Fighting to the End
The Pakistan Army's Way of War
Published on 19. June 2014
Book
Hardback
364 pages
978-0-19-989270-9 (ISBN)
Description
Pakistan's army has dominated the state for most of its 66 years. It has locked the country in an enduring rivalry with India to revise the maps in Kashmir and to resist India's slow but inevitable rise. To prosecute these dangerous policies, the army employs non-state actors under the security of its ever-expanding nuclear umbrella. The Pakistan army started three wars with India over Kashmir in 1947, 1965, and 1999 and failed to win any of them. It has sustained a proxy war in Kashmir since 1989 using Islamist militants, some of whom have now turned their guns against the Pakistani state. The Pakistan army has supported non-Islamist insurgencies throughout India as well as a country-wide Islamist terror campaign that have brought the two countries to the brink of war on several occasions. Despite Pakistan's efforts to coerce India, it has only achieved modest successes. Even though India vivisected Pakistan in 1971, Pakistan continues to see itself as India's equal and demands the world do the same. The tools that the army prefers to use, non-state actors under a nuclear umbrella, has brought international opprobrium upon the country and the army. In recent years, erstwhile proxies have turned their gun on the Pakistani state itself and its peoples. Why does the army persist in pursuing these revisionist policies that have come to imperil the very viability of the state itself, from which the army feeds? This volume argues that the answer lies, at least partially, in the strategic culture of the army. From the army's distorted view of history, the army is victorious as long as can resist India's purported hegemony and the territorial status quo. To acquiesce is defeat. Because the army is unlikely to abandon these preferences, the world must prepare for an ever more dangerous future Pakistan.
Reviews / Votes
she concentrates on the international dimensions of the policies pursued by the Pakistani army and the implications that this has forregional and international security. * Katharine Adeney, Political Studies Review * A provocative but historically justified look at the security narrative scribed and fiercely protected by the Pakistan military since its 1947 inception. * Thomas F. Lynch III, Book of the year 2014, The War on the Rocks * Fairs book, based on a meticulous analysis of literature published by Pakistans military, persuasively demonstrates that the delusions of grandeur which drive the countrys security establishment are rooted in fatal distortions of history. * Kapil Komireddi, Book of the year 2014, New Republic * the book represents a valuable contribution to the literature. It has been deeply and thoroughly researched, with an extensive analysis of the official documents of the Pakistan army previously overlooked by scholarship on the subject. * Filippo Boni, Commonwealth and Comparative Politics * a very important work which should be made available to as wide an audience as possible * R. F. Rosner, The Royal Society for Asian Affairs * Christine Fair has produced the definitive intellectual biography of the Pakistan army, which will be necessary reading for anyone interested in the country or South Asia as a whole. * Walter C. Ladwig III, War in History Book *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Dimensions
Height: 240 mm
Width: 161 mm
Thickness: 24 mm
Weight
710 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-989270-9 (9780199892709)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
04/2018
Oxford University Press Inc
€54.60
Shipment within 15-20 days
E-Book
04/2014
1st Edition
OUP eBook
€25.49
Available for download
E-Book
04/2014
1st Edition
OUP eBook
€25.49
Available for download
Person
C. Christine Fair is an Assistant Professor in the Security Studies Program within Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. She previously served as a senior political scientist with the RAND Corporation, a political officer with the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan in Kabul, and a senior research associate at USIP's Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention. Her research focuses on political and military affairs in South Asia.
Content
Acknowledgments ; Chapter 1. Introduction ; The Argument: Explaining Pakistan's Persistent Revisionism In the Face of Repeated Defeats ; Organization of this Volume ; Chapter 2. Can Strategic Culture Explain the Pakistan Army's Persistent Revisionism? ; Pakistan's Enduring and Expanding Revisionism ; Explaining Persistent Revisionism ; Strategic Culture Wars ; Pakistan: An Army with a Country ; Reproducing Culture: Recruitment in the Pakistan Army ; Methods and Sources of this Study ; Chapter 3. Born an Insecure State ; Cracking the Raj ; Imagining Pakistan ; The Problem of the Princely States ; Untangling the Punjab ; Breaking Up the Indian Army ; Historical Legacies: A Punjabi Army ; Building a Modern Army ; Table 2.1: Corps and Locations ; Implications for the Pakistan Army's Strategic Culture ; Chapter 4. The Army's Defense of Pakistan's 'Ideological Frontiers' ; The Ideology of Pakistan ; The Army's Embrace of the Ideology of Pakistan ; The Army's Methods of Islamization ; The Army's Instrumentalization of Islam ; Implications ; Chapter 5. Pakistan's Quest for Strategic Depth ; British Management of the Frontier: The Great Game ; Pakistan's Army Seeks Strategic Depth: Managing Pakistan's Frontier and Beyond ; The Army Manages the Afghan Threat ; The Rise and Fall of the Taliban ; The Army's and the Internal Threat on the 'Frontier' ; Implications: Is the Past Prologue for Afghanistan and the Frontier? ; Chapter 6. India under the Pakistan Army's Gaze ; Multiple Crises and Four Wars ; India: Through the Eyes of the Pakistan Army ; Conclusions and Implications ; Chapter 7. Seeking Security through Alliances ; Pursuing the Americans: An Alliance for Survival ; The Pakistan Tilt ; Chasing China: The All-Weather Friend ; The Strains of War ; Pakistan's Relations with the United States and China through the Eyes of the Army ; Conclusions and Implications ; Chapter 8. Seeking Security under a Nuclear Umbrella ; Origins of Pakistan's Nuclear Program ; Proliferation Under the Eye of the State ; Nuclear Doctrine and Use ; Risk Taking Under an Expanding Nuclear Umbrella ; As Bad As it Gets? ; Table 8.1 Cross Tabulations of Conflict Months by Nuclear Status ; Table 8.2: Conflict Rate by Nuclear Period ; Conclusions and Implications ; Chapter 9. Jihad under the Nuclear Umbrella ; Origins of Pakistan's Use of Non-state Actors ; From Peoples' War to Low Intensity Conflict under a Nuclear Umbrella ; Pakistan's Militant Assets ; Pakistani Support for the Militants? ; The Internal Jihad: A Case Study of Lashkar-e-Taiba ; Conclusions and Implications ; Chapter 10. Is the Past Prologue ; Endogenous Game Changers ; Democratic Transition? ; Economic Shocks-For Better and for Worse ; Civil and Un-Civil Society: Impetus for Change? ; Change from Within the Army? ; Table 10.5. Punjabis versus Baloch in Balochistan ; Exogenous Sources of Change? ; Conclusions: Prospects for Change from Within and Without? ; Chapter 11. The Army's Strategic Culture and Implications for International Security ; Managing Pakistan's Persistent Revisionism? ; References ; Appendices: Maps