Author: pstaniland

I’m going to be posting a lot more here now. I finally bailed on active posting on Twitter, at least for the time being. I joined Twitter in February 2015 very soon after my first kid was born as something mindless to do during long immobile naps and the like. Then I started getting some followers and indulging my endless distractibility, and ended up with over 20,000 followers and a lot of posts.

The upsides of Twitter are clear:

• incredible access to news and expertise from all over the world (for instance, irreplaceably useful for following the Russia-Ukraine war or 2019 India-Pakistan crisis).
• numerous new connections can be made fairly easily – I discovered a lot of smart and interesting people whose work I now read.
• opportunities for wide visibility, including in policy and journalistic circles, as well as in Asia.
• the latter two points are especially useful for someone located in “flyover country” in the Midwest (Chicago is a wonderful city, but not Boston-DC-NYC or the West Coast for international connections), interested in a region on the other side of the world, and, initially, an untenured professor trying to get a bit of attention in a staggeringly crowded marketplace.

I benefited a lot from Twitter, and even ended up writing an article using Twitter data.

The downsides, however, became increasingly apparent (they were always obvious to people wiser than me, like my viscerally Twitter-skeptical wife). Contributions are ephemeral and quickly disappear, even compared to blog posts. South Asia twitter is incredible in many ways, but I wasn’t very good at ignoring the intense vitriol accompanying it – like in many other parts of the site, the path to engagement is either denouncing or being denounced. Academia is a world of endless comparison, so there was a certain amount of unproductive stress that came with seeing people accomplishing many wonderful things that I was not.

Most importantly, I eventually internalized the fact that I say much stupider things when I don’t have an editor, reviewers, or 24 hours of letting something sit. I definitely learned that the hard way, however, after too many cringe-worthy tweets. The inclination to shoot something, anything, off into the void was too strong. As a matter of limiting my own idiocy, a couple years ago I decided to only post news or scholarly articles or anodyne commentary that lacked any real value-added. Yet I still found myself unable to stop from checking notifications and the like, making it the worst of all worlds.

Throw in the Elon Musk misadventure and the chaos it suggested (i.e. Trump being invited back on, the Kanye stuff, etc), and it seemed like a good time to stop. I’ll definitely still read some Twitter, assuming it chugs along, to get up to speed on crises, elections, breaking news, and the NBA, but I’ve hit the flat of the curve in terms of the value I get from it.

I’ll thus be reinvigorating this blog for the couple dozen of you who ever read it. I’ll take a slower pace and a longer shelf-life over the vastly-higher-visibility but fleeting world of twitter. The goal is a mix of substantive commentary with, much more frequently, links, short notes, and photographs.

On November 14, 2022, I had the pleasure of making the case for The Strategic Superiority of the Latke at the 76th Annual Latke-Hamantash Debate (for some background on this long-running tradition, see here and here). You can watch my remarks here on YouTube.

I have a new piece up in Lawfare that builds on a research agenda I’ve been pursuing as a hopeful-third book project, and assorted scholarly and policy articles. The broader project explores how geopolitical rivalries intersect with the domestic politics of third-party states affected by these competitions among great powers. I took a couple years off of public-facing writing to both deal with various other things in life and to learn about a broader set of cases and dynamics than I’d previously explored; there’s no point just repeating the same arguments about the same topics and places indefinitely – sometimes it seems like I just need to re-tool and find something new to say.

This article zooms in on a set of lessons from Asia’s Cold War for analysts, scholars, and policymakers on how to think about the internal political dynamics within these third-party countries. The first couple paragraphs set the stage:

“Competition between the United States and China in Asia has generated ongoing discussion about whether Asia’s present will resemble its Cold War past. In one key area, the contemporary period is—at least so far—much less dangerous. From the 1940s through the 1980s, Asia’s Cold War intertwined major power rivalry with intense local struggles for power and influence. Domestic political competition was frequently embedded within and connected to external geopolitics, producing complex, and often violent, outcomes.

Classic questions of strategy and statecraft could not be cleanly separated from internal political struggles for power, legitimacy, and control. The “authoritarian Leviathans” of Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia deployed anti-communism at home and abroad. Marxist-Leninist regimes with strong ties to the Soviet Union, China, or both emerged and consolidated in Laos and Vietnam. Militaries in Thailand and Pakistan mobilized Cold War fears and U.S. support to protect their political power. South Vietnam, Laos, Afghanistan, and Cambodia experienced extraordinary levels of instability and civil war, with internal armed actors closely linked to, though not fully controlled by, external players. The Sino-Soviet split and India-China competition also influenced the internal politics of states in the region.

This fusing of the global and local was not universal—India was comparatively insulated from these Cold War currents, for instance—but it helped to spur extraordinary levels of violence and political instability from 1946 until the mid-1970s in Southeast Asia, and then the fragmentation of Afghanistan and its spillover in the 1980s.”

Two of my recent-ish articles are now ungated and available to read to those without university library access:

1. With the remarkably wonderful coauthors Asfandyar Mir and Tamar Mitts, “Political Coalitions and Social Media: Evidence from Pakistan,” Perspectives on Politics (FirstView): “Social media is frequently an arena of intense competition among major political actors across the world. We argue that a fruitful way of understanding this competition is as coalitions among key actors and their networks of followers. These coalitions can both advance a shared political message and target mutual rivals. Importantly, coalitions can be tacit or explicit, and they do not necessarily depend on direct state manipulation or repression, although they often do. This makes a coalitional framework particularly valuable for studying complex political environments in which online actors blend cooperation and competition. Empirically, we show the value of this approach with novel data collection and analysis of Twitter and Facebook content from 2018–19 in Pakistan, with a focus on the dynamics leading up to and following the controversial 2018 general election. We map out networks of narrative alignment and conflict on Pakistani social media, providing important insights into the relationships among the major political parties, military, media, and dissidents. Future research can fruitfully explore the causes and effects of powerful social media coalitions.”
2. “Leftist Insurgency in Democracies,” Comparative Political Studies (2021): “Leftist insurgency has been a major form of civil war since 1945. Existing research on revolution has linked leftist rebellions to authoritarianism or blocked democratization. This research overlooks the onset of leftist insurgencies in a number of democracies. This paper theorizes the roots of this distinctive form of civil war, arguing that democracy shapes how these insurgencies begin, acting as a double-edged sword that simultaneously blocks the emergence of a revolutionary coalition and triggers intra-left splits that breed radical splinters. Leftist revolts can thus emerge during “incorporation windows” that trigger disputes within a divided left over electoral co-optation. Empirically, the paper studies all cases of leftist insurgency in southern Asia since 1945, under both autocracy and democracy, as well as a set of non-onset cases. It offers a new direction for understanding varieties of revolutionary mobilization, highlighting ideology, intra-left debate, and the multi-faceted effects of democracy on conflict.”

Clary, Lalwani, and Siddiqui with an important new survey on Indian views of foreign policy issues; Confidence and Nationalism in Modi’s India:

“A new 7000-person survey conducted by phone in India between April 13 and May 14, 2022, finds: 

• high levels of support for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who likely remains among the most popular national leaders in the world today; 
• extraordinary nationalist sentiment among Indians, at high levels compared to prior cross-national surveys using identical question wording; 
• troubling signs of intolerance toward India’s large Muslim minority, which helps provide context to recent controversies;  
• strong confidence in the Indian government’s ability to defend India against potential domestic and foreign threats;  
• expectations among a majority of Indian respondents that the U.S. military would support India in the event of a war with China or Pakistan; and 
• large majorities in favor of Indian numerical nuclear superiority against its adversaries.”

One on the 1980s/early 1990s, the other on contemporary Assam:

Alex Waterman, “The shadow of ‘the boys:’ rebel governance without territorial control in Assam’s ULFA insurgency,” Small Wars and Insurgencies:

This article leverages data from an oft-overlooked case of rebel governance – India’s United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) – to demonstrate the importance of de-centring territorial control as a prerequisite for rebel governance. ULFA neither controlled territory nor developed formalised bureaucratic institutions, yet its ‘parallel government’ held considerable sway over Assamese public life during 1985–1990, underpinned by its social embeddedness, influence upon media discourse and crucially its subversion of state structures, until its ability to limit state repression collapsed. The rise and fall of ULFA’s rebel governance illustrates the hybrid socio-political terrain upon which rebel governance is often laid.”

Neelanjan Sircar, “Religion-as-Ethnicity and the Emerging Hindu Vote in India,” Studies in Indian Politics:

“Religious division formed the basis for the subcontinent’s partition and has continued to be a major social cleavage in local relations. Yet remarkably religious parties have rarely been successful in India. This may be changing with an ascendant Bharatiya Janata Party mobilizing the Hindu vote. Accordingly, this article seeks to explicate the conditions under which successful religious parties may emerge. In order to do so, I conceive of electoral mobilization on religion as a form of ethnic mobilization, what I refer to as religion-as-ethnicity voting. I argue that religion-as-ethnicity voting emerges when the religious group meets certain spatial demographic criteria (density and pivotality) and when a governing party representing these interests can use state power to reify boundaries between religious groups. I use this framework to explain the emergence of the Hindu vote in the Indian state of Assam.”

The Wilson Center has a great Digital Archive, including a valuable Cold War International History Project. I’ve been trying to learn up on the Indian Left during the Cold War, and came across a couple fascinating documents from a 1951 visit by a group of Indian Communists to Moscow. They’re quite long but really worth reading, as they try to figure out how to best apply concepts like “national bourgeoisie” to the Indian context, seek guidance on navigating their own internal disagreements (i.e. over the priority to be placed on armed struggle), and answer questions from Stalin about conditions in India.

1. “MEETING OF TOP CPI AND CPSU COMRADES” (a key focus of this one is resolving the situation Rao describes – “serious differences have emerged among us regarding the political line of the party. The disagreements have resulted in a situation wherein the work of the party has come to a standstill”):
   “Delegation representing the Indian Communist Party, including Rao, Ghosh, and Dange, discusses the internal disagreements within the ICP following the party’s Second Congress, stemming largely over the question of armed struggle. Also touches on how the ICP should react to foreign policy issues, including US involvement in the Korean War.”

2. “RECORD OF A CONVERSATION BETWEEN STALIN AND REPRESENTATIVES OF THE INDIAN COMMUNIST PARTY”

“Meeting in Moscow between Stalin and Indian Communist Party representatives C. Rajeswara Rao, S. A. Dange, A. K. Ghosh, and [M. Basava] Punnaiah. Stalin responded to a series of prepared questions from the representatives.”

Stalin offers lots of advice; for instance:
“It is very much to your advantage to neutralize the big bourgeoisie and split off nine-tenths of all the national bourgeoisie from it. You don’t need to artificially create new enemies for yourself. And so you have many of them. The big capitalists’ turn will come, too, and, of course, then their turn will come. The problems of a revolution are decided in stages. All stages cannot be lumped together”

and

“They tell us there [in India] that partisan warfare is completely sufficient to achieve the victory of the revolution in India. This is incorrect.  Conditions in China were much more favorable than in India. There was a trained People’s Liberation Army in China. You do not have a trained army. China does not have such a dense rail network as India and this is a great convenience for partisans.  You have fewer opportunities for successful partisan warfare than China. India is more developed than China industrially. This is good from the point of view of progress but poor from the point of view of partisan warfare. No matter what detachments and liberated areas you would create they would still remain little islands. You don’t have such a friendly neighboring country on which you could rely as a backbone as the Chinese partisans created, having the USSR at their back.

Afghanistan, Iran, and Tibet, where the Chinese Communists cannot yet reach…This is not such a rear area as the USSR. Burma? Pakistan? These are all land borders and the rest are maritime. Therefore you need to look for an alternative [vykhod].

Is partisan warfare necessary? Unquestionably, it is.

Will you have liberated areas and a people’s liberation army?

Will there be such areas and will there also be the possibility of having such an army? But this is insufficient for victory. Partisan warfare needs to be combined with revolutionary actions by the workers. Without this, partisan warfare alone cannot have success.. . . .

The Chinese way was good for China.

It is insufficient for India where a proletarian struggle in the cities needs to be combined with the struggle of the peasants”

and

“I cannot consider Nehru’s government to be a puppet. He has his own roots among the population nevertheless. This is not the government of Bao Dai…Bao Dai is really a puppet. Hence it follows that partisan war in India cannot be considered the main form of struggle; maybe it needs to be called the highest form of struggle? “

1. Victor Cha, Powerplay: The Origins of the American Alliance System in Asia. American strategies to restrain its new Cold War allies in Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan, fusing together management of international and domestic politics. An IR book with an important comparative politics angle.
2. Wen-Qing Ngoei, Arc of Containment: Britain, the United States, and Anticommunism in Southeast Asia. How leaders in Malaysia and Singapore maneuvered to build an “arc of containment” against communism both at home and abroad, including skillful manipulation of outside patrons.
3. Taomo Zhou, Revolution in the Time of Migration: China, Indonesia, and the Cold War. Wonderful book on the intersection of transnational and international influences with domestic political cleavages in Indonesia in the 1950s and 1960s.
4. Christopher Goscha, The Road to Dien Bien Phu. A fascinating history of the DRV in its early years, organized with a blend of theme and chronology I find particularly well done. Kind of an interesting pairing with Cha – the 1940s and 1950s on each side of the emerging regional political competition.
5. Eva Hansson and Meredith Weiss edited a special issue of the Journal of Contemporary Asia on “Legacies of the Cold War in East and Southeast Asia.” They also edited a great selection of shorter selections from the issue in the Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia that is freely available to the public; great example of making scholarly work accessible to those without expensive subscriptions or the right university library.

Late last year, Ordering Violence was released by Cornell. For purely scholarly books, there then seems to ensue quite a long lag before anything happens. That lag is now coming to an end. A couple of pieces of news:

1. In a Perspectives on Politics Critical Dialogue, I reviewed Ioana Emy Matesan’s excellent The Violence Pendulum, she reviewed Ordering Violence, and we responded to each other. You can find my review of The Violence Pendulum here, and Matesan’s review of Ordering Violence here.
2. Ordering Violence won the Giovanni Sartori Book Award from the Qualitative and Multi-Method Research section of the American Political Science Association. The committee’s commendation is here; the list of past winners here. Sartori’s 1970 article “Concept Misformation in Comparative Politics” has had a huge impact on how I think about social science, so I was particularly thrilled.
3. Ordering Violence won the Book of the Year Prize from the Conflict Research Society. The shortlist is full of excellent books, and it was honestly quite a surprise to have won. Please check out the shortlist/honorable mentions for both awards – great books.