Editorial: World Ahead 2026 – End of Politics, Opening up of Leadership
As this impactful year 2025 ends, there are certain things one needs to know about the shifting global order. In global politics, 2025 was the year when an old order ended. President Donald Trump demolished decades-old norms and institutions dramatically. His tariffs bludgeoned multilateral trade system. Long-standing security alliances were refashioned into transactional relationships that monetised American military and economic heft. Read More
China's Coercive Activities Around Taiwan: A Strategic Assessment and Implications for India
The strategic landscape of the Indo-Pacific is increasingly defined by the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) growing assertiveness, with the Taiwan Strait serving as its most volatile flashpoint. For the democratic world, and particularly for a major regional power like India, the escalating coercive activities directed by Beijing towards Taiwan represent more than a localized dispute. They are a litmus test for the rules-based international order, challenging the principles of sovereignty, maritime freedom, and stability in the Asian commons. Read More
Towards Institutionalising India’s Critical Infrastructure Protection Programme
This paper examines India’s fragmented Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) landscape at a time when asymmetric threats, cyber intrusions and systemic vulnerabilities have elevated CIP from a technical concern to a strategic necessity1 . Current arrangements under the National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC) remain confined to information assets and leave physical infrastructures, sectoral interdependencies and resilience standards outside effective oversight. To address this gap, the paper advances an integrated statutory and evaluative architecture built on the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act (CIPA), which provides inspection authority, penalties, incident reporting and coordinated response, and the Bharat National Resilience Index (BNRI), which establishes quantifiable resilience thresholds across preparedness, mitigation, response and recovery. The approach moves beyond Western standalone critical-sector templates and incorporates India-specific sectoral clusters previously detailed by the author and published in this journal, capturing the country’s system-of-systems vulnerabilities, federal asymmetry and hybrid threat exposure. Read More
White-Collar Terrorism: The Radicalization of Professionals and the Exploitation of Financial Infrastructure
This article brings together the research done on the ground and the analysis of the collected information to present a detailed study of white-collar terrorism. This is a case of the most ironic of the terrorists, the highly educated professionals who exploit their access to institutions to enable extremist violence. As part of the research, the authors read and analyzed secret case files, oversight reviews, intelligence on the financial sector, and academic literature and then combined all these into a single comprehensive framework to understand how this issue hampers the fight against terrorism most severely and in what way. Read More
Emerging Biological Warfare Threats
The changing dynamics of warfare today has been a vulnerable matter of concern. The rapid advancements in technology such as synthetic biology and genetic engineering is changing the global landscape. Use of AI enables design, modification and production of novel pathogens. Even though biotechnology holds immense promises, it’s dual use also proposes potential threats by producing more antimicrobial resistant pathogens as well as the complete new form of deadliest viruses using synthetic biotechnology. This poses significant national biosecurity concerns. This paper examines how synthetic biology and genetic engineering with the addition of AI concerning the development of potential bioweapons. This paper also analyses current global norms and India’s capabilities, vulnerabilities and technological infrastructure that could be exploited in a high-impact biological incident along with policy framework suggestions which aim at strengthening national biodefence. In doing so, it underscores the urgent need for India to modernise its biosecurity architecture to safeguard its public health, economic stability and national security in the age of advanced biotechnology. Read More
Artificial Intelligence and National Security in the Global South
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been responsible for reshaping not only the global security architecture but also the national security architecture of individual actors i.e. states. AI has inevitably become a decisive force multiplier across military, intelligence and all other domains of strategic significance. Global South, situated in a complex geopolitical environment, faces multidimensional security challenges. To mitigate these contemporary challenges, integrating AI into national security framework is not only an opportunity but also a necessity, for actors within the region. This paper presents a critical overview of AI’s inescapable role in the national security of a country and examines its transformative potential, operational applications, institutional readiness, strategic limitations and the emerging nature of security dilemma, significantly posing a major security challenge for developing countries in the Global South, which are at a higher risk of being “passengers in flight” in the emerging Global AI Ecosystem. This paper further provides a comparative analysis of the degree of AI integration in their National Security Strategy, as compared to that of Global North. The paper, here, attempts to comprehend how a new “Algorithmic Empire” is evolving and how AI can be a key determinant in the emerging dynamics between the Global North and the Global South. Read More
Pakistan's Nuclear Programme and the AQ Khan Proliferation Network
While most nuclear weaponisation initiatives dealt only with the nuclear programme, the Pakistani one led to a nuclear proliferation network contrived by members of the same programme. This scenario consisted of a stunningly intricate and painstakingly concocted transnational network led by notorious non-state actors with occasional albeit tacit approval of the State (Abbas, 2018). This episode is unique not only for the scale and magnitude of the proliferation network but also the motivations which drove dozens of individuals, operating innumerable organisations, institutions, front companies, myriad middlemen, intemperate profiteers and above all numerous scintillating nuclear scientists and physicists to engage in this unprecedented exercise. It involved an alleged role of State actors, specifically the omnipotent military establishment which brought immense ignominy to the Pakistani State. In light of the recently concluded four-day conflict between India and Pakistan where India's Operation Sindoor decimated numerous Pakistani military assets, debates surrounding the Pakistani nuclear programme, its security or the lack of it thereof, and the decision making processes which drive Pakistan's nuclear policy have gained paramountcy in the Indian psyche. There is, thus, a need for a timely reminder of the dangers of nuclear proliferation and of the inherent fecklessness of, what academicians like Kenneth Walz call, ‘nuclear mythmakers’ (Walz, 1990). Read More
Global Trade at Crossroads – Need for an Overhaul
The Rising Protectionism and Unilateral tariffs imposed by the sovereign nation states are undermining the authority and credibility. of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and creating a turmoil in the Global Trade Order. The non-operative status of the WTO’s Dispute Settlement Body ((DSB) is leading to a lot of uncertainty in the Global trade landscape. This paper examines the implications of nonfunctioning of the WTO’s Dispute Settlement Mechanism (DSM), rising protectionism, frequent Most Favoured Nation (MFN) principle violations and the proliferation of bilateral and regional trade agreements (RTA’s) on the post-world-war II multilateral global trade order. The paper deals with an analysis of the WTO agreements to suggest reforms to restore the WTO's Dispute Settlement Mechanism, to ensure impartiality of the global trade body. The paper highlights India’s diplomatic maneuvering to navigates the uncertainty and inconsistency in global trade norms and geopolitical shifts, balancing national interests and domestic priorities while pushing for reforms beneficial to the Global South. Read More
Baloch Problem of Nationalism
The Baloch problem of nationalism is rooted in the artificial drawing of boundaries and state formation. The Baloch is a distinct ethno-linguistic community and had developed their own tribal structures. British colonial intervention in the nineteenth century fundamentally altered the established tribal structure by fragmenting Baloch-inhabited regions across British India, Iran, and Afghanistan. Colonial policies prioritised strategic and frontier management over socio-economic development, creating enduring patterns of underdevelopment and political marginalisation. Read More
