This is a great researched book by expert Stephen Cohen
War with India could change Pak
http://www.brook.edu/findresults.htm?Submit=&matches=all&query-type=advanced&fields=any&filter-connector=&filter-type=&filter-text=&simple-date-range=anytime§ions=All&document-types=all&sort-by=date&display-mode=abstract&terms=Stephen+Cohen
WASHINGTON: The present system in Pakistan is likely to continue but certain “events, trends and policies”, including a war with India and the growth of radical Islamic groups might yet transform the country, says a new book.
It also lists the possibilities of Pakistan forfeiting American and even Chinese support, a series of assassinations of senior Pakistani officials or revival of ethnic and regional separatism.
The book, “The Idea of Pakistan”, by South Asia expert Stephen P Cohen, currently a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution, a Washington DC-based think tank, discusses, among other things, the stability and durability of Pakistan’s present oligarchic-like order in the next five to 10 years.
“Conversely,” it says, “one can hypothesise the normalisation of relations with India, the emergence of a benign and progressive leadership, continuing American and international support, perhaps the success of President (Pervez) Musharraf’s version of ‘guided democracy’ and the emergence of Pakistani identity that did not rub up against India, or other important states.”
The book notes that Pakistan’s future will depend in large part on its relations with its neighbours, especially India and Afghanistan.
The conflict with India places the Pakistan army front and centre domestically and allows national security issues to cast a disproportionately large shadow over Pakistan’s economy, politics and society, it says.
“Nevertheless, despite high defence spending for years and two major wars, Pakistan is less secure today than it was 55 years ago - and the same can be said of India,” it says.
It says “Pakistanis came to view Indian society as the cause of their insecurity, thereby implying war would be permanent and Indians always impossible to trust”.
“What both states have in common is their ability to destroy each other, and neither has yet begun to absorb the implications of how their new strategic relationship matches up with their identity wars,” it says.
The book refers to “perceptive” British Pakistan-watcher Ian Talbot who suggested that the analysis of Pakistan goes beyond the cliché of three A’s: Allah, Army, and America.
Cohen argues that it is hard to escape from the three A’s with the army again in charge, America once against Pakistan’s chief patron, and the Islamists governing in two provinces.
He, however, says Talbot is right in his warning against predictions of the destruction or total failure of Pakistan. This is a state that is not likely to disappear soon.
Analysing the present army leadership, notably Musharraf, the book says it will resist radical change in either foreign or domestic policy.
“Musharraf is himself replaceable; he has little standing beyond his official position as army chief and, were he to step down or be assassinated, his army replacement would be an officer who represents the army’s wing of the establishment consensus, perhaps with modest movement in one direction or another, and his civilian replacement as president would likely to be the phlegmatic chairman of the Senate, Mohammed Somroo,” it says.
It contends Pakistan’s army is strong enough to prevent state failure, but not imaginative enough to impose the changes that might transform the state.
The book concludes that before writing Pakistan off as the hopelessly failed state that its enemies believe it to be, Washington may have one last opportunity to ensure that this troubled state will not become America’s biggest foreign policy problem in the last half of this decade.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-813162,curpg-2.cms