Cooperative Security, Arms Control and Disarmament Policy Brief No.143 - December, 2022 • By Salman Bashir
Policy Brief No.143: The China–India–Pakistan Nuclear Triangle:
Consequential Choices for Asian Security
Image: Bennian/Shutterstock.com
This Policy Brief examines the wider regional and global geopolitical entanglements of China, India and Pakistan and prospects of promoting regional stability and avoidance of nuclear conflict. Asia is now the fulcrum of global power politics. This complicates the quest for building regional stability, harmony and prosperity. To the conflictual ‘continental’ dynamics of China, India and Pakistan, the US Indo-Pacific strategy has inserted a ‘maritime’ dimension with ‘land and sea’ and ‘geo-politic and geo-economic’ connotations. India is a lynchpin of the US Indo-Pacific strategy and the choices India makes will determine the trajectory of India–China and India–Pakistan relations. India aspires to a global power status that requires it to outmatch China and dominate South Asia and the Indian Ocean region. Pakistan is concerned over Indian conventional preponderance that poses a threat to its security.