Moeed Yusuf Participates in South Asia Conflict Simulation

Moeed Yusuf, Graduate Fellow at the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer Range Future participated in a simulation exercise designed to gauge the potential for future tensions, and perhaps conflict, between India and Pakistan. The event was held in Washington, D.C. on November 6-7, 2008.

The workshop brought together renowned Pakistani, Indian, and U.S. experts, policy makers, and members of the strategic community to forecast what shape any future escalation in tensions in South Asia
would take.

Moeed Yusuf argued that future hostilities between the nuclear armed Pakistan and India cannot but cause massive destruction for both countries. Given the lack of institutionalized crisis prevention and
management mechanisms, even limited hostilities will end up unleashing an escalation dynamic that would inevitably bring the region to the brink of a catastrophe. Yusuf suggested that there was an urgent need to institutionalize “conducive diplomacy” between India and Pakistan that would nudge both sides to conclude agreements on crisis prevention, arms control, and greater economic and socio-cultural interaction. This was the only way to move South Asia from a tenuous to a permanent peace.