The ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia has many lessons for India that aspires to be a leading world power. India, except in 1971, has followed a path of high moral position and coexistence. Unfortunately, the world since time immemorial has been about decimating opponents or fighting the …

It was a time of hope. NATO, with the breakup of the Soviet empire, became obsolete. President Mikhail Gorbachev reached out to Washington and Europe to build a new security pact that would include Russia. The US Secretary of State James Baker in the Reagan administration and then West German …

The first two days of Russian operations in Ukraine has stunned the world. The inability of Ukraine to stop the Russian forces from crossing its borders will be analyzed threadbare in coming months. Ukraine is not a minion nation. It has one of the largest armed forces in Europe backed by a robust …

The budget is the foundation of all planning. And planning is the foundation of future successes. Going by the 75 years of the Indian defence expenditure, after every crisis, India opens its purse to avoid similar crisis. Her adversaries are shrewd. They never repeat. They go on to plan something …

On this Army Day, India needs to analyse why it has failed to deter its adversaries from executing plans to change the status quo on both working boundaries. Indian Army is forced to salvage the situation. As the saying goes ‘jo mare so meer’ - who hits first wins. Indian strategy of (not)managing …

The Central Asian republics have lately been in the news for the very wrong reasons. Five authoritarian dictators are ruling these republics. Three of them (Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) are governed by leaders of the Soviet era who have retained the presidencies. All three are …

Post- independence the defence industry followed the Nehruvian philosophy on the lines of the Russian model, which treated the defence sector as a strategic sector as totally under the government with no involvement of the private sector. The first Ordnance factory came up in Ishapur in the year …

Australia's decision to scuttle a $66 billion contract to jointly build diesel-electric submarines with France and sign a new deal with the US and Britain to buy eight nuclear-powered subs has nearly torpedoed relations between the Western allies. With France describing it as a stab in the back and …

The 5th Battalion (Napiers), The Rajputana Rifles, one of the oldest battalion (Bn) of the Indian Army, in which I was commissioned after passing out from Officers Training School, Madras on April 24, 1966, and had the honour to command the same unit and take it to operations during Operation Pawan …

India’s intervention in Sri Lanka in July 1987 was the first overseas deployment of the Indian Armed Forces outside the UN charter post-independence. When this operation is reviewed many flaws that ailed the planning and execution are noteworthy even this day. If war is the continuation of politics …