South Asia

63 Items

U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles (from left) greet South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem at Washington National Airport

DoD/Department of the Air Force

Journal Article - Small Wars Journal

Bernard Fall as an Andrew Marshall Avant la Lettre (Part II)

| Dec. 09, 2019

SWJ interview with Nathaniel L. Moir, Ph.D., an Ernest May Postdoctoral Fellow in History and Policy at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School. Dr. Moir is completing a book manuscript on Bernard Fall for publication.

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during his annual news conference in Moscow

AP/Alexander Zemlianichenko

Journal Article - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

How the Next Nuclear Arms Race Will Be Different from the Last One

| 2019

All the world's nuclear-armed states (except for North Korea) have begun modernizing and upgrading their arsenals, leading many observers to predict that the world is entering a new nuclear arms race. While that outcome is not yet inevitable, it is likely, and if it happens, the new nuclear arms race will be different and more dangerous than the one we remember. More nuclear-armed countries in total, and three competing great powers rather than two, will make the competition more complex. Meanwhile, new non-nuclear weapon technologies — such as ballistic missile defense, anti-satellite weapons, and precision-strike missile technology — will make nuclear deterrence relationships that were once somewhat stable less so.

Skulls at site of executions ordered by Pakistan military officials, Bangladesh, December 13, 1971.

AP

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Bargaining Away Justice: India, Pakistan, and the International Politics of Impunity for the Bangladesh Genocide

    Author:
  • Gary Bass
| Fall 2016

During the 1971 Bangladesh war for independence from Pakistan, the Pakistan army carried out a genocide that killed hundreds of thousands of Bengalis in what was then East Pakistan. The perpetrators never faced trial. Archival documents reveal how India and Bangladesh sacrificed the opportunity for war crimes trials to gain Pakistan’s agreement on key security goals—the Simla peace agreement and recognition of Bangladesh’s independence. The legacy of this decision continues to blight Bangladesh’s politics.

A transporter erector launcher (TEL), carrying four Babur cruise missiles, on display at the IDEAS 2008 defence exhibition, Karachi, Pakistan.

Skybolt101 Photo CC

Journal Article - Conflict, Security & Development

Do Nuclear Weapons Affect the Guns-butter Trade-off? Evidence on Nuclear Substitution from Pakistan and Beyond

| 2015

Scholars have argued that acquiring nuclear weapons should allow states the luxury of exiting conventional arms races. In turn, a decreased budgetary focus on conventional arms should make possible greater spending on social welfare. The author contests this logic of nuclear substitution by examining its most likely exponent, Pakistan. As a poor, underdeveloped state, a nuclear Pakistan should have welcomed the opportunity to cease its arms race with India, and spend greater sums on its population's welfare. Instead, the article shows that Pakistan has doubled down on its pre-nuclear conventional posture, mainly because of its revisionism over Kashmir.

A Pakistani paramilitary soldier mans an anti-aircraft gun at a hilltop on the Pakistan-Afghan border, November 20, 2012.

Anjum Naveed/ AP

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Old Habits, New Consequences: Pakistan's Posture toward Afghanistan since 2001

    Author:
  • Khalid Homayun Nadiri
| Fall 2012

Many explanations of Pakistan’s tacit support for the Afghan Taliban emphasize Pakistan’s long-standing rivalry with India. Four other factors, however, have been equally decisive: militarized foreign policy making, links between Pakistani military and Islamist networks, grassroots violence, and Pakistan’s contentious history with Afghanistan.

East Pakistanis, fleeing from their homes to seek safety in India, as they pass through the provisional capital of Chuadanga April 16, 1971.

AP

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Pakistan's Forgotten Genocide—A Review Essay

| Fall 2014

In The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide,Gary Bass argues that both the Nixon administration and the global community purposely ignored Pakistan’s genocide of civilians in East Pakistan. Sumit Ganguly reviews the book and reflects on the significance of the 1971 genocide.