GEOPOLITICAL TREND IN SOUTH ASIA

My brief notes on recent Geopolitical Trends in South Asia:

These is an increasing transition from geopolitics to geo-economics:

• America’s & Russia’s efforts to balance between India & Pakistan;

• America’s, China’s, and Russia’s cautious welcoming of the Taliban into the international
community.
• February 2021 agreement to build a Pakistan-Afghanistan-Uzbekistan (PAKAFUZ) railway;
• Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s regional sojourn in early April;
• mid-July’s Tashkent conference about Central Asia-South Asia connectivity;
• the US’ “New Quad” with the PAKAFUZ states; geo-economics
• US old quad; maritime in indo-pacific
• US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s trip to India; he said ‘there were few relationships in
the world that were “more vital" than that between the US and India.
• the Taliban’s latest travels to China;
• Pakistani National Security Advisor Moeed Yusuf’s and Director-General ISI Lt. General
Faiz Hameed’s trip to the US.
• India and China too have tense ties after New Delhi detected Chinese troops inside its
territory in May 2020
• Building the Greater Eurasian Partnership (GEP) is one of the top goals of Russian grand
strategy.
• The gist of Pakistan’s grand geo-economic vision is to encourage a friendly form of
“competitive connectivity” between all relevant countries (Russia, China, Iran and the U.S.)
through Afghanistan, which will serve as a convergence point of their economic interests.
The more each stakeholder invests in Afghanistan, the less likely it is that any of them will
seek to unilaterally destabilize the country as part of a zero-sum strategy against any third
party.
• India seemed to believe that it could play Russia, China and the U.S. off against one
another in order to obtain the best deals from each of them, but this policy regrettably failed
to obtain the positive dividends that were expected. Instead, they each began to regard India
as too self-interested due to the zero-sum outcomes that it was attempting to advance,
which harmed their relations with it. The end result is that India has begun to seriously
contemplate a comprehensive recalibration of its multi-alignment strategy by mending
relations with Russia, managing them more responsibly with China and being less compliant
in the face of the U.S. demands. In order to truly reform, however, India must replace its
geopolitical motivations with geo-economic ones, exactly as Pakistan has successfully done.
• US presence in Central Asia has increased in the wake of the withdrawal and that its
objectives in doing so include balancing Chinese and Russian influence in addition to
keeping the Taliban in check.
• India’s Act East Policy – strengthening ties with ASEAN members to counter China.