While contending the prevailing realists’ explanation of war happening because of power struggle, John Vasquez argues in his book, The War Puzzle Revisited, that a majority of wars are fought over territory, either to defend or occupy it. According to Vasquez, territorial disputes between two countries are ‘much more war-prone’ than others.
ince the time of their invention and the first-and-only use on 6 and 9 August 1945 on two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively, nuclear weapons have been seen by the states that possess them, or the ones that seek them, as the ultimate guarantors of their security.1 It is believed that these weapons are key to achieving victory in a war that otherwise may go on for a long time or may end in defeat if fought in conventional ways by a weaker country; in other words, nuclear weapons are believed to act as instruments of deterrence.
While Pakistan clearly seeks to maintain cordial relations with Iran, it is unlikely that it would be willing to incur the displeasure of Saudi Arabia with which it has greater economic and strategic links.
Pakistan is undergoing political turmoil once again. Once again an elected prime minister was first removed in July 2017, and then barred from fighting elections for life on April 13, 2018.
Will the Pakistani civilian leadership cease to placate the Islamist forces for their own electoral gain? Will the Army rein in the jihadis it has been using to retain “strategic depth” in Afghanistan?
The burgeoning scholarship on the army’s role in nation building, or the lack of it, is unsurprising. In the modern political order, a nation without its own army is hardly imaginable. A crucial relationship exists between the two, which is also a reason for the uneasiness about the army’s pro-active involvement in the nation-making process. Political sociologists have been uncovering striking causal relationships that demonstrate the crucial role of the army and its internal ‘organisation’, ‘control’ and ‘function’ for the subsisting units of the modern world system: nation-states.
Pakistan-Saudi Arabia Relations – the drivers and challenges
While Pakistan clearly seeks to maintain cordial relations with Iran, it is unlikely that it would be willing to incur the displeasure of Saudi Arabia with which it has greater economic and strategic links.