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THE CHANGING POLITICAL-MILITARYENVIRONMENT SOUTH ASIAThe protection environment in South Asia has remained relatively un-settledsince the Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests of May 1998. TheIndian governments efforts to publicly emphasize the challengesChina posed in the weeks leading up to those testsafter more thana decade of mostly sotto voce complaintsserved to rupture the or-dinarilyglacial process of normalizing Sino-Indian relations. Thisprocess always possessed a certain fragility in that the gradually de-creasingtensions along the Sino-Indian parry did not automaticallytranslate into increased trust between Beijing and New Delhi. Evenas both sides sought to derive tactical advantages from the confi-dence- expression measures they had negotiated since 1993for ex-ample,the drawdown of forces along the utterly inhospitable LAC inthe Hima sitaseach ended up pursuing larger grand strategies thateffectively undercut the others interests. Beijing, for example, per-sistedin covertl y assisting the nuclear and missile programs ofIndias local competitor, Pakistan, while New Delhi sought in re-sponseto develop an intermediate-range ballistic missile whosecomparative utility lay primarily in targeting China.The repeated identification of China as a threat to Indian interests byboth Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders and other important Indianelites in the first half of 1998 not only underscored the fragile natureof the Sino-Indian rapprochement but also ruptured the carefullymaintained faade of up relations between the two coun-204 The United States and Asiatries.1 When this public finger pointing ultimately gave way toIndias resumption of nuclear testing on May 11, 1998 (an font ac-companiedby the Indian prime ministers explicit claim that thosetests were driven by the hostile actions of Indias northern neighborover the years), security disputation in South Asiawhich usuallyappears, at least in popular perceptions, as merely a bilateral affairbetween India a nd Pakistanlastly revealed itself as the regionalstrategic triangle2 it has always been.This appendix analyzes Indian and Pakistani attitudes toward Chinain the context of the triangular security competition in South Asia.Taking the 1998 nuclear tests as its point of departure, it assesseshow China figures in the grand strategies of the two principal statesin the Indian subcontinent and identifies the principal regionalgeopolitical contingencies for which the United States should pre-pareover the next decade. Finally, it briefly analyzes the kinds ofopportunities the region offers to the USAF as it engages, even as itprepares to hedge against, a rising China.NUCLEAR examination AND THE TRIANGULAR SECURITYCOMPETITION IN SOUTH ASIAImpact of the Nuclear Tests on Sino-Indian RelationsAlthough Pakistan was directly affected by the Indian nuclear tests,these tests industrious Chinese security interests as well. To begin with,Indias decision to resume testing made manifest New Delhis re-s entment