Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard/Archive 167

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Talk:Regional power#Pakistan

– Discussion in progress.
Filed by Mar4d on 14:54, 14 July 2018 (UTC).

Have you discussed this on a talk page?

Yes, I have discussed this issue on a talk page already.

Location of dispute

Users involved

Dispute overview

The 'dispute' centres around the inclusion of Pakistan on Regional power, which has longstandingly been listed under the 'South Asia' section since at least 2009 [1], and with various different sources. On 28 June, a fellow IP removed the entry which, under normal circumstances, is testament to the high degree of content blanking and WP:VAND the article undergoes. When this was restored by someone else, the content was reverted this time by Adamgerber23, who later stated it was by mistake. The WP:STATUSQUO was seemingly again restored [2]. However, we have had a host of further reverts since then by newer users to the IP version [3] [4] [5], who have contended on the talk page that the entry is not merited. The full sequence of edits can be found in the edit history, while the longer discussion is available in the linked talk page section. The dispute resolution will need to rely on the presence of sources and cited content which support Pakistan's inclusion [6] [7] including Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver, T. V. Paul, James N. Rosenau, Roger Kanet, Samuel P. Huntington amongst others.

Have you tried to resolve this previously?

The matter has been discussed extensively on the talk page with a wide breadth and variety of references, and also landed up at WP:AE [8]

How do you think we can help?

Refer to above. A good start would be to weigh the references we have, and what they summarily support with respect to the above positions, as well as what the sources do not support or state what they are claimed to. Best regards. Mar4d (talk) 15:21, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

Summary of dispute by Sdmarathe

  • Issue has been well explained below by Orientls and My Lord. In my view, we should wait for the sources that pass WP:CONTEXTMATTERS since these are issues like WP:EXCEPTIONAL and passing mentions are not going to help deal with this. Regards! Sdmarathe (talk) 14:04, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
Thank you. Xavexgoem (talk) 15:52, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
  • @Xavexgoem: Yes as long as the source leaves no doubts in describing Pakistan as regional power. Sdmarathe (talk) 20:58, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

Summary of dispute by Orientls

Please keep it brief - less than 2000 characters if possible, it helps us help you quicker.

Following are the main problems with this dispute:-

  • You can discover such passing mentions for many countries for supporting the specific country's status as "regional power". If passing mentions/few sources is all you need then India had to be listed as Great power long ago on Wikipedia.
  • Sources for Pakistan fails WP:IRS as described on talk page and other venues.
  • Scholars have focused enough of describing that how India emerged as a regional power [9][10][11][12] but no one has described how Pakistan emerged as a regional power. But there are sources that focuses on describing how Pakistan is not a regional power.[13]

Following are the problems with the article as a whole:-

  • It's a list. In Wikipedia I believe paragraphs are more preferred.
  • It combines major regional power, secondary regional power and minor regional power into one list, which creates a WP:FALSEBALANCE and gives same weight to major regional power as much as it gives to a minor regional power.

These are some main problems that needs to be addressed. I am not sure if DRN would resolve these issues, I had better plans but lets try this for now. Orientls (talk) 11:03, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

Thank you. Xavexgoem (talk) 11:40, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

Summary of dispute by My Lord

Please keep it brief - less than 2000 characters if possible, it helps us help you quicker.
Details provided by Mar4d and Orientls highlights the summary of the dispute as recognition of Pakistan as a regional power. For now I would like to see the sources that have "described how Pakistan emerged as a regional power" like it has been asked above in order to pass WP:CONTEXTMATTERS. India's regional power status does seem to be passing that requirement as per this reliable source. My Lord (talk) 11:41, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
Thank you. Xavexgoem (talk) 11:58, 15 July 2018 (UTC)


Talk:Regional power#Pakistan discussion

Please keep discussion to a minimum before being opened by a volunteer. Continue on article talk page if necessary.
  • I will take this on, pending the rest of the summaries. Xavexgoem (talk) 07:13, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
Thank you Xavexgoem. Best regards, Mar4d (talk) 09:28, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

Let's begin. Here are the ground rules:

  1. Assume the good intentions of other editors. If you are not able to assume good faith, please tell me immediately so we can work it out. If anyone treats another editor with disrespect, I will ask why you do not believe that editor is acting in good faith. I will point out instances where the charges leveled against that other editor could be leveled against you. You may feel that my charges are unfair or inaccurate, and you'd probably be right.
  2. Please do not link to NPOV, V, OR, or RS, or their sections. We all know what they mean, and we all know why they're important. If you feel something is not neutral, for instance, say why it's not neutral, without reference to the policy.
  3. Please do not edit the section of the article that's in dispute. If someone outside this mediation changes it to a version that you don't agree with, do not revert the edit. By definition, a revert restores an article to its consensus version. Mediation is proof of lack of consensus. I will take a reversion to mean that you feel that your version is consensus, and therefore you feel that mediation is pointless.

The big question is the sources. I've included them at the bottom of the discussion.

  1. In which ways are the current sources inappropriate?
  2. In which ways are the sources not directly supporting the notion that Pakistan is a regional power? In other words, how are they being taken out of context?
  3. For including Pakistan on the list, what would an ideal source look like?

Thank you. Xavexgoem (talk) 16:21, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

Thank you. I will like to start off by noting these multiple citations are attributed to various scholars of international relations and political science. Their works have been published by several top publishers such as Cambridge University Press, Princeton University Press, Taylor & Francis etc. and vetted in peer reviews. All attest to the regional power status of Pakistan. More precisely, the sources cited are quite categorically listing Pakistan as a regional power. The quotes embedded into these citations under the source list are evidence. From this, we know multiple internationally renowned experts have termed Pakistan a regional power whereas the opposing argument is solely centered on one reference (Rajagopalan), who as I have thoroughly detailed on the article talk page, also uses the exact term 'regional power' several times to refer to Pakistan even while he identifies the country's strengths and weaknesses. Such 'analysis' can be said to exist for almost all regional powers, and by itself is not sufficient evidence to claim that Pakistan is not a regional power, nor does it overrule the position of the multiple sources mentioned. Regards, Mar4d (talk) 14:49, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
Thank you. Xavexgoem (talk) 19:17, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
No one has said that Mar4d provided unreliable sources. Editors asked him to cite the sources that pass WP:CONTEXTMATTERS. Rajagopalan never said Pakistan is a regional power, he in fact dismissed this notion and said "Pakistan is not often thought of as a regional power."[14] Since Mar4d is not citing the sources that pass WP:CONTEXTMATTERS, but only mentioning the passing mentions which can be also discovered for Algeria, Venezuela, North Korea and many countries that are not regional power, I think we really lack the required scholarly consensus to name Pakistan as the regional power in the present article, unless we can re-design the article. But even after that, naming Pakistan as the regional power won't be faithful towards sources since that is best treated as a sub-regional power or a minor regional power, but again the concerning policy cannot be ignored. ML talk 14:42, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
Thank you. Please remove the references to CONTEXTMATTERS, per the rules above. I do request that you rewrite this, without reference to the guideline. I'm sorry to be difficult :) --Xavexgoem (talk) 15:03, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

The sources from Mar4d fail at explaining in detail how and why Pakistan is a regional power; while, on the other hand, I have provided many reliable sources that describe how Pakistan is not a regional power and completely refutes Mar4d's arguments (e.g. [15]). Now Mar4d can post such a strong source talking in favor of Pakistan being a regional power, and I would gladly change my stance ! What type of sources do we need? An example would be this source, though it is about India as a regional power. Sdmarathe (talk) 04:32, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

So the parties against including Pakistan as a regional power would accept its inclusion if there are sources that say its position as a regional power is justified. Two questions:

  1. Is this a correct assessment?
  2. Are there nuances that I'm missing?

Please answer the questions individually. Thanks, --Xavexgoem (talk) 04:56, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

Source list

  • Barry Buzan (15 October 2004). The United States and the Great Powers: World Politics in the Twenty-First Century. Polity. pp. 71–. ISBN 978-0-7456-3375-6. Regional powers define the polarity of any given regional security complex (Walt 1987; Lake and Morgan 1997; Buzan and Wæver 2003): India and Pakistan in South Asia...
  • Buzan, Barry; Wæver, Ole (2003). Regions and Powers: The Structure of International Security. Cambridge University Press. p. 55. ISBN 978-0-521-89111-0. In the framework of their regional security complex theory (RSCT), Barry Buzan and Ole Waever differentiate between superpowers and great powers which act and influence the global level (or system level) and regional powers whose influence may be large in their regions but have less effect at the global level. This category of regional powers includes Brazil, Egypt, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Turkey.
  • Paul, T. V. (2012). International Relations Theory and Regional Transformation. Cambridge University Press. p. 11. ISBN 978-1-107-02021-4. Retrieved 3 February 2017. The regional powers such as Israel or Pakistan are not simple bystanders of great power politics in their regions; they attempt to asymmetrically influence the major power system often in their own distinct ways.
  • Ersel Aydinli; James N. Rosenau (2005). Globalization, Security, and the Nation State: Paradigms in Transition. SUNY Press. pp. 177–. ISBN 978-0-7914-6402-1. Regional powers refers to the much larger and, in international security terms, much more significant, category of states that define the power structure of their local region: India and Pakistan in South Asia; South Africa in southern Africa; Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia in the Gulf; Egypt, Israel, and Syria in the Levant; and so forth. Regional powers may not matter much at the global level, but within their regions they determine both the local patterns of security relations and the way in which those patterns interact with global powers.
  • Narang, V. (2014). Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era: Regional Powers and International Conflict. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9781400850402. Retrieved 5 March 2017.
  • T. V. Paul; Linda Paul; Teleglobe Raoul-Dandurand Chair of Strategic and Diplomatic Studies (2000). Power Versus Prudence: Why Nations Forgo Nuclear Weapons. McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. ISBN 978-0-7735-2087-5. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
  • Nadine Godehardt; Dirk Nabers (12 May 2011). Regional Powers and Regional Orders. Taylor & Francis. pp. 306–. ISBN 978-1-136-71890-8. It is also a nuclear power, with dozens of nuclear warheads and intermediate-range ballistic missiles (Khan and Lavoy 2008). By these crudely material resources measures, Pakistan should be considered a major regional power.
  • T. V. Paul; Richard J. Harknett; James J. Wirtz (2000). The Absolute Weapon Revisited: Nuclear Arms and the Emerging International Order. University of Michigan Press. pp. 256–. ISBN 0-472-08700-2.
  • Kenan Aksu (18 July 2014). Turkey: A Regional Power in the Making. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. pp. 92–. ISBN 978-1-4438-6453-4. ... Central and South Asia have now been renewed with fresh interpretations especially in regard to the regional powers of Uzbekistan and Pakistan.
  • Sumit Ganguly; S. Paul Kapur (18 August 2008). Nuclear Proliferation in South Asia: Crisis Behaviour and the Bomb. Routledge. pp. 212–. ISBN 978-1-134-06962-0.
  • Edward A. Kolodziej; Roger E. Kanet (18 June 1989). Limits of Soviet Power. Palgrave Macmillan UK. pp. 202–. ISBN 978-1-349-10146-7. Because of Pakistan's reemergence as at least a regional power, we identify an emerging pentagon of power in and around South Asia...

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