Careers In International Affairs

Source: http://www.defseminar.lk/Seminar/speakerlist2015.php

Dr. W. Lawrence S. Prabhakar, M.A (Madras Christian College), Ph.D. (University of Madras) is an Associate Professor of Strategic Studies and International Relations in the department of Political Science at Madras Christian College, India and Adjunct Research Fellow, S.Rajaratnam School of International Studies (Formerly Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.^[1]

Dr. Prabhakar specializes in academic and policy research on the following areas: Nuclear Missile issues in Southern Asia; on Maritime Security issues in the Indian Ocean and the Asia-Pacific Region and on research in India-United States Strategic Relations; Grand Strategy of India and Grand Strategy of China. His primary interest on Nuclear weapons have featured in his projects with Henry Stimson Center, Washington DC USA; Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington DC USA and with the Institut de Relations Internationales et Stratégiques, Paris, France.

The following are the excerpts from a conversation with him in cozy environs of the Madras Christian College, Chennai.

He speaks about five aspects of a career in International relations/development, so that one can understand the approaches before delving into careers in it. He calls it the “quintessence of international relations being a multidisciplinary subject”. And lists them as Socio political, Cultural, Economic, Commercial and Security/Strategic Dimensions. The boundaries between national and international is increasingly blurred in today’s times.  Calling it a global village, he says that there is a growing demand for a human development approach, with nations competing with each other in terms of the Human Development Index.

While dwelling on the cultural civilizational perspective, he lists India, China, Japan and Korea (South and North) as civilizational states and that these countries can only seen from this prism. Civilizational states are different from nation states in the sense that they have a long and contiguous history dating back to 2 millenia and more. India, though a civilizational state, is a post colonial regime, especially the governance structure. China as a nation state is difficult to understand since its governance structure is based on the Communist approach with almost no information available on it.

The territorial, social and economic problems have compounded since the advent of the nation states and formal groupings and can be traced to 1945, when the United Nations have started. Though there are formal dialogue forums for resolving these key issues. He refers to these as state making projects. The groupings/agreements like NAFTA, EU and BRICS seem to have only aided some of the countries to gang up on another. UK’s exit from the European Union has only made it that much more complex on assessing these groupings/agreements.

Countries today are combating issues like Climate change, rising sea levels, terrorism, cyber security, marine security and food security together. The groupings/agreements do aid in the same and this has led to Transnationalism, as an approach to combat the common enemies of humanity. The Millenium Development Goals talk about stakeholdership, accountability and leadership, which are common points of bringing in a consensus to beal global challenges

Moving on, when asked to highlight on the debates between HDI and GDP, he speaks of how a growth perspective does not offer development. It ignores the qualitative growth of a human being, which includes education, health and social welfare.  That the quest for growth might lead to long term damages.

International relations today is seeing a scramble for resources, territory, access and power status. Countries are only looking for growth. Therefore, it is true that development is skewed out of proportions.

When asked to comment about the recent Indo-Pak standoffs, he mentions that hype and rhetoric have no place in International relations and that only dialogues can take countries forward and that these steps must be taken together.

On a career in International affairs, he lists the following as viable career options:

Policy research

International Civil Services

Risk Analysis for MNCs

Area studies

Media

Humanitarian social agencies

It was a sheer delight to listen to this passionate academic talk about International Affairs, and how its multi disciplinary approach makes it a brilliant career option. I thank him, for sparing his valuable time for this interview.