The New Nation - Internet Edition

Mohd Aminul Karim, Ph.D

Academic Press and Publishers Library (APPL)

Pages-2I2, Price Tk.-400.00, US$ 20

Strategic studies emerged as a serious field of study in the immediate aftermath of the First World War. And even though many would still argue that it has yet to establish itself as a distinct discipline of study, strategic and security studies has come a long way. In its early days the study of this field was largely confined to memoirs and experiences of distinguished retired soldiers. It was only in the second half of the twentieth century that strategic and security studies began to attract serious scholarly attention; and there was healthy proliferation of theoretical and conceptual works. However, until recently the theory and practice seldom met; there were few platforms that brought the academics and practitioners together; and the scholarly discourse seldom found their way into the military academies.

Lieutenant General Mohammed Aminul Karim represents a new generation of soldier-scholars who have combined their knowledge on the battlefield with analytical rigour and scholarly insights. General Karim is both a professional soldier and a trained academic and author of several scholarly treatises. The Selected Papers on Security and Leadership is a collection of essays, which the author wrote and presented at the various conferences and workshops - national and international- and some of them were earlier published elsewhere. However, the readers will be grateful to have all the essays available in an easily accessible single volume. The essays cover a broad range of issues and show a thoughtful, insightful and a razor sharp mind grappling with questions that are not only globally significant but also critical to Bangladesh's own security concerns.

It would be difficult to pigeon-hole General Karim within a single tradition of security studies - he is much erudite and eclectic to fall into a simple academic category. While to a large extent he is a proponent of the realist school of thought, he is not a doctrinaire; and his writings are much more nuanced. He has a mind that is at once both open and expansive; and he has a distinct preference for a more holistic approach. He gives the deterrence doctrine a short shrift, arguing quite convincingly that an increase in one state's power invariably heightens the insecurity of another. Instead of enhancing security and stability, the policy of deterrence provokes a futile and ruinous arms race. He also challenges Samuel Huntington's 'clash of civilisation' thesis. Although, now largely discredited in the academic circles, Huntington nonetheless continues to exercise considerable influence amongst the neo-conservative ideologues and has inspired and informed their doctrine of 'full spectrum domination' of the world.

The simplicity of Huntington's thesis has been particularly seductive and probably shaped President George Bush's disastrous doctrine of 'pre-emptive intervention'. And, according to the author, it also largely explains the disastrous US intervention in Iraq and the global' crusade' as the so-called Islamists.

General Karim is an articulate advocate of soft or smart power and his reflection on multilateralism through the reform of the United Nations, multi-polarity, and the post-Cold War regional security architecture are thought provoking, original, and have deep policy significance. His concern for the individual is also striking:

Individual, national and inter-state security architecture is conditioned by different sets of assumptions, environment, geography, geopolitics, values, threats and capabilities of actors concerned to meet the impending or perceived challenges.

Such a holistic view of security is often lacking in the discourse. And because this view comes from a serving soldier it commands greater respect. The book is a useful contribution at a time when our world is fast changing. The very nature and character of warfare have changed. Wars are no longer fought by nations but through a coalition of nations. Nor is war a particularly effective mechanism for advancing national interests or resolving conflict. In the twenty-first century the sources of conflicts between nations will emanate from public health threats like the HIV AIDS epidemic, global warming, environmental pollution, scarcity of water and food, large scale population movement, trafficking in women and children, gun running, proliferation of the weapons of mass destruction, poverty and so forth. These can all become major sources of tensions and conflict but they are not capable of being resolved by wars or even through the efforts of a single state. These are transnational issues capable of resolution through cooperation amongst the states rather than wars. Nor can we ignore the fact that many of the threats to international peace and security come not from states but from individuals and groups, especially those who (rightly or wrongly) see themselves as disenfranchised, disempowered and dispossessed, and without hope. How to bring back these disenchanted people, mostly the youth, by giving them a stake in the society will be a major challenge for the students of strategic and security studies. General Karim has provided an extremely useful conceptual framework of holistic security for scholars to think about the big questions of our time. It is without doubt a significant contribution to our understanding of the global, regional and national issues.

(Reviewed by Gowher Rizvi Harvard University Kennedy School)