China is India's largest and most important neighbor, and despite recent efforts at improving relations between the two countries, the over half-century-old border dispute remains unresolved. While the prospects of a Sino-Indian border war are remote, it is essential that India understand the security implications of the rapidly modernizing Chinese military. It is in this context that this paper attempts to assess the airpower balance and the growing strength of the People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF). The paper argues that even if the pace of its modernization remains slow, the PLAAF will have decisively surpassed regional air forces in strength and capabilities by the end of the current decade.

Air Commodore Ramesh V. Phadke is an active duty officer of the Indian Air Force, currently working as Senior Fellow at the Institute for Defence Studies & Analyses, New Delhi, India. He has held five command positions and many important staff appointments. He is a postgraduate in Defence Studies and has been working on airpower issues. His current interests include China's military modernization and India's national security.

He was a CISAC visiting fellow in 2001 as part of the project "Strategic Stability: China and South Asia."

The United States is in the midst of its third major debate on nationwide ballistic missile defense-the first culminating in the 1972 ABM Treaty and the second sparked by President Reagan's "Star Wars" speech in 1983. This time the Cold War is over, the objectives for the defense are limited, and technology has advanced to the point where some options may be technically feasible.

However, intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) are not the primary threat to the United States, as events since September 11 demonstrate. Other homeland defense programs, especially civil defenses against bioterrorism, are more important. Yet emerging missile states may acquire ICBMs some day. To the extent that this is a concern, diplomatic efforts can limit the spread of ballistic missiles, and deterrence can dissuade their use. National missile defense (NMD), then, is insurance against the relatively unlikely event that ICBMs will be launched against the United States.

If the United States decides to deploy a limited NMD, the questions become what type and how much? A midcourse NMD system (one that attempts to intercept missile warheads as they fall through outer space) of the sort proposed for deployment in Alaska is the most technically mature option and would probably work well enough against emerging ICBM threats to justify limited deployment, assuming that the threat materializes. However, such a defense should contain only about 20 interceptors to minimize adverse political reactions from Russia and China. Over the long run, midcourse defenses may be vulnerable to sophisticated countermeasures. Therefore, the United States should place greater emphasis on land, naval, and air-based boostphase intercept options (defenses that attempt to intercept the ballistic missile while its rocket motors are still burning) because they are more robust to countermeasures and they pose relatively little threat to Russia and China. Space-based boost-phase NMD systems have the advantage of global coverage; however, they are technically more challenging, probably more expensive, and more destabilizing.

China and the United States share a new and rapidly expanding border-the Internet. It is a border that neither country fully understands. The possibility for misunderstanding is great because the Internet is not only transforming the relationship between the two countries, it is also transforming the countries themselves. It could be argued that China is going through the greater change. Unlike the past where information was mediated by the State, the mass media, and the work unit, Chinese citizens with Internet connections and a command of English have unprecedented direct and immediate access to information and people around the world. Because of abundance of Chinese language content, Chinese who can only read Chinese still have access to a wealth of information. The Chinese government has imposed its own unique regime on the networks in China that connect to the Internet. Though the United States and China both participate in the Internet, the regimes that they use to govern their networks are very different.