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Friends, Not Allies:
India-US Equation in the 21st Century
-- B Ramesh Babu
In the last six decades, India-US equation has gone through many ups and downs, mostly downswings till the 1990s. The transition of India-US relations from ‘divergence’ in essence in the 1950s to considerable “convergence” by the beginning of the 21st century is indeed a fascinating, complex and compelling story. Today, the two countries can be called “friends, not allies”. By way of contrast, Pakistan and the US can be seen as “allies, not friends.” Two decades of liberalization and globalization since 1990s has brought the two “estranged democracies” closer than ever before. As the reform process widened and deepened (under successive governments), the country moved closer to the US ideologically and politically at home and abroad. The most significant development in the growing proximity between the two countries since the 1990s is the India-US Nuclear Deal. However, Indo-US cooperation in this sector is at a dead end now. Since the time of President Clinton, the number, variety, scope of the ever-growing linkages (called initiatives, dialogues, agreements, partnerships, and joint military exercises, etc.) between the two sides are staggering indeed. Though the two countries have no territorial or fundamental conflicts to keep them apart, both governments are wary of each other on many counts and do not see eye-to-eye on most of the crucial challenges confronting the world today. Convergence at the cosmic level and divergence at the concrete level will continue to be the key hassle in India-US relations at the present and in the future. This paper takes a close look at the India-US equation in 21st century. © 2013 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Iran and Israel:
Construing the Past and Envisaging the Future
--Priya Singh
Contemporary Israel and Iran comprise the two most evidently antagonistic nations in the world, sharing a particularly pronounced confrontational relationship. However, prior to the Iranian Revolution of 1979, Iran and Israel were allies who cooperated extensively with one another, recognized their shared interests and developed informal relations and security alliances. The connect between the two nations was deeper than geopolitics. It could be traced back to the depths of Jewish and Persian history. Following the revolution and Iran’s embrace of a more radical ideology along with a recalculation of its national interests, Iran and Israel came to be viewed as ideological and political opposites. This resulted in a deterioration of the two states’ previously close, albeit informal relationship to the present state of affairs. The animosity between the two former allies was often represented as a clash of civilizations: a supposedly secular western democracy against a backward, theological authoritarian regime. Yet, in reality there were remarkable similarities in their geopolitical strategy, national and religious ideology and domestic social psychology. A more inclusive understanding of the relationship between these two states is therefore imperative to evaluate the current state of Iranian and Israeli relations, as well as the Israeli threat perceptions of the Iranian regime. While many in Israel today, including the current political dispensation, consider Iran to be an ancient enemy and an existential threat, yet, given the two states’ history of interfaces there are future scenarios that could provide a catalyst for improving relations between Iran and Israel, which in turn could have profound implications for the region at large. © 2013 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Great Powers Vs. Weak States: The Case of Cyprus
-- Nicos Panayiotides
This paper focuses on the efforts of the international community for the solution of the Cyprus problem starting from the 1950s to the present. Using the Cyprus problem as a case study, the paper explores the interaction between the international and constitutional dimensions of the problem. More specifically, it seeks to answer the question as to how and to what extent the international balance of power influenced Greek Cypriots’ effort in settling the conflict. By using the theory of patron-client relations, the paper presents the limits and dilemmas that weak states face in implementing foreign policy, especially when they confront regional powers who exert important geopolitical influence on the subsystem they belong to. © 2013 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
New Light on the Emergency: The Communist
Insurrection in Malaya (1948-1960)
--Laurent Metzger
A lot has been written on the Undeclared War—the Communist Uprising—which has been called the Emergency in Malaya after the Second World War. Yet new documents have been produced recently which can help us have a more complete outlook of that insurrection. Moreover, quite a few novels and films have also been made on the same. Therefore, if we take into consideration all these new sources, some of which are memoirs written by the protagonists of such war both by the communists themselves as well as by people from the other side, we have now at our disposal quite a few brand new sources of information. True, all these documents do not change completely our views on the events which unfurled during 12 years, but they contribute to give us a better understanding of what happened there and then. Obviously, the most intriguing of all these memoirs are those written by the former Secretary-General of the Malayan Communist Party, Chin Peng. Not only do we have his memoirs but also the minutes of a Seminar which was held in Canberra at the turn of the 20th century in which he was asked by academics and civil servants to comment on such events in which he took part when he was leading the uprising. This paper takes a close look at the event in the light of the new disclosures. © 2013 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
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