Fighting to the End

Since Pakistan was founded in 1947, its army has played a key role in state affairs. The country has been locked in an enduring rivalry with India, with the primary aim of settling the Kashmir issue. To that end, Pakistan fought three wars over Kashmir-in 1947, 1965, and 1999. Today, the army continues to prosecute this policy under the security of its ever-expanding nuclear umbrella.Pakistan continues to see itself as India's equal and demands the world do the same. The methods that the army uses to enforce this self-perception have brought international opprobrium upon Pakistan and its army. In recent years, their erstwhile proxies have turned their guns on the Pakistani state itself.Why does the army persist in pursuing these revisionist policies that have come to imperil the very viability of the state itself? In Fighting to the End, C. Christine Fair argues that the answer lies, at least partially, in the strategic culture of the army itself. She concludes that, from the army's view of history, it is victorious as long as it can resist India's purported drive for regional hegemony as well as the territorial status quo.