Manoj Ambat's Blog dealing with Defence, Foreign Affairs, Strategic Affairs and Politics

Image source- Flickr / Credits- Presidency of Sri Lanka Source- The Diplomat Author- Nilanthi Samaranayake Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent trip to Sri Lanka highlights New Delhi’s reawakening to the strategic position that Sri Lanka holds in India’s neighborhood. Since 2008, India has watched as China built port facilities, highways, and other major infrastructure in Sri Lanka. People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy warships have also paid port visits to Sri Lanka, even taking in Trincomalee, where India has been sensitive to any extraregional presence for decades. Most recently, in September and October 2014, New Delhi became unsettled at the sight of a conventional Chinese submarine and a tender ship openly paying port visits in Colombo on the way to counter piracy patrols in the Gulf of Aden. Despite the public nature of the docking and advance notice, Indian policymakers appeared to be taken by surprise and feared India had lost strategic ground to China re

Source- Flickr (Image credits- The Presidency of Sri Lanka) Source- Eurasia Review Author- P.S Suryanarayana Neighbourhood diplomacy can be tricky even at the best of times, because any two neighbours will have common but differing expectations of a good bilateral relationship. Viewed in this light, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s latest visit to Sri Lanka has gone off well, without setting the Palk Strait on fire. This sums up the outcome, in a positive turn of the Thames-metaphor for the narrow waterway that bridges (or segregates) the two countries. To be sure, no diplomatic breakthroughs were announced during the two-day visit hat concluded on 14 March 2015. By all accounts, however, the diplomatic mood and political atmospherics toned up the quotient of Indo-Sri Lankan neighbourliness. Apart from holding talks with Sri Lanka’s relatively new executive President, Maithripala Sirisena, Modi met a number of leaders, including those out of office, across the p

Source- The Diplomat Author- Rohan Joshi India’s neighborhood is in the midst of significant change. In Sri Lanka, an unlikely coalition with former Minister of Health Maithripala Sirisena defeated Mahinda Rajapaksa in the country’s presidential election in January.  In the Maldives, former president Mohamed Nasheed, having been systematically harassed since a de facto coup in 2012, has been sentenced to 13 years in prison and found guilty of terrorism.  Afghanistan’s future looks precarious as a unity government led by President Ashraf Ghani attempts to make peace with the Afghan Taliban. Islamist forces in Bangladesh continue to challenge the secular fabric of the state, resulting in upswing in attacks against Hindu and Buddhist minorities. Those who champion the cause of freedom and tolerance are being silenced, the heinous murder of blogger Avijit Roy earlier this month being but the most recent example. These transformative events coincide with India having wit

Image credits- MEA Official photos Source- The Diplomat Author- Darshana M. Baruah As China continues to draw attention to the South China Sea with its land reclamation and creation of artificial islands, it is also important to look at Chinese activities in the not-so-contentious but strategically important Indian Ocean Region. Beijing, with the help of economic and commercial initiatives, is mapping out a web of influence by increasing its presence in the Indian Ocean. As I argued in a previous article published by The Diplomat, access to and control of the islands in the Indian Ocean is crucial for Beijing to secure its strategic interests in the region. There are two reasons for China’s expansion into the Indian Ocean. First, some of these islands — such as Kyaukpyu — can prove to be China’s answer to its Malacca Dilemma, strengthening its energy security by reducing its dependence on the Strait of Malacca. Second, an increasing presence in the Indian Ocean

Karl Hausheofer ( Image credits- Wikimedia Commons) Source- The Diplomat Author- Francis P. Sempa Long before Robert Kaplan identified the Indian Ocean and its surrounding region as the new geopolitical pivot of world politics in his 2010 book Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power, the leading intellectual theorist of German geopolitics in the 1920s and 30s, Karl Haushofer, foresaw the power potential of what he called the “Indo-Pacific” or “Asiatic Monsoon countries” and urged German policymakers to promote the geopolitical unity of this region to offset British and American sea power. Born in Munich on the eve of the Franco-Prussian War, Haushofer studied at the Royal Maximilian Gymnasium before joining the Bavarian Army in 1887. He excelled at the Military Academy (Kriegsschule), attended artillery and engineering school, and from 1895 to 1898 studied at the General Staff College (Kriegsakademie). Between 1898 and 1908, Haushofer served with th

Image credits- MEA Official Pic, Government of India Source- The Eurasia Review Author- Vijay Sakhuja Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Maldives, Mauritius Seychelles and Sri Lanka during this month to reinforce India’s foreign policy objectives. A number of political, economic, social and security issues would constitute the agenda and several agreements and memorandums of understanding are expected to be signed with the Indian Ocean States. At least three maritime issues merit attention. Capacity-Building for Maritime Security First, capacity-building for maritime security is a recurring theme in bilateral discussions between India and the Indian Ocean island States. The 2014 trilateral meeting (India, Maldives and Sri Lanka) held in New Delhi supported the idea of expanding the trilateral engagements to include Seychelles and Mauritius as observers. It was decided to build the capacity of the partners to enhance Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA), provide

Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena  ( Image credits- Wikimedia Commons / Author MaithriPala Sirisena Official) Source- The Diplomat Author- Shannon Tiezzi While Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena is in India on his first official trip abroad, Beijing wants to make sure no one thinks China is being left out. With Sirisena in India, China’s Foreign Ministry announced that Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera will travel to China at the end of February. As Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying pointed out, Samaraweera will be the first cabinet minister from Sri Lanka to visit China since Sirisena’s government took office. “Both sides attach great importance to the visit,” Hua said, adding China’s “hope that the visit by Foreign Minister Samaraweera will be an opportunity for the two sides to exchange views on the development of China-Sri Lanka relations under the new circumstances.” Those “new circumstances” – namely, the election of a n

Image credits- Wikimedia Commons / Author- United States Government   Source- The Diplomat Author- Sarah Graham  One of the few remarked-upon passages in Hillary Clinton’s otherwise unenlightening Hard Choices was her recollection of the decision not to inform Pakistani authorities of the U.S. raid to kill Osama bin Laden. In her retelling, the suggestion that the U.S. should tend to the diplomatic sensitivities of its ally was summarily dismissed by the most senior officials in the room. This would pose too great an operational risk given the known links between the Pakistani military and terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda and the Taliban, even, scarily, at the risk that Pakistani authorities might mistake the U.S. incursion for a fully-fledged military attack by someone else. So well known are these terrorist connections, in fact, that sponsorship of terrorism by various elements of the Pakistani state has its own Wikipedia page, and analysts consider the use