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Is India Over-Extended? When Domestic Disorder Precludes Regional Intervention
| Title: | Is India Over-Extended? When Domestic Disorder Precludes Regional Intervention | | Author: | Neil Devotta | | Publication: | Contemporary South Asia / Routledge, part of the Taylor & Francis Group | | Enumeration: | Vol. 12, No. 3 / September 2003, pp.: 365 - 380 | | Abstract: | Why did India not go to Sri Lanka's rescue in May 2000 when the island's leadership begged it to intervene to save nearly 40,000 soldiers who were close to being captured by the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)? India's disinclination to get involved, even as Pakistan, China and Israel provided arms to Sri Lanka, raises the question of whether the country is still committed to the Indira Doctrine (which operates as India's equivalent of the United States' Monroe Doctrine in South Asia). This paper agrees that India remains fully committed to being the dominant regional power and a significant global power. It also argues that India will not hesitate to protect its national security interests. However, this paper suggests that domestic pressures, especially those emanating from Kashmir and the country's northeast, may have left India militarily overextended, especially during the late 1990s, and thereby prevented the country from flexing its military capabilities in the region as it did in the 1980s. Such a scenario not only hampers India's ability to operate as an efficient and dependable regional begemon, but also may have adverse ramifications for South Asia's smaller states.
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