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  • Chronicling the Afghanistan Tragedy – VIII The Great Game Returns: American Interests in Afghanistan
    D Suba Chandran    ·   23 Oct, 2001    ·    #623    ·    Commentary    
    The United States until the second half of the 1970s did not consider Afghanistan of any significance to its security interests. It provided little economic aid and rejected Afghanistan ’s request for military assistan...
  • Chronicling the Afghanistan Tragedy – VII Sending troops to Afghanistan: The Soviet Dilemma
    D Suba Chandran    ·   23 Oct, 2001    ·    #622    ·    Commentary    
    Soviet policy towards Afghanistan in the post World War period followed the old Tsarist principles.  Its leaders were initially interested in settling the border dispute with Afghanistan . Lenin wrote to King Amanullah Khan in ...
  • Chronicling the Afghanistan Tragedy – VI The Saur Revolution gone Sour
    D Suba Chandran    ·   23 Oct, 2001    ·    #621    ·    Commentary    
    The Saur revolution, as was called by the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), was really a coup against Daud Khan, in which he was killed. Though the precise Soviet role in the Saur revolution is debatable, the Soviet Union di...
  • Fernandes, Political Accountability and National Security
    Sonika Gupta    ·   23 Oct, 2001    ·    #620    ·    Commentary    
    George Fernandes is back in the Union Cabinet as Defence Minister. He had resigned in the wake of the Tehelka scandal to “uphold the morale of the armed forces”. Therefore the government’s arguments for bringing him back into the...
  • A Supersonic Cruise for India
       ·   23 Oct, 2001    ·    #619    ·    Commentary    
    On 12 June 2001, the Indo-Russian joint venture, Brahmos Co, successfully test fired a supersonic cruise missile code-named PJ-10. It is a state-of-the-art weapon system and can strike warships at 300 kms in 300 seconds, can mount multiple war-h...
  • The Spectre of Chem-Bio Terrorism - II
    Arpit Rajain    ·   18 Oct, 2001    ·    #618    ·    Commentary    
    Biological weapons have been used in war since antiquity. The Persians, Romans and Greeks poisoned the drinking water wells of their adversaries by throwing corpses into them, while the British and French infected North American Indians by giving ...
  • The Spectre of Chem-Bio Terrorism I
    Arpit Rajain    ·   18 Oct, 2001    ·    #617    ·    Commentary    
    Following the events of 11 September there is an emerging concern of terrorist use of chemical and biological weapons. There is a large assortment of chem-bio weapons with diverse characteristics that are suitable for terrorist use. There are ma...
  • Nuclear Deterrence in Southern Asia – II
    Arpit Rajain    ·   16 Oct, 2001    ·    #616    ·    Commentary    
    China has been a key player in the South Asian nuclear dynamics since the early 1960’s. With the South Asian nuclear tests, a new source of instability was brought into the security architecture of Asia . This has led to furth...
  • Nuclear Deterrence in Southern Asia – I
    Arpit Rajain    ·   16 Oct, 2001    ·    #615    ·    Commentary    
    In 1946, strategic analyst Bernard Brodie wrote: “Thus far the chief purpose of our military establishment has been to win wars. From now on its chief purpose must be to avert them”. This sums up the basic premise of nuclear deterrence...
  • Lawless Bihar-Democracy at all costs?
    Sonika Gupta    ·   16 Oct, 2001    ·    #614    ·    Commentary    
    TABLE.MsoNormalTable { FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Times New Roman"; mso-style-parent: "" }According to a recent newsreport, the Bihar chapter of the Indian Medical Association is seeking legal opinion on whether they can discontinu...
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