Author: pstaniland

I have a new article out with the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. I argue that debates over democratic backsliding and competitive authoritarianism in South Asia, while still important, need to be complemented by a renewed focus on how militaries exercise power and influence across much of the region. The fall of the Rajapaksas in Sri Lanka and Sheikh Hasina in Bangladesh showed how quickly governments with backsliding tendencies could fall. By contrast, in Pakistan and Myanmar, recent years have seen a further deepening of military entrenchment, while in Bangladesh and even Nepal, militaries emerged as decisive players in moments of political paralysis. This has important implications for these countries’ future trajectories (especially in periods of deadlock or renewed crisis), as well as their links to other states. Please go read the whole thing!

Richard Gray has a thoughtful piece in the Pacific Polarity Substack on ways for young people to enter the foreign policy community in a current era when many of the natural entry points no longer exist. I’m not part of this community, other than unpaid nonresident affiliations with a couple of thinktanks, but many of my students are looking to become part of it, so I found it very valuable. A few excerpts that jumped out to me:

“Do not expect to get a research internship for a well-known think tank for your first role. These are fiercely competitive roles that will receive hundreds of applicants every cycle. Your early internships are unlikely to fall neatly within foreign policy. As such, your goal is to pursue internships that are both interesting and broadly applicable to your long-term objectives”

“if you have the time and capacity, do something eccentric.

During undergrad, I directed a conference with National Taiwan University, the first undergraduate conference of its kind between an American and Taiwanese university (you can read about here). It took me hundreds of hours in preparation and was the second most stressful thing I have ever done, but the event and its consequences were pivotal for my later career stages. Part of the reason I landed my first think tank internship was that a guest speaker at my conference was a fellow at the organization, which made me recognizable to the hiring team. The conference also positioned me well as someone who had an idea and executed it without dramatic failure”

“You want to be specialized enough to be taken seriously as a young person, but broad enough to adapt to geopolitical swings.

On one hand, your areas of interest cannot be as broad as “foreign policy,” “international affairs,” or “international security.” Many high-profile figures operate as generalists, but they are typically people with many years of experience who either have a Dr. by their name or have intimate knowledge of how the American bureaucracy functions. As an early-career person, you need greater regional and subject matter focus, whether that is maritime security in the South China Sea, critical mineral security in Sub-Saharan Africa, or industrial strategies in Central America.

On the other hand, you don’t want to become so specialized that your skills are inflexible and fail to match most job opportunities. The policy environment shifts at a breakneck pace, and you do not want to be left behind current events. “

“I have sat on both sides of the hiring-applying equation, and recognize how dispiriting it can be to be at the mercy of decisions made by someone else, decisions that are often hasty, arbitrary, and sometimes preferential. There is a restlessness in preparing application materials, submitting on career portals, gaming out interviews, scouring LinkedIn, and … waiting. There are thousands just like you at this very moment, feeling that same emptiness in the pit of their stomach, at a standstill as the world appears to move beyond them.

Nevertheless, what an exciting moment in human history. China is now a mammoth, Southeast Asia is bustling, technologies are advancing at the frontier and diffusing throughout societies, and global challenges are interlocking at a dizzying pace and magnitude.”

“Ask yourself: if you were fielding hundreds of applicants, would you choose yourself? If not, what would it take to get there? Becoming more defined in your lane will make it more difficult for you to be replaced and insulate you from the whims of government or specific funding sources. With accumulated expertise, targeted networking, and differentiation comes a cosmos of your own creation.”

This is a valuable piece in Himal Southasian by Sanjeev Satgainya going over the key players in the March 5 election:

“Elections in a multi-party democracy are about political parties, but this election is also about something more – competing interpretations of how a democracy should function: quick and disruptive, procedural and reformist, or experienced and centralised.

The three figures currently dominating the national conversation exemplify these three interpretations: Balendra Shah, or “Balen”, of the upstart Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP), an outsider to Nepal’s political establishment and a symbol of impatience with it; the Nepali Congress’s Gagan Thapa, an institutional reformist; and K P Sharma Oli of the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist–Leninist), ousted as prime minister by the September protests, a seasoned centraliser of executive power.”

Zack Cooper has a very sober assessment of the failure of America’s Asia strategy out in Foreign Affairs, one I strongly agree with. He argues that the most plausible strategy that can be cobbled together at this point is a retrenched version of defending the first island chain, rather than a comprehensive pivot into competition across the region.

Most of the piece focuses on East Asia, but there are important implications of this strategy for India and Thailand that I wanted to highlight:

“This approach would trim U.S. commitments while retaining some of the most capable U.S. allies and partners, including Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines. The United States would likely maintain its presence in Australia and South Korea, given its enduring alliances with both countries and its desire to avoid leaving crucial allies out of the U.S. defense perimeter, a costly mistake Washington made ahead of the Korean War. But it would leave most of the rest of the region off the list of U.S. priorities, including the treaty ally Thailand and the emerging great power India. In practice, this could mean, for example, abrogating the U.S. alliance with Thailand and stating explicitly that the United States will not intervene if China encroaches on the territory or maritime claims of partners on the Asian mainland.’”

India can continue making hopeful noises about America as a long-term strategic partner, and I think there is certainly a possibility of that (including in high-tech areas), but it is also the case that the US may be far less useful as a strategic backstop than one might have thought a decade ago.

I have very few consumer vices, but do love sensibly priced, high quality Japanese precision gadgets (in addition to Canon photo gear, I drive a Subaru and own Casio/Seiko/Citizen watches). After wandering through Olympus and Fuji mirrorless cameras after following my my first photography with a Canon XTi DSLR, I’ve ended up back as a Canon user, both for film (Canonet QL17 and A-1, the latter using FD mount) and digital (RF mount). The Canon Museum is a lot of fun to surf, and PhilipReeve.net has a nice guide to vintage FD lenses.

Along these lines, this is a fun interview with the developers of the new Canon RF 45mm f1.2 (Google-translated from Japanese), followed by a set of images by photographers:

“Hagiwara: However, it was still too early to release a reproduction of the EF lens as it was. So we decided to plan a reproduction of the “FD55mm F1.2AL.” It was Canon’s first lens to use an aspherical lens. After examining the design, we realized that it could be made much smaller, so we started by searching for documents about the “FD55mm F1.2AL” within the company. . . .

Hagiwara: However, the project remained as a proposal and lay dormant for several years, and as the RF lens lineup was completed, we decided to restart it as a reproduction of the EF50mm f/1.2L USM. . . .

Abe: We wanted to meet both the demands of ease of use as a modern product and the taste of depiction due to aberrations, so we carefully considered the balance of image quality. We tried out not only EF lenses and the FD lenses mentioned earlier, but also lenses from the Serenar era (interchangeable lenses from the 1950s) [Paul note: the Serenar 50/1.8 is a really lovely Leica screw-mount lens], looking for a compromise. . . . .

Abe: In the end, we settled on a modern version of the EF50mm f/1.2L USM. Some people who love FD lenses or lenses from the Serenar era may find the blurring lacking. Instead, we ensured that it meets modern quality standards and is comfortable to use. We believe we have achieved a good balance that allows you to casually enjoy shooting at f/1.2 while also being able to experience the unique characteristics of the lens.”

This is a valuable piece in Prothom Alo arguing that with India’s decline in power in Bangladesh, China is moving up. Also notes how foreign affairs are playing out on the campaign trail:

“Ahead of the election, the BNP and its closest rival, the Islamist Jamaat‑e‑Islami, have accused each other of courting foreign interests, with Jamaat alleging the BNP is too close to India, and the BNP pointing to Jamaat’s historic ties with Pakistan, India’s old enemy.

“Not Dilli, not Pindi, Bangladesh before everything,” Rahman, the BNP leader, told a recent rally, referring to New Delhi and Pakistan’s military headquarters in Rawalpindi.”

Plus US policy is making life easier for China:

“”China is steadily building its influence both in the open and behind the scenes, benefiting from the crisis in India-Bangladesh relations,” said Constantino Xavier, a senior fellow at New Delhi think tank Centre for Social and Economic Progress.

“China has also been able to capitalise on declining U.S. engagement and Trump’s tariff war, positioning itself as a more credible and predictable economic partner.””

This is a summary – from the August 1968 monthly political report from the Indian High Commission in Colombo – of disagreements within the Sri Lankan left over the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia in 1968. I had to google “Keuneman revisionist clique” – apparently it was what the pro-Moscow, electorally-inclined faction of the Communist Party of Sri Lanka was called by its left critics. For a really deep dive, this 1974 book by an “anti-revisionist” Sri Lankan Marxist regularly uses the term, while also highlighting “the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party alone warned against placing faith in the fraud of bourgeois parliamentary democracy” and lamenting how “Khrushchov [sic] usurped power by means of a palace revolution and embarked on the treacherous course of modern revisionism, abandoning the revolutionary principles of Marxism-Leninism.”