The Geoeconomic Simulacrum of BRI and the South Asian Regional Security Complex

AbstractThe Belt and Road Initiative rattled the South Asian security environment vigorously as it involved strong territorial sensitivities of India, which found itself engaged on two fronts with Pakistan and China. The BRI has been the geoeconomic drive projecting China’s peaceful rise. It has been welcomed with hope and suspicion as Western powers are equally interested in containing China in the Asian order. This paper examines BRI as a source of external transformation to the regional security complex model devised by Buzan. South Asia’s inadequacies in bringing internal transformation, as envisioned by Buzan, allow the BRI to be a source of cold peace in the region. The BRI looks at decentered region-building with an appeal of great power overlay. This tier is relevant in diluting the South Asia geopolitical polarities. The paper claims that BRI influences South Asian geopolitics, where India and Pakistan are no longer locked into bipolarities. The smaller states are bandwagoning with China, and that calibrates the South Asian regional security complex. The cold peace laced with geoeconomic transformation can render a regional transformation to the security complex such that the South Asian regional security complex might dissipate into two or more mini-complexes. DISCLOSURE STATEMENTThe author reports that there are no competing interests to declare.Additional informationNotes on contributorsAmbrish DhakaAmbrish Dhaka is a faculty for Afghanistan Studies in the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He was a Visiting Professor of South Asian Studies at Fudan University, Shanghai, China, during March-April 2012. He did his Masters in Geography with a specialization in Political Geography. He gives Masters and PhD courses on South Asia and Afghanistan Studies at the SIS, JNU, namely, 1. Geopolitics of Afghanistan, and 2. Ethnicity, religion and politics of Afghanistan. He also gives the PhD scholars a specialized technical course on GIS for Area Studies. He has about 24 years of teaching experience. He has supervised 15 PhDs and 26 Mphils successfully. His areas of interest/specialization are 1. Political Geography, 2. Geopolitics, 3. International Relations, 3. Area Studies in South Asia, Central Asia, Eurasia and Afghanistan, 4. Energy Studies. He is an Information Technology enthusiast specializing in GIS software, Python and R Programming languages. He has developed a methodological approach to Social Media Analytics and Data Analytics in IR. He has nearly 20 years of exposure to Linux platforms. He has published 24 papers, 16 chapters, and a book to his credit. His publications are available on Academia.edu. E-mail: ambijat@gmail.com