July 8, 2011
Journal of International Affairs
Abstract:
China and India remain locked in a stagnant embrace when it comes to the most intractable of security dilemmas: the Sino-Indian border issue. A closer look at Chinese and Indian strategic, scientific and academic experts' security perceptions vis-à-vis one another reveals that there is much more to the Sino-Indian security dynamic than meets the eye. Chinese and Indian strategic analysts hold divergent interests when evaluating each other's military modernization, the former preoccupied with India's naval development and the latter with China's army. Technical analysts in each country share a similar level of interest in the other's aviation and aerospace programs. Scholars exhibit a strong, if not symmetrical, level of focus on the other country's nuclear strategy and status. Using this tripartite discourse as a baseline, this essay provides both a quantitative and qualitative analysis of each group's perceptions to better understand Sino-Indian security relations and to propose measures within each arena to enhance mutual understanding. It shows that the Sino-Indian security dilemma cannot be simply viewed through the prism of the border anymore....
January 7, 2011
The Washington Quarterly
Abstract:
On October 1, 2010, the government of Pakistan shut down the supply route for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) after an incursion into Pakistan’s territory by NATO forces, killing 16 Pakistanis in collateral damage. Two days later, militants torched 28 NATO supply trucks near Shikarpur in the southern province of Sindh. These events reflect the inherent tension both in Pakistan’s counterterrorism strategy and in its relationship with the United States and its allies in fighting the war in Afghanistan. The future of U.S. military operations in South Asia depends on the convergence of policies between the United States and Pakistan, but since the war began in 2001, interpreting Islamabad’s counterterrorism policy has been difficult.
Pakistan’s counterterrorism strategy in Afghanistan is rife with inherent contradictions, caught between an inclination to fight militant forces and yet having to partner with some to strengthen its future bargaining position. The policy flows out of Pakistan’s multiple strategic requirements: its need to remain engaged with the United States, to save itself from the Taliban attacking the Pakistani state, and to fight India’s growing presence in Afghanistan. Caught between these three issues, Islamabad’s counterterrorism policy and objectives continue to lack clarity. At best, the policy illustrates the tension between Islamabad’s need to protect itself against an internal enemy and its sensitivity toward the external threat from India.
The primary flaw of Pakistan’s counterterrorism policy, however, is that it is defined and driven by the military and that institution’s strategic objectives. It is easier to use the military option than to address the problem of changing the basic narrative and socioeconomic conditions that drive militancy in the first place. The need to create an alternative political narrative and change the mindset in Pakistan to address those socioeconomic conditions is a far more critical issue, which receives less attention than it deserves....
November 8, 2010
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs // Harvard University
Abstract:
Contemporary democratic reality is characterized by the growing role of courts in politics, as social activists regularly utilize the judicial process in an attempt to secure their values and interests as law. Observers of constitutional politics generally explain this phenomenon in the recent constitutional transformations worldwide, manifested primarily in the enactment of bills of rights accompanied by judicial review powers. These constitutional transformations enabled and simplified the ability of those with limited access to the majoritarian-led parliamentary process to challenge governmental policies through the courts. As a result, law has come to be perceived as a compelling mechanism to effectuate progressive change and facilitate authoritative resolutions to conflicts. In societies divided along religious lines, the appeal of litigation has been particularly strong, with secular and religious groups increasingly viewing it as a principal opportunity to mold the public sphere in accordance with their political and moral preferences.
This paper seeks to evaluate the efforts to achieve these perceived goals—of effectuating change and managing conflict—through the judicial process, by examining its effects in the context of the religion-based conflicts of India and Israel. By way of an empirical comparison the paper considers: (i) the judicial impact on the realization of fundamental rights, the rectification of existing discriminatory practices, and the advancement toward a more pluralist and egalitarian society; (ii) the judicial contribution to generating authoritative resolution to religion-based conflicts; and (iii) possible long term social and political implications stemming from judicial intervention in policy questions concerning hotly disputed religion-based conflicts....
May 31, 2010
Naval War College Review
Abstract:
The regional dynamic in South Asia is both extravagant and complicated. For
centuries various empires have risen, thrived, and fallen, as numerous wars
and clashes for control over resources spread across the geography. South Asian
history writ large has seen hypothetical borders redrawn several times, leaving
in question the viability of state control and perpetuating ethnic tensions.
Though the great partition of India in 1947 ought to have politically resolved
communal disharmony, the haste of British withdrawal created a geopolitical
quagmire that has resulted in an “enduring rivalry” between the nations of India
and Pakistan, one that has lasted for more than sixty years.
The contemporary security climate in the region has exacerbated this historical
The precedent of protracted conflict, which has in turn nurtured an environment
that remains resistant to the building of trust and confidence.
Since their demonstrations of nuclear capabilities,
both India and Pakistan have increased the
risk of war, with cross-border arms buildups and failure
to sustain a peace dialogue. Moreover, the regional
security environment breeds broader strategic anxieties
in both India and Pakistan,which makes the likelihood
of conventional war between the two nuclear armed
neighbors higher than it is anywhere else in the
world.
Thus the ensuing regional culture leans more toward
military competition than to strategic restraint and conflict resolution (the logical course for strategic stability). Clearly, to consider
the prospects of arms control and confidence-building measures (CBMs)
in the midst of this climate is problematic in itself, but the various grievances become
even more convoluted when strategic imbalances are further influenced
by the singular perceptions of the predominating powers in the region.
In the face of these geopolitical calamities, this article examines the realistic
prospects of sustainable arms control and CBMs in South Asia over the next decade.
The first section examines the strategic anxieties of India and Pakistan, respectively;
the second section reviews the treaties and CBMs that have been
attempted in the past (some of them still applicable today), drawing out a trend
of crisis and bilateral missteps. Later sections analyze the Strategic Restraint Regime
(SRR) proposed in 1998, as well as the Lahore Memorandum of Understanding
(MOU) of 1999, and how such measures can be more effective in the
future. Finally, the article presents three possible trajectories that the region
might take and suggests new ways forward that could create an environment
amenable to pragmatic CBMs and limited arms-control measures....
May 14, 2010
China and Eurasia Forum Quarterly // Central Asia-Caucasus Institute and Silk Road Studies Program
Abstract:
For the main Eurasian great powers, Russia, China, India, and Iran, the
Afghan issue has become an increasingly significant element of their
foreign policy, power projection and mutual relations. Indeed, the
difficulties in stabilizing Afghanistan after three decades of
uninterrupted conflict and the involvement of the U.S.-led international
coalition has had a strong impact on its surrounding areas, namely,
Central Asia, Xinjiang, Baluchistan and Kashmir. It has also affected the
balance-of-power relations in Eurasia. A growing informal economy
across the region, mainly in the form of drug trafficking, is also argued as
one of the major long-term issue. Today there is growing recognition that
the Afghan problem requires a concerted regional effort. This could give
a more prominent role to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization....
India 
