Abstract
Convincing the Pakistani military to focus its attention on the Afghan Taliban and associated groups has so far proved unsuccessful. The Obama administration’s reliance on economic incentives and regional peace initiatives, such as a dialogue with India on Kashmir, has failed to deliver tangible results. Instead, India’s footprint within Afghanistan has expanded, leaving Pakistani elites ever more anxious. Balancing Indian and Pakistani interests in South Asia remains a top priority for Western governments, and most importantly the US. In the current milieu this will require shifting Western bureaucratic focus from the age old and seemingly intractable Kashmir dispute to maintaining the peace within Afghanistan. This article outlines why this shift should be considered, and how the India–Pakistan trust deficit might be bridged.
Country or Region: Pakistan
Blank, Stephen
Summary
Five Central Asian states emerged out of the Soviet Union’s Central Asian republics in 1991. Although U.S. policymakers presumed that Iran would inevitably sweep them into its sphere of influence, this has not happened. Nor is it likely to occur. Instead there has developed a multi-state competition for influence and even control of these new states. This competition involves Russia as the leading force in the area and Moscow’s main rivals are Turkey, Iran, Pakistan (and India), China, and the United States. This rivalry is particularly strong in the struggle among these states to gain positions of leverage over the energy economy, i.e. production, pipelines, and refining in Central Asia because this region is blessed with enormous energy deposits. These deposits are crucial to Central Asia’s integration with the world economy and economic progress. Indeed, energy exports may be the only way these governments can hope for any economic stability and progress in the future. Therefore, whoever controls the energy economy will determine the destiny of the region. This monograph offers a detailed look at how and why Russia is trying to control that economy and thus the destiny of these states, as well as the strategies of its rivals. Moscow is aiming to reintegrate Central Asia into an economic, political, and ultimately military union with Russia. It is trying to dominate their economies and subject them to Muscovite direction. Russia, therefore, resorts to blocking energy production, hindering foreign firms’ activities in Central Asia, obstructing exports, and conducting currency policies that export inflation. Russia also has devised policies that coerce Central Asian states into giving Russians residing there dual citizenship. All of these policies signify Russia’s efforts to fashion a new model of economic and, hence, military-political hegemony over the region and a new form of Central Asia’s colonial dependency upon Moscow. The monograph argues that though Moscow is conducting a strong policy, it is not ultimately able to achieve such control because Central Asian states have alternatives in other states and because of Russia’s own economic weakness.
Sarwar, Sahrish and Mahwish Sarwar
Summary
This book provides a clear, detailed and current introduction to the importance of energy security as a topic that has been discussed for a long time. Energy plays an important role in the industrial and economic sector of a state to meet its ever increasing demands. South Asian region is facing a number of challenges where energy shortage is at the forefront. India and Pakistan’s foreign policy is driven more and more by its energy security concern. In order to maintain its booming economy, policy makers in India and Pakistan are turning to the repulsive regimes such as Iran. Therefore, it is necessary for economy as well as the people of the entire South Asian region to realize the importance of IPI project as having the potential for peace between India and Pakistan. It may have enormous potential to lock them into an irreversible economic interdependence, thereby strengthening their efforts to promote cooperation in other potential areas. It provides a lucid and accessible analysis of potential benefits and risks regarding IPI Gas pipeline using this to clarify political debates. The two set of expectations can be very different and in fact, conflict with each other.
Singh, Sinderpal
Summary
South Asia is one of the most volatile regions of the world, and India’s complex democratic political system impinges on its relations with its South Asian neighbours. Focusing on this relationship, this book explores the extent to which domestic politics affect a country’s foreign policy.
The book argues that particular continuities and disjunctures in Indian foreign policy are linked to the way in which Indian elites articulated Indian identity in response to the needs of domestic politics. The manner in which these state elites conceive India’s region and regional role depends on their need to stay in tune with domestic identity politics. Such exigencies have important implications for Indian foreign policy in South Asia.
Analysing India’s foreign policy through the lens of competing domestic visions at three different historical eras in India’s independent history, the book provides a framework for studying India’s developing nationhood on the basis of these idea(s) of ‘India’. This approach allows for a deeper and a more nuanced interpretation of the motives for India’s foreign policy choices than the traditional realist or neo-liberal framework, and provides a useful contribution to South Asian Studies, Politics and International Studies.
Rajagopalan, Swarna
Summary
Stephen Philip Cohen can rightly be called the doyen of South Asian security analysis, especially traditional security concerns in the region and advocacy on US foreign policy.
The contributors to the volume have all, at different at different points in time, been Cohen’s students, and are now well-known scholars in their own right. Broadly dividing Cohen’s work into categories, the contributors deal with the following issues:
- How security is understood and how important strategic relationships are framed
- Approaches to and choices made in the areas of military structure, arms production, and investment in science and technology
- How and why civil society groups are mobilized towards political ends—specifically looking at ethnic mobilization in diaspora communities, non-official initiatives for peace in South Asia, and the role of state and non-state actors in disaster management
- The role of the army.
The essays reflect a view of security as something people choose to make for themselves through an exercise of agency that is rooted in the realm of ideas.
Malone, D., and R. Mukherjee
Summary
South Asia, which consists of eight states of different sizes and capabilities, is characterized by high levels of insecurity at the inter-state, intra-state, and human level: insecurity that is manifest in both traditional and non-traditional security problems—especially transnational terrorism fuelled by militant religious ideologies.
To explain what has caused and contributed to the perpetual insecurity and human suffering in the region, this book engages scholars of international relations, comparative politics, historical sociology, and economic development, among others, to reveal and analyze the key underlying and proximate drivers. It argues that the problems are driven largely by two critical variables: the presence of weak states and weak cooperative interstate norms.
Based on this analysis and the conclusions drawn, the book recommends specific policies for making the region secure and for developing the long lasting inter- and intra-state cooperative mechanisms necessary for the perpetuation of that security.
Das, Runa
Abstract
In this paper, Ken Booth’s concept of strategic culture is drawn on to examine India and Pakistan’s nuclear policy options/policies. The thrust of the argument is that the perceptions of India and Pakistan’s strategic insecurities as interpreted by their security managers, through the prism of their strategic cultures, have, in conjunction with material, domestic and technological factors, defined their nuclear trajectories. In framing the argument, although appreciative of the material (realist) realm, attention is drawn simultaneously to the inter-subjective (constructivist) realm, namely, that productions of insecurities are also ‘cultural’. This constructivist line of analysis, which draws attention to culture ‘as both a source of insecurity and an object of analysis’ in international relations, has implications on the future of a nuclearized South Asia.
PDF
Furukawa, Katsuhisa, Michael J. Green, James J. Wirtz, Yuri Fedorov, Avner Cohen, Peter R. Lavoy, Kang Choi, Tan See Seng, and Rod Lyon
Summary
The Long Shadow is the first comprehensive, systematic examination of the roles and implications of nuclear weapons in the dramatically different post–Cold War security environment. Leading experts investigate the roles and salience of nuclear weapons in the national security strategies of twelve countries and the ASEAN states, and their implications for security and stability in a broadly defined Asian security region that includes the Middle East. The study also investigates the prospects for nuclear terrorism in Asia.
A chief conclusion of the study is that nuclear weapons influence national security strategies in fundamental ways and that deterrence continues to be the dominant role and strategy for the employment of nuclear weapons. Offensive and defensive strategies may increase in salience but will not surpass the deterrence function. Another major conclusion is that although there could be destabilizing situations, on balance, nuclear weapons have reinforced security and stability in the Asian security region by assuaging national security concerns, strengthening deterrence and the status quo, and preventing the outbreak and escalation of major hostilities.
As nuclear weapons will persist and cast a long shadow on security in Asia and the world, it is important to reexamine and redefine “old” ideas, concepts, and strategies as well as develop “new” ones relevant to the contemporary era. In line with this, the global nuclear order should be constructed anew based on present realities.
Yoshihara, Toshi, and James R. Holmes, eds
Summary
A “second nuclear age” has begun in the post-Cold War world. Created by the expansion of nuclear arsenals and new proliferation in Asia, it has changed the familiar nuclear geometry of the Cold War. Increasing potency of nuclear arsenals in China, India, and Pakistan, the nuclear breakout in North Korea, and the potential for more states to cross the nuclear-weapons threshold from Iran to Japan suggest that the second nuclear age of many competing nuclear powers has the potential to be even less stable than the first.
Strategy in the Second Nuclear Age assembles a group of distinguished scholars to grapple with the matter of how the United States, its allies, and its friends must size up the strategies, doctrines, and force structures currently taking shape if they are to design responses that reinforce deterrence amid vastly more complex strategic circumstances. By focusing sharply on strategy — that is, on how states use doomsday weaponry for political gain — the book distinguishes itself from familiar net assessments emphasizing quantifiable factors like hardware, technical characteristics, and manpower. While the emphasis varies from chapter to chapter, contributors pay special heed to the logistical, technological, and social dimensions of strategy alongside the specifics of force structure and operations. They never lose sight of the human factor — the pivotal factor in diplomacy, strategy, and war.
Sagan, Scott D., and Kenneth N. Waltz
Summary
In The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate Renewed, professors Waltz and Sagan resume their well-known dialogue concerning nuclear proliferation and the threat of nuclear war. Kenneth Waltz, Dean of Realist Theory in international relations at Columbia University, expands on his argument that “more may be better,” contending that new nuclear states will use their acquired nuclear capabilities to deter threats and preserve peace. Scott Sagan, the leading proponent of organizational theories in international politics, continues to make the counterpoint that “more will be worse”: novice nuclear states lack adequate organizational controls over their new weapons, resulting in a higher risk of either deliberate of accidental nuclear war. Treating issues from the ’long peace’ between the United States and Soviet Union made possible by the nuclear balance of the Cold War to more modern topics such as global terrorism, missile defense, and the Indian-Pakistani conflict, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate Renewed is an invaluable addition to any international relations course.
Sagan, Scott D., and Kenneth N. Waltz
Summary
A long-time staple of International Relations courses, this new edition continues the important discussion of nuclear proliferation, while looking at the regions and issues now at the forefront of the nuclear question. Over the past fifteen years, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons has been a staple in International Relations courses because of its brevity and crystal-clear explanations. The new edition, An Enduring Debate, continues the important discussion of nuclear proliferation and the dangers of a nuclear-armed world. With new chapters on the questions surrounding a nuclear North Korea, Iran, and Iraq and the potential for a world free of nuclear weapons, this Third Edition will continue to generate a lively classroom experience.
Rhodes, Richard
Summary
The final volume in Richard Rhodes’s prizewinning history of nuclear weapons offers the first comprehensive narrative of the challenges faced in the post-Cold War age. The past twenty years have transformed our relationship with nuclear weapons drastically. With extraordinary depth of knowledge and understanding, Richard Rhodes makes clear how the five original nuclear powers–Russia, Great Britain, France, China, and especially the United States–have struggled with new realities. He reveals the real reasons George W. Bush chose to fight a second war in Iraq, assesses the emerging threat of nuclear terrorism, and offers advice on how our complicated relationships with North Korea and South Asia should evolve. Finally, he imagines what a post-nuclear world might look like, as only he can.
Reiss, Mitchell
Summary
This study presents an account of why nuclear weapons are rapidly becoming less attractive than they once seemed and what factors can motivate a country’s leaders to keep nuclear ambitions in check. The book – written by an arms control expert – explains how nine countries: South Africa, Argentina, Brazil, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, India, Pakistan and North Korea – have recently capped, curtailed or rolled back their nuclear weapons programs. Among the issues discussed how, when, where and why South Africa built the bomb, how they planned to use it and why they gave it up. There are details of the classified 1992 denuclearization agreement Russia forced Belarus to sign, setting the timetable for the return of SS-25 ICBMs to Russia. Other previously confidential information is discussed.
Fischer, David
Summary
Although nearly fifty countries have a nuclear capacity, and many more are working towards this goal, only a few are actually in possession of nuclear weapons. Stopping the Spread of Nuclear Weapons addresses the problem of how to prevent the wide acquisition of such weapons, and is particularly relevant in light of the collapse of the post-war power structure and the intensive militarization of the Middle East.
In this study, David Fischer surveys the success of the international regime set up to stop the spread of nuclear weapons since the mid-1960s. He gives particular emphasis to the fact that 138 nations have renounced the bomb since 1968 and discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the non-proliferation treaty. Fischer sets forth the reasons that the membership should extend to France and China, and discusses the 1995 conference that will decide the future of this treaty.
Stopping the Spread of Nuclear Weapons provides evidence of the relationship between the development of nuclear power and the acquisition of nuclear weapons and of the dangers involved in the growing use of plutonium and the building of nuclear submarines. David Fischer provides a detailed and comprehensive view of the ongoing conflict between nuclear deterrence and non-proliferation, and examines both the short- and long-term prospects for non-proliferation.
Cirincione, Joseph, Jon B. Wolfsthal, and Miriam Rajkumar
Summary
Deadly Arsenals provides the most up-to-date and comprehensive assessment available on global proliferation dangers, with a critical assessment of international enforcement efforts. An invaluable resource for academics, policymakers, students, and the media, this atlas includes strategic and historical analysis; maps, charts, and graphs of the spread of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and missile delivery systems; descriptions of the weapons and regimes—and policies to control them; and data on countries that have, want, or have given up weapons of mass destruction. The new edition addresses the recent, dramatic developments in Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, and the nuclear black market, analyzing strategic and policy implications. A Choice outstanding academic title from one of the premier nonproliferation research teams.
