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Speaking in Delhi in November 2016, Manohar Parrikar, India's then Defence Minister, said there should be an element of unpredictability in the country's military strategy. He wondered whether India's nuclear doctrine should be constrained by a 'no-first-use' posture. The essence of the defence minister's introspection was that ambiguity enhances deterrence. This view has been expressed by several nuclear strategists. Nuclear doctrines are not written in stone and are never absolutely rigid. They are not binding international treaties that must be adhered to in letter and spirit. Fifteen years have passed since India's nuclear doctrine was approved by the Cabinet Committee on Security in January 2003. A review of the nuclear doctrine is long overdue. Credible minimum deterrence and the posture of no-first-use have stood the test of time. But is there no conceivable operational contingency that justifies a first strike? Do we need a new nuclear policy for our new geopolitical reality? This book delves into the debate and charts out a way ahead

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New Threat in West Asia In the second week of November 2015, militants from Abu Bakr AlBaghdadi's self-proclaimed Islamic Caliphate – also called ISIS, ISIL and Daesh – struck multiple targets in Beirut, Paris and Mali. Earlier, on 31 October, ISIS claimed to have brought down an Airbus aircraft of the Russian airliner Metrojet soon after it took off from the Sinai resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on a flight to St. Petersburg. Upping the ante in West Asia by several notches, President Francois Hollande of France virtually declared war on the ISIS and sent a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to the region. In order to better coordinate US air strikes, President Barack Obama approved the deployment of 50 Special Forces personnel to fight the Islamic State. And, President Vladimir Putin of Russia joined in with air strikes. One Russian fighter aircraft was reportedly shot down by Turkey for violating its air space. During the Cold War, the state of turmoil in West Asia used to be an accurate barometer of the world's political climate. At that time, the two superpowers jockeyed for power and influence in the oil rich region through their proxies but were not directly involved in any of the conflicts in the region. That situation has now changed and both Russia and the United States are now direct participants in the crisis in Iraq and Syria. In the current manifestation of instability in the perpetually strife-torn West Asian region, the charge is led by the virulently radical Sunni militants of the Islamic Caliphate proclaimed by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The ISIS is engaged in a vicious fight with the armed forces of Iraq and Syria and the Peshmerga – forces of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) from the Kurdish belt along the Iraq-Turkey border. It has captured territory in Iraq and Syria and demonstrated its ability to defend its gains. In the civil war that has been raging in Syria since 2012, almost 2,50,000 people have been killed and thousands of refugees have begun migrating to Europe; many hundreds have perished ...

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