Category Archives: Reviews

12Sep/16

‘Perilous Interventions’: A revealing title to the initiated – IndiaStrategic.in

India’s Vice President M Hamid Ansari released a book by Hardeep Puri titled ‘Perilous Interventions: The Security Council and the Politics of Chaos’ at a well-attended function September 7 in New Delhi.

Addressing a packed house after releasing the book ‘Perilous Interventions,’ Vice President lauded the book, saying that, “To the initiated, the title of Ambassador Hardeep Puri’s timely and well written book reveals much!”

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10Sep/16

‘This book is an insider’s view of the games the UN’s Security Council plays’ – The Scroll

A former Indian diplomat blows the cover off the politics of intervention in other countries’ affairs.

There are interventions and then there are perilous interventions. As the world tackles growing fundamentalism and non-state actors, nations are increasingly debating deploying their militaries to take on the new threats. But each intervention comes with a baggage of unpredictable consequences that have led to the creation of new wars and conflicts.
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05Sep/16

‘Into the UN’s lopsided world’ – Simran Sodhi, The Tribune

The need to reform the United Nations and especially the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), where the veto power of the five permanent members holds the key to crucial global decisions, is imperative. This is an opinion that has been expressed on numerous occasions in recent times and Hardeep Singh Puri’s book is another important voice in this direction.

The book makes a powerful case of why reform of the UNSC is so crucial and to illustrate this argument, Puri uses the examples of Syria, Libya and Yemen, among others. Closer home, the author Continue reading

05Sep/16

‘India’s intervention in Lanka: Mercy missions don’t draw condemnation, says India’s ex-UN envoy’ – Thalif Deen, SundayTimes.lk

NEW YORK– When the government of Rajiv Gandhi ordered the Indian Air Force to carry out an airdrop of humanitarian supplies in June 1987 inside embattled northern Sri Lanka — infamously dubbed “the parippu drop”– the Sri Lanka government reacted furiously describing India’s action as a “naked violation of Sri Lanka’s independence and an unwarranted assault on Sri Lanka’s territory and sovereignty.”
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05Sep/16

‘Lost Inside The Charmed Circle’ – Humphrey Hawksley, Asian Affairs.in

Humphrey Hawksley lauds a call for reform of the UN Security Council, by a participant who remains unaware of how it reaches its decisions

As a young diplomat in the 1980s, Hardeep Singh Puri cut his teeth on India’s ill-fated intervention in Sri Lanka, and rose to become his country’s ambassador to the United Nations when India was a rotating member of the Security Council.
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02Sep/16

‘Significant interventions’ – K.P. Nayar, Telegraph India

India is on the threshold of a re-engagement with the Levant

For the prime minister, Narendra Modi, Balochistan is not a flash in the pan. The articulation of Indian concerns, stakes and interests in Balochistan is part of a pattern in his government’s evolving foreign policy after two and a quarter years in office. Balochistan is not the only conflict zone that the National Democratic Alliance government is wading into. Ending a hands-off Continue reading

30Aug/16

‘Blunders of intervention: Policies the world is paying for’ -Tarun Basu, Business Standard

Book: Perilous Interventions: The Security Council and the Politics of Chaos; Author: Hardeep Singh Puri; Publisher: HarperCollins; Pages: 263; Price: Rs 599

As modern civilisation continues to reel under a battery of murderous attacks from Islamic extremists, many of who now claim to owe allegiance to the contemporary quasi-state terror entity called the Islamic State (IS), the world looks increasingly vulnerable to ordinary citizens, who wonder at the impunity with which militarised attackers are able to operate freely and spread mayhem, Continue reading