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What a Carrier Can Do That Nothing Else Can: The Case for India’s Third
Recently, China teased in a video an aircraft carrier that is likely to be its fourth and the first one using nuclear power. Strip away the geopolitics for a moment. Set aside the China threat, the Hormuz blockade, the Red Sea crisis, the INS Vikramaditya structural audit, and the industrial arguments about Cochin Shipyard. Ask…
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Arctic Sovereignty and the New Cold Front: Strategic Modernization and the Sino-Russian Challenge
The geopolitical equilibrium of the High North is undergoing a fundamental and irreversible transformation. For decades, the Arctic was characterized by “Arctic exceptionalism,” a shared understanding among circumpolar nations that the region should remain a zone of low tension and high cooperation, primarily governed through the consensus-based Arctic Council.5 However, the dual pressures of accelerated…
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The Geopolitical Transformation of Asymmetric Naval Warfare: From the Sri Lankan Littoral to a Grand Strategy for the Strait of Hormuz
The modern maritime security environment has undergone a fundamental shift from blue-water fleet engagements to highly complex asymmetric confrontations in the littorals. This evolution is best exemplified by the conflict between the Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) Sea Tigers, a non-state actor that pioneered the use of suicide…
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Defanging the Dragon: India’s Real Antidote to China’s Indian Ocean Strategy
This report provides a strategic analysis of India’s options for neutralizing geopolitical and non-traditional security threats within the Indian Ocean Region (IOR). The primary threat stems from the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) ‘String of Pearls’ strategy, a network of dual-use (commercial and military) ports designed to encircle India, secure Chinese Sea Lines of Communication…
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The Trident Nexus: An Analytical Report on the Convergence of LTTE Remnants, D-Company, and the ISI for Narco-Terrorism and Strategic Destabilization
This report provides a strategic analysis of an emerging narco-terrorist network, the “Trident Nexus,” which represents a symbiotic, state-sponsored alliance between remnants of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the D-Company organized crime syndicate, and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). The report argues that the LTTE’s 2009 military defeat resulted not in its eradication, but…
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Ports and Permissive Space: Can Gwadar’s Growth Be Exploited by Traffickers?
Gwadar port’s fast-growing infrastructure of new berths, enlarged container yards, vast free-trade zones, and private logistics centres poses an imperative challenge of governance to the Indian Ocean region’s maritime security architecture. However, beneath this veneer of legitimate development, a disquieting vulnerability exists: the emergence of handling capacity, customs exemptions, and private warehousing has created de…
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From FATF to the High Seas: Why Financial Transparency Is Now a Maritime Imperative
The New Geography of Illicit Flows Money and contraband move together, and both increasingly travel by sea. From methamphetamine shipments off Pakistan’s Makran coast to the digital wallets flagged in the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) October 2025 warning, the pattern is unmistakable: the maritime and financial commons are converging. Criminal and extremist networks no…
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Turkey-Pakistan-China: Power Play at Sea with Somalia as Bait
Somalia’s coastline is fast becoming the hinge on which bigger powers test ideas about influence in the western Indian Ocean. Taken together—Turkey’s entrenched training presence and new maritime guarantees, Pakistan’s fresh military-training pact, and China’s money and hard facilities next door—the pattern looks less like Somali empowerment and more like a trilateral gravity well pulling…
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The Cut-Rate Submarine: Why Hangor Isn’t the Yuan Beijing Keeps for Itself
Pakistan’s much-hyped Hangor-class submarine programme has been repeatedly showcased as a technological leap in its naval modernisation drive. But beneath the fanfare lies a crucial detail: the Hangor is not the same as the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN) frontline Yuan-class submarine. Instead, it is a cut-down export derivative, the S26 design, that lacks several…