Imperial America and the Indian Subcontinent

Authors

  • Ashok Kapur University of Waterloo

Abstract

American practitioners and scholars have an exaggerated view of America’s primacy in the world. American unipolarity was never the basis of international relations in the Subcontinent since 1947. The end of the Cold War created the illusion about the sole superpower but the end of the Cold War and America’s unipolar moment is of no consequence in assessing the evolving distribution of power and the pattern of relations in the region. Historically, America’s diplomatic and military record in the area is a story of failure and counter-productive policies on key issues such as the 1971 war, the search for Indo-Pakistani parity, nuclear non-proliferation, the containment of India and the military campaign in Afghanistan in the 1980s. America’s foreign policy machinery is capable in dealing with sub-critical issues, but crisis behavior shows that America is a weak superpower, one of several catalysts of change in the region.

Author Biography

Ashok Kapur, University of Waterloo

Ashok Kapur is Professor and Chair of Political Science at the University of Waterloo, Ontario. Born in Lahore, he is a Canadian citizen. He received the B.A. (Honours) from Punjab University, India, the M.A. from the George Washington University, and the Ph.D. from Carleton University, Ottawa. He served as a member of the United Nations Committee to study Israeli Nuclear Armament in 1980-81. His publications include India's Nuclear Option: Atomic diplomacy and Decision-Making (Praeger, 1976), International Nuclear Proliferation: Multilateral Diplomacy and Regional Aspects (Praeger, 1979), The Indian Ocean: Regional and International Power Politics (Praeger, 1983), Pakistan's Nuclear Development (Croom Helm, 1987), (ed.) Diplomatic Ideas and Practices of Asian States, Leiden, Brill, 1991, Pakistan in Crisis (Routledge, 1991), The South Asian nuclear Non-Proliferation Debate: Issues, Interests and Strategies of Change, Department of National Defence, Canada, June, 1993, Foreign Policies of India and Her Neighbours (with A. J. Wilson,) London: Macmillan Press, and New York, St. Martins Press, 1996 and Pokhran and Beyond: India's Nuclear Behaviour, Oxford University Press, 2001. India and the United States in a Changing World, New Delhi, Thousand Oaks, London: Sage Publications, 2002, 560 pp. Regional Security Structures in Asia, London: Routledge-Curzon, 2002, 198 pp. Pokhran and Beyond: India’s Nuclear Behaviour, Second Edition paperback, Oxford University Press, 2003, pp. 264.

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Issue

Vol. 6 No. 4 (2004): Summer 2004

Section

Articles