South Asia Conundrum: The Great Power Gambit - Hardcover

Professor B.M. Jain has written a wonderfully accessible book on one of the most pressing issues of our times, the stability of the South Asia region. With skill B.M. Jain guides the reader through the emerging competition between China and the United States and the efforts of other powers to balance between them. The book offers a fascinating and penetrating assessment of the region's strategic challenges while illuminating small but important opportunities for stability and order. -- Sten Rynning, University of Southern Denmark This is an essential book for anyone interested in the interplay between political and strategic dynamics in South Asia and their implications for building peace, security and stability in the region. BM Jain provides a magisterial analysis of the great power gambit in the extended South Asia by objectively analyzing their rival interests, making the study refreshingly productive and useful for scholars, academia, graduate students, and public policy leaders. -- Kevin Clements, Toda Peace Institute South Asia and the Indian Ocean region has long been caught in the vortex of great power rivalries. China's `One Belt One Road' initiative adds a whole new dimension to interstate relations in South Asia. This study provides a comprehensive evaluation of the fast changing geopolitical dynamics and implications for regional and global power balance -- Mohan Malik, Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies

South Asia Conundrum offers fresh ideas and enlightening narratives about how geopolitical and geostrategic entanglements of extra-regional powers, notably the United States, Russia and China, in South Asia and its extended neighborhood have transformed the Af-Pak region into a theater of unending conflict and political instability. The book addresses and illuminates the impending challenges and evaluates policy options before the Trump administration and US allies in dealing with the Afghan imbroglio. The book argues how the emerging strategic alliance among Russia, Iran, China and Pakistan has not only constrained US options in the region but has also constricted the US role and influence in South Asia, Afghanistan, and Central Asia. South Asian Conundrum further illustrates how the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a part of Beijing's mega Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), constitutes a direct challenge to economic and security interests of India and the United States in the region. The scope of the book is not exclusively limited to South Asia. Its geostrategic and geo-economic ramifications are much larger and deeper in global and regional contexts, involving the Greater Middle East Asia, the triangular Russian-Chinese and Iranian strategic partnership, and the long term fallout of CPEC and China's BRI on global political and economic architecture.