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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