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Begin New Search Political Geography India Content Type Working Paper Publishing Institution East-West Center

1. Cooperation Between the United States and Pakistan: What is the Future?

Author:
Riaz A. Khokhar
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
Within the Indo-Pacific region, the United States and Pakistan have sharply divergent strategic objectives. While American objectives have changed over time, focusing in recent years on rivalry with China, Pakistan’s strategic objective has remained constant—to maintain a balance of power with India. Yet Pakistan retains close strategic and economic ties with China, and the United States considers India an important strategic partner. Nevertheless, the two countries have worked together for nearly two decades toward two tactical goals—achieving a political settlement in Afghanistan and eliminating terrorism in South Asia. There is potential for them to cooperate more broadly, for example, increasing direct foreign investment to Pakistan and helping Islamabad balance its relations with the United States and China. Washington’s willingness to expand such cooperation will depend on Pakistan’s cooperation in fighting terrorism in the region.
Topic:
International Cooperation, Terrorism, Power Politics, Foreign Direct Investment, and Geopolitics
Political Geography:
Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, South Asia, India, North America, United States of America, and Indo-Pacific

2. New Zealand Picks up on the Indo-Pacific

Author:
David Scott
Publication Date:
03-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
Traditionally, New Zealand’s strategic focus has been on Australia and the South Pacific. As recently as 18 October, 2018, Ben King, New Zealand’s Deputy Secretary for Americas and Asia said that “the term Indo‑Pacific may not resonate in New Zealand yet.” And this despite a July 2018 Strategic Defence Policy Statement that already pinpointed New Zealand’s “Indo-Pacific partners reinforcing the rules based order” as being Australia, India, Japan and the United States. It is worth noting that the Strategic Defence Policy Statement gave lengthy details on the threat posed by China; in its Maritime Silk Road push into the Indian Ocean, its militarization of the South China Sea, and its push into the Pacific islands. Events from August 2019 to February 2020 reinforce that New Zealand is seeking out “Indo-Pacific” cooperation with these four particular “partners” (Japan, United States, India, Australia) over shared concerns about China.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Regional Cooperation, and Economy
Political Geography:
Japan, India, Australia, New Zealand, United States of America, and Indo-Pacific

3. The Strategic Imperatives of Modi's Indo-Pacific Ocean Initiative

Author:
Jagannath P. Panda
Publication Date:
04-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
The concepts of ‘strategic autonomy’ and ‘inclusiveness’ have been core to India’s Indo-Pacific policies. Without taking a defined position on the contested power politics in the Indo-Pacific, India has largely maintained cordial relations with most countries and stakeholders in the region. As a corollary to this, the rubric of Security and Growth for All in the Region (SAGAR) advances India’s maritime diplomacy in the Indo-Pacific, reflecting India’s desire to manage maritime security and governance in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR). Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s proposition to establish the Indo-Pacific Ocean Initiative (IPOI) at the 14th East Asia Summit (EAS) on November 4, 2019, primarily draws on this assertion.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, Economy, and Narendra Modi
Political Geography:
India and Indo-Pacific

4. Mongolia's Response to Increasing U.S.-China-Russia Rivalry in Asia

Author:
Alicia Campi
Publication Date:
08-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
Dr Alicia Campi, President of the Mongolia Society, explains that “The [“Third Neighbor”] policy was reinterpreted in content and meaning to include cultural and economic partners as diverse as India, Brazil, Kuwait, Turkey, Vietnam, and Iran. With increased superpower rivalry in its region, Mongolia has expanded this basic policy.”
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Partnerships, and Economy
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Turkey, India, Mongolia, Asia, Kuwait, Brazil, North America, and United States of America

5. Domestic Politics Force India's Withdrawal from RCEP and Broader Trade Disengagement

Author:
Amitendu Palit
Publication Date:
11-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) negotiations concluded at the ASEAN Summit in Bangkok on November 4, 2019. Fifteen RCEP members, including the ten-ASEAN countries, and Australia, China, Japan, Korea and New Zealand, agreed to commence preparation of the legal text of the agreement for signing in 2020. India was the only member to opt out, citing significant unresolved outstanding issues. India’s decision was surprising as it actively participated in the negotiations that lasted for 29 rounds and went on for more than six years since beginning in 2013. Domestic pressures forced Prime Minister Modi to withdraw India from RCEP at the last minute. It also points to disengagement becoming the prominent character of India’s trade policy as domestic protectionist interests successfully undermine outward-oriented economic visions.
Topic:
Politics, Treaties and Agreements, Economy, Trade, and ASEAN
Political Geography:
China, India, and Asia

6. The Dalit Movement and Democratization in Andhra Pradesh

Author:
K.Y. Ratnam
Publication Date:
12-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
This study argues that the democratic state in India is an historical product of very specific circumstances; as such the broader idea of democracy is not consistent with the specific Caste system. Therefore, there is serious juxtaposition between the institutional promise of democracy and the real practice of democracy in relation to the victims of the caste system, the Dalits. However, the caste based hierarchical relations of dominance and subordination have provided sufficient conditions for the rise of Dalit consciousness and these objective conditions have transformed into the sites of democratic struggles when the Dalits are affronted with the real operation of liberal democratic principles of, equality, freedom, fraternity, and social justice. Caste conflict, thus, lies at the structural dimensions of Indian society in the form of exclusion, discrimination, and economic inequality. Inequalities based on the caste divisions are intrinsically anti democratic, and the caste system as an oppressive ideological system represents the scheme of power, domination, privilege, and hierarchy. Its very foundation remains acentral obstacle in the path of democratic redistribution of power.
Topic:
Democratization, Development, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

7. State of the States: Mapping India's Northeast

Author:
Bhagat Oinam
Publication Date:
11-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
On June 18, 2001, a huge mass agitation took place in the state of Manipur against the extension of ceasefire between the Government of India and the Isaak Muivah faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland to all the Naga inhabited areas in the region. The agitation was triggered by the subclause in the agreement which read that the ceasefire between the two parties would no longer be confined to the state of Nagaland but would be extended "without territorial limits."
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Political Violence, Peace Studies, and Treaties and Agreements
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

8. Insurgencies in India's Northeast: Conflict, Co-option Change

Author:
Subir Bhaumik
Publication Date:
07-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
Ever since the British withdrawal from South Asia in 1947, India's Northeast has been scarred by sustained separatist insurgencies, mass agitations, ethnic riots and heavy-handed state response resulting in continuous bloodletting. The land-locked region, which is linked to the India mainland by the 22 km wide Siliguri corridor in northern Bengal, borders on Bhutan, Bangladesh Myanmar and China's Tibet Autonomous Region and Nepal is not too far away.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Political Violence, and Ethnic Conflict
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

9. Origins of the United States-India Nuclear Agreement

Author:
Itty Abraham
Publication Date:
05-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
Relations between the world's largest democracy, India, and the oldest, the United States, have never been better. The preeminent sign of this improved state of relations is, of course, the recent concord between the governments of both countries that proposes bilateral cooperation on a variety of fronts, from space to agriculture, but especially in relation to civilian nuclear cooperation. Bilateral agreements signed in July 2005 in Washington, D.C., and following President Bush's visit to India in March 2006,1 were hailed as historic, seemingly marking the end of “estrangement,” to borrow Ambassador Dennis Kux's characterization of relations between the two countries. But for all its claims to be “historic,” the agreements were not greeted equally, or with equal acclaim, in both capitals.
Topic:
Nuclear Weapons, Treaties and Agreements, and Weapons of Mass Destruction
Political Geography:
United States, South Asia, and India

10. Internal Displacement, Migration, and Policy in Northeastern India

Author:
Uddipana Goswami
Publication Date:
04-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
The paper is divided into four sections: Migration; Illegal Migration and Policy Lacunae; Ethnic Politics and Internal Displacement; and State Responses to Internal Displacement. In the first section I discuss the colonial policy environment, altered administrative boundaries and concepts and how all this aided/abetted large-scale migrations into the Northeast. Demographic patterns were fast changing under the colonial administration's policy of importing more migrants to people a frontier region, and this approach did not lapse when a post-colonial government was ushered in.
Topic:
Ethnic Conflict and Migration
Political Geography:
South Asia, India, and Asia