COMMENTARIES
  • East Asia Compass
    Shinzo Abe’s North Korea Strategy

    Dr Sandip Kumar Mishra    ·   09 Oct, 2017    ·    #5378    ·    Commentary    ·   Column
    North Korea's recent nuclear and missile developments pose arguably the highest threat to Japan. North Korea has tested more than 20 missiles in 2017 alone; and conducted its sixth nuclear test, reported to be a hydrogen bomb, on 3 September...
  • Nepal: Climate Change and Human Mobility
    Amb TCA Raghavan    ·   06 Oct, 2017    ·    #5377    ·    Commentary    
    In 2016, Samjong village in Upper Mustang, Nepal, which is at an elevation of 4100 m, had to be relocated to Namashung village in the same region. This was necessitated by acute drought in Samjong that had persisted for almost a decade. While th...
  • The Strategist
    The Curious Case of USS McCain

    Vijay Shankar    ·   04 Oct, 2017    ·    #5376    ·    Commentary    ·   Column
    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 China Se...
  • German Elections Results: Impact on Foreign Policy
    Kai Fürstenberg    ·   04 Oct, 2017    ·    #5375    ·    Commentary    
    The 2017 German federal election produced results partly anticipated by analysts but were shocking nevertheless. For the past five decades, the Bundestag (federal parliament) was dominated by the two major parties, the Christian democrats Christ...
  • Kabul Security: The NUG's Achilles Heel?
    Bismellah Alizada    ·   04 Oct, 2017    ·    #5374    ·    Commentary    
    On 29 September, terrorists attacked a Shia mosque in Kabul's district 10, when civilians were mourning Muharram, killing seven and wounding over 20. On 27 September, even as US Secretary of Defense James Mattis and NATO Secretary General Jens S...
  • An Interview with Dr Siegfried Hecker
    North Korea’s Nuclear Behaviour and US Diplomacy

    IPCS    ·   30 Sep, 2017    ·    #5373    ·    Commentary    
    This is a modified version of an earlier interview conducted by Elisabeth Eaves for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and contains additional questions from Ruhee Neog for the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies. Modified and reprinted ...
  • IPCS Debate
    India's Rohingya Policy: Is it Legally Sound?

    Nasreen Habib    ·   29 Sep, 2017    ·    #5372    ·    Commentary    
    Violence in the Northern Rakhine state of Myanmar against the Rohingya has escalated in the last two months creating a large-scale refugee crisis in the region. India, which shares a 1643-km-long border with Myanmar, has recently taken a troubling...
  • IPCS Debate
    India's Rohingya Policy: Is it Legally Sound?

    Abhijit Iyer Mitra    ·   29 Sep, 2017    ·    #5371    ·    Commentary    
    When Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh labelled Rohingya refugees in India “illegal immigrants” he was patently wrong. The difference between illegal immigrants and refugees is quite simple – choice. An illegal immigrant choose...
  • Regional Economy
    India's Trade Options

    Amita Batra    ·   28 Sep, 2017    ·    #5370    ·    Commentary    ·   Column
    The Indo-Pacific economic space continues to be open to reconfiguration, triggered as it has been by the US withdrawal from the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) earlier this year. There have since been many conjectures on how the region may see a...
  • Special Commentary
    Weapons in Space: Conventional War in the Cosmos?

    Allyson Rimmer    ·   26 Sep, 2017    ·    #5369    ·    Commentary    
    Outer space has been called the last frontier, but could it become the battleground of the future? Warfare in space seems difficult to imagine outside works of science fiction, but the concept and advantages of weapons in space have been under s...
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