Abstract
Contemporary international relations theory is marked by its relative neglect of regional subsystems. Barry Buzan in a recent study laments that in ‘the absence of any developed sense of region, security analysis tends to polarise between the global system level on the one hand, and the national security level of individual states on the other ... Both perspectives miss the regional level, which comprises the dynamic of security relations among the local states’.1 In the case of South Asia, this is a problem well illustrated by the few studies whose point of departure is the complex of intraregional security relations.2 South Asia is marked by a relative absence of regional cooperation and an asymmetry of power relations where, at least since the vivisection of Pakistan in 1971, India predominates.
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Notes
Barry Buzan in Barry Buzan and Gowher Rizvi, South Asian Insecurity and the Great Powers (New York, NY: St. Martin’s, 1986), p. 4.
S. D. Muni: ‘South Asia’, in Mohammed Ayoob (ed.), Conflict and Intervention in the Third World (London: Croom Helm, 1980), pp. 38–72;
Surjit Mansingh, India’s Search for Power (New Delhi: Sage, 1984);
G.W. Chowdhry: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Major Powers (New York, NY: Free Press, 1975);
Stephen P. Cohen (ed.), The Security of South Asia (Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1987);
Michael Brecher, International Relations and Asian Studies: The Subordinate State System of Southern Asia’, World Politics XV (1963): 213–35.
For example John Mellor (ed.), India: A Rising Middle Power (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1979);
Onkar Marwah and Jonathan Pollack, Military Power and Policy in Asian States: China, India and Japan (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980). In contrast, Buzan and Rizvi, South Asian Insecurity and the Great Powers, argue that the distribution of power in South Asia between India and Pakistan is bipolar.
US Central Intelligence Agency, Handbook of the Nations (9th edn; New York, NY: Central Intelligence Agency, 1989).
As Carsten Holbraad points out, Middle Powers in International Politics (London: Macmillan, 1984), p. 71, John Holmes, director general of the Canadian Institute of International Affairs, characterised India under Nehru as a great example of a middle power because of its active diplomacy in the conflict between the two blocs.
A similar view is expressed by Ashok Kapur, ‘The Indian Subcontinent: The Contemporary Structure of Power and the Development of Power Relations’, Asian Survey XXVIII (1988): 693–710, who states that there is no evidence to validate the notion of an undeclared claim to Indian hegemony in the Nehru Period (p. 703).
On the other hand Leo Rose in James N. Rosenau et al. (eds), World Politics (New York, NY: Free Press, 1976), p. 214, argues that the basic principles underlying India’s regional policy since 1947 has been to establish its regional hegemonv.
For an excellent study on the evolution of Pakistan’s foreign policy see S. M. Burke, Pakistan’s Foreign Policy: An Historical Analysis (London: Oxford University Press, 1973);
also Mohammad Ayub Khan, Friends Not Masters (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1967).
P. Haksar cited in Noor A. Husain, ‘India’s Regional Policy: Strategic and Security Dimensions’, in Cohen, The Security of South Asia, pp. 27–79 at p. 32; see also Raju G. C. Thomas, ‘Defense Planning in India’, in Stephanie G. Neuman, (ed.), Defense Planning in Less-Industrialised States (Toronto: Lexington. 1984). pp. 239–64.
D. C. Jha, ‘The Basic Foundations and Determinants of Pakistan’s Foreign Policy’ and B. N. Goswami ‘The Elites and the Formulation of Pakistan’s Foreign Policy: The Early Years’ in S. Chopra (ed.), Perspectives on Pakistan’s Foreign Policy (Amritsar: Guru Nanak Dev University Press, 1983), pp. 1–38 and 39–49 respectively.
Samuel Baid, ‘Stalemate in South Asia’, in Satish Kumar (ed.), Yearbook on India’s Foreign Policy (New Delhi: Sage, 1988), p. 112; for an excellent study of Indo-Pakistan rivalry see Gowher Rizvi in Buzan and Rizvi, South Asian Insecurity and the Great Powers, pp. 93–126.
U.S. Bajpai, India’s Security (New Delhi: Lancers, 1983), pp. 115–121;
also S. D. Muni, India’s Security (New Delhi: Lancers, 1983), pp. 115–121;
also S. D. Muni, ‘India’s Political Preferences in South Asia’, India Quarterly XXXI (1975):23–35;
Ralph R. Premdas and S. W. R. Samarasinghe, ‘Sri Lanka’s Ethnic Conflict: The Indo-Lanka Peace Accord’, Asian Survey XXVIII (1988): 676–85;
Lok Raj Baral, ‘Nepal’s Security Policy and South Asian Regionalism’, Asian Survey XXVI (1986): 1207–19.
Cited in Satish Kumar (ed.), Yearbook on India’s Foreign Policy (New Delhi: Sage, 1988), p. 187.
Dilip Mukerjee, ‘India’s Relations with the United States: A New Search For Accomodation’, in Kumar, Yearbook on India’s Foreign Policy, p. 205. His analysis is based on two US state department documents, the National Security Decision Directives 99 of July 1983 and 147 of October 1984.
R. K. Jaizn (ed.), US-South Asian Relations1947–82 (New Delhi: Radiant, 1983).
Shashi Tharoor, Reasons of State: Political Development and India’s Foreign Policy under Indira Gandhi, 1966–1977 (New Delhi: Vikas, 1982).
See for instance American analysts Jerrold F. Elkin and W. Andrew Ritezel ‘The Indo-Pakistani Military Balance’, Asian Survey XXVI (1986):518–38 at 521.
This is the view expressed by, for example, Raju C. Thomas, Indian Security Policy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986).
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© 1992 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Gill, V. (1992). India as a Regional Great Power: in Pursuit of Shakti. In: Neumann, I.B. (eds) Regional Great Powers in International Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-12661-3_3
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