Analysis & Opinions - Foreign Policy

Keeping Up with the Indians

| August 31, 2009

"Saturday's New York Times reports that Pakistan has expanded its maritime land-attack missile program, possibly based on modifications to U.S.-provided anti-ship Harpoons. News like this fuels concerns that the Pakistani establishment is not taking the internal security threat seriously enough, instead favoring its standard obsession with India. In this view, the expansion of both conventional and nuclear weapons programs shows that Pakistan is not serious about its wars within, instead myopically focusing on a status quo India that poses no real threat to Pakistan.

There is certainly merit to the argument that Pakistan simply 'doesn't get it' when it comes to fighting the Taliban. The Pakistan Army has a deeply-ingrained organizational distrust of India and strong incentives to continue building and buying expensive new systems, rather than getting into the dirty, cruel, complex business of counterinsurgency on its northwestern frontier...."

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For more information on this publication: Belfer Communications Office
For Academic Citation: Staniland, Paul.“Keeping Up with the Indians.” Foreign Policy, August 31, 2009.

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