India

Three American presidents have spent nearly 16 years alternately cajoling, coaxing, threatening and bombing Pakistan, all with a goal of trying to change the Pakistani government’s decisions about the factions it supports in Afghanistan’s desperate civil war.

India’s decision to boycott China’s Belt and Road Forum has reinvigorated the much-needed debate on the strategic relationship between the two Asian giants. This debate comes on the heels of the February 23, 2017 India-China Strategic Dialogue in Beijing, where the two states found, among their divergences, a convergence on Afghanistan that contradicts some of Delhi’s received wisdom.

CNN's Fareed Zakaria in a recent report on the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan highlights Barnett Rubin's War on the Rocks article "It's much bigger than Afghanistan: U.S. strategy for a transformed Region".

Whether launching a few missiles at a Syrian air base, sailing an aircraft carrier toward North Korea (or not), dropping MOAB, or sending more troops to Afghanistan, tactical demonstrations of U.S. strength not tied to strategic objectives sooner rather than later deteriorate into bloody demonstrations of futility.

If there was any doubt that North-East Asia has become the most dangerous place on earth, recent events give ample evidence it has attained this dubious distinction

The US and Indian navies could carry out ‘benign naval and maritime activity’ during periods of diplomatic strain.

The latest Union budget unveiled on 1 February by finance minister Arun Jaitley has been widely commended as a “defining” and “watershed” moment, as providing “stability and predictability”, and as being “pragmatic”. However, this euphoria is distinctly lacking among Indian and foreign experts who have keenly tracked the budget as it pertains to defence salaries, pensions, expenditure and military modernization programmes. Indeed, the tone among strategic experts on the defence budget is distinctly sombre.