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In
The Difficult Politics of Peace, Christopher Clary traces the India-Pakistan rivalry from both countries' independence in 1947 to the present. Drawing on personal interviews and recently declassified documents, Clary offers new insights into the political struggles of Indian and Pakistani national leaders as they sought to navigate domestic politics and international politics simultaneously, and in so doing reveals how the causes of war and peace are inextricably linked to political circumstances within rival states.
List of contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Chapter 1: Rivals, Leaders, and Change
- Chapter 2: Partition, the First Kashmir War, and the Origins of the Rivalry
- Chapter 3: War Scares and the Failure of Kashmir Talks, 1948-1954
- Chapter 4: Nehru, Ayub, and the Indus Waters Treaty
- Chapter 5: The Rise of Bhutto, Sino-Indian Conflict, and the Second Kashmir War
- Chapter 6: Dhaka, Simla, and an Incomplete Peace
- Chapter 7: Dictatorship, Democracy, and the Bomb in South Asia
- Chapter 8: From Musharraf to Modi
- Conclusion
- Index
About the author
Christopher Clary is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University at Albany, State University of New York, and a Nonresident Fellow with the South Asia Program of the Stimson Center in Washington, DC. He has held fellowships at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University, the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, the RAND Corporation in Washington, D.C., and the Council on Foreign Relations. He previously served in the Office of South and Southeast Asian Affairs of the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
Summary
A sweeping and theoretically original analysis of the India-Pakistan rivalry from 1947 to the present.
Since their mutual independence in 1947, India and Pakistan have been engaged in a fierce rivalry. Even today, both rivals continue to devote enormous resources to their military competition even as they face other pressing challenges at home and abroad. Why and when do rival states pursue conflict or cooperation? In The Difficult Politics of Peace, Christopher Clary provides a systematic examination of war-making and peace-building in the India-Pakistan rivalry from 1947 to the present. Drawing upon new evidence from recently declassified documents and policymaker interviews, the book traces India and Pakistan's complex history to explain patterns in their enduring rivalry and argues that domestic politics have often overshadowed strategic interests. It shows that Pakistan's dangerous civil-military relationship and India's fractious coalition politics have frequently stymied leaders that attempted to build a more durable peace between the South Asian rivals. In so doing, Clary offers a revised understanding of the causes of war and peace that brings difficult and sometimes dangerous domestic politics to the forefront.
Additional text
This is a spectacular book. It is empirically rich and theoretically sophisticated. Clary successfully debunks the age-old typification of the India-Pakistan rivalry as an 'unending' conflict. He clearly shows how and why leaders in both South Asian countries made choices about peace-making efforts, not just as a temporary measure between wars, but those with unique motivational characteristics. This excellent book will appeal to not only those interested in the history and politics of South Asia, but to any reader of war and peace in the modern world.
