The Strategist by Vijay Shankar
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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 ...
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"The World is Not Peaceful"
Vijay Shankar · 31 Aug, 2017 · 5351
Addressing senior Communist Party and government officials in Beijing at an event to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), Premier Xi Jinping declared, “We do not allow any indiv ...
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A Pug, a Terrier and the Doklam Stand Off
Vijay Shankar · 07 Aug, 2017 · 5335
William Moorcroft, a British veterinary surgeon of the East India Company, set off in 1816 on an expedition to the Kailas region of Tibet to search for that breed of Central Asian horses that would revitalise the blood stock of the Compan ...
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Nuclear Crises in the Time of Orwellian Wars
Vijay Shankar · 28 Jun, 2017 · 5314
"…the consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the handing-over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable condition of survival."
George Orwell, 1984 ...
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The Value of a Declared No First Use Nuclear Policy
Vijay Shankar · 01 May, 2017 · 5278
"Can it be a nation’s case to destroy the very purpose that polity sets out to attain; or as Milton put it “Our Cure, To Be No More; Sad Cure!”
The sensibility of negotiated agreements to assuage friction betw ...
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The CPEC: Corridor to Chinese Coffers
Vijay Shankar · 28 Mar, 2017 · 5256
Misshapen Marshall Analogy
Deceptive arguments are current that the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) finds historic equivalence in the ‘Marshall Plan’. The Plan was an American Congressional Act legislated on ...
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Forecast 2017: Carnage Ahead?
Vijay Shankar · 15 Feb, 2017 · 5235
Donald Trump in his inaugural speech, vowed “…this American carnage must stop here.” What preceded his vow suggested, with more intensity and less clarity, what the “carnage” was. Presumably he implied a hos ...
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Perils of Nuclear Paranoia
Vijay Shankar · 31 Dec, 2016 · 5215
If armed hostilities, for the initiator, has very little to do with military balance both conventional and nuclear; then it raises the prospect that balance may indeed be skewed against gravity.
Nuclear Brinkmanship Plus
The late T ...
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The Catechism of a Minister
Vijay Shankar · 28 Nov, 2016 · 5192
The honourable Raksha Mantri was at a public book release function on 10 November 2016. Addressing the gathering, he suggested that India should not bind itself to a No First Use (NFU) nuclear policy; continuing in the same vein, he blath ...