India has long been motivated to modernize its military, and it now has the resources. But so far, the drive to rebuild has lacked a critical component—strategic military planning. India's approach of arming without strategic purpose remains viable, however, as it seeks great-power accommodation of its rise and does not want to appear threatening. What should we anticipate from this effort in the future, and what are the likely ramifications? Stephen Cohen and Sunil Dasgupta answer those crucial questions in a book so timely that it reached number two on the nonfiction bestseller list in India. "Two years after the publication of Arming without Aiming, our view is that India's strategic restraint and its consequent institutional arrangement remain in place. We do not want to predict that India's military-strategic restraint will last forever, but we do expect that the deeper problems in Indian defense policy will continue to slow down military modernization."—from the preface to the paperback edition

This study examines the observations of U.S. military personnel who attended India's Defence Services Staff College (DSSC) at Wellington. Although the DSSC is a tri-service professional military education institution, this study focuses primarily on the Indian Army, the largest and most influentialmilitary service in India. Collectively, U.S. personnel at the DSSC had sustained interactionsover an extended period of time with three distinct groups of Indian Army officers: seniorofficers (brigadier through lieutenant general), senior midlevel (lieutenant colonel and colonel),and junior midlevel (captain and major). The study focuses on the attitudes and values of theIndian Army officer corps over a 38-year period, from 1979 to 2017, to determine if there waschange over time, and if so, to understand the drivers of that change.

What changes in China's modern military policy reveal about military organizations and strategySince the 1949 Communist Revolution, China has devised nine different military strategies, which the People's Liberation Army (PLA) calls "strategic guidelines." What accounts for these numerous changes? Active Defense offers the first systematic look at China's military strategy from the mid-twentieth century to today. Exploring the range and intensity of threats that China has faced, M. Taylor Fravel illuminates the nation's past and present military goals and how China sought to achieve them, and offers a rich set of cases for deepening the study of change in military organizations.Drawing from diverse Chinese-language sources, including memoirs of leading generals, military histories, and document collections that have become available only in the last two decades, Fravel shows why transformations in military strategy were pursued at certain times and not others. He focuses on the military strategies adopted in 1956, 1980, and 1993-when the PLA was attempting to wage war in a new kind of way-to show that China has pursued major change in its strategic guidelines when there has been a significant shift in the conduct of warfare in the international system and when China's Communist Party has been united.Delving into the security threats China has faced over the last seven decades, Active Defense offers a detailed investigation into how and why states alter their defense policies.

The Mumbai blasts of 1993, the attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001, Mumbai 26/11—cross-border terrorism has continued unabated. What can India do to motivate Pakistan to do more to prevent such attacks? In the nuclear times that we live in, where a military counter-attack could escalate to destruction beyond imagination, overt warfare is clearly not an option. But since outright peace-making seems similarly infeasible, what combination of coercive pressure and bargaining could lead to peace? The authors provide, for the first time, a comprehensive assessment of the violent and non-violent options available to India for compelling Pakistan to take concrete steps towards curbing terrorism originating in its homeland. They draw on extensive interviews with senior Indian and Pakistani officials, in service and retired, to explore the challenges involved in compellence and to show how non-violent coercion combined with clarity on the economic, social and reputational costs of terrorism can better motivate Pakistan to pacify groups involved in cross-border terrorism. Not War, Not Peace? goes beyond the much discussed theories of nuclear deterrence and counterterrorism strategy to explore a new approach to resolving old conflicts.

The 2013-14 Strategic Asia volume examines the role of nuclear weapons in the grand strategies of key Asian states and assesses the impact of these capabilities—both established and latent—on regional and international stability. In each chapter, a leading expert explores the historical, strategic, and political factors that drive a country's calculations vis-a-vis nuclear weapons and draws implications for American interests.