South Asia Archive

Oxymorons rarely work. Sure, people can’t get enough of jumbo shrimp. And there is a good reason why Shakespeare’s, “Parting is such sweet sorrow. . .” still resonates four centuries after it was penned. But on the whole, oxymorons tend to signal an inconsistency that is impossible to resolve. More and more, trends in American foreign policy reflect exactly this kind of incongruity. Take some of the concepts that have evolved over the past few years: warriors as diplomats, for instance, or soldiers as state-builders. Now, Afghanistan’s future, which will likely involve a “surge” of troops, places another seemingly discrepant […]

SLOPPY STAFF WORK — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton burst into raucous laughter when Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov pointed out a translation error on the “Reset Button” she gave him as a joke gift. The joke was on her, however, and in private she was less good-natured about the sloppy staff work responsible for the error. For one thing, it started her off at something of a disadvantage, however slight, with her Russian counterpart. For another, it pointed up an unfavorable comparison with her predecessor: Russian-speaker Condi Rice would very probably have caught the error in time. Such snafus […]

Joshua Foust decided to parse my use of literary criticism to deconstruct Afghan roads as an element of COIN strategy, and the result isn’t pretty: Here, though, Grunstein’s argument falls apart. There is preciouslittle evidence that a) “Afghans” have a homogenous identity; b) thecurrent “intrusion” by the outside world is any more significant orjarring than it was before 1979; or c) they actually dislike roads. Infact, of all the people I’ve spoken to the last two months—Pashtuns, noless—they want more, rather than fewer, roads. They see roads as the key to prosperity—a simplistic view, perhaps, but no less heartfelt. In […]

Regarding yesterday’s post on Afghan roads, Joshua Foust pointed me in the direction of his Columbia Journalism Review article on the life and death of the “road-building” meme, which appeared last September. It focuses on the fallacy of equating road-building with security, but triggered an additional thought for me about the COIN emphasis on narrative. I’ve already written about the tension that can arise when a narrative meant for domestic consumption plays poorly in-theater, and vice versa. But the road-building meme Foust dissects illustrates the way in which COIN practitioners will inevitably tend to interpret the narrative they’re constructing in-theater […]

Remember that slew of articles not too long ago all about how building roads was an essential element of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, because in addition to providing better access for securing the population, roads also helped integrate farflung villages into the broader economy? That’s how COIN practitioners see roads anyhow. Here’s John McCreary on how Afghans see them: . . . Roads are a mixed blessing because they improve the efficiency of the taxation system as well as expand the market area. They also can be infrastructure for village improvement, but that is not the expected customary result. Roads usually […]

It seems like all roads lead to China here on the blog, at least yesterday and today. But among the seven points raised by Karl Inderfurth in Congressional testimony on U.S.-India relations, this one really warrants emphasizing: Sixth, promote a cooperative triangle. Along with themuch-improved U.S. -India relationship has come questions about theunderlying motivations for this new direction in American foreignpolicy, specifically whether it represents a hedge by Washingtonagainst a rising China, India’s most consequential neighbor. Thesemanipulative temptations should be resisted. Strengthened U.S. tieswith India have their own strategic logic and imperatives and shouldnot be part of a China containment […]

The oddest thing about recent discussions of the “regional approach” to Afghanistan is that it systematically ignores the pink elephant in the room: China. So we hear about Af-Pak, with India referred to by its given name out of deference. But if you talk about Pakistan and India without talking about China, you’re leaving out a big part of the equation. To see why, check out the feature issue WPR ran on the region titled, The Asian Triangle, but especially the Arif Rafiq piece, Pakistan’s Search for Security (subscription required.) It just so happens that Chinese interests on Afghanistan and […]

I think Matthew Yglesias is significantly underestimating the degree to which the “rapid increase in our level of interest in Pakistan’s troubles” has led to a rapid increase in our less-than-well-informed meddling in Pakistan’s affairs. It’s not the interest per se, but the actions it generates, that lead to a “rapid escalation in the scale of the troubles.” Other than that, Yglesias’ observation is on target. Pakistan’s problems pre-dated our interest in them, and will in all likelihood survive it, too.

What are the two most pressing issues on the U.S. foreign policy agenda? Ask that question of 10 foreign policy mavens and nine will say Afghanistan and Iran. The other one will say Iran and Afghanistan. If the Obama administration manages to stabilize the situation in Afghanistan and find a (lasting) solution to the vexing problem of Iran’s nuclear ambitions over the next four years, it’s hard to imagine his first term won’t be deemed a smashing foreign policy success. It is against this background that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s meeting today in Geneva with Russian Foreign Minister […]

The Washington foreign policy community has a hot new buzzword: “Af-Pak,” an amalgamation of Afghanistan and Pakistan meant to denote the ongoing “two-front war” that Islamist militants are currently waging in both countries. Perhaps it is fitting that one of the most impenetrable foreign policy challenges of our time is symbolized by yet another impenetrable acronym. Not content to leave the field to the Bush administration’s clunky and ill-defined “GWOT” — that is, the “Global War on Terror” — the Obama administration has apparently adopted “Af-Pak” (or its variants, “Afpak” and “AFPAK”) as the acronym that will define a significant […]

The Pakistani Supreme Court ruling on Feb. 25, 2009, that effectively upheld a ban on former prime minister Nawaz Sharif from contesting elections could signal yet another sabotage of democracy in Pakistan. Sharif’s electoral ban quells any possibility that his PML (N) might mount a political challenge to President Asif Ali Zardari in the 2013 elections. The ruling also disqualifed Sharif’s brother, Shahbaz Sharif, from holding political office, and dissolved his government in Punjab. Zardari quickly imposed Governor’s Rule in Punjab for two months, despite the fact that Sharif’s PML (N) enjoys a majority in the provincial legislature. Zardari then […]