Breaking the Equilibrium? New Leaders and Old Structures in the India-Pakistan Rivalry

Abstract

The election of new governments in Pakistan and India in 2013 and 2014, respectively, has sparked controversies about the likely trajectory of the enduring rivalry. Emerging individual and domestic conditions reportedly created new opportunities for incremental rapprochement. Equipped with strong political mandates and backed by powerful constituencies, Pakistan's Nawaz Sharif and India's Narendra Modi initially set out to stabilize and revive their countries’ fragile economies and declared improved bilateral ties as a key precondition for implementing their economic agendas. However, mutual recriminations and border tensions resurfaced soon to prevent the revival of the stalled diplomatic dialogue in late 2014. Drawing on a thorough review of research on rivalry maintenance and termination and, in particular, the assumptions of the punctuated equilibrium model developed by Paul Diehl and Gary Goertz, this paper demonstrates how the conflict's structural complexities are likely to persist and undermine the chances for conflict resolution in the years ahead. The prevalent role of the army and a vibrant anti-Indian Islamic ideology in Pakistan, the persistence of a conflict lobby in India, lingering territorial feuds and ever increasing power asymmetries between the two countries, and decreasing third-party mediation in the Indo-Pakistani conflict will likely suffocate any initiative, however well-intended or pragmatic it may be. Even if bold leadership manages to revive a comprehensive peace process, it would have to be based on systematic confidence building measures in order to make it resilient to crises.

Keywords:

• enduring rivalries
• foreign policy change
• India-Pakistan relations
• international security
• Kashmir
• political shocks
• rivalry termination
• South Asia

Notes

¹The idea for this article developed during overlapping fellowships at the University of Oxford in 2013, and we are grateful to our hosts at St. Antony's College and at the Department of Politics and International Relations. We also thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. Hannes Ebert would like to acknowledge the funding from Volkswagen Foundation for his research.

²Karan Thapar, “A Very Sharif Nawaz,” The Hindustan Times, May 18, 2013.

³Dean Nelson, “Narendra Modi Says India and Pakistan Should be Allies in War on Poverty,” The Daily Telegraph, May 2, 2014.

⁴C. Raja Mohan, Pakistan, in Modi's Eyes (Delhi: Observer Research Foundation, April 22, 2014), http://orfonline.org/cms/sites/orfonline/modules/analysis/AnalysisDetail.html?cmaid=65770&mmacmaid=65771

⁵Ellen Barry, “Before Taking Office in India, Modi Sends an Invitation to Pakistan,” The New York Times, May 21, 2014.

⁶“Nawaz Sharif Talks ‘Common Economic Destiny’ in His Letter to Narendra Modi,” The Indian Express, June 12, 2014; “Nawaz Receives Letter from Narendra Modi,” The Express Tribune, June 14, 2014.

⁷Andrew North, “Why India-Pakistan Friendship Still Looks a Long Way off,” BBC News, June 26, 2014, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-28031085.

⁸This pattern of behavior reveals a historic continuity. In the generally hostile relationship between the two nuclear-equipped nations, which have fought four wars and faced several military standoffs, similar commitments to peace have often faced formidable barriers. Several attempts to de-escalation in the past decades such as India's unilateral grant of the Most Favoured Nation status to Pakistan in 1995, their mutual agreement on the Composite Dialogue in 1997, the Lahore Accord in 1999 and the enforcement of ceasefire across the LoC in Kashmir in 2003, failed to produce substantive policy outcomes. The renewed cooperative approach opted for by the recently elected leaders therefore calls for a thorough assessment of the present conditions and future prospects of bilateral relations.

⁹Substantial rapprochement with India during the period was further delayed by the prospects of the Indian parliamentary elections. During the election year, the Pakistani government increasingly perceived the residing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as a “lame duck” that lacked the political capital necessary to take any substantial decisions on foreign policy.

¹⁰“Speech at UN General Assembly: Kashmir Cannot be Sidelined, Says PM,” The Express Tribune, September 27, 2014.

¹¹On the reasons why the talks were cancelled, see Alisan Berland and Michael Kugelman, “Is There Any for India-Pakistan Relations?, Foreign Policy, September 2, 2014; Ellen Barry, “India Cancels Talks After Pakistani Envoy Meets With Separatists,” The New York Times, August 18, 2014; Kaustav Chakrabarti, “Why the Talks Were Cancelled,” Foreign Policy Blog, http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/10/10/why-the-talks-were-cancelled/, October 10, 2014; Ali Ahmed, “A More Aggressive India,” The Diplomat, November 7, 2014. The latter explains the decision with reference to a shift toward bilateralism in India's Kashmir policy, as manifest in the BJP election manifesto and the selection of Ajit Doval, a former intelligence officer and hardliner, as new National Security Advisor, and the BJP's attempt to win support of Kashmir political parties that oppose separatist aspirations prior to the state election in Kashmir; and on Modi's U.S. visit, see Raza Rumi, “Foreign Policy – A Case of Increasing Isolation,” The Express Tribune, October 5, 2014.

¹²See Paul Diehl, “Book Review. Why Enduring Rivalries Do – or Don't – End, by Eric W. Cox,” Perspectives on Politics 9, no. 1 (2005): 215–6, 215; and Zeev Maoz and Ben Mor. Bound by Struggle. The Strategic Evolution of Enduring International Rivalries (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2002), 4–5. More specifically, the latter study defines enduring rivalry as a long-term conflict between two states exhibiting four characteristics: “1) an outstanding set of unresolved issues; 2) strategic interdependence, implying a mutual perception as strategic rivals and a strong military and intelligence focus on the respective adversary; 3) psychological manifestations of enmity; and 4) repeated militarized conflict” (ibid: 5). In an earlier treatment, Charles Gochman and Zeev Maoz define enduring rivalries as “strategic competitions that extend over a long period of time of over a generation or more that involve the same pair of states, and that have multiple crises and wars. These rivalries are typified by a number of militarized disputes, defined as ‘a set of interactions between or among states involving threats to use military forces, displays of military force, or actual uses of military force. (…) These acts must be explicit, overt, nonaccidental, and government sanctioned” (Charles Gochman and Zeev Maoz, “Militarized Interstate Disputes, 1816–1976: Procedures, Patterns, and Insights,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 28, no. 4 (1984): 587. In a valuable addition, T.V. Paul notes that “sustained hostile interactions, in terms of severity, intensity, and duration, are the distinctive characteristics of an enduring rivalry” (T.V. Paul, “Why has the India-Pakistan Rivalry Been so Enduring? Power Asymmetry and an Intractable Conflict”, Security Studies 15, no. 4 (2006): 600–630, 602). There is disagreement about spatial and temporal scopes. Paul Diehl and Gary Goertz, for example, narrow their spatial focus on dyadic, interstate relations, as opposed to more complex triadic rivalries or regional security complexes; see Paul Diehl and Gary Goertz, War and peace in international rivalry. How do enduring rivalries between states affect international relations? (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2000), 20, 28. The temporal threshold of a minimum of 20 years is discussed in ibid: 21. A more narrow focus is advocated by William Thompson, “Identifying rivals and rivalries in world politics,” International Studies Quarterly 45, no. 4 (2001): 557–586. Concepts such as “protracted conflict” or “intractable conflict” are mostly synonymous of the concept of enduring rivalries, see Maoz and Mor, 2002, 5.

¹³Diehl and Goertz 2000, 44.

¹⁴Drawing on data gathered at the Correlates of War Project, an authoritative source for data on the evolution of warfare, Paul Diehl and Gary Goertz demonstrate that in the period between 1949 and 2001, only about 5% of interstate rivalries became “enduring,” yet this minority accounted for approximately three-quarters of all militarized disputes and over 80% of interstate wars (Paul Diehl, 2011, “Review: Why Enduring Rivalries Do – or Don't – End, by Eric Cox”, Perspectives on Politics 9 no. 1 (2011): 215–216, 215. Diehl notes that “enduring rivalries, long-standing militarized competitions between the same pairs of states (e.g., India and Pakistan), are perhaps the most dangerous phenomena in international relations, accounting for approximately three-fourths of militarized disputes and over 80% of wars. They also play central roles in increasing internal state capacity, and they consume enormous economic and political resources necessary to sustain them”; see Paul Diehl, “Book Review. Why Enduring Rivalries Do – or Don't – End, by Eric W. Cox”, Perspectives on Politics 9 no. 1 (2011): 215–216, 215. For the data, see http://www.correlatesofwar.org

¹⁵Maoz and Mor, Bound by struggle, 3.

¹⁶Paul Diehl and Gary Goertz, “The Rivalry Process: How Rivalries are Sustained and Terminated,” in What Do We Know About War?, ed. John Vasquez (Plymouth: Rowman and Littlefield, 2012), 83–111, 83.

¹⁷Gary Goertz and Paul Diehl, “Enduring Rivalries: Theoretical Constructs and Empirical Patterns,” International Studies Quarterly 37, no. 2 (1993): 147–171. See also Garry Goertz and Paul Diehl, “The Empirical Importance of Enduring Rivalries,” International Interactions 18, no. 2 (1992): 151–163.

¹⁸While different studies on “enduring rivalries” employ diverging definitions of the phenomenon, we are not aware of any study that excludes the South Asian rivalry from this category; see also Paul Diehl, Gary Goertz, and Daniel Saeedi, “Theoretical specifications of enduring rivalries: applications to the India-Pakistan case,” in: The India-Pakistan Conflict. An Enduring Rivalry, ed. T.V. Paul (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 27–54, 27; and Daniel Geller, “The India-Pakistan rivalry: prospects for war, prospects for peace,” in The India-Pakistan conflict: An Enduring Rivalry, ed. T.V. Paul (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 80–103, 101: “Employing standard time/density dispute criteria with the Militarized Interstate Dispute database, it is calculated that the India/Pakistan dyad constitutes an enduring rivalry from 1947 through 2001 (the last year in the data set). Over the period of fifty-five years between 1947 and 2001, India and Pakistan engage in forty-three militarized disputes. Thirty-four of these disputes involve the use of force by at least one state. Thirty of these disputes involve the use of force by both states. Four of these disputes are classified as wars. Given the continuing rivalry between India and Pakistan, the likelihood of future war for this dyad must be considered high.”

¹⁹Both factors are common features in most rivalries; see Frank Wayman, “Rivalries: Recurrent Disputes and Explaining War,” in What Do We Know about War?, ed. John Vasquez (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), 219–234.

²⁰Goertz Diehl, “Enduring Rivalries,” 147–171. See also Goertz and Diehl, “The Empirical Importance of Enduring Rivalries,” 151–163.

²¹Diehl, Goertz, Saeedi, 2005: 42. The authors note that between 1949 and 2001, the frequency of high-level conflict in the India-Pakistan conflict is greater than in all other enduring rivalries except the one between Israel-Egypt and China-Japan. For the definition of severity, see Diehl and Goertz, 2000, 25. However, the wars in 1947/8, 1965, and 1971 were “all characterized by a low threshold of violence, limited scope and short duration” due to a “common British imperial heritage, the lack of doctrinal innovation, and the paucity of highly sophisticated weaponry.” See Sumit Gangulay, “Wars without End: The Indo-Pakistani Conflict,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 541, no. 1 (1995): 167–178, 167.

²²This distinction is made by William Thompson, “Principal Rivalries,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 39, no. 2 (1995): 195–223.

²³See Karen Rasler, William R. Thompson, and Sumit Ganguly, How Rivalries End (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), who also refer to Argentina-Paraguay in the mid-nineteenth century and Cuba-US in the contemporary period. For the concept of “truncated asymmetry,” see T. V. Paul (2006). For a useful treatment of the conditions under which meaningful negotiations are possible in asymmetric conflicts, see Brantly Womack, China and Vietnam: The Politics of Asymmetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

²⁴Diehl, Goertz, and Saeedi, 2005: 39.

²⁵Ibid. They point to a striking observation: “In forty-three confrontations [between 1949–2001], Pakistan was never successful in achieving its goals.”

²⁶An instructive overview of models of enduring rivalry termination is provided by Rasler, Thompson, Ganguly, 2013: 195–227. In addition, there are numerous studies that discuss the conditions for the maintenance, de-escalation and eventual termination of the South Asian rivalry without explicit reference to the enduring rivalry literature. Most recently. Stephen Cohen identified six major existing explanations for the maintenance of the India-Pakistan rivalry: (1) civilizational differences (“Hindus vs. Muslims”); (2) fundamentally different state identities (“secular versus religious,” “democratic vs non-democratic”); (3) power politics; (4) geo-military and nuclear rivalry; (5) individual and group identity; and (6) outside powers’ involvement (most importantly the US, which at times complicated de-escalation). Cohen dismisses most of these explanations, arguing that a set of three factors majorly perpetuate the conflict: (1) Visible disputes over matters such as Kashmir, river water, and several territorial claims; (2) identity issues between the state institutions (not the two peoples, which share many commonalities); and (3) strategic pressure points, such as Afghanistan (Stephen Cohen, Shooting for a Century: The India-Pakistan Conundrum (Noida: Harper Collins, 2013), 165); see also Rajesh Basrur, “From Conflict to Cooperation: The Politics of Change in India-Pakistan Relations,” in India-Pakistan Relations: Courting Peace from Corridors of War, ed. P. M. Kamath (New Delhi: Promilla & Co Publishers, 2005), 57–72; and Sumit Ganguly, Conflict Unending. India-Pakistan Tensions Since 1947 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001). From the monadic perspective of Pakistan's India policy, Christine Fair identifies four endogenous and three exogenous game changers: (1) Genuine democratic consolidation (necessary, but insufficient); (2) civil society consolidation (forcing the army to alter its policies); (3) economic shocks (dramatic recession that would make liberalization inevitable); (4) increasing regional diversity in the army officer corps as a result of changing patterns of recruitment potentially eroding the military's status-quo views, values and ideology on India; (5) natural disaster; (6) destruction of the nuclear arsenal by the US; and (7) US significantly bolstering the support of civilians (Christine Fair, Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army's Way of War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 261–77).

²⁷Paul Diehl and Gary Goertz, War and Peace in International Rivalry. How Do Enduring Rivalries Between States Affect International Relations? (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2000).

²⁸Moreover, Karen Rasler, William Thompson, and Sumit Ganguly applied the expectancy revision model to the case of South Asia, see Karen Rasler, William Thompson, and Sumit Ganguly, How Rivalries End (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press). While they write at a time when civilian rule had persisted for several years, they similarly conclude that chances for significant de-escalation are low. They observe that between 1947 and the time of writing, “despite external shocks, third-party pressures, and the presence of change-seeking entrepreneurs there has been only one important time span (1972–1979) when the rivalry saw significant de-escalation. However, even during this period, the underlying sources of discord remained unabated. Intransigence and a lack of reinforcement from the adversary as well as other exogenous shocks brought this period of de-escalation to a close” (ibid: 124). Multilateral, third-party, and bilateral initiatives failed to resolve the conflict, and both endogenous and exogenous shocks failed to dramatically alter the course of the rivalry toward termination. Two main factors stabilized the status quo: First, the historically developed revisionism of Pakistan's foreign policy, with Kashmir constituting a core identity issue for the army; and, second, the praetorian state structure in Pakistan. Civilian regimes, when in power, have not performed markedly better: “[s]since they have existed at the sufferance of the military, their ability to shift the terms of popular and even elite discourse within Pakistan has been limited” and “fledgling democratic regimes, often seeking quick populist pathways to bolstering their legitimacy, have simply sought to outbid the military in their dealing with India” (ibid: 142–3). Moreover, the rivalry had “not experienced the appropriate type of shock so far” (ibid: 144). Third-party pressures and rare acts of reciprocity have been insufficient to alter the expectations of the adversaries’ leaderships, not at least due to a lack of incoming new change entrepreneurs. Lastly, they conclude that under these circumstances, two conditions would be necessary for the rivalry to end: “1) the Pakistani state and especially the military apparatus will inexorably come to the realization that they cannot compete with India and that it thereby makes sense to abandon a policy of unremitting hostility; or, 2) a powerful third party, which has the incentive and the capabilities to alter the internal structure of the Pakistani state, will diminish the overweening role of the security establishment” (ibid.).

²⁹Diehl and Goertz, 2000: 138.

³⁰Diehl and Goertz, 2012: 99.

³¹Diehl and Goertz, 2000: 223–228.

³²See Paul Diehl, Gary Goertz, and Daniel Saeedi, “Theoretical Specifications of Enduring Rivalries: Applications to the India-Pakistan Case,” in The India-Pakistan Conflict. An Enduring Rivalry, ed. T. V. Paul (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 27–54, 53.

³³Diehl and Goertz, 2000: 127.

³⁴Ibid: 48.

³⁵Ibid.

³⁶Ibid.

³⁷Ibid: 50. Similarly, Daniel Geller notes that “Pakistan is not a democratic polity. Therefore, India/Pakistan is a mixed dyad with regard to political systems and is lacking shared non-violent norms for conflict resolution as well as shared institutional constraints on war decisions. A new crisis impacting this dyad will not benefit from the conflict-dampening effects of the democratic peace.” See Geller, 2005, 82. For more recent accounts on the link between (joint) democracy and rivalry termination prospects, also see the stable peace model in Charles Kupchan, How Enemies Become Friends. The Sources of Stable Peace (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), which assumes that rivalry termination proceeds in four phases: unilateral accommodation, mutual accommodation and trust, societal integration and trust, and a shared common identity. According to his model, joint democracy might work as a facilitating factor for rivalry termination, but does by no means constitute a necessary condition. Similarly, Eric Cox's model of rivalry termination, democratic institutions bear a facilitating role but do not constitute necessary variables. See Eric Cox, Why Enduring Rivalries Do – or Don't – End (Boulder, CO: First Forum, 2010). What is needed instead is a leadership change toward a more “dovish,” “moderate” orientation toward the adversary which is open to concessions and compromise.

³⁸“The Search for Accommodation: Gorbachev in Comparative Perspective,” in: Richard Ned Lebow and Thomas Risse-Kappen (eds.), International Relations Theory and the End of the Cold War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 167–86.

³⁹Diehl, Goertz, and Saeedi 2005: 52.

⁴⁰Ibid: 53.

⁴¹Diehl, Goertz, and Saeedi, 2005: 51.

⁴²Ibid: 50.

⁴³Diehl and Goertz, 2000: 185–221, 216: “Compared to other less intense rivalries, enduring ones were up to twice as likely to involve a third party (almost two-thirds of enduring rivalries actually had at least one mediation effort), and the average number of mediation attempts was significantly greater in the enduring rivalry context. Thus, as we anticipated, the most serious forms of international conflict draw the greatest attention of third-party efforts.”

⁴⁴Diehl, Goertz, and Saeedi, 2005: 51.

⁴⁵Frederic Grare, Is Pakistan's Behavior Changing? (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, January 30, 2013).

⁴⁶Razia Musarrat, Ghulam Ali, and Muhammad Salman Azhar, “18th Amendment and Its Impact on Pakistan's Politics,” Journal of Sociological Research 3, no. 1 (2012).

⁴⁷Frederic Grare and Reece Trevor, How Will Elections Impact Pakistan's Foreign Policy? (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, April 4, 2013), http://carnegieendowment.org/2013/04/04/how-will-elections-impact-pakistan-s-foreign-policy/fxen; Amir Zia, “Sharif for Peace,” The News International, June 3, 2013.

⁴⁸Gareth Price, India and Pakistan: Changing the Narratives (Oslo: CIDOB Policy Research Project, for Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre, 2012): 15. Gareth Price, India and Pakistan: Changing the Narratives (Oslo: CIDOB Policy Research Project, for Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre, 2012): 15.

⁴⁹Ellen Barry, “Before Taking Office in India, Modi Sends an Invitation to Pakistan,” The New York Times, May 21, 2014.

⁵⁰C. Raja Mohan, “The Legacy of Vajpayee and Singh,” Observer Research Foundation, May 16, 2014, http://orfonline.org/cms/sites/orfonline/modules/analysis/AnalysisDetail.html?cmaid=66621&mmacmaid=46594.

⁵¹Ishtiaq Ahmad, “Narendra Modi: Peacemaker or Warmonger?,” Weekly Pulse, May 23, 2014, http://ishtiaqahmad.com/item_display.aspx?listing_id=877&listing_type=1.

⁵²See Sanjay Kumar, “New Delhi Cancels India-Pakistan talks,” The Diplomat, August 20, 2014; Talat Masood, “Modi's Hostility to Pakistan,” The Express Tribune, October 29, 2014; and Krittivas Mukherjee, Narendra Modi's tough talk on Pakistan's proxy war may undermine Nawaz Sharif,” The Hindustan Times, August 12, 2014.

⁵³Sumit Ganguly and Christine Fair, “The Structural Origins of Authoritarianism in Pakistan,” Commonwealth & Comparative Politics 51, no. 1 (2013): 122–142.

⁵⁴Shaiq Hussain and Simon Denyer, “Pakistan Grants India ‘Most Favored Nation’ Trade Status,” The Washington Post, November 2, 2011.

⁵⁵Vikram Sood, “Why India Must Put Any Overtures to Pakistan on Hold?” Rediff News, May 15, 2014, http://www.rediff.com/news/column/why-india-must-put-any-overtures-to-pakistan-on-hold/20140515.htm.

⁵⁶Sumit Ganguly, “What will Narendra Modi's foreign policy be like?”, BBC News, May 21, 2014, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-27482166

⁵⁷Maleeha Lodhi, “Who Foiled a Deal on Siachen?”, The News International, May 20, 2014.

⁵⁸Sharon Behen, “Pakistan PM: Economy Tops Foreign Policy Agenda,” VOA News, June 5, 2013. Andrew North, “Why India-Pakistan Friendship Still Looks a Long Way off,” BBC News, June 26, 2014, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-28031085.

⁵⁹For a detailed analysis of Sharif's India policy, see Ishtiaq Ahmad and Hannes Ebert, “Will Pakistan's India Policy under Sharif Shift Strategically?,” Strategic Analysis 37, no. 6 (November 2013): 667–674; and Lisa Curtis, “India and Pakistan Under Modi,” The National Interest, April 2, 2014.

⁶⁰Cyril Almeida, “Nawaz Sharif Must Mend Pakistan's Three Fault Lines,” The Guardian, May 13, 2013.

⁶¹Huma Yusuf, Pakistan Grants India Most Favored Nation Trading Status?, Asia Pacific Bulletin (Washington: East-West Center, November 10, 2011).

⁶²Sajad Padder, The Composite Dialogue Between India and Pakistan: Structure, Process and Agency, Heidelberg Papers in South Asian and Comparative Politics (Heidelberg: Heidelberg University, 2012); and Steve Coll, “The Stand-off,” The New Yorker, February 13, 2006.

⁶³“It's Tough Time for Pak-India Ties: Sethi,” The News International, May 19, 2014.

⁶⁴Isac Kfir, Nawaz Sharif and Narendera Modi: Are We Witnessing a New Dawn in South Asia? (New York: Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism, May 28, 2014) http://insct.syr.edu/nawaz-sharif-narendra-modi-witnessing-new-dawn-south-asia/

⁶⁵Niharika Mandhana, “Incoming Indian PM Invites Regional Neighbors to Inauguration,” The Wall Street Journal, May 22, 2014.

⁶⁶Dipanjan Roy Chaudhry and Masood Hussain, “Elections 2014: Narendra Modi Likely to Follow a More Muscular Policy Towards Pakistan If He becomes Prime Minister,” The Economic Times, May 3, 2014. Niharika Mandhana, “How Will Modi Change India's Relationship With Pakistan?,” Wall Street Journal, May 1, 2014. BJP's election manifesto can be found at http://www.bjp.org/images/pdf_2014/full_manifesto_english_07.04.2014.pdf

⁶⁷“India, Pakistan Decide to Explore Way Forward at Modi-Sharif Meeting,” The Financial Express, May 27, 2014.

⁶⁸Mudassir Raja, “Pakistani Victims: War on Terror Toll Put at 49,000,” The Express Tribune, March 27, 2013.

⁶⁹Ishaan Tharoor, “Why Pakistan's Offensive on the Taliban is a Very Big Deal,” The Washington Post, June 17, 2014; Aqil Shah, “Pakistan Fights Back: Behind the Operation in North Waziristan,” Foreign Affairs, June 19, 2014.

⁷⁰Amir Mir, “Army to Step up War Against Taliban under Gen Raheel,” The News International, November 29, 2013; and BBC, “Raheel Sharif Named as New Pakistan Army Commander,” BBC News Asia, November 27, 2013.

⁷¹Daniel Markey, A Pakistani Strategic Shift? (Washington, DC, 2013), http://docs.house.gov/meetings/FA/FA13/20130319/100524/HHRG-113-FA13-Wstate-MarkeyD-20130319.pdf.; Najam Sethi, “New Existential Paradigms,” The Friday Times, August 17–23, 2012. http://www.thefridaytimes.com/beta3/tft/article.php?issue=20120817&page=1#sthash.7hS2SX08.dpuf

⁷²Price, 2012, 2.

⁷³Economic crisis is not included in the list of endogenous political shocks in the punctuated equilibrium model, but can be reasonably derived from parts of the study and has explicitly been mentioned by others, see for example Thompson (2001).

⁷⁴Dhruva Jaishankar, “Does India's New Prime Minister Actually Have a Foreign Policy?”, Foreign Policy, May 19, 2014.

⁷⁵Barry, “Before Taking Office in India, Modi Sends an Invitation to Pakistan.”

⁷⁶Curtis, “India and Pakistan Under Modi.”

⁷⁷“Modi's Mission,” The Economist, May 24, 2014.

⁷⁸Frank Daniel, “New Government Reveals Plan for Jobs, Low Inflation,” Reuters, June 9, 2014.

⁷⁹One could, however, also argue that Pakistan does not feature prominently in India's economic agenda, and that Delhi's focus on geoeconomic policies might actually distract from engaging with Pakistan.

⁸⁰“Trade between India and Pakistan Surges 21% to $2.4 Billion,” The Express Tribune, May 14, 2013.

⁸¹Shahbaz Reza, “Non-Discriminatory Market Access: Pakistan, India All But Sign Trade Normalization Deal,” The Express Tribune, March 15, 2014.

⁸²See Ishtiaq Ahmad, “Pakistan's ‘Regional Pivot’ and the Endgame in Afghanistan,” IPRI Journal 13 (2013): 13–16.

⁸³Allison Berland and Michael Kugelman, “Is There Any Hope for India-Pakistan Relations?” Foreign Policy, September 2, 2014.

⁸⁴Sadia Fazal, “Off to a Bad Start,” Business Recorder, August 28, 2014.

⁸⁵In many of the high-profile terrorist attacks targeting key military and civilian installations and personnel, those accused of involvement or accepting responsibility hail from jihadi organizations previously involved in jihad in Kashmir. Their grievances arise from Pakistan's post-9/11 support to the US War on Terror and consequent inability to provide active support for Kashmir militancy. See “India and Pakistan: Right-Leaning Governments Take The Stage in the Subcontinent's Geopolitics,” Stratfor, May 27, 2014, http://www.stratfor.com/sample/analysis/india-and-pakistan-right-leaning-governments-take-stage-subcontinents-geopolitics

⁸⁶Hussain Zaidi, “The Indian Dilemma,” The News International, June 2, 2014.

⁸⁷Raza Rumi, “Foreign Policy—A Case of Increasing Isolation,” The Express Tribune, October 5, 2014.

⁸⁸Sameer Yasir, “Losing Faith in Modi: Article 370 Debate Dims Hopes in Kashmir,” Firstpost, June 3, 2014, http://www.firstpost.com/politics/losing-faith-in-modi-article-370-controversy-dims-hope-in-kashmir-1552077.html; and Ishfaq-ul Hassan, “Has UNMOGIP Outlived Its Utility? The Debate Continues, Daily News & Analysis, July 13, 2014, http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-has-unmogip-outlived-its-utility-the-debate-continues-2001679

⁸⁹Rajesh Basrur, Domestic Politics and Systemic Constraints in Pakistan's India Policy, Brief (Bradford: Pakistan Security Research Unit (PSRU), Bradford University, 2010).

⁹⁰“Indian Defense Budget Will Hit Hard Modernization of Armed Forces,” The Times of India, March 6, 2013.

⁹¹Zachary Keck, “India, Cold Start and Pakistani Tactical Nukes,” The Diplomat, May 8, 2013.

⁹²Michael Pizzi, “Report: India Remains World's Largest Arms Buyer,” Al-Jazeera, March 17, 2014, http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/3/17/india-still-worldslargestarmsbuyerasasianrivalriesheatup.html.

⁹³Karen Rasler, “Shocks, Expectancy Revision, and the De-escalation of Protracted Conflicts: The Israeli-Palestinian Case,” Journal of Peace Research 37, no. 6 (November 1, 2000): 200.

⁹⁴See also Rasler, Thompson, Ganguly 2013: 144. War defeats, a critical kind of political shock, are usually associated with rivalry termination, yet, they argue that despite devastating war defeats, the India-Pakistan rivalry demonstrates that “war defeats can be less shocking than they might be [as assumed in the expectancy revision model] if the full impact of losing a war is constrained by international norms and third parties.”

⁹⁵The stability of foreign policy in other world regions is explored, for example, by David. Welch, Painful Choices: A Theory of Foreign Policy Change (Princeton University Press, 2005); Christine Fair explores more particularly the army's persistent role in politics; see Christine Fair, “Why the Pakistan Army Is Here to Stay: Prospects for Civilian Governance,” International Affairs 87, no. 3 (2011): 571–588. Finally, for a discussion of the impact of patronage networks on political inertia, see Alexander Evans, “Continuity and Change in Pakistani Politics,” Contemporary South Asia 20, no. 2 (June 2012): 213–224.

⁹⁶For the most authoritative explanation on the ideological sources of the rivalry and how these have laid the foundation for recurring territorial conflicts and opportunistic clashes, see Sumit Ganguly, Conflict Unending. India-Pakistan Tensions since 1947(New York: Columbia University Press, 2001): 4-8. For a more recent account, see also Stephen Cohen, Shooting for a Century. The India-Pakistan Conundrum (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution Press, 2013): 118–147.

⁹⁷Sachin Parashar, “Manmohan Singh, Musharraf Came Close to Striking Kashmir Deal: Wikileaks” The Times of India, September 3, 2011.

⁹⁸Ahmad and Ebert, 2013, 671–673.

⁹⁹Nadim Hussain, “Pakistan's New, Optimistic Afghan Strategy,” Foreign Policy, June 17, 2014; and Pamela Constable, “Pakistan's Army Chief Seeks ‘Friendly and Stable’ Afghanistan,” The Washington Post, February 2, 2010.

¹⁰⁰New Delhi's military dealings with Kabul, including the provision of armaments and training of Afghan National Army personnel, surely add to Pakistani security establishment's persisting fear of being encircled on eastern and western fronts. This is one major factor behind Pakistan's reluctance to address Indian and international concerns about its dual or ambivalent counter-terrorism approach.

¹⁰¹See The Jinnah Institute, Pakistan, the United States and the Endgame in Afghanistan: Perceptions of Pakistan's Foreign Policy Elite (Islamabad: The Jinnah Institute and US Institute of Peace, 2011): 12–13.

¹⁰²Shuja Nawaz and Mohan Guruswamy,” India and Pakistan: The Opportunity Cost of Conflict (Washington, DC: The Atlantic Council, 2013): 19.

¹⁰³Maleeha Lodhi, “Test of Diplomacy Ahead,” The News International, March 18, 2014.

¹⁰⁴Imtiaz Gul, “Managing Modi.” The Friday Times, May 13, 2014.

¹⁰⁵Nitin Gokhalae, “A New Opportunity for Indo-Pakistan Relations,” The Diplomat, May 29, 2013.

¹⁰⁶Sharon Behen, “Pakistan PM: Economy Tops Foreign Policy Agenda,” VOA News, June 5, 2013.

¹⁰⁷Rasler, Thompson, Ganguly, 2013: 19 How Rivalries End (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 19.