Politics, economics, regional dynamics of South Asia
My Foreign Service career was devoted mainly to South Asia and economic issues. However, it did afford me a “worm’s eye view” of some aspects of the U.S. opening to China and Henry Kissinger’s historic visit there in 1971.
Read my take on these dramatic events in a chapter I wrote for A New Cold War: Henry Kissinger and the Rise of China, edited by Sanjaya Baru and Rahul Sharma (Noida:HarperCollins, 2021).
October 28, 2020: Isher Ahluwalia came from a modest family of 11 siblings, discovered her remarkable academic talents in high school, and went on to start a brilliant career and a devoted marriage to Montek while they were living in Washington and Isher was finishing her PhD.
Survival 62-5 Book Reviews – South Asia
September 28, 2020: Three very different books caught my eye this year. Mariam Abou Zahab’s Pakistan: A Kaleidoscope of Islam provides a close-up and granular picture of a variety of strands of the Islamist movement. Continue reading “Book Reviews: Pakistan, India, China”
In Memoriam – K. Shankar Bajpai
September 7, 2020: The passing of K. Shankar Bajpai fells one of the giants of Indian diplomacy, a man who distinguished himself heading diplomatic missions in arguably three of the four most important posts for India – Pakistan, China, and the United States.
December 6, 2019: The first time Steve Cohen came into the lives of the Schaffer family was when he turned up in New Delhi as a grad student some time in the early/mid 1960s. Continue reading “In Memoriam, Stephen P. Cohen, 1936-2019”