The notion of collective security has always been attractive for students of international affairs. Yet, it has also been the most elusive in practice. Throughout the evolution of Westphalian system of international relations, many saw that the concept of collective security was the only alternative to perpetual war and conflict. Rooted in the principle of "all for one and one for all", the idea of collective security posits that peace cannot be secured in an environment of self-help and balance of power. This notion is contested by realists who insist that pursuit of power, conflict and hegemony are natural conditions of international system and that it is not possible for states to put collective interest above that of the national interest. The context of this age-old argument, however, has been transformed in recent decades amidst the rise of a number of new concepts such as common security, comprehensive security, cooperative security, and human security. Common security emphasizes the reality of interdependence among adversarial states and the importance of developing shared perspectives. Comprehensive security brings into consideration many traditional non-military challenges. The proponents of human security challenge the traditional state-centric model of security and demand that peace and well being of the individual receive the primary focus.

It is easy to argue from the traditional perspective that given the deep divisions and security problems within the Subcontinent, the idea of collective security is an unattainable in the foreseeable future. Could "collective self-defence"--a lesser form than collective security be considered an appropriate model for South Asia? Different regions in recent history—most notably Europe and South East Asia—have put in place varying forms of collective self-defence arrangements. Collective self-defence was successful in Europe given the common threat faced by the West European nations during the Cold War from the Soviet Union. Under the leadership of the United States, the West European states found it necessary to bury their past differences which led to a series of wars and face the perceived all-encompassing threat from the Soviet Union in a united manner. In South East Asia, too, shared internal and external threats allowed security cooperation among the regional states.

South Asia, however, has found it hard to emulate either West Europe which had alliance-based collective defence arrangements or South East Asia with is looser forms of regional cooperation. While the Cold War dynamics forced stronger forms of cooperation in West Europe and South East Asia, they sharpened the intra-regional security problems in the Subcontinent. The problems between India and Pakistan that arose out of the Partition got accentuated by the impact of the Cold War. India and Pakistan joined the opposing coalitions of the global Cold War. While the alliances they formed—Pakistan with U.S. and China and India with the Soviet Union—seemed to provide stability at one level, they also created the conditions for long-term instability in the region. The combination of regional and global dynamics meant that let alone collective security or collective self-defence the states of South Asia found it impossible to have even normal neighbourly relations. While South Asia is a long way from implementing either collective security or collective self-defence, the traditional debate on security in the region has been altered by the impulses of globalization as well as regional developments.

SOUTH ASIAN SECURITY AFTER THE COLD WAR
The end of the Cold War at the global level did not match any of the expectations for a peace dividend in South Asia. At first cut, the 1990s seemed a depressing decade for the Subcontinent in terms of peace and development. The early hopeful signs of democratization at the turn of the decade vanished into thin air by the time the new millennium arrived. The Army returned to the centre-stage in Pakistan amidst the incompetence of its political class. Democratic politics in Nepal failed to deliver, and the parliamentary system in Bangladesh degenerated into a war of bandhs. The rapid dissipation of the hopes for more representative and effective governance in the Subcontinent during the 1990s was accompanied by the rise of religious extremism and anti-modernism in the region, exemplified most significantly by the Taliban in Afghanistan. The northwestern parts of the Subcontinent became the epicentre of terrorism in the world--with an impact that ranged from Tanzania to Tajikistan and Manhattan to Mindanao. In India, the destructive trail of the Hindutva ideology moved from the demolition of the Babri Masjid to the gruesome communal riots during early 2002 in Gujarat. Civil wars from Kashmir to Jaffna meanwhile raged on, with victims countless for any one to enumerate. The introduction of nuclear weapons, covertly at the turn of the 1990s and overtly at the end of the decade, combined the weapons of mass destruction with violence, terrorism, jihad and inter-state conflict. All optimism for the future of the Subcontinent—either in terms of internal security or inter-state security—appeared to have been smothered.

Yet the very negative developments in the Subcontinent carried within them the seeds of a radical transformation of the region. The international impact of the extremist forces—dramatised on September 11 2001—inevitably drew retribution from the sole super power of the international system. Never mind the irony that it was the U.S. policy of pitting jihadis against godless Soviet Communists in Afghanistan in the 1980s that produced Osama bin Ladin and his jihadi allies. The American War on terrorism has had its intended and unintended consequences. The Taliban was ousted, and the Army in Pakistan has become the instrument to clean up the jihadi mess that was nurtured by it in the 1980s and 1990s. Equally important, it has focused international attention on the Subcontinent and its intra-state and inter-state wars. Never in the past has the international system paid so much attention to the problems of regional security in South Asia. During the Cold War the external environment complicated the security politics of South Asia. Now an external environment may be emerging that is favourable to a reasonable resolution of South Asia's security challenges.

The accumulated impact of globalization on the politics and economics of the Subcontinent over the last decade has begun to reveal a radical transformation. The Indo-Pak military confrontation since the attack on Parliament on December 13 has brought the Anglo-American powers into play in a manner that has not been seen since the early 1960s. The prospect, however remote, of a war between India and Pakistan escalating into a nuclear exchange has forced the international community to explore a final resolution of the underlying political conflict between the Subcontinental rivals. The Kashmir question is not the only one among the regional conflicts that is on the Anglo-American radar. The expansive American war on terrorism has brought the United States, with Britain in tow, and the European Union into a political effort to deal with the other security challenges in South Asia—the tragic war in Sri Lanka and the Maoist insurgency in Nepal. The world has begun to impinge on the Subcontinent. Along with the global war on terror that is focused on Afghanistan, there have been Anglo-American efforts to defuse the Indo-Pak tensions, the Norwegian mediation between the Singhalese and Tamils in Sri Lanka, and the international initiative on Nepal led by Britain. The security dynamics of the Subcontinent are being altered irreversibly.

But external environment alone is not enough to resolve regional security problems. It needs political courage and statesmanship within the region to grasp the new challenges as well as opportunities for peace and development in the subcontinent. To some extent the pressures from below are already forcing states in the region to act more purposefully. After a series of military crises and real wars, India and Pakistan have finally recognised the importance of a sustained bilateral engagement that would involve both bilateral cooperation and conflict resolution. There is also recognition throughout South Asia that the time has come deal with the civil wars within the region in a more innovative and political manner rather than trying to deal with them as law and order problems. The current efforts at peace within the region can at best be characterised as "work in progress" with no guaranteed prospect of success. But there is no denying the fact that the assumptions and premises on how to end conflict have begun to be questioned and revised in a fundamental manner. That is a reason for hope.

More subtle, but even more significant, has been the consequences of economic globalization in the 1990s. Under pressure from the "Washington Consensus", all nations of the Subcontinent have adopted liberal economic policies. As they open up their markets to the world, the South Asian states are discovering that they cannot keep them closed to their own neighbour, India. While Islamabad continues to resist normal trade relations with New Delhi, some of the smaller countries of the region have begun to acknowledge that their economic future is now intertwined with that of India. There is no escape from the logic of globalisation that demands deeper trade relations and economic integration with India. Meanwhile proposals for mega-projects for pipelines and transportation corridors, straddling across borders in South Asia, promise to further deepen economic integration in the Subcontinent.
Whatever might be its other negative consequences, the relentless pressures of globalization are helping to break down the economic walls within the Subcontinent. Trade volumes within South Asia have begun to surge, although entirely in India's favour at the moment. Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are among the top ten export destinations for Indian goods. Nothing less than a reversal of the economic Partition of the Subcontinent is now on the cards. After the Partition divided British India into separate states, insular economic policies and political differences had made borders into high-security barriers. Now globalization offers the prospect of transforming these borders into zones of economic cooperation and reconnect regions that were once part of the same economic and cultural space.

INDIA: TOWARDS POSITIVE UNILATERALISM
For all its own internal difficulties, the task of leading the region towards economic modernization, political moderation, and social development inevitably falls on New Delhi. One of the most significant developments in India since 1991 has been radical rethinking about the relevance of a more effective regionalism in the subcontinent and a sea change in the Indian policy towards her smaller neighbors. This was based on the recognition of the acute crisis that had enveloped India's relations with her neighbours at the turn of the 1990s. At the heart of the changing Indian policy towards the neighbors is the so-called "Gujral doctrine'', named after Inder Kumar Gujral who served as the external affairs minister during 1996-97 and as prime minister during 1997-98. Mr. Gujral's willingness to go more than half the distance in resolving the long-standing problems of the Subcontinent was followed by his successors. Although the doctrine was named after Mr. Gujral, given his enthusiastic articulation of it, the broad lines of it were followed by the government of P.V. Narasimha Rao, (1991-96) and that of Vajpayee, who followed Gujral. Yashwant Sinha, foreign minister under the BJP led coalition explicitly acknowledged the debt to his predecessors and the Vajpayee government's commitment to take it forward. He has coined a new expression for the core of "Gujral Doctrine", namely to "institutionalizing positive asymmetry in favour of our neighbours".

No state bases its policy on altruism. India's new regional policy has been guided by three imperatives. First is the recognition that India cannot fulfill its aspirations for a larger international profile without addressing its problems in the neighbourhood. The real tensions in India's relations with all its neighbours will act as a huge fetter on its attempts to become a major power on the global scene. India cannot run away from its neighbourhood. However frustrating it might be, there is no alternative available for Indian diplomacy other than a substantive and patient engagement of its neighbours.

Second, as it coped with the emerging globalisation of regional security, India had to discard much of its traditional baggage about the role of other major powers in the subcontinent. Shedding the past suspicion of the major powers has become necessary. In the past, New Delhi had sought to keep the other powers out of the region, claiming some kind of an exclusive mandate as a regional power to manage the affairs of the Subcontinent. That approach has been neither credible nor effective. New Delhi does not have the luxury of pursuing a kind of Monroe doctrine for the region. Instead of trying to keep other powers out of the region, India must work with them to promote economic modernization, social harmony, and political moderation. The old way of looking at the internationalisation of South Asian security is to define it as a set back. The other is to take advantage of the trend to achieve India's interests. India's focus is slowly shifting away from mechanics to political outcomes.

Third, India has begun to recognise that it has a huge stake in the rapid economic development of its neighbourhood. The economic performance of India has been the best in South Asia during the decade of 1990s. But that rapid development is no guarantor of stability in South Asia. Without all boats rising in South Asia at the same time, India can neither prosper nor be secure. While globalisation is chipping away at the notion of South Asia as an exclusive sphere of influence of India, it is reinforcing the primacy of the Indian market in the long-term evolution of the South Asian economies. The integration of the markets of the Subcontinent over the coming decades is inevitable. This has opened the doors for unilateral Indian initiatives to promote economic integration and political stability in South Asia.

Globalization is beckoning India with the prospect of resolving long-standing conflicts in the region and re-integrating the South Asian market. If India can think big and act bold, a prosperous Subcontinent is within the realm of political imagination. An Indian strategy to shape such a future would involve shedding excessive suspicion of other great powers, finding ways to act in cooperation with them, and discarding the old slogans on "internationalisation", 'bilateralism' and 'reciprocity'. Such a strategy must consider unilateral economic actions that will accelerate integration of the region. Instead embarking on tortuous bilateral negotiations on trade with the smaller neighbours, India can alter the economic dynamics of the region through unilateral actions. Security multilateralism and positive economic unilateralism from India are the keys to a different future in the Subcontinent.

TOWARDS COOPERATIVE SECURITY
While collective security and collective self-defence will remain unrealisable goals, the changed global and regional context allows the nations of the Subcontinent to pursue cooperative security. Unlike "collective security", cooperative security is not rooted in idealist notions of how the world ought to be. Cooperative security also accepts the reality on the ground that an alliance like relationship between India and all her neighbours is not possible in the foreseeable future. But the idea of cooperative security recognises the reality of profound interdependence among the South Asian nations in both economic and security realms. The imperatives of this new interdependence range from common steps to avoid a nuclear war between India and Pakistan to the implementation of a free trade area in the Subcontinent. It could indeed be argued that the outlines of such a cooperative security regime in South Asia have begun to emerge. The challenge now is to lend political energy to the processes of problem-solving and accelerate wide ranging regional cooperation.

The Twelfth SAARC summit has helped lift the profound veil of pessimism that had engulfed the prospects for SAARC. The signing of a framework free trade agreement has launched a new era of cooperation in hard areas of commerce and trade. While many elements of detail need to be sorted out, the agreement to create SAFTA is indeed a turning point in the evolution of South Asian regionalism and has restored the intuitional credibility of SAARC. The Twelfth SAARC Summit has also opened the doors for thinking about trans-border energy cooperation and even bolder concepts such as common currency. It has also talked about engaging other regional groupings and nations to widen the ambit of regional and trans-regional economic integration. While much hard work remains to be done, it has created the basis for optimism about future direction of regionalism in the subcontinent.

Cooperative security is premised on the assumption that states will act in their own self-interest. That self-interest is evident in the case for regional free trade and trans-border energy cooperation. Yet, states in the region have been unable to act even when it serves their own national interest. While Sri Lanka has shown a forward-looking vision for economic cooperation, the same cannot be said about others. Bangladesh seems reluctant to follow the logic of regional integration despite being increasingly tied to the Indian economy. Pakistan too holds back on beneficial economic regionalism, citing the importance of settling the question of Jammu and Kashmir first. Negative thinking is also pervasive in New Delhi, where the tunnel vision and tight-fistedness of its economic bureaucracy is constraining rather than facilitating the integration of the Subcontinent. Despite the dramatic surge in its exports to its South Asian neighbours and much slower rise in imports from the neighbours during the 1990s, India has been niggardly in opening its market.

South Asians nations have wallowed in poverty for so long and marketed it abroad for aid, that they find it hard to conceive of shared prosperity through greater economic integration. Breaking out of this cycle is possible only if South Asian states move towards depoliticise issues of economic cooperation and build the habits of cooperative security. Depoliticisation of economic cooperation need not mean avoiding the negotiation on long-standing political disputes. Finding final settlements to difficult issues, completing the negotiations on delineation of boundaries, respecting the security concerns of others are all in the self-interest of individual nations of South Asia. The temptation to put either one—conflict resolution and normalisation of bilateral relations--ahead of the other has resulted in lack of movement on both fronts. Cooperative security demands walking on both legs—expanding economic cooperation wherever possible and making sustained efforts to resolve political disputes.
ds walking on both legs—expanding economic cooperation wherever possible and making sustained efforts to resolve political disputes.

The writer is Professor of South Asian Studies at the School of International Studies,
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi