Abstract

Human Security is one of the complex challenges in South Asian region which has been continuously neglected by the policymakers due to the lack of state-centric comprehensive tendencies for the regional security paradigms. In this context, this research work attempts to encourage hostile South Asian nation-states to amend their hostile state-centric behaviors towards people-centric approaches for peace and security in the region. Although, the concept of human security is poorly concentrated in the region yet huge potential still exists which can successfully attract the masses for continuous cooperation to deal human security challenges in the region. The primary aim of this paper is to explore the capacities of South Asian nuclear powers India and Pakistan to combine the elements of their soft and hard powers into a smart power strategy to advance their mutual gains for sustainable human security. To explore the potential capabilities of people-centric approaches in India-Pakistan state-centric tendencies, this paper attempts to answer two questions related to smart power engagement potential for developing a winning strategy. 

Key Words

Smart Power Engagement, Sustainable Human Security, South Asia

Introduction

South Asia is one of the most populous regions which is regarded as the home of about one-fourth population of the entire World. The region comprises of eight states including two nuclear powers Pakistan and India those have always been engaged in a continuous rivalry, while other states in the region are Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal and Maldives (Ashraf, Begum & Jathol, 2016, p.52-55). The region also possesses a significant potential which can contribute in achieving impressive socio-economic growth and cooperation for regional peace and prosperity. However, the general perception exists among South Asian states’ economic and political policies to follow their traditional state-centric approaches rather than people-centric policies. Therefore, such traditional behavior creates serious challenges for poverty alleviation, sense of deprivation within societies, socio-political, economic disparities and other challenges related to human security in the region (Yousaf & Farhan, 2017a, p.477).

Since 1990s, the world started to prioritize human security primarily based on internal and external threats existed within their communities. In the annual report of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) of 1994 on Human Development encouraged the nation-states that human security is a universal concept which ensures human security by adopting preventive measures rather than state-centric interventions by major and greater powers. Hence, this idea of apart from physical security began to convince the world that peace and security paradigms should also be refocused by the states for achieving human security in terms of food, equality in resources, health, environment, cultural, socio-political etc. (Yousaf et al., 2017b, p.478-485). In South Asian region, debate on human security (non-traditional) is relatively a new phenomenon emerged within regional security policy debates. Therefore, this concept is ill-defined and poorly understood in the regional security paradigms which made it more complex and challenging for regional peace and security cooperation among nations (Arabinda, 2016, p.2-13).

Since 1947, both India and Pakistan have been staunch rivals and also have been engaged in many traditional and non-traditional confrontations on various issues particularly on Kashmir issue. Therefore, both nuclear powers always prioritize their state-centric security policies rather than people-centric approaches. Although, sources of power have been transforming with the passage of time, because the application of both hard power and soft power have simultaneously been unsuccessful to produce the desired results like counter terrorism, eradication of extremism, poverty alleviation, denuclearization, human security etc. Historically explaining Franco-Prussian (Germany) hostile relations those could not be normalized through traditional state-centric approaches, however, for acquiring the desired results both states transformed their traditional approaches and preferred people-centric policy infrastructures. Hence, they successfully integrated the whole European region into a union which is widely known as European Union. Similarly, we have another successful example of Chinese and Japanese hostile historic relations. Currently, both states have numerous issues like territorial, political, maritime, security, ethnic and others, nevertheless these nations preferred their socio-economic and people-centric policies for sustainable peace and security in the region. Both China and Japan also integrated the region and strengthened world’s second largest bilateral economic partnership with a remarkable volume of 318 billion US$ from 1979 to 2012 in the Asia-Pacific region. 

However, in the case of South Asia, the prevailing antagonistic environment always creates hurdles for developing cooperation among states particularly between India and Pakistan. In this context, people-centric policies can be more productive for peaceful Indo-Pak relations. Similarly, there is a famous proverb “if you plan for one year, plant rice, if you plan for ten years, plant trees and if you plan for hundred years, educate the people”. These words can be helpful for policymakers of any state to formulate the ‘real winning’ strategy for achieving purposeful objectives, interests and goals their states (Dwvedi & Sangit, 2017, p.1-4). To promote sustainable human security concept between Indo-Pak traditional policymaking approaches, the idea of smart power (combination of smart and hard powers) strategy can be encouraging in this context. For achieving the desired results, this idea can be propagated by developing foreign policy means of engagement, economic diplomacy, investments in academic engagements and institutional cooperation on the functional areas of human security. Hence, smart power engagement strategy can be used as an instrument for the development of sustainable human security approaches between Indo-Pak hostile relations which can be more productive for construction of a secure community in South Asia (Chun-Yi Lee, 2019, p.7-10).




Main Argument

A resourceful and integrated policy infrastructure is required to draw a comprehensive human security mechanism in South Asia. For this purpose, the combination of both soft power and hard power can be formulated as a ‘winning strategy’ to achieve regional socio-economic cooperation and stability peace for sustainable human security in South Asia. In the backdrop this paper explores that how smart power can be converted into a winning strategy, and how can Smart Power engagement be useful for developing human security infrastructure within India and Pakistan state-centric policy paradigms. 

This research work is primarily based on secondary or second hand data that was collected from books, published research articles, news articles, opinion articles, journals, newspapers, magazines, documentaries, internet etc. Similarly, this research work also focuses on qualitative and exploratory research methods to investigate and develop this comprehensive research study on this particular topic. On the other hand, both qualitative and quantitative research methods can be useful to develop in-depth understanding about the smart power engagement for sustainable human security policy structure in South Asian region. Similarly, exploratory research type is also useful in order to explore the answers of the research questions on this particular research topic. It also helps to develop research design and data collection methods to compile the research work. 

In this research the concepts of smart power and its engagement to explore the prospects for sustainable human security in South Asian region. Therefore, secondary data sources have preferably be utilized to develop convincing arguments and opinions about smart power engagement strategy as skillful and resourceful instrument for transforming state-centric approach into people-centric approach. However, potential limitations in data collection and developing a leading research design; it is always a challenging factor when a specific research problem is addressed. Unstructured interviews process which is the significant part of primary data collection always plays a vital role in developing a quality research work. However, with the limited resources of communication and finance, therefore, it is difficult to conduct unstructured interviews of famous political personalities, journalists and writers. Therefore, secondary data sources play a significant role to conduct a conceptual research process about this specific research topic.

Bridging the Gap Between Literature and Theoretical Structure

This research work attempts to address the literature gap which is highlighted during the reviewing of the available literature sources. In the available literature, no systematic study is available on smart power engagement for sustainable human security in South Asian region, particularly between India and Pakistan relations. This research work highlights the Indo-Pak traditional state-centric behaviors that limit available opportunities of cooperation particularly for strengthening human security paradigms within the region. This research work also fills the literature gap by highlighting traditional state-centric approach related to human security. Hence, the available limited literature holds specific sources of knowledge on this particular topic. However, this research paper on ‘smart power engagement for sustainable human security in South Asia’ comprehensively and systematically helps to fill the literature gap and endeavors to develop a scholarly compiled research study. The available literature on South Asian security perspectives focuses more on the concept of hard power, soft power and traditional state-centric strategic policies. However, this research work particularly, attempts to develop an innovative idea related to the development of smart power diplomacy and smart power engagement strategy for the establishment of a winning strategy to influence the traditional state-centric strategic approaches in South Asia.

Human Security primarily aims to protect humans from various chronic threats those limit their freedom and create vulnerabilities to harm their lives. In the contemporary world, a number of non-traditional threats like health, food, environment, community security etc. have been threatening the human security since decades. However, in South Asian region, rival states have continuously been engaged with their state-centric in protecting their geographies and ensuring traditional security policies from external threats. The region possesses one-fourth population of the total population of the world; nevertheless, rival states of the region are engaged in strengthening their military and nuclear power capabilities to protect their people and territories from their regional and extra-regional traditional security threats. In this context, both India and Pakistan have been engaged in these efforts since their emancipation from British raj in 1947. Theoretically analyzing this research study, it is mandatory for us to build our argumentative position through views of scholars. 

In this context, Ken Booth is one of the leading scholars in security studies explains the concept of emancipation within the purview of security in his review article entitled “emancipation verses power and order” He argues that power (derivative of security) and order are always acquired at the costs of others. Therefore, the concept of emancipation can be prioritized over these concepts. In addition, Booth considers ‘security’ as the elimination of constraints from human lives, while ‘emancipation’ means to free or liberate the people (individual to society) from all physical and other human constraints those create hurdles for them to carry out what they would want freely desire to do (Ken, 1991, p.2-4). According to this concept wars and the threats of wars, poverty, poor education structures, socio-economic and political oppressions and other factors are those constrains. In South Asian region, the human security challenges are neglected because state prefers traditional security threats to deal for ensuring its physical protection of its people from other security threats. 

It is also claimed that South Asian people were emancipated from colonial rule during 1947 but the traditional state-centric approaches did not provide or ensure their security their people from non-traditional security threats. Consequently, Booth explains that security and emancipation are identical; hence the concept of emancipation produces the real impression of security. He also argues that oppressions or threats can range from physical violence, political and economic oppression, and existential threats to socio-national identities (cultural). Theoretically, emancipation can be regarded as a security for the individuals and societies but in the nation-state system, humans should be regarded as ‘ends’ while states as ‘means’ (Joao, 2012, p.351). In the contemporary nation-state system, humans are considered as the ultimate referent because states are unreliable and illogical in their behaviors and characters. Therefore, states are unreliable because many states are engaged in business of security but others are not.

 In the case of South Asia, both India and Pakistan have been engaged in maximization of traditional power capabilities on the name of security. Both nuclear powers invest billions of dollars to expand their defense and military capabilities rather than alleviation of poverty, financing in education system and elimination of other human constraints (Ken, 2017, p.5-7). Similarly, states are illogical because they are preferred as the primary actor in the world politics although states are simply considered as ‘means’, not ‘ends’ of security. In South Asian traditional state-centric approaches and behaviors state’s physical security is considered as the primary objective of security policies rather than human security. However, the idea of emancipation (security) demands the integration of mutual human rights. This idea claims that ‘an individual is not truly free unless everyone is free’. Hence, it can be result-oriented for eliminating the barriers of cooperation among states at domestic, regional and International levels (Joao, 2012, p. 351-355).




Smart Power Engagement

Smart Power can be defined as “capacities of an actor(s) to combine the elements of both soft power and hard power in a way that are mutually reinforcing the actor’s purposes are advanced efficiently” (Earnest, 2008a, p.110). Smart power has become a national security imperative which is driven by both long-term structural changes in International system and short-term failures of the current administrative efforts. Consequently, the existing debates over public diplomacy and soft power have failed to address the conceptual, institutional and political dimensions because the advocates of public diplomacy and soft power tend to build their arguments poorly (Earnest, 2008b, p.112). Moreover, their positions on these concepts are politically immature and institutionally weak. On the other hand, the advocates of hard power are politically and institutionally powerful, but they frequently frame their arguments inefficiently because their impressions convince to believe that they can carefully ignore or simply embrace the elements of national power that lie outside their traditional purview (Joseph Jr, 2011a, p.3-5).

In this context, Joseph Nye argues that smart power prefers multilateralism and promotes foreign policy strengths. He also explains that in twenty-first century, smart power does not demand for power maximization of maintenance of hegemony rather it prefers ways to combine power resources into successful strategies purview (Joseph Jr, 2011b, p.6). Through a successful smart power strategy, the actors (state actor or non-state actor) can identify their directions for achieving a ‘winning strategy’ with (Joseph Jr, 2011c): 

• Preferred goals or outcomes

• Availability and utilization of resources

• positions and preferences of the targets of attempts at influence

• successful form of the power behavior 

• probability of success purview 

The concept of smart power helps the policymakers to identify their directions before practical application of the policies and strategies. Hence, foreign policy and diplomatic engagements can be the key factors for a state when it wants to secure its national interests without any coercion, use of power or any sort of political and economic influence. Similarly, for achieving sustainable human security objectives between Indo-Pak hostile relations, smart power engagement strategy can be the result-oriented if the policymakers of both states prefer smart power as their national security imperatives. The following argument will help us to understand the development of a winning strategy through smart power engagement. 

The Development of a Winning Strategy

The development of a winning strategy is a specific skill which guides the competitor(s) to know who and why you are competing. Similarly, a winning strategy requires time to analyze the activities of the rival or competitor and what your rival likely to intend to do. Hence, it is argued that successful strategists must explore and exploit the opportunities. If the strategists fail to create opportunities, the failure will help your rival to exploit the opportunities against you. In world’s politics, military strategies are considered as the instrumental for achieving the national security objectives. In the economic field, the industrialists also prefer to develop strategies for creating opportunities. In this context, the economists have to focus on their institutional strengths and weaknesses as they focus on the tendencies, economic drivers, risks and uncertainties.  In this context, there are five practices; those can be helpful to improve competitiveness of organizational structure and behavior of the actors.

• Understand the Economic Strengths of your Rivals

• Look Forward, not Backward

• Put Yourself into minds of your Rivals

• Create the Threats into Opportunities

• Be ready to Act more Boldly (Yuval, 2017a, p.2).

In the context of South Asian regional security environment, the above mentioned five practices can be instrumental to utilize the available resources to formulate a winning strategy. At the same time as, this model suggests that the economic strengths of your rivals can motivate other actors within a society or within a region. Similarly, economic competition between India and Pakistan can be helpful if both states seriously prefer bilateral economic cooperation for regional peace and security. However, the political leaderships of both countries always articulate historical confrontations between both nuclear rivals on different occasions that limit the potential for socio-economic and human security prospects. Despite these challenges and hostile relations between both regional nuclear powers, this model still suggests that potential threats can also be converted into opportunities between India and Pakistan relations. Furthermore, the availability of power resources (soft and hard) should also be refocused to combine into smart power strategy for the development of winning between Indo-Pak hostile relations. 




Human Security Threats in South Asia

No society can be protected from internal and external threats unless it prefers to transform its previous policy experiences; those could have not produced fruitful results. In the current scenario, the concept of security is typically associated with the traditional state-centric approaches that prefer to protect state’s territory from the external threats at any cost. However, after the end of the Cold War in 1989, the traditional security behavior of a state was transformed when the emerging new security challenges promoted to a complex situation for policymakers to who should be protected first, state or people or both. Security-based concepts were extended beyond the non-traditional or non-military approaches. Thus, the concept of human security is widely preferred rather than states security (Yousaf & Farhan, 2017, p.486). As, the United Nation’s Human Development Report presented in 1994 also revolutionized the human security concept throughout the world. However, the traditionalists continued to support the old state-centric behavior/tendencies. 

South Asian region has been one of the more volatile and backward regions in terms of stability and human security after African continent in the World. In the region, traditional security concepts based on state-centric behaviors have primarily been preferred rather than the existence of potential threats to human security in the region. Similarly, both Indian and Pakistan still prefer the concepts of geo-politics, power competition and relative gains. As a result of these tendencies, the whole region has been facing more serious intra-state and inter-state human security threats since many decades. In this context, non-traditional threats are more vulnerable to humans rather than the traditional security challenges (Dwivedi & Sangit, 2017a, p.2-8). The region has already comprised of various common problems in which poverty, socio-political instabilities, religious radicalization, less economic growth, low literacy rate, unemployment, growth of starvation, gender disparities, ethnic problems, environmental degradation etc. (Dwivedi & Sangit, 2017b, p.10). In South Asia, approaches related to human security have always been reactive rather than proactive which means that human security issues are addressed when they become widespread and pose sever threats to humans. Therefore, individuals, communities and states have always been under the influence of consistent life-threatening risks that could be more destructive in future for the local, national and regional peace and security. 

In this context, many scholars argue that if a state does not prefer to address its non-traditional security threats then these threats can be more challenging for its traditional security paradigms. Similarly, in South Asian region, terrorism was initially based on ethnic, communal, religious or intra-state conflicts but later it becomes a more challenging factor for regional peace and security. Therefore, in this region human security demands systematic arrangements based on institutional frameworks that could predict potential threats while the formation of institutional policy infrastructure to secure humans from sudden calamities and other life-threatening risks (Ashraf, Begum & Jathol, 2016, p.58). This idea cannot be result-oriented by utilizing soft power or hard power separately. This idea can be productive if both powers would be integrated together with a skillful strategy into smart power engagement. Hence, smart power engagement strategy can be helpful for sustainable human security approach in South Asia.

Smart Power Engagement Strategy and India-Pakistan Hostile Relations

Smart power engagement strategy is one of the new strategies in the world politics which can motivate the policy-makers to develop productive policies for a state’s national security by refocusing the traditional patterns of national security policy mechanism. As earlier, the states those have reviewed their traditional policies and transformed into a winning strategy for their nations have experienced fruitful results in various parts of the word, particularly in the integration of European Union after the end of the Second World War and Sino-Japanese relations in Asia-Pacific region in 1979. By analyzing these two successful applications of Smart power engagement policy infrastructure, it can be argued that it can be promoted as a ‘winning strategy’ by promoting and financing education system, innovation in the institutional structure and promotion of capacity-building norms within societies (De Leon & Ricardo, 2017, p.5). 

Hence, the application of smart power as a useful strategy can produce successful results for the development of policy-making mechanism, strengthening governance structures and security community within a state. In this research study, it is primarily focused to develop human security policies based on smart power engagement strategy in South Asia region, particularly to enhance socio-economic cooperation between India and Pakistan relations. In this context, it is mandatory for policy-makers of both countries to review their traditional state-centric behaviors and should utilize the smart power as a winning strategy to normalize hostile India-Pakistan relations for sustainable human security mechanism in the region.

 One of the significant pillars to normalize regional environment is to develop political and a functional security community infrastructure based on democratic ideals and international norms. In the case of South Asian regional environment, multiple intra-state and inter-state conflicts create serious challenges for national and regional security and stability mechanism. These conflicts are primarily based on the territorial issues, division of water resources issues, ethnic problems, cross-border conflicts, nuclearization and many other socio-religious issues those have been contributing in the creation of serious consequences for humans and their security policies since many decades. Therefore, South Asia is regarded as the most dangerous region for the humans to live with security and freedom. In reality, human security can be challenged by the interplay of numerous factors’ functionality at three different levels like national, regional and International levels (Ashraf, Begum & Jathol, 2016, p.57). However, in the world, different successful norms and ideals are available for those can contribute to develop sustainable human security patterns for the integration of South Asian region. For achieving successful human security paradigms, smart power diplomacy can be formulating as a motivational model for actors to review their foreign policy engagements, establishment of academic networks, and promotion of practical collaboration within non-traditional security area (De Leon & Ricardo, 2017a, p.5). Hence, smart power diplomacy can be helpful for the policymakers to construct comprehensive directions for strategic and human security paradigms to stabilize regional peace and cooperation among the actors in the region. South Asian region is always influenced by hostile state-centric strategic and political policy behaviors.

For securing productive results of smart power diplomacy, the policymakers of both countries would have to alter their traditional policymaking behaviors to advance rule-based, peaceful and flexible regional environment where both rivals India and Pakistan particularly could share their responsibilities for comprehensive security interactions. Despite the availability of more potential for cooperation, the region is still more fragile in defining the policies for conflict prevention, confidence-building, peaceful settlement of the disputes, peace-building measures, collaboration in non-traditional security apprehensions, timely response to issues and disaster management policy mechanism. All these weaknesses and trust deficiency between or among states highlight non-serious behaviors in the region. Between India and Pakistan hostile relation, to achieve successful results in all these areas of cooperation and regional security for humans, the practical application of smart power diplomacy can be productive if it is applied in comprehensive manners (De Leon et. al, 2017b).

Conclusion

South Asia is one of the more volatile regions in terms of human security in the world. Traditionally, the concept of human security is always related to the security of a state (territories) through maximization of military and nuclear capabilities to compete with other security threats. After the publication of the revolutionary report on human security of UNDP in 1994, the state-centric approaches in the entire world started to shift towards people-centric approaches. However, in the South Asian region, the people-centric approaches have been still under the consideration of the policymakers; those have been consistently influencing the traditional approaches. The scholars in India and Pakistan have already warned that if both states do not consider the non-traditional security challenges as serious threats to their national security; then these threats can be more challenging for their traditional security paradigm in the coming years. This research work attempts to identify the loopholes as they separate the application of hard power and soft power capabilities for securing human security objectives in the India and Pakistan relations. In the Human Development Report (HDR) of 1994, it is specifically mentioned that it is easy to ensure human security by adopting preventive measures rather than later interventions and confrontations. However, in South Asian region human security measures are based on reactive than proactive policy mechanisms. This traditional approach has also created serious challenges for the humans in the region in terms of food scarcity, environmental degradation, religious issues, terrorism and so many other challenges. 

For a productive policy mechanism, the concept of smart power engagement and diplomacy can be the guiding principles to develop the foreign policy engagements, construction of human security community for confidence-building attitude in the region, financial investment on academic institutions and other areas of cooperation that can transform traditional attitudes of rival states within the region. There are many successful models related to smart power diplomacy. The integration of European Union is one of the leading models when the two historic regional rivals Germany and France developed one area of cooperation and later integrated the whole region into commonwealth nations. Similarly, Sino-Japanese economic cooperation also brought both regional rivals to close for the development of trade partnerships. In the context of South Asia, for the achievement of sustainable peace and security, it is mandatory for both India and Pakistan to review their traditional state-centric policies and attitudes to integrate the region. 

In the contemporary world, the means of power have been transformed due to the rise of new areas of engagements and cooperation. Both India and Pakistan possess huge figures of man-power with a remarkable potential existing within their societies. The traditional attitudes of the both states could not lead other areas of cooperation like modernization of educational institutions, socio-economic cooperation through the development of non-state actors and other areas. To achieve sustainable human security objectives in the region, it is mandatory for both India and Pakistan to review their state-centric attitudes. In this context, both of the states will have to develop skillful and comprehensive policy infrastructures that could policymaker to formulate a desired winning strategy through soft power engagement for the whole region in terms of sustainable human security and stable cooperative attitude among the actors in the region.

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