VIF Papers
People’s Liberation Army Navy - An Overview of Maritime Strategic Thought, Naval Capabilities, Implications of Military Reforms & Naval Operations and Exercises

This paper aims to provide an overview of the Chinese maritime strategic thought and naval capabilities that could have a bearing on India’s strategic and security environment, particularly in the Indian Ocean. It provides a broad picture of major reforms in PLA during the Xi Jinping era that commenced in 2014 and the drivers and objectives behind these reforms.

Implications of China’s Hydro-Hegemony on River Yarlung Tsangpo: Another Lever of China’s Expansionist Tactics into India’s East

On 11 March 2021, China’s parliament, the National People’s Congress, endorsed a plan to build a ‘super dam’ on the lower reaches of the Yarlung Tsangpo River in southeastern Tibet. According to Chinese media reports, the dam will have an installed capacity of around 60 Gigawatt (GW), the world’s largest, and will be built at The Great Bend section of the Yarlung Tsangpo River in Nyingchi Prefecture’s Medog County close to the Indian border.

Deterrence Theory– Is it Applicable in Cyber Domain?

… effective cyber deterrence policies require regular, sustained disruption of malicious cyber activity. Such disruption can be technical, legal, logistical, financial, diplomatic, and, in some extreme cases, kinetic. Increasing the scope, scale and tempo of disruption activities should impose high costs on adversaries …

Cyber Weapons – A Weapon of War?

… cyber weapons will be used individually and blended simultaneously with conventional kinetic weapons as force multipliers … for both attacker and defender, it is difficult to predict; cyber weapons often achieve things other than their intended purpose … strategic calculation for attackers thus becomes considerably more complex ... over-reliance by strategists and scholars on such imprecise terminology has significant risks for misinterpretation and premature prescription ...

Biden as a Liberal Crusader: Assessing the Obama-Biden Human Rights Legacy

… the hope is that Biden would have learnt from the Obama era mistakes and hence follow a non-interventionist policy to avoid another ‘humanitarian’ war … at the end of his Presidential term, Biden may emerge a ‘liberal crusader’ or be another ‘crumbling liberal hero’ …

India-Japan in the Indo-Pacific: A Strategic Convergence for Peace, Progress and Prosperity

Over the last three decades, with the economic rise of India, Japan, China, Korea, ASEAN combined with Australia and New Zealand, Indo-Pacific has surely emerged as the new theatre of Great Power contest. The idea of Indo-Pacific and its coordinates such as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD) and Supply Chain Resilience Initiatives (SCRI) are the brain Childs of modern Japan’s visionary Prime Minister Abe Shinzo. With the benefit of his historical insights and political legacies, partnership with India has emerged as the centrepiece in his scheme of global political restructuring.

Water Security as Part of Non-Traditional Security: Threat - Implications for India

… it would be important for the Indian government to assess how China could ‘weaponize’ its control over trans-boundary waters and potentially ‘choke’ the Indian economy … there are different opinions about the impact of the proposed dams on the quantity of water flow in the Brahmaputra. A gigantic hydropower project will undoubtedly have some effects ... There is also one school of thought which believes that the negative impact may not be huge.

China’s Cyber-Influence Operations

… With its growing assertiveness in the international arena, China uses new technologies to achieve its foreign policy goals and project an image of responsible global power … spending billions on influence operations across the world ... fits in with China’s larger aim of expanding its soft power alongside its growing economic and military power … reach of Beijing’s overseas media is impressive and should not be underestimated. But the results are mixed ...

China’s Nuclear and Missile Capabilities : An Overview

… creation of the theatre commands and the PLA’s emphasis on joint operations have catalysed the Rocket Force’s focus on jointness…. integrating Rocket Force units into dual-use missile systems and the possible collocation of conventional and nuclear missiles could create risks of unintentional escalation in a conflict ... more diverse and dispersed nuclear force could increase China’s confidence in the survivability of its second-strike capability, causing it to forego more assertive changes to its nuclear posture…

Indian Military: Adapting to New Age Strategic Paradigm

… for some years before India’s military modernization bears fruition at the field level, the Indian military, having committed to its rigorous oath, has little option but to defend the nation by harnessing what resources that might be available and what little that might be coming in the immediate future …

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