Rajan Menon

Steve Coll and Rajan Menon in IPS News | 'U.S. Reactions to Pakistani Election Results Are Mixed'

Communications — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 17:40:00 -0500

New America in the News:

Pakistan: U.S. Reactions to Pakistani Election Results Are Mixed (Inter Press Service News)

..."[The Islamist parties] have been replaced by secular Pashtun nationalist parties who are hostile to the Taliban and who, at a minimum, will not allow the institutions of these provincial governments to be used by collaborators of the Taliban," Steve Coll, a South Asia expert and president of the New America Foundation, told an interviewer on public television Tuesday.

..."There is this notion that if a coalition can be stitched together, this will strengthen the war on terror," said Rajan Menon, a South Asia expert at Lehigh University. "It will not, because the war has very, very little support among Pakistanis, regardless of social class, ethnic background, or religious commitment who feel that it has only spread the violence without translating into any tangible benefit for average Pakistanis.

"If you have a democratic government headed by the PPP or Sharif, it will have to reflect this popular sentiment," Menon said, noting that Zardari has already called for more dialogue with militant Islamists in the tribal areas than military confrontation.

The Changing of the Guard

Ron Tang — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0500

The view that sometime during this century a “changing of the guard” will occur, when China will displace the United States in much the same way as America did Britain, is widely held. It unites liberals and conservatives, optimists and pessimists, most of whom accept the proposition that “the East is back”, with China leading the pack. The debate is over when the shift will happen and what a world that currently bears an American stamp will look like after China has become Mr. Big.

The main problem with the narrative about China’s challenge to American supremacy (the limits of… more

ABC Radio Australia Interviews Rajan Menon on Pakistan

Communications — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 00:47:00 -0400

New America in the News:

Last week Former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto addressed her power-sharing deal with General Pervez Musharraf at her press confrerence. “Many have criticized the deal but it is being done to avoid bloodshed and ensure an orderly transfer of power to the people,” she said.

In an interview with ABC Radio Australia, New America Foundation Fellow Rajan Menon discussed Bhutto’s political situation upon her return to Pakistan after eight years in exile.

Has Bhutto been damaged politically by the amnesty deal struck with General Musharraf?

“Yes… There’s no question that within her own party there was great unease about deal cutting with Musharraf. Not only was there the feeling she might taint herself while doing it, but in effect Musharraf was reeling in on the ropes... she rang the bell ending the round. Needlessly she allowed him a second shot as it were,” said Menon.

For the complete interview with Menon and more on the situation in Pakistan, please follow this link.

It's Pakistan's Choice

Articles — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 09:23:00 -0400

As Pakistan’s president, Pervez Musharraf, struggles to retain power, the United States finds itself in a familiar predicament, one that illustrates a recurring pathology in its foreign policy. Having yet again cast its lot with a strongman, Washington is confounded now that his political position has become precarious. It’s the Anastasio Somoza, shah of Iran, Ferdinand Marcos dynamic in a different guise. Though Musharraf won’t be forced into exile like those friends of Washington, the best he can hope for is to survive the current turmoil with vastly reduced authority.

The Bush administration’s problem in Pakistan is that it has… more

Benazir Bhutto Negotiates a Return to Pakistan's Politics

Articles — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 14:19:00 -0400

Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s president and strongman, met his nemesis, the opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, in Abu Dhabi on July 27. Only extraordinary political circumstances could have thrown these two together. Musharraf sees Bhutto -- a former prime minister who’s lived in exile since the general brought corruption charges against her -- as emblematic of all that’s wrong with Pakistan’s inept and graft-ridden political parties. Bhutto, for her part, sees him as yet another military usurper, like the one who had her father -- then Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto -- hanged in 1979.

The sad fact is they’re both right. So… more

The U.S. and Turkey: End of an Alliance?

Articles — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 11:52:00 -0400

This article is available only in the attached PDF format. Please download the file below for the full text.

Brian Lehrer Show Interviews Rajan Menon on Pakistan

Communications — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 14:13:00 -0400

New America in the News:

The National Intelligence Estimate released this week revealed the continuing role of Pakistan in the survival of Al Qaeda. Former CIA analyst Paul Pillar and Lehigh University professor of international relations Rajan Menon talk about how US foreign policy could best address the problem.

To listen to this interview, please visit The Brian Lehrer Show website.

Pakistan's Uncertain Future

Articles — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 06:59:00 -0400

After the shootout at Islamabad’s Red Mosque, the pro-democracy demonstrations against Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf in the months preceding it, and Islamists’ rallies and suicide bombings following it, the United States finds itself in a familiar situation, aligned with a general who grabbed power in a coup but has become politically isolated, perhaps beyond repair. The difference is that Pakistan is now a more dangerous place than it was under the three prior military strongmen, Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan, and Zia ul-Haq.

Although the upsurge of radical Islam began under Zia (a patron of the Red Mosque) the threat now posed… more

World View: A Darkening In the North

Articles — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 13:21:00 -0400

Iraq’s Kurdish north has offered a heartening contrast to an otherwise blood-soaked country. Its polity works; its economy thrives. But the reports last week of a Turkish military incursion, in pursuit of Kurdish rebels, is an eruption of only one of three steadily deepening problems that could combine to worsen the Bush administration’s predicament in Iraq.

The first is the dispute over Kirkuk, capital of At-Tamim province. The city and its environs contain some 10 billion of Iraq’s 112 billion barrels in proven oil reserves. Saddam Hussein expelled thousands of Kurds as well as Turkomans and Christians from the Kirkuk region… more

Cool It, It's Not a Cold War

Articles — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 10:07:00 -0400

News report these days opine with tiresome regularity that Russia and the United States are headed for a new Cold War. But don’t believe the hype.

It’s true enough that Moscow and Washington have been exchanging cross words. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told the House Armed Services Committee on Feb. 7 that Russia’s military modernization constitutes a threat; the assessment went largely unnoticed here, but not in Moscow.

Things got really nasty three days later. At an international conference in Munich, Germany, with Gates looking on, Russian President Vladimir V. Putin accused the U.S. of riding roughshod over international law and… more