Rajesh Basrur
Biographic Data
| ID | 4096680 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Rajesh Basrur |
| GIVEN NAMES | Rajesh |
| FAMILY NAME | Basrur |
| SIGNATURE | BASRUR R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Nanyang Technological University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 34 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1985 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
India’s Nuclear Dynamics with China and Pakistan in the Maritime Domain
With the development of nuclear ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs), India’s nuclear deterrence has entered the maritime domain, and other capabilities such as sea-based nuclear cruise missiles and missile defence could follow. Since New Delhi’s sea-based cruise missiles and missile defence will not significantly reshape its deterrence against Beijing, the main issues between these two Asian powers are the Indian SSBN and the naval dynamics in w…
Indian Nuclear Policy: A Neoclassical Realist Analysis
This article draws its analytical approach from neoclassical realism (NCR). It focuses on empirical evidence that explains (a) India’s reluctance to adopt nuclear weapons as the basis of national defence; (b) the decision to drop its reluctance and officially make nuclear weapons the foundation of national security; (c) the adoption of a minimalist approach to deterrence as a starting point for national policy; (d) the subsequent partial shift aw…
India’s conventional strategy in a nuclear environment: A neglected link
Indian military strategy has tended to neglect the link between the conventional and nuclear domains in a nuclear weapons environment. We argue that this anomaly is evident in two broad areas: the conception of “war,” and the complexity produced by new technologies that span the two domains. First, we show with empirical evidence that “limited war” in a nuclear environment is misnomer: the reality is more appropriately called “marginal conflict” …
Covid-19 and international cooperation: IR paradigms at odds
Modi’s India and Japan: Nested strategic partnerships
India–China Maritime Competition: The Security Dilemma at Sea
India’s Pakistan problem: Operation Parakram revisited
Why did India launch and later withdraw from the exercise in coercive diplomacy – Operation Parakram – against Pakistan in response to the attack on India’s Parliament by terrorists based in that country? This paper marshals factors operating at the systemic, state and individual/small-group levels of analysis to show that, despite the paucity of evidence on decisionmaking of the kind required for an effective foreign policy analysis (FPA) approa…
India and China: A Managed Nuclear Rivalry
Between June and August of 2017, a major military confrontation occurred between Indian and Chinese troops at Doklam, an area close to the Sino-Indian border disputed by Bhutan and China.1 A Chines
Brokering peace in nuclear environments: U.S. crisis management in south Asia
This is a timely book. Its significance is underlined by the outbreak of yet another India–Pakistan crisis following India's March 2019 air strikes in the Pakistan-held portion of Kashmir, in response to a violent attack on its forces by militants based there. This intractable nuclear rivalry has drawn significant analytical attention, but much of it has focused on the problem of stability/instability. This in itself is an unexceptionable concern…
Indian Foreign Policy under Modi: A New Brand or Just Repackaging
This forum comes from a 2016 panel at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association. The forum participants offered midterm assessments of the foreign policy of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This forum considers whether Modi heralded in a new era in Indian foreign policy, or whether Modi's policies just repackaged older policies. The authors in this forum answer these questions by focusing on a range of issues from the role o…
Introduction: Revisiting the security dilemma through the lens of India–China relations
This introduction explains the rationale for this special issue of Asian Security. It begins with a short discussion about the relevance and the utility of the term “security dilemma” in international relations. The concept, which emerged during the Cold War, has since been used extensively to describe India-China relations. This special issue attempts to add to our understanding of the India–China relationship as well as to contribute to enrichi…
India–Pakistan Rivalry: Endless Duel
The enduring rivalry between India and Pakistan has produced a substantial literature over the years.1 The books under review show how much the conflict remains center stage. The India–Pakistan bor
Modi's foreign policy fundamentals: A Trajectory Unchanged
The advent of Narendra Modi as prime minister has produced considerable debate about the direction that Indian foreign policy might take under his stewardship. While there are diverse ways in which one might assess Modi's foreign policy vis-à-vis the major powers, three overarching questions are of central importance. First, given his reputation as a staunch Hindu nationalist, to what extent do his ideological leanings influence Modi's foreign po…
China, India and Pakistan: Models for an intermediate stage towards disarmament
As the USA and Russia seek to reduce their nuclear arsenals en route to universal disarmament, they are hamstrung by the lack of a doctrinal basis for minimum deterrence. The cold war debate between Albert Wohlstetter and Patrick Blackett remains valid today. Though Wohlstetter's ideas, which produced large arsenals, remain influential, an examination of the history of nuclear rivalries shows that Blackett's thinking—offering security with more c…
Two Decades of Minimum Deterrence in South Asia: A Comparative Framework
A review of two decades of the India-Pakistan nuclear relationship shows that, like all nuclear rivalries, deterrence works at a minimal level regardless of beliefs about the requirements of deterrence. Also, like other nuclear rivalries, it displays a fundamentally schizophrenic behaviour pattern. When conflict draws close, India and Pakistan completely reject the usability of nuclear weapons and ignore the tenets of deterrence theory and doctri…
Global Quest and Regional Reversal: Rising India and South Asia
The end of the Cold War coincided with a significant change in India’s relationship with the rest of the world. The somnolent elephant awoke to energize itself by liberalizing its economy and quickly emerged as a potential major power in global politics. From the standpoint of its neighbours in South Asia, there might well be cause for anxiety. India has long been viewed as a hegemonic power in the region. Do the strengthening sinews of the regio…
Theory for Strategy: Emerging India in a Changing World
The realist school of thought in international relations theory, under attack in the post-Cold War era for its numerous failings, has turned away from its focus on system structure to a refined version of its earlier form, which also focused on domestic factors and policy choice. But the neoclassical school neglects important systemic dynamics arising from variations in levels of economic and strategic interdependence. A refined neoclassical appr…
Scholarship on India’s International Relations
An assessment of scholarship on India’s International Relations (IIR) shows some significant weaknesses. At the global level, the discipline has not kept pace with rising interest in India. There is an appreciable degree of theoretical content in IIR, but it is relatively narrow in range. At the Asian level, interest in IIR is weak and, with exceptions, lacks engagement with theory as well as breadth of scope. In India, the discipline exhibits a …
South Asia's Cold War: Nuclear Weapons and Conflict in Comparative Perspective
This book is a ground-breaking analysis of the India-Pakistan nuclear confrontation as a form of ‘cold war’ – that is, a hostile relationship between nuclear rivals. Drawing on nuclear rivalries between similar pairs (United States-Soviet Union, United States-China, Soviet Union-China, and United States-North Korea), the work examines the rise, process and potential end of the cold war between India and Pakistan. It identifies the three factors d…
Do Small Arsenals Deter
January 01 2008 Do Small Arsenals Deter? Rajesh M. Basrur, Rajesh M. Basrur Rajesh M. Basrur is Associate Professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, and Director at the Centre for Global Studies in Mumbai, India. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Michael D. Cohen, Michael D. Cohen Michael D. Cohen is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Politi…
Decentralizing Theory: Regional International Politics
International Relations Theory and Minimum Deterrence
Nuclear command-and-control and strategic politics in South Asia
This paper analyses the conceptual elements of command-and-control, and argues that control is the more important. It then offers a discussion of the relationship between control and strategic stability, which provides some novel insights into the nature of the India– Pakistan nuclear relationship. Following a discussion of the factors that act for and against stability in the region, the paper offers some concluding thoughts about measures to pr…
Kargil, terrorism, and India's strategic shift
Nuclear Weapons and Indian Strategic Culture
The persistence of restraint, stability and minimalism in India's nuclear policy is best explained with reference to its strategic culture. This constitutes an intermediate structure between the power-acquisition imperative of the structure of the international system and domestic choices on how power is actually constituted. Disaggregation of strategic culture into three analytically distinct components - the level of assumptions and beliefs, th…
Scholarship on India’s International Relations
An assessment of scholarship on India’s International Relations (IIR) shows some significant weaknesses. At the global level, the discipline has not kept pace with rising interest in India. There is an appreciable degree of theoretical content in IIR, but it is relatively narrow in range. At the Asian level, interest in IIR is weak and, with exceptions, lacks engagement with theory as well as breadth of scope. In India, the discipline exhibits a …
Nuclear Weapons and Indian Strategic Culture
The persistence of restraint, stability and minimalism in India's nuclear policy is best explained with reference to its strategic culture. This constitutes an intermediate structure between the power-acquisition imperative of the structure of the international system and domestic choices on how power is actually constituted. Disaggregation of strategic culture into three analytically distinct components - the level of assumptions and beliefs, th…
Modi's foreign policy fundamentals: A Trajectory Unchanged
The advent of Narendra Modi as prime minister has produced considerable debate about the direction that Indian foreign policy might take under his stewardship. While there are diverse ways in which one might assess Modi's foreign policy vis-à-vis the major powers, three overarching questions are of central importance. First, given his reputation as a staunch Hindu nationalist, to what extent do his ideological leanings influence Modi's foreign po…
Modi’s India and Japan: Nested strategic partnerships
Indian Foreign Policy under Modi: A New Brand or Just Repackaging
This forum comes from a 2016 panel at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association. The forum participants offered midterm assessments of the foreign policy of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This forum considers whether Modi heralded in a new era in Indian foreign policy, or whether Modi's policies just repackaged older policies. The authors in this forum answer these questions by focusing on a range of issues from the role o…
Global Quest and Regional Reversal: Rising India and South Asia
The end of the Cold War coincided with a significant change in India’s relationship with the rest of the world. The somnolent elephant awoke to energize itself by liberalizing its economy and quickly emerged as a potential major power in global politics. From the standpoint of its neighbours in South Asia, there might well be cause for anxiety. India has long been viewed as a hegemonic power in the region. Do the strengthening sinews of the regio…
Kargil, terrorism, and India's strategic shift
Indian Nuclear Policy: A Neoclassical Realist Analysis
This article draws its analytical approach from neoclassical realism (NCR). It focuses on empirical evidence that explains (a) India’s reluctance to adopt nuclear weapons as the basis of national defence; (b) the decision to drop its reluctance and officially make nuclear weapons the foundation of national security; (c) the adoption of a minimalist approach to deterrence as a starting point for national policy; (d) the subsequent partial shift aw…
India’s Pakistan problem: Operation Parakram revisited
Why did India launch and later withdraw from the exercise in coercive diplomacy – Operation Parakram – against Pakistan in response to the attack on India’s Parliament by terrorists based in that country? This paper marshals factors operating at the systemic, state and individual/small-group levels of analysis to show that, despite the paucity of evidence on decisionmaking of the kind required for an effective foreign policy analysis (FPA) approa…
Theory of International Politics: Limitations of Political Realism
In the increasingly uneasy world of today, when the notion of a “balance of terror” no longer seems a jaded and unlikely description of the human condition, the concerned thinker, fearful of the future, must pause to reconsider the relevance of the dominant mode of thought in international retations. This paper seeks to examine the fundamental question whether political realism, for long the dominant mode of thought in international politics, can…
In Retrospect: A Reappraisal of Soviet Policy in South Asia
Structure and Interaction in the Global System
Nuclear Weapons and Indian Strategic Culture
The persistence of restraint, stability and minimalism in India's nuclear policy is best explained with reference to its strategic culture. This constitutes an intermediate structure between the power-acquisition imperative of the structure of the international system and domestic choices on how power is actually constituted. Disaggregation of strategic culture into three analytically distinct components - the level of assumptions and beliefs, th…
Kargil, terrorism, and India's strategic shift
International Relations Theory and Minimum Deterrence
Nuclear command-and-control and strategic politics in South Asia
This paper analyses the conceptual elements of command-and-control, and argues that control is the more important. It then offers a discussion of the relationship between control and strategic stability, which provides some novel insights into the nature of the India– Pakistan nuclear relationship. Following a discussion of the factors that act for and against stability in the region, the paper offers some concluding thoughts about measures to pr…
Decentralizing Theory: Regional International Politics
South Asia's Cold War: Nuclear Weapons and Conflict in Comparative Perspective
This book is a ground-breaking analysis of the India-Pakistan nuclear confrontation as a form of ‘cold war’ – that is, a hostile relationship between nuclear rivals. Drawing on nuclear rivalries between similar pairs (United States-Soviet Union, United States-China, Soviet Union-China, and United States-North Korea), the work examines the rise, process and potential end of the cold war between India and Pakistan. It identifies the three factors d…
Do Small Arsenals Deter
January 01 2008 Do Small Arsenals Deter? Rajesh M. Basrur, Rajesh M. Basrur Rajesh M. Basrur is Associate Professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, and Director at the Centre for Global Studies in Mumbai, India. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Michael D. Cohen, Michael D. Cohen Michael D. Cohen is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Politi…
Theory for Strategy: Emerging India in a Changing World
The realist school of thought in international relations theory, under attack in the post-Cold War era for its numerous failings, has turned away from its focus on system structure to a refined version of its earlier form, which also focused on domestic factors and policy choice. But the neoclassical school neglects important systemic dynamics arising from variations in levels of economic and strategic interdependence. A refined neoclassical appr…
Scholarship on India’s International Relations
An assessment of scholarship on India’s International Relations (IIR) shows some significant weaknesses. At the global level, the discipline has not kept pace with rising interest in India. There is an appreciable degree of theoretical content in IIR, but it is relatively narrow in range. At the Asian level, interest in IIR is weak and, with exceptions, lacks engagement with theory as well as breadth of scope. In India, the discipline exhibits a …
Two Decades of Minimum Deterrence in South Asia: A Comparative Framework
A review of two decades of the India-Pakistan nuclear relationship shows that, like all nuclear rivalries, deterrence works at a minimal level regardless of beliefs about the requirements of deterrence. Also, like other nuclear rivalries, it displays a fundamentally schizophrenic behaviour pattern. When conflict draws close, India and Pakistan completely reject the usability of nuclear weapons and ignore the tenets of deterrence theory and doctri…
Global Quest and Regional Reversal: Rising India and South Asia
The end of the Cold War coincided with a significant change in India’s relationship with the rest of the world. The somnolent elephant awoke to energize itself by liberalizing its economy and quickly emerged as a potential major power in global politics. From the standpoint of its neighbours in South Asia, there might well be cause for anxiety. India has long been viewed as a hegemonic power in the region. Do the strengthening sinews of the regio…
China, India and Pakistan: Models for an intermediate stage towards disarmament
As the USA and Russia seek to reduce their nuclear arsenals en route to universal disarmament, they are hamstrung by the lack of a doctrinal basis for minimum deterrence. The cold war debate between Albert Wohlstetter and Patrick Blackett remains valid today. Though Wohlstetter's ideas, which produced large arsenals, remain influential, an examination of the history of nuclear rivalries shows that Blackett's thinking—offering security with more c…
India–Pakistan Rivalry: Endless Duel
The enduring rivalry between India and Pakistan has produced a substantial literature over the years.1 The books under review show how much the conflict remains center stage. The India–Pakistan bor
Modi's foreign policy fundamentals: A Trajectory Unchanged
The advent of Narendra Modi as prime minister has produced considerable debate about the direction that Indian foreign policy might take under his stewardship. While there are diverse ways in which one might assess Modi's foreign policy vis-à-vis the major powers, three overarching questions are of central importance. First, given his reputation as a staunch Hindu nationalist, to what extent do his ideological leanings influence Modi's foreign po…
Indian Foreign Policy under Modi: A New Brand or Just Repackaging
This forum comes from a 2016 panel at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association. The forum participants offered midterm assessments of the foreign policy of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This forum considers whether Modi heralded in a new era in Indian foreign policy, or whether Modi's policies just repackaged older policies. The authors in this forum answer these questions by focusing on a range of issues from the role o…
Introduction: Revisiting the security dilemma through the lens of India–China relations
This introduction explains the rationale for this special issue of Asian Security. It begins with a short discussion about the relevance and the utility of the term “security dilemma” in international relations. The concept, which emerged during the Cold War, has since been used extensively to describe India-China relations. This special issue attempts to add to our understanding of the India–China relationship as well as to contribute to enrichi…
India–China Maritime Competition: The Security Dilemma at Sea
India’s Pakistan problem: Operation Parakram revisited
Why did India launch and later withdraw from the exercise in coercive diplomacy – Operation Parakram – against Pakistan in response to the attack on India’s Parliament by terrorists based in that country? This paper marshals factors operating at the systemic, state and individual/small-group levels of analysis to show that, despite the paucity of evidence on decisionmaking of the kind required for an effective foreign policy analysis (FPA) approa…
India and China: A Managed Nuclear Rivalry
Between June and August of 2017, a major military confrontation occurred between Indian and Chinese troops at Doklam, an area close to the Sino-Indian border disputed by Bhutan and China.1 A Chines
Brokering peace in nuclear environments: U.S. crisis management in south Asia
This is a timely book. Its significance is underlined by the outbreak of yet another India–Pakistan crisis following India's March 2019 air strikes in the Pakistan-held portion of Kashmir, in response to a violent attack on its forces by militants based there. This intractable nuclear rivalry has drawn significant analytical attention, but much of it has focused on the problem of stability/instability. This in itself is an unexceptionable concern…
Covid-19 and international cooperation: IR paradigms at odds
Modi’s India and Japan: Nested strategic partnerships
Political science (26 works) · Law (20 works) · Economics (17 works) · International Relations and Foreign Policy (15 works) · Law (15 works) · Politics (13 works) · Sociology (12 works) · South Asian Studies and Conflicts (10 works) · Global Peace and Security Dynamics (9 works) · Political economy (9 works)