South Asian Politics Seminar: "Fighting to the End, the Pakistan Army's Way of War" | C. Christine Fair, Georgetown
February 26, 2014
Join us this Friday for the Brown-Harvard-MIT Joint Seminar on South Asian Politics’ first lecture of the semester. Professor C. Christine Fair, from Georgetown University, will present the findings of her forthcoming book on the strategic culture of Pakistan’s army. Based on decades of the army’s own defense publications, which provide insights into how it sees the world in which it inhabits, Dr. Fair asks why – after starting three largely unsuccessful wars, and continuing a proxy war in Kashmir for 25 years – the army continues to pursue a policy of using non-state actors under a nuclear umbrella despite international opprobrium upon itself and the country. Pakistan continues to see itself as India’s equal and demands the world do the same, she argues: in the army’s distorted view of history, it remains victorious so long as it can resist India’s purported hegemony and the territorial status quo. To acquiesce is defeat. Because the army is unlikely to abandon these preferences, the world must prepare for an ever more dangerous future Pakistan.
C. Christine Fair is an assistant professor in the Peace and Security Studies Program, within Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. She has served as a senior political scientist with the RAND Corporation, a political officer to the UN Assistance Mission to Afghanistan in Kabul, and as a senior research associate in USIP’s Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention. She is also a senior fellow with the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. Her research focuses upon political and military affairs in South Asia, and her previous publications cover a range of security issues in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
Friday, Feb. 28th | 2:30pm
MIT Center for International Studies
Lucian Pye Conference Room, E40-496
1 Amherst Street
Cambridge, MA 02142