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

Image credits- Wikimedia Commons/ United States DOD Source- The National Interest Author- Alexander Vuving Satellite images analyzed by defense intelligence magazine IHS Jane’s show that China is reclaiming on Fiery Cross Reef in the Spratly Islands a piece of land that bears the shape of a 3000-meter airfield and a harbor large enough to receive tankers and major warships. This is not the first, but the latest in a series of land reclamations that China is conducting both in the Spratly Islands and the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea. What does China want with this island building? What is the ultimate objective of these projects? The usual lens we use to decipher strategic moves on the international arena is ill suited to answer these questions. It views the game nations play in term of chess, but China is playing weiqi in the South China Sea. Weiqi, better known in the West by its Japanese name, go, is the oldest Chinese board game that bears much para

USAF B-2 ( Image credits- Wikimedia Commons/ United States DOD) Source- The National Interest Author- Robert Haddick In a speech at the Reagan Presidential Library on November 15th, outgoing U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel introduced the Defense Innovation Initiative or DII, a set of projects some have dubbed the “Third Offset Strategy.” Hagel challenged his department and the greater defense community to devise technologies and concepts that will ensure that U.S. military forces retain, as Hagel described, “the ability to project power rapidly across oceans and continents by surging aircraft, ships, troops and supplies. If this capability is eroded or lost, we will see a world far more dangerous and unstable, far more threatening to America and our citizens here at home than we have seen since World War II.” Hagel warned that, “technologies and weapons that were once the exclusive province of advanced nations have become available to a broad range of militaries an

Image credits- Wikimedia Commons/ Author- Pp391 Source- The Diplomat Author- Mohamed Zeeshan Plummeting global oil prices have generated much discussion over the past few weeks. Oil is an important driver of global geopolitics: Washington hopes sanctions on Moscow’s oil-dependent economy will help the West get its way in Ukraine. In the Middle East, a good part of the battle against the Islamic State revolves around the amount of oil under its control. A few thousand miles away, the South China Sea simmers over oil as much as it does over maritime control. The Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries (OPEC) last month voted not to cut output, which suggests that the price free-fall has probably just begun. That’s bad news for oil-dependent economies around the world, from Russia to Algeria. Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Rafael Ramirez, for one, glumly accepted OPEC’s decision as a collective one, after his bid to cut oil output by as much as 2 million barrels per

Navy of Taiwan ( Image credits- Wikimedia Commons/ ROCN Official image) Source- The National Interest Author- Ted Galen Carpenter Taiwan’s governing Kuomintang Party (KMT) suffered a brutal defeat in just-completed elections for local offices. Indeed, the extent of the KMT’s rout made the losses the Democratic Party experienced in U.S. midterm congressional elections look like a mild rebuke. The setback was so severe that President Ma Ying-jeou announced that he would relinquish his post as party chairman. Although that decision does not directly affect Ma’s role as head of the government, it reflects his rapidly eroding political influence. The growing domestic political turbulence in Taiwan is not just a matter of academic interest to the United States. Under the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, Washington is obligated to assist Taipei’s efforts to maintain an effective defense and to regard any coercive moves Beijing might take against the island as a serious threat to t

PLAN Sailors ( Image credits- Wikimedia Commons Source- The National Interest Author- Patrick M. Cronin China’s reemergence as a wealthy and powerful nation is a fact. In recent decades its rise has been unprecedented, moving from the tenth-largest economy in 1990, to the sixth-largest economy in 2001, to the second-largest economy in 2010. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), China now surpasses the United States in terms of purchasing power parity. By the same measure, China’s economy was only half the size of America’s a decade earlier, and it is this trajectory that is molding assumptions about the future regional power balance and order across the Indo-Pacific. Recent declines in growth and rising questions about future stability have yet to alter most perceptions about tomorrow’s China. China’s deepening integration with the regional and global economy underscore the difficulty of pushing back when China transgresses rules and norms. Take the issu