Is South Asia the Most Dangerous Place on Earth?

The Center for the Study of Public Scholarship and the Asian Studies Program of Emory University present

Is South Asia the Most Dangerous Place on Earth?

RAJU G. C. THOMAS

Allis Chambers Distinguished Professor of International Affairs Marquette University

Monday, February 28, 2005

4:30pm

White Hall, Room 205

Following the nuclear tests conducted by India and Pakistan in 1998, U.S. officials and the American media have called South Asia the most dangerous place on earth. In 2001 Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage called Kashmir "the most dangerous place in the world." Indeed, during the American bombing of Afghanistan to root out the Al Qaeda terrorist base, tensions escalated over Kashmir between these two newly-armed nuclear weapon states. Pakistani leaders have threatened the use of nuclear weapons if India were to launch a conventional attack on Pakistan to stop cross border terrorism. Stemming the hemorrhage in Indo-Pakistani relations and the slide towards a nuclear war constitute a concurrent challenge for the United States as it pursues its war objectives in Afghanistan and Iraq and the elimination of terrorist networks everywhere.

RAJU G. C. THOMAS is the Allis Chalmers Distinguished Professor of International Affairs at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Thomas has published/edited over a dozen books, 35 book chapters and 30 articles in academic journals. Some of his most recent works include Nuclear India in the 21st Century and Yugoslavia Unraveled: Sovereignty, Self-Determination, Intervention. Currently, he is co-editing with Stanley Wolpert a 4-volume Encyclopedia of India. He has delivered numerous overseas lectures. Thomas has an M.A. degree in Industrial and Monetary Economics from Bombay University, a B.Sc.Econ. degree in Economics and International History from the London School of Economics, an M.A. in International Relations from the University of Southern California, and a Ph.D. in Political Science from UCLA.

For more information, please contact Anne Walker at 404-727-7602 or awalker@emory.edu.