The Cold War on the Periphery

Rating:
Summary: The Limits of Power
Review: A superb book, indeed. McMahon musters the research necessary to demonstrate the shortsighted and even foolish choices of all concerned parties in South Asia's post-independence history. If politics may be defined as the art of the possible, as it so often is, we may ask today whether the South Asian outcomes generated by the United States, the Soviet Union, Pakistan and India were in any way necessary. Could this history have been different? Yes! India and Pakistan could have settled their differences over Kashmir. The United States could have abstained from giving Pakistan military aid that hindered its economic and political development while enabling it to avoid pursing a political solution to its political problems, especially those in Kashmir and East Pakistan. India could have gained more aid than it did from the United States while retaining its neutralist position if it had avoided the ritualistic use of self-righteous and inflammatory rhetoric vis-à-vis the United States. It too could have settled the Kashmir question, but it was far too stubborn for that. After reading McMahon's book, I could only conclude that the relevant actors were too blinded by ambition, power and fear to grasp the human reality of the situation. What was needed was state building and statecraft that would enable India and Pakistan to feed its people, to resolve their political differences and to create a political community in the region that would work to ensure the dignity and freedom of the many peoples and nations residing there. We are awaiting these outcomes still.

For those individuals concerned with South Asian politics, this book is a must read.

Rating:
Summary: I wish i could have given it Zero Stars
Review: Extremely biased book. The lesson learnt: Never write a book about two countries and take one country's side. The book to me was worthless.... The first few pages were more than enough crap for me to read.

Rating:
Summary: Good Research, Bad Reasoning
Review: Good in research. Bad in reasoning. This is about the best I could come up with after reading the book. The author does an excellent job of researching the background, but ultimately falls in the same Pakistan-is-a-stepchild-of-India pitfall. Pakistan and India are fundamentally two different nations. Racially and culturally, the Pakistanis are the inheritors of Arab-Turkic-Persian-Mogul rulers of India who ruled the region for a thousand years, until 1857 when the last of their rulers was overthrown by the British Empire. When, in 1947, India gained independence, it also marked the fact that it was the first time in a 1,000 years the Indians were ruling themselves. Racially, the people of Pakistan IN THE MAJORITY come from Arab, Aryan, Turkic, and Persian backgrounds. But Pakistanis also have a considerable proportion of the population descending from earlier Indian converts to Islam. In fact, Pakistanis even do not have anything in common with the people of former East Pakistan, or today's Bangladesh, with the exception of Islam, of course. Pakistanis, in effect, even do no belong to South Asia, but to the Middle East. As a young nation in 1947, Pakistani leaders were too occupied with the task of nation building that they overlooked the setting of the nation's cultural compass. But the awareness has increased in later years. This is the Pakistan most academicians mistake for India's stepchild.