Climate change is not a prognosis for the future, as some irresponsible governments believe. All countries are affected by and contribute to the cause of climate change. Some 150,000 human lives are lost each year as a result of climate change. One heat wave killed 20,000 people in Europe alone in 2003. More often invincible (!), the US is more vulnerable to natural disasters than terrorists attack. The successive floods in Bangladesh present the single biggest threat to the national security of such low-lying countries.

The impending danger of bursting of an artificial lake/dam on the Pareechu River in the Tibet Autonomous Region of People’s Republic of China has been subsided. Indian government, policy makers and security analysts were on tenterhooks till the danger was hovering over their head. The situation was in fact no less serious that the traditional military threat emanating from across the frontiers.