A World Divided

The theme of early April's meeting of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, a political and economic forum for eight South Asian countries, was "connectivity." Despite the fact that this talkfest slogan was so obvious as to be meaningless, regional leaders took it seriously enough. During the meeting they agreed to work toward a South Asian community that has a "smooth flow of goods, services, peoples, technologies, knowledge, capital, culture and ideas ..." Yet even as the agreement was being drafted, bureaucrat underlings back home were contemplating new ways to separate themselves from neighboring countries—not through trade barriers or...