Abstract
It is quite intriguing to note how reference is made in media, and more importantly even by scholars, to terrorist leaders in Pakistan and disgruntled / radicalized elements in the Pakistani establishment including the Pakistani military (the so-called Deep State) every time a cross-border terrorist strike is engineered from Pakistani soil. Are we so naïve as to not know that Pakistan is held by the jugular by her own military; the bottom-line being that the only Deep State in Pakistan is the Pakistani military including the ISI which is also 100 percent military.
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Country or Region: Pakistan
Weldemichael, Awet T., Patricia Schneider, and Andrew C. Winner
Summary
Unregulated or lesser regulated maritime spaces are ideal theatres of operation and mediums of transportation for terrorists, insurgents and pirates. For more than a decade, the Indian Ocean waters adjoining Somalia have been a particular locus of such activities, with pirates hijacking vessels, and Al Qaeda and Al Shabab elements travelling between Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, operating lucrative businesses and even staging deadly operations at sea. However, these operations and threats remain, by and large, understudied. Responses to the two threats have varied, highlighting the lack of cohesive regional and global institutions with the mandate and the capacity to address them. Those scholarly deliberations on Indian Ocean maritime security focus on piracy and armed robbery at sea, while their terrorist/insurgent counterparts have eluded sustained scrutiny. This volume will help close that gap by looking at both from the field in Somalia and Yemen, within broader frameworks of regional maritime security and port-state control, international maritime law and the ongoing search for maritime resources. The European, African and Middle Eastern case studies add salience to the regional and international complexity surrounding maritime security off the Horn of Africa. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of the Indian Ocean Region.
Stobdan, P
Abstract
India was always aware of the enormous energy reserves within its geographically proximate Central Asian region that could potentially fulfil its energy demands. The recent visit by Prime Minister Modi to the region has proved critical in paving the way for India to finally acquire a long awaited energy stake in the region. The new developments could not have been possible without the evolving undercurrents of the new geopolitical balance of power in the region. Russia seems to be playing a conspicuous role in nudging both India and Pakistan towards cooperation in the energy pipeline. However, there is no case to be euphoric on this front. India’s energy diplomacy in Central Asia will fail if it continues to discount the Russia factor in its policy.
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Kapur, Ashok
Summary
This book traces the triangular strategic relationship of India, Pakistan and China over the second half of the twentieth century, and shows how two enmities – Sino-Indian and Indo-Pakistani – and one friendship – Sino-Pakistani – defined the distribution of power and the patterns of relationships in a major centre of gravity of international conflict and international change. The three powers are tied to each other and their actions reflect their view of strategic and cultural problems and geopolitics in a volatile area.
The book considers internal debates within the three countries; zones of conflict, including northeast and northwest south Asia, the Himalayas and the Indian Ocean; and the impact of developments in nuclear weapons and missile technology. It examines the destructive consequences of China’s harsh methods in Tibet, of China’s encouragement of military rather than democratic regimes in Pakistan, and of China’s delay in dealing with the border disputes with India. Ashok Kapur shows how the Nehru-Chou rhetoric about “peaceful co-existence” affected the relationship, and how the dynamics of the relationship have changed significantly in recent years as a range of new factors – including India’s increasing closeness to the United States – have moved the relationship into a new phase.
Fair, C. Christine, and Sumit Ganguly
Abstract
The Pakistani foreign and security policy establishment has propagated at least five egregious and pernicious myths to promote what they deem to be Pakistan’s vital interests, while alienating India and contributing to flawed U.S. policies. All five myths need to be put to rest.
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Dutt, Sagarika, and Alok Bansal, eds
Summary
The South Asian security complex refers to security interdependencies between the states in the region, and also includes the effect that powerful external actors, such as China, the US and Russia, and geopolitical interests have on regional dynamics. This book focuses on the national securities of a number of South Asian countries in order to discuss a range of issues related to South Asian security.
The book makes a distinction between traditional and non-traditional security. While state-centric approaches such as bilateral relations between India and Pakistan are considered to be traditional realist approaches to security, the promotion of economic, environmental and human security reflect global concerns, liberal theories and cosmopolitan values. The book goes beyond traditional security issues to reflect the changing security agenda in South Asia in the twenty-first century, and is a useful contribution to studies on South Asian Politics and Security Studies.
Dulat, A. S., and Aditya Sinha
Summary
Kashmir was an issue close to former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s heart. There were repeated setbacks, first the Kargil war, General Pervez Musharraf s coup in Pakistan, the hijacking of Indian Airlines flight IC 814 in December 1999 and the Parliament attack two years later. But he countered each with an initiative full of hope: the bus to Lahore in 1999, the Agra Summit in 2001 and finally the hand of friendship extended to Pakistan in Srinagar in May 2003. A.S. Dulat, chief of the Research and Analysis Wing under Vajpayee and India s foremost Kashmir expert, brings nearly two decades of experience in the state to bear on the subject in this book. It looks as much into the future as at the years gone by as it throws light on how a new government can revive and conclude the Vajpayee peace process.
Chakma, Bhumitra
Summary
South Asia is often viewed as a potential nuclear flashpoint and a probable source of nuclear terrorism. But, how valid are such perceptions? This book seeks to address this question and assesses the region’s nuclear security from two principal standpoints. First, it evaluates the robustness of the Indo-Pakistani mutual deterrence by analysing the strength and weaknesses of the competing arguments regarding the issue. It also analyses the causes and consequences of nuclear arms race between India and Pakistan, the nature of deterrence structure in the region and the challenges of confidence building and arms control between the two countries in order to assess the robustness of South Asia’s nuclear deterrence. Second, it assesses the safety and security of the nuclear assets and nuclear infrastructure of India and Pakistan. The author holds that the debate on South Asia’s nuclear security is largely misplaced because the optimists tend to overemphasise the stabilising effects of nuclear weapons and the pessimists are too alarmists. It is argued that while the risks of nuclear weapons are significant, it is unlikely that India and Pakistan will give up their nuclear arsenals in the foreseeable future. Therefore, what needs to happen is that while nuclear elimination should be the long-term goal, in the interim years the two countries need to pursue minimum deterrence policies to reduce the likelihood of deterrence failure and the possibility of obtaining fissile materials by non-state actors.
Bradnock, Robert W
Summary
South Asia has developed from a group of newly independent post-Colonial states of at most secondary importance to the wider world to its current position as a region of central strategic importance to both global economic development and world peace and stability.
This Atlas highlights the global significance of South Asia in relation to economic, geopolitical and strategic interests. It provides a coherent descriptive and analytical account of the key elements of the complex societies that make up the region and its component countries. Illustrated with more than 100 original maps and offering concise entries on key issues, the book is structured thematically in these sections:
Global Context
Geographical Environments
Historical Evolution of South Asia
Key Issues in modern South Asia
Economy and Security
Fair, C. Christine, and Sumit Ganguly
Introduction
Ever since 9/11, the United States has provided Pakistan with a steady supply of security and nonsecurity assistance. U.S. officials have justified these generous transfers—worth more than $30 billion since 2002—on the grounds that they secure Pakistan’s ongoing cooperation in Afghanistan, bolster Pakistan’s ability to fight terrorism, and give the U.S. government influence over the country’s ever-expanding nuclear weapons program. Failing to deliver this support, the argument runs, could dramatically weaken the will and capacity of Pakistan’s security forces and possibly even lead to the collapse of the Pakistani state. In that event, Pakistan’s nuclear know-how, material, or weapons could well fall into the hands of nefarious actors.
Yet that logic is fundamentally flawed. Many of the weapons Washington gives Islamabad are ill suited to fighting terrorism, and continued transfers will do nothing to convince the Pakistani government to end its long-standing support for terrorist groups. In fact, U.S. assistance gives Pakistan an incentive to foster a sense of insecurity concerning its nuclear arsenal and expanding ranks of jihadists.
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Douglas, Jason, and John Doyle
Abstract
Nuclear rivalry in South Asia is discussed almost exclusively in terms of the India-Pakistan binary relationship. However, the detail of the nuclear weapons proliferation in the region cannot be reviewed without taking account of the triangular relationship between China, India and Pakistan, and examining the wider global context. This article explores the understudied Indian and Chinese nuclear strategies, analyses their motivations in strengthening their nuclear weapons capabilities and the role of international norms and regimes on non-proliferation in their national decision making. It concludes that for China the perceived threat is primarily the USA; for India it is primarily China. Both have the economic capacity for nuclear investments and the desire of powerful states to access the large Chinese and Indian markets meant there was no real threat of sanctions. The Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) and Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) have been largely irrelevant to their nuclear calculations, indicating a weak norm and a weak regime against strong and emerging powers. Ultimately, it was the power relations between states and not the international regime which framed their decision-making. The article also explores the compatibility of these states’ respective nuclear strategies with the renewed call for global nuclear disarmament in the wake of President Obama’s 2009 Prague speech, arguing ultimately that measures and counter-measures taken will result in nuclear weapons continuing to play a central role in Chinese and Indian national security efforts. Text of a paper delivered at the symposium ‘Disarmament and Non-Proliferation: Historical Perspectives and Future Objectives’, which took place at the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin, on 28 March 2014.
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Ayson, Robert
Abstract
Even if the international mood in favour of steep US and Russian nuclear cuts was to last, it is unlikely to spread to Asia, where nuclear arsenals remain comparatively modest and where regional allies rely on Washington for extended deterrence. This does not render nuclear arms control irrelevant in Asia, where there is a modest but significant tradition based on informal and unilateral restraint rather than formal agreement. But as more of Asia’s nuclear programs have come out of the closet and as great power relationships intensify, the region needs to look nuclear arms control more squarely in the eye. For arms control to have real purchase in tomorrow’s Asia, China and the USA will need to look beyond their currently asymmetrical relationship and find an understanding based on increased nuclear transparency which also restrains their potentially escalatory competition in advanced conventional war-fighting abilities.
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Singh, Rajkumar, and Hemlata Singh
Summary
In this age of globalisation the book, Nuclear Power and Politics of South Asia- New Disclosures, unfolds different stages of the growth of nuclear energy and its proliferation in the region South Asia with added emphasis on nuclear weapon development in India and Pakistan. In previous decades the region remained at the centre of world focus due to intended global and regional strategic interests of China and the United States. Even the present day nature of world politics did not help solve the nuclear uncertainties of South Asian nuclear weapon power states whose hostility and mistrust for each other is widely known and accepted. Establishment of nuclear stability will make this part of the globe free from deprivation of all kinds.
Pilat, Joseph F., ed
Summary
On December 8, 1953, President Dwight Eisenhower proposed in a speech to the United Nations that nuclear nonproliferation be promoted by offering peaceful nuclear technology to countries that would renounce nuclear weapons. Today the value of that basic trade-off―atoms for peace―is in question, along with the institutions that embody it. Deployment of weapons by India and Pakistan, noncompliance with safeguards by North Korea and Iran, and the threat of nuclear terrorism have weakened the image of the Nonproliferation Treaty. And new proposals and technologies for peaceful uses of nuclear power are coming forward, though they are accompanied by the realization that 1950s hopes for nuclear energy “too cheap to meter” were unrealistic.
The twenty-five contributors to Atoms for Peace grapple in many ways with nuclear proliferation, nuclear terrorism, and the future of nuclear energy. They include officials and scientists from a wide range of agencies and institutions. Among them are officials or former officials from Israel, Egypt, Pakistan, Canada, Korea, and Japan, from the U.S. departments of state, energy, and defense, the U.S. Senate, the National Security Council, the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations, the Nuclear Threat Initiative, MIT, Los Alamos National Laboratory, the College of William and Mary, and the University of California.
Atoms for Peace also includes a set of fundamental speeches and documents relating to Atoms for Peace and its institutions.
Mohan, M.P. Ram, K.D. Raju, and M.V. Shiju
Abstract
South Asia is one of the densely populated regions of the world. A disaster in the nature of nuclear accident in one country will have a significant impact on the life and livelihood of large population across the region. Currently, major economies in South Asia are expanding their nuclear energy programmes, and this poses a trans-boundary risk. The risk is aggravated by the fact that countries in South Asia are not a part of any common international nuclear liability framework, nor do they have reciprocal domestic law. This subjects the region to an uncertain liability and compensation regime.
This paper explores the legal response mechanisms available in respect to state liability and compensation. The paper argues that the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), a regional community of South Asian countries is the appropriate institutional mechanism available to form a regional nuclear risk community.
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