BOOK REVIEW: Pakistan's proclivity for war

[unhappycamper]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=post&forum=1133



Pakistan's proclivity for war
Reviewed by Ehsan Ahrari
Jul 28, '14

For the past 15-plus years, Pakistan has been the unenviable focus of a variety of unflattering depictions of its state of affairs in scholarly and journalistic narratives. It appears as if various authors are in competition to select increasingly ominous phrases to describe that country and its cataclysmic state of affairs.

Some called it "the most dangerous place", "a country that is descending into chaos", a county that possesses a "Kalashnikov" culture, a "garrison state", or a "hard country".

As if following the same tradition, T V Paul's book, The Warrior State: Pakistan in the Contemporary World, adds one more phrase, "warrior state", to portray it as a country where the security state has outgrown all other institutions and activities and where radical Islamization and its attendant obscurantism have been the consequences of state policy.

He describes Pakistan as a place where the chances for the decline of power of the security state are minimal and the prospects of the development of other institutions for the evolution of that country as a politically stable democracy or economically prosperous state are slim.