Author: pstaniland

An important passage from his Winning the Third World: Sino-American Rivalry during the Cold War, and one very relevant to contemporary Asia – while regional states are much more stable today, they remains outside the reliable control of outsiders:

“political instability prevailed in much of the Global South during the Cold War often confounding the efforts of both Americans and Chinese to cultivate particular leaders or elites. Military coups, successful insurgencies, or other power plays could realign politics in developing countries, altering relations with and perceptions of outside powers” (9)

Pew has another excellent survey out looking at a variety of countries’ public opinion toward the US. Luckily this one includes India. What do Indians make of the US and Joe Biden?

First off, public opinion toward Biden is overall very positive, continuing an upward trend since 2017 (and returning to close to the Obama-era high):

Second, Indians have a generally positive opinion of the US in general:

Third, an unusually high percentage of Indians think the US considers their country’s interests (Indians also overwhelmingly think the US contributes to peace and stability around the world, at 70%):

Fourth, Indians are impressed with American universities and unimpressed with American media and entertainment (note: I agree!):

The trends here look very good for the United States and US-India relations. They are also a useful reminder – including to me – that the daily outrage on twitter (how dare the US send Uzra Zeya to Delhi (to, it turns out, talk about the Indo-Pacific strategy)! Blinken’s comments on human rights will turn Indian opinion against the US! Biden is trying to soft regime change Modi!) seem to be largely irrelevant to mass public opinion. They may matter to a (likely very small) subset of the public, of course, and that can be meaningful, but most people aren’t paying attention or experiencing radical swings in opinion. The same is true in the US – 40% of Americans haven’t heard of Modi one way or another while general opinion toward India seems pretty stably positive. Most of this day-to-day stuff that occupies wonks and twitterati and journalists and academics is irrelevant to public opinion. It may be relevant in other meaningful spheres (legislatures, NGOs, The Discourse, etc) but it’s important to keep some perspective.

I radically reduced my tweeting mainly for my own reasons – distraction, being trolled in annoying ways, wasted time, feeling compelled for some reason to offer comments even without anything to say. It’s also the case that the usefulness of social media seems to be in decline, as the Thesis Whisperer argues here:

“But things have changed. Telling academics they can achieve career success by using today’s algorithmic-driven platforms is like telling Millennials they could afford to buy a house by eating less avocado on toast. It’s a cruel lie”

Aqil Shah’s excellent analysis of the fate of Imran Khan includes this important point:

“The military has defied any suggestion of its fractiousness. It has maintained its cohesion to systematically repress the PTI and reclaim its domination of Pakistani public life. . . . the army is still united, in lockstep with directives from its leaders, and bent on stamping out the challenge posed by Khan. . . . the civilian government’s collusion with the military has dashed the faint hope that democracy in the country had a fighting chance”

Ahsan Butt, Dann Naseemullah, and I made a related point in a data-focused piece on the Pakistani military in the Journal of Strategic Studies. It took some twitter criticism for seeming to be laudatory of the Army – because it highlighted its internal cohesion and professional-seeming internal processes – but I thought we were pretty clear that in fact this was a huge problem for democratization in Pakistan because of how the Pakistan Army combines a high degree of internal cohesion with ongoing external politicization and intervention. Most political militaries becomes factionalized, split between hard- and soft-liners, and pulled into party politics and social cleavages. That’s why quantitative analyses show that military regimes tend not to last compared to single-party regimes.

Pakistan’s military has managed to finesse that tendency by continuing to hold itself together during transitions in and out of direct rule and in shaping politics while ostensibly back to the barracks (Myanmar and Egypt are other cases with echoes of this power). It would be much better for meaningful democratic transition if there were in fact major rifts within the military (note: that could cause other problems, of course) that could establish stronger, more consistent civilian bargaining power able to consolidate a transition.

The Journal of Democracy has an excellent collection of five articles offering a mix of agreement and disagreement about the state, and history, of Indian democracy. They’re all open-access so free to read – check out the collection here.