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

Image credits- VOA Source- The National Interest Author-  Nikolas K. Gvosdev How are we to make sense of Vladimir Putin’s announcement that the bulk of the Russian expeditionary force in Syria is to be withdrawn over an as-of-yet undefined period in the coming weeks and months? Is this a Kremlin victory lap, or a way to extricate Russia from what might prove to be a dangerous and costly mistake? Here are five ways to view Putin’s surprise. 1) Mission accomplished The most straightforward explanation, based on an assessment that the Russian expeditionary deployment, which began last September, was always intended to be a short-term operation. At the time, the Kremlin made no grandiose promises about what its active involvement in the Syrian civil war would bring—no boasting about how the Islamic State would be destroyed or statements about restoring control over all of Syria to the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Like the Russian intervention in the Donbass the ye

Image credits- The BBC Source- Eurasia Review Author- Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia might have miscalculated when it went into Yemen, not with boots on the ground but with bombs from the air, to try and deter the advance of the Shiite Houthi rebels. Riyadh and its Gulf allies, somewhat grandiosely called their intervention ‘Operation Decisive Storm’, obviously borrowing the jargon from the West. When it began the airstrikes, which appeared to be in imitation of a number of similar Western actions in the Middle East and North Africa, the Saudis and their co-bombers might have assumed it would be a cake-walk. It wasn’t. Notwithstanding mounting civilian casualties, the Houthis fought back with resilience that took the Gulf monarchies by surprise. In their consternation, the monarchies turned to the militarily most powerful Muslim State, the nuclear-armed Pakistan, asking for military support. The Pakistani response was a greater shock to them tha

Image source- Wikimedia Commons Source- The National Interest Author- Akhilesh Pillalamarri The possibility of Pakistan, a non-Arab South Asian country becoming embroiled in Yemen’s civil war is very high, as Saudi Arabia has been leaning heavily on Pakistan to join its military coalition there. Pakistani involvement could include the deployment of land forces. There are already hundreds of Pakistani troops in Saudi Arabia conducting joint exercises with Saudi forces and Pakistan has voiced support for Saudi airstrikes in Yemen. Explicit Pakistani involvement in Yemen could be dangerous for it, both militarily and politically. Although Pakistan’s population is majority Sunni, unlike Saudi Arabia or Iran, Pakistan was not founded on the basis of any particular understanding of Islam. Rather, Pakistan was founded on the more general basis of Islam as a whole, in order to serve as a homeland for South Asia’s Muslims, whether Sunni or Shia. Around a fifth of Pakistan