South Asia’s Geopolitical & Strategic Engagement – serie

This book explores how Sri Lanka navigates its foreign policy, addresses security threats, and participates in regional organizations like SAARC and BIMSTEC to influence its geopolitical stance. Sri Lanka's strategic location in the Indian Ocean shapes its complex relationships with India, China, and the United States. Balancing these superpower influences while safeguarding its sovereignty and autonomy is a critical task for its policymakers.The purpose of this work is to look at Sri Lanka’s engagement with the Global superpowers and its geo-strategic and geo-political importance in the region. This sort of engagement shows how the bilateral tensions are also playing out in the extraterritorial region where Sri Lanka and the superpowers like USA, China, India and others are involved because of history, economics, and security reasons. Chapters in this proposed work look at the various facets of Sri Lanka’s engagements with the superpowers as well as with small nations. The book contains both thematic and bilateral issues. The readers will benefit from this comprehensive volume in following ways: (a) They will come to know Sri Lanka’s geo-strategic and geo-political importance in Asia; (b) They will get an idea of how India and China are trying to get involved and compete with one another with regard to Sri Lanka; (c) The readers will understand the role of the superpowers in relation to Sri Lanka; and (d) the readers will get aware of how the major super-powers are contesting against each other in Asia for their benefits.

This book  is  a  critical  articulation  of  Nepal’s connectivity  geopolitics,  offering  a  triangular  analysis  of  the country's  geopolitics,  connectivity  and  foreign  policy.  By elucidating the  interplay  between  these  elements,  it contributes  to  a  deeper  understanding  of  how  smaller  states strategically balance aspirations and trade-offs in navigating   the  contemporary  reality  of  connectivity geopolitics  amidst  competing  global  interests.  Furthermore,  it helps us  examine  how  insights  generated  from  a  country's history  of  strategic  culture  could  be  valuable  in  navigating  the contemporary reality of connectivity geopolitics and why one should not take foreign support for connectivity at face value.The narrative portrays the Cold War and post-Cold War dynamics between superpowers and regional powers like China and India in South Asia, elucidating how their relations shape the region's politics. This study also examines how smaller states such as Nepal establish their agency by navigating external pressures while asserting their strategic interests. By introducing connectivity as an analytical lens, the book transcends the conventional lens of security and small state as approaches to Nepal’s foreign policy. Central to the book's analysis is Nepal's foreign policy and its navigation of regional politics, striving to balance the interests of India and China during the Cold War era and also the contemporary era. Consequently, regional politics emerges as a prominent theme within the book.