Some gaps in the understanding are filled, but more questions emerge.
Too many trees have been felled and much ether used to debate the Indian offer to recommence peace talks with Pakistan. Most of the sensible debate — not the jingoistic bit of how we have been shamed by Pakistan cocking a snook at us — [...]
Why India’s offer of bilateral talks with Pakistan is a really bad idea?
The Acorn is known to choose his words carefully. So when he sets out to welcome the impending Indo-Pak talks, albeit cautiously and with a big caveat in tow, one has to sit up and take notice. His only rationale for welcoming the [...]
One quote from the Indian Foreign Secretary says it all.
Political power flows from the barrel of a gun.~Mao
Here is Nirupama Rao’s answer to the sudden surge in media pieces asking India to resume talks with Pakistan.
Karan Thapar: What about the opinion expressed by some analysts that if India were to resume the dialogue process, it [...]
The calls for recommencing talks with Pakistan do not stand to logic and are not grounded in reality.
There are periods in history in which it isn’t enough to say you’ve done your best, when the only test is whether you have done what is necessary.~Churchill
It seems that the wonderfully efficient marketing machinery at an Indian [...]
Two sensible answers. Counter China with open-minded caution. Look at China as an opportunity.
It is for good reason that K. S. Bajpai has been a huge favourite of the INI bloggers. Although his pieces appear rather infrequently in the media, Bajpai’s perceptive analysis and clarity of thought always shines through. So it came as a [...]
Sending troops to Afghanistan is a valid strategic option for India.
There’s a fine line between fishing and standing on the shore like an idiot. ~Steven Wright
In two separate op-ed pieces today, former army chief General Shankar Roychowdhury and defence analyst Ajai Shukla try to find ways for India to influence the events in Afghanistan. Roychowdhury [...]
If this is India-friendly opinion, what is the centrist view in Pakistan.
When he was a young officer with the Pakistan army, he believed — till the mid-1970s — that the only good Indian is a dead Indian. Then, as a serving and a retired general, he was associated with a Indo-Pak Track-II diplomatic initiative called [...]
Even the reasoning of a celebrated game theorist is fallacious.
One of the world’s most prominent applied game theorists, Bueno de Mesquita, has been regularly consulted by CIA — more than a thousand predictions with better strike rate than CIA’s own analysts — and big international corporates to “predict the outcome of any situation in which [...]
US should warm up to implications of its South Asia policy.
Why do you say that India wants to help strengthen Pakistan?
India understands that it is not in its interest to try to destabilise or undermine Pakistan’s security at this very sensitive time.[Dawn]
This is Robert Blake, the new US Assistant Secretary of State for South [...]
Deconstructing the major themes in his speech.
The Prime Minister’s speech in Parliament on the Indo-Pak Joint Declaration did little to resolve the contradictions and remove the confusion in everyone’s mind about Pakistan policy of the UPA government. The UPA chairperson, Mrs. Sonia Gandhi has further muddied the waters by suggesting that “till Pakistan shows concrete [...]
Andrew F. Cooper, writing in the latest issue of the Public Diplomacy magazine, contends that India — along with other BRIC nations — has moved on from being a middle power to an emerging power.
In economic terms, middle powers have been overtaken by the big emerging powers. These economies are garnering significant attention from the [...]
India must seek a role to bring Iran and US closer.
In the foreign policy domain, the Obama administration has been focussed on a few countries and regions. Foremost among them is AfPak, closely followed by Iraq. But the other major country where the new President is trying to steer a new course in US foreign [...]
India must secure its interests, not carp over imagined grievances.
Richard Holbrooke, during his recent visit to Pakistan and India, has said all the right things: the US will not mediate on Kashmir, India is not a part of his mandate and Obama administration is looking at India to play a much wider regional role. None [...]
Some observations and what it means for India.
While most of us were waiting for the AfPak strategy from the Obama administration, what came out on Friday was more of a Pak-Af strategy. There were no major changes in efforts being employed inside Afghanistan. However the focus of the strategy was more on Pakistan. Gauging from [...]
Testimonies in the US senate highlight these about the Pak army.
From the testimony of US Director of National Intelligence[pdf], Dennis Blair to the Senate Armed Services Committee:
Sustained pressure against al-Qa’ida in the FATA has the potential to further degrade its organizational cohesion and diminish the threat it poses. If forced to vacate the FATA and [...]
ExecuPundit quotes former US Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith:
It was a standard joke that State Department papers always had the same three options: [1] Suffer in silence; [2] do some diplomacy; [3] nuclear war. State would boldly support the second option.
Well, South Block in New Delhi seems no different!
Jaswant Singh is wrong about Parakram and the US.
During World War II, Oscar Levant, the pianist and wit, was asked by his draft board, “Do you think you can kill?” He replied, “I don’t know about strangers, but friends, yes.” BJP leader, Jaswant Singh is perhaps treading the same path now.
Do you think the BJP-led [...]
Think through. Bolder options. Rich dividends.
In today’s Indian Express, Professor C Raja Mohan charts out the course for Indian engagement with Obama administration over AfPak, to coincide with Richard Holbrooke’s visit to Delhi starting today. Two points from his prescription merit special attention. The first one.
Short of sending troops, New Delhi can to contribute in [...]
India must support trial of 1971 war criminals by Bangladesh.
One of the major issue raised by the Awami League during the recently held elections that led to their overwhelming victory was their promise of trials of war criminals from the Bangladesh war of independence. When the bill was placed in the Parliament, it placed the [...]
Only if Pakistan would carry out its threat on being rated at top in the new administration’s foreign policy agenda.
There is no mention of India or Kashmir on President Obama’s Foreign Policy Agenda on the White House website. Even the mention of NPT brings out countries like Iran and North Korea. Incidentally, India is not [...]
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