The Strategist by Vijay Shankar
Vijay Shankar
 Vice Admiral (Retd.)
  • The Looming Winter of Discontent: Who is Winning the War in Ukraine?
    Vijay Shankar   ·    26 Oct, 2022   ·    5837
    Impact and Veracity of Social MediaThe widespread popularity of social media, despite its loud and frequently boorish content, has made the study of events that form historical processes a disarrayed function of the common, rather than t ...
  • Counterforce Strategies are a Threat to Nuclear Deterrence Stability
    Vijay Shankar   ·    15 Sep, 2022   ·    5829
    Early atomic bombs were crude city-annihilators. Their ability to bring enormous and horrific civilian destruction was demonstrated by the US in 1945. The two bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki caused 2,14,000 primary fatalities to ...
  • Russia in the Black Sea: What Happened to the Moskva?
    Vijay Shankar   ·    04 Jul, 2022   ·    5822
    The flagship of the Russian Black Sea fleet, the ‘Slava’ class missile cruiser, Moskva, sank at on 14 April 2022 in position 45°10′43.39″N  30°55′30.54″E,  after being "damaged." That is as far as one can establ ...
  • The Challenge of a Multi-Polar Nuclear Age
    Vijay Shankar   ·    03 Jun, 2022   ·    5819
    Of Parity, Assured Destruction, & Mistrust For the last 77 years, since the US first detonated nuclear weapons and annihilated the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, an eerie ambivalence has prevailed on the subject of nu ...
  • Power Paradigms and the Vexed Path to Peace in Ukraine
    Vijay Shankar   ·    31 Mar, 2022   ·    5811
    The multi-polar distribution of power that marks contemporary geopolitics has spawned   security imbalances on account of economic inequities, geography, demographics, the military, and the nature of government. It has incited a jos ...
  • Deciphering Chinese Grand Strategy
    Vijay Shankar   ·    31 Jan, 2022   ·    5806
    Grand strategy refers to state’s plan of action to achieve its major long-term objectives. Beijing’s grand strategy relies on a combination of leadership declarations, policies, economic activities, and military means. Since its ...
  • 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 ...
Other Articles by Vijay Shankar