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In the strategic consciousness of South Asia, peace is a word that appears only in the aftermath of war. The region continues to conduct its diplomacy in the language of deterrence, its statecraft in the idiom of fear, and its alliances in the logic of exclusion. India, Pakistan, and China remain entangled in a geometry of grievance: a triangle held together not by any shared political imagination but by an inherited architecture of mistrust. What is astonishing, and yet taken for granted, is the absence of any meaningful framework to even conceptualize, let alone initiate, a triangular peace.
Why has South Asia refused to think in threes? Why have India and Pakistan, or India and China, continued to conduct their foreign policies within narrow bilateral enclosures when the structure of their security dilemmas is obviously triangular? This refusal is not accidental; it is symptomatic of a deeper pathology: a fear of interdependence masquerading as sovereignty.
Any argument for a triangular peace among India, Pakistan, and China must begin with a critique of the regional order that pretends bilateralism is sufficient. The Indian state has long believed that its border issues with China can be managed through one diplomatic architecture, while its dispute with Pakistan belongs to another. The same schizophrenia characterizes Pakistan’s relationship with China—strategically indispensable, yet analytically detached from its India-centric worldview. China, for its part, instrumentalizes Pakistan’s grievances with India, even as it claims neutrality.
But geopolitics is rarely so neat. As Stephen Walt reminds us in The Origins of Alliances, states balance not just power, but threat. And threats, especially in regions like South Asia, do not remain confined within the silos we draw for them. The China-Pakistan axis is not simply a transactional partnership—it is a geopolitical formation that deeply conditions India’s strategic imagination. Conversely, India’s assertiveness on the LAC cannot be divorced from its anxieties about encirclement. Each dyad is haunted by the third.
Yet the region lacks even the vocabulary to address this triangle politically. This silence is not just a failure of policy—it is a failure of thought. Why have scholars, think tanks, and diplomatic establishments failed to institutionalize a trilateral track? Where are the proposals for shared protocols, regional confidence-building mechanisms, or multilateral climate diplomacy?
One answer lies in the seductive idea of exceptionalism. India believes its civilizational history entitles it to strategic autonomy. Pakistan, burdened by its origin myth, sees its survival as a form of perpetual resistance. China, having abandoned Deng’s modesty, now frames its rise as historically inevitable. These narratives are not merely rhetorical; they are strategic enclosures that insulate each country from the imperatives of cooperation.
But this insulation is proving unsustainable. The region is now facing transnational crises that make a mockery of sovereignty. Himalayan glaciers—vital to all three states—are vanishing at an alarming pace. Cross-border river basins are under stress. Air pollution does not recognize checkpoints. Neither do cyberattacks, pandemics, or radical ideologies. The fact that India, China, and Pakistan have not initiated any sustained trilateral conversation on climate coordination or ecological management is nothing short of scandalous.
This ecological blindness reflects a deeper epistemic failure. As the historian Sunil Amrith has shown in Unruly Waters, the very story of South Asia’s modernity is one of shared hydrology, entangled ecologies, and overlapping vulnerabilities. That these entanglements have produced no regional consensus is indicative of how much our geopolitical consciousness remains trapped in colonial scaffolding. Each state is playing a 20th-century game in a 21st-century world.
Nor can military deterrence offer an indefinite buffer. The Kargil War, the Balakot episode, and the Galwan standoff are not aberrations—they are reminders that nuclearization has not banished the temptation of limited conflict. As Vipin Narang has argued, the region is increasingly sliding into a space where nuclear posturing coexists with sub-conventional adventurism. That is a recipe not for stability, but for miscalculation.
The temptation, of course, is to manage this condition indefinitely. It is tempting to believe that as long as communication lines are open, backchannels functional, and deterrence stable, peace will somehow endure. But peace built on postponement is peace that corrodes from within. What it produces is not security, but a normalization of insecurity. What it sustains is not order, but anxiety.
To imagine a triangular peace is not to indulge in idealism. It is to recognize that the current strategic imagination has reached the limits of its utility. If diplomacy is to be more than just a crisis response mechanism, it must return to its moral and intellectual foundations: the capacity to imagine political alternatives to permanent confrontation. As Hedley Bull warned, a system that institutionalizes war as its organizing principle will ultimately erode its own legitimacy.
The real challenge, then, is not geopolitical but philosophical: Can South Asia develop a political imagination that transcends its colonial inheritance and ideological fixations? Can it shift from being a theatre of deterrence to a forum for negotiation? Can it cultivate the epistemic humility to recognize that interdependence is not weakness, but the condition of survival?
India, with its democratic ethos and civilizational depth, is uniquely placed to lead such a shift. But it must resist the seductions of hubris. It must move beyond the idiom of retribution and reclaim the art of negotiation—not as concession, but as statecraft. Pakistan must realize that strategic depth has become strategic debt. China must understand that influence without legitimacy is a fragile asset.
None of this will be easy. It is far simpler to sustain enmity than to construct peace. But regions are not condemned to repeat their past. They are condemned only if they refuse to think beyond it. South Asia today needs not a perfect solution, but a new starting point—a forum, a mechanism, even a conversation—that accepts the triangle for what it is: not a trap, but a potential architecture for peace.
In the end, the failure to imagine a triangular peace is not a failure of strategy—it is a failure of courage. And perhaps that is the gravest crisis in South Asia today: not the absence of power, but the absence of imagination.
By: Zahid Sultan (Freelance Researcher. PhD in Politics and Governance from Central University of Kashmir. Email: Zahidcuk36@gmail.com
Irshad Ahmad Bhat (Pursuing PhD in Political Science) Email: bhatirshad81@gmail.com
These pieces are being published as they have been received – they have not been edited/fact-checked by ThePrint.