Policy Briefs

This Policy Brief addresses the key variable in an emergent Southern Asian nuclear multipolarity: the India–China relationship and the extent to which nuclear weapons become more prominent in respective national security belief systems in New Delhi and Beijing. It first assesses the existing boundaries of nuclear deterrence, then evaluates four trends that are pushing the region towards deterrence multipolarity. Next it identifies two possible fulcrums: developments that would tip the region from the status quo into a new system. Finally, it surveys the rather barren landscape of existing CBMs before identifying possible avenues to improve stability and reduce potential sources of conflict.

This Policy Brief addresses the geopolitical situation in South Asia which is witnessing entangled trends, reflected as chronic India–Pakistan confrontation, the frigid China–India relationship and the increasing US–China competition. First, it analyses the competitive US–China relationship and its implications for the China–India–Pakistan nuclear trilemma. The second section examines the frigid China–India relationship and its implications for the China–India–Pakistan nuclear trilemma. The third section touches on the chronic India–Pakistan confrontation and argues that it is extremely important but also equally difficult for India and Pakistan to reset their relationship from confrontation to cooperation. Finally, it offers proposals for concerned parties to manage their relationship and the consequent nuclear trilemma.

This Policy Brief explores the Pakistan–India and China–India nuclear dyads along three specific axes: drivers of conflict; points of commonalities, similarities and differences; and implications of these for their nuclear stockpiles. It recognises that the nuclear playground in Southern Asia is marked by an exceptional level of complexity and the consequent regional nuclear dynamics has fair potential for crisis and arms race instability. The Policy Brief concludes with policy recommendations to address the concomitant dangers.

This Policy Brief explores the nexus between domestic politics and foreign policy in India, Pakistan, and China to explain what the contemporary domestic political trends in each state indicate about the future of bilateral relations and explains how bilateral relations may in turn affect domestic politics.

This Policy Brief looks back on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in a longer-term and broader reflective analysis of four intertwined threads: the core issues at dispute, the conflict parties, the possible different endings to the war, and the principal lessons to be drawn from the conflict. Since the second world war, there has been a long-term shift from the power end of the spectrum towards the normative end as the pivot on which history turns, with a steady reduction in societal, national and international violence. This has been accompanied by a geographical shift from Europe to Asia and the Pacific as the new cockpit of world affairs. Bucking these twin trends, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine marked the return of Europe to the centre of world affairs, and the return to Europe of geopolitics, territorial disputes and large-scale force and ground wars not experienced since 1945. The Policy Brief concludes with the question: Where to next?