Imperatives of Peace in South Asia

For the past 54 years, South Asia has been mired in tension and conflicts. The root cause of these problems is the unresolved Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan. The United Nations, despite its Charter obligation to maintain international peace and security, has been unable to resolve this dispute. Kashmir, itself, has been turned into a nuclear flashpoint and poses a threat to international peace and security. The challenge before the international community, and especially the United States, therefore, is to become involved in resolving the dispute in accordance with the relevant Security Council resolutions and in conformity with the wishes of the Kashmiri people. India must show its good faith by eschewing hegemonic designs, abandoning bellicosity and brinkmanship, and sincerely joining Pakistan in overcoming all bilateral problems. It is time to restore peace and stability in South Asia. To achieve that, the international community, especially the United States, must play their due role.     

The Use of Force—Stability and Instability: India,Pakistan, and China

This article evaluates the source of instability and stability in the India-Pakistan dyad and the Sino-Indian dyad. Challenging the dominant thesis that “means determine ends,” the article posits that the use of force by Pakistan renders the India-Pakistan relationship unstable, whereas the Sino-Indian relationship is significantly more stable because of the absence of force. The difference in the state of stability in both dyads is because the weaker state, Pakistan in its conflict with India has failed to accept the verdict of its military defeats. This failure to internalize irreversible military outcomes makes Pakistan particularly susceptible to employing forcible solutions to settle its dispute with India over Kashmir. The reality reverses in the Sino-Indian territorial dispute, in that India has implicitly accepted its military loss against China in 1962 and charted a diplomatic pathway in resolving the boundary dispute.     

Britain and Kashmir, 1948: “The Arena of the UN”

The Jammu and Kashmir dispute of 1947–1949 between India and Pakistan became the first inter-state conflict to be discussed at the United Nations Security Council. This analysis looks at the views of the government and the delegation of Great Britain, one of the five permanent members of the Security Council, on Kashmir through the year of 1948. It argues that the British attitude was determined more by Imperial and Commonwealth strategic and ideological imperatives in South and Central Asia and the Middle East and less by the merits of the cases of the disputants. Operating within the twin backdrop of decolonisation and the Cold War, the British official mind juggled Kashmir's accession to India, India's complaint of aggression against Pakistan, and Pakistan's demand for a plebiscite in Kashmir with an eye to their own hopes and fears in a region that it understood as the key vantage on Communism and Islam.     

Pakistan's endgame in Kashmir

Although Pakistani leaders often describe the dispute over Kashmir as the “core issue” between India and Pakistan, Pakistani policy is driven by a deeper fear of India and about Pakistan's national identity. Pakistan's approach to the resolution of the Kashmir dispute has been characterized by a series of tactical moves, lacking a coherent strategy or a planned end game. Only a sustained peace process can address the multiple factors that give rise to Indian and Pakistani suspicions about each other's intentions and Pakistani tactics designed to prolong the conflict in the hope of eventually altering the status quo. Pakistan does not have a clearly thought out endgame in Kashmir and attending to its insecurities could be one of way of ensuring the emergence of a realistic endgame without violence.     

Great Britain and Kashmir, 1947–49

In 1953, a book on Jammu and Kashmir titled The Grim Saga (Dasgupta & Co. Ltd.) came out in Calcutta, India. Its author, S. N. Shivpuri, lamented “the triple tragedy of Kashmir–local, subcontinental and international.” Almost five decades since then, a great deal has been written about the local and subcontinental tragedy(s) in Kashmir. This article instead turns its gaze towards the international aspects that accompanied the evolution of the first India-Pakistan conflict over Kashmir from 1947–49, which sowed the seeds of the enduring dispute between the two countries. Focusing on the British policy towards Kashmir during this period, it contends that the impact of three wider, over-lapping contexts of international geopolitics, namely, British fears about unrest in the north-west of Indian subcontinent along the border with Afghanistan, British involvement in the Middle East, and British plans against the former Soviet Union, affected the official interpretation of British interest in Kashmir. These contexts, in turn, were created by the two themes of decolonization in South Asia and the Cold War in that pivotal year of 1947.     

Italy and the community after thirty years of experience

Convincing the Pakistani military to focus its attention on the Afghan Taliban and associated groups has so far proved unsuccessful. The Obama administration's reliance on economic incentives and regional peace initiatives, such as a dialogue with India on Kashmir, has failed to deliver tangible results. Instead, India's footprint within Afghanistan has expanded, leaving Pakistani elites ever more anxious. Balancing Indian and Pakistani interests in South Asia remains a top priority for Western governments, and most importantly the US. In the current milieu this will require shifting Western bureaucratic focus from the age old and seemingly intractable Kashmir dispute to maintaining the peace within Afghanistan. This article outlines why this shift should be considered, and how the India--Pakistan trust deficit might be bridged.     

Mediation Practice in the South African Construction Industry: The Influence of Culture, the Legislative Environment, and the Professional Institutions

We studied mediation practice in the South African construction industry by surveying sixty-three mediators. We found that mediators are more intent on resolving disputes for the parties than on assisting the parties to find their own settlements. In addition, we found that greater emphasis by parties to the dispute is placed on technical expertise, authority, and a clear understanding of the matter in dispute than on moving the parties toward an in-depth understanding of each other's perspectives. We conclude that mediation practice in the South African construction industry is not consistent with generally accepted principles of mediation. We also argue that the fragmented and potentially adversarial traditional procurement system predominantly used in South Africa, together with the inadequate institutional response in promoting mediation as a preferred dispute resolution method, is encouraging mediation to develop in this way. This is cause for concern, not only because this practice represents a departure from the underlying philosophy of mediation — dialogue aimed at amicable and long-lasting solutions that are in everyone's best interests — but because it is incompatible with the Southern African worldview concept of ubuntu .     

India,Pakistan, and the Kashmir dispute: unpacking the dynamics of a South Asian frozen conflict

Asia Europe Journal - The Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan remains at the core of one of the most intractable conflicts in modern history. This article provides a plausibility probe into...     

Intervenors with Interests and Power

This article presents a framework for understanding the roles that interested and powerful intervenors play in resolving disputes. Called an intervention role grid, this framework can be used to analyze the dispute resolution functions that third parties can perform. It may also be used to shed light on the difficult choices that confront intervenors with interests and power. The article uses case material from five recent international conflicts to illustrate how the intervention role grid works.     

Dispute Resolution and the Politics of Cultural Generalization

This essay argues that generalizations about cultural identities and values should play a key role in designing procedures to resolve disputes. Generalizations about cultures are risky given the complexity of memberships and group boundaries, not to mention the power dynamics within and between social groups. But it is important to take the risk: attempts to avoid or transcend culture in resolving disputes pose and even greater, or reiterating the understandings of dominant cultural groups under the guise of neutrality. The author explores the "politics of cultural generalization" in theoretical terms, then considers its implications for concrete elements of dispute resolution training and process design.     

Politics,proximity and paranoia: the evolution of Kashmir as a nuclear flashpoint

This article traces the evolution of Kashmir as a “nuclear flashpoint,” and the relationship between Kashmir, nuclear weapons, and regional security. The first section discusses the concept of a geopolitical flashpoint, providing a definition and a series of historical examples. The Kashmir issue and its role in the broader Indo-Pakistani conflict fit reasonably neatly into this definition. A second section briefly traces the history of nuclear weapons programs in the region, as the potential for nuclear escalation by competing powers or their allies is a key factor in defining nuclear flashpoints (a post-1945 phenomenon). The third section examines the evolution of the Kashmir issue and successive Indo-Pakistani crises within a nuclearized regional environment from 1984 to 2003. The final section assesses the prospects for Kashmir in the near future, and concludes that due to underlying political factors, Kashmir will remain a nuclear flashpoint for the foreseeable future.     

Nehru’s legacy in Kashmir: Why a plebiscite never happened

As the dispute over Kashmir broke out in 1947, a plebiscite of the people of the state offered a mutually acceptable and ostensibly fair path out of the imbroglio. Critics have often laid the blame on Nehru, and the territory’s salience to India, for why a plebiscite was never held. Based on primary documentation, this article makes the case that it was not a lack of commitment to the formula, but rather Nehru’s deeply held strategic and reputational fears that motivated, first, the setting of what Delhi saw as firm but fair pre-conditions, and after the conclusion of the US-Pakistan military pact in 1954, the complete rejection of the plebiscite option.     

India's “potential” endgame in Kashmir

This article presents an Indian view of the endgame in Kashmir. It seeks to answer two essential, if prosaic, questions: Does India have a plan for the final settlement of Jammu and Kashmir? If so, what are its essential elements? While there may not be a publicly discernable Indian game-plan, there is the possibility of durable peace in Kashmir. Events subsequent to the Kargil war of 1999, the terror attacks against America on September 11, 2001, and a shift in international public opinion regarding Kashmir all provide an opportunity for India settle the Kashmir question. These factors are, however, rooted in deeper changes within the Indian polity, including the growing consensus on economic and political decentralization and an ambition to increase India's international influence, which may increase India's willingness to commit itself to a potentially more long-term and imaginative course for its Kashmir policy.     

Broadening the Evaluation of Dispute Resolution: Context and Relationships Over Time

Evaluation of negotiation outcomes tends to focus on measurable, dyadic,short-term resolutions of conflict. We review current challenges to this traditionalmodel of the evaluation of dispute resolution outcomes, and we offerfour perspectives that can help address them. First, we advocate the needfor longitudinal studies of negotiations that incorporate disputant relationshipsbefore and after a particular negotiation. Second, we highlight theincreasing importance of third parties in resolving conflict. Third, we suggesta more comprehensive conception of parties, relationships andoutcomes in negotiations research. Finally, we advance an explicit incorporationof context and culture into dispute resolution research models.     

Solving the “Manchurian Problem”: Uchida Yasuya and Japanese Foreign Affairs before the Second World War

This article re-examines British diplomacy in the Venezuelan boundary dispute, 1895–96. The analysis focuses closely on the actions of the British Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, and his Ambassador to Washington, Sir Julian (later Lord) Pauncefote. It argues that a combination of Salisbury’s deliberate foot-dragging, and his failure to understand how seriously US politicians viewed the dispute, meant that disagreement was unnecessarily prolonged and exacerbated. Thus, at a time when the British government was beset with other imperial problems it was ultimately forced to concede to US demands. Consequently, the article argues that the issue was not only poorly handled by Salisbury, but was also a significant moment in US foreign policy.     

The Face-to-Face Mediation Program: A Massachusetts success story

Summary An effort that began as an experimental alternative to small claims court for consumer cases has fostered the application of alternative dispute resolution to many other conflicts in Massachusetts. The Attorney General's Face-to-Face Mediation Program, unique in the country, has proven to be an effective local resource to citizens of the state for resolving consumer disputes. The influence of the program has been felt outside the Attorney General's office as well as within.In the two years since this report was written, the Attorney General's Face-to-Face Mediation Program has shown a steady increase both in referrals and in quality of service. Today, all but one of the seven remaining mediation programs is running at or near capacity. In 1988, 84 percent of the approximately 700 cases that were mediated reached agreement, and 96 percent of those agreements were upheld. Suzanne Goulet Orenstein, who is Senior Associate, Program on Environmental Dispute Resolution with The Conservation Foundation, Washington, D.C., formerly was Chief, Local Consumer Groups and Dispute Resolution Activities with the Office of the Massachusetts Attorney General.Kathleen Grant is Coordinator of the Face-to-Face Mediation Program, Public Protection Bureau, The Massachusetts Attorney General's Office, 131 Tremont St., Boston, Mass. 02111.     

Why do some international institutions contain strong dispute settlement provisions? New evidence from preferential trade agreements

To understand why some international institutions have stronger dispute settlement mechanisms (DSMs) than others, we investigate the dispute settlement provisions of nearly 600 preferential trade agreements (PTAs), which possess several desirable case-selection features and are evoked more than is realized. We broaden the study of dispute settlement design beyond “legalization” and instead reorient theorizing around a multi-faceted conceptualization of the strength of DSMs. We posit that strong DSMs are first and foremost a rational response to features of agreements that require stronger dispute settlement, such as depth and large memberships. Multivariate empirical tests using a new data set on PTA design confirm these expectations and reveal that depth – the amount of policy change specified in an agreement – is the most powerful and consistent predictor of DSM strength, providing empirical support to a long-posited but controversial conjecture. Yet power also plays a sizeable role, since agreements among asymmetric members are more likely to have strong DSMs due to their mutual appeal, as are those involving the United States. Important regional differences also emerge, as PTAs across the Americas are designed with strong dispute settlement, as are Asian PTAs, which contradicts the conventional wisdom about Asian values and legalization. Our findings demonstrate that rationalism explains much of international institutional design, yet it can be enhanced by also incorporating power-based and regional explanations.     

论澳巴海洋边界划分方法之特色及其对中日东海海域划界之借鉴意义

大陆架及专属经济区制度产生以来,相邻或相向沿海国的海域划界特别是其彼此的专属经济区(或专属渔区)与大陆架应统一还是分别划界问题之重要性日益凸显。独具特色的澳巴海域划界条约采用的划界方法,对中日关于东海海域划界冲突立场之协调富有借鉴意义,在东海中日争议海域,可以通过就大陆架和上覆水域分别划定界线并设立适当联合开发区来解决争端。     

Contemplating Peace between India and Pakistan

India-Pakistan relations are at an inflection point with India’s dramatic revocation of Kashmir’s autonomy and its desired objective to transform the nature of the Kashmir conflict from a “bilateral” (involving Pakistan) to a “unilateral” status (excluding Pakistan). Pakistan, on the other hand, has embarked on a diplomatic offensive making the case against India’s majoritarian politics in Kashmir as detrimental not only to the Kashmiris but also to the strategic stability between the two rivals. This article reasons that India’s and Pakistan’s dominant zero-sum strategies—premised on winning while ensuring the other’s loss—are least likely to come to fruition. Given the present nature of ties, the way forward is for the two states to engage in a minimalist framework where mutual interests, as opposed to dominant positions, are put forth as a basis for engagement. Second, engagement more than agreement should be the short- to medium-term goal. Finally, any talk during this time on freezing the Kashmir conflict is least likely to bring any long-term dividends for peace and stability between the two regional adversaries.     

Reply to pluchinsky and rapoport comments

The on-going Kashmir conflict has metamorphosed into a formidable insurgency that has attracted extremist groups fromPakistan and elements of Al-Qaeda. Given Al-Qaeda's modus operandi as an international network based on already existing domestic extremist groups, this article argues for the resolution of the India-Pakistan Kashmir conflict as an avenue for shrinking the constituency of both Kashmiri domestic extremist groups and, by extension, that of Al-Qaeda's. Feasible options for resolutions are analyzed and an alternative proposition is suggested. An unresolved, or inadequately resolved, conflict is expected to lead the Kashmiri insurgency on a trajectory directed at the Pakistani government, possibly leading to that country's fragmentation and the subsequent expansion of Al-Qaeda's operational base. It is thus argued that the resolution of the Kashmir conflict be viewed as an integral component of the broader U.S. ‘war on terrorism’ and should compromise of delicate American diplomatic involvement in the India-Pakistan dialogue over Kashmir.