Before 26 May 2014 when Modi Government took over the reins of power in Delhi, in last fifteen years we have been following the Pakistan policy of talks at any cost a gesture which Pakistan took as our weakness. After Modi government came on the scene India did take an initial tough stand of no talks till Mumbai attack accused in Pakistan are speedily dealt with and Pakistan sponsored terror is put to an end. However in the recent meeting at Ufa between the Indian Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi and the Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif at the side-lines of Shanghai group convention in Ufa, Russia, It appears Modi government is also falling in line with the same old Pakistan policy of talks, no talks and again talks. Time we make up our mind how we want to tackle Pakistan.
After American withdrawal from Philippines a void was created in South-China sea region which gave opportunity to China to seize it and slowly increase and strengthen its naval presence. China is world’s second largest importer of oil and oil constitutes 70% mainstay of Chinese industries, home produced coal accounts for other 30%. Chinese oil passes through Africa and Gulf region and their sea line of communication extends from Chinese mainland to Port of Sudan.
Poignancy, laced with a sense of Naga pride and aspirations, can best describe the responses to the August 3 Naga Peace Accord signed between the NSCN (I-M) and the government of India. This can only be understood by talking to those living in Nagaland. On August 4, I received an early morning phone call from Zunheboto town (Zunheboto in Sumi dialect refers to a flowering shrub) in Nagaland. The sober voice of one of my young Naga friends broke the silence across the miles as she whispered, “Sister, finally, we do have closure, right?” followed by a spell of silence pregnant with meaning. I knew that she was brimming with emotions — pride amidst hurt; dignity amidst insecurity. I recalled Martin Luther King, Jr.’s lines from the movie Selma: “this is a demonstration of our dignity”.
"Media is very interesting entertainment for me," Doval said, responding to an audience query about the media, after the late Lalit Doshi memorial lecture here. 
Civilian casualties in Afghanistan are still on the rise, according to a UN report. In the first six months of 2015, the UN documented 4,921 civilian casualties (1,592 dead and 3,329 injured). While the total amount of civilian casualties rose only one percent compared to the same period in 2014, it looks like 2015 will be one of the deadliest years for Afghan civilians on record. Since 2009, the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) has recorded 52,653 civilian casualties (19,368 dead and 33,285 injured).
In a July 30 article in the Global Times, a nationalistic Chinese newspaper, an unnamed analyst warns that Mullah Mohammed Omar’s death will deal a heavy blow to the Taliban. But China may prove to be another loser — Mullah Omar had guaranteed crucial agreements with Beijing in the past, and was seen as providing the best chance that any future peace deal between the Taliban and the Afghan government would stick. Despite China’s misgivings about the Taliban, Mullah Omar was a man they could do business with, one of the last of the leading political and spiritual authorities in the militant world that was willing to pragmatically accommodate Chinese concerns for stability in the restive, Muslim-minority northwest Chinese region of Xinjiang.
The resistance by powerful Afghan Taliban leaders and field commanders to the nomination of Mullah Akhtar Mansoor as successor of Mullah Mohammad Omar and his elevation as the new Emir of the Taliban movement has, for now at least, spoiled the elaborate end-game that the Pakistanis had planned in Afghanistan. The talks between the Afghan Taliban and the Afghan government have been put on hold and there is no clarity if they will re-start anytime soon, if at all. And even if they do re-start, there are doubts whether these talks will be able to deliver anything close to peace.
The summary of the IPCC’s fifth assessment report has a stark warning on how climate change is threatening the world, but also shows the way out – if policymakers are willing to take it
This week, the countries that comprise the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will assemble for their annual regional forum. Though not on the formal agenda, a hot topic will be a Code of Conduct with China for managing disputes in the South China Sea, which has been sought since the late 1990s but eluded the parties for as long. China’s recent Spratly island building activities have raised a new sense of urgency for codifying rules of behavior among other states in the region. Beijing’s building also suggests that China remains uninterested in crystallizing the territorial status quo in the South China Sea (for more on the South China Sea and why it matters, check out WOTR’s first Around The World podcast!). U.S. policymakers, for their part, have had harsh words for their Chinese counterparts in private and in public as China’s island spree has unfolded. Amidst this substantial pressure, the ASEAN–China Code of Conduct remains Washington’s best hope that the South China Sea disputes can be managed diplomatically. The reasons for continued U.S. interest in this lingering initiative are not difficult to divine.
Screw moral hazard. Dire warnings from economists and investors hold little water in a situation that’s completely political.
Beijing-based Industrial & Commercial Bank of China holds the top spot with assets valued at $3.5 trillion. That means the bank is worth more than the entire value of the British economy.
Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, president of Central Asia’s most isolated state since 2006, made his first visit to Kyrgyzstan this week. The two leaders signed 15 agreements and spoke warmly of growth in the bilateral relationship. Energy featured in the discussions–especially a gas pipeline through Kyrgyzstan to China and the possibility of Turkmenistan supplying electricity to Kyrgyzstan in the future.
Editor's note: Daniel Byman writes in his August 2 post for the Lawfare blog that using counterterrorism as a lens for seeing the Middle East has helped the United States in several of its success against the al-Qaida core, but argues that this filter has also led to an underestimation of the overall impact on terrorism, as well as hindered an adequate response in general.
Ibrahim al-Asiri, an operative for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, is internationally recognized as the world’s foremost terrorist bomb-maker. And he isn’t pleased with an Al Jazeera documentary released in June that featured a man describing himself as a former spy inside AQAP alleging that the terrorist group had at times received support from the Yemeni government.
The Syrian nightmare is far from over, and supporters of President Bashar al-Assad continue to insist that the regime will survive the turmoil. But U.S. policy now appears to be working in tandem with Russia, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, a rare alignment — although Iran remains a potential spoiler.
Much of the examination of the Iran nuclear agreement has focused on the funds that would be released once Iran complied with the terms of the agreement. Some estimates of such funding have gone as high as $150 billion—although U.S. experts put the total at $100 billion and note that some $50 billion of this money has already been obligated.
Global warming and climate change refer to an increase in average global temperatures. Natural events and human activities are believed to be contributing to an increase in average global temperatures. This is caused primarily by increases in “greenhouse” gases such as Carbon Dioxide (CO2).
In 1967, NBC News aired a segment by veteran documentarian Ted Yates depicting what life under Suharto in Indonesia was like. In the footage, tanks rumble across the countryside, firing cannons into the sky, and armed soldiers scatter frenzied, terrified crowds across a city square. The martial sounds and images then give way to a shot of a water tank overlooking a labor compound, the familiar American household name “Goodyear” emblazoned across its side. “Indonesia has a fabulous potential wealth in natural resources. Goodyear’s … rubber empire is an example,” Yates narrates. Next, there are shots of laborers being marched across a plantation by soldiers and being forced to work the rubber at gunpoint. What he and his crew had captured, Yates said, was a “largely unnoticed victory over the communists” — the ouster of Sukarno, Indonesia’s first president, by Suharto, a military officer, some two years earlier.
Mykola Azarov’s call for early elections and “total regime change” in Kiev was a bit of a head-scratcher. The ousted Ukrainian prime minister, after all, is deeply unpopular in his homeland and—with the exception of Ukrainian prosecutors who want to put him on trial—largely forgotten.
What we think we know, don't know and things that might surprise us about climate change and the environment.
In a wide-ranging conversation hosted by Michael O’Hanlon of the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence on Friday, July 31, representatives from some of America’s leading defense and services companies—LMI, Deloitte, Pratt & Whitney, and BAE Systems—each gave their take on the future of national security technologies and their revolutionary role in shaping the battlefield of tomorrow.
Restraint is the strategic underpinning of how many states confront cyber actions. Despite calls for a response to cyber aggression, the U.S. government still has not decided on a viable reaction given limited options. As David Sanger recounts in the New York Times, “in a series of classified meetings, officials have struggled to choose among options that range from largely symbolic responses … to more significant actions that some officials fear could lead to an escalation of the hacking conflict between the two countries.”
Sometimes a technology is so awe-inspiring that the imagination runs away with it — often far, far away from reality. Robots are like that. A lot of big and ultimately unfulfilled promises were made in robotics early on, based on preliminary successes.
Denmark has been a stalwart ally of the United States since 1999, participating in operations in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Mali, and off of the Horn of Africa, and transporting chemical weapons out of Syria. Last September, Denmark reacted quickly and enthusiastically to the American call to join the anti-Islamic State coalition, contributing a C-130 Herculestransport aircraft early on, 7 F-16s, and 120 soldiers to train Iraqi security forces. The Danish parliament overwhelmingly approved these deployments and the new Danish government of Lars Løkke Rassmussen has pledged to extend the mission when its mandate expires in October, but it is unclear whether the Danish military can continue. The ability of this small country to sustain its deployments for years on end has impressed American defense officials, but it is now cracking under the strain of defense cuts and sustained operations.
