The Cold War on the Periphery Revised Edition

by Robert J. McMahon (Author)

2 ratings

ISBN-13: 978-0231082273

ISBN-10: 0231082274

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Focusing on the two tumultuous decades framed by Indian independence in 1947 and the Indo-Pakistani war of 1965, The Cold War on the Periphery explores the evolution of American policy toward the subcontinent. McMahon analyzes the motivations behind America's pursuit of Pakistan and India as strategic Cold War prizes. He also examines the profound consequences―for U.S. regional and global foreign policy and for South Asian stability―of America's complex political, military, and economic commitments on the subcontinent.

McMahon argues that the Pakistani-American alliance, consummated in 1954, was a monumental strategic blunder. Secured primarily to bolster the defense perimeter in the Middle East, the alliance increased Indo-Pakistani hostility, undermined regional stability, and led India to seek closer ties with the Soviet Union. Through his examination of the volatile region across four presidencies, McMahon reveals the American strategic vision to have been "surprinsgly ill defined, inconsistent, and even contradictory" because of its exaggerated anxiety about the Soviet threat and America's failure to incorporate the interests and concerns of developing nations into foreign policy.

The Cold War on the Periphery addresses fundamental questions about the global reach of postwar American foreign policy. Why, McMahon asks, did areas possessing few of the essential prerequisites of economic-military power become objects of intense concern for the United States? How did the national security interests of the United States become so expansive that they extended far beyond the industrial core nations of Western Europe and East Asia to embrace nations on the Third World periphery? And what combination of economic, political, and ideological variables best explain the motives that led the United States to seek friends and allies in virtually every corner of the planet?

McMahon's lucid analysis of Indo-Pakistani-Americna relations powerfully reveals how U.S. policy was driven, as he puts it, "by a series of amorphous―and largely illusory―military, strategic, and psychological fears" about American vulnerability that not only wasted American resources but also plunged South Asia into the vortex of the Cold War.

Editorial Reviews

Review

A magnificent book, written with remarkable clarity... The best book we have on the process of American involvement in South Asia, 1945-1965, and a critique of Cold War policies in the Third World., Reviews in American History

From the Back Cover

This book examines how and why an area that seemed destined to remain indefinitely on the periphery of world politics- and on the periphery of the American consciousness- came to be drawn into the Cold War vortex.

Paperback: 431 pages
Publisher: Columbia University Press; Revised edition (April 15, 1996)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0231082274
ISBN-13: 978-0231082273
Product Dimensions: 6 x 1 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Customer Reviews: 2 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,265,451 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #206 in Pakistan History
- #1467 in India History
- #1306 in International Diplomacy (Books)

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Ahmed Quraishi

Good Research, Bad Reasoning

February 14, 2000

Format: Paperback

Good in research. Bad in reasoning. This is about the best I could come up with after reading the book. The author does an excellent job of researching the background, but ultimately falls in the same Pakistan-is-a-stepchild-of-India pitfall. Pakistan and India are fundamentally two different nations. Racially and culturally, the Pakistanis are the inheritors of Arab-Turkic-Persian-Mogul rulers of India who ruled the region for a thousand years, until 1857 when the last of their rulers was overthrown by the British Empire. When, in 1947, India gained independence, it also marked the fact that it was the first time in a 1,000 years the Indians were ruling themselves. Racially, the people of Pakistan IN THE MAJORITY come from Arab, Aryan, Turkic, and Persian backgrounds. But Pakistanis also have a considerable proportion of the population descending from earlier Indian converts to Islam. In fact, Pakistanis even do not have anything in common with the people of former East Pakistan, or today's Bangladesh, with the exception of Islam, of course. Pakistanis, in effect, even do no belong to South Asia, but to the Middle East. As a young nation in 1947, Pakistani leaders were too occupied with the task of nation building that they overlooked the setting of the nation's cultural compass. But the awareness has increased in later years. This is the Pakistan most academicians mistake for India's stepchild.

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Michael Gabriel

I wish i could have given it Zero Stars

April 19, 2000

Format: Hardcover

Extremely biased book. The lesson learnt: Never write a book about two countries and take one country's side. The book to me was worthless.... The first few pages were more than enough crap for me to read.

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The Cold War on the Periphery Revised Edition