"South Asian Security Complex and Pakistan-US Relations Post 9/11' (ABSTRACT)

Following is the abstract and Introduction of a Research Paper entitled 'South Asian Security Complex and Pakistan-US Relations Post 9/11' as appeared in Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI) Journal Summer 2010, Volume X, Number 2.

South Asian Security Complex and Pakistan-United States Relations Post 9/11

Amer Rizwan*

Abstract

Post 9/11 Pakistan-United States relations are in many ways a new round of the same game. Although this phase is believed to be a fresh beginning that may usher in a new strategic and sustainable camaraderie between the two counties yet looking at this complex relationship through the prism of the interaction between the regional and global level security complexes points at the continuity of the old patterns. There may have been different paraphernalia to the macro-securitization of Terrorism and that of the Soviet Communism yet in both these cases Pakistan has been motivated to forge close relations with the US, less by the global concerns espoused by the latter, then by its regional security imperatives. The continual intersections between the two security complexes provide an interesting framework for the understanding of the otherwise complex interplay of factors. The current partnership has far reaching implications for all levels of Pakistan’s security i.e. global, regional and domestic. The paper investigates the invariable pros and cons of this quid pro quo partnership for Pakistan.

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akistan-United States’ relationship in the post 9/11 era has been determined by yet another intersection between the global level trends and the South Asian regional currents. The paper attempts to explain this complex relationship with the help of Barry Buzan’s theoretical framework for security analysis at global, regional and domestic levels,[1] as modified in Regional Security Complex Theory (RSCT) and the concept of securitization.[2] The study underscores that Pakistan-US relations in the post 9/11 era have had a number of implications for Pakistan’s security at all the three levels i.e., domestic, regional, and global. The first part of the paper explores the issues related to Pakistan’s global and regional security whereas the second part attempts to analyze the impact of Pakistan-US relations in the post 9/11 era on Pakistan’s domestic security.

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* Doctoral Candidate, Department of International Relations, Quaid-i-Azam University , Islamabad.

[1] Barry Buzan, People, States and Fear: An Agenda for International Security Studies in the post Cold War Era, (Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1991), p.193.

[2] Barry Buzan and Ole Waever, Regions and Power: The Structure of International Security. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). See also Barry Buzan and Ole Waever, “Macrosecuritisation and security Constellations: reconsidering scale in securitisaion theory”, Review of International Studies (2009), 35, 253–276 Copyright _ British International Studies Association doi:10.1017/S0260210509008511

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