Cold War
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The Failure of Pakistani Alliances & The Instability of the Middle East
0M-3 examines why alliances involving Pakistan, CENTO, SEATO and the recent Saudi Arabia and Turkey pacts, have failed, arguing that regional infighting and diverging interests, not colonial-drawn borders, are the…
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Geography is Power
A reply to X.T.M’s post, this essay argues from realism that geography has shaped South Asian states’ trajectories, citing Mackinder and Spykman, Pakistan’s Cold War and GWOT frontier role, and…
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Browncast: Major Amin on the Ukraine Crisis
On the day Russia launched its operation, Omar talks to military historian Major Amin, whose frank, pro-Russian framing the host says probably reflects Putin’s or Russian nationalists’ own thinking. Listeners…
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Browncast Episode 99: Carl Zha on the new Cold War, and marrying a Hindu
In Browncast Episode 99, Razib talks to repeat guest Carl Zha, host of the Silk and Steel podcast, about the new Cold War, the controversies around him, including claims he…
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Eye in the Sky. Pakistan and Cold War Aerial Reconnaissance
Hamid Hussain’s long 2010 essay on US reconnaissance flights from Pakistan during the Cold War, from high-altitude U-2 surveillance onward, sent to his mailing list after readers asked for it…
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Live blogging – Rethinking Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
Live notes from a Cambridge lecture rethinking the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The speaker argues it was a seminal Cold War moment, that Afghanistan has been made and unmade repeatedly,…
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The Post-White World
The author suggests ‘The Post-White World’ as a book title, tracing Western consolidation from 1492 to Victorian racial hegemony and its unravelling through two World Wars, decolonisation and the Cold…
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Review: Raiders of the China Coast
Reviewing Frank Holober’s memoir Raiders of the China Coast, about CIA-run guerrillas on Taiwanese-held islands, the reviewer finds it mostly a fond, nostalgic account of male bonding rather than a…
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For “Strategic Reasons”, Did Britain Want Pakistan in 1947?
An anonymous correspondent’s points, posted by Omar Ali, argue that Britain preferred a divided India for strategic reasons after 1945, with the Soviet Union ascendant and Congress refusing to grant…
