As India and Pakistan commemorated 75 years on independence in August 2022, the new book Subcontinent Adrift: Strategic Futures of South Asia by Feroz Hassan Khan, is a timely, much-needed publication, which Professor Sharad Joshi at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey commends as “an important volume on the India-Pakistan rivalry [that] provides a rich and timely perspective on the subcontinental dyad.”
As Shuja Nawaz, Distinguished Fellow at the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council notes:
On the heels of his masterly account of the growth of Pakistan as a nuclear weapons state, Eating Grass, Feroz Khan turns to explaining the strategic imbalance in South Asia that feeds the unending hostility between India and Pakistan. In this compact and compelling analysis, he illustrates the historical and militaristic thinking on both sides that feeds enmity while hobbling the ability of both countries to achieve internal and external peace and development. Khan’s cogent new book should be seen as a warning that armed conflict or use of terrorist proxies will not solve the problems facing the teeming millions in South Asia—they will only exacerbate them.
Ashley J. Tellis, Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, adds:
The Indo-Pakistani rivalry has receded in international consciousness in recent years—sometimes for good reason. But the underlying sources of instability persist. Feroz Khan’s sympathetic survey of this competition aptly highlights why the quest for a lasting peace cannot be neglected any longer
Peter Lavoy, former Senior Director for South Asia, National Security Council, also praises the book because it
provides a comprehensive account of the India-Pakistan competition after 75 years of independence, three bloody wars, and numerous near-miss nuclear crises. Professor Feroz Hassan Khan, former Brigadier in the Pakistani Army and Director in Pakistan’s Strategic Plans Division, gives us a vivid account of the region’s tragic history, the domestic and international roots of rivalry, a spiraling nuclear arms race, and the many failed bids for peace and normalization. He offers a compassionate and lucid analysis of South Asia’s past and present and valuable insights into South Asia’s possible futures, ranging from the reassuring to the outright terrifying.
Siegfried S. Hecker, Professor and Senior Fellow, CISAC and FSI at Stanford University, recommends the book as “a must read from Feroz Khan on the continuing simmering security dangers in South Asia and their impact on the rest of the world.”
A book review in Pakistan Politico also recommends Subcontinent Adrift as:
an essential read for not only Pakistani officials involved in doing all this but also for academicians and citizens of India and Pakistan, for they are the victims of instability and beneficiaries of peace between the two South Asian titans.”
About the author: Feroz Hassan Khan is Research Professor at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School. A former Brigadier in the Pakistani Army, he served as Director of Arms Control and Disarmament Affairs in the Pakistan’s Strategic Plans Division, Joint Services Headquarters. Khan has represented Pakistan in several multilateral forums and has published on Pakistan’s security policies and strategic stability in South Asia, including Eating Grass: The Making of the Pakistani Bomb (Stanford University Press).
Subcontinent Adrift: Strategic Futures of South Asia by Feroz Hassan Khan is available in hardcover, paperbook, and ebook formats and is part of the Rapid Communications in Conflict and Security Series (General Editor: Dr. Geoffrey R.H. Burn).
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