Tag Archives: International Relations

I began reading Nadeem Farooq Paracha’s Points of Entry once I was sensibly strapped into the seat of my plane, expecting to take no longer than the length of my short flight to finish the slim book. I remember being rather pleased with myself that morning at having eked out this reading schedule. And I could not, of course, have been more wrong, or my timing more off the mark.

Media freedom has come under threat in both India and Pakistan, most explicitly during the Emergency period in this country and during the Zia ul-Haq years in Pakistan. While these interregnums may now appear to be forgotten, in both India and Pakistan old threats—like state censorship and repression—continue to remain even as new ones have surfaced and they include online intimidation and even assassination.

In 2017, Tilak Devasher had published a well-analysed book on Pakistan titled Pakistan: Courting the Abyss. It not only analysed the contemporary problems of Pakistan but also attempted a forecast on crucial issues facing the country—Water, Education and Population. It was a refreshing account by an Indian with less of an ideological baggage in looking at Pakistan.

In his foreword, Anatole Lieven, author of Pakistan: A Hard Country (Penguin, London, 2011), aptly describes General Durrani’s book as a ‘combination of memoirs and reflections’ by ‘Pakistan’s foremost military intellectual’, which he finds ‘enlightening, necessary but in many ways depressing.’

This hefty volume provides a useful primer for non-specialists on Indian security and, to only a slightly lesser extent, for specialists as well. It ranges widely across the spectrum of security issues—covering theoretical approaches to security, traditional threats, internal security challenges and even the new non-traditional threats arising from the economy, migration and cyber-warfare.

A changing geopolitical scenario in the Indo-Pacific and certain domestic issues facing China has made the country clutch on to its nationalist fervours more strongly than before. The Chinese leadership has substantially upped its economic and military power. There is a greater yearning for national glory—exemplified by an assertive protection of China’s interests both at home and abroad.

Xi Jinping is now the all-powerful leader of China. A country of 1.4 billion people, it has some ninety million members of the Communist Party (CCP). It is the second largest economy with a 2017 GDP estimated at twelve trillion dollars representing nearly 20% of the world economy which makes it larger than the next three—Japan, Germany and the UK—put together.

The academic nuclear debate in India waxes and wanes. It is currently demonstrating a slow uptick, especially because of the emergence of a new group of younger scholars who bring more energy, new approaches and fresh insights into the field. The two books examined here, though addressing different aspects of the Indian nuclear issue, testify to this.

Lawrence Freedman, the leading British strategic thinker and Head of Department of War Studies at King’s College London, once mentioned to this reviewer that Srinath Raghavan was the best student he ever had. He was his doctoral student and later a colleague at the department. He has written some of the best books on military cum diplomatic history on South Asia; to name a couple: War and Peace in Modern India…