Every year so much is being written about the India-Pakistan rivalry that it appears difficult to come up with an original contribution. In 2022 alone three other books apart from the book under review came out on the subject. Tariq Rahman discussed India-Pakistan wars in his Pakistan’s Wars: An Alternative History and Satinder Kumar Lambah, the former Indian diplomat, wrote a memoir explaining how six Indian Prime Ministers had pursued peace with Pakistan in his In Pursuit of Peace: India-Pakistan Relations Under Six Prime Ministers. However, the book which comes closest in terms of content and methodology to the book under review was written by Surinder Mohan, Complex Rivalry: The Dynamics of India-Pakistan Conflict. Mr. Mohan has used the complex rivalry model and examined fifty-seven militarised disputes from 1947 to 2021 to explain the life-cycle of the India-Pakistan rivalry.

The books by Dr. Rahman and Mr. Mohan focus on explaining the war-making process in the conflict while Mr. Lambah discusses the peace-building process, and so far the whole literature on India-Pakistan conflict can easily be divided into these two broad categories of war-making and peace building. However, no academic work has discussed the war-making and peace-building processes together, whereas in reality the two processes are interconnected and interdependent. This is where Dr. Clary’s original contribution lies as he examines the two processes together and tries to explain when and why rival states pursue war-making or peace-building, and asks when is escalation or de-escalation the more likely outcome? From this starting point, therefore, the author has been able to provide a holistic examination of conflict and cooperation between India and Pakistan since partition in 1947 to 2021.

The India-Pakistan conflict is not a new terrain for Christopher Clary. He has vast experience of working on South Asia, especially on nuclear rivalry between India and Pakistan. The book under discussion is his first but he has published several research articles, monographs, book chapters and op-eds in the Washington Post, the Indian Express and other newspapers on Indian and Pakistani foreign policy. As well as secondary sources, the author’s research has included primary source material and interview with key figures on both sides.

Theory is the strongest point of the book as the whole book revolves around the leader primacy theory developed by the author to explain what causes conflict escalation and de-escalation in South Asia. Clary explains how alternative theories of cooperation and conflict among rivals offered by different scholars are unable to explain the rivalry between India and Pakistan and why his own leader primacy theory is the most appropriate theory to explain its ebb and flow.

Clary has used leader primacy theory to explain how the national leader’s own position in his country becomes a key determinant in terms of whether he adopts conflictual or conciliatory behavior. He points out that apart from the leader primacy, ‘strategic incentives’ faced by the rival states also constitute an important element in the decision making. But if the leader has ‘fractured or diffused’ foreign policy authority, then the ‘strategic incentives’ in themselves cannot convince him to go for reconciliation (p.30). Clary argues that only a leader who has the ‘concentrated foreign policy authority’ or ‘primacy’ in decision making within his country can take the risk of going along the difficult path of peace because in terms of domestic political gains, war-making is far more profitable as compared to peacebuilding (p.3-4). Moreover, when rivalry gets entrenched over time, it produces ‘an influential cadre of hardliners who have a ‘parochial interest’ in continuing the rivalry (p.14-15). Therefore, leader primacy becomes a necessary condition for sustainable peacebuilding.

Clary is of the opinion that authoritarian rulers can achieve leader primacy more easily because of more personalized and centralized foreign policy decision making but the conception of leader primacy does not depend on regime type. In India the democratically elected Prime Ministers Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Atal Behari Vajpai and Narendra Modi had achieved leader primacy, while in Pakistan three out of four military dictators (Ayub Kahan, Zia-ul-Haq and Pervez Musharraf) had achieved it at one point although Ayub and Musharraf near the end of their respective periods of rule had lost the same primacy. Hence, leader primacy depends on several factors. Once obtained, it can also be lost as well if circumstances change. Among civilian rulers in Pakistan Liaqat Ali Khan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif obtained leader primacy and hence were able to conclude the Liaqat-Nehru pact 1950, the Simla Accord 1972 and the Lahore Declaration 1999 respectively.

Rather than picking certain events to prove his leader primacy theory, Dr. Clary has empirically tested it on the whole range of conflict and cooperation episodes that took place between 1947 and 2021. After explaining his theory in the first chapter and tracing the origins of the India-Pakistan rivalry in the second, he devotes the remaining six chapters of the book to testing how well the leader primacy theory explains ‘shifting inter-state behavior’ of the two countries (p.9).

The work is arranged chronologically, which makes it very easy for even a reader with no background in South Asian politics to comprehend developments and keep up with the pace of the book. Chapter three covers the period 1948-1954, chapter four 1955-1960, chapter five 1960-1965, chapter six 1966-1977, chapter seven 1977-99, and chapter eight 1999-2021. Hence, from Nehru-Liaqat to Modi-Imran the leader primacy theory is tested in different times with different strategic incentives and different kinds of leadership at the helm in Delhi and Islamabad.

The leader primacy theory along with alternative explanations for major wars and crises starting with the first Kashmir War (1948-49) and Bengal crisis (1950) up to the Surgical Strikes (2016) and Pulwama/Balakot Crisis (2019) are discussed in the book. Similarly, all major conciliatory initiatives and peace processes starting with the Kashmir negotiations (1948-1954) up to the Backchannel Dialogue (2004-07) and attempts by Nawaz Sharif in his second tenure (2013-17) are discussed threadbare in comparison with the leader primacy theory and other alternative explanations. Interestingly, the author completely misses the negotiations around the agreement on a new liberalised visa regime in 2012 and the trade agreement on MFN status for India in the same year.

The author shows with empirical evidence how hawkish and uncontrolled veto players distort information and sabotage peace initiatives making it almost impossible for those leaders with fractured foreign policy authority to pursue peace. President Musharraf’s backchannel peace initiative (2004-07) was a classic case in this regard. Musharraf had enjoyed leader primacy for most of his rule, which is why by March 2007 he was able to arrive at an agreement with India over a lasting solution of the Kashmir dispute in backchannel dialogues. But after March 2007 as he started to lose domestic ground and gradually lost his primacy in the foreign policy, he could not seal the deal with India because of the fears of strong reaction from hawkish veto powers.

Moreover, the book shows how in the post-Musharraf era (2008-21) no leader in Pakistan could secure the leader primacy which made it difficult to revive the peace process. Clary has explained in detail how President Asif Ali Zardari (2008-2013) and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif (2013-2017), despite their desire to normalise relations with India, could not achieve any progress in improving relations with India. Nawaz Sharif, despite getting a mandate to improve relations with India in the 2013 elections, could not revive the peace process because he lacked the leader primacy and uncontrolled veto players made it impossible for him to pursue peace with India.

In my opinion the real contribution of the book under review is that it describes very well how difficult the path of peace is and what kind of challenges leaders in situations of deep rooted conflicts face when they decide to take the path of peace. However, one major element which is missing in the book is the role played by people-to-people contacts and the peace lobby in building peace. Dr. Clary has put so much emphasis on hawkish, uncontrolled veto powers who play the role of spoilers in the conflict, but at the same time fails to mention civil society initiatives such as the Pakistan India Peoples Forum for Peace and Democracy (PIPFPD) and Aman ki Asha which facilitate the process of peacebuilding and try to control the damage done by spoilers. But yes, the war lobby and the hawkish veto powers are more powerful compared to the peace lobby in the India-Pakistan conflict, which is why conflict lingers on, but complete silence on the role of peace mongers in a book which claims to look at both the war-making and peacebuilding processes is mind-boggling.

© Bloomsbury Pakistan 2024