I've never been impressed by Michael K. He's tends to view South Asia relations from a NatSec only view that is heavily colored by his experiences during the GWOT.
He isn't the most proficient in understanding the ins-and-outs of institutions. And fundamentally, it's institutions - not interests or personas - that set strategy or goals.
I think he is a good source if we want to understand KPK and transnational terrorism, but not really beyond that.
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And this is the fundamental problem with South Asia studies in the US - almost all academics in the space largely entered during the GWOT or the NPT, and their domain experience is largely around either transnational terror or nuclear posture.
There are almost no academics in the US with US citizenship who have significant experience and knowledge about how institutions work within South Asian countries, and those who have that knowledge decide to retain their home country's citizenship becuase they know they can pull a Raghuram Rajan, Aravind Subramaniam, or a Krishnamurthy Subramanian (no relation to Aravind).
Chinese studies faced the same issues before 2017-19 as well, because there were few Chinese born American naturalized academics with a background in Chinese institutions, plus when I was in college (Obama 1/2) the majority of the limited academic funding in Govt/PoliSci was devoted to Russia, Iran, and the Arabic speaking nations. China was largely viewed the same way India is today and India the same way Vietnam or Indonesia are viewed today in American academia.
These academic blind spots are a major reason why American foreign policy keeps failing - there is almost no domain experience outside of Russia/CEE and MidEast studies in the US. We barely built Chinese studies domain experience but a lot of that is ex-USSR scholars pivoting to China for funding.
Understatement of the year.
> Maybe Michael
I've never been impressed by Michael K. He's tends to view South Asia relations from a NatSec only view that is heavily colored by his experiences during the GWOT.
He isn't the most proficient in understanding the ins-and-outs of institutions. And fundamentally, it's institutions - not interests or personas - that set strategy or goals.
I think he is a good source if we want to understand KPK and transnational terrorism, but not really beyond that.
-----------
And this is the fundamental problem with South Asia studies in the US - almost all academics in the space largely entered during the GWOT or the NPT, and their domain experience is largely around either transnational terror or nuclear posture.
There are almost no academics in the US with US citizenship who have significant experience and knowledge about how institutions work within South Asian countries, and those who have that knowledge decide to retain their home country's citizenship becuase they know they can pull a Raghuram Rajan, Aravind Subramaniam, or a Krishnamurthy Subramanian (no relation to Aravind).
Chinese studies faced the same issues before 2017-19 as well, because there were few Chinese born American naturalized academics with a background in Chinese institutions, plus when I was in college (Obama 1/2) the majority of the limited academic funding in Govt/PoliSci was devoted to Russia, Iran, and the Arabic speaking nations. China was largely viewed the same way India is today and India the same way Vietnam or Indonesia are viewed today in American academia.
These academic blind spots are a major reason why American foreign policy keeps failing - there is almost no domain experience outside of Russia/CEE and MidEast studies in the US. We barely built Chinese studies domain experience but a lot of that is ex-USSR scholars pivoting to China for funding.