Security in the Contemporary World

Why this chapter matters for UPSC: "Security in the Contemporary World" is Chapter 5 of the current Contemporary World Politics (Reprint 2026-27); it was Chapter 7 before the rationalisation of 2022-23, and this site keeps the old numbering in its page order. It is the book's conceptual chapter: NCERT asks what "security" means, separates the traditional conception (military threats to the state, answered by deterrence, defence, balance of power and alliances) from the non-traditional conception (human security and global security, which ask "security for whom?"), lists the new sources of threat, and ends with the four components of India's security strategy. GS3's internal-security section asks these questions almost every year: the complexity and causes of terrorism (Mains 2021), solutions to terrorism and the sources of its funding (Mains 2017), the internal security challenges India faces and the role of its intelligence agencies (Mains 2023), the sources of terror funding and the "No Money for Terror" conferences (Mains 2023); GS2 asked about the UN Security Council's Counter-Terrorism Committee (Mains 2024). Prelims tests the treaties NCERT names (the Biological and Chemical Weapons Conventions, the ABM Treaty, SALT, START, the NPT) and India's nuclear doctrine. This page follows NCERT's sections in order, quotes the 1994 Human Development Report and the Cabinet Committee on Security's release of 4 January 2003 from their texts, and dates every treaty count to the UN Treaty Collection or the organisation's own page as read in October 2026.

🧠 First Principles — Read This First

Security is "freedom from threats", but only from the extreme ones. NCERT's definition is built in two steps. "At its most basic, security implies freedom from threats", but since "human existence and the life of a country are full of threats", only threats to "core values" count, and only threats so intense that "those values would be damaged beyond repair if we did not do something to deal with the situation". The chapter's recurring warning is against letting the word swallow everything: "if we do that, the concept of security stands to lose its coherence".

Two conceptions, four questions. The traditional conception answers four questions in one way: the referent is the state, the threat is military, the source is another state, the approach is force. The non-traditional conception begins "by questioning the traditional referent of security" ("Security for who?") and then "the other three elements": "what is being secured, from what kind of threats and the approach to security". Everything in the chapter hangs on this grid; use it to classify any statement in a Prelims question.

Contexts decide. NCERT insists on "the importance of keeping in mind different contexts or situations which determine our view of security": what Europe feared after 1945 (attack by the other bloc) differed from what the new states of Asia and Africa feared (their neighbours and their own separatists); what the Maldives fears (sea-level rise) differs from what southern Africa fears (HIV-AIDS). Both conceptions, NCERT says, "vary according to local contexts".

PART 1 — Quick Reference

The Chapter at a Glance

Treaties and Institutions (NCERT's figures first; the record named in each row)

PART 2 — Concepts & Narrative

What Is Security?

NCERT opens by noticing how the word is used to close debate: "we hear that an issue is a security issue and that it is vital for the well-being of the country", with the implication "that it is too important or secret to be debated and discussed openly". In a democracy, "surely this cannot be the case". The definition that follows is in two moves. "At its most basic, security implies freedom from threats", but "our world would be saturated with security issues if we took such a broad view of what is threatening"; so "those who study security ... generally say that only those things that threaten 'core values' should be regarded as being of interest", and even then only "extremely dangerous threats—threats that could so endanger core values that those values would be damaged beyond repair if we did not do something". NCERT leaves the open questions open: "Whose core values though? The core values of the country as a whole? The core values of ordinary women and men in the street?" And it concedes that "security remains a slippery idea": it would be "amazing if six hundred and fifty crore people, organised in nearly 200 countries, had the same conception of security" (the population figure is NCERT's; the United Nations put the world's population above 820 crore in 2025).

Traditional Notions: External

"In the traditional conception of security, the greatest danger to a country is from military threats. The source of this danger is another country which by threatening military action endangers the core values of sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity." Military action also "endangers the lives of ordinary citizens", who "are made targets of war, to break their support of the war". The four components (deterrence, defence, balance of power, alliance building) are in the key-term box above.

The traditional view locates most threats outside the border for a structural reason: "the international system is a rather brutal arena in which there is no central authority capable of controlling behaviour". Within a country "the threat of violence is regulated by an acknowledged central authority — the government"; in world politics "there is no acknowledged central authority that stands above everyone else". The UN is not one: "as presently constituted, the UN is a creature of its members and has authority only to the extent that the membership allows it to have authority and obeys it. So, in world politics, each country has to be responsible for its own security."

Traditional Notions: Internal

Why does the traditional view say so little about internal security? Because "after the Second World War it seemed that, for the most powerful countries on earth, internal security was more or less assured": the US and the Soviet Union "appeared to be united and could expect peace within their borders", and the powerful western European states "faced no serious threats from groups or communities living within those borders", so they "focused primarily on threats from outside". Their external threat was the other alliance; some European powers also "continued to worry about violence in their colonies", as in Vietnam and Kenya in the 1950s.

The new states of Asia and Africa inherited some of these fears and added two of their own. Some joined the Cold War alliances and had to worry about the Cold War "becoming a hot war and dragging them into hostilities". NCERT's figure: "The Cold War between the two superpowers was responsible for approximately one-third of all wars in the post-Second World War period. Most of these wars were fought in the Third World." Beyond that, the new countries "faced the prospect of military conflict with neighbouring countries" and "had to worry about internal military conflict": "Many newly-independent countries came to fear their neighbours even more than they feared the US or Soviet Union or the former colonial powers." Internally they feared "separatist movements", and "sometimes, the external and internal threats merged" when "a neighbour might help or instigate an internal separatist movement". NCERT's two statistics on the result, which it does not source: "Internal wars now make up more than 95 per cent of all armed conflicts fought anywhere in the world. Between 1946 and 1991, there was a twelve-fold rise in the number of civil wars—the greatest jump in 200 years."

Traditional Security and Cooperation

Even within the traditional conception "there is a recognition that cooperation in limiting violence is possible", on both "the ends and the means of war". On ends, "countries should only go to war for the right reasons, primarily self-defence or to protect other people from genocide". On means, "armies must avoid killing or hurting non-combatants as well as unarmed and surrendering combatants", "should not be excessively violent", and "force must in any case be used only after all the alternatives have failed".

Three further forms of cooperation. Disarmament "requires all states to give up certain kinds of weapons": NCERT's examples are "the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) and the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC)", which "banned the production and possession of these weapons"; "more than 155 states acceded to the BWC and 193 states acceded to the CWC", and "both conventions included all the great powers". The superpowers "did not want to give up the third type of weapons of mass destruction, namely, nuclear weapons, so they pursued arms control". Arms control "regulates the acquisition or development of weapons": the Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972 "tried to stop the United States and Soviet Union from using ballistic missiles as a defensive shield to launch a nuclear attack" while allowing "a very limited number of defensive systems"; SALT II and START followed; and the NPT of 1968 "was an arms control treaty in the sense that it regulated the acquisition of nuclear weapons: those countries that had tested and manufactured nuclear weapons before 1967 were allowed to keep their weapons; and those that had not done so were to give up the right to acquire them". Confidence building "is a process in which countries share ideas and information with their rivals": "they tell each other about their military intentions and, up to a point, their military plans", the forces they possess and where they are deployed, so that "rivals do not go to war through misunderstanding or misperception".

NCERT's summary of the traditional conception: it is "principally concerned with the use, or threat of use, of military force. In traditional security, force is both the principal threat to security and the principal means of achieving security."

Non-Traditional Notions

Non-traditional notions "go beyond military threats to include a wide range of threats and dangers affecting the conditions of human existence". They begin "by questioning the traditional referent of security" and then "the other three elements of security — what is being secured, from what kind of threats and the approach to security". Proponents answer "Security for who?" with "Not just the state but also individuals or communities or indeed all of humankind". The two names are human security and global security.

Human security "is about the protection of people more than the protection of states". NCERT grants that "human security and state security should be — and often are — the same thing", but "secure states do not automatically mean secure peoples": protecting citizens from foreign attack "may be a necessary condition for the security of individuals, but it is certainly not a sufficient one", because "during the last 100 years, more people have been killed by their own governments than by foreign armies". All proponents agree that the "primary goal is the protection of individuals"; they differ on the threats. The narrow conception focuses on "violent threats to individuals", or, in Kofi Annan's words as NCERT quotes them, "the protection of communities and individuals from internal violence". The broad conception adds "hunger, disease and natural disasters because these kill far more people than war, genocide and terrorism combined", and in its broadest form "economic security and 'threats to human dignity'". NCERT's gloss: "the broadest formulation stresses what has been called 'freedom from want' and 'freedom from fear', respectively".

Global security "emerged in the 1990s in response to the global nature of threats such as global warming, international terrorism, and health epidemics like AIDS and bird flu". No country can resolve these alone, and "one country may have to disproportionately bear the brunt of a global problem": NCERT's example is that "a sea level rise of 1.5–2.0 meters would flood 20 percent of Bangladesh, inundate most of the Maldives, and threaten nearly half the population of Thailand".

New Sources of Threats

Terrorism "refers to political violence that targets civilians deliberately and indiscriminately. International terrorism involves the citizens or territory of more than one country." Terrorist groups "seek to change a political context or condition that they do not like by force or threat of force"; civilian targets are chosen "to terrorise the public and to use the unhappiness of the public as a weapon against national governments or other parties in conflict". The classic cases "involve hijacking planes or planting bombs in trains, cafes, markets and other crowded places". Since 11 September 2001 "other governments and public have paid more attention to terrorism, though terrorism itself is not new"; in the past "most of the terror attacks have occurred in the Middle East, Europe, Latin America and South Asia".

Human rights "have come to be classified into three types": political rights "such as freedom of speech and assembly"; economic and social rights; and "the rights of colonised people or ethnic and indigenous minorities". There is "broad agreement on this classification" but none on "which set of rights should be considered as universal human rights, nor what the international community should do when rights are being violated". Since the 1990s, "Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the genocide in Rwanda, and the Indonesian military's killing of people in East Timor have led to a debate on whether or not the UN should intervene to stop human rights abuses": some argue "the UN Charter empowers the international community to take up arms in defence of human rights"; others "that the national interests of the powerful states will determine which instances of human rights violations the UN will act upon".

Global poverty is "another source of insecurity". NCERT's figures are those of its edition: "World population—now at 760 crore—will grow to nearly 1000 crore by the middle of the 21st century"; "half the world's population growth occurs in just six countries—India, China, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh and Indonesia"; among the poorest countries "population is expected to triple in the next 50 years, whereas many rich countries will see population shrinkage". The mechanism: "high per capita income and low population growth make rich states or rich social groups get richer, whereas low incomes and high population growth reinforce each other to make poor states and poor groups get poorer". The disparity "contributes to the gap between the Northern and Southern countries", and within the South; "most of the world's armed conflicts now take place in sub-Saharan Africa, which is also the poorest region of the world".

Migration. Poverty in the South "has also led to large-scale migration to seek a better life ... in the North", creating "international political frictions". NCERT's distinction, a Prelims regular: "International law and norms make a distinction between migrants (those who voluntarily leave their home countries) and refugees (those who flee from war, natural disaster or political persecution). States are generally supposed to accept refugees, but they do not have to accept migrants." People "who have fled their homes but remain within national borders are called 'internally displaced people'"; NCERT's example is the "Kashmiri Pandits that fled the violence in the Kashmir Valley in the early 1990s". The refugee map "tallies almost perfectly with the world conflicts map": "From 1990 to 1995, 70 states were involved in 93 wars which killed about 55 lakh people", and "in the 1990s, all but three of the 60 refugee flows coincided with an internal armed conflict". NCERT's UNHCR chart of where refugees were hosted in 2017 gives Africa 30 per cent, the Middle East and North Africa 26, Europe 17, the Americas 16, Asia and the Pacific 11.

Health epidemics "such as HIV-AIDS, bird flu, and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) have rapidly spread across countries through migration, business, tourism and military operations". NCERT's dated figures: "By 2003, an estimated 4 crore people were infected with HIV-AIDS worldwide, two-thirds of them in Africa and half of the rest in South Asia"; drug therapies lowered the death rate in rich countries in the late 1990s "but these treatments were too expensive to help poor regions like Africa". New diseases ("Corona, ebola virus, hantavirus, and hepatitis C") have emerged while old ones ("tuberculosis, malaria, dengue fever and cholera") "have mutated into drug resistant forms"; animal epidemics (mad-cow disease in Britain, bird flu in Asia) have large economic effects. Such epidemics "demonstrate the growing inter-dependence of states making their borders less meaningful than in the past".

The test. "Expansion of the concept of security does not mean that we can include any kind of disease or distress in the ambit of security. If we do that, the concept of security stands to lose its coherence." To qualify, "an issue must share a minimum common criterion, say, of threatening the very existence of the referent (a state or group of people) though the precise nature of this threat may be different": the Maldives and sea-level rise; southern Africa and HIV-AIDS, where "one in six adults has the disease (one in three for Botswana, the worst case)"; Rwanda in 1994, where "nearly five lakh" Tutsi "were killed by the rival Hutu tribe in a matter of weeks".

Cooperative Security

"Dealing with many of these non-traditional threats to security require cooperation rather than military confrontation." Force "may have a role to play in combating terrorism or in enforcing human rights (and even here there is a limit to what force can achieve)", but "it is difficult to see what force would do to help alleviate poverty, manage migration and refugee movements, and control epidemics"; "in most cases, the use of military force would only make matters worse". Cooperation "may be bilateral (i.e. between any two countries), regional, continental, or global", and may involve "international organisations (the UN, the World Health Organisation, the World Bank, the IMF etc.), non-governmental organisations (Amnesty International, the Red Cross, private foundations and charities, religious organisations, trade unions, associations, social and development organisations), businesses and corporations, and great personalities (e.g. Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela)". Force is not excluded: cooperative security "may involve the use of force as a last resort", against "governments that kill their own people or ignore the misery of their populations" and against "international terrorists and those who harbour them", but "non-traditional security is much better when the use of force is sanctioned and applied collectively by the international community rather than when an individual country decides to use force on its own".

India's Security Strategy

India "has faced traditional (military) and non-traditional threats to its security that have emerged from within as well as outside its borders". NCERT gives its strategy "four broad components, which have been used in a varying combination from time to time".

First, military capability, "because India has been involved in conflicts with its neighbours — Pakistan in 1947–48, 1965, 1971 and 1999; and China in 1962". Surrounded "by nuclear-armed countries in the South Asian region, India's decision to conduct nuclear tests in 1998 was justified by the Indian government in terms of safeguarding national security. India first tested a nuclear device in 1974."

Second, international norms and institutions. Nehru "supported the cause of Asian solidarity, decolonisation, disarmament, and the UN as a forum in which international conflicts could be settled". India "took initiatives to bring about a universal and non-discriminatory non-proliferation regime in which all countries would have the same rights and obligations with respect to weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, biological, chemical)", argued "for an equitable New International Economic Order (NIEO)", and "used non-alignment to help carve out an area of peace outside the bloc politics of the two superpowers". "India joined 160 countries that have signed and ratified the 1997 Kyoto Protocol" (NCERT's count is of its day; the UN Treaty Collection now lists 192 parties, and India's instrument of 26 August 2002 was an accession, not a signature followed by ratification). "Indian troops have been sent abroad on UN peacekeeping missions in support of cooperative security initiatives."

Third, internal security. "Several militant groups from areas such as the Nagaland, Mizoram, the Punjab, and Kashmir among others have, from time to time, sought to break away from India. India has tried to preserve national unity by adopting a democratic political system, which allows different communities and groups of people to freely articulate their grievances and share political power."

Fourth, development. An attempt "to develop its economy in a way that the vast mass of citizens are lifted out of poverty and misery and huge economic inequalities are not allowed to exist", which "has partially succeeded". Democratic politics "allows spaces for articulating the voice of the poor", and there is "a pressure on the democratically elected governments to combine economic growth with human development". NCERT's conclusion: "democracy is not just a political ideal; a democratic government is also a way to provide greater security".

PART 3 — UPSC Integration

Three Frameworks

1. The four-question grid. Referent (state or people?); threat (military or non-military?); source (another state, or poverty, disease, environment, non-state actors?); approach (force, or cooperation?). Classify any statement with it: NCERT's exercise 2 (chikungunya, workers' inflow, a group demanding nationhood, a group demanding autonomy, a critical newspaper) is this grid applied.

2. NCERT's test of a security problem. An issue qualifies when it threatens "the very existence of the referent". Use it to resist the Mains temptation to call everything a security issue, and to justify why sea-level rise is a security threat to the Maldives but a development issue elsewhere.

3. India's four components as an answer skeleton. Military capability (dated: the 1998 tests, the 2003 doctrine, the current treaty position); norms and institutions (non-proliferation, peacekeeping, the Kyoto Protocol and its successor the Paris Agreement, the UN counter-terrorism bodies); internal security through democracy (the dated record on left-wing extremism and the North-East); development (NCERT's "partially succeeded"). A GS3 internal-security answer that uses all four will cover causes, measures and the democratic frame UPSC rewards.

Confused Pairs

• Deterrence (preventing war) vs defence (limiting or ending war): NCERT's own distinction; both are traditional.
• Disarmament (giving up a class of weapons: BWC, CWC) vs arms control (regulating acquisition: ABM, SALT, START, NPT).
• Human security (people as referent) vs global security (threats that cross borders: warming, terrorism, epidemics).
• Narrow human security ("freedom from fear", violence) vs broad human security ("freedom from want", hunger, disease, disaster, dignity).
• Migrant (leaves voluntarily) vs refugee (flees war, disaster or persecution) vs internally displaced person (remains within the border).
• CTBT: India has not signed vs the United States and Israel: signed, not ratified vs Russia: ratified, then withdrew ratification (2023).
• Political Council (PM; authorises use) vs Executive Council (NSA; inputs and execution) of the Nuclear Command Authority.

Exam Strategy

• Prelims: memorise NCERT's two statistics (one-third of post-1945 wars; 95 per cent internal; twelve-fold rise 1946-91), the treaty table above with the dates NCERT uses, the three types of human rights, the migrant/refugee/IDP distinction, the four components of India's strategy, and the 2003 doctrine's points in the Government's wording.
• Mains: open with NCERT's definition and test; structure with the four-question grid; quote the 1994 report's two aspects and seven categories; close with India's four components and the dated record; cite counts as "UN Treaty Collection, October 2026" or "OPCW, October 2026", never as timeless figures.
• Avoid: "India has not ratified the CTBT" (it has not signed); "India will retaliate with nuclear weapons against a chemical attack" (an option, if the attack is major); "the doctrine was adopted in 2003" (published; the draft was 1999); "the NPT is a disarmament treaty" (NCERT: arms control); "Pakistan's official doctrine document" (Pakistan has published none; see the dated box).
• Cross-reading: page 1 (the Cold War's arms-control box: LTBT, NPT, SALT, START); page 8 (Kyoto and Paris); the sister book's "India's External Relations" (the 1974 and 1998 tests, the NPT and CTBT positions); the Class XI Political Theory chapter on peace.

Practice Questions

NCERT's exercises, worked

1. (i) Confidence Building Measures: (b) a process of exchanging information on defence matters between nations on a regular basis; (ii) Arms Control: (d) regulates the acquisition or development of weapons; (iii) Alliance: (c) a coalition of nations meant to deter or defend against military attacks; (iv) Disarmament: (a) giving up certain types of weapons.
2. (a) chikungunya or dengue: a non-traditional (health) concern if it threatens the existence of a community, otherwise not a security threat; (b) inflow of workers from a neighbouring nation: migration, a non-traditional concern (NCERT: states "do not have to accept migrants"), not a military threat; (c) a group demanding nationhood: a traditional internal security threat (secession threatens territorial integrity); (d) a group demanding autonomy: not a threat to the state's existence; democratic accommodation, NCERT's third component; (e) a newspaper critical of the armed forces: not a threat; free speech is part of the democratic system NCERT calls a source of security.
3. Traditional security takes the state as referent, military force as the principal threat and the principal means, and other states as the source; non-traditional security expands the referent to people and humankind, the threats to hunger, disease, disasters, environment, terrorism and rights violations, and the approach to cooperation. Alliances belong to the traditional category (NCERT's fourth component).
4. Third World people face threats from neighbours and from internal separatism, and the non-traditional threats of poverty, epidemics, displacement and conflict (sub-Saharan Africa is NCERT's example); First World people, after 1945, faced mainly the external military threat of the rival bloc and today face global threats (terrorism, warming, epidemics) more than internal war.
5. Terrorism is a non-traditional threat in NCERT's classification (listed under "new sources of threats"), because its targets are civilians and its agents are usually non-state; but it has a traditional dimension when a state sponsors it against another, and NCERT allows force "against international terrorists and those who harbour them".
6. Surrender; deter (raise the costs of war to an unacceptable level); defend (deny the attacker its objectives and defeat its forces). Governments do not advertise the first.
7. Balance of power is a government's sensitivity to the relative strength of other countries, especially neighbours and past rivals, as a clue to future threats; a state maintains it by building military power and the economic and technological power behind it, and by alliances.
8. Alliances increase a coalition's "effective power relative to another country or alliance", to deter or defend against attack; NCERT's example of a functioning one is NATO, whose Article 5 treats an armed attack on one member as an attack on all (the dropped Cold War chapter, page 1).
9. Yes, by NCERT's test: environmental degradation threatens "the very existence of the referent" where it submerges a state (the Maldives), floods a fifth of a country (Bangladesh) or destroys livelihoods; it is global in nature and therefore a case for cooperative security.
10. Nuclear weapons deter nuclear or large conventional attack by another state, the traditional threat; they do nothing against poverty, epidemics, migration, environmental change or terrorism by non-state actors, which NCERT says "require cooperation rather than military confrontation".
11. Both, in "varying combination": traditional (four wars with Pakistan, 1962 with China, the 1974 and 1998 tests, the 2003 doctrine) and non-traditional (democracy as a security mechanism, development to end poverty, norms and institutions, peacekeeping, the Kyoto Protocol). The dated record below shows where the balance has fallen in the 2020s.
12. The cartoon links war and terrorism as each other's cause and justification; in favour: wars that kill civilians create the grievances terrorism feeds on, and NCERT's alliance example (the US and the Afghan militants) shows how one produces the other; against: NCERT defines terrorism by its deliberate targeting of civilians, which distinguishes it from war under the limits NCERT lists, and most terrorism arises without an inter-state war.

Practice (UPSC-pattern, not past papers)

13. "In traditional security, force is both the principal threat to security and the principal means of achieving security." Examine the statement and show how the non-traditional conception alters each of the four elements of security. (GS3, 15 marks)
14. Distinguish disarmament, arms control and confidence building with one treaty or measure each. With New START's expiry on 5 February 2026, what remains of the arms-control architecture NCERT describes? (GS2, 10 marks)
15. State the two aspects and seven categories of human security in the UNDP's 1994 report. Apply them to one Indian internal-security challenge of your choice. (GS3, 10 marks)
16. Reproduce the elements of India's nuclear doctrine as summarised by the Cabinet Committee on Security on 4 January 2003 and explain why the doctrine is described as "credible minimum deterrence" rather than "minimum deterrence" alone. (GS2, 10 marks)

📦 Revision Capsule

Sources

• NCERT, Contemporary World Politics (Class XII), ch. 5 "Security in the Contemporary World", Reprint 2026-27: ncert.nic.in PDF.
• Prime Minister's Office, "Cabinet Committee on Security Reviews Progress in Operationalizing India's Nuclear Doctrine", 4 January 2003: PIB archive.
• UNDP, Human Development Report 1994, chapter 2 "New dimensions of human security", pp. 22-25: UNDP PDF.
• UN Treaty Collection, Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (chapter XXVI-4), status as at 3 October 2026: treaties.un.org; Kyoto Protocol (chapter XXVII-7-a): treaties.un.org.
• UNODA, Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons: disarmament.unoda.org.
• OPCW, member states: opcw.org.
• Akashvani News, "US and Russia Exit New START Treaty, Triggering Fears Over Global Nuclear Stability", 5 February 2026: newsonair.gov.in.
• Akashvani News, Home Minister's statement in the Lok Sabha on left-wing extremism, 30 March 2026: newsonair.gov.in.
• UN Treaty Collection, Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (chapter XXVI-9), status as at 4 October 2026: treaties.un.org.
• BWC Implementation Support Unit (UNODA), 2026 Updated Universalization Toolkit, April 2026: UNODA PDF.
• SIPRI Yearbook 2026, chapter 8 "World nuclear forces": SIPRI PDF; summary: SIPRI PDF.
• State Council Information Office of the PRC, China's National Defense in the New Era, 24 July 2019: english.www.gov.cn; PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the government statement of 16 October 1964: mfa.gov.cn.
• Landau Network-Centro Volta, Nuclear safety, nuclear stability and nuclear strategy in Pakistan, 14 January 2002, as hosted by Pugwash: pugwash.org.
• PIB, Global Solidarity with India: A United Front Against Cross-Border Terrorism, May 2025: PIB PDF; Akashvani News, 20 March 2026, on the Indus Waters Treaty: newsonair.gov.in.
• UN Department of Peace Operations, Contributions by Country (Ranking), February 2026: peacekeeping.un.org PDF.
• FATF, "Outcomes FATF Plenary, 20-21 October 2022" (which records Pakistan's commitments "that the FATF identified in June 2018 and June 2021"): fatf-gafi.org.
• Akashvani News, "Country becomes free of Left Wing Extremism after nearly six decades: MoS HM in RS", 29 July 2026: newsonair.gov.in.