India’s National Security Challenges and the State Response

Abstract

This chapter begins by noting that India for much of its history as an independent state has had a “reactionary” approach to national security that attempted to address security threats sporadically as and when they arose and an enduring preference for “non-alignment”. For most of the Cold War era India charted for itself a path free of great power rivalries by not getting associated with any power-blocks as this was deemed to be the best way of ensuring freedom of action and defence of India’s national interests. However the chapter argues that in the post-Cold War period New Delhi’s national security policy has been indelibly shaped by the structural change in the international system (i.e. the opportunities and constraints of American unipolarity) and a major domestic political transition away from the Nehruvian political and economic model towards a broadly neoliberal one. The combined effects of these changes have been to moderate India’s traditional “non-alignment” posture in practice, although not rhetoric, via its deepening engagement and cooperation with the United States and to stimulate greater levels of political and economic engagement with East and Southeast Asia under the Look East policy.