Geostrategic Factors in India-Pakistan Relations

Abstract

South Asia has, by 1980, come full-circle in its political place in the sun and in our understanding of its strategic environment. When the British ruled the subcontinent, they recognized three likely sources of external threat: the northeast (where China was an unlikely competitor, but Japan emerged as a substantive threat, ultimately sending its forces into India); the northwest (where Russia, Czarist and Soviet, was a looming presence kept at bay by an Afghanistan buffer); and the Indian Ocean, then a British lake (but so insecure that Vizag and other cities were bombarded during World War II).' Upon independence, India in particular rejected the kind of geostrategic logic so carefully developed by the British. Instead, Nehru sought to deflect India's important neighbors with good will; while Pakistani leaders proclaimed their support of the great game, their concerns were primarily directed against the much larger and better equipped India. Thus, the fall-back position of Auchinleck and other British military strategists was abandoned. They had hoped that the successor states to the Raj would cooperate closely with each other in the defense of the subcontinent and that they would also continue in their historic role as regional arsenal and