
ATMANIRBHAR BHARAT — CHOOSING SWAVLAMBAN (SELF-RELIANCE) OVER SELF-SUFFICIENCY
Note: Some segments of this article have been published by the author in the South Asia Defence and Strategic Review (Vol 16 Issue 2 May – Jun 2022) and are repeated here with due permission.
As the Indian Navy gears up for the 2022 edition…

THE INDO-PACIFIC LEGACY OF ABE SHINZO
Over the week that has elapsed since the tragic loss of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was assassinated in his home country on the 8th of July 2022, the world has witnessed a deluge of eulogies for this charismatic world leader…

CRIMINAL JURISDICTION IN INTERNATIONAL LAW
This article was first published in the April 2022 edition of Benedict's Maritime Bulletin [Vol 20, No 2, Second Quarter 2022] and is reproduced with due permission".
Even almost a century after the seminal 1927 Permanent Court…

PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS OF MARITIME SECURITY COOPERATION IN THE INDIAN OCEAN REGION: A CASE STUDY OF THE INDIAN OCEAN NAVAL SYMPOSIUM (IONS) – PART I
Overview
“States that adjoin this ocean are differentiated by their varying political ideologies, by the God they pray to, by the language they converse in, by their history and their race.”[1]
The Indian Ocean Region (IOR) has variously…

THE ISPS CODE AND THE MARITIME SECURITY OF INDIA PART - II
This is the second part of an article on the very basics of the ISPS Code and its applicability to Indian ship- and port-facility security. It is reiterated that this article has been written to provide fundamental, baseline-information…

ISPS CODE AND MARITIME SECURITY OF INDIA PART – I
The International Ship and Port Facility (ISPS) Code is of utmost importance for the safety and security of India’s maritime sector, as it safeguards international trade relations and this, in turn, ensures the growth of the Indian economy. …

THE INTERNATIONAL DAY FOR THE FIGHT AGAINST ILLEGAL, UNREPORTED AND UNREGULATED FISHING
In December 2017, the United Nations General Assembly in its annual resolution on sustainable fisheries declared 05 June as the ‘International Day for the Fight against Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) Fishing’. The UN also declared…

BOOK REVIEW - BALOCHISTAN IN THE CROSSHAIRS OF HISTORY
By Sandhya Jain. New Delhi: KW Publishers Pvt Ltd, 2021. 332 pages.
The story of Balochistan is steeped in depredation, treachery and pillage. This region has remained, for much of its existence, on the sidelines of history. Its ethnic…

THE VANILLA ISLANDS — POTENTIAL FOR A ‘PLURALISTIC SECURITY COMMUNITY’
The expression “Vanilla Islands” is a colloquialism that has been gaining currency since 2010 and is used to collectively describe a group of six exotic island-States (Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mayotte, Reunion, and Seychelles) that…

FRANCE’S INDO-PACIFIC STRATEGY 2022: AN ANALYSIS
Introduction
During his speech on 02 May 2018 at the Garden Island Naval Base at Sydney, the French President, Emmanuel Macron, spelt out his country’s Indo-Pacific Strategy. The strategy was based on seven pillars and aimed at placing…

SINKING OF THE RUSSIAN CRUISER MOSKVA: A CAUSE-EFFECT ANALYSIS
One of the major casualties of the Russia-Ukraine conflict was the loss of the Russian Navy cruiser, the Moskva, in the Black Sea, after an unexplained fire on board. While Ukraine understandably claimed credit —albeit not yet corroborated…

NATIONAL PERSPECTIVES: INDIA’S MARITIME OUTLOOK
This paper was published as a chapter in a book titled “Schools of Maritime Thought: Perspectives from Six Nations”. The book is the first product of ‘The Maritime Research Working Group’ (MRWG) organised by the Sea Power Centre-Australia…