Quote of the week: “Escalation is inherent in war both because the desire to win and the need not to lose.” – V.R. Raghavan, “Limited War and Escalation Control,” Nonproliferation Review, 2001. One common thread among the comings and goings…
Quotes of the week: “The ability to win a local war cannot be translated into the ability to fight it safely and therefore cannot provide a firm foundation for either deterrence or coercion.” — Robert Jervis, The Meaning of the…
George Perkovich and Toby Dalton have assessed the possibilities of conflict between India and Pakistan in a timely book, Not War, Not Peace? Motivating Pakistan to Prevent Cross-Border Terrorism (Oxford, 2016). Their bottom line is reflected in the title: India’s…
Note to readers: An earlier version of this essay was published at ForeignAffairs.com on January 16th. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump will inherit rising nuclear dangers in five regions of the globe. Every one of them could get worse under his watch. Even before…
Note to readers: My recent essay, “Pakistan’s Choice,” met with mixed reviews, at best, from colleagues in Pakistan. I wrote about the growing distance between Pakistani security narratives and narratives that outsiders hold about Pakistan. Patching up relations won’t happen…
Since testing nuclear weapons in 1998, Pakistan has lost while India has gained regional and international standing. Pakistan has also become less confident of its national security as the United States has gravitated toward India and as Pakistan’s own ties with…
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, like his two predecessors, has opted for restraint in the face of provocations by violent extremist groups that have found safe havens within Pakistan. Modi publicly announced – at a political conclave, no less — that…
The attack on an Indian military encampment at Uri, most probably from well-armed, well-trained cadres of a “proscribed” group based on the Pakistan side of the Kashmir divide, is the costliest since the 2008 Mumbai attacks. This attack was preceded…
Kashmir is on the boil again. Unrest has been on the rise for months now. The involvement of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence can be safely assumed, but less than in previous flare-ups, if clashes along the Line of Control dividing Kashmir…
After Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s whirlwind surprise visit to Lahore on Christmas Day, there was little doubt that spoilers in Pakistan would try to derail improved relations. The operative questions were where, when, and whether the attackers would succeed in shutting down…
