Reading between the lines

From South Asia Daily for April 25:

Officials confirmed on Monday that the Indian government canceled the visa of Chinese dissident leader and Uighur activist Dolkun Isa on April 23 after pressure from Beijing (Reuters, Time, BBC). Isa is the chairman of the Germany-based World Uighur Congress and was due to attend a conference next week in the northern Indian town of Dharamsala. Uighurs are an ethnic minority community from China's western Xinjiang region and have a long history of discord with Beijing. They are Muslims and regard themselves as culturally and ethnically close to Central Asian nations. Chinese authorities consider Isa as a terrorist and criticized India when the visa was issued. Previous media reports indicated that Delhi granted Isa a visa after China blocked India's bid to get the UN to put Jaish-e-Muhammad chief Masood Azhar on its terrorist list.

And why would China have blocked India's effort to put Azhar on the UN terrorist list? Presumably because Pakistan opposed the move, and China was doing Pakistan, in effect, a favor.  I can't imagine what other reason Beijing would have.

Lahore bombing

I had not heard of the group Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, which claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing in Lahore that killed at least 65 people (evidently mostly Christians, who were intentionally targeted).  Wiki says that the group split from the main Pakistani Taliban organization (the TTP) in 2014.  It is not entirely clear from the Wiki entry exactly what Jamaat-ul-Ahrar's current relation to the TTP is.

ETA 3/28: According to the NewsHour tonight, most of the victims were Muslims.

Quote of the day

From S. Raghavan, 1971: A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh (2013), pp.218-19 (notes omitted; italics added):

On 30 July 1971, a member of the [Bangladesh] Awami League showed up at the US consulate in Calcutta seeking an appointment for Kazi Zahirul Qaiyum, a national assembly member from the Awami League, to meet with the consul-general.  Instead, the consulate arranged for Qaiyum to see a political officer the following day.  Qaiyum said that he had come at the behest of Foreign Minister Khandakar Moshtaque Ahmad, who wished to reestablish the Awami League's contacts with the United States [with a view to the U.S. facilitating negotiations between Gen. Yahya Khan, ruler of Pakistan, and the Awami League].... The US embassy in Islamabad observed that even if Qaiyum's proposals represented those of the Bangladesh government, Yahya was unlikely to accept them.  In serving as a conduit for these messages, the United States risked upsetting its relations with Pakistan.  Nonetheless, in the interest of long-term relations with the Bangladesh leadership, the risk seemed worth running.  The White House had a rather different view.  Kissinger insisted that asking Yahya to parley with the Awami Leaguers in Calcutta was "like asking Abraham Lincoln to deal with Jefferson Davis."  Nixon agreed that "we can't ask Yayha to do that."  Yet, he asked the State Department to sound out Ambassador Farland [the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan] on this issue.     

To say that Kissinger's remark was an inapt analogy would be an understatement.

Thoughts on nuclear weapons and the Middle East

Update (3/11): This FP column by Graham Allison is to the point.

---

The U.S. and the USSR had a few close calls during the Cold War, moments when the possibility of a nuclear exchange came too close for comfort.  India and Pakistan had an apparently close call during the Kargil crisis in 1999.  The existence of these close calls means that nuclear deterrence is not an airtight guarantee against a nuclear exchange.  Nor is 'the nuclear taboo' an absolute guarantee, since an exchange between two nuclear-armed countries might conceivably occur essentially unintentionally, i.e. by accident.

However, while nuclear deterrence did not provide an absolute guarantee during the Cold War and while there were a few close calls, on the whole it worked remarkably well, at least in the narrow, relevant sense of "worked".  The Cold War never turned into a hot war between the superpowers, who wreaked havoc on the Third World via proxy wars and caused an enormous amount of human misery and death, but managed to avoid the sort of cataclysmic exchange that, in the worst-case scenario, would have meant the end of anything resembling 'civilized' life on the planet.  In other words, the "delicate balance of terror" between the superpowers (to borrow the title of a famous article by Albert Wohlstetter from the late 1950s) turned out to be quite sturdy (safety as "the sturdy child of terror," as Churchill put it, in something of a metaphorical mash-up).

These rather unoriginal reflections may serve as a prelude to the thought that, if Iran should one day acquire a nuclear weapon or the capacity to obtain one in a short time frame, the consequence would not be an existential threat to Israel, contrary to Netanyahu's assertions (n.b. I haven't yet read the full transcript of his speech to Congress).  Israel of course has its own (officially unacknowledged) nuclear arsenal, and there is every reason to suppose that nuclear deterrence would operate between Iran and Israel as it operates between India and Pakistan, and as it operated between the U.S. and the USSR during the Cold War.  That doesn't mean no possibility whatsoever that an exchange could occur, but it suggests it would be highly unlikely.  The Iranian leadership would have to be insane to launch a deliberate nuclear strike on a nuclear-armed state with a powerful conventional military, one closely allied to the most militarily powerful country in the world, and I'm aware of no evidence to suggest that Iran's leadership is insane.  (Though doubtless there are people who would rush to furnish some were they to read this post, which they probably won't.)

The 'threat' from an Iranian bomb, insofar as there would be one, would come, or so it seems to me, in the form of an increased boldness on Iran's part to throw its weight around in the region, engage in coercive diplomacy vis-a-vis, e.g., Saudi Arabia or Turkey, and generally become more of a nuisance in the eyes of its adversaries.  That's not nothing, of course, but it is not the existential threat to Israel that some people claim would be the result of an Iranian nuclear-weapons capacity.

The latest news from the talks is that Iran has rejected the proposal (or 'demand', whichever it was) for a 10-year freeze on certain nuclear activities.  However, the talks will and should continue.  Netanyahu's prescription of increased sanctions and an end to the negotiations does not seem like a prescription for anything other than disaster in the long run.  As Peter T. pointed out in his guest posts recently published on this blog (see here and here), Iran is, by virtue of its size, location, capabilities, and level of development, not the sort of country that can be sanctioned into submission -- not, at least, without setting the stage for precisely the kind of potentially explosive or catastrophic consequences that everyone should be eager to avoid.

A final note about how we think about security claims, which I'm tacking on because I just read Jarrod Hayes's post at Duck of Minerva.  Jarrod points out that a speaker's authority to make security claims may be undermined if the claims come to be seen by the target audience as 'political' (though all security claims are political).  Although I agree with this, I think Netanyahu's speech is an instance where one should focus on the objective merits of his claims as much as on their 'authority'.  Jarrod writes: "Even though the construction of security is intersubjective, it is spoken about in objective terms. Where the objectivity of the claim rubs thin, as in Netanyahu’s case, his ability to speak security is undermined."  

But the objectivity of Netanyahu's claim rubs thin not simply because it may be perceived as 'political' but because it lacks 'objective' merit.  The fact that the construction of security is intersubjective does not mean that there is not a world 'out there' about which one can make better or worse, more plausible or less plausible, claims.  The claim that an Iranian nuclear capacity poses an existential threat to Israel is unconvincing, for reasons suggested above.  It is unconvincing because it clashes with what history, logic, and evidence suggest about how the real world works.  Contrary to Patrick Jackson's view that the world does not exist independently of the mind (mind-world monism), I believe there is a 'real world', that it exists independently of our minds, and that claims about how the world works can be judged as more or less convincing on the basis of evidence.  That does not mean I am a neo-positivist (and actually since I have no research agenda and essentially no standing in the IR 'profession', it doesn't really matter what my meta-theoretical leanings are); what it does mean is that in this case we should not lose sight of whether Netanyahu's claims, irrespective of his authority to make them, accord with what we know about the real world. 

Is Partition to blame for all the subcontinent's woes?

Isaac Chotiner's review of John Keay's Midnight's Descendants puts, it seems to me, too much blame on Partition for everything that is today less-than-optimal in the subcontinent.  P. O'Neill corrects a specific sentence in Chotiner's review, here.

Khilnani on Bass and Raghavan

Sunil Khilnani's review, in the New Republic (Nov. 25, 2013), of Gary Bass's The Blood Telegram and Srinath Raghavan's 1971 is informative, but I do have a couple of small criticisms (well, the first point is a criticism, the second point is more of an observation).

(1) Khilnani twice refers to India as "militarily weak" (the first reference is to India in 1971 as "the world's largest democracy but also one of its poorest and militarily weakest"), and he writes that, during the months of the crisis leading up to the Indian intervention, "the Indians were aware that Pakistan's American weaponry gave it an edge over India...." Yet, as Khilnani also observes, once the war was launched in December it was a "swift and decisive" Indian victory. This doesn't compute. If India was so militarily weak, why was the victory so quick and decisive? Even if one agrees with Raghavan's view that the Indian victory "was considerably influenced by chance and contingency" (1971, p.235), Khilnani's emphasis on India's military weakness seems a bit odd.

(2) Khilnani writes: "...as Bass and Raghavan each make clear, Pakistan was not the only route available to the Americans [Nixon and Kissinger] to pursue their China goals. The United States could have restrained Pakistan's military actions while still securing the China opening." I think this is probably a correct historical judgment, but it's a bit more definite than what Raghavan says (I'm leaving aside Bass here because I haven't read the Bass book). Raghavan (as mentioned in my review of 1971, below) says Nixon's and Kissinger's refusal to "squeeze" Yahya was "understandable" (1971, p.92) through early July, when Kissinger made his secret trip to Beijing. It is after that point that Pakistan was no longer needed as a conduit to China. On the other hand, Raghavan also suggests that Nixon and Kissinger could have put effective economic pressure on Pakistan in late April or early May (p.266), probably without jeopardizing the China opening. But his overall judgment on this particular issue seems less definite than Khilnani's. It's a matter of nuance, not sharp disagreement. (Romania was the other possibility Nixon and Kissinger considered as a conduit to China, but "the line through Pakistan was the better bet" for reasons Raghavan explains on p.86, from which the quoted phrase is taken.)

Book review: Raghavan on the birth of Bangladesh

Srinath Raghavan, 1971: A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh.  Harvard University Press, 2013.  358 pp.

The crisis that led to the creation of Bangladesh was a major episode in the history of South Asia and had implications that reached beyond the subcontinent.  It raised issues that would recur frequently in subsequent decades, as humanitarian catastrophes increasingly took place in the context of civil wars and/or secession.  The creation of Bangladesh also had lasting geopolitical consequences: Srinath Raghavan writes in 1971 that it “was the most significant geopolitical event in the subcontinent since its partition in 1947” (4).  

Raghavan’s book is marked by narrative detail and backed by extensive research: among other things, he has gone into various archives (though Pakistan’s archives on the episode remain closed), read many memoirs and other sources, and also made use of the substantial amount of recent work on the international history of the 1960s and 1970s.  He maintains that the birth of Bangladesh was not inevitable but the product of “choice and chance” (8) and should be viewed in light of “the interplay between the domestic, regional, and international dimensions” (9).  Raghavan deals with the stances of many countries during the crisis and also pays attention to actors such as the press, celebrity musicians, NGOs, and the UN. However, the classic figures of diplomats, soldiers, and heads of state occupy center stage in his account.

This post focuses on what 1971 says about the roles in the crisis of the Soviet Union and the United States, and how these roles were complexly entangled with those of some of the other main players, notably China.  As will be seen, Raghavan is highly critical of Nixon and Kissinger, particularly the latter’s overemphasis on U.S. ‘credibility’ and his tendency to see linkages everywhere.

One general impression that emerges from this history is that none of the main actors wanted the crisis to escalate into a direct great-power military confrontation.  The dominant, though certainly not exclusive, diplomatic-strategic note was one of caution.  This impulse toward restraint, however, also meant that no decisive action was taken to stop the Pakistani army’s rampage in East Pakistan until India went beyond supplying aid to the indigenous independence forces and eventually intervened with its own soldiers (and Raghavan thinks India should have intervened earlier).       

The Nine-Month Crisis

Raghavan’s account starts with the fall of Pakistan’s ruler Ayub Khan in early 1969 and his replacement by a military regime led by Gen. Yahya Khan.  The catalyst for Ayub’s departure was student-led protests, part of the global wave of protests in 1968.  The protests “not only deposed Ayub Khan but also radicalized the movement for autonomy” in East Pakistan (266).  In December 1970, Mujibur Rahman’s Awami League, running on an autonomy platform, won a majority in parliamentary elections, including all but two seats in the East. 

Negotiations on forming a new government ensued between the Awami League and Yahya Khan.  When the negotiations broke down despite the League’s willingness to be flexible on some key points, the Pakistani army launched its crackdown in East Pakistan on March 25, 1971.  A description of the initial assault, written by a UN Development Program official in Dacca (the capital of E. Pakistan), referred to “Army trucks loaded with the dead bodies of civilians” (quoted, 148).  The army shot students in the halls at the university in Dacca (now Dhaka) and also hit Old Dacca (52).  Estimates of the dead from the initial attack varied from 5,000 to 25,000 (149).  Subsequent continued brutality by the Pakistani army led millions of Bengalis to flee into India.

Had India decided quickly to intervene militarily, the crisis would not have lasted long.  However, for reasons Raghavan details in chapter 3 India did not intervene early, and the episode unfolded over a period of nine months: April-December 1971.  When India did decide to launch full-scale operations, the war was short: it “formally began” (234) in the early hours of December 4 (though Pakistan launched a preemptive air strike in the west on Dec. 3), and it ended when the Pakistani army in the east surrendered on Dec. 16. 

Maneuvering in the Whirlwind

The birth of Bangladesh, as this book makes clear, occurred at a turbulent time in world politics.  The intense Cold War crises of the early 1960s – the Berlin crisis and the Cuban missile crisis – were in the past, but parts of the Third World (as it was then called) had become an arena in the superpower contest.  The U.S. was still mired in the Vietnam War (and had expanded its operations into Cambodia), while the Soviet Union and China had barely been on speaking terms since 1961 and had come to blows on the Ussuri River in 1969.  China was reeling internally from the effects of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, the Prague Spring had been suppressed by the Soviets, and, particularly in the West, non-state actors and the emergence of human rights as an international-political issue both were having an increasing if uneven impact on the conduct of foreign policy.  At the same time the relatively new postcolonial states generally opposed secessionist movements wherever they occurred.        

The Sino-Soviet split and the U.S. determination to capitalize on it by a rapprochement with China provide the backdrop for much of the diplomatic maneuvering that surrounded the East Pakistan crisis.  The superpowers, Raghavan writes, took fundamentally different approaches to it: Nixon and Kissinger viewed the events through the lens of their grand geopolitical plans, whereas the USSR’s perspective was primarily regional (115). 

The Soviets, having mediated in Tashkent the settlement that restored the status quo after the 1965 Pakistan/India war over Kashmir, saw themselves as peacemakers on the subcontinent (and for a brief period they sold arms to Pakistan and India at the same time).  Premier Alexei Kosygin, for example, favored a “‘trade and transit agreement’ between India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan which would be ‘beneficial for the whole region’” (114).  In line with this approach the Soviets, at least through most of the crisis, sought to discourage Indian military intervention in East Pakistan and to push Yahya Khan “toward a peaceful, political resolution of the problem” (116).  It was only toward the end of the crisis that the Soviets gave up hope that Yahya might release Mujibur Rahman from jail and negotiate a resolution with him (see below).         

The USSR and India signed a “friendship and cooperation” treaty on August 9, 1971.  According to Raghavan, it was a statement by Kissinger that finally pushed India to sign the treaty.  Having returned from his secret trip to China (see below), Kissinger informed the Indian ambassador to the U.S. on July 17 “that if China intervened in an India-Pakistan war, the United States would be unable to help India”; this led Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi, who had been hesitating, to move to finalize the treaty with the USSR (127).  The treaty’s key provision, Art. IX, called for “mutual consultations” between the parties with a view to “remov[ing]” any threat of an attack on either one; it also, in effect, ruled out Soviet assistance to Pakistan if India-Pakistan hostilities broke out.

However, a gap remained between the USSR and India on the proper approach to the crisis, since the Soviets for some time thought that the refugee issue could be resolved separately from the political issue of East Pakistan’s future (124) and were reluctant to give even conditional approval for Indian military action or to confer about “contingencies.”  The day after the treaty was signed, Soviet foreign minister Gromyko urged Mrs. Gandhi to view “the situation in a cold blooded way…The heart should be warm but the mind should be cool as we say” (quoted, 130).  It was only later, specifically in late September, that the Soviet leadership, having concluded that Yahya Khan “was unwilling to work toward any reasonable solution,…decided to throw its weight behind India” (226).  By late October, the Indian foreign minister was able to tell a parliamentary committee “that India could count on ‘total support’ from the Soviet Union” (226).  To the end, however, the Soviets remained determined not to become directly involved militarily in the crisis and worried about the possibilities of an escalation that would drag them into a great-power confrontation.                   

Tilting at Windmills

Now to the matter of the U.S. stance.  Although “Nixon wheeled with him to office a trolley of biases against India and in favor of Pakistan” (82), Raghavan contends that it was not these prejudices, for the most part, but rather the planned opening to China, and Pakistan’s role in it, that dominated Nixon’s and Kissinger’s calculations.  As the crisis erupted, Nixon ordered his people not to “squeeze” Yahya Khan (81).  The Chinese premier, Zhou Enlai, had suggested that Yahya Khan’s good offices could be used to facilitate the China opening, and “[i]n this context, Nixon and Kissinger’s desire to refrain from squeezing Yahya…was understandable” (92), at least until after Kissinger’s secret trip to China in early July.  Incidentally, contrary to Kissinger’s claim in his memoir White House Years that “Pakistan’s leaders…never sought any reciprocity” (quoted, 87) for their role as conduit to China, Pakistan pressed for a resumption of arms sales, which the U.S. did resume on a one-time basis in October 1970 (84, 87).   

Nixon and Kissinger’s refusal to pressure Yahya Khan elicited a strong protest from the U.S. consul in Dhaka, Archer Blood, who sent cables in late March and early April 1971 “detailing the terror being unleashed on the populace by the Pakistani army” (89).  Nixon and Kissinger were unmoved, and the U.S. ambassador in Islamabad chimed in, deprecating “righteous indignation” (quoted, 89) as a basis for policy.  Raghavan suggests that, however “understandable” was the U.S. softness toward Yahya because of his role as channel to China, the U.S. could have  exercised economic leverage on Pakistan, which was “facing a major liquidity crisis” (94), without undermining the China opening.  Raghavan thinks it “highly probable” that U.S. pressure of this sort "in late April to early May" would have forced Yahya to grant the Awami League’s autonomy demands (266).  (This must remain somewhat conjectural, of course, since the leverage was not exercised.)

After Kissinger’s secret trip to China (July 9th-11th), U.S. policy, Raghavan notes, “began shifting from a disinclination to squeeze Yahya to an active tilt in favor of Pakistan” (105).  (Among major powers, the U.S. was mostly alone in this; Edward Heath’s government in Britain, for example, took a quite different tack; see 162-69.  For the positions of Australia, Canada, France, Germany, and others, see chapter 7.)    

Why the tilt?  “After all, following Kissinger’s trip to Beijing, Pakistan was no longer important as a diplomatic conduit to China” (106).  The answer, according to Raghavan, boils down to Kissinger’s and Nixon’s “excessive concern with reputation” (198) – their belief that if they failed to tilt toward Pakistan and thereby failed to stand with an ally, the nascent U.S.-China connection would be damaged. 

During Kissinger’s July trip he and Zhou Enlai had discussed the crisis, and in their last conversation before Kissinger left, “Zhou asked Kissinger to ‘please tell President Yahya Khan that if India commits aggression, we will support Pakistan’” (106).  This statement was vague – “we will support Pakistan” could mean a range of different things.  But Kissinger interpreted it as a Chinese test of U.S. commitment to Pakistan, such that if the U.S., in Raghavan’s words, “stood aside and allowed Pakistan to be humiliated by India, [U.S.] credibility in the eyes of Beijing would suffer -- resulting in deep, possibly irreparable harm to the budding relationship with the People’s Republic” (106; cf. 198, 247). 

Thus when the crisis reached its climax in December, Nixon and Kissinger sent a U.S. naval task force steaming from the coast of South Vietnam toward the Bay of Bengal, told the Soviets that the situation on the subcontinent jeopardized U.S.-Soviet détente, and urged – unavailingly – the Chinese to move soldiers to the border with India (Nixon to Kissinger: “I tell you a movement of even some Chinese toward that border could scare those goddamn Indians to death” [quoted, 247].)  Kissinger’s remarks to Nixon at this point are laced with urgency: e.g., “the world’s psychological balance of power” is at stake (quoted, 248); and “at least we’re coming off like men” (quoted, 256).   

Nixon and Kissinger claimed credit in their memoirs for saving West Pakistan from Indian aggression, although the only concrete evidence of Indian intentions in that respect that they had was a single-sourced CIA report of early December (244).  Raghavan argues that an attack on West Pakistan was never India’s aim. He writes: “Nixon and Kissinger overplayed the importance of an intelligence source, mainly because it helped them rationalize their desire to demonstrate resolve to China and the Soviet Union…. The only practical consequence of the aggressive U.S. posturing was to spur the Indians to capture Dhaka and seal their victory – objectives that had not been on their strategic horizons when the war began.  This was Nixon and Kissinger’s war of illusions. In retrospect, they come across not as tough statesmen tilting toward their ally but as a picaresque pair tilting at windmills” (262-63).

***  

A few concluding remarks.  1971 covers a lot of ground, and I’ve left out much in this post.  For instance I’ve mostly passed over Raghavan’s discussion of how trends in the global normative/political environment of the time affected the crisis and the reactions to it (see chapter 6), a topic which could occupy a post by itself (and which, from my standpoint, would involve taking issue with one or two of the author’s interpretations, albeit on somewhat tangential points).  The book’s wide scope coupled with attention to detail will make it valuable to historians, IR scholars, and others.  Finally, a minor point: 1971 has a full scholarly apparatus and two maps, but in addition a timeline/chronology would have been helpful.

Noted

From NYRB (Oct. 24): Malise Ruthven reviews (h/t) Akbar Ahmed's The Thistle and the Drone.

A brief excerpt:

Ahmed argues...that the acts of terror or violence directed at the U.S. or its allies are set off as much by revenge based on values of tribal honor as by extremist ideologies.... It seems fair to argue, as Ahmed does, that the values of honor and revenge inherent in the tribal systems contribute to jidahist extremism, and that by ignoring this all-important factor the U.S. has been courting disaster.

But according to Ruthven, Ahmed sees the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) as "countertribal." Anyway, RTWT.

Noted

I get FP's AfPak Daily Brief but I don't always read it and/or sometimes put off reading it, depending on what else is on the plate (such as wasting time writing comments at CT, an activity of vital importance [cough]).

Anyway I just now got around to reading the July 1 edition of the Brief. It contains descriptions of bombings in Quetta (30 members of the Hazara group killed), Peshawar (17 civilians killed in an attack aimed at a Pakistani mil. convoy), and North Waziristan (several members of a local anti-Taliban militia killed by a roadside bomb). Then there is more Pakistan news (Cameron's visit, etc.) and some material on Afghanistan.

Finally, at the end, a note about a classical music concert in Karachi at which a performer demonstrated 100 ways of playing the drum and tabla. It's as if the editors just couldn't bear to leave readers with an unrelieved picture of bombings, deaths, etc.

'Cold' boundaries and 'hot' boundaries

Journalistic discussions of issues involving land boundaries between countries (or between states, to use the rough synonym) sometimes fail to distinguish between two possible kinds of disagreement: disagreement over a boundary's location and disagreement over a boundary's status.

There are no longer many disagreements of consequence over state boundaries' location. Most boundaries are settled, or 'cold' -- to use a term one occasionally sees (or used to). Among the unsettled or 'hot' boundaries there is Israel/Palestine, of course, which is something of a special case. There is the disputed India-China boundary, which has just recently flared up again (see also here). And there are, no doubt, a few others, e.g. the disputed India-Pakistan boundary in the Siachen glacier. (There are also, notably, disputes about islands but those necessarily involve maritime boundaries and are therefore in a different category.)

More common, I think, than disputes about location are disputes about a boundary's status. These disputes don't have to do with where the boundary is drawn but rather about the status of the territory it marks out. Take the cases of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, mentioned here. Supporters of Abkhazian independence presumably don't want a different location for the boundary marking out Abkhazia; rather, they want a change in the boundary's status, from a provincial to an international boundary. When an article about secessionist or independence movements refers to "the rigidity of boundaries," this distinction can get lost, because the reader may infer that a secessionist movement wants to change a boundary's location when it doesn't. The Balochistan independence movement, for example, would presumably be happy with the current location of the boundary marking out Balochistan as a province of Pakistan, but it wants the status of that boundary changed to an international boundary. (Note however that some cases, such as that of an independent Kurdistan were it to be achieved, might involve changes in boundaries' locations.)

Then there can be tensions and disagreements that involve boundaries in some way but are not about either the boundary's location or its status. Two states that share a boundary can disagree, for instance, over how to manage the movement of people and/or goods across it. There can also be violence along a boundary that doesn't, strictly speaking, have much to do with the boundary itself but is an expression of hostility between the countries involved that happens to erupt along the boundary for various reasons.

For instance, the recent clashes between Afghan and Pakistani soldiers along the Afghan-Pakistan border may not have much to do with the border itself. According to a May 2 NYT story (h/t FP's AfPak Daily Brief):

Afghan forces claimed on Thursday that they had overrun and destroyed a Pakistani-held border crossing in a remote area, an event that provoked a spontaneous outpouring of nationalist sentiment here, sending thousands of students into the streets to demonstrate and setting off lively debate on social networking sites. A funeral for Qasim Khan, an Afghan border policeman who was the only confirmed victim of the clash, turned into a patriotic rally.

The NYT piece goes on to note that the outcry over the death of one Afghan soldier at the hands of Pakistani soldiers contrasts with the relative silence about the deaths of "eight Afghan Local Police officers [who] were killed on Thursday morning by a [Taliban] roadside bomb that blew up as their truck passed by in the village of Pashtunabad in Logar Province."

That young Afghans pour into the streets when an Afghan soldier is killed by Pakistani soldiers, but do not react similarly when eight American-trained Afghan local policemen are killed by the Taliban, is worth noting. One could draw several possible conclusions. But the  clashes between Afghan and Pakistani soldiers along the border may, to repeat, have little to do with the border itself, despite the NYT piece's mention of the Durand Line; in this sense it is different from the India-China border dispute. (I realize this is a debatable proposition, so reasoned disagreement is welcome.)

Nasr's critique

Since all the foreign-policy bloggers will probably soon be referring to this, if they haven't already, I'm not going to say anything about it right now.

Update: A different view from Nasr's.

A smidgen of autobiography

An outfit called Kashmir Tour Packages has left a comment on the previous post (actually it's an ad, not a comment, but whatever...). [Note added later: I have deleted the ad.]

I've been in Kashmir once, as a child traveling with my family; we were living in what was then East Pakistan and the Kashmir excursion was part of a vacation. We stayed on a houseboat for part of the time; I don't remember the trip very well. The landscape in Kashmir is indeed beautiful; however, these days I wouldn't want to travel in the immediate vicinity of the Line of Control, since Indian and Pakistani soldiers have been exchanging fire there, with resultant fatalities, in the last week or two. Tourists are presumably never allowed to get near the LoC anyway.

Btw, what about the UN observing/monitoring contingent in Kashmir? There is one, I believe, and has been for many years. But unless I'm mistaken, their terms of engagement, which are less 'active' than those of certain UN contingents elsewhere, don't permit them to do  anything once firing starts. It's strictly an observational mission. The rationale is that the presence of UN observers, even if they're not empowered to do much of anything, will have a pacifying effect. This proposition is non-falsifiable, since we don't know exactly how much more violence, if any, would have occurred if the UN weren't there. But on balance I suppose it's better to have them there than not.

Added later: For the LoC clashes through the prism of 'the spiral model', see here. (H/t D. Nexon)

Friday miscellany

-- The bombings in Quetta: analysis.

-- P. Kennedy vs. P. Kennedy?: Paul Kennedy's new book on WW2, Engineers of Victory, due to be released at the end of this month, is reviewed very favorably in the current Foreign Affairs by Lawrence Freedman. The book's focus is the contribution to the Allied victory of (quoting Freedman's capsule review) "middle managers, such as...logisticians, engineers, and operational analysts...." So it wasn't just the top commanders or "superior productivity" that led to success. Now this is interesting, because if I had to sum up, in one oversimplified line, what I took away from Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers when I read it some years ago, it would be: Superior productivity explains just about everything when it comes to war, or at least great-power war, in the industrial age.
[note: edited slightly after initial posting]

Drone strikes continue, but who are the casualties?

I've started to get in my inbox, as of this a.m., Foreign Policy's 'AfPak daily brief' and also the more general 'morning brief' (not sure I'll continue with the latter). Since I haven't been following the international news through other means as closely as I might, these roundups may be useful.

The 'AfPak brief' cites various news reports about a drone strike that killed "top Pakistani militant commander" Maulvi Nazir, who staged attacks on U.S./ISAF forces in Afghanistan. The brief mentions that this same strike also killed nine people in a house in S. Waziristan but says nothing about their identities. Also mentioned is a drone strike in N. Waziristan that "killed four people whose identities could not be verified." This sort of thing highlights how difficult it must be for those journalists and analysts who try to keep track of exactly who the drone strikes are killing, and underlines why there is no definitive count of civilian casualties.

A.M. linkage

Pressman on whether the U.S. and Israel continue to share values.

D.C. Exile on sovereignty and drone strikes.

[added later] More on Israel: The Fall 2012 issue of Dissent, which I just bought in a bkstore, contains an exchange on Israel between James Rule and Michael Walzer, as well as a review-essay "Zionism and Its Discontents." Haven't read either one yet.    

The immorality of the U.S. drone war

I'm going to vote for Obama. I live in a safely blue state but, perhaps a bit irrationally, I don't feel like taking any chances. Romney in the White House would be horrible. There are important issues where the chasm between the two is wide and the Romney approach would be very bad. There is the issue of prospective Supreme Court appointments. And so on.

All that said, am I going to vote for Obama enthusiastically? No, I don't think I can say that. Conor Friedersdorf's description of the drone war (via CT) captures the major part of the reason:

The drone war [Obama] is waging in North Waziristan isn't "precise" or "surgical" as he would have Americans believe. It kills hundreds of innocents, including children. And for thousands of more innocents who live in the targeted communities, the drone war makes their lives into a nightmare worthy of dystopian novels. People are always afraid. Women cower in their homes. Children are kept out of school. The stress they endure gives them psychiatric disorders. Men are driven crazy by an inability to sleep as drones buzz overhead 24 hours a day, a deadly strike possible at any moment. At worst, this policy creates more terrorists than it kills; at best, America is ruining the lives of thousands of innocent people and killing hundreds of innocents for a small increase in safety from terrorists. It is a cowardly, immoral, and illegal policy, deliberately cloaked in opportunistic secrecy. And Democrats who believe that it is the most moral of all responsible policy alternatives are as misinformed and blinded by partisanship as any conservative ideologue.

I'm hard pressed to do anything except agree with this. I don't share Friedersdorf's conclusion (he's voting for the libertarian candidate), but on this issue I think he's pretty much right. That is, he's right that it's an immoral policy. (He's not right in the conclusion that it requires a vote for someone other than Obama. Sometimes one has to vote for a candidate who is pursuing an immoral policy, if the other candidate with a chance to win would pursue more immoral policies.) 

Also, see a new study of the drone campaign described here (h/t).

P.s. (added later): As things I've written here before suggest, I recognize that the issue is not an easy one, given Pakistan's refusal to deal with the Haqqani network and other groups which have been carrying out cross-border attacks into Afghanistan from the border region. Still, the 'collateral' cost of drones, in terms of civilian casualties and hardship, makes the campaign in its current form hard to justify.  

Are Pakistan's generals right to fear 'encirclement'?

In Steve Coll's article "Looking for Mullah Omar" in the Jan. 23 New Yorker, there is a passage (at p.52 of the hard copy) which contains a statement that I've been reading for a long time now, in one place or another and in one form of words or another:

...Taliban influence in Pashtun areas of Afghanistan has...served Pakistan's cause against India. The [Pakistani] generals fear that India will use economic aid and political support for Afghanistan to encircle Pakistan, establishing consulates and business outposts, and use these to funnel aid to separatist groups such as those fighting to achieve independence for the Pakistani province of Baluchistan. The [Afghan] Taliban offer a counterforce in this proxy struggle.

What evidence is there that India has actually tried to "encircle" Pakistan via aid to the Karzai government, setting up "business outposts," etc.? I know that India funded an elaborate road-building project or two in Afghanistan but I don't follow developments closely enough to know the answer to the question. Fears of 'encirclement,' however, can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The news today that the Pakistani prime minister is urging the Afghan Taliban to enter peace talks with the Afghan government (which have been in the 'feeler' stages for a while) may indicate that the proxy-against-perceived-encirclement strategy is becoming less attractive and that Pakistan is beginning to realize that its interests will be served if the Afghanistan war comes to some kind of a settlement.

On Baluchistan, btw, I have bookmarked this piece by Akbar Ahmed (h/t The Yorkshire Ranter), but haven't yet read it.

Quote of the day

Peter Tomsen, in the Fall 2011 World Policy Journal (p.89):

A more realistic and tougher American policy towards Pakistan should take into account a number of regional geopolitical trends.... Duplicating a geopolitical pattern in the 1990s, the closer the predominantly Pashtun Taliban get to the Amu Darya River, dividing Afghanistan from the former Soviet Stans, the more Russia, Central Asian states, India, and Iran will coordinate to assist Afghan Tajik, Uzbek, and Hazara anti-Taliban resistance groups.... Counterproductive results of Pakistan's proxy wars in Afghanistan will also be felt at home as Pakistan surrenders the extensive regional economic benefits an Afghan peace accord could deliver to Pakistan.

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There's also some other interesting material in the same issue, e.g. "Kenya: Phoning It In" (on the transforming effects of money transfers by cell phone in Kenya -- pp. 8 and 9 of the hard-copy issue).

Pakistan reacts to charges about the security of its nukes

Via WaPo's Karen Brulliard:

...a story in this week’s Atlantic magazine...cast strong doubt on the security of [Pakistan's nuclear] weapons. According to the article, Pakistan moves its nukes in unmarked trucks on public roads – the same used by militant groups that have attacked military bases – while a worried United States hones plans to secure them in the event of a terrorist takeover.

In a statement on Sunday, Pakistan’s foreign ministry slammed the article, dismissing it [as] “pure fiction, baseless” and “part of a deliberate propaganda campaign meant to mislead opinion.”

Hazaras in Baluchistan targeted again

Unlike, for example, Iraq, where Shiites are in the majority and Saddam Hussein's Sunni regime represented the empowerment of a minority group, in Pakistan the vast majority of the population is Sunni. Nonetheless, certain militant Sunni groups remain bent on trying to rid Pakistan of all Shiites. Or so one might conclude from the recent attacks in Baluchistan on Shiites belonging to the Hazara tribe. See here.