The Changing Pakistan Army Officer Corps

The Pakistan Army elicits many concerns about terrorism, nuclear and the coherence of the state. However, very little is actually known about this institution. This article mobilizes unique data to address one important facet: the Army's geographical recruitment base. We find that the Pakistan Army has been successful at expanding the geographical recruitment base while some groups (namely those who are native to Sindh) remain highly under-represented. We also find that the officer corps is increasingly coming from urban areas. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these important shifts subject to the limitations of our data.     

Country survey IV: Pakistan

This paper examines the role of the military in Pakistan, particularly in regard to civil‐military relations and defence industrialisation. Pakistan's military expenditure is relatively high, but apart from investment multipliers, little of this spending filters through to the civil sector. Pakistan's defence‐industrial strategy centres on rebuild and Chinese technological collaboration. However, while this ‘capital‐saving’ approach has merit, the strategy has thus far failed to stimulate broader civil development linkages. A conclusion of this paper is that Pakistan is failing to maximise the strategic dual‐use benefits of integrating civil‐military activity.     

Why Culture Matters: Revisiting the Sino-Indian Border War of 1962

This article examines the nuclear command and control (C²) system implemented in Pakistan since 1998, and discusses its potential consequences for the risk of inadvertent or unauthorised use of nuclear weapons. I argue that troubled civil-military relations and Pakistan's doctrine of ‘asymmetric escalation’ account for the creation of a command and control system with different characteristics during peacetime and military crises. Although the key characteristics of Pakistan's nuclear C² system allow relatively safe nuclear operations during peacetime, operational deployment of nuclear weapons during military standoffs is likely to include only rudimentary protections against inadvertent or unauthorised nuclear release. The implication of this study is that any shift from peacetime to wartime command and control procedures is likely to further destabilise Indo-Pakistani relations during the early stages of a diplomatic or military standoff, and introduce a non-trivial risk of accidental escalation to the nuclear level.     

Rethinking Stability in South Asia: India,Pakistan, and the Competition for Escalation Dominance

India and Pakistan are currently engaged in a competition for escalation dominance. While New Delhi is preparing for a limited conventional campaign against Pakistan, Islamabad is pursuing limited nuclear options to deter India. Together, these trends could increase the likelihood of nuclear conflict. India, for example, might conclude that it can launch an invasion without provoking a nuclear reprisal, while Pakistan might believe that it can employ nuclear weapons without triggering a nuclear exchange. Even if war can be avoided, these trends could eventually compel India to develop its own limited nuclear options in an effort to enhance deterrence and gain coercive leverage over Pakistan.     

Pakistan’s response to US foreign policy towards South Asia 1977–1993

Relations between the USA and Pakistan have been tenuous since the 1947 partition of British India and the subsequent creation of the former. The 1979 Soviet intervention in Afghanistan focused the attention of the international community on South Asia. This article will examine the foreign policies of three successive US Presidential Administrations between 1977 and 1993, and how their decisions and corresponding actions were interpreted by the Pakistani government and its people. The key finding is the trend of the ebb and flow of US interest in Pakistan. The primary research conducted for this article shows that Pakistanis recognize this trend and consider it hypocritical of the US government. The current conditions in South Asia are ominously similar to those of 1992 with the drawdown of US and NATO troops from Afghanistan. Policy-makers would be wise to review the events of 1977–1993 so that the cycle is not repeated again.     

Brinkmanship,not COIN,in Pakistan’s post-9/11 Internal War

Politics is critical to making sense of Pakistani successes and failures in dealing with non-state armed groups. This includes domestic political currents; regional political currents; and the global impetus of the post-9/11 era. How these currents overlap renders to any reading of insurgency in Pakistan real complexity. This article engages with this complexity rather than shirking from it. Its hypothesis is that while the insurgency bordering Afghanistan has been an epicentre of Pakistani military efforts to fight the Taliban, this theatre is in of itself insufficiently inclusive to grasp the nature of Pakistan’s security challenges and its consequent responses.     

Explaining the impact of militancy on Iran–Pakistan relations

ABSTRACT

Sectarian militants have for years launched attacks from Pakistan across the border to Iran. Finding sanctuary in a neighbouring country can make the difference between success and failure for militants. Conventional wisdom holds that a lasting transnational militancy challenge would typically create serious interstate conflict. Militancy has triggered armed encounters between Iran and Pakistan. This article argues that despite some tension militancy has resulted in deeper cooperation in the ambivalent dyad. Both states’ overarching security concerns, having exhausted other options, the believed involvement of third-party states, and economic potential, have moderately alleviated negative pressure caused by militancy.     

Helping hands: external support for the KNU insurgency in Burma

This article analyses to what extent the Burmese KNU insurgency made use of external support from states, refugees, and diasporas. Based on extensive fieldwork it is concluded that support from neighbouring states and refugees has for years kept the Karen rebellion alive. Western countries perceived forms of resistance to the illegitimate Burmese regime as just and have therefore played a crucial role in the continuation of conflict in Karen State. It is important that policymakers and donors as well as executing organizations continue to reflect critically on the way they exercise their work.     

India and Pakistan: Bargaining in the Shadow of Nuclear War

Based on the experience of the Cold War, some scholars hoped that the introduction of nuclear weapons into South Asia would promote peace between India and Pakistan. Instead, nuclear weapons made Pakistan less fearful of India's conventional military forces, and therefore help explain recent conflicts between them. Moreover, US expressions of concern about the possibility of inadvertent nuclear war in South Asia may have provided an incentive to both sides to be intransigent in order to elicit US intervention.     

Indian Military Modernization and Conventional Deterrence in South Asia

In recent years, headline grabbing increases in the Indian defense budget have raised concerns that India’s on-going military modernization threatens to upset the delicate conventional military balance vis-à-vis Pakistan. Such an eventuality is taken as justification for Islamabad’s pursuit of tactical-nuclear weapons and other actions that have worrisome implications for strategic stability on the subcontinent. This article examines the prospects for Pakistan’s conventional deterrence in the near to medium term, and concludes that it is much better than the pessimists allege. A host of factors, including terrain, the favorable deployment of Pakistani forces, and a lack of strategic surprise in the most likely conflict scenarios, will mitigate whatever advantages India may be gaining through military modernization. Despite a growing technological edge in some areas, Indian policymakers cannot be confident that even a limited resort to military force would achieve a rapid result, which is an essential pre-condition for deterrence failure.