Beyond The Balance Of Power

Using the concept of "beyondbalance of power", this dissertation analyzes U.S.security strategy toward South Asia in the post-Cold War era.During the Cold War, the U.S.-Pakistan alliance was counterweighted by the friendlyrelationship between the Soviet Union and India. These two opposing forcesformed thebalance of power in South Asia. America viewed South Asia to as a "reduction" of theglobal Cold War, and the conflict between India and Pakistan was but the "South Asianversion" of the worldwide conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. U.S.South Asia policy served its global containment strategy. Pulling Pakistan into analliance, supporting India to counter China, and aiding Pakistan to contain the SovietUnion were all part of America's global strategy and in its nationalinterest.After the Cold War ended, America started using bilateral, regional, and functional lensesto understand the South Asian sub-continent, and started to utilize a "beyondbalance ofpower" strategy in its interactions with the region. The strategy can be seen in three areas:ideology, policy, and bilateralrelationships. As forideology, America believes that,whether on the basis of economic potential, political worthiness, or comprehensivenational power and regional influence, India's strategic position is obviously higher thanPakistan's. On a policy level, the fociof the Clinton administration's global strategy andthe main goalsof its South Asia policy were economics, security and democracy.Because of the major security issues in the South Asianregion (such as nuclearproliferation, the Kashmir conflict and terrorism), America's principal security intereststhere consisted of maintaining regional stability, preventing the spread of weapons ofmass destruction, and countering terrorism. Non-proliferation policy, Kashmir policy,and anti-terrorism policy thus comprised the bulk of America's South Asia securitypolicy and produced a tilt toward India. In the area of bilateral relationship, not only doU.S.-India and U.S.-Pakistan relations occupy different positions in America's South VIIAsia security strategy, but America has also tried to establish these two bilateralrelationships on different cooperative bases and has attempted to treat each separately.The occurrence of the September 11th attacks followed by the so-called"globalwaronterror" had a greatimpact on the South Asia region. On the one hand, America hasactivelyreestablished and developed a partnership with Pakistan to obtain this front-linecountry's support. At the same time, it has continually pushed to transform itsstrategicrelationship with India. America maintains and develops friendly relations with bothIndia and Pakistan at the same time, demonstrating continued interest in – andimplementationof – a "beyond balance of power" strategy.