Pakistan's army has dominated the state for most of its 66 years. It has locked the country in an enduring rivalry with India to revise the maps in Kashmir and to resist India's slow but inevitable rise. To prosecute these dangerous policies, the army employs non-state actors under the security of its ever-expanding nuclear umbrella. The Pakistan army started three wars with India over Kashmir in 1947, 1965, and 1999 and failed to win any of them. It has sustained a proxy war in Kashmir since 1989 using Islamist militants, some of whom have now turned their guns against the Pakistani state. The Pakistan army has supported non-Islamist insurgencies throughout India as well as a country-wide Islamist terror campaign that have brought the two countries to the brink of war on several occasions. Despite Pakistan's efforts to coerce India, it has only achieved modest successes. Even though India vivisected Pakistan in 1971, Pakistan continues to see itself as India's equal and demands the world do the same. The tools that the army prefers to use, non-state actors under a nuclear umbrella, has brought international opprobrium upon the country and the army. In recent years, erstwhile proxies have turned their gun on the Pakistani state itself and its peoples. Why does the army persist in pursuing these revisionist policies that have come to imperil the very viability of the state itself, from which the army feeds? This volume argues that the answer lies, at least partially, in the strategic culture of the army. From the army's distorted view of history, the army is victorious as long as can resist India's purported hegemony and the territorial status quo. To acquiesce is defeat. Because the army is unlikely to abandon these preferences, the world must prepare for an ever more dangerous future Pakistan.

About the Author
C. Christine Fair is an Assistant Professor in the Security Studies Program within Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. She previously served as a senior political scientist with the RAND Corporation, a political officer with the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan in Kabul, and a senior research associate at USIP's Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention. Her research focuses on political and military affairs in South Asia.

Reviews
she concentrates on the international dimensions of the policies pursued by the Pakistani army and the implications that this has forregional and international security. * Katharine Adeney, Political Studies Review *
A provocative but historically justified look at the security narrative scribed and fiercely protected by the Pakistan military since its 1947 inception. * Thomas F. Lynch III, Book of the year 2014, The War on the Rocks *
Fairs book, based on a meticulous analysis of literature published by Pakistans military, persuasively demonstrates that the delusions of grandeur which drive the countrys security establishment are rooted in fatal distortions of history. * Kapil Komireddi, Book of the year 2014, New Republic *
the book represents a valuable contribution to the literature. It has been deeply and thoroughly researched, with an extensive analysis of the official documents of the Pakistan army previously overlooked by scholarship on the subject. * Filippo Boni, Commonwealth and Comparative Politics *
a very important work which should be made available to as wide an audience as possible * R. F. Rosner, The Royal Society for Asian Affairs *
Christine Fair has produced the definitive intellectual biography of the Pakistan army, which will be necessary reading for anyone interested in the country or South Asia as a whole. * Walter C. Ladwig III, War in History Book *



Book Information
ISBN 9780199892709
Author C. Christine Fair
Format Hardback
Page Count 364
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 544g
Dimensions(mm) 236mm * 155mm * 23mm