The Sino-Soviet Complex and South Asia

Abstract

For the past twenty years or so, the Sino-Pakistani and Soviet-Indian relationships have been noted for their stability. Sustained by the hostility between Islamabad and New Delhi, between Beijing and Moscow, they have survived a number of regime changes in each of the countries, the break-up of Pakistan into two separate states, and international systemic changes in which multipolarity has replaced the bipolarity of the early cold war years. For reasons relating to the local dynamics and to the dynamics of the rift between the Soviet Union and China, the period under study will broadly be divided into three. In the first phase (1950–58) US penetration of the region stimulated a Soviet response and Soviet-American rivalry. The second phase (1959–72) witnessed Sino-Soviet rivalry as the most salient external force in the region. In the years following the emergence of Bangladesh to the early 1980s, however, the pattern of contention and the relationships it engendered have been disturbed, the full implications of which are still difficult to assess. Improvements in Sino-American and Sino-Indian ties, India’s nuclear explosion and the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan are some of the factors that have contributed to the greater fluidity and uncertainty in relations in this final period.