The Strategist by Vijay Shankar
Vijay Shankar
 Vice Admiral (Retd.)
  • Quad and AUKUS: Compacts to Collar China
    Vijay Shankar   ·    30 Nov, 2021   ·    5797
    A historical analogy may be necessary to fully understand the looming conflict between Chinese authoritarianism and the uneasy democracies of the world. In the run up to the First World War, Germany pursued a combination of militarism, o ...
  • China and a New Cold War
    Vijay Shankar   ·    11 Aug, 2021   ·    5778
    In 1947, George F Keenan, an American Foreign Service officer, formulated the policy of ‘containment’. The continuity that this policy represented may be appreciated by its longevity. It was the foundation of US strategy during the C ...
  • Afghanistan: The Consequences of US Withdrawal
    Vijay Shankar   ·    29 Jun, 2021   ·    5772
    President Biden announced on 14 April 2021 the end of what is described as America’s “forever war” in Afghanistan. The announcement came nearly two decades after the US invasion of Afghanistan. Ten years ago, the US proclaimed th ...
  • A Breakdown of Order: Politico-Military Dynamics in the South China Sea
    Vijay Shankar   ·    10 Mar, 2021   ·    5757
    Geopolitical trends are not ‘pop-up’ events. They represent an evolved aggregation of policies that manifest as direction in a state’s world view. The present politico-military dynamics in the South China Sea (SCS) are no different ...
  • China and the Geopolitical Impact of COVID-19
    Vijay Shankar   ·    09 Dec, 2020   ·    5745
    China’s dazzling growth story has been rudely disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic and the consequent chaos it has brought down on global economic systems. Ironically, in the past, its growth trajectory was able to brush aside the fallou ...
  • China and the Korean War: A Cracked Mirror for the (Global) Times?
    Vijay Shankar   ·    22 Oct, 2020   ·    5733
    An intriguing Global Times editorial was published earlier in October to mark the PLA’s 70th  anniversary of  “victory” over US forces in Korea. The analysis, rather economical with facts, suggests that will, strategic wi ...
  • The Resurrection of Xi ‘Zedong’
    Vijay Shankar   ·    30 Sep, 2020   ·    5730
    In 1981, five years after Mao Zedong’s death, China adopted an official verdict on his life. It called Mao a great revolutionary whose contributions outweighed the cost of his mistakes (Zhisui Li). Literature and history of later year ...
  • China's Curious Wars
    Vijay Shankar   ·    25 Aug, 2020   ·    5715
    Never to be undertaken thoughtlessly or recklessly wars are to be preceded by measures that make it easy to win. —Sun Tzu, Art of War (Griffith, p 39) The Chinese tradition of warfare differs from contemporary understanding. Ins ...
  • China and COVID-19: What Went Wrong?
    Vijay Shankar   ·    29 Mar, 2020   ·    5668
    The history of armed conflict is intertwined with the generation of diseases. In 1155, the German Holy Roman Emperor Barbarossa poisoned water wells in Italy with human bodies as he challenged the papacy; to 1763, when the British delibe ...
  • The Chanciness of Squirming Back from the Brink of Nuclear War
    Vijay Shankar   ·    31 Jan, 2020   ·    5647
    Stanislav Yefgrafovich Petrov, Colonel Second Rank of the Soviet Strategic Air Defence Forces, stood as watch-in-charge at the Oko nuclear early warning surveillance system at the top secret Serpukhov-15 complex in a South Moscow suburb. ...
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