South Asia

It’s Time for a New Smart Power Approach To chart the deterioration of ties between Washington and Islamabad over the last two years, as well as the conundrums gnawing at Obama administration officials, consider the following: Despite Pakistan’s official designation as a “major non-NATO ally,” its egregious double game in Afghanistan is increasingly fueling talk […]

What would Jinnah think about what the country has become? South Asia last week harkened back to the events of August 1947.  The 65th anniversary of Indian and Pakistani independence brought forth the expected homage to the ideals that accompanied the dissolution of the British Raj.  Yet even amid the high-minded rhetoric, unanticipated developments in […]

Fresh tests await the epically dysfunctional partnership Last month’s agreement on NATO supply routes provided some hope that the two-year long free fall in U.S.-Pakistani relations was at an end.  But new serious tests await the epically dysfunctional partnership. One sign of the tensions that remain is Islamabad’s mounting accusations that the U.S.-led NATO coalition […]

Last week’s blackouts illuminate three fiascoes holding India back The massive, cascading power outages that left the northern half of India in the dark for two days last week bring to mind a telling juxtaposition of events in mid-1998.  India had just concluded a momentous series of nuclear weapon tests, code-named “Operation Shakti” in reference […]

Whatever Singh’s own faults as a government leader, India’s economic malaise is due to more basic problems. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is on the receiving end of a barrage of slings and arrows these days.  The most recent salvo comes from Time magazine, whose Asian edition this week has a cover story labeling him “The […]

The agreement reopening NATO supply routes lays bare Pakistan’s strategic isolation.  But is anyone in Islamabad paying attention? Some are spinning last week’s deal ending Pakistan’s seven-month closure of key NATO supply routes into Afghanistan as a triumph of Islamabad’s resolve.  The reverse is much closer to the mark, however.  Pakistan overplayed its hand in […]

We’ll soon find out whether Prime Minister Singh can salvage something positive from his final two years in office A previous post focused on the recent political crisis in Pakistan that resulted in Prime Minister Gilani’s removal and in the process further destabilizing the civilian government as well as complicating efforts to repair spiraling U.S.-Pakistan relations. […]

Winning over Pakistani hearts and minds is proving difficult Two new reports provide further insight into the breakdown of U.S.-Pakistan relations. The first, put out by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, charts the growing hostility of Pakistani public opinion toward the United States. The second, issued by the International Crisis Group (ICG), a respected non-governmental […]

A long summer of political turmoil has begun that makes harder the search for a new equilibrium with Washington A tale of two capital cities in the grip of political uncertainty unfolded in South Asia last week.   Islamabad was the scene of a fast-paced soap opera that throws into further doubt the future of the […]

Even though the big news in Pakistan right now is about the newly elected Prime Minster, deteriorating diplomatic relations with the United States, and match fixing charges on star cricketers, there is a less publicized–but important story–that CNN published last week, “Family’s 20 Kids Highlight Pakistan’s Population Explosion.” The article warns that Pakistan is currently among the […]

However justified, the public berating of Islamabad has become counterproductive. The comments made by Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta during his swing through South Asia last week once again raise the question of how coordinated the Obama administration’s regional policy is.  An earlier post flagged this issue two months ago by noting the curious timing […]

Events lay bare just how strategically isolated Islamabad has become. As my last post noted, the events of the past week show that New Delhi is sitting pretty diplomatically, being courted ardently by both Washington and Beijing.  Conversely, they also laid bare just how strategically isolated Islamabad has become. Pakistan’s most recent troubles began with […]