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Rising temperatures and other environmental changes in the Arctic such as thawing permafrost and melting sea ice and glaciers have enabled ships traversing from Chinese ports to European ones to use the shorter Northeast Passage Route (NSR). Yong Sheng, a COSCO ship, left Dalian port in China for Rotterdam in Europe via the Bering Strait and Russia’s northern coastline in 2013.

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Unlike his predecessors Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, who believed that the boundary dispute was best left to be settled at a much later date, key policymakers say that Xi Jinping is looking to strengthen his historical legacy by coming to a boundary settlement with India during his term.

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The Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s (SCO) summit meeting will take place in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek during 13-14 June 2019. This year’s SCO summit has many new backgrounds to it. This will be SCO’s first leaders’ meeting since the full escalation of the trade war between the United States (US) and China. This will be Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first multilateral engagement in his second term. His first bilateral visits are to the Maldives and Sri Lanka.

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Introduction

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The changes the international system has undergone from being tight bipolar to loose multipolar have resulted in the blurring of lines between traditional conceptions of hard and soft power. Military wars envisaged in the form of the two World Wars are distant memory; and new forms of warfare fuelled by technological advances have become the norm. Power now means the ability to shape other states’ behavior in accordance with a particular state’s own security needs. Information therefore, is of paramount significance in this context.

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Several other purchases, such as the planned acquisition of another Akula-class nuclear submarine, may also attract US sanctions. But would the Trump administration be willing to give India access to nuclear submarines, air defence systems, etc? According to senior officials spoken to, the reply is in the affirmative.

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Defence diplomacy acts as a support mechanism to sustain cooperative structures in the strategic domain, to safeguard strategic spaces, and explore mutual cooperation in defence. This translates as a soft deterrent against any adversary. Defence relations between India and Vietnam have acquired importance against the backdrop of China’s island-building activities in the South China Sea, expansion of China’s Sanya submarine base and India’s security concerns due to frequent deployment of Chinese submarines in the Indian Ocean.

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India’s relationship with the Gulf has witnessed a qualitative transformation since the August 2015 visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the United Arab Emirates (UAE). While seeking better relations with all Gulf countries, New Delhi has avoided taking sides in intra-Gulf disputes.

India has demonstrated its anti-satellite (ASAT) capability by destroying one of its own satellites launched recently. The test places India in an elite club of advanced technology countries, possessing the wherewithal to deny the use of outer space assets to their adversaries. While regional security concerns played a crucial role in this decision, the American perspective on outer space, in addition to attempts to find a global consensus on banning ASAT development and testing also played its part.

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The North Koreans claim that during the talks in Vietnam, Donald Trump was 'clearly not the person in command' on the US side.