Suchergebnisse

In response to the perceived inability of the Indian military to leverage its conventional superiority to end Pakistan's 'proxy war' in Kashmir, the Indian Army announced a new offensive doctrine in 2004 intended to allow it to mobilize quickly and undertake limited retaliatory attacks on its neighbor, without crossing Pakistan's nuclear threshold. This Cold Start doctrine marks a break with the fundamentally defensive military doctrines that India has employed since gaining independence in 1947. Requiring combined arms operating jointly with the Indian Air Force, Cold Start represents a significant advance in India's conventional military capabilities. Yet, despite the Indian Army's intentions, it risks provoking or escalating a crisis on the subcontinent that could breach the nuclear threshold. Recent military exercises and associated organizational changes indicate that although the Indian Army has made progress toward developing an operational Cold Start capability, particularly in the area of network-centric warfare, the doctrine remains in the experimental stage. Nevertheless, this is a development that deserves further study. As the Indian Army enhances its ability to achieve a quick military decision against Pakistan, the political pressure to employ such a strategy in a crisis will increase-with potentially catastrophic results. Adapted from the source document.

Japanese leaders struggled for decades to overcome legal, political, and normative constraints on the expansion of the Self-Defense Forces so that Japan could field a robust military. Their progress was steady and significant, but slow. Now, having reframed the nature of the threat Japan faces and having borrowed creatively from the U.S. model, they have found new traction by empowering the Japan Coast Guard (JCG). Today's JCG has what its publicists, citing capabilities explicitly banned by Japan's constitution, call 'New Fighting Power'! Remarkably, however, JCG modernization and expansion are being achieved without much objection from Japan's neighbors or from the domestic public. Although the JCG is not a 'second navy', it is already a fourth branch of the Japanese military. Tokyo is now able to project additional diplomatic influence as well as 'fighting power'. Japan's 'new fighting power' is thus greater than the sum of its military parts. Adapted from the source document.