South Asia Moving Towards Transformation:

Emergence of India as a Great Power

Barry Buzan

The end of the Cold War also brought an end to the East-West conflict on a
global scale. In the absence of a core conflict in the international system, regional
security dynamics have assumed greater importance. In the post-Cold War period
while some regions have undergone rapid peaceful change, others have experi-
enced unprecedented conflict. Yet others remain hostage to the old patterns of
interaction. Where does South Asia fit in? Since 1990, South Asia has been in
the news for a number of reasons. Problems of economic reforms, political instabil-
ity, democratization, regional conflict and cooperation, the nuclear tests of
May 1998, and the Kargil war between India and Pakistan in the summer of 1999,
all these have made the region a turbulent zone over the past decade. How can
one understand these trends in South Asia? Is there a pattern to be seen in the
South Asian security complex? If so, what does it say about this region?
The first section of this article briefly deals with the formation, structure and
operation of the South Asian security complex during the Cold War. The follow-
ing section looks at how the complex has evolved since the end of the Cold War,
examining whether it has remained essentially stable in form, or is showing signs
of transformation. It concludes with a discussion on the possible future scenario
for the South Asian complex.
I have argued that the security dynamics at the domestic, regional and global
levels show a lot of continuity. I have also argued that the bipolar structure at the
regional level is weakening as Pakistan loses ground in relation to India thus
strengthening the broader Asian security complex. The analytical framework of
the article is the security complex theory (SCT). Classical security complex the-
ory (CSCT) posits the existence of regional subsystems as objects of security
analysis, and the focus is primarily on the state as the key unit, as well as on the
political and military sectors.’ This framework highlights the relative autonomy
of regional security relations. All the states in the system are enmeshed in a global

The author is Professor, Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of Westminster, London, U.K.

’Barry Buzan, People, States and Fear (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991), ch. 5.

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2

web of security interdependence. But since most states fear their neighbours more
than distant powers, insecurity is often associated with proximity. Consequently,
security interdependence over the international system as a whole is far from uni-
form. The normal pattern of security interdependence in a geographically diverse
anarchic international system is one of regionally based clusters, which are often
described as security complexes. Security interdependence is markedly more
intense between the units inside such complexes, than with units outside it.
Security complexes are about the relative intensity of security relations that lead
to distinctive regional patterns shaped by both the distribution of power and
historical relations of amity and enmity. This &dquo;classical&dquo; version of the
theory has recently been updated to take into account not only the widening of the
security agenda (from the strictly military one to non-military ones and
the opening up of security studies of referent objects other than the state) but
also the move towards a more constructivist understanding of security dynamics.’
Thus, a security complex can be defined as a set of units whose major processes
of securitization, desecuritization or both are so interlinked that their national
security problems cannot reasonably be analyzed or resolved separately. Its
essential structure is key to understanding the significant change in a classical
security complex. The three basic components of the essential structure are:
(a) the arrangement of the units and the differentiation amongst them, (b) the
patterns of amity and enmity, and (c) the distribution of power among the
principal units. Major shifts in any of these, or changes in the boundaries that
define and separate different security complexes, would normally require a redef-
inition of the complex. This approach allows one to analyze regional security in
both static and dynamic terms. If security complexes are seen as structured sub-
systems, then one can look for outcomes resulting from either structural effects
or processes of structural change.

The South Asian Security Complex during the Cold War

The South Asian security complex, like most other post-colonial security com-

plexes, emerged out of a conflict situation. India and Pakistan bom out of a were

conflict between the Muslim League and the Congress. This communal conflict
got transfonned into an interstate, military-political one between an Islamic
Pakistan and a secular, multicultural, multireligious India in the post-1947 period.
This interstate conflict between the two biggest powers in South Asia retained its
societal security elements, and formed the core of the regional complex. Before
independence, the process of securitization was based on Muslim claims for
politico-cultural autonomy. Afterwards, it was based on many issues like the dis-
pute over territory (especially Kashmir) between the two new states, balance of
power, mutual accusation of interference in each other’s domestic affairs and the
nature of their constitutions. India’s secular, federal constitution threatened

Barry Buzan, Ole Waever and

2 Jaap dc Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis (Boulder,
CO: Lynne Reinner, 1998).

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 3

Pakistan with reabsorption, and many in Pakistan suspected India of wishing to

reunite the subcontinent. The principle of Pakistan’s ideology as a homeland for
Muslims threatened India’s patchwork of ethnic and religious groups with dis-
memberment. This constitutional tension provided fertile ground for securitiza-
tion of national identities on both sides, and government found it convenient to
cultivate threat perceptions of the other for their own domestic political purposes.
This rivalry led to three wars (1947-48, 1965, 1971), generated several serious
crises in which war looked a possibility (1984, 1987, 1990, 1999), and was
reflected in numerous skirmishes.’ It was a common practice on the part of each
government to accuse the other of fomenting domestic political violence across
the border. For instance, the separatist problem which India confronted in Punjab
and Jammu and Kashmir was the reflection of Pak-sponsored terrorism. All this
helped to sustain military competition, which from the mid-1970s onwards
acquired a nuclear dimension.
Like Pakistan, other smaller states in the region (Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka,
the Maldives, Bangladesh) are all tied into the complex in one way or the other
because of the close links which their politics, economies and societies have
with India. Partly because of their isolation from each other, and partly because
of the realization that their collective strength does not match India there has
never been a tendency for the whole complex to polarize around an anti-Indian
alliance centred on Pakistan. Neither is there much sign of a smaller state band-
wagoning with India, though at times Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have bilateral
security agreements with India (not against Pakistan), and Nepal has been in
India’s security zone since 1950. Neither Pakistan nor India attracts any South
Asian regional allies, which means that India has succeeded in preventing the
formation of an anti-India front by these smaller states through bilateralism.
The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) does not
affect the security politics of the region in any way. Nepal and Bhutan are both
dependent on India for trade and transit. Sri Lanka remains broadly neutral in
the conflict between India and Pakistan, but is tied to India by the long fester-
ing problem of its Tamil minority which has had its impact on the Tamil popu-
lation in southern India. The Indian intervention involving 60,000 troops during
1987-90 could not resolve the civil war between the Tamil minority and
Sinhala majority in Sri Lanka. The Maldives gained independence in 1965, and
its turbulent domestic politics forced it to seek Indian intervention in 1989.
Bangladesh was bom in 1971 as a combined result of civil war in Pakistan and
the consequent third major war between India and Pakistan. It is tied to India
by shared language, culture, problems arising out of the sharing of river water,
and migration. As a result, during the Cold War, economic relations amongst
the South Asian states were not significantly securitized at the regional level,
and the low level economic interdependence could not restrain the region’s
military-political antagonisms.

Shekhar Gupta, "India Redefines its Role", Adelphi Paper 293 (London: IISS, 1995), pp. 51-52.
3

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4

The South Asian security complex remained insulated from those around it.
Burma provided insulation from South East Asia, and Afghanistan from the Gulf.
Major wars in these areas did not spill over into neighbouring regions. Had India
been able to maintain Tibet as an insulator between South Asia and China, the
South Asian complex would also have been well insulated from the north. But the
annexation of Tibet by China brought Chinese borders close to India’s heartland
and led to a great deal of friction between India and China over the border issue
during the late 1950s. This ultimately resulted in a border war between the two in
1962, a mini-crisis in 19874 and a perennial sense of insecurity in India about
China. Parallel to this, a durable military partnership, though not an alliance,
developed between China and Pakistan from the early 1960s. Security dynamics
between South Asia and China posed a problem for early attempts to formulate
South Asia as a clear model of a regional security complex. This problem was
tackled by putting China at the global level, a solution that now seems oversim-
plified. In the light of a more fully developed theory, the Sino-Indian security
dynamics in the late 1950s can better be seen as part of the wider process by
which an Asian supercomplex was forming at that time. Although Chinese
involvement in South Asia did take place in the context of the Cold War, it was
primarily located at the interregional level. As a result, the end of the Cold War
did not affect it much.
At the global level, even though the South Asian security complex was not
central to the main theatres of the Cold War rivalry, it nonetheless was affected by
the rivalry. As CSCT envisages, when there is rivalry amongst the global powers,
a regional security complex in conflict formation mode draws in outside interven-
tion along the lines of its own internal split. Thus, from an early stage, Pakistan
sought to associate itself with the United States, and a bit later, with China. By the
early 1950s it had succeeded in becoming part of the US network of containment
alliances. Although its relationship with the US was often troubled, especially
from the 1970s onwards, over nuclear proliferation issues, Pakistan regained US
support during the 1980s as an ally against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
This strategic relationship between the US and Pakistan, and especially US arms
supplies to Pakistan, and US naval manoeuvres in the Bay of Bengal during the
1971 Indo-Pakistan war, led to a durable securitization of the US in India. An Indo-
Soviet relationship began to develop from the early 1960s, initially on the basis of
Soviet arms supplies, and then in 1971 on the basis of a formal treaty. The Sino-
Indian war in 1962 reinforced India’s drift towards the Soviet Union on the one
hand and cemented the China-Pakistan relationship on the other. In this way, the
rivalry in South Asia became tied into, and reinforced by the global-level patterns
of the US-Soviet and Sino-Soviet rivalries.
Thus, during the Cold War period, the South Asian complex, in terms of
CSCT, operated in the following manner: its essential structure was bipolar, with
deeply rooted mutual securitization between India and Pakistan. This structure

Ibid.,
4 p. 57.

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 5

was not greatly affected by the secession of Bangladesh from Pakistan, and was
bolstered by the nuclearization of the military rivalry between India and Pakistan
from the mid-1970s onwards. Most of the states in the region functioned in some
degree as weak states, though India’s robust democracy pushed it towards the
middle of the weak-strong state spectrum.’ They had turbulent and often violent
domestic politics fuelled by ethnic and religious differences, and since ethnic and
religious ties often crossed national borders, there was a strong two-way influ-
ence between the domestic and regional levels in South Asian insecurity. This

pattern of domestic-regional linkage remained stable throughout the Cold War,

as did the pattern of linkage upward to the Sino-Soviet-US triangle.

Despite the stability of structure, there were always three possibilities for
change. First was the possibility of internal transformation. This rested
on Pakistan being unable to sustain bipolarity either because of its own disinte-

gration, or because of India’s inherent advantages over it. Pakistan’s inclination

to forge alliances with outside powers and the nuclear option were its key cards
in attempting to forestall any such development. Second was the possibility of
external transformation by an escalation of the India-China rivalry to a point
where it pushed the South Asian regional level into the background. This possi-
bility was affected by the growth of nuclear weapon capabilites in South Asia,
and by India’s potential for great power standing beyond the regional level. Third
was the possibility of external transformation linking South Asian and West
Asian security dynamics. Although the West Asian and South Asian security
dynamics generally stood back to back, there were two mechanisms that could
fuse them together. One was Pakistan’s attempt to counter India by seeking allies
in the Islamic world. This initially led to its relationship with Iran, and later to
quite close military and political ties with Saudi Arabia (in regard to the anti-
Soviet war in Afghanistan and in lending Pakistani troops for internal duty in
Saudi Arabia). The other was Israeli concern over Pakistan’s rhetoric about an
&dquo;Islamic&dquo; nuclear bomb, and the speculation during the 1970s, that Israel and
India might therefore find a pressing common cause. However, neither of these
mechanisms became strong enough during the Cold War to threaten the essential
separateness of South Asian and West Asian security dynamics, though they did
make for an active interregional level.
At the global level, South Asia was never more than a side-show to the main
events of the Cold War. Its regional dynamics were strongly autonomous, and
although affected by the military inputs from the global level, they were not created
or even reshaped by those in any significant way.

I
The 1990s and Beyond: Continuity or Transformation?
Since the impact of the Cold War on the security dynamics of South Asia was
limited, it is not surprising that the end of the Cold War did not bring about any
dramatic transformations in this regard. But at the same time, it will be too

Buzan, People,
5 States and Fear, pp. 96-107.

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6

simplistic to maintain that the South Asian case has been &dquo;more of the same&dquo;
since 1990. There is a substantial case both for continuity as well as the move-
ment of the South Asian complex towards a radical transformation. It is worth
looking at both cases in some detail.
The Case for Continuity
The case for continuity can be made across all four levels. At the domestic,

regional and interregional levels this is not particularly surprising given the deep
roots of the dynamics at these levels. It is more surprising at the global level,
which has undergone a major change.

The Domestic Level

The general pattern of violent internal politics in most of the countries in the
region remained much the same, as did the pattern of spillover from this level to
the regional, interstate one. Progress towards democratization in most of the
South Asian countries did little to change this pattern. Although both Nepal and
Bangladesh experienced political turbulence in some degree, the most affected
were Sri Lanka, Pakistan and India.
In Sri Lanka, animosity between the Sinhala and Tamil populations has fuelled
a civil war since the 1970s in which approximately 60,000 people have died.6 The
conflict between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the govern-
ment has continued to oscillate between periods of intense fighting and relative
calm. The assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991, allegedly by the LTTE, greatly
undermined the support of Indian Tamils for the LTTE. By the mid-1990s the
LTTE had established a virtual state in the north. The success of the military
operations by the government forces in 1994-95 led to the recovery of nearly all
of the LTTE-controlled towns, but this did not end the civil war. The LTTE
changed its tactics; it started attacking the armed forces and bombing the
Sinhalese heartland. By early 2000 it was reclaiming territory in the north.
Despite its scale and seeming intractability, the civil war in Sri Lanka did not
threaten the state or the economy, which continued to function reasonably well in
’

most areas.
In Pakistan, however, the weak state problem was more serious. The entire
state machinery wasdistorted by passionate commitment to an unequal military
a

rivalry with India that Pakistan could not win, but which imposed on it a large,
expensive and politically active military establishment. Widespread corruption in
high places, political instability and domestic violence, all combined to raise
questions about the long-term viability of the state. There were serious concerns
that Pakistan was drifting towards the sort of semi-permanent political chaos that
prevailed in Afghanistan and Somalia. Pakistan’s political elites were &dquo;more
concerned with looting the economy than developing it&dquo;, and often pursued their

Rohan Gunaratna, "The Burden of Ethnicity, Insurgency and Insecurity in Sri Lanka", in Marvin
6
G. Weinbaum and Chetan Kumar, eds, South Asia Approaches the Millennium: Reexamining National
Security (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995), p. 80.

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 7

bitter personal rivalries more in the streets than in the parliament.’ The army which
dominated political life in Pakistan, whether in or out of government, became a
quasi-autonomous actor in its own right, and in the process dealt a body-blow to the
growth of democracy.8 As a result, voter turnouts came down from 64 per cent in
1970 to 36 per cent in 1997. By 1996 the country ranked fifty-third out of fifty-four
on Transparency International’s survey of business perceptions of corruption. Less

than I per cent of its population paid tax.’ In 1999, the military once again seized
political power. Pakistan’s quasi-autonomous military and intelligence services had
involved the country deeply in the Afghan war against the Soviet Union, and after
the Soviet withdrawal, in the civil war that followed amongst the varied religious
and ethnic factions in Afghanistan. Among other things this led a large number of
Afghan refugees to be trained and armed inside Pakistan. The border between
Afghanistan and the North West Frontier Province largely disappeared, and
Pakistani-sponsored Islamic militants increasingly penetrated deep into the
Pakistani society itself bringing with them a lively trade in arms and drugs with
their associated warlords and mafias.’° In addition, there were also instabilities in
the southern provinces of Baluchistan and Sind. The conflict between the Mohajir
Quami Movement (MQM) and the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) which almost
amounted to a minor civil war, triggered off a military intervention during 1992, and
by 1996 at least 3,000 people had been killed.&dquo; On top of such ethnic violence was
a growing securitization of religious identity accompanied by outbreaks of violence

involving Pakistan’s dominant Sunni Muslims and its Shi’ia and Christian minori-
ties. At least some of this sectarian bloodshed was linked to the growing influence
of Taliban-inspired (Sunni) Islamic extremism on Pakistan’s domestic life.&dquo;
On the surface, India might seem to present a similar picture, with corruption
scandals and unstable governments serving as a backdrop to ethnic and religious
political tension. One might even assume that for India, the South Asian complex
was partly about its relations with its neighbours and partly about its internal

politico-military relations. But in India, the military remained clearly subordinate

to political authority, and democracy had developed deep roots. Therefore, in no
case was the country in danger of moving into the ranks of failed states. After the
serious economic crisis of the early 1990s,&dquo; measures of liberalization generated

’John Bray, "Pakistan at 50: A State in Decline", International Affairs, vol. 73, no. 2, 1997,
pp. 315-31.
Rasool Baksh Rais, "Security, State and Democracy in Pakistan", in Marvin G. Weinbaum and
8
Chetan Kumar, eds, South Asia Approaches the Millennium; Reexamining National Security
(Boulder, CO:Westview Press, 1995), pp. 63-78; Samina Ahmed, "Pakistan: The Crisis Within", in
Muthia Allagapa, ed., Asian Security Practice: Material and Ideational Influences (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1998), pp. 338-66.
Bray, "Pakistan at 50", pp. 320, 325-26.
9
Strategic Survey, 1994-95, pp. 198-99.
10
Strategic Survey, 1996-97, p. 205.
11
Amin Saikal, "Afghanistan’s Ethnic Conflict", Survival, vol. 40, no. 2, 1998, pp. 123-24; Olivier
12
Roy, "Fundamentalists without a Common Cause", Le Monde Diplomatique (in The Guardian
Weekly), October 1998, p. 2.
Stuart Corbridge, "The Militarisation of all Hindudom? The Bharatiya Janata Party, the Bomb
13
and the Political Space of Hindu Nationalism". Paper presented to the Pan-European International
Relations Conference, Vienna, July 1998, pp. 8-10.

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8

a respectable rate of economic growth. The long-drawn out insurgency problem

in Punjab which cost several hundred lives per year peaked in 1992 with some
3,000 dead, but subsided thereafter.&dquo; The violence in Kashmir, which was more

closely linked to Indo-Pakistani relations, continued with high casualties and

periodic crises, such as the Kargil border war of 1999, showing no sign of solu-
tion. There was also tension between Hindus and Muslims which sometimes
results in communal violence. During the 1990s, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP),
the so-called &dquo;Hindu nationalist&dquo; party, experienced a steady rise in political
strength. It finally succeeded in forming a coalition government at the centre in
the spring of 1998. And as the BJP approached power, it moderated its policies
in order to both strengthen national unity, and to widen its electoral base.&dquo;

The Regional Level

The linkage between security politics in the region and domestic insecurities con-
tinued with on-again off-again tensions between India on the one hand and Nepal
(borders, trade and transit agreements, migrants, water), Bangladesh (water allo-
cations, migrants, insurgency spillovers) and Sri Lanka (Tamil politics) on the
other. As regards Indo-Pakistani relations, the traditional pattern of hostility
has not only continued but has also considerably escalated.
The India-Pakistan rivalry revolved around three long-standing issues:
Kashmir, communal tensions and the military. Border skirmishes between the
two armies continued over the Siachen glacier, and Pakistan continued to support
insurgent groups in Kashmir, including a border-crossing crisis in 1992. The
intense political rivalry between Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif fuelled com-
petitive anti-Indian rhetoric over Kashmir,&dquo; leading to more forceful mutual
accusations of interference in each other’s internal affairs. Pakistan also took
much political mileage out of the communal tensions in India. All of this con-
tributed to a chill in the diplomatic relations between the two states lasting from
1994 to 1997. High-level talks resumed briefly in 1997 under the &dquo;Gujral doc-
trine&dquo;&dquo; and again in 1998 after the May nuclear tests. But these efforts were of
no avail and in the summer of 1999 the two fought a small border war in the

Kargil sector. There seemed to be no end in sight to the long-standing pattern of

alternating hostility and dialogue between the two states on political issues even
though they showed the ability to cooperate on issues such as the sharing of the
Indus waters.&dquo;
On top of all this was the nuclear and missile rivalry, though in 1991 the
two countries did manage to agree on nuclear installations and in 1992 on the

14 Survey, 1993-94, p. 183.

Strategic
Corbridge, "The Militarisation of all Hindudom?".
15
Strategic Survey, 1993-94, pp. 187-88.
16
"Bhabani Sengupta, "India in the Twenty-first Century", International Affairs, vol. 73, no. 2, 1997,
pp.297-314.
Itty Abraham, "Towards a Reflective South Asian Security Studies", in Weinbaum and Kumar,
18
South Asia Approaches the Millennium, pp. 26-30.

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 9

non-use of chemical weapons.&dquo; Since India’s first satellite launch in 1980 and
its first Surface to Surface Missile (SSM) test in 1988, this rivalry has mostly
consisted of posturing with newly acquired missile capabilities and anticipating
future developments. India has indigenous development projects for short-
(Prithvi) and medium-range (Agni) SSMs and a submarine-based cruise missile
(Sagarika). It has conducted several tests of Prithvi, which is much closer to
deployment status than Agni, and has plans to develop a small fleet of missile-
carrying nuclear submarines.2° Pakistan has received substantial assistance from
North Korea and China for several short-range and one intermediate-range
SSM (Ghauri) which was tested in 1998, and has for some years possessed
Chinese M- I I SSMS.&dquo; Amongst the rhetoric surrounding the bomb tests was a
Pakistani claim that Ghauri was being fitted with nuclear warheads.22 Pakistan
has also announced programmes for the development of a longer-range missile
(Ghaznavi).
Both states have long-standing military nuclear programmes dating back at
least to Pakistan’s defeat in the 1971 war. India’s test in 1974 accelerated the
process in Pakistan. Since the 1980s; both have been acknowledged as probable
threshold states. Pakistan is generally assumed to have received substantial assist-
ance from China, which has helped it to catch up with India. But China denies

any such involvement.23 The general feeling is that both have either acquired or
could very quickly acquire operational nuclear weapons. In 1995 India appeared
close to conducting a nuclear test, which did not take place until May 1998.
India’s tests were followed closely by matching tests by Pakistan. In the heated
rhetoric after their nuclear tests, both states claimed weaponized nuclear capabil-
ity.14 Many observers of this process are worried that overt nuclear rivalry will
not produce a stable deterrence configuration between India and Pakistan. Poor
C3I, underdeveloped strategic doctrines and vulnerability to crisis instability
could all override restraints on the use of nuclear weapons.25

The Interregional Level

At the interregional level, continuity is partly about the Asian supercomplex, and
partly about the security interplay between South Asia and West Asia. The

Michael Krepon and Amit Sewak, eds, Crisis Prevention, Confidence Building and Reconciliation
19
in South Asia (New York: St. Martin, 1995).
Programme for Promoting Nuclear Non-Proliferation (PPNN), Newsbriefs, no. 42, 1998, p. 16.
20
Strategic Survey, 1992-93, p. 135, and 1996-97, p. 208; Brahma Chellaney, "After the Tests:
21
India’s Options", Survival, vol. 40, no. 4, 1998-99, pp. 93-111; Francois Heisbourg, "The Prospects
for Nuclear Stability between India and Pakistan", Survival, vol. 40, no. 4, 1998-99, pp. 77-92.
PPNN, no. 42, 1998, p. 5.
22
William Walker, "International Nuclear Relations after the Indian and Pakistani Test Explosions",
23
International Affairs, vol. 74, no. 3, 1998, pp. 505-28.
Walker, "International Nuclear Relations", p. 518.
24
Neil Joeck, "Maintaining Nuclear Stability in South Asia", Adelphi Paper 312 (London: IISS,
25
1997); Walker, "International Nuclear Relations", pp. 505-28; Heisbourg, "The Prospects for Nuclear
Stability", pp. 82-86.

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10

Asian supercomplex is fairly simple whereas the South Asia - West Asia one is
much more complicated.
Continuity in the Asian supercomplex hinges on the pattern of relations between
China on the one hand, and India and Pakistan on the other. South Asia con-
tinued to be a fairly minor front for China, and the strategy it adopted to keep it that
way was to sustain support for Pakistan’s effort to maintain the bipolar conflict
formation in the subcontinent. This was a realist strategy which meant that to the
extent that India could be distracted by Pakistan’s challenge, it would be diverted
from making trouble for China. China’s game in South Asia was helped by the
disintegration of the Soviet Union and India’s consequent loss of a compensating
countervailing force against China. China continued to back Pakistan’s attempt
to match India’s achievements in nuclear and missile technology, and India con-
tinued to cite the threat from China, more than Pakistan, as the justification
for its nuclear and missile programmes. Although an important element of continu-
ity, this pattern should not be over-emphasized. There were limits to China’s
support for Pakistan, and Sino-Indian relations were in some ways cooperative.
China did not want to be drawn into an Indo-Pakistan war and did not have an
alliance with Pakistan. It was concerned about Pakistan’s instability and even
more so about the Islamization of Pakistani politics, which had implications for
China’s own problems with its Muslim minorities. Further, despite India’s use of
China as the rationale for its own nuclear developments, the two have maintained
a stable diplomatic relationship since the 1980s. There are regular high level
visits from both the sides and talks on border issues. In fact, in the immediate
aftermath of the Cold War there were some border agreements (in 1993) and
moves to demilitarize the border.26 However, no major shift has taken place in
what remains essentially a cool relationship.
Continuity across the South Asian - West Asia boundary prevails despite the
upheavals caused by the wars in Afghanistan and their repercussion in both
regions. At present this boundary remains as active as it was during the Cold War
and is therefore a case for external transformation. But this has not linked, and
does not seem likely to link, together the security dynamics of the two regions.
Rather, it is likely that it will help to keep them separate. In the past, interest
in this boundary was over whether there would be some direct integration of
security dynamics resulting either from Israel’s engagement with Pakistan’s
&dquo;Islamic&dquo; bomb, or from Pakistan’s perennial search for support in the Islamic
world. Neither of these possibilities ever materialized to bring the basic sepa-
rateness of South Asian and West Asian security dynamics into question,
though rhetoric about an &dquo;Islamic bomb&dquo; is not wholly absent in Pakistan.
Between South Asian and West Asian regional security dynamics, Afghanistan
always acted as an insulator engaging its neighbours on all fronts, but keeping
them apart much more than pulling them together. It remains the key to this
boundary.

Gupta, "India Redefines its Role", pp. 56-57.

26

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 11

The civil warthat followed the end of the Soviet intervention has created
a in
mini-complex Afghanistan. This mini-complex reflected political fragmen-
tation at the substate level, but nonetheless generated a conflict formation that
possessed most of the qualities of a state-level complex. In particular, the conflict
formation serves to channel external interventions along the lines of the internal
rivalries. This mini-complex is in many ways comparable to that in the Caucasus,
where a not wholly dissimilar ethno-political fragmentation, albeit one that has
some small states as well as substate formations in it sustains another mini-

complex. Both of these mini-complexes act as insulating zones between larger

patterns of regional security dynamics: Russia and West Asia in the case of
Caucasus, South Asia and West Asia (particularly the Gulf subcomplex) in the
case of Afghanistan. In both cases the mini-complex draws in neighbouring

states, but its internal dynamics are strong enough to keep the larger dynamics
separate. The mini-complexes do not generate enough power or concern to
become themselves the centre of a new larger regional formation, and they are
less important to most of the states around them than security concerns that pull
them in other directions.
A full account of developments in Afghanistan is beyond the scope of this art-
icle. But a brief reference to them would help to understand the dynamics of the
mini-complex there. Since 1947 its turbulent internal politics have provided
much space for Pakistan’s military and intelligence services to operate. During
the 1980s, conflict in Afghanistan was essentially between the Soviet Union and
its Afghan communist allies on the one side, and a variety of local militias on the
other. Most of Afghanistan’s neighbours, particularly Saudi Arabia and Pakistan,
supported the anti-Soviet forces. The US provided substantial aid and arms to
these forces. After the Soviets withdrew in 1989, the local communist regime was
unable to sustain itself and fell in 1992. Thereafter the Afghan resistance disinte-
grated into ethno-religious fragments and the factions began to fight amongst
themselves for the control of all, or in some cases parts, of the country.
It seems political turbulence in Afghanistan will be a permanent feature. The
divisions within the country run deep and have been consolidated by the long
civil war. All the factions have outside supporters. Even if the Taliban could
bring the whole country under its control, these factions would still continue their
campaigns from neighbouring territories with substantial refugee populations.
Russia, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan all have strong interest in containing the kind
of Islamic extremism represented by the Taliban, just as Saudi Arabia, and seem-
ingly Pakistan, have in promoting it (though Saudi enthusiasm may be tempered
by the Taliban support for the breakaway Saudi radical, Osama bin Laden).
Uzbekistan is already concerned about the training of Islamic militants from
Central Asia in Pakistani religious schools. 21 Iran represents a different version of
Islamic extremism, so its engagement is also guaranteed. Up to a point, taking
rival positions in Afghanistan is part of the more general Gulf rivalry between

The Economist, 4 July 1998, p. 76.

27

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12

Saudi Arabia and Iran. Yet while all of this may indicate a serious breakdown of
the boundary between South Asia and West Asia (not to mention Central Asia),
that does not seem to be the correct way to interpret what is unfolding.
There are three main points. First, none of the neighbouring countries is
either interested in, or capable of, establishing its hegemony over, let alone
occupying, Afghanistan. The resistance power of Afghanistan was conclusively
demonstrated by the Soviet invasion, when even a neighbouring superpower
could not change the internal dynamics. Second, all of the neighbouring states
have more pressing security concerns in other directions. Third, Afghanistan
itself does not have the power to generate wider security dynamics. Basically,
it is a &dquo;zone of chaos&dquo; and its power is limited. It can neither project much
power abroad (except terrorism), nor become the central focus of a new com-
plex by drawing its neighbours in. Taken together, these points mean that the
&dquo;zone of chaos&dquo; represented by Afghanistan is likely to endure and will con-
tinue to fulfil its function as an insulator between the Gulf and South Asia. In
the event of the &dquo;Talibanization&dquo; of Pakistan, all or part of that country might
get absorbed into the &dquo;zone of chaos&dquo;.28 This would be an irony given
Pakistan’s hand in promoting the Taliban in the first place. Neither Iran nor
India has any interest in expanding into what might be called &dquo;the Afpakistan
area&dquo;. Both have more pressing concerns in other directions and share common
objectives in containing the chaos without getting too involved in it. The long-
term interests of both of these key players lie in maintaining the back-to-back
tradition of the security dynamics in the Gulf and South Asia. Here the
Sunni-Shi’ia split in Islam serves India well by denying Pakistan the strategic
depth of serving as the frontier of Islam against India. By committing itself to
the Saudi-backed Sunni cause in Afghanistan and by tolerating violence against
its own Shi’ia minority, Pakistan has made a strategic error of potentially the
same gravity by which it lost Bangladesh. Its key ally, Saudi Arabia, is itself a
weak state, with an unresponsive and self-serving ruling elite that sustains itself
through huge oil revenues. Pakistan’s deep involvement in Afghanistan and its
alliance with Saudi Arabia for this purpose might raise the prospect of break-
ing down the border between the South Asian and the West Asian complexes.
But what seems more likely is that it will further weaken Pakistan and encour-
age all the other neighbouring states to pursue containment of the West Asian
zone of chaos.

The Global Level

Given the significant changes in the global power structure since 1990, it is
important degree of continuity at the global level with regard
to take note of the
to South Asia. During the later decades of the Cold War, the Soviet Union was
an ally of India and the US was allied with Pakistan, though the latter arrange-

ment was unstable. The US generally supported Pakistan over the Soviet invasion

Strategic Survey,
28 1996-97, p. 208; Saikal, "Afghanistan’s Ethnic Conflict", pp. 123-24.

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 13

of Afghanistan during the 1980s, but opposed its nuclear programme and did not
politically support its rivalry with India even though its military supplies de facto
strengthened Pakistan vis-A-vis India. In the initial fluidity following the disinte-
gration of the Soviet Union it apeared that the pattern of Cold War rivalry in
South Asia would change. India, Pakistan and Bangladesh all supported the US
during the Gulf War, despite internal dissension on the issue. The disintegration
of the Soviet Union deprived India of an ally and disrupted its lines of military
supply. The confusion of post-Soviet politics made it difficult for India to
re-establish relations with its successor state, Russia. With the disappearance of
the Soviet threat in Afghanistan, US-Pakistan relations came under severe strain.
The US invoked the Pressler amendment in 1990 cutting military and economic
aid to Pakistan because of its nuclear programme. For a year or two it appeared
that the US would swing towards India.
But within a short time much of the same old pattern fell back into place. India
began to rebuild its relationship with Russia which became both its main source
of arms supply and military technology transfer. India-US relations cooled as
Washington put more emphasis on non-proliferation goals than on building ties
with India. The US put pressure on India over its missile programme in general
and campaigned in particular against the 1992 Indo-Russian agreement on rocket
technology.&dquo; In 1993, it condemned India’s human rights violations in Kashmir.
Two years later, the US seemed to tilt back towards Pakistan by lifting the
Pressler amendment for one year after successful lobbying by Benazir Bhutto,
thus allowing some significant arms supplies to Pakistan.10 The US also began to
find some common cause with Pakistan in supporting anti-Iranian forces in the
Afghan civil war.
Both India and Pakistan came under severe US pressure over the negotiations
on the renewal of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and on the Comprehensive
Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) during 1995-96. India bore the brunt of this, having lost
its case in both. It found itself confronting the CTBT with entry into force provi-
sions that included itself, Pakistan and Israel. During the late 1990s, it was not
difficult to find either political rhetoric or academic analysis in Delhi that unhesi-
tatingly identified the US as the key threat to India.3’ The October 1999 military
coup in Pakistan once again alienated that country from the US. During the last
months of his administration, President Clinton visited India giving rise to new
hopes for improvement in the relationship between the US and India. But given
the uncertainties of domestic politics in both the US and India (not to mention
Pakistan) there is as yet no firm basis to argue for a permanent change in South
Asia’s relationship with countries on a global level.

29 Survey,
Strategic 1992-93, pp. 171-72; Strategic Survey, 1993-94, p. 190.
Strategic Survey,
30 1995-96, pp. 197-209.
Kanti Bajpai, "India: Modified Structuralism", in Muthia Allagapa, ed., Asian Security Practice:
31
Material and Ideational Influences (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), pp. 174-77.

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14

But although the pieces of the Cold War alignments fitted into the same

pattern during the 1990s, they did not have exactly the same significance. India
and Russia did rebuild some aspects of their military relationship, but these were
largely confined to arms supply and no longer contained the element of strategic
alliance. The prevailing political and economic chaos in Russia largely put it out-
side the balance of power game in South Asia. The US role in the subcontinent
remained as ever unclear and not very deeply or continuously engaged. Nuclear
proliferation remained the dominant US concern in the region. This meant that its
relationship with India remained cool and prickly, and with Pakistan fluctuated
between warm and cool, depending on the issues of the day. Overall, the end of
the Cold War probably weakened what was a fairly marginal American engage-
ment in South Asia; this worked strongly against Pakistan in the long run. While
by 1997 the US had lost interest in making common cause with Pakistan in
Afghanistan, the US response to the nuclear tests in 1998 hurt Pakistan more
than India.
Thus the security complex in South Asia was not affected significantly by the
end of the Cold War. Its essential structure remained unaltered, as did the local
forces driving it. The patterns of interregional and global penetration into the
region also did not change much. But the idea that it remained &dquo;more of the same&dquo;
would be a premature conclusion to draw about this regional complex.

The Case for Transformation

The case for transformation is quite subtle. It does not rest on any immediate or
dramatic effect of the end of the Cold War. Rather, it comes about as a result of
slower moving forces, some generated within the region, and others mostly oper-
ating at the interregional level.
Internal Transformation
The difficulty of Pakistan’s task in maintaining bipolarity against India means
that the question of an internal transformation has always been on the cards in
South Asia. But in the absence of some transformative event, such as defeat in
war, or the collapse of the state, the problem is to determine whether or not a set
of incremental developments have undermined Pakistan’s claim to be a regional
pole of power. This question is almost wholly about power, for there seems little
prospect that Pakistan will abandon its securitization of India.32 Indeed, the entire
gamut of socially constructed India-Pakistan relations seems locked into hostil-
Ity.33 On the face of it, the evidence about bipolarity pulls in opposite directions.
On the one hand, the achievement of nuclear parity equips Pakistan with the great
equalizer, and therefore confirms the bipolar power structure in South Asia. On
the other hand, there are many developments which suggest that Pakistan is

32
Samina Ahmed, "Pakistan: The Crisis Within", in Allagapa, Asian Security Practice, p. 361.
Sheen Rajmaira, "Indo-Pakistani Relations: Reciprocity in Long-Term Perspective", International
33
Studies Quarterly, vol. 41 no. 3, 1997, pp. 547-60.

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 15

steadily fading away as a credible rival to, or balancer of, India. In other words,
it is in danger of losing its status as a distinct number two to India, and sliding
towards being more of a nuisance than a challenger.
In simple material terms, India’s population is seven times that of Pakistan; the
land area ratio is 4:1. India’s Gross National Product (GNP) is more than six
times that of Pakistan and its current growth rate slightly ahead though its GNP
per capita is still only two-thirds that of Pakistan. But India’s military expend-
iture is well over three times that of Pakistan’s, and its military manpower two
times as great. 34
These statistics matter, but they have not prevented Pakistan from holding a
credible &dquo;number two&dquo; position in South Asia over several decades. The main
problem is, as discussed above, Pakistan’s apparent slide from being a weak state
towards being a failed one. This is in contrast with India’s relatively better polit-
ical performance as the world’s largest democracy. Pakistan’s decline is the mak-
ing of its elites and leadership over the years. Pakistan provides a model for the
&dquo;tragic misuse of Islamic ideology to create a bogus state structure&dquo; that lacks
legitimacy and remains authoritarian and unresponsive to provincial needs.&dquo;
Although its leaders make much of the threat from India, the external threat &dquo;is
less severe than the country’s internal fault lines&dquo;.36 Indeed, it is the chaotic state
of politics within Pakistan that fuels the need to exaggerate the threat from India.3’
Even a relatively sympathetic observer of Pakistan’s politics has to write that:

Pakistan’s civil order and domestic political economy is in turmoil. Widening

ethnic, regional and religious-sectarian cleavages, the after-effects of the Afghan
War, and weapons proliferation all pose serious challenges to the government.
Pakistani society is now so fractured, inundated with sophisticated weapons,
brutalised by civic violence and overwhelmed by the spread of narcotics that
it is no longer possible for any civilian government to operate effectively with-
out the Army’s support Competing political forces tend to be intolerant
....

towards each other, thereby undermining political institutions and processes.

There is no consensus among them as to how to keep the military out of
politics.&dquo;
Although the securitization rhetoric is still strong at the interstate level,
Pakistani society seems increasingly to be fragmenting into referent
for based ethnic and
substate
objects security mainly on religious identity. T rmy and
intelligence services have a quasi-autonomous character, but it is far from clear
whether their interests are the same, or whether either is immune to internal
fragmentation. This incoherence is not a temporary or recently developed one.
34 Survey, 1998-99, pp. 295-99.
Strategic
Strategic Survey, 1992-93, p. 174.
35
Bray, "Pakistan at 50", p. 330.
36
Ahmed, "Pakistan: The Crisis Within", p. 361.
37
38 Rizvi, "Civil-Military Relations in Contemporary Pakistan", Survival, vol. 40,
Hasan-Askari
no. 22, 1998, p. 110.

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16

It is part of Pakistan’s whole political history since independence, and this

makes one apprehensive about the scope for any major change of direction.
The president has dismissed the prime minister four times since 1988; the only
government which received much admiration was the brief and unelected
interim regime led by Moeen Qureshi in 1993. Pakistan has been steadily dis-
sipating the political resources that it had inherited. Only the army and intelli-
gence services remain robust, and it is not clear how long the state can soldier
on before it either comes apart at the seams, or sinks into sustained incoherence

within its existing borders.

With the loss of US support, the army is no longer a match for India which
it once was. India is now basically secure on the subcontinent. The rhetoric that
followed the 1998 nuclear test makes it very clear. India studiously downplayed
Pakistan’s nuclear tests, conspicuously not taking up the opportunity to follow
Pakistan’s tit-for-tat behaviour. India sought to put its tests in the broader per-
spective of China and other nuclear weapon states.39
Thus Pakistan is losing the capacity to stand as a pole of power against India,
and the South Asian complex is moving towards unipolarity.

External Transformation
As I have ruled out transformation across the frontier with the West Asian com-
plex, the remaining possibility is that the South Asian complex will undergo an
external transformation on the basis of developments in the relations between
India and China. The traditional form of this scenario was an increase in Sino-
Indian tensions to the point where they transcended India-Pakistan ones. India’s
nuclear rhetoric, and China’s continued arms supply to Pakistan indicate that
this line of thinking still has some relevance. But the escalation of Sino-Indian
military rivalry is not the only way through which external transformation along
this axis can take place. There is another way; India can also transcend its region
by rising to the status of the third Asian great power. Its reach for great power sta-
tus does not depend on all-out rivalry with China; it can also achieve this status
while improving relations with China. This gives China a substantial and increas-
ingly widely recognized role as the benchmark of India’s status.4° Before and
after the May 1998 nuclear tests, India’s Defence Minister George Fernandes
repeatedly identified China as the main threat to India,4’ even though in general
terms Sino-Indian relations have been relatively cordial since the signing of the
border agreement between the two in 1993. This is nothing new. India has always
measured itself against China and always thought of itself as a great power. The
problem has been that neither China nor the rest of the world acknowledged its
claim, and there is evidence of some continuity in this posture. China condemned

PPNN,
39 no. 42, 1998, p. 4.
Chellaney, "After the Tests", p. 9; Therese Delpech, "Nuclear Weapons and the New World Order:
40
from Asia". Survival, vol. 40, no. 4, 1998-99, pp. 57-76.
Early Warning
The Economist, 9 May 1998, p. 86; PPNN, no. 42, 1998, p. 4.
41

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 17

India’s tests in general terms, refusing to take up the Indian defence minister’s
of
categorization China as a threat. It also studiously avoided making any overt
counter-move such as resuming its own nuclear tests.42 Indeed, there is a certain
parallel between India’s response to Pakistan’s tests and China’s response to
India’s. In each case the smaller power sought to measure itself against its larger
neighbour, with the bigger power doing its best to ignore or downplay the chal-
lenge. But like the decay of Pakistan, the rise of India is an incremental event not
indicating complete transformation. Again, as with Pakistan, the question is
whether enough has changed, or is on the verge of changing, to warrant a
re-evaluation of the regional security structure.
Many factors are responsible for this view, and we can start with the rise of
more explicitly nationalist politics in India. The BJP’s ascent to power during
the 1990s is the most obvious expression of this trend; from a different angle it
can be seen as the demise of the secular, modernist Congress party that dominated
India from independence to the economic crisis of the early 1990s.43 Even if the
BJP government is short-lived, it nonetheless signals a shift in Indian politics as a
whole into a more nationalist mode, a trend reinforced by the Kargil war in 1999.
In addition, the BJP will have left its successor(s) with the fact of India’s nuclear
tests in 1998 and its explicit claim to the status of a nuclear weapons state (NWS).
A statement issued by the Indian government clearly hinted at this. It read: &dquo;Our
strengthened capability adds to our sense of responsibility, the responsibility and
obligation of power.&dquo;4’ There can be little doubt that whatever the other motives
might be, India’s nuclear tests were intended to reinforce its claim to great power
status.
It is worth reflecting on this claim in the light of Hedley Bull’s definition of a
great power. Bull maintains that in addition to being in the front rank of military
capability, great powers must be:

recognised by others to have, and conceived by their own leaders and peoples
to have, certain special rights and duties. Great powers, for example, assert the
right, and are accorded the right, to play a part in determining issues that affect
the peace and security of the international system as a whole. They accept the
duty, and are thought by others to have the duty, of modifying their policies in .

the light of the managerial responsibility they bear.45

India’s assertion of a nuclear weapons state (NWS) status notwithstanding, the

material statistics do not strongly favour its claim. Although it has the second
largest population, the fourth largest military establishment, and the seventh largest
territory in the world, it ranks only fourteenth in GNP (alongside Australia, Mexico
and the Netherlands), and only thirteenth in military expenditure (in the company

PPNN,
42 no. 43, 1998, p. 3; The Economist, 9 May 1998, p. 86.
Corbridge, "The Militarization of all Hindudom?".
43
Walker, "International Nuclear Relations", p. 520.
44
Hedley Bull. The Anarchical Society (London: Macmillan, 1977), pp. 200-02.
45

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18

of Brazil, South Korea, Taiwan, Israel and Australia). Its ninth rank in military
R&D is significant, but its GNP per capita is equivalent to that of Senegal and
Nigeria, at around 7 per cent of the level of the main Western states. Even within
Asia, India is not unquestionably in the front rank. Its military expenditure ranks
fifth, just below South Korea and Taiwan, and just above Australia, but only
one-third the level of Japan and China. And its GNP also ranks fifth, just below
Australia and South Korea, slightly more than half of China’s, and barely one-
eleventh of Japan’s. 46 Still, there is little doubt that India thinks in terms of hav-
ing special rights and duties in the management of international society, though
whether it is ready to &dquo;modify its policies in the light of the managerial responsi-
bilities it bears&dquo; is perhaps more open to argument. To India’s credit in this regard
are its good record in international peacekeeping operations and its scrupulous
adherence to trade controls in nuclear technology.17 The question is whether other
leading members of the international community are willing to accord India that
right formally, and whether they treat it de facto as a great power in their own
foreign policy calculations?
The typical view from the West still tends to answer this question negatively.
The US has not treated India with the same respect that it accords other great
powers. Until Clinton’s visit in March 2000, the US classified India along with
Brazil as a regional power located in an area of marginal interest. Clinton’s visit
might have brought some change in the perspective by acknowledging India’s
status as a vibrant democracy, its economic potential, and moreover, its possible
utility as a counterweight to China. It remains to be seen how serious or sustained
this shift is. Nevertheless, it demonstrated that India’s status lay somewhere between
the biggest of the regional powers and the smallest of the great powers. It has been
often argued that the legal framework of NPT makes it almost impossible to grant
India formal status as an NWS and that this status denial is one of India’s main
grievances.48 There is a tendency in the West to see India’s claim for NWS status
as somewhat old-fashioned which still regards nuclear weapons as the key cur-

rency of power in an age where others are more concerned with economic
strength. This puts India in the same league as Britain and France, hanging on to
nuclear weapons and permanent seats in the Security Council long past the point
at which their real weight justifies them. But this attitude, though still largely
valid for the West, is vulnerable on two counts.49 First is India’s impressive eco-
nomic growth. Since 1994 it has sustained a growth rate between 5 and 8 per cent
a year, generated an impressive high-tech industry and trade and weathered
the worst of the East Asian economic crises without major disruption. What
is significant is that it looks well-placed to continue on this path.5° Second
is the relative depth and robustness of India’s democratic, federal and legal

Strategic Survey,
46 1998-99, pp. 295-99.
47 "International Nuclear Relations", p. 523.
Walker,
Ibid., pp. 511-12.
48
James Manor and Gerald Segal, "Taking India Seriously.", Survival,
49 vol. 40, no. 2, 1998.
The Economist, 29 April 2000, pp. 69-70.
50

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 19

institutions when compared with those in China and South East Asia. To the extent
that democratic credentials and a successful liberalizing economy define the
agenda of international community, India’s claims for great power status should
get a hearing.
But regardless of whether or not India succeeds in convincing the West of its
credentials, it may well find a more responsive audience in Asia. For the West,
safely ensconced in the &dquo;zone of peace&dquo;, nuclear weapon capability may indeed
seem old hat. But to those in the &dquo;zone of conflict&dquo;, India’s nuclear tests conveyed
a significant message. Right across Asia from Iraq and Iran, through Russia and

China, to Korea and Taiwan, there are governments and peoples who will have
no difficulty empathizing with India’s position regardless of whether they oppose
or support its action. India may well be close to a position from which it can play

China’s old trick51 of trading on its future as an up-and-coming power. The

prospect of economic growth and rising military capability may put India into a
position where both China and the US have to take it seriously. India could be an
ally or an opponent of both. If China and the US begin to compete for India’s
favour, then it will be well on its way to achieving great power status. From this
perspective it becomes clearer that substantial changes may well be underway in
the standing and relevance of the South Asian regional complex itself. As we
have seen, the domestic and regional security dynamics within South Asia have
largely preserved their traditional forms. But this does not mean that their
overall significance in the larger pattern of things remains the same. There is
strong reason to show that the South Asian regional level is diminishing in import-
ance to India, and that India’s significance within the Asian supercomplex is

increasing.
What is important to note here is that India no longer remains confined to
South Asia; it is beginning to carve out a wider role for itself as great Asian
power. This is certainly the hope of those advocating a nuclear weapons policy
more openly focused on China.52 It was also the aim of what came to be called
the Gujral doctrine&dquo; by which India, since the early 1990s, sought to pacify its
smaller neighbours, make accommodative agreements with them and increase
intraregional trade. This was based on the understanding that India had no hope
of being taken seriously outside the region until it stabilized its own local envir-
onment. On the whole, this policy has worked quite successfully, despite minor
irritants here and there. Pakistan resisted it the most but even there, unofficial
trade is said to be much larger than the official figures would suggest. And the
political decay of Pakistan, despite its nuclear arsenal, reinforces this develop-
ment. It opens the way for thinking of the South Asian complex as transforming
itself from being a vigorous bipolar conflict formation towards a kind of uni-
polar hegemony. Labelling this a &dquo;unipolar hegemony&dquo; is not meant to suggest

Gerald Segal, "Does China Matter?", Foreign Affairs, vol. 78,

51 no. 5, 1999, pp. 24-36.
Chellaney, "After the Tests," pp. 98-111.
52
Sen Gupta, "India in the Twenty-first Century", pp. 279-314.
53

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20

that India has successfully dominated or overawed its neighbours in a classical

imperial sense.That might be true of its relations with Bhutan, but it is not the
case with Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, and
certainly not with Pakistan. What it sug-
gests is that India no longer feels strategically threatened from within South Asia,
at least not severely so, and that it has the resources and the will to carve out a
wider great power role in Asia. This does not mean that the South Asian regional
level would cease to operate. India will, inter alia, certainly have a task on its
hands to stabilize the potentially dangerous nuclear relationship with Pakistan.
But Pakistan no longer has any rational incentive to attempt all-out wars with
India as it did in the past. This gives India more room to develop roles outside
the region.
Perhaps the most significant move in this respect was India’s acceptance of the
invitation to join the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in 1996, an invitation that
was pointedly not given to Pakistan despite its earlier links to the region as a
member of the now defunct South East Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO)
alliance. No matter how toothless one might think the ARF to be, it is nonethe-
less a substantial segment in the security architecture of the Asian supercomplex.
There can be little doubt that the South East Asian states wanted India as a
counter-weight to China, and that both India and China understood the signifi-
cance of that move. India’s membership also complemented its &dquo;look East&dquo; eco-
nomic policy from the early 1990s which sought to link up the country with the
East Asian boom. At the military level, India’s response to China’s cultivation of
Burma is Indian naval presence in South East Asian waters and the plans to build
up a naval base in the Andaman Islands. The economic crisis in East Asia during
the late 1990s came as a setback. Even though economic recovery is well under-
way, it is too early to say what impact it will have on the entire process. Although
not having any immediate military significance, India’s joining of the ARF broke
its traditional security insulation from South East Asia and thereby consolidated
its place in the Asian supercomplex. A similar, though less significant, indicator of
India’s move upwards from regional power is its role in the Indian Ocean Rim
Initiative, which aims to strengthen local control over that ocean.
’

Summary and Outlook

The first thing to observe is how much of this region’s story still fits in with the
state-centric, military-political framework of CSCT. Although interstate wars
seem to have faded into the background, India-Pakistan relations are still largely
an account of securitizations about military power, weapons and political status.
The more open attitude of the revised SCT towards non-traditional sectors and
referent objects draws more attention to the domestic level, but using a securi-
tization approach does not significantly change the profile of what was observed
through the use of more traditional methods. In terms of sectors, societal insecur-
ity is a major part of the domestic story and draws more attention to the internal
dynamics in the states of the region, particularly Afghanistan and Pakistan. It
helps one to see a variety of substate actors and entities with standing as security

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 21

actors and referent objects. But even this non-traditional sector is substantially
integrated into the interstate rivalries, and much of it can be viewed from military
and political angles. So far, the economic and environmental sectors have a rela-
tively minor place on the balance sheet of securitization within the region. Water
sharing is the key environmental concern on the subcontinent and has been
successfully handled politically up to a point. To the extent that the economy has
been securitized (this is with reference to the impacts of globalization), it could
change if intraregional trade continues to expand. The fact that so much of security
in this region can be comprehended in the old style reinforces the idea that the
post-Cold War international system is still divided into &dquo;two worlds&dquo; for purposes
of security analysis. Within that model, South Asia is clearly in the zone of conflict,
where the traditional power politics rules of international relations still prevail.
A second observation is that there is evidence of a considerable disjuncture
between the picture that would emerge from a traditional strategic analysis and
the one that results from following a securitization approach. Traditional strate-
gic analysis focuses on the India-Pakistan and India-China rivalries, with their
associated wars, tensions, military deployments and material capabilities. But the
security debate in India points towards an entirely different scenario. Pakistan is
seen mostly as an irritant, and not even its nuclear threat is taken seriously. China
is not seen as an immediate threat, despite its support for Pakistan, and even as a
future threat is largely seen as a problem for the US to handle, not India. There is
a strong tendency to regard the US as the main threat to India. Given the fact of

US hegemony by virtue of being the last superpower and as the leader of global
capitalism, there is not much sympathy for the idea that the global level has
become less important compared to the regional one as a result of the end of the
Cold War. The image is one of an increasingly coordinated core pressurizing a
periphery made weaker after the disintegration of the Soviet Union-thus a
stronger global level, not a weaker one, when viewed from a Third World per-
spective. Both its preoccupation with the US and its dismissal of Pakistan make
sense in the light of India’s self-perception as a great power. Its relatively calm
and detached attitude towards China is harder to explain and could be crucial to
how the Asian supercomplex unfolds.
To sum up, we can make the following points about how the South Asian
complex and the wider security constellation within which it operates have
evolved since the end of the Cold War.

~ At the domestic level, the general pattern in the region shows a great deal of
continuity across the transition from the Cold War to the post-Cold War era.
Within this pattern, political life in Afghanistan and Pakistan has become
conspicuously more fragmented, chaotic and violent.
~ At the regional level, the pattern of amity and enmity has remained broadly
similar, perhaps with some intensification of the hostility between India and
Pakistan. But Pakistan’s slide towards failure as a state has increasingly
brought the power bipolarity of the South Asian complex into question.

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22

Despite Pakistan’s nuclear equalizer, India looks more hegemonic in the

region. Thus, although the regional level retains its traditional form, it is
becoming less important to India and thereby allowing it more latitude to
define wider security horizons.
~ At the interregional level, one finds mainly continuity in the patterns
between South Asia and West Asia, and between China and South Asia. The
South Asian complex has undergone no external transformation, but its pos-
ition in the Asian supercomplex has been strengthened by India’s member-
ship in ARF. The boundaries between the South Asian complex and its
neighbours are not breaking down and forming new configurations of
amity/enmity and polarity. Instead, something quite different seems to be
unfolding. The regional boundaries have remained broadly stable, while the
whole South Asian regional level has diminished in relative importance for
India. In effect, India has begun to establish its great power credentials at the
interregional level in Asia, though at the global level its efforts remain at an
early stage.
~ At the global level, there is a high degree of continuity in the overall pattern
of outside intervention in South Asia, though India has lost much of its
support from the Soviet Union and Pakistan has lost much of its support
from the US. These developments have left China in an improved position
vis-d-vis South Asia.

Most likely, South Asia is slowly moving towards the curious regional struc-
ture of what might be called &dquo;contested hegemony&dquo;, in which the amity/enmity
pattern between India and its neighbours remains much the same, but power dif-
ferentials steadily lift India into prominence as an Asian great power. It is not
implausible to imagine dramatic transformations in the region: nuclear war
between India and Pakistan, or a Lebanon/Afghan type state failure in Pakistan.
At present there is insufficient evidence to suggest which way Indo-Pakistani
nuclear relations will move. There is a possibility that the two states may move
towards open deployment of, and an arms race in, nuclear missiles. India’s desire
to reference itself against China makes deployment more probable, as will US
moves towards anti-missile defences if they provoke an expansion of China’s
arsenal. But in general South Asia has proved resilient to big changes, and it is
advisable that India cultivates moderation by being an essentially balanced and
slow-moving actor.&dquo; Thus, incremental change in the same direction as during
the 1990s seems more likely. Only in Pakistan domestic turbulence seems to
threaten the existence of the state. The prospects for Pakistan appear further bleak
as it reaps the harvest in Afghanistan. In the years ahead environmental prob-

lems-flooding caused by both river mismanagement and rising sea levels,

drought, soil degradation, overpopulation-could also seriously threaten various
parts of the subcontinent, sometimes generating pressures for mass migration into

54 "India: Modified Structuralism", pp.193-97.

Bajpai,

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 23

neighbouring states. Some of these processes are already visible in Bangladesh.

If India can sustain its recent levels of economic growth, and if regional trade
increases either through bilateral agreements, or by the realization of the South
Asian Free Trade Area slated for 2005, then India’s emergent hegemony will
increase.
How India’s role at the interregional level will develop depends, as does much
else in East Asia, on what happens with China. If China is perceived as a threat
by its neighbours, then India could get drawn into a balancing coalition against it.
Its membership in ARF indicates this option. Strategically, India is already mov-
ing more eastward than westward, and given China’s leading role in bolstering
Pakistan’s military capability, the possibility for rivalry between them remains
strong. This &dquo;if&dquo; is a big one given that India shares the willingness of most Asian
states to give China the benefit of doubt, avoid provoking it even when provoked
by it, and generally regard it as a problem for the US to deal with. It is very
unlikely that India would like to get drawn into the turbulence of West Asia; it
could easily share a long-term interest with Iran in seeking to preserve the insu-
lation that keeps the South Asian and West Asian security dynamics separate. In
general, India’s military capability would most likely enhance its standing much
more in the Asian zone of conflict than at the global level, where thinking
remains dominated by more economistic, post-modem values.
At the global level, there is little reason to think that India’s rather marginal
status will change quickly. China is one variable that could easily change this pat-
tern, but that would require the development of a serious global rivalry between
the US and China, in which the US would once again seek to construct contain-
ment around its rival. Such a development is not impossible to imagine, though
it is not inevitable or imminent. If it did occur, it would push South Asia into
the front line of a new Cold War and probably at last impel the US to recognize
the significance of India. Another variable that could change the pattern is the
impressive and sustained economic growth in India of the kind seen in much of
East Asia during the 1980s and 1990s. That is not impossible, though given the
dynamics of Indian politics it is not inevitable. 55 In the absence of either develop-
ment, US interests in South Asia will remain focused on the issue of nuclear pro-
liferation. That will mean that Washington’s long-standing pattern of prickly and
incoherent relationship with India and Pakistan will continue.
It is important to note that India seems to gain so little internationally from its
remarkable exercise in democracy. Within its region, India is feared, and in some
cases hated, by its neighbours. In Asia, being democratic earns the country no

special favours or respect from the few other democracies there, most notably
Japan and Australia. At the global level as has already been noted, India gets no
special recognition from either the US or the European Union (EU).
It is also worthy of comment that India’s aspirations to recognition as a great
power in Asia, or the world, depend heavily on which scenario dominates its

Corbridge, "The Militarization of all Hindudom?", pp.

55 1-43.

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24

international future. If the incremental pattern of &dquo;more of the same&dquo; remains

dominant, India will make only slow progress towards wider influence and higher
status. If India’s nuclear rivalry with Pakistan turns unstable and obsessive, then
its inability to achieve recognition as a great power will almost certainly continue,
stymied by confinement within an active South Asian conflict formation. But if
fear of China crystallizes into either an Asia-wide conflict formation, or a
global-level Sino-US rivalry, then India’s claim will be heard more seriously.
April 2001

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