On 04 Jun this year, the US Navy (USN) took a rather unusual step in reintroducing the Warrant Officer-I (W-I) rank and inviting applicants in this rank for cyber warfare. The USN has had a complex history of warrant ranks as opposed to commissioned and non-commissioned ranks. The details of this history are not of […]
Introduction Five years ago, in September and October of the year 2013, the ‘Chinese Marshall Plan’ or the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was unveiled in Kazakhstan and Indonesia by Premier Xi Jinping. Done to ‘enhance regional connectivity’, the delayering of the ‘belts’ and ‘roads’ mechanism mapped expansively through Asia, Europe, and Africa will tell one […]
On December 16 2016, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) seized an Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (UUV) in the EEZ of the Philippines, approximately 50 nautical miles North-West of the Subic Bay. The UUV belonged to the United States (US) Navy. The US government condemned the Chinese action. It claimed that the People’s Republic of China […]
In an imprudent move, India abstained from a United Nations resolution brought to the General Assembly by United States of America on 6th December. The harmless resolution condemned Hamas for firing rockets into Israel which endangered the lives of civilians. It called for the cessation of provocative and violent activities by all militant groups including […]
Maldives has borrowed heavily from China in the last five years putting it at serious risk of debt distress. Now Male has sought support from India to tide over its financial problems. The Foreign Minister of Maldives Abdulla Shahid along with the Finance Minister Ibrahim Ameer and the Minister for Economic Development Fayyaz Ismail visited […]
On 26 November 2008 (‘26/11’), a group of terrorists from Pakistan undertook attacks at several locations in Mumbai.[1] The siege ended three days later. By then, the terrorists had killed or injured more than 400 people.[2] The terrorists had sailed from Pakistan and landed at Mumbai using the sea route. En route they had also […]
Oddly, the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) is a sub-regional grouping named after a sea body, but the graphics in its logo are devoid of blue colour. Of course, the etymology of BIMSTEC originated from the names of its members in 1997, but the fact remains all its members […]