proposed road¬map for the restructuring of the Indian Armed Forces into five distinct…
Skilling Gaps in Defence Production
In accordance with its “Atmanirbhar Bharat” policy,the Government on August 10 announced a ban on import of 101 weapons, platforms and equipment. Later, none other than Prime Minister Narendra Modi…
Time for an American base in an Indian island
If anything, the just concluded visit of Defence Minister Rajnath Singh to Russian capital Moscow for attending the meet of the defence ministers of the member countries of the Shanghai…
Justice for the Forces
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman does not seem to have done justice to the country’s defence forces and their preparedness, which, ironically, she was looking after as the Defence Minister during…
India and the United States: A Delicate Balance
These are the bad days for the Indo-US relations. Some of the recent decisions by the Donald Trump Administration have complicated matters for India. The bad health of the relationship…
Should India work with the United States to stabilise Afghanistan?
It is a rare coincidence that on October 24 soon after Afghan President Ashraf Ghani concluded his “one-day working visit” to Indian capital, the United States Secretary of State Rex…
The Issue of Rohingyas
The opposition parties and the habitual critics of the present dispensation have now made the presence of about 40000 Rohingyas in India a political issue. With the usual and unthinking…
India’s Doklam gains
Now that 73-day long standoff between the troops of India and China at the Doklam tri-junction (India, China and Bhutan) has come to an end, a dispassionate analysis of the…
Doklam Standoff: A case of Chinese duplicity
Consistency has never been a virtue for the Communist rulers of China in settling their border disputes with the neigbours. They have used different principles for different countries. And this…
Operation Bluestar: The British connection
There seems to be an avoidable controversy over the British connection in the unfortunate Operation Bluestar in June 1984 that saw the Indian Army entering the sacred Golden Temple to…
Enemies of India’s nuclear power
Supposedly among America’s “oldest and largest nonpartisan, nonprofit investigative news organizations”, The Center for Public Integrity (CPI) has over the last one week, carried four reports that damn India’s nuclear…
Thinking Beyond Pakistan
Many friends and colleagues have wondered why I have not commented on the recent parleys between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif at Ufa in Russia…
Another partition?
The other day I was stunned to hear from a close confidant of former Bihar Chief Minister and union railway minister Lalu Prasad Yadav that unless somebody like Narendra Modi…
Why Russia still matters
Russian President Vladimir Putin is visiting India in the second week of December for what will be the 15th annual summit between the two countries. He is scheduled to address,…
The 1962 lessons
China invaded India in 1962. Though there is a view that the exact date of invasion was October 10, the most acceptable one is October 20, 1962. The war ended…
Beyond India-China Bonhomie
How does one rate Chinese President Xi Jinping’s just concluded three-day visit to India? If one goes by the body language of the Chinese President and the Indian Prime Minister…
Understanding the Article 370
The recent suggestion of the Gujarat chief minister and BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi at a rally in Jammu that the nation should debate the usefulness of the Article…
Is India Scared of China?
Ms Annette Lu, the Vice President of the Republic of China, better known as Taiwan, is still finding it hard to believe that the Vajpayee government did not allow her…
Indian Foreign Policy under Modi
Speech by Prakash Nanda at Australia-India Institute, University of Melbourne, on May 6, 2013 First of all, I am grateful to the Australia -India Institute for inviting me and providing…
Dalai Lama is India’s boon, not bane
New Delhi, India – Is the Dalai Lama’s presence in India a major impediment to the growth of normal relations between India and China? To put the question differently, would…
What is Modi’s military vision?
Recently I had written in these pages on the importance of Narendra Modi’s strategic vision. That was dominated by the theme of foreign policy. But what about Modi’s military vision?…
What is Modi’s strategic vision?
BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi is slowly uncovering his foreign policy vision. The other day while campaigning in Arunachal Pradesh he expressed his concerns over “Chinese assertiveness” and comforted…
Good Governance and Foreign Policy
As had been the practice with his predecessors, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has started the exercise of rewarding or taking interests of his close civilian officers before demitting office.…
Refusing to learn from Mumbai attacks
It is five years since that dreadful night of November 26, 2008, which saw 10 terrorists making an amphibious landing onto the jetties of Mumbai, and proceeding to carry out…
The avoidable political storm
Former Army Chief V K Singh is again in news. Of course, one may ask when he was not in news. He had a stormy innings as the Army Chief(…
Cutting the Syrian knot
A war on Syria with disastrous consequences for the rest of the world has presumably been avoided. The Obama Administration was all set for launching the war, ostensibly as a…
Engineering Terror
Two dreaded Indian terrorists – Abdul Karim Tunda and Yasin Bhatkal – have been apprehended recently near Indo-Nepal border. Both of them had developed significant Pakistani connections; in fact they…
Sharif: Pakistan’s next Prime Minister?
The other day while watching noted television journalist Karan Thapar’ s “Devil’s Advocate” programme, I was impressed by Pakistani leader Nawaz Sharif’s “sincere” assurance that if elected to the office…
Uncomfortable questions on land-swapping with Bangladesh
Pakistan has done it again. In its continuing hybrid war against India(about which I have already written in this column), two terrorists belonging to Hizbul Mujahedeen, which is based in…
Revisiting the Defence Acquisitions
Predictably, the present scam involving the VVIP chopper deal that has surfaced following the arrest of key officials of the firm that produces Augusta Westland -101 choppers in Italy has…
Pakistan’s Hybrid War
A peculiarly important news item that I came across while writing this column (January 10) is about the Manmohan Singh government’s decision to implement the visa-on-arrival facility at the Attari-Wagah check…
Time to say Good Bye to Prithvi Missiles?
Recently I attended a round-table symposium on how “Missile transparency” could be an important confidence building measure (CBM) between India and Pakistan. It was organised by the New Delhi-based…
China humiliates India by offering cash tips
How does one view the tips (“gift”) of Rs. 50000 that General Liang Guanglie, the outgoing defence minister of China, who has just concluded his five-day India visit, gave each…
Turmoil in Bodoland
Assam is burning as I write this. Ethnic clashes between the Bodo tribes (Hindus) and “Bengali Muslims” (most of them being immigrants) have already consumed 40 lives and resulted in…
Sri Lanka: Disturbing Questions
Some years ago, I was in Sri Lankan capital Colombo. On learning that my home state happens to be Odisha despite my Delhi-upbringing, all of a sudden, the general manager…
Silent Invasion
In its latest “Annual Report”, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has admitted that checking illegal migration from Bangladesh is a major challenge “considering the porous nature of the international…
India’s Tibet?
The act of self-immolation by the Tibetan protestor Jamphel Yeshi on March 26 in New Delhi against the visit of the Chinese President Hu Jintao has hit the international headlines.…
Indo-Pak: Limitations of Peace Talks
One always has a lot of emotional attachment with his or her place of birth. Therefore it is understandable why Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has a very soft corner…
Three cheers for AFSPA
By no stretch of imagination, Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah can be considered a competent administrator. His record in office has been pathetic, to say the least. Yet,…
The Hina factor
External Affairs Minister S M Krishna says that he is “satisfied” at the progress achieved during the India-Pakistan dialogue on July 27 at New Delhi. According to him, his…
Laden and Ladenism
Osama Bin Laden has been killed by the Americans, though many Pakistanis and Arabs do not believe so in the absence of such “hard evidence” as displaying his dead…
Misreading Pakistan
The recently revealed WikiLeaks documents mentioned, among others, how the then national security advisor M K Narayanan had indicated once to his American interlocutors, and that too, in the presence…
Hostages on Sea
As I write this, family members and supporters of the six Indian sailors onboard MV Suez, an Egyptian ship, captured by Somali pirates in August 2010, remains uncertain. With…
Dark Clouds over Pakistan
It all began in June 2009. Asia Bibi, a farm hand from the village of Ittan Wali in Sheikhupura District of the Punjab province in Pakistan, was asked to fetch water.…