An extension of behavioral correlates of war (BCOW) to the Indo-Pakistan rivalry, 1993--2000

The objective of this dissertation is a straightforward extension of Russell J. Leng's Behavioral Correlates of War work on the Indo-Pakistani dyad using data collected under the NSF MID3 update project. Using this new MID3 data this dissertation examines activity within this on-going crisis-prone dyad from 1993 to 2000. The goal of this research is to develop hostility indexes for both periods which will allow comparison of escalation patterns developed by Leng in his recent work Bargaining and Learning in Recurring Crises: The Soviet-American, Egyptian-Israeli, and Indo-Pakistani Rivalries (2000). The result of this effort provides a comparison between the historical Indo Pakistani dyadic crises as examined by Leng and two later crises. Identification of patterns of escalation is critical in these latter crises now that both India and Pakistan are regional nuclear powers and that any armed conflict between the two immediately becomes one of global concern. The availability of fresh, validated Militarized Interstate Dispute (MID) data for the period 1993--2001 contributes significantly to this analysis.