Asian Affairs: An American Review

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Breaking the Equilibrium? New Leaders and Old

Structures in the India-Pakistan Rivalry

Ishtiaq Ahmad & Hannes Ebert

To cite this article: Ishtiaq Ahmad & Hannes Ebert (2015) Breaking the Equilibrium? New Leaders
and Old Structures in the India-Pakistan Rivalry, Asian Affairs: An American Review, 42:1, 46-75,
DOI: 10.1080/00927678.2015.999518

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Asian Affairs: An American Review, 42:46–75, 2015
Copyright C 2015 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 0092-7678 print / 1940-1590 online
DOI: 10.1080/00927678.2015.999518

Breaking the Equilibrium? New Leaders

and Old Structures in the
India-Pakistan Rivalry

ISHTIAQ AHMAD
HANNES EBERT

Abstract: The election of new governments in Pakistan and India in 2013 and
2014, respectively, has sparked controversies about the likely trajectory of the
enduring rivalry. Emerging individual and domestic conditions reportedly created
new opportunities for incremental rapprochement. Equipped with strong political
mandates and backed by powerful constituencies, Pakistan’s Nawaz Sharif and
India’s Narendra Modi initially set out to stabilize and revive their countries’
fragile economies and declared improved bilateral ties as a key precondition
for implementing their economic agendas. However, mutual recriminations
and border tensions resurfaced soon to prevent the revival of the stalled
diplomatic dialogue in late 2014. Drawing on a thorough review of research
on rivalry maintenance and termination and, in particular, the assumptions of
the punctuated equilibrium model developed by Paul Diehl and Gary Goertz,
this paper demonstrates how the conflict’s structural complexities are likely to
persist and undermine the chances for conflict resolution in the years ahead.
The prevalent role of the army and a vibrant anti-Indian Islamic ideology in
Pakistan, the persistence of a conflict lobby in India, lingering territorial feuds and
ever increasing power asymmetries between the two countries, and decreasing
third-party mediation in the Indo-Pakistani conflict will likely suffocate any

Address correspondence to Ishtiaq Ahmad, St Antony’s College, University of Oxford, 62

Woodstock Road, Oxford, UK OX2 6JF. E-mail: [email protected]

46
India and Pakistan 47

initiative, however well-intended or pragmatic it may be. Even if bold leadership

manages to revive a comprehensive peace process, it would have to be based on
systematic confidence building measures in order to make it resilient to crises.

Keywords: enduring rivalries, foreign policy change, India-Pakistan relations,

international security, Kashmir, political shocks, rivalry termination, South Asia

U nder what conditions will the enduring rivalry between India and Pakistan
de-escalate and eventually terminate?1 Recent elections of new governments
in both countries again sparked hopes in media and policy circles that the long-
standing conflict might be ripe for taking a next step towards de-escalation. At
first, the re-election of Nawaz Sharif, leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz
(PML-N), as Prime Minister for the third time in the May 2013 elections generated
renewed hopes for rapid progress in India-Pakistan relations. During his second
premiership from 1997-1999, Sharif’s attempt to fast track the peace process with
India was a major catalyst for his removal from power in the 1999 military coup.
Moreover, ahead of the 2013 elections, he had promised to open “a new chapter”
in relations with India, including via a joint investigation of the Mumbai attacks
and by reigning in militant Jihadi groups.2 When Narendra Modi, leader of the
Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was elected Prime Minister in a
landslide electoral victory in May 2014, he proceeded to pursue a conciliatory
tone toward Pakistan as soon as he was assured of election victory. He was quick
to dispel concerns about India being more hostile towards Pakistan under his lead-
ership by declaring—as Sharif had done on the eve of his election—to write “a
new chapter” in the bilateral relations, if Pakistan demonstrated a commitment
to peace and stopped “terrorist attacks being launched from its soil.”3 He also
assured that his Pakistan policy would not be driven by “anger.”4 Most remark-
ably, the Indian Prime Minister raised hopes for improved relations in the region
by inviting Sharif and other leaders of the South Asian Association for Regional
Cooperation (SAARC) member states to attend his swearing-in ceremony in New
Delhi in May 2014.5 Sharif’s participation in the event seemed to suggest that he
was able to gain some ground in his struggle over authority on India policy with
Pakistan’s army, or that the army leadership had given at least tacit agreement for
improving trade ties. Sharif was careful not to refer to Kashmir during his visit. His
meeting with Modi was symbolically significant and demonstrated a gesture of
mutual warmth. The two leaders also exchanged letters of appreciation afterwards
underlining their shared economic agenda and mutual commitment to peace.6
Modi further accepted Sharif’s invitation to visit Pakistan in the near future. Fi-
nally, the debut meeting brought a substantive outcome, as both leaders decided
to resume the foreign secretaries’ talks to discuss all outstanding issues, including
Kashmir.7
48 Asian Affairs: An American Review

However, just when bilateral ties appeared to make considerable progress,

mutual tensions resurfaced.8 During his first year in office, Sharif remained
committed to normalizing ties to India, but his efforts were constrained by a
renewed escalation of violence along the Line of Control (LOC) in Kashmir
(which would eventually be resolved amicably through a rare constructive
engagement between top military officials of the two countries). Sharif prioritized
cultivating economic relations in the region, but he failed to make the expected
progress in increasing bilateral trade with India, due largely to resistance from
the army and other influential interlocutors with vested interests.9 Sharif was also
now forced to push Kashmir on the agenda again. He raised this issue at length
in his speech before the UN General Assembly in September 2014, but only after
the Modi regime made some recalcitrant moves on Kashmir and terrorism as
major irritants in Indo-Pakistani relations.10 Moreover, at that time, Sharif was
under pressure from weeks-long protests in Islamabad against his rule, and his
unexpectedly vocal stance on Kashmir at the UN was probably meant to placate
the military leadership and keep it on his side for averting the political crisis. In
parallel, Modi displayed a more assertive Kashmir policy, cancelled the foreign
secretaries’ talks in August 2014, and secured U.S. support in counter-terrorism
efforts during his visit to the United States one month later.11
These dynamics reveal the deep-rooted yet highly viable impediments to rivalry
termination in the South Asian rivalry. This article analyzes the question of whether
the developments in the context of the two historic parliamentary elections create
more conducive conditions for rivalry de-escalation and eventual termination or
rather contributes to the adversary’s endurance. The first part is divided into two
sections. The first provides a definition of “enduring rivalry” and outlines the
particularities of the South Asian enduring rivalry. The second gives an overview
of what factors rivalry research assumes to be necessary for rivalry maintenance
and termination, and presents the punctuated equilibrium model. The second part
applies this model to evaluating the prospects for rivalry termination in the current
South Asian context. In particular, it discusses whether endogenous and exogenous
shocks implied in the punctuated equilibrium model—democratic consolidation,
regime change, civil war, and regional power shifts—are sufficiently present to
facilitate rivalry termination. It finds that all four of these factors are only partially
given and are further undermined by stabilizing factors. It concludes by outlining
the need for confidence-building to manage the rivalry in an environment that
is otherwise prone for conflict escalation. Analyzing the current dynamics is
also linked to the more general question on whether new leaders under changed
political, economic, and security circumstances can make a difference in foreign
policies among enduring rivals such as India and Pakistan.
India and Pakistan 49

Rivalry Maintenance and Termination

Enduring Rivalry and the India-Pakistan Conflict

The question of whether the domestic changes outlined above can promote a
de-escalation and eventual termination of the conflict is not confined to South Asia.
The antagonism between India and Pakistan constitutes what scholars of interna-
tional relations categorize as an “enduring rivalry.” Enduring rivalries are defined
as “long-standing militarized competitions between the same pairs of states” and
are characterized by “the persistent, fundamental, and long term incompatibility
of goals between two states,” manifesting themselves in “the basic attitudes of the
parties toward each other, as well as in the recurring violent or potentially violent
clashes over a long period of time.”12 Regarding the frequency and duration of
disputes, enduring rivalry can be defined as those rivalries involving at least six
disputes and lasting for 20 years or more:

The six-dispute minimum ensures that states have reached a significant level of
military competition (the severity or seriousness part of enduring rivalry). The 20-
year time ensures that the competition is indeed enduring, and therefore the conflicts
are not bunched together in a narrow time frame. Indeed, most rivalries with six or
more disputes last 20 or more years, and longer rivalries tend to have more than the
minimum number of disputes.13

Enduring rivalries attract tremendous interest in the research on the causes

of war for two reasons: they constitute both a rare and a particularly dangerous
form of interstate rivalries. Quantitative longitudinal studies revealed that while
only a small minority of interstate rivalries become “enduring,” this minority
accounts for the majority of all militarized disputes and, in particular, their most
violent manifestation: interstate wars.14 Hence, “only a small group of states was
responsible for most interstate disputes and wars” and “these conflict-prone states
did not fight randomly—they tended to fight each other.”15 Enduring rivalries are
not the root causes of war but constitute the context in which the majority of
international conflict (wars) and also violent territorial changes and arms races
have taken place.16 Conflicts are likely to escalate again within enduring rivalries,
even if a formal treaty has resolved a dispute.17
The conflict between India and Pakistan fulfills these criteria and, in fact, con-
stitutes an “archetype” of contemporary enduring rivalry in many analyses.18 Other
contemporary enduring rivalries include the intractable conflicts between China
and Taiwan, Israel and Palestine, Israel and Syria, and North and South Korea.
The India-Pakistan rivalry shares with these the common features of geographic
contiguity and the presence of at least one unresolved territorial dispute.19 The
presence of a territorial dispute drove the emergence of the South Asian rivalry,
and rivalry research argues that rivalries including territorial dispute are “the most
persistent and least likely to terminate swiftly.”20 Moreover, since independence in
50 Asian Affairs: An American Review

1947, the two states’ fundamental goals have persistently proven incompatible, as
manifest in the occurrence of four interstate wars and multiple, ongoing violations
of the disputed LOC and the Working Boundary as well as recurrent crises with
tangible risk for violent escalation of the unending conflict.
Four characteristics make the South Asian enduring rivalry particularly note-
worthy: First, the India-Pakistan rivalry is considerably more conflict- and war-
prone than most other enduring rivalries both in terms of frequency and severity
of disputes (the latter understood in terms of the level of military force).21 Sec-
ond, it is one of the most salient in contemporary world politics, given that both
adversaries possess large and growing arsenals of nuclear weapons and that their
geographic location lends them particular geopolitical prominence. Third, it in-
volves a usually broad set of conflicted issues and qualifies as both a positional and
a spatial rivalry, the former involving a competition over regional preponderance,
the latter an ongoing dispute over territorial claims.22 A fourth particularity of
the South Asian rivalry is that it falls into the category of asymmetric conflictive
dyads. Asymmetric dyads usually do not lead to rivalries, since the more power-
ful state can effectively threaten the weaker neighbor without severe, long-term
contestation (see for example the Georgia-Russia dyad). In rare cases, asymmetric
dyads become rivals when the weaker adversary overestimates its capabilities and,
as a consequence, is perceived by the stronger state as a threatening competitor,
or if other factors effectively truncate and mitigate the power asymmetry. Both
conditions are present in South Asia, making it a case of “truncated asymmetry.”23
In the majority of bilateral disputes since 1947, it is the nominally weaker state that
initiated disputes by threatening, displaying, or using military force first.24 The
disputes have most often ended in stalemates, with few decisive defeats, leaving
the challenger “unsuccessful and unsatisfied, but still capable of mounting future
challenges.”25
These four characteristics of the South Asian enduring rivalry—high conflict-
and war-propensity, international salience, broad conflict scope and truncated
asymmetry—shape the context conditions under which rivalry termination has to
occur. In addition, there is a set of more general explanatory variables for rivalry
termination, which will be outlined in the following section.

Conditions for Rivalry Maintenance and Termination in South Asia

The conditions under which enduring rivalries in general and the South Asian
enduring rivalry in particular are maintained and can be terminated have been
discussed elsewhere.26 The existent research on rivalries is, however, too extensive
to review here in detail. Instead, Table 1 provides an overview of factors reportedly
contributing to the maintenance of enduring rivalries and outlines how these factors
have to change in order for the rivalry to terminate.
India and Pakistan 51

TABLE 1. Factors Determining Rivalry Persistence and Termination

Persistence Termination

Decision-maker level
1. Dysfunctional learning → Organizational failure and functional
learning
2. Leadership priorities/strategies → Change in leadership priorities/strategies
(e.g., shifting focus on domestic
development versus external competition)
→ Change in leadership (more critical in
systems where the leader is a principal
source of foreign policy orientations)
→ Change in internal distribution of power
Domestic level
3. Problems of national identity → Secure identities
4. Institutional incompatibility → Joint democracy
→ Democratic consolidation
→ Leadership autonomy
5. Secession/irredentism → Change in strategies and goals
6. Political-economic benefits of → Internal economic crises
rivalry maintenance (it pays off) → Hurting stalemates
and sufficient internal and → Shifts in the external distribution of power
external resources for rivalry (e.g. military defeat, loss of patronage)
maintenance
Regional level
6. Territorial divisions → Territorial settlement
7. Nuclear weapons → Nuclear stability
(stability/instability paradox)
8. Truncated power asymmetry → Preponderance of status quo power
9. Lack of effective regional → Strengthening of regional institutions
institutions
10. Dearth of economic interaction → Deepening economic interdependence
11. Rejecting responsibility for → (Promise of) Reciprocity
initiating termination → Extending peace initiatives
12. Mistrust → Confidence-building measures and credible
commitments
13. Prevailing threat perception → New perceived threats to security
International level
14. Great power involvement → Major change in great power policies
→ Third-party mediation
15. Systemic/structural factors (e.g., → Post-Cold War, post-9/11
bipolar competition) constraints/opportunities

Source: Own compilation based on T. V. Paul and William Hogg, “South Asia’s embedded
conflict: Understanding the India-Pakistan rivalry,” in The India-Pakistan Conflict. An En-
during Rivalry, ed. T. V. Paul (Cambridge: Cambridge University), 251-67, 252; and Rasler,
Thompson, and Ganguly, 2013: 196. Both sources provide detailed references for the respective
factors.
52 Asian Affairs: An American Review

Rivalry research does not assume that all of these factors necessarily have to be
present at the same time for rivalry to terminate; and none of them is assumed to be
sufficient on its own. Numerous multivariate models of rivalry research have been
developed that outline diverging causal linkages between some of these factors.
Most directly relevant to our purpose is one study which explicitly applies a model
of enduring rivalry to explore the conditions under which the India-Pakistan rivalry
might terminate: the punctuated equilibrium model.27
Paul Diehl and Garry Goertz developed the punctuated equilibrium model to
explain rivalry maintenance and termination with a major focus on domestic polit-
ical processes.28 The model rests on the assumption that “enduring rivalries, once
established, are relatively stable phenomena over time until they are dislodged by
environmental shocks.”29 Since enduring rivalries are caused by well-entrenched
causes, endogenous and exogenous political shocks are virtually necessary condi-
tions to disrupt established patterns of behavior and to terminate rivalries abruptly
rather than incrementally.30 They list four endogenous, state-level shocks: (1) the
shift of either rival to a democracy; (2) regime change in either rival; (3) the oc-
currence of a civil war; and (yet not relevant to our selected time period) (4) the
achievement of independence. In addition, the model includes three exogenous,
system-level shocks: (1) rapid shifts in the power distribution that could recon-
figure alliance patterns, create new opportunities for cooperation or increase the
costs for maintaining the rivalry; (2) world wars; and (3) massive territorial changes
(only the first being immediately relevant to our selected time period).31 In a book
chapter published in 2005, Diehl, Goertz, and Daniel Saeedi applied the punc-
tuated equilibrium model to South Asia. Writing at a time when then Pakistani
President General Pervez Musharraf was still firmly in charge and then Indian
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had just been elected, they find the chances for
termination of the rivalry to be extremely limited, as “the competition is deeply
ingrained in each society, both the public psyche and in military and government
planning. A political shock alone, even if one were to occur, is insufficient to lead
to the end of the rivalry. The other conditions associated with enduring rivalry
termination are not present and probably unlikely for the foreseeable future.”32
Among the endogenous shocks, first, they focus explicitly on the impact of
a democratic consolidation on the rivalry and observe that consistent with the
broader assumptions of the “democratic peace” literature, “(e)mpirical results in-
dicate strong confirmation that rivalries are more likely to end when both states
become democratic.”33 Testing this finding in South Asia, they conclude that the
“India-Pakistan rivalry was less dispute-prone under joint democracy than during
other periods. The probability of a new dispute arising in any given year during
the joint democracy period was approximately 40% (seven disputes in 17 years) as
opposed to almost 100% (36 disputes in 38 years) when there was no joint democ-
racy.”34 They argue that while civilian leaders such as Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz
Sharif have arguably been as eager to pursue revisionist claims toward Kashmir
India and Pakistan 53

as the military rulers, they “resorted to military force less frequently to pursue
those claims, and may have concentrated more on domestic concerns (as they
were more accountable to domestic audiences) than the military leaders.”35 How-
ever, they also note that because the military continued to exert considerable, if
indirect, influence on politics even during the periods when elected civilians were
in charge of the government, “Pakistan is best understood as a hybrid democ-
racy/autocracy.”36 Therefore, the full pacifying effect of democracy assumed in
democratic peace theory has not occurred in the rivalry. Joint democracy, they
conclude, might have indeed had a modest, mitigating effect on the India-Pakistan
rivalry, but given persistent impediments to democratic institutions, it has not
led to rivalry termination in the past and “even if Pakistan restored democracy
immediately (an unlikely prospect), it may be years before Pakistan is a stable
democracy, and therefore pacifying effects may be apparent only in the distant
future.”37 About three years later in 2008, however, Pakistan made the transition
from military to civilian rule and experienced its first genuine transition from one
to another civilian government in 2013. While the general qualification on demo-
cratic consolidation is immediately relevant to our evaluation of current rivalry
termination prospects, we need to assess whether recent changes are sufficient to
at least tilt toward more stable joint democracy.
Second, apart from democratic consolidation, the punctuated equilibrium model
considers a change in leadership in at least one rival as another, related endogenous
political shock that could trigger rivalry termination. Regime change, the model
claims, is often the result of failed past policies and associated with new policies
and new ideas that break with these past policies. This might include a shift away
from hostility with the adversary and might produce diplomatic breakthroughs
necessary for peace agreements and conflict resolution. In order to evaluate the
impact of new leaders on the rivalry, Diehl and Goertz draw on Richard Lebow’s
work on international conflict and cooperation. Lebow assumes that in order for
rivals to achieve a conciliatory accommodation, the leaders need (1) to commit
to domestic reforms that require or benefit from accommodation, (2) recognize
that confrontation has been counterproductive in the past, and (3) expect the
adversary to respond positively to conciliatory overtures.38 As examples for a (new)
leader’s considerable impact on rivalry termination, Daniel, Goertz, and Saeedi
quote South Africa’s transition from the apartheid regime to Nelson Mandela’s
government which quickly improved relations to several neighbouring countries,
Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat’s significant peace initiative toward Israel leading
to the Camp David Accords and a de-escalation of the Egypt-Israel rivalry, and
U.S. President Richard Nixon’s visit to Beijing in 1972 facilitating a historic Sino-
US rapprochement.39 Another obvious example is Mikhail Gorbachev’s impact
on Soviet-U.S. rivalry in the late 1980s.
However, the latter examples demonstrate the fragile nature of such develop-
ments, with the Egypt-Israel rivalry still persisting today, and both the Sino-U.S.
54 Asian Affairs: An American Review

and the Russian-U.S. rivalry once declared terminated now escalating again in
the context of the international power transition and the more recent and ongo-
ing Ukrainian crisis. Diehl, Goertz and Saeedi conclude that in both India and
Pakistan, the conditions outlined by Lebow were similarly not given. In Pak-
istan, (1) economic problems were present to a scale that “plagued the Soviet
Union before its demise” and “[r]esolving the Kashmir problem might increase
international economic aid and lessen the crushing defense burden” and (2) fail-
ures of past policies were obvious. Yet, revisionist territorial claims remained
popular, and a leader interested in resolving—as opposed to merely temporarily
de-escalating—the conflict, has still been missing, leaving the third condition (3)
speculative at that point. In India, the two mainstream parties BJP and Congress
diverged little regarding Kashmir policy.40
A third endogenous shock assumed in the punctuated equilibrium includes civil
war in at least one of the rivals, which would require the respective government(s)
to divert its resources and attention inward. In their assessment of prospects
for rivalry termination in South Asia a decade ago, Diehl, Goertz, and Saeedi
argue, unrests inside India were not “serious enough to threaten the Indian regime
or end the rivalry”; and while civil war in Pakistan could potentially lead to
a temporary respite in the rivalry, the various groups competing for power as
well as public opinion were, equally change-averse regarding the country’s India
policy.41 Moreover, civil war has regularly been exploited by both sides to weaken
the adversary, eventually rendering civil war a stabilizing factor of the enduring
rivalry rather than a driver of eventual de-escalation.
An exogenous, system-level shock assumed to be necessary for rivalry termina-
tion and relevant to our time period includes a rapid shift in the power distribution
that could reconfigure alliance patterns, create new opportunities for cooperation
or increase the costs for maintaining the rivalry. This could involve the appearance
of other security threats for the rivals (common external enemies). In the previous
application of the model, none of the additional rivalries India and Pakistan have
been embedded in respectively (e.g., India-China, Pakistan-Afghanistan) have
been significant enough “to distract India or Pakistan from their primary rivalry
with each other”, but had a rather reinforcing impact; nor did they see any such
common security threat emerging.42 The impact of third-party mediation and con-
flict management on the stability of enduring rivalries also plays a part in the power
equation in enduring rivalries. Diehl and Goertz show that enduring rivalries ex-
perience more mediation efforts than other conflicts given the perceived high risk
emanating from their maintenance.43 In their empirical assessment a decade ago,
they demonstrate that this factor as well as other system-level shocks had limited
impact on the prospects for rivarly termination in South Asia in the past (e.g., the
relatively insignificant impact of the end of the Cold War on the India-Pakistan
rivalry) and were unlikely to exert major influence in the foreseeable.44
India and Pakistan 55

To conclude, Diehl, Goertz, and Saeedi’s application of the punctuated

equilibrium model to South Asia about a decade ago demonstrated the complex
impediments undermining the prospects for rivalry termination in the region. The
following analysis builds on these findings and applies the model of punctuated
equilibrium in order to assess whether the most recent domestic political changes
since the May 2013 elections in Pakistan reflect a tendency toward more or less
conducive conditions for rivalry termination. Since a majority of the factors
assumed to be conducive for rivalry termination—democratic consolidation,
regime change, civil war, independence, shifts in the power distribution, world
wars, massive territorial change—have evidently not changed lately, our analysis
will focus on those aspects that came under considerable scrutiny since mid-2013.
These include (1) democratic consolidation; (2) regime change and new leaders;
(3) civil war and security imperatives that could force both governments to focus
inward, and (4) power shifts and third-party mediation.

Tracing Conditions for Rivalry Termination

Democratic Consolidation and Its Discontents

Are internal and external conditions in South Asia more conducive for ri-
valry termination today than they were in the past as demonstrated above? The
punctuated equilibrium model asserts that democratic consolidation is a virtually
necessary condition for rivalry termination. Unstable democratic institutions in
Pakistan largely undermined the pacifying effects of joint democracy a decade
ago. In recent years, however, political factors at the domestic level in both India
and Pakistan seemed more favorable to improving bilateral relations. In Pakistan,
Sharif’s ability to realize his peace plans still depends largely on his aptitude to
assert civilian authority in foreign policy over the military, even though two de-
velopments seemed to strengthen his relative position during the formative phase
of his third stint in power. First, the results of the May 2013 elections provided
Sharif with a strong political mandate and considerable momentum for policy
reappraisal. For the first time in history, an elected civilian government completed
its full term and was replaced by another civilian regime.45 In the context of re-
lations with India, Sharif’s comeback has been particularly important because he
represents the Punjabi establishment that has traditionally championed the army-
sponsored nationalistic discourse on India but is now increasingly supportive of
normalizing relations with India. Second, socio-political transformations in the
country during the post-Musharraf period have also been largely conducive to the
civilian government’s relatively strong stance—with an active higher judiciary,
a vocal mass media as well as the growth of an urban middle class being key
attributes of the democratization process. Major constitutional reforms such as
the 18th Amendment increased the political leverage of civilian leadership.46 An
56 Asian Affairs: An American Review

emerging broad consensus among mainstream and regional political parties on

consolidating democracy and improving regional ties as well as the influence of
vocal peace lobbies in both countries have been additional factors facilitating the
implementation of Sharif’s peace agenda with India.47 Yet, as the outcome of the
late 2014 political turmoil in Pakistan suggests, the military’s challenge to civilian
assertion in core foreign policy subjects, especially India policy, is far from over,
even amid changed socio-political realities of the country.
In India, a post-colonial national trajectory that produces tangible gains in
democratic consolidation and economic empowerment and which induces steps
towards peace has evolved organically. The country’s significant economic growth
since the early 1990s has increased both domestic self-confidence and nationalism.
While the former is positive, the latter is less so.48 Consequently, in the recent past,
India has often been less responsive to Pakistan’s peace overtures. The former
Congress-led coalition also had to look “at its back when dealing with Pakistan
because it was open to attack from the right wing.”49 With Modi’s landslide
electoral victory, this limitation seemed to be over. After serving 13 years as the
chief minister of Gujarat, he has built a reputation as a successful entrepreneurial
modernizer. He leads a majority government and thus is in a position to take
bold decisions in pursuing peace with Pakistan. His electoral pledge to continue
former BJP leader and Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s legacy in foreign
policy implied that India under his leadership would not abandon its traditional
nuclear restraint, continue to seek peace with neighbours and promote regional
prosperity.”50 In short, barring a major upsurge in bilateral relations, a combination
of Hindu nationalist and Punjabi constituencies make the current Indo-Pakistani
leaders less vulnerable to nationalist voices within their respective countries when
making decisions on these relations.51
However, in spite of these initial indicators for a democratic consolidation, the
prospects for rivalry de-escalation and eventual termination have again become
quickly constrained by structural impediments caused by domestic politics. A
major reason why the Modi regime, for instance, cancelled peace talks with Pak-
istan in August 2014 was its intention to win state assembly elections, especially
in the State of Jammu and Kashmir, by portraying itself as tough on Pakistan.52
Domestic political constraint to peace with India in the form of the persistent role
of the army has been a persisting reality in Pakistan.53 The army has dominated
domestic politics, directly or indirectly, long enough to control external policy and
dominate public discourse. The army continues to be a powerful political player in
the country—with its huge business empire still intact, its share in the national ex-
chequer unquestioned, its ability to destabilize civilian regime through proxies in
politics, society and bureaucracy uninterrupted, and its influence on shaping public
opinion and foreign policy still dominant, even if contested. Despite the salience
of domestic danger from the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), India remains a
major factor in the military’s threat perception—since major sources of tensions,
India and Pakistan 57

like the unresolved Kashmir dispute, rivalry in Afghanistan and counter-terrorism

issues persist. While the army leadership might currently not be in a position to
intervene in politics to the degree possible during Sharif’s previous stint in office,
a strategic change in the security approach will likely only take place when the
political balance continues to shift in favor of the civilian forces.
For now, whatever gains Pakistan may have made concerning democratization,
they are insufficient to allow the Sharif regime a free hand in reshaping India policy
priorities. During the PPP regime, the army did tacitly approve limited cooperation
in trade ties with India, but this could hardly be termed as a “strategic shift” in
Pakistan’s India policy.54 Its civil-military interests in relation to India’s regional
economic pursuits have nonetheless shown some accommodation, as reflected
in Pakistan’s agreement to a one-way Indo-Afghan trading arrangement and to
India’s inclusion in the gas pipeline project from Turkmenistan. Despite this, Indian
voices publicly opposing the current rapprochement, such as Vikram Sood, the
former head of Indian intelligence, remain sceptical of the degree of such changes:
“Pakistani military and intelligence establishment is unable to change the way it
thinks much less make a U-turn in its policies towards India.”55 Given that Modi’s
foreign and security policy advisors mostly share similar views on Pakistan, even
sanguine efforts from the Pakistani side would hardly meet much reciprocity.56
Despite this, as compared to Pakistan, there are no formidable structural barriers
in India to peace with Pakistan. The army remains firmly under civilian control.
There is just one attempt, namely the Siachen glacier settlement in 2006, which
it reportedly resisted.57 Apart from this, if some political and security obstacles
exist—in the shape of ingrained hostility toward Pakistan among a section of
Indian intelligentsia or an alleged official tendency to overlook the crucial value
of conflict resolution in the peace process—they are not difficult to overcome,
provided the civilian forces in Pakistan duly assert authority in domestic politics
and take effective control of foreign policy, and, hence, are able to meet India’s
counter-terrorism expectations.

Regime Change, Leadership Resolve and Ideological Boundaries

In Pakistan, the role of civilian leadership in the conduct of domestic and foreign
policy has traditionally been limited. The army has ruled the country directly or
indirectly since independence in 1947. Civilian assertion of authority has been
particularly restricted in questions related to Afghanistan and India. Within these
confines, however, Sharif has attempted to gain leverage by keeping the foreign
policy portfolio under his purview and appointing trusted advisors and envoys
to implement his regional agenda. But are the two prime ministers willing and
able (1) to commit to domestic reforms that require or benefit accommodation;
(2) recognize that confrontation has been counterproductive in the past; and (3)
expect the adversary to respond positively to conciliatory overtures as outlined in
58 Asian Affairs: An American Review

the punctuated equilibrium model? The available evidence suggests that only the
first of these criteria can be verified, and even that must be qualified. Matching
the conditions of the model, Sharif has expressed his conviction that an economic
recovery in Pakistan requires a peaceful approach in the region, particularly in
relation to India. For that purpose, all foreign missions from the start primarily
aimed at overcoming lingering divergences in key relationships.58 Several factors
further underline Sharif’s qualifications for shifting the course of relations with
India.59 As the Punjabi leader of a conservative party, he is less vulnerable to
charges of being lenient towards India.60 Moreover, as a successful industrialist,
he is expected to be aware of the benefits of increased economic dealings with
India.61 Most importantly, Sharif’s penchant for peace with India is underlined
by a track record of conciliation attempts during his past two premierships in the
1990s, which included the design of a Composite Dialogue process in 1997, the
initiation of back-channel negotiations and the “bus diplomacy” that eventually
led to the Lahore Declaration.62
On the Indian side, individual factors have become more significant with Modi’s
election. As a Hindu nationalist leader, he was expected to adopt a tougher stance
toward Pakistan in case tensions over Kashmir erupt again or a terror attack similar
to the 2008 Mumbai attacks reoccurs in India.63 Unsurprisingly, the Modi regime’s
response to renewed border tensions in late 2014 was precisely more hawkish than
his predecessors. However, in the absence of such occurrences, Modi can also be
expected to be a willing partner in pursuit of peace. Economic development is a key
priority for both leaders. Modi ran his election campaign not on communalism
but on issues of governance and economic development—emphasizing that as
chief minister of Gujarat State, he was able to implement pro-business policies
that helped the state experience consistent growth.64 Like Sharif, Modi is arguably
“less vulnerable to charges of weakness,” which could provide him with sufficient
political leeway to take steps towards improving relations with Pakistan. He can
draw on the Pakistan policy trajectory of Vajpayee, when peace negotiations
between the two countries nearly reached a breakthrough.65
However, the persistent power of ideological narratives effectively undermines
the chances to capitalize on the window of opportunity of new leadership. In partic-
ular, competing extremist religious ideologies have played a pivotal role in fueling
the Indo-Pakistani conflict in the past, and their regressive role may well persist
into the future. In Pakistan, the ideological constraint is most evident, as the growth
of violent religiosity has had severe implications for Indo-Pakistani ties in the last
few decades. The statist narrative on Islamic ideology as the basis of Pakistan’s
creation, essentially a relic of General Zia’s era, has helped the military maintain a
privileged position in the political system. Its India-centric security paradigm—or
military-sponsored nationalist discourse based on a perceived or real security threat
from India—is justified on the basis of this ideology: A Muslim nation born out of
fear of Hindu domination, therefore, has to somehow engage in a perpetual strug-
gle against Indian domination in South Asia. Such religiously grounded notions
India and Pakistan 59

provide the conceptual basis for a culture of jihad and its terrorist expression in the
region. The pursuit of an India-specific “strategic depth” strategy in Afghanistan,
the past support of Taliban militants for the purpose and the sponsorship of vio-
lence in Kashmir as well as the post-9/11 propensity to make a distinction between
“good Taliban” and “bad Taliban” are all implications of this regressive trend. A
reversal of this trend and the erosion of the ideological foundation would likely
necessitate a wholesome and more deep-rooted reorientation of the state.
In India, the return to power of the Hindu nationalist BJP also has some ide-
ological implications. While there were few direct references in BJP’s election
manifesto or his campaign speeches on how he would approach Pakistan, Modi’s
public remarks seemed to confirm the Pakistani concern of a more confrontational,
“muscular” foreign policy.66 He promised a “zero-tolerance” approach to alleged
militancy from Pakistan and sharply criticized the Congress-led government for
not responding forcefully enough to alleged Pakistani violations of the LoC in
Kashmir.67 Modi’s role as Chief Minister of Gujarat during the state’s 2002 mas-
sacre of over 1,000 Muslims and his fierce anti-Pakistan stances in the past fueled
nationalist trends in the country and has also fed into anti-Indian ideological dis-
courses in Pakistan. Additionally, fears exist that if Modi fails to revive the Indian
economy, he may resort to nationalistic euphoria and pursue a jingoistic approach
towards Pakistan to sustain public support for his regime.

Civil War, Economic Crisis, and Lingering Territorial Conflicts

A civil war in at least one of the rivals can potentially force the respective gov-
ernment(s) to divert its resources and attention inward. The changed security per-
ceptions in both nations, particularly in Pakistan, also constitute an important driver
for Indo-Pakistani peace. Perhaps the most pressing issue facing Pakistan and espe-
cially its military is domestic terrorism by TTP, which has already caused unprece-
dented human and economic losses in recent years.68 The army has been at war with
the TTP and its affiliates since 2007, and it assumed a broader and more serious
dimension with the launch of Zarb-e-Azb operation in North Waziristan in June
2014.69 The ethnic insurgency in Baluchistan poses another major challenge. Here,
the military has combatted what it now also considers an existential security threat
from within. Army Chief General Raheel Sharif is seen as “the architect of the
significant change of military strategy in which the focus was switched away from
the traditional rivalry with India to dealing with the internal threat posed by the
Taliban.”70 If such a shift in Pakistan’s threat perception from external to domestic
security issues occurs, it could create a window of opportunity for the Sharif regime
to proactively chart out a more peaceful course in its relationship with India.71
In India, the government’s prevailing view of Pakistan in recent years has in-
cluded the recognition of the dangers India faces from an unstable Pakistan.72
60 Asian Affairs: An American Review

The prospect of the Taliban gaining clout in Pakistan worries India, but its prin-
cipal security concern remains the issue of cross-border terrorism. During his
debut meeting with Sharif, Modi raised this issue, urging the Pakistani leader to
expedite the investigative and legal process to bring the culprits of the Mumbai
attacks to task. Cross-border terrorism will remain a priority in Modi’s Pakistan
policy, especially given that the security quagmire entails serious risks of terrorist
spillover; it therefore also offers opportunities for security cooperation.
Another force that drove both governments, but in particular the Pakistani,
to turn attention inward, were severe economic crises affecting both countries.73
Some constituencies in India and Pakistan share a pragmatic interest in improving
their economic relationship. India’s priority lies in overcoming the recent stagna-
tion in economic growth, and Pakistan is interested in tackling its own persistent
economic crisis. Sharif’s and Modi’s political agendas also converge in their focus
on economic development. In Pakistan, the gravity of economic woes is mani-
fested in an acute energy crisis that has jeopardized industrial production, reduced
exports and caused mass rioting. There is no near-term solution to the energy cri-
sis. Alternative sources of international finance do not exist. Harnessing regional
trade, energy and investment links, including with India, has consequently become
Pakistan’s key compulsion and considerable support among political parties, pub-
lic opinion and corporate interests has become evident. Sharif recognized that
Pakistan’s economic development will benefit enormously from greater access to
India’s vast economy, and he expressed support for formalizing and expanding
trade and commercial ties with India.
The new Indian government similarly prioritizes economic development in its
regional approach. “I believe a strong economy is the driver of an effective foreign
policy,” Modi said.74 He “hopes to make India a leader in its own neighbourhood,
knitting together a regional trade and economic bloc.”75 Moreover, the BJP may
have learned from its last tenure (1998-2004) that maintaining the confidence of
foreign investors requires peaceful relations with Pakistan.76 The Modi regime has
hence sought to reinstate the economic momentum lost in recent years, as its growth
rate oscillates between 4–5%, and inflation stands at 9% and above.77 It is therefore
no surprise that its first major initiative was the introduction of an economic plan
to reduce inflation, trigger economic growth and create jobs for the approximately
ten million people who join the workforce each year.78 While India’s economic
viability is only marginally affected by its relations with Pakistan—as demon-
strated in the past two decades—the desire to continue the growth path of the
past increased Delhi’s energy and resource needs, hence rendering a cooperative
relationship with Pakistan more and more beneficial—especially in light of the
significant trade flows to and through Pakistan (to Afghanistan and Central Asia).79
In recent years, India and Pakistan have demonstrated a shared interest in ex-
panding bilateral trade, which amounted to US$2.27 billion annually in 2013. This
is largely because they find the cost of trading through third countries like the UAE
India and Pakistan 61

untenable. Informal trade is another major issue. Bilateral trade is in fact one area
where preliminary progress has already been made. In 2012, Pakistan pledged
to grant Most Favored Nation (MFN) status to India and replaced the positive
list for import from India with a negative list.80 After being unable to meet the
MFN pledge due to resistance from the army and trade-wary agriculturists, the
Sharif regime worked out an alternative deal that offered India Non-Discriminatory
Market Access on Reciprocal Basis.81 Meanwhile, the two countries man-
aged to increase the number of tradable items, further expanded cross-border
infrastructure, and simplified visa requirements for traders and businessmen. Since
2010, Afghan exports to India have been transiting through Pakistani territory.
Since 2008, both countries were part of the TAPI gas pipeline project, in which
Pakistan serves as the supply corridor for Central Asian energy to South Asia.82
Persistent lingering territorial conflicts over Kashmir, but also Siachen and Sir
Creek, however, impede the chances to genuinely shift the Pakistani security prior-
ities and to fully mitigate the threat perception in India. During the course of peace
talks in recent years, India has been reluctant in meeting Pakistani expectations
concerning the resolution of Kashmir, which undeniably remains the main territo-
rial dispute between the two countries. The BJP election manifesto had declared
to abrogate Article 370 from the Indian constitution that gives autonomous status
to the State of Jammu and Kashmir. Modi’s first day in office began with one of
his cabinet ministers inviting debate on this constitutional provision. In July 2014,
the Modi regime asked the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and
Pakistan (UNMOGIP) to vacate its offices in Srinagar. On August 12, during a
speech to Indian army and air force soldiers in Jammu and Kashmir, Modi made
reference to “our neighbor’s attitude” of engaging in a proxy war. His subsequent
decision to cancel talks between the two countries’ foreign secretaries scheduled
for August 25 in Islamabad came in response to a meeting held between Islam-
abad’s High Commissioner in New Delhi and Kashmiri separatist leader Shabir
Shah earlier in the day, which he viewed as unacceptable.83 In fact, Pakistani
diplomats meeting members of The All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), the
main Kashmiri separatist group, is a decade-long practice and did not invoke such
responses when Sartaj Aziz, Sharif’s advisor on foreign affairs, had done the same
in November 2013.84 These unwarranted steps by the Modi regime damaged the
newfound climate of goodwill in Indo-Pakistani ties, especially by reinforcing
suspicions in Pakistan about its hostile intentions.
The cross-border terrorist threat from Pakistan has remained India’s central
concern in recent years. New Delhi continues to perceive this threat as an outcome
of the alleged nexus between Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and ji-
hadi groups like Lashkar-e-Tayiba (LeT), who have a history of waging jihad in
Kashmir and are also accused of involvement in major terrorist acts in India such
as the 2008 Mumbai attacks. The Indian government dismisses the possibility that
62 Asian Affairs: An American Review

disgruntled elements of these groups could act independently to conduct cross-

border terrorism.85 The comparatively stable economic and political situation has
furthermore led India to maintain the status quo in security dealings with Islam-
abad. There is no indication that the Sharif regime will be able to meet India’s
counter-terrorism expectations anytime soon as long as the Kashmir dispute re-
mains unsolved. Modi, like Sharif, presents a blend of economic liberalism and
political conservatism and could thus be expectedly more cooperative in pursuing
closer economic relations with Pakistan but simultaneously tougher on the issue of
cross-border terrorism.86 This became apparent during his high profile visit to the
United States in September 2014, when he secured U.S. support for undertaking
“joint and concerted efforts, including the dismantling of safe havens for terrorist
and criminal networks, to disrupt all financial and tactical support for networks
such as al Qaeda, LeT, Jaish-e-Mohammad, the D-Company and the Haqqanis.”87
The persistence of this conflict has often led to sudden escalation of tensions
across the LoC, as happened in 2013. As long as Kashmir remains unresolved
and Pakistan fails to meet India’s counter-terrorism expectations, potential trou-
bles in their security relationship may disrupt whatever progress they are able to
make in their economic relationship. Their competing interests in Afghanistan,
where Pakistan is unnerved about India’s security role and India concerned about
the Taliban’s return to power with Pakistani support, may likewise have such a rip-
ple effect. As their predecessors, the new Indian and Pakistani governments have so
far made little progress in resolving such lingering conflicts. The Sharif regime has
not fulfilled its promise of expediting the Mumbai attack investigation and legal
process. And voices from within the Modi government to remove Article-370 from
the Constitution that gives special status to the state of Jammu and Kashmir as well
as its decision to ask the United Nations Military Observers Group in India and
Pakistan to vacate its Delhi office signaled a hardening of India’s Kashmir stand.88

Shifts in Power Distribution and Declining Third-Party Mediation

The punctuated equilibrium model asserts that rapid shifts in the distribution
of power can contribute to rivalry termination if they lead to unbearable costs
of rivalry maintenance for the weaker side, create new common security threats,
or involve third-party intervention. However, the current system-level conditions
seem to have a rather stabilizing impact on the rivalry. First, growing military
power asymmetries between India and Pakistan sustained conflict between the
two countries for decades, especially by continuing to fuel Pakistan’s insecurity
dilemma.89 Balancing such asymmetries therefore remains a raison d’être and
a guarantee for the military to stay on top of foreign and security issues. Even
though much of India’s defense pursuits are linked to its security relationship with
China, the resultant economic and political cost with regard to Pakistan constitute
a crucial factor in constraining civilian assertion over foreign and security policy.
India and Pakistan 63

A large chunk of Indo-Pakistani defense spending, with a double-digit annual raise

on each side, is fuelled by the other. This is particularly burdensome for Pakistan,
because it spends a much higher percentage of its GDP on defence than India
does—2.88% versus 1.79%, respectively.90 While relative economic prosperity
allows India to spend extensively on defense, Pakistan, whose economy is in dire
straits, chooses to follow suit, largely to balance its security relationship with India.
For instance, Pakistan’s current preference for adding tactical nuclear weapons to
its nuclear inventory is largely in response to India’s so-called Cold Start doctrine.
Unveiled in 2004, the doctrine dictates India’s response to Pakistani incursions
or cross-border terrorism, namely quick but limited conventional military strikes
into Pakistani territory.91 In addition, India has in recent years become the world’s
largest arms buyer, having increased its arms imports by 111% in the past five years
compared with 2004–08.92 There is hence little hope to mitigate the destabilizing
consequences of the Indo-Pakistani power asymmetry to be solved anytime soon.
Second, international actors have also partly contributed to the Indo-Pakistani
conflict by not deterring an arms race between the two countries and limiting
their role to managing crises instead of resolving conflicts. As per theories of
enduring rivalry, in addition to favorable individual and domestic conditions, an
external shock in the system is needed, a disruptive event that makes leaders of
the countries in conflict revise their expectations and open up windows of oppor-
tunity.93 Productive third-party involvement designed to alter the confrontational
foreign policy narrative as well as a structural environment that allows enough
leverage for domestic decision makers to implement and enforce new policies are
also imperative for change to happen. While a shock had occurred with the 2008
Mumbai attacks, it was not the type of shock prescribed in models of enduring
rivalry termination, as it rather reinforced the status-quo ante.94
The United States and China are two countries heavily engaged in South Asia,
and could play an instrumental, though limited, role in persuading or pressuring
India and Pakistan to resolve lingering disputes and promote regional peace. Yet
their track record of engagement with Pakistan shows that both countries have fa-
vored cooperation with military regimes. The Obama Administration did attempt
to side with the elected rulers by offering unconditional civilian assistance under
the Kerry-Lugar Bill. However, pragmatic considerations in the context of the
NATO withdrawal have eventually forced it to rely upon the military for peace-
making in Afghanistan. The United States wants India and Pakistan to achieve a
“stable peace” but has so far stayed away from direct involvement in reshaping
Pakistan’s approach to cross-border terrorism.
China’s decades-long strategic relations with Pakistan have been confined
mostly to developing Pakistan’s security capacity, naturally leading it to also
prefer engagement with the military. Over time, however, Chinese engagement
with Pakistan has transitioned from security to economic cooperation, as the
two countries are currently engaged in a multi-billion Economic Corridor project
64 Asian Affairs: An American Review

that will link the Pakistani seaport Gwadar with China’s Xinjiang province via
a transport network. Simultaneously, China has increasingly expressed concern
over the threat of extremist spillover from Pakistan into Xinjiang province. Over
the years, as its economic relations with India have expanded, China has also
adopted a neutral stance on Kashmir. As for the United States, it did intervene
to defuse the 2002 military standoff by subtly warning India of economic
consequences if it did not budge from its aggressive mode. However, like China
and other regional powers, it has not taken a harder stance toward the two
countries to resolve their lingering conflicts over terrorism and territory. On the
contrary, the United States has at times contributed to their growing asymmetries
through controversial arrangements such as the 2006 Indo-U.S. nuclear deal.
Overall, we argue that the current changes in democratic consolidation and
new leadership are insufficient to trigger rivalry termination for two reasons:
First, the recent initial changes fall short of meeting the threshold that models
of enduring rivalry termination assume to be necessary to alter the rivals’ threat
perception. The new Indian leadership still benefits from maintaining the image
of Pakistan as an enemy, and the Pakistani civilian leadership failed to emerge as
the primary source of the country’s foreign policy orientation. Second, even well
intended policies are undermined by both state-level and system-level factors. The
period immediately following the May 2014 Indian parliament elections strikingly
illustrates the factors derailing initial peace efforts, undermining processes of
change, and maintaining the rivalry. Pakistan’s structural and ideological barriers
to peaceful relations with India are still formidable, even though their traditional
salience may have somewhat diminished due to worsening economic and security
problems facing the country. Pakistan’s India policy is at the very heart of its
overall orientation in international relations, and its political elites and institutions,
which operate in a society with strong patronage networks, have traditionally been
change-averse and bound by structural constraints.95 Such limitations may be
less relevant in India due to its relatively stable democratic institutions, though
the political resurgence of Hindu nationalism constitutes a potential ideological
irritant in the peace process. Given the current constellation of Pakistani fragility
and BJP’s hard stance on terrorism, the process of Indo-Pakistani rapprochement
could therefore be quickly derailed in the event of a new crisis. Nevertheless, a
window of opportunity has opened to kick-start the process of conflict resolution.

Steps Toward Rivalry De-Escalation

Confident voices regarding the future of Indo-Pakistani relations point to

Sharif’s and Modi’s leadership credentials, the prevalence of relatively stable polit-
ical orders in the two countries, their converging focus on economic development
through bilateral and regional cooperation, the security imperatives necessitating
India and Pakistan 65

such cooperation as well as the recent efforts on both sides at building an even-
handed relationship. However, domestic politics, ideological narratives, lingering
conflicts, power asymmetries, and the role of third-parties undermine the prospects
for a rapid breakthrough in their relationship.96 Table 2 provides a summary of
our findings based on the punctuated equilibrium model.
In light of the aforementioned drivers of change and barriers to progress in
Indo-Pakistani ties, what could be the possible way forward for the two countries?
Current political conditions, economic needs and security aspirations of India and
Pakistan seem conducive to consolidating the preliminary gains made in the peace
process in recent years. Modi and Sharif can build on past achievements, which
include a workable roadmap, composite dialogue format, track-two diplomacy
and confidence building measures. The Composite Dialogue, launched during the
previous Sharif regime, was revived in January 2004, and in the subsequent four
years, until the Mumbai attacks of November 2008, made visible progress in the
trade and travel spheres, particularly across the LoC in Kashmir. In 2007, India
and Pakistan were even able to chalk out a draft formula for a Kashmir settlement
through Indo-Pakistani back channel diplomacy.97 The ceasefire along the LoC in
Kashmir has remained in place since late 2003, even though it has been disrupted
twice more recently in early 2013 and late 2014.98 Both nations have also continued
to largely adhere to several other nuclear and conventional Confidence Building
Measures (CBMs) aimed at managing and preventing crises.
Thus, even while mutual distrust and security tensions have repeatedly
prevented the final resolution of disputes, significant potential does exist. In fact, a
solid basis for a workable roadmap to peace between India and Pakistan is already
there. In Pakistan, security imperatives seem to have also caused some policy
rethinking regarding Afghanistan. Fearing that its domestic problem of Taliban
insurgency may worsen in the context of a renewed civil war in Afghanistan
post-2014, Pakistan is inclined to facilitate an “Afghan-led, Afghan-owned”
peace settlement.99 In addition, while Pakistan remains concerned about India’s
role in Afghanistan, this largely focuses on security100 and not so much economic
issues.101 Such inclinations away from the previously pursued ‘strategic depth’
approach are, however, currently still largely of declaratory nature. The risk
that instability in Afghanistan continues to contribute to the stability of the
India-Pakistan rivalry is thus persistent.
With a shared economic agenda, the leaders of the two countries are in favor of
further enhancing bilateral trade, investment and energy cooperation. Pakistan’s
internal economic and security woes, socio-political transformations and regional
compulsions have created an environment that remains broadly conducive to civil-
ian assertion in domestic politics and a meaningful shift in India policy—even if
this process certainly suffered a temporary setback amid political turmoil in late
2014. India’s national agenda under the current leadership is driven by the need
to overcome the recent stagnation in economic growth and has therefore led to
a policy that aims to harness the country’s regional standing and relationships,
66 Asian Affairs: An American Review

TABLE 2. Findings – Punctuated Equilibrium Model and South Asia

in 2013–4

Processes of Conditions for rivalry termination in South

Level rivalry termination Asia

State-level Democratic → Historic democratic transition in Pakistan,

shock consolidation stable government in India
BUT:
→ Democratic setback since mid-2014 in
Pakistan, army leadership principal source of
foreign policy orientation, hybrid democracy
more dispute- and war-prone than full
democracy
→ Lack of shared institutional constraints and
non-violent norms for conflict resolution
→ Ideological divergences trumping elements
of joint democracy
→ Continuous fundamental different state
identities
Regime change → Relatively strong civilian political mandate
and influential political constituencies
→ Civilian leadership priorities advocating
rivalry termination
BUT:
→ Leadership’s deepening ideological
divergences
Civil war → Persistent and acute instability in Pakistan
→ Indicators of shift toward economic
development
BUT:
→Civil war exploited by the adversary
→ Lingering territorial conflicts persistent
primary security concern
System- Shift in regional → Growing dyadic asymmetry, contributing to
level power persistent threat perception and (nuclear)
shock distribution arms race
→ Absence of new common enemy
→ Great power involvement complicate
termination
Dramatic territorial → Absent
changes
World war → Absent

Source: Own compilation, explanatory variables for rivalry termination based on Diehl, Goertz,
2000.
India and Pakistan 67

including with Pakistan. These promising trends create the context for further
progress in economic and security relations between the two countries. As their
economic interests in the region increasingly converge, India and Pakistan will
need to build upon recent achievements in the peace process and find common
ground on Afghanistan, e.g., by replacing a geo-political competition with geo-
economic cooperation, which would likely propel economic gains through direct
trade links with Central Asia and easy access to the region’s vast energy resources.
The challenges ahead for the civilian leaderships of the two countries are indeed
arduous. Pakistan will need to reverse the rigid discourse on Islamic ideology, and
exploit the rare convergence of civil-military interests over combating domestic
terrorism, which would need to eventually extend to countering terrorism in all
forms and manifestations. The regional and international players engaged with
Pakistan, the United States and China in particular, can play a positive role in
helping the country move in such a direction. Their role must also transcend
beyond merely managing Indo-Pakistani crises after their occurrence and move
to encouraging and pressuring the two countries to amicably resolve their long-
pending differences over security issues, including cross-border terrorism and
territorial disputes.
The primary responsibility to enable such a resolution, however, lies with the
civilian regimes of India and Pakistan—to work out a conflict resolution and trust
building mechanism that aims to build upon the critical tools to enable peace
already at their disposal, including the comprehensive CBMs regime and nearly
negotiated deals. Meanwhile, the arms race and high levels of defense spending
continue to impose opportunity costs for both nations. Here, the economic vision
shared by Modi and Sharif can make a difference. The Modi regime could take
the lead in reducing the spending on armaments, which could simultaneously
help India overcome its sluggish economic growth in recent years. But so far his
regime has announced the opposite. If India and Pakistan were to expand trade and
investment to the fullest extent possible, their annual bilateral trade could result
in a GDP trajectory that equals an estimated increase of as much as 1.5%.102
India and Pakistan cannot move ahead on the road to viable peace without
reviving the Composite Dialogue process that was initiated by the Sharif and
Vajpayee regimes in 1997 and included eight agenda issues, including Kashmir.
When the peace process after the Mumbai attacks resumed in early 2011, India
instead opted for “a selective engagement on issues of priority to India. . . Nor-
malisation, in other words, was acceptable if it proceeded piecemeal and not as
an across-the-board process. Pakistan went along with this approach in a spirit
designed to preserve the momentum of normalisation.”103 Modi and Sharif have
to overcome domestic political constraints as well as persisting divergence in their
respective peace agendas: as Pakistan continues to view formal trade relationship
with India as a possible springboard for discussions on the bigger issues, such as
territorial disputes like Kashmir. By contrast, India sees trade normalization as
68 Asian Affairs: An American Review

an end in itself, a stance rooted in New Delhi’s view that the state of Jammu and
Kashmir is an inalienable and irrevocable part of India.
The Modi regime should hence demonstrate interest in resolving Kashmir and
other territorial disputes with Pakistan and the Sharif government must realize
that the test of its intent for friendly relations with the Modi government will
rest on the commitment to the January 2004 Islamabad declaration, in which
Pakistan committed to not allowing its territory to be used for terrorism against
India.104 Pakistan has to overcome the ambivalence and duality inherent in its
counter-terrorism approach by being tough against all jihadi outfits like the TTP
engaged in domestic terrorism or those like LeT who have allegedly used its
soil to conduct terrorism in India. In 2006, India and Pakistan had agreed to
establish a Joint Anti-Terrorism Mechanism. The establishment of an institutional
arrangement to jointly fight terrorism will be crucial to prevent or preempt the
likelihood of another Mumbai-like attack in India. If such an event reoccurs,
whatever gains made in economic and political relations will likely be trumped.
The Indian government would benefit to recognize one pattern in Pakistani
politics: In Pakistan, a country where the military has dominated politics directly
or indirectly—and controlled national security and foreign policy on the basis of
hostility with India—the pursuit of peaceful relations with India is one means the
civilian leaders use to assert their relative position in the domestic power equation
with the military. Sharif had opted for this course during his previous stint in
power by inviting Prime Minister Vajpayee to Pakistan in February 1999 to sign
the historic Lahore Accord. This fateful step led to the Kargil war in summer
1999 and Sharif’s ouster through a military coup later that year. During the event
of the 2013 elections, Sharif declared to “pick up the threads from where we
left in 1999.”105 The key priority of his government has been the revival of the
economy, for which overcoming existing divergences in regional ties is identified
as a key foreign policy prerequisite.106 This makes Sharif Modi’s willing partner
for peace. Thus, rather than recreating unnecessary tensions with Pakistan, which,
in turn, may undermine Sharif regime’s attempts to tilt the civil-military balance
in its favor, the Indian prime minister can instead choose to assist his Pakistani
counterpart by showing due willingness to resolve territorial disputes like Kashmir.
Foreign policy inertia in Pakistan is difficult to overcome. Islamabad’s change-
prone leadership is certainly backed by current economic and security imperatives.
It has to prevail over deeply embedded structural barriers and neutralize domestic
elite’s opposition to new strategies and behaviour, particularly from the military.107
Factors such as the security quagmire, economic crisis, and regional isolation have
deterred it in recent years from intervention in politics and adventurism in the
region. Thus, unlike the 1990s, Sharif has considerable room to maneuver and ex-
pand the scope of civilian power in domestic and foreign policy decision-making.
Ensuring transparency in the national counter-terrorism approach and finding com-
mon ground with India in Afghanistan are two key challenges. Recognizing the
urgency of these matters can contribute to building institutions in trade and politics
India and Pakistan 69

that reduce insecurity, mistrust and ideological enmities and eventually show that
gains trump increasingly painful losses.

NOTES

1. The idea for this article developed during overlapping fellowships at the University of Oxford
in 2013, and we are grateful to our hosts at St. Antony’s College and at the Department of Politics and
International Relations. We also thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. Hannes
Ebert would like to acknowledge the funding from Volkswagen Foundation for his research.
2. Karan Thapar, “A Very Sharif Nawaz,” The Hindustan Times, May 18, 2013.
3. Dean Nelson, “Narendra Modi Says India and Pakistan Should be Allies in War on Poverty,”
The Daily Telegraph, May 2, 2014.
4. C. Raja Mohan, Pakistan, in Modi’s Eyes (Delhi: Observer Research Founda-
tion, April 22, 2014), http://orfonline.org/cms/sites/orfonline/modules/analysis/AnalysisDetail.html?
cmaid=65770&mmacmaid=65771
5. Ellen Barry, “Before Taking Office in India, Modi Sends an Invitation to Pakistan,” The New
York Times, May 21, 2014.
6. “Nawaz Sharif Talks ‘Common Economic Destiny’ in His Letter to Narendra Modi,” The
Indian Express, June 12, 2014; “Nawaz Receives Letter from Narendra Modi,” The Express Tribune,
June 14, 2014.
7. Andrew North, “Why India-Pakistan Friendship Still Looks a Long Way off,” BBC News,
June 26, 2014, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-28031085.
8. This pattern of behavior reveals a historic continuity. In the generally hostile relationship
between the two nuclear-equipped nations, which have fought four wars and faced several military
standoffs, similar commitments to peace have often faced formidable barriers. Several attempts to
de-escalation in the past decades such as India’s unilateral grant of the Most Favoured Nation status to
Pakistan in 1995, their mutual agreement on the Composite Dialogue in 1997, the Lahore Accord in
1999 and the enforcement of ceasefire across the LoC in Kashmir in 2003, failed to produce substantive
policy outcomes. The renewed cooperative approach opted for by the recently elected leaders therefore
calls for a thorough assessment of the present conditions and future prospects of bilateral relations.
9. Substantial rapprochement with India during the period was further delayed by the prospects
of the Indian parliamentary elections. During the election year, the Pakistani government increasingly
perceived the residing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as a “lame duck” that lacked the political
capital necessary to take any substantial decisions on foreign policy.
10. “Speech at UN General Assembly: Kashmir Cannot be Sidelined, Says PM,” The Express
Tribune, September 27, 2014.
11. On the reasons why the talks were cancelled, see Alisan Berland and Michael Kugel-
man, “Is There Any for India-Pakistan Relations?, Foreign Policy, September 2, 2014; Ellen
Barry, “India Cancels Talks After Pakistani Envoy Meets With Separatists,” The New York Times,
August 18, 2014; Kaustav Chakrabarti, “Why the Talks Were Cancelled,” Foreign Policy Blog,
http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/10/10/why-the-talks-were-cancelled/, October 10, 2014; Ali Ahmed,
“A More Aggressive India,” The Diplomat, November 7, 2014. The latter explains the decision with
reference to a shift toward bilateralism in India’s Kashmir policy, as manifest in the BJP election
manifesto and the selection of Ajit Doval, a former intelligence officer and hardliner, as new National
Security Advisor, and the BJP’s attempt to win support of Kashmir political parties that oppose sep-
aratist aspirations prior to the state election in Kashmir; and on Modi’s U.S. visit, see Raza Rumi,
“Foreign Policy – A Case of Increasing Isolation,” The Express Tribune, October 5, 2014.
12. See Paul Diehl, “Book Review. Why Enduring Rivalries Do – or Don’t – End, by Eric W.
Cox,” Perspectives on Politics 9, no. 1 (2005): 215–6, 215; and Zeev Maoz and Ben Mor. Bound by
Struggle. The Strategic Evolution of Enduring International Rivalries (Ann Arbor, MI: University of
Michigan Press, 2002), 4–5. More specifically, the latter study defines enduring rivalry as a long-term
conflict between two states exhibiting four characteristics: “1) an outstanding set of unresolved issues;
2) strategic interdependence, implying a mutual perception as strategic rivals and a strong military
and intelligence focus on the respective adversary; 3) psychological manifestations of enmity; and 4)
repeated militarized conflict” (ibid: 5). In an earlier treatment, Charles Gochman and Zeev Maoz define
70 Asian Affairs: An American Review

enduring rivalries as “strategic competitions that extend over a long period of time of over a generation
or more that involve the same pair of states, and that have multiple crises and wars. These rivalries are
typified by a number of militarized disputes, defined as ‘a set of interactions between or among states
involving threats to use military forces, displays of military force, or actual uses of military force. (. . .)
These acts must be explicit, overt, nonaccidental, and government sanctioned” (Charles Gochman and
Zeev Maoz, “Militarized Interstate Disputes, 1816–1976: Procedures, Patterns, and Insights,” Journal
of Conflict Resolution 28, no. 4 (1984): 587. In a valuable addition, T.V. Paul notes that “sustained
hostile interactions, in terms of severity, intensity, and duration, are the distinctive characteristics
of an enduring rivalry” (T.V. Paul, “Why has the India-Pakistan Rivalry Been so Enduring? Power
Asymmetry and an Intractable Conflict”, Security Studies 15, no. 4 (2006): 600–630, 602). There is
disagreement about spatial and temporal scopes. Paul Diehl and Gary Goertz, for example, narrow their
spatial focus on dyadic, interstate relations, as opposed to more complex triadic rivalries or regional
security complexes; see Paul Diehl and Gary Goertz, War and peace in international rivalry. How
do enduring rivalries between states affect international relations? (Ann Arbor, MI: University of
Michigan Press, 2000), 20, 28. The temporal threshold of a minimum of 20 years is discussed in ibid:
21. A more narrow focus is advocated by William Thompson, “Identifying rivals and rivalries in world
politics,” International Studies Quarterly 45, no. 4 (2001): 557–586. Concepts such as “protracted
conflict” or “intractable conflict” are mostly synonymous of the concept of enduring rivalries, see
Maoz and Mor, 2002, 5.
13. Diehl and Goertz 2000, 44.
14. Drawing on data gathered at the Correlates of War Project, an authoritative source for data
on the evolution of warfare, Paul Diehl and Gary Goertz demonstrate that in the period between 1949
and 2001, only about 5% of interstate rivalries became “enduring,” yet this minority accounted for
approximately three-quarters of all militarized disputes and over 80% of interstate wars (Paul Diehl,
2011, “Review: Why Enduring Rivalries Do – or Don’t – End, by Eric Cox”, Perspectives on Politics 9
no. 1 (2011): 215–216, 215. Diehl notes that “enduring rivalries, long-standing militarized competitions
between the same pairs of states (e.g., India and Pakistan), are perhaps the most dangerous phenomena
in international relations, accounting for approximately three-fourths of militarized disputes and over
80% of wars. They also play central roles in increasing internal state capacity, and they consume
enormous economic and political resources necessary to sustain them”; see Paul Diehl, “Book Review.
Why Enduring Rivalries Do – or Don’t – End, by Eric W. Cox”, Perspectives on Politics 9 no. 1 (2011):
215–216, 215. For the data, see http://www.correlatesofwar.org
15. Maoz and Mor, Bound by struggle, 3.
16. Paul Diehl and Gary Goertz, “The Rivalry Process: How Rivalries are Sustained and Ter-
minated,” in What Do We Know About War?, ed. John Vasquez (Plymouth: Rowman and Littlefield,
2012), 83–111, 83.
17. Gary Goertz and Paul Diehl, “Enduring Rivalries: Theoretical Constructs and Empirical
Patterns,” International Studies Quarterly 37, no. 2 (1993): 147–171. See also Garry Goertz and
Paul Diehl, “The Empirical Importance of Enduring Rivalries,” International Interactions 18, no. 2
(1992): 151–163.
18. While different studies on “enduring rivalries” employ diverging definitions of the phe-
nomenon, we are not aware of any study that excludes the South Asian rivalry from this category;
see also Paul Diehl, Gary Goertz, and Daniel Saeedi, “Theoretical specifications of enduring rivalries:
applications to the India-Pakistan case,” in: The India-Pakistan Conflict. An Enduring Rivalry, ed.
T.V. Paul (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 27–54, 27; and Daniel Geller, “The India-
Pakistan rivalry: prospects for war, prospects for peace,” in The India-Pakistan conflict: An Enduring
Rivalry, ed. T.V. Paul (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 80–103, 101: “Employing
standard time/density dispute criteria with the Militarized Interstate Dispute database, it is calculated
that the India/Pakistan dyad constitutes an enduring rivalry from 1947 through 2001 (the last year in
the data set). Over the period of fifty-five years between 1947 and 2001, India and Pakistan engage
in forty-three militarized disputes. Thirty-four of these disputes involve the use of force by at least
one state. Thirty of these disputes involve the use of force by both states. Four of these disputes are
classified as wars. Given the continuing rivalry between India and Pakistan, the likelihood of future
war for this dyad must be considered high.”
19. Both factors are common features in most rivalries; see Frank Wayman, “Rivalries: Recurrent
Disputes and Explaining War,” in What Do We Know about War?, ed. John Vasquez (Lanham, MD:
Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), 219–234.
India and Pakistan 71

20. Goertz Diehl, “Enduring Rivalries,” 147–171. See also Goertz and Diehl, “The Empirical
Importance of Enduring Rivalries,” 151–163.
21. Diehl, Goertz, Saeedi, 2005: 42. The authors note that between 1949 and 2001, the frequency
of high-level conflict in the India-Pakistan conflict is greater than in all other enduring rivalries except
the one between Israel-Egypt and China-Japan. For the definition of severity, see Diehl and Goertz,
2000, 25. However, the wars in 1947/8, 1965, and 1971 were “all characterized by a low threshold of
violence, limited scope and short duration” due to a “common British imperial heritage, the lack of
doctrinal innovation, and the paucity of highly sophisticated weaponry.” See Sumit Gangulay, “Wars
without End: The Indo-Pakistani Conflict,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and
Social Science 541, no. 1 (1995): 167–178, 167.
22. This distinction is made by William Thompson, “Principal Rivalries,” Journal of Conflict
Resolution 39, no. 2 (1995): 195–223.
23. See Karen Rasler, William R. Thompson, and Sumit Ganguly, How Rivalries End (Philadel-
phia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), who also refer to Argentina-Paraguay in the mid-
nineteenth century and Cuba-US in the contemporary period. For the concept of “truncated asymmetry,”
see T. V. Paul (2006). For a useful treatment of the conditions under which meaningful negotiations are
possible in asymmetric conflicts, see Brantly Womack, China and Vietnam: The Politics of Asymmetry
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
24. Diehl, Goertz, and Saeedi, 2005: 39.
25. Ibid. They point to a striking observation: “In forty-three confrontations [between 1949–2001],
Pakistan was never successful in achieving its goals.”
26. An instructive overview of models of enduring rivalry termination is provided by Rasler,
Thompson, Ganguly, 2013: 195–227. In addition, there are numerous studies that discuss the conditions
for the maintenance, de-escalation and eventual termination of the South Asian rivalry without explicit
reference to the enduring rivalry literature. Most recently. Stephen Cohen identified six major existing
explanations for the maintenance of the India-Pakistan rivalry: (1) civilizational differences (“Hindus
vs. Muslims”); (2) fundamentally different state identities (“secular versus religious,” “democratic vs
non-democratic”); (3) power politics; (4) geo-military and nuclear rivalry; (5) individual and group
identity; and (6) outside powers’ involvement (most importantly the US, which at times complicated
de-escalation). Cohen dismisses most of these explanations, arguing that a set of three factors majorly
perpetuate the conflict: (1) Visible disputes over matters such as Kashmir, river water, and several
territorial claims; (2) identity issues between the state institutions (not the two peoples, which share
many commonalities); and (3) strategic pressure points, such as Afghanistan (Stephen Cohen, Shooting
for a Century: The India-Pakistan Conundrum (Noida: Harper Collins, 2013), 165); see also Rajesh
Basrur, “From Conflict to Cooperation: The Politics of Change in India-Pakistan Relations,” in India-
Pakistan Relations: Courting Peace from Corridors of War, ed. P. M. Kamath (New Delhi: Promilla &
Co Publishers, 2005), 57–72; and Sumit Ganguly, Conflict Unending. India-Pakistan Tensions Since
1947 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001). From the monadic perspective of Pakistan’s India
policy, Christine Fair identifies four endogenous and three exogenous game changers: (1) Genuine
democratic consolidation (necessary, but insufficient); (2) civil society consolidation (forcing the
army to alter its policies); (3) economic shocks (dramatic recession that would make liberalization
inevitable); (4) increasing regional diversity in the army officer corps as a result of changing patterns
of recruitment potentially eroding the military’s status-quo views, values and ideology on India; (5)
natural disaster; (6) destruction of the nuclear arsenal by the US; and (7) US significantly bolstering
the support of civilians (Christine Fair, Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army’s Way of War (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2014), 261–77).
27. Paul Diehl and Gary Goertz, War and Peace in International Rivalry. How Do Enduring
Rivalries Between States Affect International Relations? (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan
Press, 2000).
28. Moreover, Karen Rasler, William Thompson, and Sumit Ganguly applied the expectancy
revision model to the case of South Asia, see Karen Rasler, William Thompson, and Sumit Ganguly,
How Rivalries End (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press). While they write at a time
when civilian rule had persisted for several years, they similarly conclude that chances for significant
de-escalation are low. They observe that between 1947 and the time of writing, “despite external
shocks, third-party pressures, and the presence of change-seeking entrepreneurs there has been only
72 Asian Affairs: An American Review

one important time span (1972–1979) when the rivalry saw significant de-escalation. However, even
during this period, the underlying sources of discord remained unabated. Intransigence and a lack
of reinforcement from the adversary as well as other exogenous shocks brought this period of de-
escalation to a close” (ibid: 124). Multilateral, third-party, and bilateral initiatives failed to resolve
the conflict, and both endogenous and exogenous shocks failed to dramatically alter the course of the
rivalry toward termination. Two main factors stabilized the status quo: First, the historically developed
revisionism of Pakistan’s foreign policy, with Kashmir constituting a core identity issue for the army;
and, second, the praetorian state structure in Pakistan. Civilian regimes, when in power, have not
performed markedly better: “[s]since they have existed at the sufferance of the military, their ability
to shift the terms of popular and even elite discourse within Pakistan has been limited” and “fledgling
democratic regimes, often seeking quick populist pathways to bolstering their legitimacy, have simply
sought to outbid the military in their dealing with India” (ibid: 142–3). Moreover, the rivalry had
“not experienced the appropriate type of shock so far” (ibid: 144). Third-party pressures and rare
acts of reciprocity have been insufficient to alter the expectations of the adversaries’ leaderships, not
at least due to a lack of incoming new change entrepreneurs. Lastly, they conclude that under these
circumstances, two conditions would be necessary for the rivalry to end: “1) the Pakistani state and
especially the military apparatus will inexorably come to the realization that they cannot compete with
India and that it thereby makes sense to abandon a policy of unremitting hostility; or, 2) a powerful
third party, which has the incentive and the capabilities to alter the internal structure of the Pakistani
state, will diminish the overweening role of the security establishment” (ibid.).
29. Diehl and Goertz, 2000: 138.
30. Diehl and Goertz, 2012: 99.
31. Diehl and Goertz, 2000: 223–228.
32. See Paul Diehl, Gary Goertz, and Daniel Saeedi, “Theoretical Specifications of Enduring
Rivalries: Applications to the India-Pakistan Case,” in The India-Pakistan Conflict. An Enduring
Rivalry, ed. T. V. Paul (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 27–54, 53.
33. Diehl and Goertz, 2000: 127.
34. Ibid: 48.
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid.
37. Ibid: 50. Similarly, Daniel Geller notes that “Pakistan is not a democratic polity. Therefore,
India/Pakistan is a mixed dyad with regard to political systems and is lacking shared non-violent
norms for conflict resolution as well as shared institutional constraints on war decisions. A new crisis
impacting this dyad will not benefit from the conflict-dampening effects of the democratic peace.”
See Geller, 2005, 82. For more recent accounts on the link between (joint) democracy and rivalry
termination prospects, also see the stable peace model in Charles Kupchan, How Enemies Become
Friends. The Sources of Stable Peace (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), which assumes
that rivalry termination proceeds in four phases: unilateral accommodation, mutual accommodation
and trust, societal integration and trust, and a shared common identity. According to his model, joint
democracy might work as a facilitating factor for rivalry termination, but does by no means constitute
a necessary condition. Similarly, Eric Cox’s model of rivalry termination, democratic institutions bear
a facilitating role but do not constitute necessary variables. See Eric Cox, Why Enduring Rivalries Do
– or Don’t – End (Boulder, CO: First Forum, 2010). What is needed instead is a leadership change
toward a more “dovish,” “moderate” orientation toward the adversary which is open to concessions
and compromise.
38. “The Search for Accommodation: Gorbachev in Comparative Perspective,” in: Richard Ned
Lebow and Thomas Risse-Kappen (eds.), International Relations Theory and the End of the Cold War
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 167–86.
39. Diehl, Goertz, and Saeedi 2005: 52.
40. Ibid: 53.
41. Diehl, Goertz, and Saeedi, 2005: 51.
42. Ibid: 50.
43. Diehl and Goertz, 2000: 185–221, 216: “Compared to other less intense rivalries, enduring
ones were up to twice as likely to involve a third party (almost two-thirds of enduring rivalries actually
had at least one mediation effort), and the average number of mediation attempts was significantly
India and Pakistan 73

greater in the enduring rivalry context. Thus, as we anticipated, the most serious forms of international
conflict draw the greatest attention of third-party efforts.”
44. Diehl, Goertz, and Saeedi, 2005: 51.
45. Frederic Grare, Is Pakistan’s Behavior Changing? (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace, January 30, 2013).
46. Razia Musarrat, Ghulam Ali, and Muhammad Salman Azhar, “18th Amendment and Its
Impact on Pakistan’s Politics,” Journal of Sociological Research 3, no. 1 (2012).
47. Frederic Grare and Reece Trevor, How Will Elections Impact Pakistan’s Foreign
Policy? (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, April 4, 2013),
http://carnegieendowment.org/2013/04/04/how-will-elections-impact-pakistan-s-foreign-policy/
fxen; Amir Zia, “Sharif for Peace,” The News International, June 3, 2013.
48. Gareth Price, India and Pakistan: Changing the Narratives (Oslo: CIDOB Policy Research
Project, for Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre, 2012): 15. Gareth Price, India and Pak-
istan: Changing the Narratives (Oslo: CIDOB Policy Research Project, for Norwegian Peacebuilding
Resource Centre, 2012): 15.
49. Ellen Barry, “Before Taking Office in India, Modi Sends an Invitation to Pakistan,” The New
York Times, May 21, 2014.
50. C. Raja Mohan, “The Legacy of Vajpayee and Singh,” Observer Research Founda-
tion, May 16, 2014, http://orfonline.org/cms/sites/orfonline/modules/analysis/AnalysisDetail.html?
cmaid=66621&mmacmaid=46594.
51. Ishtiaq Ahmad, “Narendra Modi: Peacemaker or Warmonger?,” Weekly Pulse, May 23, 2014,
http://ishtiaqahmad.com/item display.aspx?listing id=877&listing type=1.
52. See Sanjay Kumar, “New Delhi Cancels India-Pakistan talks,” The Diplomat, August 20, 2014;
Talat Masood, “Modi’s Hostility to Pakistan,” The Express Tribune, October 29, 2014; and Krittivas
Mukherjee, Narendra Modi’s tough talk on Pakistan’s proxy war may undermine Nawaz Sharif,” The
Hindustan Times, August 12, 2014.
53. Sumit Ganguly and Christine Fair, “The Structural Origins of Authoritarianism in Pakistan,”
Commonwealth & Comparative Politics 51, no. 1 (2013): 122–142.
54. Shaiq Hussain and Simon Denyer, “Pakistan Grants India ‘Most Favored Nation’ Trade Status,”
The Washington Post, November 2, 2011.
55. Vikram Sood, “Why India Must Put Any Overtures to Pakistan on Hold?” Rediff
News, May 15, 2014, http://www.rediff.com/news/column/why-india-must-put-any-overtures-to-
pakistan-on-hold/20140515.htm.
56. Sumit Ganguly, “What will Narendra Modi’s foreign policy be like?”, BBC News, May 21,
2014, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-27482166
57. Maleeha Lodhi, “Who Foiled a Deal on Siachen?”, The News International, May 20, 2014.
58. Sharon Behen, “Pakistan PM: Economy Tops Foreign Policy Agenda,” VOA News, June 5,
2013. Andrew North, “Why India-Pakistan Friendship Still Looks a Long Way off,” BBC News, June
26, 2014, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-28031085.
59. For a detailed analysis of Sharif’s India policy, see Ishtiaq Ahmad and Hannes Ebert, “Will
Pakistan’s India Policy under Sharif Shift Strategically?,” Strategic Analysis 37, no. 6 (November
2013): 667–674; and Lisa Curtis, “India and Pakistan Under Modi,” The National Interest, April 2,
2014.
60. Cyril Almeida, “Nawaz Sharif Must Mend Pakistan’s Three Fault Lines,” The Guardian, May
13, 2013.
61. Huma Yusuf, Pakistan Grants India Most Favored Nation Trading Status?, Asia Pacific
Bulletin (Washington: East-West Center, November 10, 2011).
62. Sajad Padder, The Composite Dialogue Between India and Pakistan: Structure, Process and
Agency, Heidelberg Papers in South Asian and Comparative Politics (Heidelberg: Heidelberg Univer-
sity, 2012); and Steve Coll, “The Stand-off,” The New Yorker, February 13, 2006.
63. “It’s Tough Time for Pak-India Ties: Sethi,” The News International, May 19, 2014.
64. Isac Kfir, Nawaz Sharif and Narendera Modi: Are We Witnessing a New Dawn in South Asia?
(New York: Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism, May 28, 2014) http://insct.syr.edu/
nawaz-sharif-narendra-modi-witnessing-new-dawn-south-asia/
74 Asian Affairs: An American Review

65. Niharika Mandhana, “Incoming Indian PM Invites Regional Neighbors to Inauguration,” The
Wall Street Journal, May 22, 2014.
66. Dipanjan Roy Chaudhry and Masood Hussain, “Elections 2014: Narendra Modi Likely to
Follow a More Muscular Policy Towards Pakistan If He becomes Prime Minister,” The Economic Times,
May 3, 2014. Niharika Mandhana, “How Will Modi Change India’s Relationship With Pakistan?,”
Wall Street Journal, May 1, 2014. BJP’s election manifesto can be found at http://www.bjp.org/images/
pdf 2014/full manifesto english 07.04.2014.pdf
67. “India, Pakistan Decide to Explore Way Forward at Modi-Sharif Meeting,” The Financial
Express, May 27, 2014.
68. Mudassir Raja, “Pakistani Victims: War on Terror Toll Put at 49,000,” The Express Tribune,
March 27, 2013.
69. Ishaan Tharoor, “Why Pakistan’s Offensive on the Taliban is a Very Big Deal,” The Washington
Post, June 17, 2014; Aqil Shah, “Pakistan Fights Back: Behind the Operation in North Waziristan,”
Foreign Affairs, June 19, 2014.
70. Amir Mir, “Army to Step up War Against Taliban under Gen Raheel,” The News International,
November 29, 2013; and BBC, “Raheel Sharif Named as New Pakistan Army Commander,” BBC
News Asia, November 27, 2013.
71. Daniel Markey, A Pakistani Strategic Shift? (Washington, DC, 2013), http://docs.house.
gov/meetings/FA/FA13/20130319/100524/HHRG-113-FA13-Wstate-MarkeyD-20130319.pdf.; Na-
jam Sethi, “New Existential Paradigms,” The Friday Times, August 17–23, 2012. http://www.
thefridaytimes.com/beta3/tft/article.php?issue=20120817&page=1#sthash.7hS2SX08.dpuf
72. Price, 2012, 2.
73. Economic crisis is not included in the list of endogenous political shocks in the punctuated
equilibrium model, but can be reasonably derived from parts of the study and has explicitly been
mentioned by others, see for example Thompson (2001).
74. Dhruva Jaishankar, “Does India’s New Prime Minister Actually Have a Foreign Policy?”,
Foreign Policy, May 19, 2014.
75. Barry, “Before Taking Office in India, Modi Sends an Invitation to Pakistan.”
76. Curtis, “India and Pakistan Under Modi.”
77. “Modi’s Mission,” The Economist, May 24, 2014.
78. Frank Daniel, “New Government Reveals Plan for Jobs, Low Inflation,” Reuters, June 9, 2014.
79. One could, however, also argue that Pakistan does not feature prominently in India’s economic
agenda, and that Delhi’s focus on geoeconomic policies might actually distract from engaging with
Pakistan.
80. “Trade between India and Pakistan Surges 21% to $2.4 Billion,” The Express Tribune, May
14, 2013.
81. Shahbaz Reza, “Non-Discriminatory Market Access: Pakistan, India All But Sign Trade
Normalization Deal,” The Express Tribune, March 15, 2014.
82. See Ishtiaq Ahmad, “Pakistan’s ‘Regional Pivot’ and the Endgame in Afghanistan,” IPRI
Journal 13 (2013): 13–16.
83. Allison Berland and Michael Kugelman, “Is There Any Hope for India-Pakistan Relations?”
Foreign Policy, September 2, 2014.
84. Sadia Fazal, “Off to a Bad Start,” Business Recorder, August 28, 2014.
85. In many of the high-profile terrorist attacks targeting key military and civilian installa-
tions and personnel, those accused of involvement or accepting responsibility hail from jihadi
organizations previously involved in jihad in Kashmir. Their grievances arise from Pakistan’s
post-9/11 support to the US War on Terror and consequent inability to provide active support
for Kashmir militancy. See “India and Pakistan: Right-Leaning Governments Take The Stage in
the Subcontinent’s Geopolitics,” Stratfor, May 27, 2014, http://www.stratfor.com/sample/analysis/
india-and-pakistan-right-leaning-governments-take-stage-subcontinents-geopolitics
86. Hussain Zaidi, “The Indian Dilemma,” The News International, June 2, 2014.
87. Raza Rumi, “Foreign Policy—A Case of Increasing Isolation,” The Express Tribune, October
5, 2014.
88. Sameer Yasir, “Losing Faith in Modi: Article 370 Debate Dims Hopes in Kash-
mir,” Firstpost, June 3, 2014, http://www.firstpost.com/politics/losing-faith-in-modi-article-370-
India and Pakistan 75

controversy-dims-hope-in-kashmir-1552077.html; and Ishfaq-ul Hassan, “Has UNMOGIP Outlived

Its Utility? The Debate Continues, Daily News & Analysis, July 13, 2014, http://www.dnaindia.com/
india/report-has-unmogip-outlived-its-utility-the-debate-continues-2001679
89. Rajesh Basrur, Domestic Politics and Systemic Constraints in Pakistan’s India Policy, Brief
(Bradford: Pakistan Security Research Unit (PSRU), Bradford University, 2010).
90. “Indian Defense Budget Will Hit Hard Modernization of Armed Forces,” The Times of India,
March 6, 2013.
91. Zachary Keck, “India, Cold Start and Pakistani Tactical Nukes,” The Diplomat, May 8, 2013.
92. Michael Pizzi, “Report: India Remains World’s Largest Arms Buyer,” Al-
Jazeera, March 17, 2014, http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/3/17/india-still-worldslargest
armsbuyerasasianrivalriesheatup.html.
93. Karen Rasler, “Shocks, Expectancy Revision, and the De-escalation of Protracted Conflicts:
The Israeli-Palestinian Case,” Journal of Peace Research 37, no. 6 (November 1, 2000): 200.
94. See also Rasler, Thompson, Ganguly 2013: 144. War defeats, a critical kind of political shock,
are usually associated with rivalry termination, yet, they argue that despite devastating war defeats,
the India-Pakistan rivalry demonstrates that “war defeats can be less shocking than they might be
[as assumed in the expectancy revision model] if the full impact of losing a war is constrained by
international norms and third parties.”
95. The stability of foreign policy in other world regions is explored, for example, by David.
Welch, Painful Choices: A Theory of Foreign Policy Change (Princeton University Press, 2005);
Christine Fair explores more particularly the army’s persistent role in politics; see Christine Fair,
“Why the Pakistan Army Is Here to Stay: Prospects for Civilian Governance,” International Affairs
87, no. 3 (2011): 571–588. Finally, for a discussion of the impact of patronage networks on political
inertia, see Alexander Evans, “Continuity and Change in Pakistani Politics,” Contemporary South Asia
20, no. 2 (June 2012): 213–224.
96. For the most authoritative explanation on the ideological sources of the rivalry and how these
have laid the foundation for recurring territorial conflicts and opportunistic clashes, see Sumit Ganguly,
Conflict Unending. India-Pakistan Tensions since 1947(New York: Columbia University Press, 2001):
4-8. For a more recent account, see also Stephen Cohen, Shooting for a Century. The India-Pakistan
Conundrum (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution Press, 2013): 118–147.
97. Sachin Parashar, “Manmohan Singh, Musharraf Came Close to Striking Kashmir Deal: Wik-
ileaks” The Times of India, September 3, 2011.
98. Ahmad and Ebert, 2013, 671–673.
99. Nadim Hussain, “Pakistan’s New, Optimistic Afghan Strategy,” Foreign Policy, June 17,
2014; and Pamela Constable, “Pakistan’s Army Chief Seeks ‘Friendly and Stable’ Afghanistan,” The
Washington Post, February 2, 2010.
100. New Delhi’s military dealings with Kabul, including the provision of armaments and training
of Afghan National Army personnel, surely add to Pakistani security establishment’s persisting fear
of being encircled on eastern and western fronts. This is one major factor behind Pakistan’s reluctance
to address Indian and international concerns about its dual or ambivalent counter-terrorism approach.
101. See The Jinnah Institute, Pakistan, the United States and the Endgame in Afghanistan: Per-
ceptions of Pakistan’s Foreign Policy Elite (Islamabad: The Jinnah Institute and US Institute of Peace,
2011): 12–13.
102. Shuja Nawaz and Mohan Guruswamy,” India and Pakistan: The Opportunity Cost of Conflict
(Washington, DC: The Atlantic Council, 2013): 19.
103. Maleeha Lodhi, “Test of Diplomacy Ahead,” The News International, March 18, 2014.
104. Imtiaz Gul, “Managing Modi.” The Friday Times, May 13, 2014.
105. Nitin Gokhalae, “A New Opportunity for Indo-Pakistan Relations,” The Diplomat, May 29,
2013.
106. Sharon Behen, “Pakistan PM: Economy Tops Foreign Policy Agenda,” VOA News, June 5,
2013.
107. Rasler, Thompson, Ganguly, 2013: 19 How Rivalries End (University of Pennsylvania Press,
2013), 19.