The Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF), in collaboration with the Royal United Service Institute (RUSI) and the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR), organised a two-day workshop on ‘Silk Road Trade and Connectivity in Central and South Asia’ on 29th & 30th March 2016.
On March 17, 2016, a broad panel of eminent foreign policy experts representing the Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF) engaged Japan’s present Ambassador to India H.E. Mr. Kenji Hiramatsu in an interaction going over the entire gamut of India-Japan bilateral relations.
A team of three members from the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP) visited the VIF on 14 March 2016 for an interaction on a wide range of issues. The team comprised of Colonel Christain Buhlmann (Head of Regional Development Program, GCSP), Colonel (GS) Christof Gertsch (DA for India and Singapore) and Colonel Urs Amiet (Senior program Adviser, GCSP). The VIF panel was led by Lt General R.K Sawhney with the other members being Brig Vinod Anand, Commodore Gopal Suri, Group Captain Lalit Joshi and Colonel Ashish Sirsikar.
The VIF, on March 9, 2016, invited Amb PS Raghavan, who last served as India’s Ambassador to Russia till his retirement in January this year, for a discussion on ‘India-Russia relations: opportunities and challenges’, attended, among others, by top functionaries from the military fraternity and senior diplomats, including two earlier Ambassadors to Russia--former Foreign Secretary Amb Kanwal Sibal and Amb PP Shukla.
In continuation of their efforts to set up a premier think tank in Thailand, a ten-member delegation of Thai defence and security experts, led by Mr. Vera Urairat, Deputy Director General, National Security Council Secretariat, Thailand, visited the Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF) on 02 March 2016 for an interaction, aimed partly at getting acquainted about the VIF – its vision, thrust areas of study, faculty etc, and partly at discussing potentials of cooperation in areas of common strategic interests – maritime security, terrorism and cyber security, to name a few.
Steady Growth. Although some signs of a somewhat waning economy are now visible in China (economic growth rate sliding down from 10.5% in 2010 to 7.4% in 2014) she has experienced a steady growth cycle for the past two decades, catapulting the country as the world’s second largest economy. Click here to read full Paper
The Vivekananda International Foundation hosted the third Quad Plus Dialogue at Jaipur from February 14 to 16, 2016. This initiative was started in 2013, when security and strategic affairs experts from four major think tanks—the Heritage Foundation (USA), Vivekananda International Foundation (India), the Tokyo Foundation (Japan) and the Australian Strategic Policy Institute—launched this plan, entitled the “Quad-Plus” with the aim of promoting expert discussions around shared strategic concerns among the four democracies – along with some “Plus” countries.
OOn 10 February 2016, the VIF invited Daniel Pipes, an internationally acclaimed scholar on radical Islam and the President of the Middle East Forum, for an interaction on Islamism and the politico-religious dimensions of the conflict in the Middle East, followed by an interactive session.
Dr Thomas Bagger, Head of Policy Planning, German Foreign Office, visited the VIF on February 24, 2016 for an interaction that ranged across a wide and varied geostrategic landscape, inter alia, the future of the European Union, German foreign policy challenges amidst the rise of China, Russia’s reassertion in world affairs, the situation in the Middle East, the ever growing refugee crisis facing Europe, and the potential for furthering bilateral cooperation between India and Germany.
Geo-Political Context The Chinese White Paper on defence of 2015 and the papers issued earlier have been emphasizing that their “national defense policy is defensive in nature... and will never seek hegemony or expansion.” Yet, countries that have been at the receiving end of China’s assertive policies in South China or East China Sea would tend to think otherwise. Click here to read full Paper