After the Cold War: South Asian Security

Abstract

Asymmetries dominate South Asia, explaining much of the region's tension, and complicating the U.S. approach to its major powers, India and Pakistan. Disparities in geographic size, population, military capability, and economic markets leave the Pakistanis feeling inferior to India and reinforce India's view of itself as an emerging major power. For much of the last five decades, South Asia was of episodic strategic interest to the United States. The region's strategic value was measured almost solely in terms of the Cold War struggle with the Soviet Union and varied with the mercurial cycles of U.S.-Soviet geopolitical competition. Even at the height of the region's relevance for U.S. global policy, in the 1950s and again in the 1980s, the link between Washington and South Asia was never comfortable.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 1995
Accession Number
ADA394582

Entities

People

  • Jed C. Snyder

Organizations

  • National Defense University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Counter WMD
  • Space
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Arms Control
  • Arms Control Treaties
  • Asia
  • Ballistic Missiles
  • Cold War
  • Governments
  • Military Capabilities
  • National Security
  • Nuclear Weapons
  • Pakistan
  • Security
  • South Asia
  • Terrorism
  • Treaties
  • United States
  • Ussr
  • Weapons

Fields of Study

  • Political science

Readers

  • East Asian Political and Security Studies within the Soviet Union
  • Military History of the United States in the 20th Century.