Pakistani-American Scholar on US Role as Peace Broker in South Asia

Pakistani-American scholar Dr. Moeed Yusuf has examined the role of the United States in defusing South Asian crises since the nuclear tests conducted by India and Pakistan in 1998.

In "Brokering Peace in Nuclear Environments U.S. Crisis Management in South Asia" by Dr. Moeed Yusuf published by Stanford University Press, the author analyzes American diplomacy in three critical periods: Kargil conflict in 1999; the stand-off after the Indian Parliament attack in 2001 and the terrorist attack in Mumbai in 2008.

Yusuf argues that the US-Soviet Cold War deterrence model does not apply to the India-Pakistan conflict and offers his theory of "brokered bargaining". In chapters that detail the US role during three India-Pakistan crises, it is clear that the US rejected India's insistence on bilateralism in resolving India-Pakistan disputes.  The author says that "in each episode, the concern about the escalation forced the United States to engage, largely unsolicited, and use a mix of rewards (or promises of) and punishments (or threats of) with the regional rivals to achieve de-escalation--ahead of its broader regional or policy interests."

It seems that Yusuf accepts the widely-held assumption that India enjoys insurmountable conventional military superiority over Pakistan. Many speculate that the difference between the conventional military strengths of the two South Asian rivals is so great that Pakistan would be forced to quickly resort to the use of nuclear weapons in the event of an Indian attack. Such assumptions and speculations are challenged by Professor Walter Ladwig of the War Studies Department at London's Kings College, Meenakshi Sood of Delhi-based Indian Army think tank called The Center for Land Warfare Studies, and other scholars.

Professor Walter Ladwig believes that Pakistan’s conventional deterrence against India in the near to medium term is "much better than the pessimists allege".  Pakistan's  NCWF (New Concept of War Fighting) developed in response to India's CSD (Cold Start Doctrine) is designed to "mount a counter-offensive even before India fires the first shot", according to Indian analyst Meenakshi Sood. Ladwig sums it up well: "Despite a growing technological edge (over Pakistan) 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".

One could argue that Yusuf gives too much credit to the US efforts in de-escalating India-Pakistan crises. It creates the impression that brown leaders are less rational than their white counterparts in dealing with existential crises. It perpetuates the stereotype that only a select few nations in the West can be trusted with weapons of mass destruction.  It justifies the nuclear Apartheid being pursued by the United States in the form of nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT).  Could it be that the author's research is heavily influenced by the fact that he works for the United States Institute of Peace which is a US government-funded Washington think tank?

Overall, Dr. Moeed Yusuf's "Brokering Peace in Nuclear Environments U.S. Crisis Management in South Asia" is a thought provoking book. It should stimulate serious discussion of how regional nuclear powers like India and Pakistan can engage with each other more deeply to maintain peace and stability in their neighborhood. This will require both parties, India and Pakistan, to have sustained dialog to resolve core issues like Kashmir that underly recurring crises.

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Comments

Riaz Haq said…
US and China are playing geopolitical game in Pakistan over CPEC that could determine which country becomes the next superpower


http://www.riazhaq.com/2018/09/us-china-competition-in-pakistan-cpecs.html
Riaz Haq said…
USIP's Moeed Yusuf: "#India-#Pakistan Conflict Leaves Great Powers Powerless #US helped prevent war in 2008 after #Mumbai. Those days are gone. #Terrorism isn’t the only worry. The “Line of Control” in #Kashmir is also a likely flashpoint". @USIP https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/10/954587-india-pakistan-mumbai-terror/

decade ago, the world watched in disbelief as terrorists from the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba group ripped through the Indian financial capital of Mumbai. By the time the 10 attackers were stopped four days after the assault began, they had killed 164 people—Americans and other foreign nationals among them—and left over 300 injured. India’s 9/11, as the Indian media dubbed it, had unfolded. India, having long seen the Lashkar-e-Taiba as a direct proxy of the Pakistani intelligence outfit, the Inter-Services Intelligence, blamed the Pakistani state for having directed the attack. A near-war crisis between the two nuclear neighbors ensued in its wake, offering a stark reminder why U.S. President Bill Clinton termed this part of the world “the most dangerous place” on Earth at the turn of the century.

Ten years after the Mumbai attacks on November 26, 2008, the Indian-Pakistani rivalry remains as entrenched as ever. While the two countries have avoided major wars, they continue to flirt with crises and have been engaged in low-intensity conflict in the disputed territory of Kashmir. This has unfolded in an environment devoid of any robust crisis management mechanisms aimed at reducing the risk of inadvertent escalation and providing dependable ways of directly negotiating a way out of a crisis. With nuclear weapons in the mix, the consequences of escalation could be catastrophic—and the possibility of such an outcome is greater today than it was on the eve of the Mumbai attacks.

India and Pakistan came “fleetingly close” to war during the Mumbai crisis, but fortunate circumstances prevented a military clash. The attacks came on the back of the single most promising peace process the two have ever had. The overall aura of positivity and the trusted channels of communication created through their five-year peace bid helped relieve tensions. A dovish Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh—who was genuinely interested in peace with Pakistan and hesitant to use military force to settle disputes, especially in South Asia’s nuclearized environment—also led India to forego the military option, even as the Indian public and media were calling for blood. Most importantly, third-party states, led by the United States, played crucial mediatory roles and were instrumental in nudging India and Pakistan to end the crisis.

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Pakistan has been increasingly vocal and aggressive in alleging Indian support of terrorist incidents in Pakistan.

Terrorism isn’t the only worry. The “Line of Control” that divides Indian and Pakistani control of Kashmir is also a likely flashpoint. Violence levels along the Line of Control were the highest in 15 years in 2017, with violations of a cease-fire agreed to in 2003 consisting of prolonged and often significant military hostilities.
Riaz Haq said…
Bharat Karnad: #Modi "incessantly squawking to #Washington about #Pakistan’s nefarious hand in #Kashmir affairs...#Indian PM brought up Kashmir in their talk by way of...complaint and may have added for good measure that were Pakistan to butt out" #Trump https://bharatkarnad.com/2019/07/23/trump-lied-but-whats-the-truth/

I have for a long time now maintained that Modi is doing just about every thing wrong with his policy of unilateral friendship and strategic concessions vis a vis the United States. Much of this is due to his unrequited enthusiasm, even love, for America and things American that blinds him to the serious cost of his approach — a steady erosion of the national interest. But Trump extemporaneously also made clear his dichotomous view of the world when, in referring to Afghanistan, he said that the US would not any more play “the policeman” of the world — meaning that he was “extricating” US forces from that country, but added that if he wanted to he could end the Afghanistan war in no time at all by killing “10 million” people, by using weapons of mass destruction, such as thermobaric bombs (fuel air explosives). In other words, he set up the US as either playing the global policeman or US using WMD! And this is the US President, also with his curious views on Kashmir, that Modi is banking on to assist him in furthering India’s interests?

There’s lots Modi can do to right his policy of tilt. He can begin by resisting the temptation to show of his English language skills and speak to world leaders, and particularly Trump, only in Hindi (even better, in Gujarati) in which he’s more fluent. It will also put the foreign leaders off their game — a strategy routinely used by the Chinese nomenklatura and perfected by Maozedong’s premier, Zhouenlai. It is a diplomatic method studiously followed by North Korea and other countries that have successfully dealt with the US and the West generally.

Native languages as diplomatic tool is something MEA has never used, leave alone exploited, to the country’s advantage. Because in head-to-head exchanges between leaders, the one using other than English is always at an advantage. For instance, were Modi to carry on diplomatic business only in Hindi or Gujarati — albeit inconveniencing foreign minister K. Jaishankar with only street-level acquaintance with Hindi and none at all of Gujarati — foreign interpreters/note-takers helping out their leaders will be hard put to get it right. So when aide memoirs/diplomatic notes are shared the Indian note will naturally have precedence. This is precisely the tactic Chinese interlocuters have traditionally used to baffle foreigners, and to obtain the diplomatic edge. President Vladimir Putin too speaks only in Russian in his formal exchanges even though he has as good a handle on the English language as does Modi.
Riaz Haq said…
So what's #Modi going to do? #India’s 3rd party mediation policy on #Kashmir is very confused and hypocritical. It seeks 3rd countries’ support to isolate and coerce #Pakistan but it refuses to accept their mediation to resolve the issues in #SouthAsia

http://www.riazhaq.com/2016/10/is-indias-modi-succeeding-in-isolating.html
Riaz Haq said…
Time for #India and #Pakistan to walk the talk. Was what President Clinton did #mediation? Or was it intervention? #Trump gave India a preview on February 28, before Abhinandan was freed by Pakistan, of what was coming. Was it mediation? #Kashmir #Balakot https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/its-time-for-india-and-pakistan-to-walk-the-talk/article28739436.ece

It took more than 10 years after Simla to group the subjects that India and Pakistan would sporadically talk about, and even then the two countries have been going around in circles. It is reasonable to assume that nowadays Pakistan talks more about India and Kashmir to the U.S. than to India. Terrorism was one of the subjects that the two nations emphasised they would bilaterally discuss, but the 2011 Mumbai blasts shattered that premise. Since then India has been talking about Pakistani terrorism not so much with Pakistan as with any country willing to listen. This is probably why U.S President Donald Trump revealed at the Oval Office on July 22 that he and Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan would be “talking about India”. “I think maybe if we can help intercede and do whatever we have to do,” he said. “But I think it’s something that can be brought back together.”

Clinton’s role during Kargil
President Trump may have been overstating it, but when the Simla Agreement was violated in Kargil, it was an American President who helped push the Pakistani troops back into Pakistan. As the Kargil War began to get bigger, a worried President Bill Clinton, who called the region “the most dangerous place in the world”, reached out to both Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, urging Mr. Sharif to pull back from the Line of Control (LoC) and Vajpayee not to widen the war front.

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Was what President Clinton did mediation? Or was it intervention? Or meddling? Or was this all a shining example of bilateralism envisaged in the Simla Agreement? President Trump gave India a preview on February 28, before Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman was freed by Pakistan, of what was coming when he said: “We have some reasonably decent news. I think hopefully that’s going to be coming to an end. It’s been going on for a long time, decades and decades. There’s a lot of dislike, unfortunately. So we’ve been in the middle trying to help them both out, see if we can get some organization and some peace, and I think probably that’s going to be happening.” Was that mediation or the Simla Agreement at work? Nobody pointed out to President Trump that only the Ministry of External Affairs or the Pakistani Foreign Office or the Director General of the Inter-Services Public Relations were allowed to make such announcements.

We have to recognise that the world has changed since the Simla Agreement was signed. After the 1971 war, India returned land taken in battle on the western border, to create lasting peace. The LoC is now more firmly established than ever before. There is no talk any more of United Nations resolutions. Most of the subjects in the ‘composite dialogue format’ like Siachen, Sir Creek and Wullar Barrage have been discussed threadbare. Some of them have been ready for political signatures for years. If the way forward is bilateral, then surely it is time to prove it?
Riaz Haq said…
Christine Fair attacks Moeed Yusuf and Brig Feroz Khan as "Pakistan assets" in US

https://theprint.in/opinion/was-us-institute-of-peace-harbouring-a-pakistani-asset-the-case-of-moeed-yusuf/300386/


For several years, under the ostensible leadership of Moeed Yusuf, the Washington DC-based United States Institute of Peace –working on global conflict reduction – has furthered a relentless pro-Pakistan policy. He has been promoting Pakistan’s interests at US taxpayers’ expense.

I have complained about it many times, and have also reported him to the FBI and to every serving member of the US House Oversight Committee. The institute was founded by the US Congress, which continues to pay its bills.

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The United States Institute of Peace (USIP)’s pro-Pakistan stance is evidenced in the editorials and programme documents written by Moeed Yusuf and his colleagues, including Steve Hadley, another well-known pro-Pakistan former official in the George W. Bush administration, as well as in media interviews and congressional testimonies. Persons familiar with USIP employees have told me that they note that “we [USIP] are pro-Pakistan.”

The USIP has been the premier venue for hosting a variety of Pakistani officials. The events are by invitation-only and not open to a general audience. This policy is odd given that the USIP is funded exclusively by the US government. They also explicitly preclude critics of Pakistan or of the USIP’s position such as myself.

During the last event that I was permitted to attend at USIP in 2014, the USIP hosted a Pakistan Defense delegation after which I posted a searing recount of the event. The man behind the event was an oddly well-heeled Pakistani-American Dentist named Nisar Chaudhury who latter confessed to illegally lobbying on behalf of Pakistan. (Pakistan had long ousted me from such events but Chaudhury was keen to broker some kind of a rapprochement with me and the deep state and invited me. That rapprochement did not happen, obviously.)


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The South Asia policy community first heard of Moeed Yusuf around 2008 when he was a doctoral student in Boston. Leading male South Asia scholars nurtured him. In 2010, Ambassador William B. Taylor hired Moeed Yusuf as a “South Asia Adviser”. At the time of hire, he was not an American citizen, and as per my conversations with USIP staff, he was hired as a consultant initially. Early in his tenure, I raised issues with Taylor as well as Andrew Wilder.

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My concerns about Yusuf intensified when a foreign agent informed me that they believed Yusuf and/or Hadley, most likely via Hadley’s private firm, had taken funds from the Midwest Fertilizer Co. LLC in Indiana. The operations of this firm were not without controversy because its lead investor was Fatima Fertilizer Group, a Pakistan-based firm that was supplying some 80 per cent of the fertilizer that the Taliban used in its improvised explosive devices (IEDs, or bombs), which were responsible for most of the deaths of Americans soldiers and their Afghan and NATO allies. A British military officer argued that the firm should change its production method because the Fatima Group is the “lone source of the problem in Afghanistan”. The firm refused to be a part of a solution. For this reason, then-governor of Indiana, Mike Pence, suspended state support for the project.

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Brigadier Gen. (Retired) Feroz Khan might be the most audacious placement. For more than a decade, he has been a faculty member at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in California. Khan, who was promoted to brigadier without ever commanding a brigade, was related to Pervez Musharraf through marriage. (Khan’s daughter was married to Musharraf’s son. They have since been divorced.) What makes Khan so controversial is that prior to joining the NPS, he worked for General Khalid Kidwai in Pakistan’s Strategic Plans Division (SPD), which is the premier organisation responsible for Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme.
Riaz Haq said…
Here's what I think of Christine Fair: She's both unfair and unhinged.


C. Christine Fair's anti-Pakistan rants show that she is a warmonger masquerading as a serious scholar. She calls herself a "Rambo B**ch". She wants both US and India to invade Pakistan knowing that all three countries have nuclear weapons. She strongly supports US drone killings which, in the words of General Michael Flynn, "fuel the conflict".


https://www.riazhaq.com/2016/12/christine-fairs-anti-pakistan-rants.html
Riaz Haq said…
https://blackbox.nervecenter.live/christine-fair-a-scholar-unbecoming/

Christine Fair, a prominent academic at Georgetown University is in the news again. This time for accusing Moeed Yusuf who is a respected scholar at USIP for being an asset of the Pakistani Government.

This is not the first time she has accused Yusuf or other respected scholars without evidence for espionage. This is also not the first time that her extremist views have landed her in trouble. She got into a confrontation with the German government for calling the German airport officials ‘Nazi Police’ – a deeply insensitive remark to be made in Germany given the history of the country.

When it comes to her attacks on academics and scholars, many within the scholarly community view it as an attempt to silence any opposing view to ensure her monopoly in Washington D.C. on the narrative on Pakistan.

However, Fair’s persistent attacks on Mooed are a reflection of a larger problem of racism within the scholarly community in the West. The academic and policy think tanks, especially in the International Relations discipline, have long been accused of racism due to deep Western centrism and neo-imperial tendencies.

Western centrism essentially means that the field of IR is driven primarily by the Western conception of what constitutes ‘knowledge’ and ‘truth’. It is basically looking at the world through the eyes and prejudices of the Western scholars that hijack the global discourse and exclude non-Western voices as either ‘irrelevant’ or ‘compromised’. This is what Meera Sabaratnam calls the ‘West knows best’ ideology that puts the non-Western scholars as inferior and unscientific.

A journal article published by Arlene Tickner titled ‘Core, Periphery and (Neo)Imperialist International Relations’ using the Trip Survey (2011) provides extensive details on this Western centrism that exists in the academic and scholarly world.

In an already rigged scholarly world, non-Western scholars like Moeed are soft and vulnerable targets because of their background. In her tweets, Christine Fair claimed to have lodged an official complaint against Moeed to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and members of Congress to not only revoke his U.S. citizenship but also the right to work in the country.

The purpose is to exclude and silence the diversity of opinion not through academic dialogue but through vicious attacks on the credibility of non-Western scholars like Moeed Yusuf. Christine Fair, unfortunately, exhibits and reinforces the very orientalist, and extremist tendencies that she claims to fight against in Trump’s America.
Riaz Haq said…
Pakistan’s Policy of Credible Minimum Deterrence
July 12, 2022 Telegraph Nepal


-Zafar Khan and Rizwana Abbasi, Pakistan

http://www.telegraphnepal.com/pakistans-policy-of-credible-minimum-deterrence/


Empirical evidence suggests that Pakistan has successfully deterred India with its minimum deterrence capability. The policy statements of Pakistani leaders, however, indicate that minimum is not a static capability; it is flexible; and it would evolve in accordance with the changing strategic environment.
For example, Sattar et al stated: ―Minimum is open for debate. It has got an open interpretation. It remains flexible. There is no number game. It, thus, remains a non-fixed entity.‖14They added:
―Minimum nuclear deterrence will remain the guiding principle of our nuclear strategy. The minimum cannot be quantified in
Static numbers.

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It would be extremely pessimistic, as the Carnegie-Stimson report suggests, that Pakistan would need to find an alternative nuclear future to become a ―normal nuclear weapons state, keep ―strategic deterrence based upon the principles of ―assured destruction and stop developing short range delivery vehicles in response to a limited war that could be imposed on Pakistan by India‘s proactive military doctrine. In other words, Pakistan would need to keep strategic weapons for the worst-case scenario and cap the short and longer-range deterrence capabilities against the adversary. This proposed alternative nuclear future does not fully serve Pakistan‘s security and national interests. Some reasons are highlighted below.

First, such a policy would undercut the credibility of its minimum deterrence if Pakistan did not develop a short-range deterrence capability to counter the CSD that aims at waging a limited war against Pakistan from eight integrated points31 under the nuclear overhang.

Second, plugging no gaps against the possibility of CSD operations for a ―limited conventional war, as the report suggests, would allow India to exploit Pakistan‘s vulnerabilities and deterrence weaknesses. This is not merely theoretical because India in pursuance of the CSD did contemplate a surgical strike against Pakistan in the aftermath of the Mumbai terrorist attacks in 2008. Conceptually, the development of Nasr as a low-yield battlefield weapon demonstrates what Lawrence Freedman once stated ―I exist; therefore, I deter. Nasr can, therefore, be seen as an instrument for nuclear peace in South Asian deterrence stability disrupted by India‘s Pragati/Prahaar short range nuclear capability. Therefore, the development of Nasr, specific to India‘s development of battlefield nuclear weapons and CSD, becomes part of Pakistan‘s deterrence capability without which its deterrence credibility could be extremely weakened.

Third, strategic deterrence, as defined by the Carnegie Stimson report in the worst-case scenario resulting in nuclear exchanges and major conventional warfare, cannot be a rational response to deter a limited war emanating from the CSD. If this was the case, both the Soviet Union and the US would not have crafted a strategy for building and deploying the TNWs to deter a limited war. Although neither the US nor the Soviet Union had used the TNWs, they still exist both in Europe and Russia, successor to the Soviet Union, for deterrence purposes. In fact, despite the end of the Cold War, TNWs still play a role in the United States‘extended deterrence in Europe.

Finally, Nasr’s development falls within the broader contours of Pakistan‘s declarations on credible minimum deterrence and full spectrum deterrence. It does not imply numerical expansion in deterrence forces. The increase within Pakistan‘s deterrence capability would be in proportion to India‘s planned expansion. This may, however, not exactly be within the parameters of weapon-to-weapon competitive strategy practiced during the Cold War. Whether Pakistan would practice recessed deterrence or follow the ready-arsenal strategy for some of its deterrence forces would depend on the prevailing strategic environment.
Riaz Haq said…
#India, #Pakistan came close to a #nuclear war, claims ex US Sec of State Mike Pompeo. His Indian counterpart Sushma Swaraj called, told him that Pakistan was preparing for a nuclear attack after #Balakot strike in February 2019 & India ready to retaliate

https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/india-pakistan-came-close-to-a-nuclear-war-claims-former-us-secretary-of-state-in-new-book/article66429650.ece


Former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has claimed that he was “awakened” to speak to his then Indian counterpart Sushma Swaraj who told him that Pakistan was preparing for a nuclear attack after the Balakot surgical strike in February 2019 and India is preparing its own escalatory response.

In his latest book Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love that hit the stores on Tuesday, Mr. Pompeo says the incident took place when he was in Hanoi for the U.S.-North Korea Summit on February 27-28 and his team worked overnight with both New Delhi and Islamabad to avert this crisis.

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