The Strategist by Vijay Shankar
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Xi and China’s Fourth May Revolution: Can State Control and People’s Empowerment be Reconciled?
Vijay Shankar · 23 May, 2019 · 5590
Since 1919, the Fourth of
May movement has been evoked by Chinese scholars and the Chinese Communist
Party (CCP) as a beacon for independence
and enlightenment. How the array of critical thoughts that the movement
represented will ...
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Why Nuclear Doctrinal Stasis is Not a Bad Idea
Vijay Shankar · 24 Apr, 2019 · 5582
There
is an inherent limit to how precisely predictions can be made, let alone prognosticate
impact particularly when polity, power, and people are involved. The historian
Michael Howard cautioned against those who would play the oracle: ...
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Xi’s Disquieting Dream of National Rejuvenation
Vijay Shankar · 31 Jan, 2019 · 5553
In the run up to the First World War, Germany pursued a combination of overbearing diplomacy and brinkmanship to achieve policy goals, despite the risk of war. Demanding a review of the international order that would confer on it a domi ...
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Deen Aaya
Vijay Shankar · 24 Sep, 2018 · 5516
The
impact of organised religion on nations has historically been a sense of
contrived significance, but in essence has neither refined society nor elevated
power status. The case of civilizational encounters is curious. The vanquished w ...
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The Dilemma of a Threshold
Vijay Shankar · 01 Aug, 2018 · 5498
The nuclear planner is acutely involved in analysis of when and under what political conditions opposing leadership (military or otherwise) may resort to the employment of nuclear weapons. For nations with a policy of no first use (NFU), th ...
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The Regression of Nuclear Policy
Vijay Shankar · 03 May, 2018 · 5462
Contemporary trends positing the reversibility of a nuclear exchange presupposes that the antagonists are able to understand mutual aims, objectives and have unimpeachable knowledge of boundaries within which the conflict is to be played ou ...
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Quad: The Making of a Robust Entente?
Vijay Shankar · 12 Mar, 2018 · 5446
The force planner’s primary task is to ensure that the military element of national power alongside economic and political elements supports national strategy. India had in 1950 defined national goals in the Preamble and Directive Pri ...
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No Responsible Steward of Nuclear Weapons, This
Vijay Shankar · 01 Jan, 2018 · 5413
Two seemingly disparate incidents in recent days hold the portents for unsettling times. The first was the 'absconder General' and erstwhile Pakistan President Musharraf’s declaration on 5 December 2017, of not only his cosy ...
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“Taking Centre Stage in the Worldâ€
Vijay Shankar · 28 Nov, 2017 · 5399
When Chairman Xi declared at the opening of the 19th Congress of the Communist Party of China, “It is time for us to take centre stage in the world,” he may have drawn this deduction from two perceived shifts in the global str ...
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The Curious Case of USS McCain
Vijay Shankar · 04 Oct, 2017 · 5376
On 21 August 2017, in the darkness of astronomical twilight, USS John S McCain, a destroyer bound for Singapore after a sensitive ‘freedom-of-navigation’ operation off one of China’s illegal man-made islands in the South C ...
