Publications

RECENT BOOKS

High Stakes in the Himalayas
The Second Kashmir War: National Objectives and Global Power. Chisinau, MD: Eliva Press, 2024. ISBN: 978-99993-1-732-0

The Kashmir Conflict has, for nearly eighty years now, mirrored both the interstate relations of India and Pakistan as well as the evolving structures  of global political power. This account and analysis of the Second Kashmir War provides a thickly textured description of the interactions between South Asia’s enduring rivals during this tumultuous and, it can be credibly argued, decisive confrontation of collective wills. It does so by reporting both countries’ political leaders’ statements of their respective national objectives. Goal articulation is employed here as a means of analyzing the nature and scope of the issues at stake in this high-intensity trial by fire.

Juxtaposed with the complex interplay of competing national purposes, the impact of a secondary level of interstate relations, namely those engaging the polarizing powers of the times – the United States, the Soviet Union, and the People’s Republic of China, is integrated within the analytical framework so as to provide an accurate stocktaking of the war’s trajectory and outcomes. It is at these junctures- the interrelationships between Pakistan and India on the one hand, and their respective interactions with the three principal intervening powers, on the other, that the Second Kashmir War becomes readily intelligible in its significant dimensions. Lessons that can be applied in preventing, short-circuiting, and terminating the wars of the 21st century form a central element of this account and analysis.

Structural Realism and Geopolitical Thought
An Approach to International Political Theory Development. Chisinau, MD: Eliva Press, 2020. ISBN: 978-9975-3475-2-5

This analysis of the theoretical arts and science of the academic field of International Relations links geopolitical thinking, particularly that emanating from the French-speaking world, with mainstream conceptual frameworks developed principally in English by scholars and practitioners operating for the most part from the perspective of political science. This reinforced cross-cultural approach draws on the strengths of both knowledge streams in an exercise in international-political theory development. More fundamentally, the research design highlights the natural affinities of structural-realist and geopolitical thought in the theory development enterprise. 

The study of political power in all its attributes, both manifest and latent, is the core purpose of the discipline of political science. Geopolitical formulations, analyses, and constructs, for their part, serve to assess how political power is both structured by and interacts with geographical and environmental contexts.  Recognizing the centrality of realist and geopolitical reasoning to the practice and study of International Relations, this record of a deeply researched exploration in the literatures of both traditions of thought seeks to advance the ongoing collective effort to better comprehend and implement constructive action in international political life.

PUBLICATIONS, CONFERENCE PAPERS & SUBJECT MATTER EXPERT PRESENTATIONS

“Morally the wielder of power appears to cause the event, physically it is those who submit to the power. But as the moral activity is inconceivable without the physical, the cause of the event is neither in the one nor in the other, but in the union of the two.”

Tolstoy