Research

Although Russia can no longer exercise hegemonic power or demand exclusive rights of engagement, it is still the preponderant regional player in Central Asia.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi traveled to Washington last week, making his fourth trip to the United States since taking office just two years ago. India and South Asia Program Fellow, Ronak Desai examines the strategic approach to India's relations with the United States.

Many energy consumers, and even analysts and policymakers, confront and frame energy and climate risks in a moral vacuum, rarely incorporating broader social justice concerns. Here, to remedy this gap, we investigate how concepts from justice and ethics can inform energy decision-making by reframing five energy problems — nuclear waste, involuntary resettlement, energy pollution, energy poverty and climate change — as pressing justice concerns.

The authors analyze and contrast how China and India mobilized financial resources to build domestic technological innovation systems in wind energy.

Pakistan has developed tactical nuclear weapons to deter India from executing its Cold Start war doctrine. India, however, has disavowed that doctrine. Further, the use of such weapons against Indian troops inside Pakistan would kill and injure countless civilians, while risking massive nuclear retaliation by India. In this International Security article, Jaganath Sankaran argues Pakistan should reconsider the role of tactical nuclear weapons in its military strategy.

Campbell Craig and Benjamin H. Friedman, Brendan Rittenhouse Green, and Justin Logan respond to Stephen G. Brooks, G. John Ikenberry, and William C. Wohlforth's Winter 2012/2013 International Security article, "Don't Come Home, America: The Case against Retrenchment."

Ronak Desai, an Associate with the India and South Asia Program, reflects on the state of U.S.-Pakistan relations and its prospects for the future.

"Getting second-rung leadership right is important for any enterprise, and for al Qaeda that meant assuring the brand and building network capacity for terror. Bin Laden was careful about deciding who would be anointed with two powerful gifts—his blessing of leadership, and formal affiliation of groups to al Qaeda central (a term he heard used by the media and, amazingly, appropriated)."

After decades of flirting with nuclear weapons, India finally emerged as a nuclear power in the 1990s. New evidence suggests that India was able to hold off in part because it was able to secure protection through an alternate method: implicit “umbrellas” from superpowers. In the late 1970s, however, U.S. support for India waned as it began to improve its relations with Pakistan, and India lost its other major backer with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. By the late 1980s, India could no longer protect itself through diplomatic means, and acquisition of the bomb became an inevitable response to its security needs.

Recent national trends in investments in global energy research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) are inconsistent around the world. Public RD&D investments in energy are the metric most commonly used in international comparative assessments of energy-technology innovation, and the metric employed in this article. Overall, the data indicate that International Energy Agency (IEA) member country government investments have been volatile: they peaked in the late 1970s, declined during the subsequent two decades, bottomed out in 1997, and then began to gradually grow again during the 2000s.