Böcker av Shalini Chawla

India's neighbourhood has witnessed crucial developments in the last decade: complex security challenges, looming economic crises, socio-political unrest, border clashes, China's expanding engagement, India's rising profile, and the COVID-19 pandemic. For New Delhi to promote its national interests and drive the momentum of its growth trajectory, stability in its neighbourhood is indeed important. As a global player, India is increasingly looking to partner and extend cooperation in the growth of its neighbourhood. Over the last eight years, India has advocated the "Neighbourhood First" policy which 'focuses on creating mutually beneficial, people-oriented, regional frameworks for stability and prosperity'. India's neighbourhood presents complex dynamics, and the challenges demand attention and serious consideration in its policy options. The versatile neighbourhood also offers opportunities for India to extend cooperation at the regional level and address common strategic, economic, social and security concerns. India's Neighbourhood: Challenges and Opportunities with insights of leading experts is a timely contribution to academia, practitioners, and keen readers. The book fills a critical void in the domain of neighbourhood studies and comprehensively analyses India's bilateral relations with Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, Iran, the Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. The book assesses the traditional security challenges like terrorism, examines crucial non-traditional security issues (hydro-politics and climate change), scans the emerging dynamics of rare earth elements and evaluates the wider possibilities of India's role in stirring regional cooperation in these key areas.

Pakistan's nuclear thinking, its ambiguous doctrine, and posture-revolving around the much-acclaimed fill spectrum deterrence, remains critical for Indian policymakers and the international security community. The Pakistani security rationale is indeed one of the crucial dimensions of Pakistan's complex dynamics. In this context, the narrative of Pakistan's threat perceptions becomes an integral part of its strategic posturing for both the outside world and domestically, to justify its inclination (and excessive diversion of national resources) towards defence and nuclear build-up. With all the existing domestic, economic, and security challenges, which are detrimental to nation's growth, the stable factor has been Pakistan's military and nuclear build-up. Past experience suggests its acquisition of nuclear weapons and expansion of the arsenal will continue to be rationalised as an ultimate guarantee of security, deterrent to Indian conventional military superiority, to perceived threat perceptions vis-à-vis India, and to provide an umbrella to pursue a proxy war through terrorism. In this context, it is important to undertake a study on Pakistan's security dimensions and its nuclear positioning to allow India to evaluate its options against Pakistan.