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SOUTH ASIA'S WEAK STATES

Stanford University Press

Contents

Tables and Figures.....................................................................................................................................ixAcknowledgments........................................................................................................................................xi1 State Capacity and South Asia's Perennial insecurity Problems T. V. Paul............................................................................32 State Failure and States Poised to Fail: South Asia and Developing Nations Robert I. Rotberg........................................................313 State Formation, Consolidation, and the Security Challenge: exploring the Causes of State incapacity in South Asia Matthew Lange.....................514 State, Nations, and the Regional Security order of South Asia Benjamin Miller.......................................................................745 Economic Globalization and State Capacity in South Asia Baldev Raj Nayar............................................................................986 Symbiosis and Fracture: Civil Society and Weak States in South Asia Mustapha Kamal Pasha............................................................1227 Polity, Security, and Foreign Policy in Contemporary India David Malone and Rohan Mukherjee.........................................................1478 Weak State, Failed State, Garrison State: the Pakistan Saga Lawrence Ziring.........................................................................1709 Afghanistan: A Weak State in the Path of Power Rivalries Rasul Bakhsh Rais..........................................................................19510 Sri Lanka: Challenges in State Consolidation and Minority integration Sankaran Krishna.............................................................22011 Bangladesh: "A Weak State" with Multiple Security Challenges Ali Riaz..............................................................................24112 Rebellion and State Formation in Nepal: implications for South Asian Security Maya Chadda..........................................................26513 transforming South Asia: is a Pluralistic Security Community Feasible? T. V. Paul and Theodore McLauchlin..........................................293Author Biographies.....................................................................................................................................313Index..................................................................................................................................................317

Chapter One

South Asia, which consists of eight states of different sizes and capabilities, is characterized by high levels of insecurity in inter state, intrastate, and human dimensions. Although most emerged as independent nations in the 1940s, the states in the region have not yet been able to settle their several conflicts—internal and external—while some have become the epicenters of both traditional and non-traditional security problems, especially transnational terrorism fueled by militant religious ideologies. The region also has not developed adequate institutional mechanisms and normative frameworks for solving its myriad security challenges collectively and nonviolently. One result of this is that even when some conflicts are resolved, others emerge in their place, often leading to the continuation of the cycle of violence in other parts of the region.

What explains the chronic insecurity of South Asia? A large set of variables have been presented in the literature for this multifaceted insecurity problem. They include: 1. irreconcilable national identities; 2. lack of political development (i.e., the absence of proper democratic institutions and procedures); 3. weak economies; 4. unsettled territorial disputes; and 5. lack of regional institutions. While these factors can explain a great amount of the chronic insecurity of the region, especially at the interstate level, we still lack a compelling explanation that can cover substantial ground for the perpetual multidimensional insecurity of South Asia. Most of the literature on South Asian security deals with interstate dimensions; there has been a somewhat excessive focus on the India-Pakistan rivalry and, in recent years, the nuclear relationship that has emerged between the two states. As a result, scholarly and policy studies of the region's security problem do not treat it in a way that captures its multidimensionality or the relationship between internal, interstate, and human security dimensions.

I argue that South Asia's multidimensional insecurity can be explained largely by two critical factors: the presence of weak states and weak cooperative interstate norms. Both state capacity and weak cooperative norms act largely as intervening variables in causing regional insecurity, as they themselves may be caused by other underlying factors, which I do not cover in this chapter. Other chapters in this volume treat more closely the underlying factors for the weak state syndrome, such as difficulties with state formation and state consolidation in South Asia. It should be noted that state strength alone need not alleviate interstate insecurities, but in some instances it may exacerbate them. Hence, the need for states that observe norms of cooperation, nonintervention and territorial integrity is all the more important for regional security. Moreover, state capacity becomes very crucial in dealing with internal security challenges, which tend to generate interstate conflicts, especially in South Asia.

Various estimates of state capacity place South Asian states among the weakest states globally. For instance, five of the South Asian states have entered the twenty-five weakest states in an annual index of 120 countries published by Foreign Policy magazine since 2006. These states—Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka—carry considerable conflicts internally and spillover effects externally.

The region also has weak norms of cooperative behavior. These norms or standards of behavior—often developed through institutional arrangements, as in the case of states in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)—could provide a compensatory mechanism for preventing violent conflicts even among weak states. In South Asia, what is noticeable is a paucity of nonintervention norms. In other words, the states in the region are not often willing to live by the imperatives of the territorial status quo, as they exhibit characteristics of revisionism to varying degrees. Moreover, internally, states tend not to have highly effective mechanisms for the peaceful settlement of conflicts through democratic means, generating opportunities for disgruntled groups to engage in violent conflicts that are also tempting targets for external intervention. Nevertheless, states in South Asia are exceptionally sensitive to the norms of sovereignty and sovereign equality, even when they do not fully believe in respecting the sovereignty of their neighbors.

What is a Weak State?

Before discussing weak states, it is important to examine state capacity, a topic that has received considerable attention in the sociology and comparative politics...