CIAO DATE: 03/2010
Volume: 3, Issue: 34
Winter 2009/10
Same As It Ever Was: Nuclear Alarmism, Proliferation, and the Cold War (PDF)
Francis Gavin
Nuclear alarmists argue that proliferation is the most dangerous threat facing the United States, but they largely ignore such past threats and overstate their claims. A better understanding of the history of nuclear proliferation and of how the international community escaped calamity during a far more dangerous time-the Cold War-would lead to more effective U.S. nuclear nonproliferation policies than those currently proposed by the alarmists.
Posturing for Peace? Pakistan's Nuclear Postures and South Asian Stability (PDF)
Vipin Narang
India and Pakistan are both nuclear-armed states, but their divergent nuclear postures have led to a stark difference in their deterrence capabilities. India has maintained an assured retaliation posture, but Pakistan has shifted from a catalytic to an asymmetric escalation posture, allowing it to pursue aggressive policies without significant fear of retaliation. Furthermore, to make its posture credible, Pakistan has had to relinquish some central control over the security of its nuclear arsenal. The implications for South Asian and international stability, therefore, are grim unless India and Pakistan can minimize the dangers of their current postures, and the United States can help Pakistan to better secure its nuclear arsenal.
Understanding Support for Islamist Militancy in Pakistan
C. Christine Fair, Jacob N. Shapiro
Islamist militancy in Pakistan has long stood atop the international security agenda, yet there is almost no systematic evidence about why individual Pakistanis support Islamist militant organizations. An analysis of data from a nationally representative survey of urban Pakistanis refutes four influential conventional wisdoms about why Pakistanis support Islamic militancy. First, there is no clear relationship between poverty and support for militancy. If anything, support for militant organizations is increasing in terms of both subjective economic well-being and community economic performance. Second, personal religiosity and support for sharia law are poor predictors of support for Islamist militant organizations. Third, support for political goals espoused by legal Islamist parties is a weak indicator of support for militant organizations. Fourth, those who support core democratic principles or have faith in Pakistan's democratic process are not less supportive of militancy. Taken together, these results suggest that commonly prescribed solutions to Islamist militancy-economic development, democratization, and the like-may be irrelevant at best and might even be counterproductive.
For more information about this publication please contact the IS Editorial Assistant at 617-495-1914.
For Academic Citation:
Jacob N. Shapiro and C. Christine Fair. "Understanding Support for Islamist Militancy in Pakistan." International Security 34, no. 3 (Winter 2009/10): 79-118.
The Myth of Military Myopia: Democracy, Small Wars, and Vietnam
Jonathan D. Caverley
A capital- and firepower-intensive military doctrine is, in general, poorly suited for combating an insurgency. It is therefore puzzling that democracies, particularly the United States, tenaciously pursue such a suboptimal strategy over long periods of time and in successive conflicts. This tendency poses an empirical challenge to the argument that democracies tend to win the conflicts they enter. This apparently nonstrategic behavior results from a condition of moral hazard owing to the shifting of costs away from the average voter. The voter supports the use of a capital-intensive doctrine in conflicts where its effectiveness is low because the decreased likelihood of winning is outweighed by the lower costs of fighting. This theory better explains the development of the United States' counterinsurgency strategy in Vietnam during Lyndon Johnson's administration compared to the dominant interpretation, which blames the U.S. military's myopic bureaucracy and culture for its counterproductive focus on firepower and conventional warfare.
For more information about this publication please contact the IS Editorial Assistant at 617-495-1914.
For Academic Citation:
Jonathan D. Caverley. "The Myth of Military Myopia: Democracy, Small Wars, and Vietnam." International Security 34, no. 3 (Winter 2009/10): 119-157.
Powerplay: Origins of the U.S. Alliance System in Asia
Victor Cha
In East Asia the United States cultivated a "hub and spokes" system of discrete, exclusive alliances with the Republic of Korea, the Republic of China, and Japan, a system that was distinct from the multilateral security alliances it preferred in Europe. Bilateralism emerged in East Asia as the dominant security structure because of the "powerplay" rationale behind U.S. postwar planning in the region. "Powerplay" refers to the construction of an asymmetric alliance designed to exert maximum control over the smaller ally's actions. The United States created a series of bilateral alliances in East Asia to contain the Soviet threat, but a congruent rationale was to constrain "rogue allies"- that is, rabidly anticommunist dictators who might start wars for reasons of domestic legitimacy and entrap the United States in an unwanted larger war. Underscoring the U.S. desire to avoid such an outcome was a belief in the domino theory, which held that the fall of one small country in Asia could trigger a chain of countries falling to communism. The administrations of Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower calculated that they could best restrain East Asia's pro-West dictators through tight bilateral alliances rather than through a regionwide multilateral mechanism. East Asia's security bilateralism today is therefore a historical artifact of this choice.
For more information about this publication please contact the IS Editorial Assistant at 617-495-1914.
For Academic Citation:
Victor D. Cha. "Powerplay: Origins of the U.S. Alliance System in Asia." International Security 34, no. 3 (Winter 2009/10): 158-196.