South Asia's Geography of Conflict
Author(s): Robert D. KaplanType of Publication: Report
Date: 09/08/2010
Download the full report (PDF)India will emerge as the key Eurasian pivot state because of its effect on relations between the United States and China. To effectively deal with India, American policymakers must understand Indian geography and geopolitics throughout its long history. In particular, Indian geography is the story of invasions from a northwesterly direction, and India's strategic challenges still inhere in this fact. Afghanistan, in Indian eyes, is not part of Central Asia but part of the Indian subcontinent. Afghanistan is linked organically to India on account of the record of empires past. This organic connection to India is also true of Central Asia and Iran. As for Pakistan, it is seen by Indians as the modern-day residue of medieval Muslim domination over India. As the India-Pakistan dispute attests, nationalism is young and vibrant in the subcontinent, as it was in early modern Europe. The India-China rivalry, unlike the India-Pakistan one, is far less emotional because it is not borne of historical grievances. India is quietly testing the United States in Afghanistan, to see to what extent America will remain as a great power in Eurasia.
As the United States and China become great power rivals, the direction in which India tilts could determine the course of geopolitics in Eurasia in the 21st century. India, in other words, looms as the ultimate pivot state. But even as the Indian political class understands at a very intimate level America's own historical and geographical situation, the American political class has no such understanding of India's. Yet, if Americans do not come to grasp India's age-old, highly unstable geopolitics, especially as it concerns Pakistan, Afghanistan and China, they will badly mishandle the relationship.
Indeed, America has come to grief in the past by not understanding local histories. India is much too important for us to commit a similar mistake. In fact, India and South Asia in general have a dangerously misunderstood geography. Understanding that geography delivers one to the core of South Asia's political dilemma, which is about borders that can never be perfect or even acceptable to all sides, so that the map of South Asia resembles that of war-torn, early-modern Europe, made worse by nuclear weapons. Indian history and geography since early antiquity constitutes the genetic code for how the world looks from the vantage point of New Delhi.
The broad arc of territory from Afghanistan southeastward into northern India was for long periods under the embrace of a single polity, so that Afghanistan is linked organically to India, even as Afghanistan matters more crucially to Pakistan. Thus, giving up on Afghanistan would carry momentous geopolitical implications for the United States, as it would affect how elites in New Delhi and other Asian capitals henceforth perceive Washington. Afghanistan is a tipping point for the American projection of power in Eurasia. It will affect at a visceral level how not just Indian, but also Pakistani and Chinese elites, see the United States. And the direction that Afghanistan takes will affect how successful India is in overcoming the problems on its borders in order to emerge as a world-class power. To give readers a rich sense of this, I first delve into South Asian geography and history at some length.
India, thus, is both a subcontinent and a vital extremity of the greater Middle East, with a highly organic relationship to it.
The key to understanding India is the realization that while as a subcontinent India makes eminent geographic sense, its natural boundaries are, nevertheless, quite weak in places. The result has been various states throughout history that do not conform to our spatial idea of India, and in fact lie astride it. In fact, the present Indian state still does not conform to the borders of the subcontinent, and that is the heart of its dilemma: Pakistan, Bangladesh and (to a lesser extent) Nepal also lie within the subcontinent and pose significant security threats to India, robbing India of political energy that it would otherwise harness for power projection throughout much of Eurasia.
Watch a CNAS exclusive interview with Kaplan on South Asia's Geography of Conflict here.