Jadavpur Journal of International Relations

China has been investing considerable financial as well as intellectual resources for strengthening, improving, and maintaining its defense establishment. The Chinese military establishment continues to constantly keep itself abreast of advances in both technology and tactics. However, China’s race for arms and the urgency with which it wants to acquire competence in weapons technology are matters of serious concern for its big and small neighbors, not only those with many of whom it has territorial and maritime disputes but also countries of the Asia-Pacific region like Australia and the USA. It remains to be seen how far China, despite its race for arms and competence, is able to convince its neighbors and the world that its rise would indeed continue to be peaceful. In this backdrop, this article tracks the evolution of Chinese military policy in the recent years in terms of strategies, structures, finances, and development, and identifies the weaknesses of the military establishment. It attempts to understand China’s race for arms in the light of the significance of realist thought in understanding world politics.

The aim of the study is to identify the problems and prospects surrounding India’s regional trade and investment patterns with regard to subregional cooperation. There are several factors which appeals to India’s interests in subregional cooperation, with particular emphasis on the idea of development, which puts a high premium on economic growth. This, however, blinds the urgent need for sustainable and equitable benefits and sharing compounding interests. The debate and discourse on the Look East Policy in India’s foreign policy is viewed as an attempt to assert its potential regional stature and consequently try to overcome and move beyond certain imposed limitations in regional priorities. India, South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and Association of Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN) countries are viewed as natural trading partners. Besides this, there have also been substantial contributions with regard to progress in India’s trade with other developing countries in Asia and the Pacific region, within the initiations of the formation of Look East Policy among subregional entities.

The article explores the steady strengthening of India’s relationship with Israel, ever since India established full diplomatic relations with Israel in the year 1992. However, notwithstanding the convergence of interests on a range of issues between India and Israel, this bilateral relationship will have to be carefully managed because of a host of constraints which circumscribe the same. This study examines those factors which are bringing the two nations increasingly closer and the constraints that might stand in the way of healthy bilateral relations between them. The first section of this article deals with those areas where both the nations cooperate. The second section highlights the various constraints that make it difficult for this relationship to achieve its full potential. This article explores how India has intricately tried to maintain a delicate balance over the years by addressing the areas of constraints in a very articulate way, so that the Indo-Israeli relations in the post-Cold War era continue to flourish.

The end of the Cold War witnessed a paradigm shift not only in the international setting but also in the field of studies relating to security issues. During the Cold War international relations, both in terms of theory and practice, were dominated by the realist paradigm that emphasized on the notion of preservation of the state from threats emanating from external sources. Such a conception was myopic and it narrowed the analysis of international and security issues. During the past decade, particularly during the post-Cold War era, attempts were being made to broaden the security agenda in order to include issues of other sectors, namely, political, economic, societal, and ecological, besides the military ones. This article is an attempt to deal with a broader understanding of the term security as drawn from various theoretical schools not only to lend clarity to the term but also to enable a researcher to place the concept in a proper frame of reference, that is, to examine the concept of security with focus on the changing international security agenda that not only calls for a rethinking but also a reexamination of the perennial security issues.