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671. Getting the Military Out of Pakistani Politics

Author:
Aqil Shah
Publication Date:
05-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
The United States has a major stake in Pakistan's stability, given the country's central role in the U.S.-led effort to, in U.S. President Barack Obama's words, "disrupt, dismantle, and defeat" al Qaeda; its war-prone rivalry with India over Kashmir; and its nuclear arsenal. As a result, U.S. policy toward Pakistan has been dominated by concerns for its stability -- providing the reasoning for Washington's backing of the Pakistani military's frequent interventions in domestic politics -- at the expense of its democratic institutions. But as the recent eruption of protests in the Middle East against U.S.-backed tyrants has shown, authoritarian stability is not always a winning bet. Despite U.S. efforts to promote it, stability is hardly Pakistan's distinguishing feature. Indeed, many observers fear that Pakistan could become the world's first nuclear-armed failed state. Their worry is not without reason. More than 63 years after independence, Pakistan is faced with a crumbling economy and a pernicious Taliban insurgency radiating from its Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), the semiautonomous seven districts and six smaller regions along its border with Afghanistan. It is still struggling to meet its population's basic needs. More than half its population faces severe poverty, which fuels resentment against the government and feeds political instability. According to the World Bank, the Pakistani state's effectiveness has actually been in steady decline for the last two decades. In 2010, Foreign Policy even ranked Pakistan as number ten on its Failed States Index, placing it in the "critical" category with such other failed or failing states as Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Somalia. The consequences of its failure would no doubt be catastrophic, if for no other reason than al Qaeda and its affiliates could possibly get control of the country's atomic weapons. The Pakistani Taliban's dramatic incursions into Pakistan's northwestern Buner District (just 65 miles from the capital) in 2009 raised the specter of such a takeover.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
Pakistan, Afghanistan, United States, Washington, Middle East, India, and Kashmir

672. International Relations studies in Asia: distinctive trajectories

Author:
Muthiah Alagappa
Publication Date:
05-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
This article investigates and explains the development of International Relations studies (IRS) in China, Japan, and India. Beginning in early 1980s IRS experienced exponential growth in China and is becoming a separate discipline in that country. Despite early starts, IRS in Japan and India is still an appendage in other disciplinary departments, programs, and centers although growing interest is discernible in both countries. Continued rise of Asian powers along with their growing roles and responsibilities in constructing and managing regional and global orders is likely sustain and increase interest in IRS in these countries and more generally in Asia. Distinctive trajectories have characterized the development of IRS in China, Japan, and India. Distinctiveness is evident in master narratives and intellectual predispositions that have shaped research and teaching of IR in all three countries. The distinct IRS trajectories are explained by the national and international context of these countries as well as the extensiveness of state domination of their public spheres. Alterations in national circumstances and objectives along with changes in the international position explain the master narratives that have focused the efforts of IR research communities. Extensiveness of state domination and government support, respectively, explain intellectual predispositions and institutional opportunities for the development of IRS. IRS in Asia has had a predominantly practical orientation with emphasis on understanding and interpreting the world to forge suitable national responses. That orientation contributed to a strong emphasis on normative–ethical dimensions, as well as empirically grounded historical, area, and policy studies. For a number of reasons including intellectual predispositions and constraints, knowledge production in the positivist tradition has not been a priority. However, IR theorizing defined broadly is beginning to attract greater attention among Asian IR scholars. Initial interest in Western IR theory was largely a function of exposure of Asian scholars to Western (primarily American) scholarship that has been in the forefront in the development of IR concepts, theories, and paradigms. Emulation has traveled from copying to application and is now generating interest in developing indigenous ideas and perspectives based on national histories, experiences, and traditions. Although positivism may gain ground it is not deeply embedded in the intellectual traditions of Asian countries. Furthermore, theorizing in the positivist tradition has not made significant progress in the West where it is also encountering sharp criticism and alternative theories. Asian IR scholarship would continue to emphasize normative–ethical concerns. And historical, area, and policy studies would continue to be important in their own right, not simply as evidentiary basis for development of law-like propositions. It also appears likely that Asian IR scholarship would increasingly focus on recovery of indigenous ideas and traditions and their adaptation to contemporary circumstances. The net effect of these trends would be to diversify and enrich existing concepts, theories, methods, and perspectives, and possibly provide fresh ones as well. The flourishing of IRS in Asia would make the IR discipline more international.
Topic:
International Relations, Development, and Government
Political Geography:
Japan, China, America, India, and Asia

673. Mounting Challenges and Multilateralism

Author:
Yu Bin
Publication Date:
04-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Comparative Connections
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
China-Russia economic relations were “reset” on New Year's Day 2011 when the 1,000-km Skovorodino-Daqing branch pipeline was officially opened. The pipeline, which took some 15 years from conception to completion, will transport 15 million tons of crude annually for the next 20 years. The low-key ceremony marking the launch of the pipeline at the Chinese border city of Mohe was followed by several rounds of bilateral consultations on diplomatic and strategic issues in January. In March and April, Moscow and Beijing sought to invigorate their “joint ventures” – the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the Brazil, Russia, India, China (BRIC) forum – at a time when both Moscow and Beijing feel the need for more coordination to address several regional and global challenges and crises.
Political Geography:
Russia, China, India, Beijing, and Moscow

674. Don't Expect Much from Japan in the Indian Ocean

Author:
Toshi Yoshihara and James R. Holmes
Publication Date:
01-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
Japan is an Indian Ocean power of long standing. Ten years ago, in a post-9/11 show of solidarity with the United States and to exercise a more muscular foreign policy, Tokyo committed vessels of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF, or MSDF) to the coalition naval contingent supporting combat operations in Afghanistan. JMSDF tankers resupplied coalition warships, while Aegis destroyers guarded against air and surface threats in the Arabian Sea. Japanese seamen posted impressive statistics for this naval enterprise. The Japan Ministry of Defense reported that JMSDF vessels supplied about 137 million gallons of fuel oil and some 2.8 gallons of water to customers from about a dozen countries, including the United States, Pakistan, France, Britain, and Germany. Tokyo spent over $110 million on the logistics mission in its final two years according to Defense Ministry spokesmen, even as demand for such support dwindled.
Topic:
Foreign Policy
Political Geography:
Pakistan, Britain, Afghanistan, United States, Japan, India, France, Arabia, Germany, and Tokyo

675. Letter from the UN: After the U.S. Veto on Settlements

Author:
Graham Usher
Publication Date:
05-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
Obama's first veto in defense of Israel at the UN was of a Security Council draft resolution that condemned Israeli settlements in language reflecting the administration's own stated policy. The draft, supported by all other UNSC members, forced the U.S. to choose between undermining its credibility internationally and alienating constituencies at home. For the Palestinians, insistence on tabling the draft in defiance of Washington was seen by some as a first step in an “alternative peace strategy” involving a turn away from the Oslo framework in favor of the UN. After reviewing the context of the resolution, the author analyzes the stakes for the various players, the repercussions of the veto, and the diplomatic prospects in its wake. On 18 February 2011, the Obama administration vetoed a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution that would have condemned as illegal Israeli settlement in the occupied territories. Palestinian insistence on submitting the resolution incurred America's wrath. But the Council's fourteen other member states (including permanent members Britain, France, China, and Russia and nonpermanent powers Germany, Brazil, India, and South Africa) all voted for the resolution. And a colossal 123 countries cosponsored it, including every Arab and African state except Libya (which rejects a twostate solution to the conflict). Israel “deeply appreciated” the American veto—understandably so. Rarely had it been left so alone internationally, with even close allies like Germany ignoring appeals to abstain. For the Americans, Obama's first veto in defense of Israel at the United Nations came at a time when he wanted to appear at least rhetorically on the side of young Arab protestors who from Morocco to Yemen had been demanding change, rather than with the ancien régimes defending inertia. U.S. Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice's contortions were palpable as she tried to explain a veto that violated elemental justice, international law, and until recently her administration's own stated policy on settlements—all in the name of a peace process that no longer exists. The veto “cost the Americans blood,” admitted Israel's Maariv newspaper, paraphrasing a “sharp” exchange between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the aftermath. It also cost Obama in the occupied territories. In Ramallah, some 3,000 mainly Fatah members staged a “day of rage” against the veto, with the West Bank Palestinian Authority's (PA) usually pro-American Prime Minister Salam Fayyad incandescent: “The Americans have chosen to be alone in disrupting the internationally backed Palestinian efforts,” he said. Smaller Fatah anti-America demonstrations occurred in Qalqilya, Hebron, Jenin, and East Jerusalem. The Palestinian and Arab decision to take the resolution to the UN was born of the beaching of the U.S.-steered “peace process” after the Israeli government's refusal last September to renew a partial moratorium on West Bank settlement starts. It was the first run of what has been called the PA's new “alternative” diplomatic strategy. Combined with the promise of new elections in the West Bank and Gaza, moves toward reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah, and the approaching climax of Fayyad's state-building agenda in September, the alternative strategy involves freeing the Palestinian case from the grip of American tutelage in order to anchor it again on UNSC resolutions and international law. How serious is the alternative?
Political Geography:
Russia, China, America, India, South Africa, Brazil, Palestine, and Germany

676. Emerging challengers in knowledge-based industries? The case of Indian pharmaceutical multinationals

Author:
Gert Bruche
Publication Date:
07-2011
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment
Abstract:
The growth of outward foreign direct investment (FDI) from developing countries and of a new generation of “emerging multinational enterprises” (EMNEs) has stimulated a flurry of publications. EMNEs have been portrayed as on their way to adulthood, latecomers that leapfrog into advanced positions, emerging giants, and challengers of conventional multinational enterprises (MNEs) from advanced economies.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Foreign Direct Investment
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

677. Inward FDI in Israel and its policy context

Author:
Yair Aharoni
Publication Date:
01-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment
Abstract:
In the first four decades of its existence, Israel was not successful in attracting inward foreign direct investment (IFDI) despite attempts to do so. In the past two decades, Israel have become a haven for multinational enterprises (MNEs) that have taken advantage of its unique assets – among them a skilled, educated workforce and cutting-edge research-and-development (R) capabilities – by establishing production lines or R centers and acquiring dozens of successful start ups. Israel's IFDI stock sharply increased from US$ 4.5 billion in 1990 to US$ 71.3 billion in 2009. It is expected that IFDI will further accelerate following Israel's accession to the OECD in May 2010 and as more firms from emerging market economies, including China and India, will come to appreciate its characteristics as an ideal locational choice. Israel also weathered the global economic crisis well, even though IFDI declined sharply. Israel actively encourages IFDI, mainly in high technology areas. In 2010, the Government also created special incentives to attract research centers of financial institutions.
Topic:
Economics, Markets, Foreign Direct Investment, and Financial Crisis
Political Geography:
China, Middle East, India, and Israel

678. India and Sri Lanka after the LTTE

Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Crisis Group
Abstract:
India has long been the country with the greatest influence over Sri Lanka but its policies to encourage the government there towards a sustainable peace are not working. Despite India's active engagement and unprecedented financial assistance, the Sri Lankan government has failed to make progress on pressing post-war challenges. Government actions and the growing political power of the military are instead generating new grievances that increase the risk of an eventual return to violence. To support a sustainable and equitable post-war settlement in Sri Lanka and limit the chances of another authoritarian and military-dominated government on its borders, India needs to work more closely with the United States, the European Union and Japan, encouraging them to send the message that Sri Lanka's current direction is not acceptable. It should press for the demilitarisation of the north, a return to civil administration there and in the east and the end of emergency rule throughout the country.
Topic:
Conflict Prevention, Civil War, Armed Struggle, Bilateral Relations, and Hegemony
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, South Asia, India, and Sri Lanka

679. Global Brazil and U.S.-Brazil Relations

Author:
Samuel W. Bodman, James D. Wolfensohn, and Julia E. Sweig
Publication Date:
07-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Brazil has transcended its status as the largest and most resource-rich country in Latin America to now be counted among the world's pivotal powers. Brazil is not a conventional military power, it does not rival China or India in population or economic size, and it cannot match the geopolitical history of Russia. Still, how Brazil defines and projects its interests, a still-evolving process, is critical to understanding the character of the new multipolar and unpredictable global order.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Globalization, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Russia, China, India, Brazil, and Latin America

680. The Other BRIC in Latin America: India

Author:
Jorge Heine and R. Viswanathan
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Americas Quarterly
Institution:
Council of the Americas
Abstract:
India emerges as a major partner for Latin America.
Topic:
Development and Government
Political Geography:
Russia, China, India, Brazil, Argentina, and Latin America