China-India contemporary relations: Geopolitical challenges to the small states in South Asia

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Manish Jung Pulami
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Small States ◽  
Major Power ◽  
Contemporary China ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
Major Powers ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
India And China

Background: The two Asian giants, India and China, have shown unprecedented growth and development in recent decades. As neighbours, the bilateral relationship between the two countries has experienced turbulences, even wars, but their trade and economic relations date centuries back. These characteristics of cooperation and conflict between India and China as they aspire to become major powers globally have tuned up the competitiveness, which has further engaged them with collaborations in some areas, conflicts and contestations in others. This unique relation with antagonistic cooperation has implications for South Asian states, including India and other small states. Methods: Thus, realising the research gap of future repercussions on the region and hypothesising that the contemporary China-India relations not only have consequences on each other but also brings challenges to the small states in South Asia, the paper primarily focuses on current China-India relations and the geopolitical challenges to the South Asian small states. Hence, it is crucial to comprehend ‘What is the nature and pattern of contemporary China-India relations?’ and ‘What are the geopolitical challenges to the small states because of this unforeseen relation?’ The study revisits the historical relationship between India and China to examine the trend of collaborations and contestations between the two. The paper also discusses the increasing forays of China into South Asia and the deepening US-India relationship to counter those looming Chinese influences. Results: Notably, the research identifies the geopolitical challenges for other South Asian small states because of those fluctuations in the relationship and recommends strategies for the small states in South Asia to avert the increasing geopolitical challenges, generalising the challenges for the small states evolving due to the major power politics in different parts of the world.

The Ubiquity of Oil

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Rosemary A. Kelanic
Keyword(s):  
Great Powers ◽  
Great Power ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
Major Powers ◽  
Self Sufficiency ◽  
Great Power Politics ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Systematic Framework

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the relationship between oil and great power politics. For over a hundred years, oil has been ubiquitous as both an object of political intrigue and a feature of everyday life, yet its effects on the behavior of major powers remain poorly understood. This book focuses on one particular aspect of oil: its coercive potential. Across time and space, great powers have feared that dependence on imported petroleum might make them vulnerable to coercion by hostile actors. They worry that an enemy could cut off oil to weaken them militarily or punish them economically, and then use this threat as a basis for political blackmail. Oil is so essential to great powers that taking a state's imports hostage could give an enemy significant leverage in a dispute. The book presents the first systematic framework to understand how fears of oil coercion shape international affairs. Great powers counter prospective threats with costly and risky policies that lessen vulnerability, ideally, before the country can be targeted. These measures, which can be called “anticipatory strategies,” vary enormously, from self-sufficiency efforts to actions as extreme as launching wars.

Why Minor Powers Risk Wars with Major Powers

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marinko Bobić
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Comparative Analysis ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Window Of Opportunity ◽  
Major Power ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
Asymmetric Conflict ◽  
Mixed Methods Approach ◽  
Major Powers ◽  
Regime Stability ◽  
Minor Powers

Major powers have immense resources at their disposal, while minor powers are assumed to avoid wars and power politics due to structural and material constraints. This provokes the question why do some minor powers nonetheless decide to militarily engage their vastly stronger opponents, particularly major powers? Inspired by several theoretical insights, this book proposes a more complex framework of minor powers in interstate asymmetric conflict. It analyses five conditions highlighted by previous studies: domestic crisis, foreign support, window of opportunity, anomalous beliefs, and regime stability. The theoretical framework works well with a mixed-methods approach, a medium-N research design (Qualitative Comparative Analysis), and three case studies: Iraq (1990), Moldova (1992), and Serbia (1999). The book finds that by looking through the lenses of multiple theories, one can observe a more nuanced relationship how different conditions interact in impacting minor powers’ decisions. Ultimately, minor powers militarily engage major powers when facing a more important domestic crisis and when they also believe that they have a window of opportunity or support from another major power in order to constrain major powers’ capability and resolve. Looking at the current conflict in Syria, there are important policy implications given the observation that minor powers do and will continue to challenge major powers in the future.

scholarly journals Dyeing the Springtime: The Art and Poetry of Fleeting Textile Colors in Medieval and Early Modern South Asia

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 627
Author(s):  
Sylvia Houghteling
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
South Asia ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Devotional Poetry ◽  
Literary Arts ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
South Asian Art ◽  
Regional Histories ◽  
Early Modern South Asia

This paper explores the metaphorical and material significance of short-lived fabric dyes in medieval and early modern South Asian art, literature, and religious practice. It explores dyers’ manuals, paintings, textiles, and popular and devotional poetry to demonstrate how the existence of ephemeral dyes opened up possibilities for mutability that cannot be found within more stable, mineral pigments, set down on paper in painting. While the relationship between the image and the word in South Asian art is most often mutually enhancing, the relationship between words and color, and particularly between poetry and dye color, operates on a much more slippery basis. In the visual and literary arts of South Asia, dye colors offered textile artists and poets alike a palette of vibrant hues and a way to capture shifts in emotions and modes of devotion that retained a sense of impermanence. More broadly, these fragile, fleeting dye materials reaffirm the importance of tracing the local and regional histories even of objects, like textiles, that circulated globally.

Economic Relations between South Asia and East Asia

2017 ◽  
pp. 49-93
Author(s):  
Pradumna B. Rana ◽  
Wai-Mun Chia
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
South Asia ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Economic Integration ◽  
Trading Costs ◽  
Production Networks ◽  
Asian Countries ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
The Look ◽  
Economic Linkages

This chapter reviews the ‘Look East’ policies implemented, either formally or informally, by the South Asian countries. It argues that these policies have had a number of positive impacts. Efforts are also being made to improve connectivity to reduce trading costs between the two regions. The chapter then assesses the potential for South Asia–East Asia trade. It also reviews the literature on how greater SA–EA economic linkages especially through SA joining production networks will lead to a win-win situation for all countries in both South Asia and East Asia. South Asian economic integration will also be reinvigorated.

Protection Rackets and Party Machines

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (6) ◽  
pp. 693-723 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Martin ◽  
Lucia Michelutti
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Political Competition ◽  
Uttar Pradesh ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
North India ◽  
Indian Context ◽  
Protection Rackets ◽  
The Relationship

Control over means of violence and protection emerge as crucial in much research on corruption in non-South Asian contexts. In the Indian context, however, we still know little about the systems of organised violence that sustain the entanglement of crime, capital and democratic politics. This timely comparative ethnographic piece explores two different manifestations of what our informants identify as “Mafia Raj” (“rule by mafia”) across North India (Uttar Pradesh and Punjab). Drawing on analytical concepts developed in the literature on bossism and “mafias”, we explore protection and racketeering as central statecraft repertoires of muscular styles of governance in the region. We show how a predatory economy together with structures of inter- and intra-party political competition generate the demand for and the imposition of unofficial and illegal protection and shape different manifestations of Mafia Raj. In doing so, the paper aims to contribute to debates on the relationship between states and illegalities in and beyond South Asia.

scholarly journals China’s Footprints in Maldives: Concern for India?

2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
S Y Surendra Kumar
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
South Asian ◽  
South East Asia ◽  
Peaceful Rise ◽  
North East ◽  
The North ◽  
China’S Foreign Policy ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Diplomatic Relationship ◽  
India And China

China has, in the recent decades, has consolidated its interests in the South Asian region. This change in China’s foreign policy, from a focus on the North-East and South-East Asia, hints at an attempt to sustain China’s own peaceful rise. India, on the other hand, has emphasised on a ‘Look East’ foreign policy in the recent times. Both India and China share an important diplomatic relationship with Maldives. However, China’s growing influence in Maldives might be a serious strategic concern to India. This article is an exploratory study of the relationship that China shares with Maldives and its implications to India.

Locating Religion in South Asia: Islamicate Definitions and Categories

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-241 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ilyse R Morgenstein Fuerst
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Islamic Studies ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

The category of Islam as a religion—as defined within religious studies discourses—informs Islamic studies across disciplines, even as it appears in fields that may not have methodological, theoretical, or topical overlaps with the study of religion. By locating Islamicate, South Asian definitions of religion as analogous, related, and, in some cases, influences to Euro American definitions of religion, this article troubles the relationship between the study of religion, definitions of religion, and non-European, non Christian actors. This essay contributes to the growing body of literature asking how and when native definitions of categories of (or like) religion have been incorporated or ignored within the broadest definitions and specifically how Islamicate texts contribute to the history of the study of religion.

scholarly journals Regional Security in East Asia: ASEAN's Value Added and Limitations

2010 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 115-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice D. Ba
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
Value Added ◽  
Asia Pacific ◽  
Regional Security ◽  
Power Relationship ◽  
Major Power ◽  
Major Powers ◽  
Security Environment ◽  
Regional Institution ◽  
The Relationship

This paper considers ASEAN's value added and limitations as regards its ability to play a meaningful and practical security role in East Asia and the Asia Pacific. It argues that ASEAN's contributions to regional security and within ASEAN-plus arrangements are not uniform. Instead, they vary depending on the relationship and the arrangement. This paper gives particular attention to two sets of relations: 1) ASEAN's relations with major powers; and 2) major power relations with one another. It argues that the latter has proven most challenging in terms of both practical changes to the regional security environment and growing questions about the appropriateness and capacity of ASEAN to “lead” institutional arrangements, but that such challenges may also vary depending on which major power relationship or regional institution is in question. It further argues that ASEAN's challenges are also conditioned by security contributions that are often understated, though dissatisfactions from both inside and outside the organization are likely to remain persistent challenges to ASEAN ability to defend its current role.

scholarly journals Comparative Analysis of the US and Chinese Foreign Policy Towards South Asia; Implications for Pakistan

2020 ◽  
Vol V (IV) ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Waseem Ishaque ◽  
Rizwana Karim Abbasi ◽  
Usha Rehman
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
South Asia ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Chinese Foreign Policy ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
Asian Region ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Soviet Invasion ◽  
South Asian Region

South Asia has its geopolitical significance due to its proximity with the oil-rich Middle Eastern States, natural resourcerich Central Asia and economically developed states of South-East Asian States. South Asia has two nuclear states; Pakistan and India. Since the end of 2nd World War, the USA has been present which has provided stability to this region. The USA had extended its investment and aid to Pakistan in during cold war which had maintained a Balance of Power between India and Pakistan. U.S. articulated response against Soviet invasion in 1979 and later entered in Afghanistan in 2001 on the pretext of WoT. Chinese foreign policy has fostered stability in South Asian region. Through its "Win-Win" policy, China has very firm economic relations with all South Asian states. Through BRI, China wants economic prosperity in the South Asian region. In such environments, Pakistan must have to act pragmatically, avoiding zero-sum policy.

scholarly journals International Anarchic Structure in Nuclearizing South Asia: An Analysis (1974-98)

2019 ◽  
Vol IV (IV) ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Robina Khan ◽  
Ghulam Mustafa ◽  
Muhammad Imran
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
South Asia ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Nuclear Proliferation ◽  
Poverty Line ◽  
Major Powers ◽  
Nuclear Tests ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Global Population ◽  
Level Of Analysis

This explanatory research aimed at analyzing the nuclearization of south Asia using the framework of 'third level of analysis' named 'international anarchic structure' by Kenneth Waltz. South Asia is the home to 1/3rd of the global population, out of which around 41% population lives under poverty line. Historical intra-state rivalries, personal political ambitions and the crucial geostrategic locality made the region extremely attractive for major powers since the de-colonialization of the sub-continent. The cold war antagonism offered extra space and shelter in acquiring nuclear capabilities to both India and Pakistan. India's first nuclear test in 1974, putting aside all the international nuclear proliferation efforts, provided legitimacy to Pakistan's nuclear designs. Moreover, the global powers once achieved their objectives in 1989, left the region on its own fate. Almost decade long pattern of confrontation-crisis-negotiations resulted in nuclear tests in 1998 by the two south Asian states while ignoring CTBT. Inclusion of nuclear weapons brought about unprecedented threats and the region became 'nuclear flash point.

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