Strategic Security in South Asia

By Sagar Rijal

The strategic security context in South Asia is centered on India’s complex relationship with its two nuclear-powered neighbors, Pakistan and China. The long-simmering historical conundrum of Kashmir, which has provoked three major wars and a perpetual state of impasse between India-Pakistan, has for long been at the forefront of the regional security picture. However, the economic rise of China in the last three decades coupled with its growing security ambitions in the entire Asian region portends a major shift. The Sino-Indian challenge—given the two nations’ unsorted boundary issues and dueling strategic ambitions—has turned into the salient feature of South Asian transformation in the last twenty years. At a recent conference held at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a panel of analysts presented their views on the these twin relationships, which have the potential to affect regional and global security in the 21^st century.

Ashley J. Tellis of the Carnegie Endowment began with a startling argument: the general impression that India is weaker than China is wrong. Since its shocking defeat at the 1962 war against China, India had spent a great deal of resources to avoid another such failure, deploying “forward defense” in its long mountainous border regions with China. On the other hand, China had stationed only paramilitary troops near the difficult border terrain, while keeping the larger PLA forces farther back. Thus, Tellis argued that in the greater Tibetan frontier region India had maintained operational superiority since the 1970s.

However, in the last 20 years Chinese capacity has grown in all areas including the resources devoted the border areas but also extending to its capacity in the oceans and air. China has made huge investments in infrastructure in the Tibetan region so that now it is possible to transport large number of outside forces in case of necessity. The modernization of PLA forces as well as logistical systems of the Chinese military has closed that gap in the border regions. More dramatically, the PRC has made improvements and investments to modernize its Air Force and Navy. While traditionally, Indian Air Force and Indian Navy were well prepared and slightly superior, that gap has also been closed.

What has been the Indian response to the growing military modernization campaign of China? While India has made significant infrastructure and resource investments of its own, and forged tighter security arrangement with neighboring nations, in terms of matching Chinese capacity India is slowly falling behind. Tellis argued that, like with everything else concerning India, domestic politics and strategic myopia of its politicians are to blame.

The India–Pakistan conflict also suffers from malign domestic politics in both the countries. Jack Gill of the Near East and South Asia Center, offered further pessimism about any forward progress on that front. Gill argued that in the short term the Kashmir issue is going to be held hostage to the upcoming domestic elections in both Pakistan and then in India. So until after the mid-2014 he sees no further progress on that front.    

           

   ~Sagar Rijal, ABD, is spending the final semester of his graduate assistantship doing research for his dissertation in Washington, D.C. Every week he will attend meetings, seminars, or presentations at think tanks and develop a column for the Bulletin community.

Twenty Years of Indian Transformation

By Sagar Rijal

For a daylong conference entitled “Twenty Years of Transformation in South Asia,” the panels were predictably dominated by the concerns of the largest South Asian state, India. Hosted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on Thursday, January 31, the broad themes of the gathering could be divided into “the economic issues facing India” and “the security context of the Indian sub-continent.” I will present a follow-up column devoted to the security issues. Here I consider a panel discussion on some aspects of the Indian economy.

Since the economic liberalization policies of 1991-1992, India has averaged unprecedented GDP growth rates of more than 6% per year. Observers and boosters view India’s growth as corresponding to that of the much steeper and longer trajectory experienced by China. If there is a concern, it is that of continuity of reforms and growth. Where is Indian economy headed? The panel looked for answers in a few interesting directions.

Dr. Devesh Kapur from University of Pennsylvania presented data about mass education, the demand for which has skyrocketed in the past two decades. Since human resource is the one resource that India has in abundance, Dr. Kapur argued that the quality of its educational system would strongly determine the trajectory of its economy. However, the data he presented is not very sanguine. There is a lack of adequate supply of higher education opportunities as well as concerns about the quality of education. He reported that 3700 new colleges opened in India in a recent five-year period – a rate of more than ten new colleges every single day, raising questions about quality. The massive explosion in enrollment in higher education has left many institutions with an acute shortage of trained faculty.

After such pessimistic picture on education, Dr. Milan Vaishnav aroused hope in the most unlikely issue: corruption. The conventional wisdom is that corruption is rampant and impossible to solve in India. However, Dr. Vaishnav argued that there is a “great cleansing” taking place right now due to voter movements and Right to Information laws. He attributed the recent spate of high-profile corruption cases to increased transparency, which has only led to more exposure of corruption, especially amid a booming economy that expanded the corruption frontier.

Vikram Nehru, a former World Bank analyst, drew attention to the external angle, to and area of immense opportunity for the Indian economy. He argued that strengthening the trade and investment relationship with the nations of East and Southeast Asia would provide unparalleled opportunities for Indian economy to keep its growth trajectory. The ASEAN nations already seek an economic hedge against China, which India could successfully leverage into long-term growth. 

However, Mr. Nehru offered wise caution. India’s constraints are not external but mostly internal, meeting the challenges of human capital development, getting a handle on corruption, reforming the labor laws and achieving a modicum of political accountability. A fine list to keep India busy for another twenty-year transformation.

~Sagar Rijal, ABD, is spending the final semester of his graduate assistantship doing research for his dissertation in Washington, D.C. Every week he will attend meetings, seminars, or presentations at think tanks and develop a column for the Bulletin community.

 

“Big Bets and Black Swans”

Brookings Institution

 by: Sagar Rijal

 With the nation’s capital gearing up for President Obama’s inauguration celebration, the pundit class is busy prognosticating on his second term agenda. The ongoing issues in domestic politics – the recriminations on the fiscal cliff deal, the necessary but elusive grand budget compromise, gun control regulations – are certain to carry over from the dying days of the first term and engage the majority of the President’s time. However, a variety of ongoing and new challenges beyond the nation’s borders seem poised to demand a greater share of his attention as well.

To mark the transition, the Brookings Institution unveiled its latest publication, Big Bets and Black Swans: A Presidential Briefing Book at a public discussion event on Thursday. In that book a number of Brookings fellows offer memos on what they view as the most salient foreign policy opportunities and challenges for the President to tackle and look out for in his second term. In the discussion moderated by NBC News’s David Gregory, two panels of authors held forth on their views on the “big bets and black swans” on the U.S. foreign policy.

Every new presidential term is greeted by the clichéd “unprecedented challenges.” The director of Foreign Policy at Brookings, Ambassador Martin Indyk did not deviate from the norm. Introducing the panel discussion, Indyk used a phrase – “a plastic moment” – to emphasize that the President faces a challenging and unsettled but ultimately malleable global arena as he enters his second term in office. The discussants enumerated the “big bets,” or opportunities and issues that are sure to be on the table: satisfactorily resolving the Iranian nuclear issue; constructive engagement with China to nudge it towards a more responsible role as a regional and global player; helping to prevent the possible implosion of the Euro debt crisis, among others. David Gregory wondered if there was enough “bandwidth” in the administration, given the plethora of domestic issues to deal with, to handle all of these myriad foreign policy challenges successfully.  Robert Kagan responded that the decision to confront any of these issues, especially Iran, is not a function of choice but of necessity.

On the other hand, unexpected and unanticipated new developments might totally blind-side the administration, grabbing its attention and sapping its capacity. These so-called “black swans” – low probability but high impact events – are by definition unpredictable. Yet another panel of Brookings analysts took a stab at speculating some possibilities: disorderly breakdown of the Eurozone; accelerating climate change in the form of more catastrophic weather events, collapse of the Palestinian Authority, and even a possible revolution in Saudi Arabia leading to the fall of the House of Saud. The “black swans” seem improbable; but that is precisely the point: to analyze and plan for those highly improbable and yet impactful foreign policy crises.

The discussion thus was informative enough in its survey of possible foreign policy direction. But whether the President and his administration heed the myriad recommendations will only be known long after the inauguration parades have passed.

***

For further information on the Foreign Policy at Brookings project and to download Big Bets and Black Swans: A Presidential Briefing Book, go to this link: http://www.brookings.edu/research/interactives/2013/big-bets-black-swans

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~Sagar Rijal, ABD, is spending the final semester of his graduate assistantship doing research for his dissertation in Washington, D.C. Every week he will attend meetings, seminars, or presentations at think tanks and develop a column for the Bulletin community.

Clash of Labels ~ By: Mustafa Kemal Dağdelen

Written by: Mustafa Kemal Dağdelen

Think Without Labeling

This Video was a commercial video fo a leading newspaper in Turkey.  The motto of the commercial was "Think Without Labeling"

Clash of Labels

How do you label your counterpart? According to his/her nationality, race, ethnicity, religion or sect? What is the motivation behind labeling other human beings? Establishing a ground to explore differences peacefully or identifying potential adversary?

The youth of 21^st century has been familiar with national identities, political identities, ethnic identities, racial identities, sexual identities and religious/sectarian  identities and has witnessed a number of clashes which are arisen from those identities and/or differences between them. 

It is not the intention of these poor words to propose a very idealistic prescription for the oldest problem of humankind. Rather, these words intend to reflect a deep burden of the author who was born in one of the most diverse cities of the world which historically has been home to different religious and ethnic communities and very rarely seen severe conflicts between different groups.

Since 2001 every aspect of socio-political arena has been affecting the author’s life-path, decisions, orientations and motivations. The author has always been trying to understand explicit and/or implicit generators of socio-political developments and has realized the fact that from philosophy to literature, respective systemizations/disciplines within Humanities offer various explanations for human beings’ tendencies and actions.

By the way, the burden of the author should be clarified before getting drowned in the chaos of thoughts; ‘Why do we always tend to label other human beings and treat them accordingly?’  This is a very broad and complex question and could open several paradigmatic discussions. Yet, this piece does not have an academic purpose; thus, the simplistic inspiration or reaction desires to be tolerated and accepted as a written formation of sensitivity against current developments in the world. 

The author has always been puzzled by this burden and usually been told that the answer could be explored with a scholastic pursuit and very first shock was reading ‘Homo homini lupus est’ and its depth and a big question appeared in the author’s mind ‘Why?’ and Machiavelli approached with his remarkable words ‘In judging policies we should consider the results that have been achieved through them rather than the means by which they have been executed.’ Meanwhile, the author’s fantastic journey has begun  in the wild nature of politics, which is basically ‘affairs of state’ according to Aristotle’s politika. Getting closer to the youngest, most attractive, most aesthetic, and most contemporary discipline of social sciences -International Relations- made the chants more hearable ‘let the war begin between glorious écoles of International Relations, namely realism and its foes.’ Since the subject was being analyzed very subjectively, it was lacking an academic basis; it did not have a well-identified research question, dependent and independent variables, indicators, theoretical framework etc., it was highly encouraged to visit scholarly jungles. However, if it had been desired diligently, several scholarly clichés would have been applied and  it was pledged that the problem would be lost and shadowed again in the luxuriant academic patterns.

Before forgetting, what was the problem? Are the labels truly needed in this world or should they always been strongly emphasized? The author of these paradoxical words thinks that learning beyond the names of human beings usually establishes a ground to clashes which occurs in different levels – international, regional, internal, societal etc. -  Do you often pray to see solutions for Arab-Israeli, Shia-Sunni, India-Pakistan, North Korea-South Korea conflicts or Flemish-Wallon, Turkish-Kurdish, Pashtun-Punjabi crises or Republican-Democrat, Communist-Nationalist, Leftist-Rightist tensions? Although it is not difficult to enrich examples, it is not necessary to demonstrate the sable tableau of our world again. 

Written by: Mustafa Kemal Dağdelen

Should women get Ph.D.s in international relations? | Daniel W. Drezner

Click Below to read the post at The Foreign Policy Website. 
Should women get Ph.D.s in international relations? | Daniel W. Drezner

We would like to hear your response to this article! 

On Epistemology: How do we know what we know? ~ Scott Duryea

On Epistemology: How do we know what we know?
written by: Scott Duryea

Humans act purposefully. Yes, believe it. It’s true.

This may seem like a fairly obvious statement, but the logical extensions of this proposition fail to prove meaningful in mainstream political economic thought. The study of economics and politics, it is believed by Karl Popper, among others, are empirical sciences. Propositions, in order for them to be true, must have observable falsifiability. This is the way we know, as political scientists, if a theory is scientific.

The social sciences, it is believed by logical positivists like Popper, belong to the same epistemological category as the natural sciences. In other words, we can gain scientific knowledge by employing the same methods for acting humans as we can for mechanical instruments or biological ecosystems. How do we know things to be true? Because we can observe hypotheses in reality and be able to falsify them.

But, the study of human action deals with complex phenomena that hold no constants in the empirical world.

Why?

Precisely because humans act purposefully and subjectively. Individuals use means to achieve ends. This is an a priori statement. The only way to understand and explain complex human interaction is by these deductive methods. In other words, the study of human action is not an empirical science. Constants in (and therefore the predictability of) human action can only be derived from axiomatic deductive reasoning.

To be sure, a priori knowledge does not explain much about human action, but what it does reveal is extremely important.

For instance, neoclassical economics teaches that individuals use cost-benefit analysis to make decisions and to maximize utility. Utility in the neoclassical sense is monetary gain. Humans often do act to increase their wealth. But, how do we explain someone who turns in a missing wallet to the police instead of raiding the wallet and throwing it in the trash? Cultural norms? Maybe. But, more specifically, individuals value things subjectively. This means that humans do not always act in accordance with monetary benefit, but with what they will benefit them in a given instance. The person valued more the satisfaction of knowing they did some moral good than the monetary benefit of keeping the money. In this sense, individuals will always act in accordance to their perceived personal benefit, whether it’s monetary gain, moral satisfaction, or leisure.

We know this because of a priori knowledge (self evident truths) instead of empirical testing and falsifiability.

Think about it. Every action is a choice and a preference over another action. Try to prove that you do not always act purposefully, and in a way that you think will get you a level of satisfaction that you would not have gotten had you not completed the action. Right now, I’m typing this article because I prefer it more than doing my statistics homework or eating an apple.

Whereas Popper would say that this is not a scientific statement because one cannot falsify it empirically, Immanuel Kant would prove that it is necessarily true given the law of non-contradiction.

We know that humans act purposefully because there is no way to disprove it without indeed acting purposefully and thus contradicting ourselves.

This is the science of praxeology, this science of human action.

This is not to say that the current methods of political science are not useful. We can understand how humans have acted in the past and may act in the future, given some probability and explanatory value of given variables. But, we should not forget that there is great explanatory value in deductive reasoning from the simple axiom that humans act purposefully.

written by: Scott Duryea

Maybe. Maybe Not. ~ By: Sabine Hirschauer

Written By Sabine Hirschauer, PhD Candidate

I’ve been here before. I’ve read these words, these sentences. I’ve seen these images before. Men clustered on a hill, standing in line, their heads bowed, waiting. For their hair to be shorn. Like animals. Fathers and brothers taken to concentration camps. Mothers chased across a mine field. Their daughters systematically raped. For days. Screams and wails lingering in the air, coming from a police station. Thousands of people packed into boxcars, then later forced for three days and nights to march across a non-man’s land. Emaciated men behind barbed-wire. An entire village population evacuated. Into an 18-car train. Hundreds of men on the floor of cattle sheds. This is not the Holocaust. Not World War II. Not Germany in 1940. This was Manjaca, Brezovo Polje Slavonski Samac, Tuzla. Bosnia-Herzegovina, the cruel summer of 1992. The end of the Cold War and its false prophecy of a perpetual peace. A cliché again comes to mind: Does history really repeat itself? Or is it sometimes just a fluke of the most cruel kind? The infamous vicious cycle. Or a time warp that one can overcome. Bend back. Make straight. And good again?
I’ve just finished copying and pasting from excerpts from the 1992 Human Rights Watch/Helsinki watch report about the Bosnian conflict. And as I read on I know I’ve been here before. I’ve read these words, similar sentences before. I’ve seen these images. Over and over again. The report “speaks” of the atrocities committed at the “refugee” camps by Serbian soldiers, of deteriorating conditions at the camps. The frustration of UN workers being paralyzed to act according to rules and regulations, according to senseless UN bureaucracy. And an international community seemingly oblivious of the medieval slaughter that is unfolding in the heart of a modern Europe – at the end of the 20th century. “Our frustration arises from our inability to do anything other than write reports and stand-by since UNPROPFOR has no operational responsibilities across the border.” In one of the memos a UN staffer begged for a minibus to help carry escapees “to safety since UN vehicles are not to be used for humanitarian purposes.” To no avail.
I’ve been here before. I’ve read these words, similar sentences. I’ve seen these images. The Holocaust. Trains and ships packed with people fleeing to borders, to the safety of other countries, just to be refused, turned around, pushed back into hell.
You’d think after all these second chances we would be a better people. So let me throw out a seemingly unrelated and in comparison innocent and trivial event. Twenty years fast forward, along comes the Euro Crisis. And Poland’s foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski being quoted of saying in November 2011 “I fear German’s power less than German’s inaction.” This makes him the first foreign minister in his country’s history of making such remarks. Poland, today one of the junior members of the EU, a country which has been over and over again invaded, captured and left for dead throughout history by its brutal neighbors. For me, this quote, hearing it on the radio, came as an indicator as to how we – possibly - can overcome the curse of history. Maybe. Maybe not. Or how we construct our own signs and our own destiny?
The concept of the EU, in general, as a confederation/association of states, independent yet interdependent (to me) is an effective mechanism that deters war and fosters peace. And the concept of the monetary union, in particular, (to me) is a sign of a commitment for us to finally abandoning the bloody battlefields of our ancestors and to see each other collectively rather than insular. This is (for me) why the EU and the Euro cannot fail. In addition to its economic function, both could serve as a mechanism that raises our moral compass as a people to avoid mass slaughter and mass political contentment - again. Maybe. Maybe not.
Or: This is - at least - how I see it. And I know everything is complex. And comes in various shades of grey. But maybe it’s not so complex. And maybe not so grey.
But this is my imperfect reality. This is my truth. Today. And how I know it. So: Do we need to suffer over and over again from the same thing? I think not. I think never.

Written By Sabine Hirschauer, PhD Candidate