Title: Review of Subcontinent Adrift: Strategic Futures of South Asia.

• Author: Dorschner, Jon P.

Author: Jon P. Dorschner

Text:

Subcontinent Adrift: Strategic Futures of South Asia

By Feroz Hassan Khan

Cambria Press: August 2022

258 pp.

To start, it's important to understand that the author, Feroz Hassan Khan, a retired Pakistani Brigadier, served as the Pakistani Army's Director of Arms Control and Disarmament Affairs. This differentiates Khan from the generals who command troops in combat. He is an intellectual general who is currently a Research Professor at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School. Since his retirement, Khan has published a number of articles on South Asian arms control and related matters and a book Eating Grass: The Making of the Pakistani Bomb (Stanford Security Studies 2012).

He is the latest of many authors to tackle the Indo-Pakistan conflict, which has continued with periodic starts and stops since the two nations won their independence from Great Britain in 1947. If you are not a South Asia specialist and plan to read only one book on this subject, I heartily recommend this one.

This book is qualitatively better than most others that often focus more on the South Asia policies of the United States, Russia, China, and other powers rather than on the two states involved in the relationship. Khan, by contrast, maintains a laser-like focus on India and Pakistan without getting sidetracked. Khan deals only with the subject at hand and does not get bogged down in detailed analysis of the international system, the internal politics of world powers, or the maze of South Asian domestic politics. He keeps his work short, and easy to comprehend.

Khan's military background and intimate knowledge of the internal dynamics of the Pakistan armed forces and Pakistani civil/military relations has given him a valuable and unique insight uncommon among authors from academia or journalism. South Asian military culture and its Byzantine complexity is almost incomprehensible to the outsider. Khan's unique perspective and succinct writing style allows the non-military reader to cut through the fog and see the issues clearly.

Khan's sincere attempt at objectivity separates him from many writers who tackle IndiaPakistan issues. As a retired Pakistani general this must have been difficult for him to accomplish, something I believe he would be the first to acknowledge. Despite this, Khan tries to explain the internal variables that have prevented India and Pakistan from resolving their dispute, normalizing their bilateral relationship, and...