Yearly roundup: Standout books of 2023

Of all the non-fiction books I enjoyed reading in 2023 and learnt much from, four stand out. Cold Peace: Avoiding the New Cold War by Michael Doyle is an important addition to the growing literature on the world’s most consequential relationship – between the US and China. Recent years have seen a number of insightful books on the global rivalry, including The Avoidable War by Kevin Rudd, The Long Game by Rush Doshi, Avoiding the ‘Thucydides Trap’ edited by Dong Wang and Travis Tanner and Kishore Mahbubani’s Has China Won? Doyle agrees with those authors and experts who advocate greater engagement between the US and China. 

He points to the dangers of a looming cold war but argues this is not inevitable. Instead, a ‘cold peace’ can be established if certain key compromises are made by the competing powers to yield cooperation in critical areas. Doyle’s main concern is how to prevent a second cold war, even though he doesn’t see this as a replay of the original one. He identifies four bridges toward this end. The first concerns US-China cooperation on the shared challenge of climate change mitigation. The second is finding a negotiated end to the Ukraine conflict with Russia. The third bridge is détente between the US and China. Here, ideas for a compromise on Taiwan are presented. The fourth bridge to a ‘cold peace’ is to forge new rules on cyber. While acknowledging clashing interests and ambitions, he argues that accommodation is possible to stabilize the world’s most important bilateral relationship. 

Zamir Akram’s The Security Imperative: Pakistan’s Nuclear Deterrence and Diplomacy is a compelling account of the country’s quest for a nuclear capability in which diplomacy played a key role. Having dealt first-hand with nuclear issues and negotiations, Akram, an outstanding diplomat, is especially qualified to tell the definitive story of Pakistan’s nuclear diplomacy. He does so with sharp insight and extraordinary breadth. The key themes of his book are the security-driven nature of Pakistan’s nuclear deterrence and the discriminatory treatment meted out to Pakistan by the US-led West and how Pakistan’s diplomacy navigated through this while protecting and advancing its nuclear and missile programs. Akram recalls how after India’s 1974 nuclear explosion, the US ended up punishing Pakistan for what India had done.

Anurudha sees India’s tightening military control, silencing of dissent, bulldozing of its economy and demography and assault on civil liberties as unsustainable and therefore believes its Kashmir strategy is bound to fail. 
- Maleeha Lodhi

 

The book’s detailed accounts of Pakistan’s bilateral and multilateral nuclear diplomacy offer many valuable insights. Important as the nuclear capability has been to provide Pakistan with the means to deter external aggression, an important conclusion of the book is that nuclear deterrence cannot deal with internal challenges which Pakistan is facing, which in turn can weaken deterrence.

The third book A Dismantled State: the untold story of Kashmir after Article 370 by Anurudha Bhasin chronicles the latest, ongoing chapter in occupied Kashmir’s decades-long tragedy. It is a scathing indictment of Indian actions in Jammu and Kashmir following its annexation and bifurcation by abrogation of Article 370 of the Indian constitution on August 5, 2019. As a prominent journalist, executive editor of Kashmir Times and resident of Kashmir, Anurudha has long witnessed the turmoil, violence, injustices and vicissitudes of political life there. But post-August 2019, which saw J&K’s dismemberment and disempowerment, was a fundamental break from the past. She describes her book’s aim as discovering how this period that drastically altered the sociopolitical and economic landscape “impacted the people of J&K in their day-to-day lives”. The book is an effort to “combat disinformation in Kashmir’s dangerous information desert”, which it does convincingly.

The author also reflects on decades of Delhi’s failed policies in J&K — policies of manipulation and jailing of leaders combined with military coercion. Significantly, Anurudha sees India’s tightening military control, silencing of dissent, bulldozing of its economy and demography and assault on civil liberties as unsustainable and therefore believes its Kashmir strategy is bound to fail. Although the BJP government has disingenuously sought to portray the imposed silence in Kashmir as acceptance, the reality is of seething and massive discontent and deepening alienation from which “India stands to be the bigger loser.”

While the fourth book was published earlier than 2023 it is another I found very instructive. Big Capital in an Unequal World: The Micropolitics of Wealth in Pakistan by Rosita Armytage joins the ongoing debate in the country about the politics and economics of elite ‘capture’. It offers a fascinating insight into Pakistan’s ‘uppermost’ elite, and its networks and methods that help to maintain its position and reinforce inequality in the country.

She casts her book as an ethnography of the micro-politics of elite lives, which she had the opportunity to observe during the time she spent in Pakistan working and researching here. It is as much a study of the daily experience of modern capitalism among the business elite as an insight into the social conduct, relationship building, marriages and political connections of its members. She describes Pakistan as a compelling case of elite power, which, like many rapidly developing states, is run by an oligarchy of economic and political interests and afflicted by high levels of instability. But this instability is encouraged by powerful families that benefit from it through what she calls the “culture of exemptions”. This must-read book has enriched the debate that continues to rage in Pakistan about the role of the elite and especially how its stranglehold over the economic and political system can be broken by a growing middle class that seeks, but has yet to secure, a bigger voice in national affairs.

- Maleeha Lodhi is a former Pakistani ambassador to the US, UK & UN. Twitter @LodhiMaleeha