Prof. Mattoo on the 3Ss to complement the 3Rs

Prof. Mattoo is keeping up his campaign to improve the Indian education sector. After his much discussed essay on the problems afflicting international studies in India, he has now written about school education, asking that the 3Rs be complemented by the 3Ss . . .

Prof. Mattoo suggests the need for greater Sensitivity, Security, and Spritual and Scientific temper. His essay was published in Education World and can be found here
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N. Sathiyamoorthy on the current situation in Sri Lanka

Mr. N. Sathiyamoorthy, Director of the Chennai chapter of the Observer Research Foundation, author of a recent book on Sri Lanka and senior journalist based in Chennai, made a presentation at CIPOD on the current situation in Sri Lanka.

He drew out many of the complexities surrounding the situation in Sri Lanka. He seemed convinced that the Sri Lankan government was intent on integrating the Tamil population into the Sri Lankan national mainstream. The presentation was followed by a very lively discussion.
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Dr. Ashutosh Misra on Pakistan's Permanent Instability

On 7 October 2009, Dr Ashutosh Misra, Research Fellow at Griffith University, Australia made a presentation on ‘Pakistan’s Permanent Instability: Is Democracy the Answer?’ at CIPOD. This summary was prepared by Atul Mishra, a PhD candidate at CIPOD.


Dr Misra began by highlighting the absence of democracy and continuing political instability in Pakistan. Absence of democracy and political instability have been the features of Pakistan since its very inception. He said that Mohammad Ali Jinnah envisaged a democratic Pakistan state. But other Pakistani leaders, many of whom became members of its Constituent Assembly, were not interested in promoting democracy. Pakistan’s Constituent Assembly was primarily made of landlords with inherited feudal privilege. They were not keen on creating a democratic Pakistan because it would have undermined their economic, political and social clout. The resulting delay in framing the Constitution and the lingering debate over the role of Islam in the new state set the stage for Pakistan’s instability. Foundations of democracy in Pakistan were very weak. Also, the Muslim League, which spearheaded the Pakistan movement, was in some ways stranger to Pakistan because its leadership did not come from the places where Pakistan eventually came into being.

Dr Misra argued that the centralization of power in the formative years of Pakistan left the polity susceptible to influence and dominance of military and bureaucracy. Simultaneously, Islam was used by the elite to centralize power. The result has been a constant interplay of the influence of the military, civilian leadership nominally committed to democracy and Islamic forces in running the Pakistan state. Dr Misra argued that no ruling dispensation in Pakistan has managed to have the three elements of political longevity: power, authority and legitimacy. For instance, the military has had power but little authority and legitimacy. At various points, therefore, the military leadership has sought support from Islamic forces or pretended to democratize the political system by conducting elections. Governments in Pakistan have also been affected by a constant cycle of cooption, promotion and marginalization.

Dr Misra argued that democracy was not only desirable but also the only way to stabilize Pakistan. Despite its dilution, suspension and use for instrumental purposes, democracy has staged repeated comebacks in Pakistan. This shows that if democratic forces are given an opportunity, the possibility of Pakistan becoming a stable state would increase. He emphasized the promise that the 2006 Charter of Democracy signed between the former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif offered for Pakistan’s future. The 36 point declaration could have paved the way for stable, peaceful and democratic Pakistan. But actions by individual leaders have made Pakistan suffer. Asif Ali Zardari’s quest for appropriating all channels of power and political supremacy are in line with his predecessors who have also paid lip service to democracy. His vindictive politics conducted against the Sharif brothers and autocratic style of functioning make an already fragile Pakistan even more susceptible to another military coup.

Dr Misra suggested that democracy was the answer to Pakistan’s instability. But for democracy to come about, Pakistan’s leadership would have to learn the right lessons from the country’s history and the ruling regime must have power, authority and legitimacy. Asked about India’s role in absence of democracy in Pakistan, he pointed out that India is seen as a threat to Pakistan. The sources of Pakistan’s instability, however, are domestic. Unless the role of and relations between the forces of democracy, Islam and military (and the three are not necessarily isolated from each other) are not sorted out, democracy would be difficult to sustain in Pakistan.

The post-presentation interaction with students and faculty member of CIPOD was lively, exhaustive and, as the speaker confessed, exhausting.

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India's "coercive diplomacy" against Pakistan not working, writes Happymon Jacob

Another essay by Happymon Jacob. This time he argues that India's "coercive diplomacy" towards Pakistan - which is how he characterises India's refusal to talk to Pakistan - has not worked and is unlikely to work . . .

As Jacob argues, "India’s strategy of compellence has never really worked against Pakistan. And it is unlikely to work in the future." The essay was published in The Hindu. You can also read it at Jacob's blogpage here.
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Happymon Jacob wants PM Manmohan Singh's speechwriter changed

Happymon Jacob has a radical solution for Kashmir: change PM Manmohan Singh's speechwriters . . .

Jacob thinks that the pace of India's bureaucratic decision-making process is too slow for the Kashmiris. The essay was published in the Greater Kashmir on November 3, 2009. You can read the full analysis from his blog here.
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Prof. Swaran Singh on Sino-Indian relations

Prof. Swaran Singh was recently interviewed by the Global Times on Sino Indian relations.

Regarding the recent troubles on the border, Prof. Singh suggested that "Time will be the great healer."

Read the full interview here.
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Prof. Mattoo on liberating India from Pakistan

Yet another essay by Prof. Mattoo on the India-Pakistan-Kashmir tangle in the Financial Express. He has provided, I think, a better explanation and argument for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's recent initiative towards Pakistan than the government's spinmeisters have.

Prof. Mattoo suggests that India should work towards constructing Jinnah's model of Pakistan: Muslim, moderate and modern. He suggests an Indian policy based on deterrence of asymmetric attacks, strengthening forces in Pakistan who have a stake in better India-Pakistan relations and weakening those who are opposed.

Read his full essay here.
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Atul Mishra on some recent works on Hobbes

Atul Mishra, a CIPOD PhD candidate, has contributed a nice little essay to the CIPOD Blog. Read on for Atul's comments on a couple of recent essays on Hobbes . . .


Atul:

Revisions are in order. Global power shifts to the East. And history has become curiously interesting again, for the nth time. The New Historians in Israel are questioning the foundations of conventional national history. Some in Russia are trying to resurrect (or reestablish) Stalin. Armenians are trying to dig out a history the Turks claim never happened. It is not just recent events which are set for retelling. We are also being told that Henry V’s victory at the Battle of Agincourt, fought all those years ago in 1415, may not have been so splendid and heroic after all. The subcontinent is no stranger to revisionism in history either. Two recent articles have sought to revise – or at any rate add to – our understanding of Thomas Hobbes, the author of Leviathan (the book and the idea).


Corey Robin, who teaches at CUNY and has earlier written a very readable history of fear, has reviewed Quentin Skinner’s Hobbes and Republican Liberty for The Nation. Corey interprets Hobbes, in the light of Skinner, as one of the first of the modern counterrevolutionaries. Indeed the very first. Hobbes’s prescription and preference of establishing order in situations of civil war is well known. More interesting is the way the article establishes Hobbes’s counterrevolutionary credentials.


Much against the prevailing (and evolving) ideas of republicanism and democracy, Hobbes ingeniously argued that the sovereign’s absolute and undivided power emerges from the contract individuals enter with one another. This theory of consent is well known and so is its basic problem: the apparent irreconcilability of fear and freedom.


Not so, says Robin. Hobbes redefined the idea of will as voluntary. Which means: “If I chose security over rights, then the fact of choosing this is an expression of my will – voluntary and free.” It’s a complex argument Robin makes. An engaging wordplay – “democratic distemper”, “the counterrevolutionary is a pastiche of incongruities” are examples – and his efforts to contextualize Hobbes for modern times make it a good read.


The other article, “More Revisions in Realism: Hobbesian Anarchy, the Tale of the
Fool and International Relations Theory” is by Giulio M. Gallarotti of Wesleyan University and has been published in the latest issue of International Studies. If you thought the likes of C.B. Macpherson, Leo Strauss and Skinner had read all that was apparent and hidden in Hobbes, revise your thoughts.


Gallarotti argues that a close reading of the section on the tale of the fool in Chapter 15 of the Leviathan renders Hobbes’s logic of anarchy more problematic than has been appreciated. With the help of game theory, he suggests that cooperation is possible even in Hobbesian state of nature. Implications of this new interpretation are that there are reasons to see Hobbes as the first early modern neoliberal and constructivist. This synthesis of the realist, neoliberal and constructivist elements in Hobbes can lead us towards a new vision of international relations. Gallarotti’s term for it is Cosmopolitik.
Note: You would need subscription to read Gallarotti's article online.

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Prof. Mattoo on India Today's BEST

India Today has set up a panel of experts they call BEST (Board of Experts on Security and Terror). CIPOD's Prof. Amitabh Mattoo is a member of the group, which met recently to discuss key national security issues . . .


A part of the transcript is available here from the India Today website. The rest will apparently be posted on their website later.

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Prof. Mattoo: Four Ds for a new Kashmir

Prof. Amitabh Mattoo has a new essay on the India-Pakistan-Kashmir tangle in the Times of India.

Prof. Mattoo argues that "For all Kashmir's apparently complex problems, there are in reality only four principal challenges that need to be addressed": dialogue, devolution/de-centralisation, demilitarisation and development.

Read his full essay here.
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Prof. Swaran Singh on the nuclear disconnect

Prof. Swaran Singh has written an essay on the need for India, particularly the Indian strategic community, to consider a different nuclear vision.


Prof. Singh argues that 'as India moves from victimhood to a stakeholder profile in the nuclear sweepstakes, several fundamentals need to change as well', most importantly, the lack of coordination between decision-makers and the strategic community.

Read his essay here.
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Prof. Mattoo attends Pugwash CTBT consultation

Professor Amitabh Mattoo recently attended the Pugwash consultation on the status of the CTBT and prospects for its entry into force in New York.

Clearly, there is a lot of focus on CTBT, given President Obama's Prague speech on nuclear disarmament and the expectation that he would make another attempt at getting the US Senate to ratify the CTBT. The meeting, organized by Pugwash, was held on October 12, under the Chatham House Rule. Invitees were primarily from th Annexe-2 countries. The programme included a presentation by Ambassador Sergio Duarte, UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs and remarks from Ambassador Tibor Toth, Executive Secretary of the Preparatory Commission of the CTBTO.
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Rajagopalan attends the Regional Powers Conference at Sciences Po, Paris

Cross-posted from Rajesh Rajagopalan's The Real World


I recently attended the third conference of the Regional Powers Network (RPN) project, organized by the Sciences Po, Paris (8-9 October 2009).

The RPN is a multi-year project that aims to examine, both theoretically and substantively, the role of various regional powers in the global system. The project brings together the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA) of the University of Hamburg, the University of Oxford, and Sciences Po, Paris. The first conference, titled "Ideas, Interests, Resources and Strategies of Regional Powers – Analytical Concepts in Comparative Perspective" was held in Hamburg last September. Professors Alka Acharya and Ummu Salma Bava from SIS attended that conference. The second conference, Regional Powers and Global Orders, was held in Rio de Janeiro was held in April this year. The one I attended was titled "Regional Powers and Regional Order" and I presented a paper on Pakistan as a regional power and a global problem. I stuck to to the first part: Pakistan as a regional power. I argued that unlike much of the literature on regional powers, which saw regions and regional powers as subjects and victims of global powers and processes, regional powers (indeed, smaller powers in general) are quite adept at pursuing their regional agenda by using and shaping global power interests. The paper is still in draft form, though . . .
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Jacob says India should start talking to Pakistan, "Now".

Happymon Jacob has written a new essay in Greater Kashmir arguing that India should start talking to Pakistan, now.

Jacob argues that India has been overusing coercive diplomacy and that New Delhi has reaped all the possible benefits it can out of refusing to talk to Pakistan.

Read his full essay in the link above or here.


Edited 15/10/2009 late evening: Hmm . . . the Greater Kashmir website seems rather uncooperative. The link to the essay keeps going to the wrong op ed section, so please read the essay directly from Happy's blog archive here.
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Patrick Bratton on 'Coercive Signalling'

Patrick Bratton gave an interesting talk at CIPOD on September 30, 2009 on 'the effects of governmental structure on coercive signalling'.


Bratton is Assistant Professor of Political Science and Program Chair for Political Science and International Relations at Hawaii Pacific University. He has done a considerable amount of work on coercion in international politics. He provided the abstract of the presentation pasted below:

The Effecs of Governmental Structure on Coercive Signalling

How does governmental structure affect the ability of a state to send clear coercive messages and to orchestrate those signals into coherent messages? This presentation shall review the concept of coercion and previous studies done by the author and his collaborator on the effects of governmental structures on coercion. Several studies indicate that democracies, in particular presidential democracies with a division of powers like the United States, are poor at sending clear signals and orchestrating those signals into coherent messages. There has been an assumption that both authoritarian and parliamentary governments are more effective. The presentation will compare the effects of these three types of governments on signaling and orchestration: (1) Presidential divided/shared powers systems; (2) Westminster parliamentary democracies; and (3) authoritarian governments. It uses examples from: the US War with Vietnam, the 1982 Falklands War, and the 1995-96 Taiwan Straits Crisis.

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Mattoo and Jacob to attend India-Pakistan CBM meet

Professor Amitabh Mattoo and Happymon Jacob would be participating in an India-Pakistan Track-Two Dialogue organized by the New Delhi-based Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies (IPCS). The Dialogue is scheduled on 2-3 October 2009 in Bangkok, Thailand.

The current Dialogue is the second in a series of confidence building dialogues being organized to bring together key opinion makers (including former senior officials) from India and Pakistan to discuss critical issues impacting the bilateral relationship including the issue of Kashmir and terrorism along with other important confidence building measures. Participants include from India G. Parthasarathy, Vikram Sood, A.S. Dulat, Admiral Raja Menon, Siddharth Varadarajan, Prof. Riyaz Punjabi, P.R. Chari, and AVM Kapil Kak, and from Pakistan, Aziz Khan, Riaz Khokhar, Arif Kamal, Najimuddin Sheikh, Talat Hussain, Gen. Aziz Khan and Gen. Asad Durrani.
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Happymon Jacob on the Kashmir peace process

Happymon Jacob has written an essay about the peace process in Kashmir in the Srinagar-based Greater Kashmir. He is not particularly hopeful . . .

As he puts it, "perhaps it is not an ideal season that makes peace, but rather peace that makes the season ideal." Read the full essay here.
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More needless hand-wringing over the NPT/US-India nuclear deal

Cross-posted from The Real World.


Are'nt we done with this yet??

Apparently not. The generic UNSC resolution 1887 (click here if the previous link does not open) about nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation (press statement including discussions here) has set-off yet more paranoid worrying in New Delhi that India will be targeted. Only the Indian Express seems to have taken a more sober line.

As if it needed reiteration, the MEA, MoS Tharoor and even PM Manmohan Singh had to step-up to state India's position on the NPT for the umpteenth time and reassure the TV pundits that the UNSC resolution was not directed at India and that the US was not backing out on the nuclear deal (further reiterated by Clinton).

That the UNSC resolution would get tied up with the nuclear deal is even more surprising. To reiterate what I have said before, the US-India nuclear deal is really a deal between India and the international community, not just the US. And the benefits are already visible: here, here, here, here, here, here and here, with more to come. Even if the US were to balk at this stage, it matters little because the gate is already open for nuclear commerce with the rest of the world.

A lot of recent debate in the US about the paranoid style of American politics; it may be time consider seriously hypotheses about the paranoid style of Indian politics . . .
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Prof. Mattoo reviews Gretchen Peters' Seeds of Terror

Prof. Amitabh Mattoo has published an excellent review in the India Today of the new book by Gretchen Peters, an ABC News reporter, about the link between drug trafficking and terrorists in Afghanistan.


The review, which is generally favourable, can be found here. As always comments are welcome, on either the review or the book.


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Rajesh Rajagopalan at the SAIIA 75th Anniversary Conference

Cross-posted from The Real World.


I attended the South African Institute of International Affairs' 75th Anniversary conference, 'Africa in a New World: Geopolitics, interdependence and leverage', 17-18 September in Johannesburg and made a presentation on 'Moving the Center of gravity from the Atlantic to the Pacific'.

I did not have a written paper but my notes are posted below.

Introduction
Is the center of gravity of global politics moving from Atlantic to the Pacific? Is there also a power transition away from the US? I suppose the answer is yes to both, though the first shift is much more prominent and relevant than the second.

Shifting from Atlantic to Pacific
Since US both an Atlantic and a Pacific power, the shift from the Atlantic to the Pacific does not hurt the US. Can the shift to Pacific or Asia-Pacific lead to a different type of international politics, different from a European style of international politics? In other words, would Asia’s rise lead to a new (more harmonious?) international political culture or would Asia’s future be Europe’s past? But little sign of any dramatic change in Asian int’l politics. Insecurity and the consequences of insecurity no different in Asia. US presence/alliances keeps lid on more extreme insecurities

Nature of current international order
Is the curret system unipolar, multipolar or what? Unipolar-in purely material terms, because difference in wealth and power between dominant power and everybody else is greater than at anytime since end of the Roman Empire. But does this disparity lead to greater American control?

Not necessarily; being a GP ain’t what it used to be because:
• Ideology of nationalism
• Norms (legitimacy) of resistance
• Democratisation of firepower makes conquest difficult
• Nuke allow even small/weak states (NKorea) to counter US

Nevertheless, US capacity to control still immense. Example: US-Ind nuke deal; US changed global rules for just one country, demonstrates what power can do. So though US can’t get its way always, US dominance should not be underestimated

Moving towards multipolarity?
Obviously, US declining in relative terms since 1945, but not against the same power:
1940-1960s vis-à-vis Europe
• 1960-80s vis-à-vis Japan/southeast Asia
• 1980s-current vis-à-vis China, India
• This suggests that current challengers might not displace US

History of rise/fall of GPs illustrate that these are mostly internally determined; so difficult to predict; three lessons, however:
• GPs/hegemonies/empires last long, maybe hundreds of years
• Have not usually been balanced by other power (Roman, Chinese, Mughal etc, not balanced by others)
• GPs have usually declined for domestic/economic reasons, not because of other GPs
So US decline inevitable, but when, how impossible to predict. Assumption that US would quickly decline not valid.

What if multipolarity happens? Speculations about the future:
• Multipolarity may lead to greater insecurity and war
• Major players could become regional hegemons, dominating neighborhoods
Could lead to more insecurity
• Nevertheless, nukes likely to prevent direct combat between nuke powers, as in bipolarity
• But, as in bipolarity, it could lead to proxy wars, support for insurgents etc, because nuke war no longer possible
• Global norms/institutions could potentially suffer with no one (GP) to care for them.

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Social science prose

(cross-posted from The Real World)

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a nice essay about academic prose, written by Gail Hornstein, professor of psychology at Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts, US.

Though she writes from her experience in a different discipline, much of what she writes should be familiar to students of political science and international relations. Clarity and simplicity should have greater value in the social sciences than it has today. I do feel that IR is (very) slightly better than most other social sciences, primarily because of its policy orientation. That forces IR folks (especially those on the policy end of the spectrum; the theorists, I think, are no better than the other social scientists) to both stay rooted in worldly concrens and write in a way that makes them somewhat more readable. Almost two decades back, the editors of International Security also pleaded for greater clarity in a guide to contributors, despite the fact that IS is among the more readable IR journals. Clearly, we are all still struggling.
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Prof. Swaran Singh on Sino-Indian relations

Prof. Swaran Singh recently published an OpEd essay in China Daily on Sino-Indian relations.

He sees great promise for partnership between the two countries, despite some recent troubles on the border, mainly because of their common position on climate change.

Read his full essay here.
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Prof. Amitabh Mattoo on the Pokhran-2 controversy

Prof. Mattoo has written an OpEd essay with Dr. Rajiv Nayan of IDSA about the recent Pokhran-2 controversy.

They argue that the recent controversy stems from an over-emphasis on the H-bomb, and 'rivalry between institutions and individuals', and call for an independent oversight authority to prevent these controversies in the future.
Read the full essay in The Telegraph here.
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Prof. Swaran Singh on the Pokhran-2 controversy

Prof. Swaran Singh wrote an OpEd piece on the recent controversy over the Pokhran-2 H-bomb test . . .

Prof. Singh argues that given the controversy, India should keep its nuclear testing option open. Read his full essay in the Hindustan Tmes here.
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More from Prof. Mattoo on India's Pakistan Policy

Prof. Amitabh Mattoo has a new OpEd essay on India's Pakistan policy in the Hindu.

Prof. Mattoo argues that there are multiple Pakistans and India needs to recognize that reality. In addition, he points out that the recent Pew survey suggests that most ordinary Pakistanis want good relations with India.

Read the full essay here . . .
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