Description

Category:South Asian StudiesSouth Asian StudiesSouth Asian Studies-Sat
Publisher: Cambria Usa | ISBN: 9781638570639 | Pages: 280

While several books have examined the security challenges faced by India and Pakistan in isolation as well as the strategies they have each adopted in response, Subcontinent Adrift places the two sets of clashing outlooks, policies, and strategies together and analyzes the causes and consequences of the drift in South Asia. Subcontinent Adrift maps out and explains India and Pakistan s respective interests, motivations, and long-term objectives from a contemporary perspective. Much has happened in the intervening period since the nuclear tests in 1998 that has shaped the rivalry between these two countries, including advances in their strategic capabilities, domestic political shifts, and changes in the global balance of power. Hence the book considers to what extent the "drifting" Subcontinent is affecting the political, military, and economic dynamics on the international stage and causing a "global drift"-described by Chester Crocker as a "disorderly mixture of turbulence and drift in relationships among the leading powers and key regional states." This study identifies the latent and emergent drivers behind the mounting acrimony in South Asia-notably, India s ambitions as a "rising power" coupled with the resurgence of China and Pakistan s strategic anxiety as the United States unmoors itself from Afghanistan and embraces India. India is similarly concerned as China advances its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) across the region, developing a network of economic and strategic hubs and bringing India s neighbors into China s embrace through its strategy of peripheral diplomacy. Countries in the region are attracted by the new opportunities offered through the BRI, which in turn undercuts India s national objectives and provides new incentives for Pakistan to balance against India. Khan elucidates the intricacies of such external drivers vis-à-vis the internal factors of both countries and their ramifications in various scenarios. Subcontinent Adrift will be a valuable addition to the fields of international relations, security studies, and Asian studies. This book is in the Rapid Communications in Conflict and Security Series (General Editor: Dr. Geoffrey R.H. Burn).

About the Author

Brigadier General (retired) Feroz Khan is a lecturer in the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey. He served with the Pakistani Army for 30 years, most recently as Director, Arms Control and Disarmament Affairs, within the Strategic Plans Division, Joint Services Headquarters, and has represented Pakistan in several multilateral and bilateral arms control negotiations. General Khan has been a visiting scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and has held fellowships at Stanford University s Center for International Studies and Cooperation, the Brookings Institution, the Center for n-Proliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, and the Cooperative Monitoring Center, Sandia National Laboratory. He has also taught as visiting faculty at the Department of the Defense and Strategic Studies, Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad.