India Pakistan Rivalry Research Articles

China and Regional Security in South and Southeast Asia: A Comparative Analysis of ASEAN and SAARC

Asian regionalism is largely represented by economic cooperation at sub-regional levels, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is seen as a prominent example of that. In contrast, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) has failed to take off as a platform for economic cooperation and has been hostage to the India-Pakistan rivalry. While ASEAN was established as a forum to address members’ security apprehensions concerning China, SAARC was created to focus on regional cooperation in non-controversial matters like trade and human security. Hence, ASEAN has engaged more deeply with China through various mechanisms. Conversely, SAARC-China relations remain limited because India, the most dominant actor in the organization and the region, views China as a threat to its security and hegemony in South Asia. The research, therefore, aims to answer the following question: How does one region successfully manage security challenges/threats while the other remains ensnared by them? Resolving this puzzle necessitates a nuanced understanding of the role of regionalism in Southeast Asia, emphasizing the significance of comprehending the process and evolution of regionalism in this context. To address this inquiry, the research employs a comparative-historical analysis grounded in archival data encompassing both primary and secondary sources. The investigation reveals that SAARC’s limited engagement with China is a consequence of India’s opposition, a dynamic absent in ASEAN, where Indonesia actively supports cooperation with China. The research underscores the critical importance of unraveling the complexities of regionalism in Southeast Asia to grasp the underlying factors contributing to divergent outcomes in these regional organizations.

Geographies of rage: India-Pakistan rivalry and Guru Nanak

ABSTRACT This paper examines how the shared cultural and spiritual heritage of Guru Nanak is intertwined with the political tensions and violence that have defined the complex relationship between India and Pakistan. We argue that that Nanak is the only thinker/spiritual leader who is equally respected both in India and Pakistan. This strong and rare commonality between India and Pakistan could be the agreed basis, despite all other differences, for conversation and dialogue between the two countries. We suggest that such dialogue can remove mistrust and foster peaceful and mutually beneficial relations.

SOUTH ASIA’S GEOPOLITICAL LANDSCAPE IN A TRANSFORMATIVE WORLD

As an academic and political vision, South Asia as a distinct conceptual construct acquired currency only after the decolonization of British India in 1947. In the geopolitical sense, it was in the context of the Cold War that South Asia came to figure in the overall matrix of the strategic deliberations of our times. Significantly, the birth of South Asia was primarily driven by external factors rather than developments from within the region. For a long time, South Asia remained synonym for India-Pakistan rivalry and the issues emerging from it. However, in recent years various developments at the global, regional and national levels have sparked a change in the South Asian geopolitical landscape. Nothing has had a more profound impact on South Asia than the rise of an increasingly aggressive China. Undoubtedly, this has serious implications for India. Consequently, India has sought to reorient its priorities and relationships and, in the process, has awakened to the realization of the importance of establishing its own footprint in the larger subcontinent. In the changed eco-system of the subcontinent, India-China rivalry has come to overlie traditional bilateral conflicts between India and its neighbours. As a result, new forms of regional and sub-regional initiatives, — bilateral formats, trilateral and quadrilateral formats of engagements— have become a reality. The geopolitical restructuring of South Asia presents both opportunities and challenges for the countries in the region. The paper will highlight some of the recent geo-political developments in the South Asian strategic landscape and India’s response to it.

The Changing Nature of the India-Pakistan Rivalry : Analysis in South Asian Regional Context

The India-Pakistan rivalry has endured since 1947 but the nature of the troubled relationship is changing. This paper examines academic discourse, political speeches and media reports, and concludes that the relationship is becoming increasingly asymmetric as India responds better to regional geopolitics and has stronger economic drivers than Pakistan. The paper examines the modern rivalry through regional level analysis. The regional level, where still on-going conflict and chaos in Afghanistan prevails, is providing the opportunity for the rivalry to be played out in proxy and the Sino-Indian narrative is increasingly superseding the traditional India-Pakistan one.

The role of emotions in interstate relations: Using an interpersonal conflict model to reconceptualize Pakistan’s obsession vis-a-vis India

Despite use of terms such as “siblings” or “brothers from the same mother (India)”, there have been few or no attempts to explain the wide-ranging sentiments associated with India-Pakistan rivalry from a theoretical perspective. A cross-disciplinary approach has been employed in this article to re-examine and reconceptualize the existing landscape of Pakistan-India conflict. An interpersonal conflict model has been used to theorize the emotions found in their bilateral relations which have often been neglected or marginalized while studying their obsessive rivalry with each other. Despite testing the troublesome dyad of these nation-states on diametrically opposite ethnic or religious grounds, this article categorizes Pakistan and India as former family members who parted ways in 1947. The article explains different phases of an interpersonal conflict model and clarifies how the emotional climate associated with these phases could be transposed to intergroup and interstate levels of conflicts between communities who lived together for centuries, and engage them in a perpetual rivalry.

China’s new security concept: India, terrorism, China’s geostrategic interests and domestic stability in Pakistan

The paper seeks to provide an answer to the question which has hitherto not been significantly explored in the relevant academic scholarship: Why did China block India’s (and other countries) attempts to designate Masood Azhar – head of Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM/Jaish) as terrorist under UN Security Council 1267 committee rules? According to the extant literature, China's actions are explained broadly by India-China rivalry and India-Pakistan rivalry resulting in a strategic and ‘all weather partnership between China and Pakistan against their common enemy India. This study argues that China’s actions are also explained by its New (Asian) Security Concept and the ensuing China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), domestic (in)stability in Pakistan and China’s geo-strategic interests. China is deeply perturbed by the socio-economic-political instability in Pakistan. China was concerned that if Masood Azhar was designated as a terrorist under UNSC 1267 Committee rules, Jaish and other terrorist organizations would take up arms against the Pakistani state (as in the past) which will create further instability in Pakistan and undermine CPEC and China’s geo-strategic interests. Thus, the paper provides a more comprehensive and nuanced grasp of China’s reluctance to designate Masood Azhar as a terrorist.

Conflict or Cooperation? India and Pakistan in Shanghai Cooperation Organisation

South Asia is one of the least integrated regions in the world, with persistent India–Pakistan rivalry acting as a major stumbling block to regional cooperation through the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). Nonetheless, both India and Pakistan continue to experiment with multilateral arrangements and both became members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in 2017. While it is too early to predict the impact of the India–Pakistan rivalry on the SCO, dominant scholarship highlights the likelihood of a negative influence. This paper would like to present an alternative possibility – of the SCO providing opportunities for collaboration in the areas of security and counterterrorism, which in turn may positively influence Indo–Pak relations. Further, the likelihood of the Indo–Pak conflict negatively impacting the SCO is low primarily because, unlike SAARC, the SCO is led by China and Russia, who are actively invested in keeping the SCO influential to serve their key interest in challenging the dominant Western world order.

Same Principles but Different Outcomes of SAARC and ASEAN: Searching Gap

This article shows that two regional organizations- the Association of South East Asian Nations and the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation were established for regional cooperation and integration. Though both regional organizations’ principles, objectives have similarity but unfortunately, SAARC became an ineffective organization by failing to achieve its goal. Intra-regional trade of SAARC is significantly worse than other regions in the globe. This article tries to find out the reason behind the ineffectiveness of SAARC and concludes that India-Pakistan rivalry, India’s role with smaller countries and mutual mistrust among the nations of South Asia are the main causes that made SAARC an ineffective organization. On the contrary, ASEAN nations have practiced informal diplomacy to mitigate their bilateral disputes, decision making process- the ASEAN way, Indonesia’s positive role made ASEAN a successful organization. The article has also shown a comparative analysis between SAARC and ASEAN for identifying some good examples which SAARC countries could follow.

Military capabilities and regime type: the emergence of India–Pakistan rivalry

This article explores the outbreak and escalation of India–Pakistan rivalry from the perspective of power capabilities and the divergent nature of the two adversaries’ political regimes. It contrasts the established debates’ distributional aspects, particularly the notion of power asymmetry and the Pakistani policy-makers decision to initiate armed hostilities against India, to ascertain the onset of the First Kashmir War and the course of rivalry formation. It argues that, opposite to what scholars have actually viewed or assessed, Pakistan had significant military strength to wage the mountain warfare in Kashmir in 1947 and based on this assessment its political-military leadership had taken a ‘calculated risk’ to seize the area of strategic importance in Kashmir. Further, this article shows how India and Pakistan’s different political foundations and regime types influenced their early actions which eventually drove them to develop a highly antagonistic relationship within the first decade of their independence.

Ideology, territorial saliency, and geographic contiguity: the beginning of India–Pakistan rivalry

Ideology, territorial saliency, and geographic contiguity: the beginning of India–Pakistan rivalry

Tangible–Intangible Factors Interaction on Hostility Escalation and Rivalry Endurance: The Case of India–Pakistan Rivalry

A major contribution of the enduring rivalry literature is that the same pair of states—commonly referred to as dyads—are the cause for the majority of violent territorial changes and low-intensity conflicts. Enduring rivalries account for almost half of the militarized disputes during the past 200 years. Expanding literature on enduring rivalries informs us that militarized disputes and crises are influenced by past outcomes, internal dynamics of conflict behaviour and the prospects of future disputes. This article focuses on the India–Pakistan enduring rivalry, which has persisted for 68 years, and this rivalry is marked by four wars, and numerous instances of asymmetric warfare. The India–Pakistan rivalry has proved to be the most enduring, and it simply does not show any sign of abatement, and this conflict has become nested within the Pakistan–Afghanistan and India–China regional rivalry and territorial dispute. In addition, the India–Pakistan enduring rivalry has also become deeply enmeshed in the American-led Global War on Terrorism (GWOT). This article reviews the vast literature on enduring rivalry with particular focus on India–Pakistan to examine what factors have led to the persistence and exacerbation of this rivalry and why it is displaying no inclination towards termination.

Afghanistan's India–Pakistan dilemma: advocacy coalitions in weak states

This article seeks to examine the foreign policy behaviour of weak states in regions marked by politically turbulent geostrategic environments. An analysis of Afghanistan's foreign policy behaviour vis-à-vis Pakistan and India lends focus to this aim. India–Pakistan rivalry has gained traction as a key factor in determining Afghanistan's stability in the wake of the drawdown of Coalition forces. Missing from this debate, however, is consideration of Afghanistan's agency as a weak state with an independent set of policy preferences. Based on primary interviews with a diverse set of Afghan political actors the article outlines two competing policy advocacies: Pakistan friendly and Pakistan averse. The article argues that these advocacies are key to understanding Afghanistan's India–Pakistan dilemma. Departing from the ethnic lens used to explain Afghan politics and its regional linkages, this article shows that Kabul's relations with Islamabad determine its approach towards New Delhi regardless of ethnic rivalries. Understanding domestic Afghan narratives in this regional context is therefore imperative to adequately assess South Asia's prospective security calculus.

Murky waters, dangerous currents: India, Pakistan, China and the coming nuclearisation of the Indian Ocean

We are currently seeing a potentially dangerous nuclear proliferation as India, Pakistan, and perhaps China, look to deploy ship-borne nuclear weapons in the Indian Ocean. India-Pakistan nuclear rivalry is the immediate driver for these developments, but the India-China nuclear relationship is also increasingly moving into the Indian Ocean. The deployment of strategic and tactical nuclear weapons in the maritime realm could further destabilise already unstable nuclear relationships, creating a real risk of a sea-based nuclear exchange.

Breaking the Equilibrium? New Leaders and Old Structures in the India-Pakistan Rivalry

The election of new governments in Pakistan and India in 2013 and 2014, respectively, has sparked controversies about the likely trajectory of the enduring rivalry. Emerging individual and domestic conditions reportedly created new opportunities for incremental rapprochement. Equipped with strong political mandates and backed by powerful constituencies, Pakistan's Nawaz Sharif and India's Narendra Modi initially set out to stabilize and revive their countries’ fragile economies and declared improved bilateral ties as a key precondition for implementing their economic agendas. However, mutual recriminations and border tensions resurfaced soon to prevent the revival of the stalled diplomatic dialogue in late 2014. Drawing on a thorough review of research on rivalry maintenance and termination and, in particular, the assumptions of the punctuated equilibrium model developed by Paul Diehl and Gary Goertz, this paper demonstrates how the conflict's structural complexities are likely to persist and undermine the chances for conflict resolution in the years ahead. The prevalent role of the army and a vibrant anti-Indian Islamic ideology in Pakistan, the persistence of a conflict lobby in India, lingering territorial feuds and ever increasing power asymmetries between the two countries, and decreasing third-party mediation in the Indo-Pakistani conflict will likely suffocate any initiative, however well-intended or pragmatic it may be. Even if bold leadership manages to revive a comprehensive peace process, it would have to be based on systematic confidence building measures in order to make it resilient to crises.

The India–Pakistan rivalry and failure in Afghanistan

In discussions of NATO’s failure in Afghanistan, there is an increasing recognition of the damaging influence of competition between India and Pakistan. Yet, while reference to “rivalry” abounds, few authors connect Indian and Pakistani behaviour to the established literature on international rivalry. This paper corrects this explanatory gap by applying findings from the subfield of rivalry research. States engaged in rivalry behave differently; each issue of contention is fused into the broader rivalry relationship. For India, influence in Afghanistan is a component of its regional strategy, designed to maintain dominance over Pakistan in South Asia. For Pakistan, influence in Afghanistan is sought primarily for the opportunity to confront, damage, and frustrate Indian aims. The result is continued violence and instability. For policymakers, an appropriate appreciation of the strategic and political realities in a given region is a prerequisite for future international interventions in order to avoid such complications.

Transforming the Line of Control: Bringing the “Homeland” Back In

The majority of existing research on the Indo‐Pakistani conflict has shown that this conflict persists due to the confronting actors' long‐term incompatibility in goals and their use of realpolitik conceptions to resolve their core issue—Kashmir. While most of this research is focused on the dynamics of already established realpolitik scholarship, less is known about how it contributed to make this dyad exceedingly dangerous in the post–Cold War era. The present effort attempts to account for the “action‐reaction conundrum” by illuminating how the traditional realist practices are performing contrary to their security maximization objectives in the India‐Pakistan rivalry. In order to bring the two states out of their prolonged security dilemma, what is needed is a way forward through the transformation of the Line of Control on the basis of an approach that combines the Westphalian state and an alternative paradigm. This article concludes by discussing the steps required to move in this direction, that is, toward Indo‐Pakistani coexistence and a progressive future for South Asia more generally.

Mixed Legacies in Contested Borderlands: Skardu and the Kashmir Dispute

The article explores the sense of belonging of people from Skardu, a border town located in the Gilgit-Baltistan region, a territory administered by Pakistan but which is disputed by India for its being part of the former Princely State of Jammu and Kashmir. Neither full Pakistani citizens, nor identifying themselves with Kashmiri nationalism, the people of Gilgit-Baltistan lack of a common sense of belonging. The uncertain future of the territorial entity contributes to this, despite transformations already at work there. By examining the social and material landscape of Skardu town, and therefore using a micro-level perspective, the article aims to address issues of identity and security connected with broader constructed narratives of intrastate or interstate conflict, such as the Kashmir dispute within the wider geopolitical imaginary of India–Pakistan rivalry.

Not loving thy neighbour as thyself: Trade, democracy and military expenditure explanations underlying India—Pakistan rivalry

This article analyses whether greater international trade, democracy and reduced military spending lower hostility between India and Pakistan. Conflict between the two nations can be best understood in a multivariate framework where variables such as economic performance, multilateral trade with the rest of the world, bilateral trade, military expenditure, democracy scores and population are simultaneously taken into account. The empirical investigation is based on time series econometrics from 1950— 2005, allowing causality to be examined. The results suggest that reduced bilateral trade, greater military expenditure, less development expenditure, lower levels of democracy, lower growth rates and less general trade openness are all conflict enhancing, albeit with lags in some cases. Moreover, there is reverse causality between bilateral trade, militarization and conflict; low levels of bilateral trade and high militarization are conflict enhancing, but conflict also reduces bilateral trade and raises militarization. Economic growth is conflict mitigating, but the reverse is not true. Globalization, or greater openness to trade with the rest of the world, is the most significant driver of a liberal peace, corroborating a modified form of the capitalist peace, rather than a common democratic political orientation suggested by the pure form of the Kantian liberal peace.

Rising India’s Pakistan Problem

This article identifies the persistent India–Pakistan rivalry as a paired minority conflict and argues that, as the predominant actor, India needs to shed its historical complexes and engage Pakistan proactively. By transcending its traditional reluctance, fears and prejudices, India must demonstrate that it can make use of its recently established economic and socio-political clout to be a dominant force in the region. A review of different scenarios for the future of Pakistan and possible Indian responses to another terrorist attack on Mumbai indicates that India’s best option would be to evolve a multilevel and long-term ‘carrot and stick’ strategy towards its neighbour. Beyond ineffectual Track II dialogues, an excessive focus on Kashmir and myopic decisions determined by domestic contingencies, India needs to build the necessary trust and solve its Pakistan problem by focusing on deeper economic interdependence and sustained civil society contacts, and revive its nuclear disarmament plans.

Why has the India-Pakistan Rivalry Been so Enduring? Power Asymmetry and an Intractable Conflict

The India-Pakistan conflict is one of the most enduring rivalries of the post-World War era. Thus far, it has witnessed four wars and a number of serious interstate crises. The literature on enduring rivalries suggests that the India-Pakistan dyad contains factors such as unsettled territorial issues, political incompatibility, irreconcilable positions on national identity, and the absence of significant economic and trade relations between the two states, all cause the rivalry to persist. In this article I present a crucial neglected structural factor that explains the endurance of the rivalry. I argue that the peculiar power asymmetry that has prevailed between the two antagonists for over half a century has made full termination of the rivalry difficult in the near-term. Truncated power asymmetry is a causal factor in this rivalry's persistence, as rivalries between a status quo power and a challenger state that are relatively equal in their capabilities at the local level are the most intractable and nearly impossible to resolve quickly. The duration of many other asymmetric rivalries can also be explained using a framework of global superiority versus local parity in power capabilities that exist between the antagonists.