About

Frontline Strategy Digest is an independent weekly journal of strategic affairs, published every Friday. It exists to bring rigorous, long-form analysis to readers who are serious about understanding the world — not merely reacting to it.

The Editor

Colonel Maqbool Shah, SM (Veteran), served for thirty-three years in the Indian Army. He commanded an infantry battalion on the Line of Control, served as Director of Military Operations at Army Headquarters, and represented India as a United Nations Liaison Officer across forty-two countries in Iraq and Kuwait after the First Gulf War. After retirement, he spent twelve years in corporate leadership before returning to what he considers his primary vocation: thinking clearly about hard problems and writing honestly about what he finds.

He is the author of four books and a contributing analyst to The Diplomat, Foreign Policy, Asia Times, and Greater Kashmir. He is Kashmiri by origin, based in Jammu, and writes from a perspective shaped equally by the military tradition, the Urdu and Persian literary inheritance, and a conviction — learned from his father, an Indian freedom fighter with the Azad Hind Fauj and a highly regarded social activist, who gave his life defending a place of worship belonging to a different faith community in August 1992 — that the measure of any argument is whether it would survive contact with genuine moral seriousness.

Why This Publication

India produces capable strategic thinkers. It does not yet have an independent, practitioner-led weekly journal that combines analytical rigour with the readability that a general professional audience requires — and that treats its readers as adults capable of handling complexity, uncertainty, and conclusions they may not find comfortable.

Frontline Strategy Digest is an attempt to fill that gap. It is editorially independent of all governments, political parties, corporate sponsors, and foreign principals. Its only obligation is to its readers and to the truth as best it can be established.

Editorial Standards

The Digest publishes under a formal Editorial Charter. The core commitments are accuracy, intellectual honesty, methodological transparency, and the willingness to be wrong in the record rather than quietly right after the fact. Errors of fact are corrected prominently. Analytical errors are reassessed openly. The archive is never edited.

What We Cover

Strategic and military affairs: doctrine, capability, deterrence, and the changing character of conflict.

Geopolitics and diplomacy: great-power competition, alliance architecture, and regional balances of power.

Indian strategic culture: civil-military relations, knowledge architecture, and the evolution of strategic thought.

West Asia and the Indo-Pacific: the two theatres most consequential for India's strategic environment.

Technology and warfare: artificial intelligence, cyber, space, and autonomous systems.

Contact

Submissions, responses, corrections, and Humour in Uniform contributions are welcome.

Editor: editor@frontlinestrategydigest.com

Substack archive: frontlinestrategy.substack.com, www.maqboolshah.substack.com

Press enquiries: editor@frontlinestrategydigest.com (mark subject: Press)