[By way of review, RSC Theory means a theory of international relations that looks at the globe from the bottom up -- from the circumstance of particular regions regarded as each a "security complex" in its own right, to their relationship with each other and so to the Big Global Picture. This, as expounded in the 2003 book REGIONS AND POWERS, is in accord with the old Machiavellian realist approach to the subject and averse to top-down views such as the "end of history" or "clash of civilizations" theorists.]
I'd like to quote a striking passage about matters of cause and effect in this book.
"For much of history, only one scenario appears as relevant ... because development has turned onto one of the tracks that becomes self-reinforcing. At crucial moments of historical change, the situation is open and several scenarios become possible, though, as we have seen, rarely all."
This seems to me to be an important and general insight, that applies not merely to the life of regional security complexes but to the life of individual human beings. Causation and decision making are one thing when seen looking forward, and quite another when seen in hindsight. After a decision is made, it tends to become self-reinforcing, so thereafter it seems to have been fated. That latter seeking, though, is a consequence of perspective and distortion.
I mentioned Ribot in my list of "golden age" thinkers. Ribot's law, a much discussed principle of psychology to this day, says that amnesia is retrograde. Brain damage that impairs memory impairs first and most the more recent memories, often leaving older memories intact. The worse the brain damage, the further back in time their memory impact goes. Likewise, then, critical historical changes seem permeable only when they are recent.
Returning to REGIONS AND POWERS. Part two of this book (after a lot of methodological preliminaries are discussed) deals with Asia. The first chapter of part two addresses "South Asia," the part of Asia dominated by the isosceles-triangle shaped peninsula south of the Himalayas, and the bipolar politics of India versus Pakistan. Both of those countries were by the time the book was written nuclear powers.
Buzan and Waever write, "For a year or two [after the implosion of the old Soviet Union] there seemed a prospect that the United States would swing to India, and that Sino-Indian relations might warm up [i.e. become more overtly hostile]."
Neither of those things happened, though. The rare border clashes between China and India didn't amount to much, and the US remained tied more to Pakistan, the latter re-affirmation attributable to "successful lobbying by Benazir Bhutto, and thus allowing some significant arms supplies to be delivered to Pakistan." This, not surprisingly, affected sentiment in India.
In the late 1990s "it was not difficult to find either political rhetoric or academic analysis in Delhi that unhesitatingly identified the United States as the key threat to India," reinforcing the old Cold War pattern. Buzan and Waever, a Brit and a Dane respectively, see the tendency of many in India to see the US a the enemy as overblown.
In part that overblown tendency received free run because many in India want to see India as a global power, on a par with the US -- or at least one cut below that, on a part with China and post-Soviet Russia.
In regional terms, Buzan and Waever suggest that in years to come the South Asia region may merge in the East Asia region, into a "supercomplex". This could come about Pakistan falls apart politically, on a "seeming slide toward failure as a state," diminishing itself as a power. South Asia on that scenario becomes a unipolar region. Pakistan could end up only little more of a strategic threat to India than, say, Sri Lanka or Bangladesh.
In that case, India as the one Pole in that region will naturally turn east, where there are many states that would welcome its willingness to make itself a counterweight to China.
This book was published in 2003, and the authors seem still to be absorbing the impact of 9/11/2001, and the US entry in force into Afghanistan. Standing, as we are, on that other side of THAT involvement, I think we can say that the authors' overall analytical framework remains useful. The Afghanistan involvement caused strains between the US and Pakistan, culminating as it did in a US strike into Pakistan sovereign territory in order to dispose of bin Laden. Meanwhile, Afghanistan has contributed to serve as an unfortunate "insulator" between the Middle East on the one hand and South Asia on the other.
India continues, as Buzan and Waever predicted, to look away from that insulator and the Middle East in general and toward the far east as its field of influence. The Modi administration talks about its Act East policy and (although formally committed to 'one China') it does maintain cordial de facto relations with Taiwan.
More, I suspect, to come.
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