One of the alarming trends of recent warfare pertains to the widespread use of children as soldiers. In an oft-quoted estimate children today are said to be participating as active combatants in over seventy five percent of the world’s armed conflicts.
The invention of nuclear weapons, the ultimate among the three weapons of mass destruction, has given rise to completely novel conditions that have fundamentally affected the concept of war in the contemporary human history. The nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 1945 during World War II were the two most remarkable acts of war in recorded military history. Fortunately, there have been no uses of this deadly device after that, but thousands of nuclear testing have taken place and also many accidents due to human or technical error occurred with large scale environment and health related effects. The so called great and emerging powers have stockpiled thousands of nuclear weapons in their arsenals overtly and the non state actors, primarily transnational terrorists groups may have stockpiled covertly, to unleash a catastrophic scenario hitherto witnessed or imagined. We have seen the restraint to use nuclear device against any rival nations within the state actors, but there is remote possibility of similar restraint from a terrorist group.
The deliberate germ attack unleashed against the most powerful country in the world, the United States in late 2001, made us believe that the threat of the 21st century would be human-induced disease outbreaks. Human-induced or not, the subsequent SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) and Bird flu outbreaks underscored that infectious disease holds the real threat to humanity in the coming years. The situation would arise due to many factors, such as environmental pollution, overpopulation and excessive human interference in the natural process of life.
The twenty-first century marked paradigm shifts in the changing world order. The end of the Cold War, end of the global bipolar power rivalry; onset of globalization with resultant change in economic development, commerce and trade, advancement in information and communications technologies, transportation, etc. obliterated the geo-political boundaries of the nation state. Unfortunately, the spread of Asymmetric Conflict have emerged as the defining paradigm in the changing contour of politics, economics, military strategy and technology.
The imbroglio between Iran and the international community has every potential to spiral into another unnecessary and largely unwanted conflict in the Middle East. While dialogue and coercive diplomatic interactions may prevent the isolation of oil producing Shia majority state, the threat of utilising hard power tools, has needlessly exacerbated an already volatile situation. This paper aims to trace the roots of the current diplomatic stand-off between Iran and the international community.
The modern era has witnessed enormous growth in transnational organized crime. Over the years such crime groups have covertly provided arms and ammunition to terrorist groups purely for business interests. However, the difference between organized crime and terrorism has blurred in the last few years. Few crime organizations have shown a tendency of involving themselves in terrorist activities for non-profit reasons.
The security environment in South East Asia is being challenged from several directions. The region is plagued with piracy, and has also witnessed maritime terrorism-related activities, drug smuggling, gun running and illegal migration. Some of these have the potential to disrupt and destroy maritime enterprise. Efforts have been made by regional countries to address these problems and there has been an encouraging response to their efforts to combat disorder at sea.
Considered a newcomer to the problem of insurgency in comparison to other Northeastern states of India, Meghalaya has been witnessing organized armed violence since the early 1990s. Over a period, intermittent violence led to full-fledged insurgency movement, camouflaging itself under the cover of a movement based on ethnic identity. The situation has been manipulated by the social elites, including politicians and bureaucracy while the disillusioned youths have been a pawn in the game of power struggle.
Of particular concern for India is the increasing collusion between Pakistan’s ISI and Bangladesh’s military intelligence establishment, the DGFI, to keep India’s North East bleeding “with a thousand cuts” by stepping up anti-India activities from Bangladesh. The ISI facilitates meetings between various Indian insurgent groups, arranges funds, weapons and ammunition for them, which has resulted in the emergence of Bangladesh as a major transit base for smuggling of arms into India.
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