Journal of International Studies

The security landscape in South Asia is changing radically due to the introduction of new nuclear and conventional military capabilities by both India and Pakistan.

I became acquainted with Secretary McNamara in the mid- 1990s when I helped organize a series of Track II dialogues between Americans and Indians and Pakistanis. This was before India and Pakistan became overt nuclear-armed states with their tests in 1998. In these dialogues the aim was to discuss with influential Indians and Pakistanis – former generals, foreign secretaries, and the like – the risks and burdens that arise from nuclear-armed competition. No one had wrestled so hard and openly with these challenges as Robert McNamara. He had done so while serving as Secretary of Defense during and after the Cuban Missile Crisis, and then in the decades following his government service. Thus, we were honored and moved that he would volunteer his time and subject his body to the wear and tear of travel to South Asia to share his experiences and perspectives. By the mid-1990s when we were conducting our dialogues in South Asia, the Cold War was over. McNamara had even earlier conclud...

When Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif took the reins four months ago there was immense hope in India that the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) (PML-N) leader would give a boost to ties between the two countries, especially in the realm of trade. Unfortunately, tensions across the Line of Control (LOC) in August, a terrorist attack on the eve of the meeting between Sharif and his counterpart Manmohan Singh  on the sidelines of the UNGA , and continuing tensions in Kashmir have put the issues of trade and people-to-people contact on the backburner. If anything, the naysayers on both sides have become further emboldened. The electronic media in India has been jingoistic, and the opposition BJP has not been particularly supportive of Singh’s dialogue with Pakistan. The Pakistan electronic media hasn’t helped matters either, as this writer witnessed during a recent Pakistan sojourn. Sections of Pakistani media criticized Sharif for being excessively soft on India. They obvious...

While the Prime Ministers of India and Pakistan were preparing for their meeting in New York on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, another set of leaders were in Islamabad, exploring new ways to improve the bilateral relationship. These were group of young leaders from a range of fields: politics, media, the arts, academia and medicine, who had been chosen by the Asia Society, New York as Fellows for the year 2013-2014, under the India-Pakistan Regional Young Leaders Initiative (IPRYLI). In all there were 11 individuals, five from India and six from Pakistan. The three-day conference in late September was a joint endeavor of the Asia Society and the Jinnah Institute in Pakistan. I had the good fortune of attending the conference. There were two obvious differences between the meeting between the prime ministers and the brainstorming session in Islamabad. First, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif restricted the...

Manmohan Singh, the Indian Prime Minister, is facing mounting internal political pressure on whether India should attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) to be held in Colombo in November. His critics insist that India join with Canada in boycotting the Commonwealth meet to protest Sri Lanka’s dismal human rights record and the increasingly authoritarian leadership under President Mahinda Rajapaksa. The situation escalated last week when parties in Tamil Nadu, where voters are ethnically and linguistically aligned with Sri Lankan Tamils, unanimously passed a resolution  urging Singh to stay away from the much-anticipated meeting  in November. For his part, Singh, aware of the domestic consequences, has trodden carefully, stating in a noncommittal tone that his decision on whether to travel to Colombo would be taken in “the best interests of the people of India and Tamil Nadu.” If Singh were truly concerned about the long-term geopolitical interests o...

It’s been less than five months since Nawaz Sharif began his third term as Pakistan’s prime minister, but his honeymoon period is long since over. In fact, PM Sharif finds himself increasingly under siege from all sides, being challenged internally by Pakistan’s security services and the Pakistani Taliban, and externally by the United States, India, Afghanistan and possibly Iran. One of the central themes of Sharif’s current term has been a desire to improve relations with India. “We want to move toward better relations with India, to resolve the remaining issues through peaceful means, including that of Kashmir,”  Sharif said  shortly after taking office. One of the central challenges in realizing this goal was always going to be getting Pakistan’s military and intelligence service on board. Recent weeks have made it abundantly clear that Sharif lacks this support as cross border raids by Pakistani militants into India have skyrocketed.  According to some estima...

Together with growing trade ties, incremental advances like the recent talks in New York are significant. The story of an enduring Indo-Pakistan rivalry is a familiar one, in which the neighboring states, born of a bloody partition, are trapped in an endless cycle of conflict. But this narrative perpetuates two false habits. The first is a static understanding of Indo-Pakistan relations, pessimistic in its fixation on their violent history. The second is a reductive understanding, in which the emphasis on security obscures the long and successful record of cooperation. In the context of increasingly adverse domestic political environments – with India’s jingoistic right wing and Pakistan’s irredentist military hindering the diplomatic process – there is an even greater need to re-think India- Pakistan relations. The (in)Security Complex The two countries have maintained a patchy ceasefire over the de facto border in Kashmir – the “Line of Control” – since 2003. This year’s c...