If Pakistan's president, General Pervez Musharraf, wanted to send a shiver down the spine of the international community, and remind it that South Asia still remains the world's most dangerous place, he could not have done so more effectively than he did last Monday...
The resounding victory of the Hindu-nationalist and rabidly anti-secular, anti-Islam, anti-Pakistan Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in legislative Assembly elections in the western state of Gujarat has dangerous implications not just for India's domestic politics, but...
A little over two weeks after North Korea shocked the world by admitting that it has a clandestine nuclear weapons acquisition programme, some more dismaying facts have come to light. The most stunning of these may be the world's first instance of the actual transfer,...
The Indian government has announced the de-escalation and demobilisation – or, as it prefers to call it "re-deployment" – of over half a million troops which it amassed at the border with Pakistan ten months ago. Pakistan has decided to reciprocate...
As the beat of America's war-drums against Iraq gets louder, the Indian government finds itself in an untenably contradictory situation: should it support a United Nations-endorsed attack against Iraq's "terrorist" Saddam Hussein regime, as part of US...
As the beat of America's war-drums against Iraq gets louder, the Indian government finds itself in an untenably contradictory situation: should it support a United Nations-endorsed attack against Iraq's "terrorist" Saddam Hussein regime, as part of US...
Now that the first of four phases of the "litmus-test" elections to the legislative Assembly of the Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) is over, India and Pakistan have instantly locked horns over their representative character and significance. This renewed rivalry...
NB: Claims and counter-claims by India and Pakistan about an August 23 intrusion across the border raise disturbing questions about their communication links and their deterrent equation. Ten days ago, India’s new foreign minister Yashwant Sinha and...
When Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi rose to speak at Hiroshima's Peace Memorial Park at 8:26 a.m. this past August 6, that is to say, precisely 11 minutes past the sounding of the Peace Bell which commemorates the world's first dropping of the nuclear bomb,...
One of the salutary lessons from the scary India-Pakistan standoff (which has still not ended) is that the political and military leadership of neither country can be trusted to desist from nuclear brinkmanship, even downright nuclear adventurism. More than a billion...
