Foreign Policy, Defence & Geopolitics

State behaviour, deterrence, world orders, and India’s strategic choices.

Frameworks in this section concern how states behave towards each other — how they describe their interests, deter rivals, and position themselves in a changing world order.

If you are new here, start with Describing State Policy on Geopolitical Issues (a taxonomy for talking clearly about what any government actually does in foreign policy) and Guns and Butter (the fundamental trade-off between security and prosperity that shapes most strategic choices). India-specific cases run throughout these frameworks — they are written from a perspective that takes India’s strategic constraints seriously.

A Taxonomy of Defence Innovation
What it says On November 30th, the Defence Ministry approved IAF’s capital acquisition proposal for 97 Tejas Mk1A aircraft. This move signals a major shift — India’s armed forces have accepted the Tejas platform as a replacement for their inventory of old and outdated, mostly Russian, aircraft.

Aap Hamaare Hain Kaun, Russia?
What it says An honest framework for India’s actual strategic relationship with Russia.

China’s Predicament
What it says The structural strategic challenges China faces — and what they imply for India.

Decoupling Dynamics
What it says The mechanics of economic-political separation between major economies.

Describing State Policy on Geopolitical Issues
What it says A common vocabulary for analysing what a state’s position on any given foreign-policy issue actually is.

Dictatorship and Democracy in Israel and Pakistan
What it says A comparative reading of two states often analogised — and what the analogy hides.

Flakiness in US Pakistan Policy
What it says A pattern-level analysis of the inconsistencies in American policy towards Pakistan.

Guns and Butter
What it says The classic trade-off between defence and civilian spending, applied to Indian budgetary politics.

How Democratic States Perceive Each Other
What it says The structured way democracies read other democracies — and where the reading breaks down.

Human Capital Investment Model for National Security
What it says Defence capability is built from people, not platforms; the framework forces that fact into view.

Hypocrisy in International Relations
What it says A typology of inconsistent state behaviour — and why some hypocrisies are stable and others are not.

India and the Post-COVID-19 World Order
What it says How the pandemic accelerated geopolitical realignments India has to navigate.

India’s Approach Towards Chinese Firms
What it says A framework for balancing technology, security, and economic openness in dealing with Chinese companies.

India’s Leverage Assessment Framework
What it says Leverage is not a property of national size. It is a product of the density of interrelationships, the asymmetry of vulnerability in specific domains, and the willingness to endure short-term costs to establish long-term red lines.

India’s Retaliatory Options Against Larger Powers
What it says India’s conventional wisdom that it lacks retaliatory options against the US is analytically wrong. A big domestic market, defence procurement leverage, pharmaceutical patents, and a SAMR-type regulatory authority are four concrete cards India can play.

India’s Stake in the US-China GPU Fight
What it says India is a consumer-integrator in a five-layer AI stack. It benefits from Chinese open-source models but not Chinese hardware — a distinction the current American debate collapses.

Ingredients of a New World Order
What it says The components — power, ideology, institutions — that define an international system.

Instruments of Technology Geopolitics
What it says This shift explains why a DeepSeek came about after OpenAI blocked access to Chinese users and the US government blocked Chinese users from accessing advanced chips.

National Security Preparedness and COVID-19 Planning
What it says Why pandemics belong in national security thinking, not just public health.

Pakistan’s Stratagems
What it says Pakistan operates as a rentier state distributing territorial and resource concessions to multiple benefactors simultaneously — but geopolitics has a fourth dimension: time, and tactical wins carry inherent temporal risks.

Paradoxes of India’s Westernophobia
What it says Contradictions in how India relates to Western powers — economically, strategically, and rhetorically.

Responding to LAC Standoff in Ladakh
What it says A working framework for thinking through India’s options on a live border crisis.

Three Schools of Thought on India–US Relations
What it says The competing perspectives Indian strategists hold on the bilateral relationship.

Trusted Source–Trusted Product Framework
What it says India’s hardware security regime screens both vendors and products for supply chain integrity. The framework separates who makes something from what it does, recognising that a trusted vendor can ship a compromised product and a distrusted vendor can ship a clean one.

What Global Order Are We In?
What it says A framework for naming the current international system — unipolar, multipolar, or something messier.

What Made the US Enable China’s Rise
What it says A historical reading of strategic miscalculation by an open economy facing a closed rival.

What Makes an Asset Strategic?
What it says The criteria that separate genuinely strategic assets from things merely labelled strategic.

When Will China Block Its Open-Weight Models
What it says China exports open-weight AI models for five strategic reasons, and will restrict them only after three thresholds — domestic consolidation, ecosystem lock-in, and commoditisation saturation — are crossed.
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