Geopolitics

Postcolonial Asia offers at least seven types of states and nations. In their somewhat uncritical pursuit of total nationalism, territorial Asian states compete with their archipelagic cousins. The sea gypsy nations--spread across the South China Sea and other East Asian states--reject the monopoly of land as the only inhabitable space, discounting territory as an essential constituent of a nation. Ironically, while history kept them outside the fold of the territorial states, the present attempts to co-opt them. Only by challenging, as the Asian sea gypsies do, land's claim to being the sole inhabitable territory within law, and rethinking the sea as a place of danger can we truly vernacularise our statist imaginations.

A sense of history should help policy-makers in India and Pakistan to put into perspective their respective expectations of the US - as in any relationship among unequals - as the latter pursues its longterm global battle against 'international terrorism'. Our past experience provides ample grounds for caution.

The reactions of the Central Asian states to the United States' 'war against terrorism' will be guided by the fact that while the American presence in the region is likely to be temporary, Afghanistan will always be there on the other side of the border.