India as Global Security Actor

Thanks to sustained economic growth and key investments in military capabilities, India will face growing demands from within and the international community to seek and play a greater role in global security affairs. The values and interests likely to guide India’s future behavior will be a mixture of old and new, eastern and western. India’s international aspirations have an important pre-history, covered in this chapter’s first section where non-alignment, as idea and practice, is explored for its enduring significance. India’s relevance as a security actor is assessed in terms of its activities and capacity to influence developments within two security zones of major contemporary importance: Afghanistan and the Indian Ocean. Finally, a section on the constraints and challenges examines India’s ability to navigate a multi-polar world, the fallout and gains of nuclearization, the 2008 Indo-US nuclear deal, as well as ‘the weaknesses from within’ in terms of human security.