After reading Shiv saars post and also trying to think through, I think he is correct. Modi is between rock and hard place.shiv wrote:
The point I am getting at is that politics is all about "log kya kahenge". The winner in politics is always the person who thinks about all his actions under two headings
1. What will people say if my plans succeed
2. What will people say if my plans fail
.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essence_of_Decision
Based on this 'essence of decision', the government will make a decision not on what a rational person would think. The government will make a decision based on where they sat (bureaucracy) and where they stood (internal politics). A rational person will want a tit for a tat.When he first wrote the book, Allison contended that political science and the study of international relations were saturated with rational expectations theories inherited from the field of economics. Under such a view, the actions of states are analyzed by assuming that nations consider all options and act rationally to maximize their utility.
Allison attributes such viewpoints to the dominance of economists such as Milton Friedman, statesmen such as Robert McNamara and Henry Kissinger, disciplines such as game theory, and organizations such as the RAND Corporation. However, as he puts it:
It must be noted, however, that an imaginative analyst can construct an account of value-maximizing choice for any action or set of actions performed by a government.
Or, to put it bluntly, this approach (which Allison terms the "Rational Actor Model") violates the law of falsifiability. Also, Allison notes that "rational" analysts must ignore a lot of facts in order to make their analysis fit their models.
In response, Allison constructed three different ways (or "lenses") through which analysts can examine events: the "Rational Actor" model, the "Organizational Behavior" model, and the "Governmental Politics" model.
To illustrate the models, Allison poses the following three questions in each section:
Why did the Soviet Union decide to place offensive missiles in Cuba?
Why did the United States respond to the missile deployment with a blockade?
Why did the Soviet Union withdraw the missiles?
That will be a loss leader. IMO we have to take army out of the equation in the dealing with Pakistan. Bureaucratically, Sushma Swaraj might be doing her job. Its how the internal politics is played is what Modi can do. Of course, this is just my opinion. But I agree with Siv saar.