On November 14, the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center and the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University hosted a discussion with Bharat Karnad, senior fellow for National Security Studies at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, and author of India’s Rise: Why it is not a Great Power (Yet)

Security concerns between India and Pakistan have persisted since their independence and issues such as Kashmir, nuclear weapons and water security have restrained relations between the two neighbors. Mr. Karnad will discuss how the Indian government can ease tensions and normalize relations by taking unilateral, symbolic, and substantive actions. These actions include removing the nuclearized short-range ballistic missiles from forward deployment and restructuring the armor/mechanized Indian forces near Pakistan’s border to reduce suspicion from the Pakistani army without hurting Indian security. He will discuss these ideas in depth and explain what actions India, in particular, can take to reduce the Pakistani army’s suspicions and to reorient its threat perceptions.

Mr. Karnad is an expert on Indian security policy and earned his BA and MA from the University of California Santa Barbara and Los Angeles, respectively. He has been a visiting scholar at Princeton University, University of Pennsylvania, and was a foreign fellow at both the Shanghai Institutes of International Studies, and the Henry L. Stimson Center. He was a member of the First National Security Advisory Board of India, and has served on the National Security Council for the Government of India.

A discussion with

Bharat Karnad
Senior Fellow, National Security Studies at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi

Introduced by

Thomas Lynch, III
Distinguished Research Fellow, Institute for National Strategic Studies
National Defense University

Moderated by

Shuja Nawaz
Director, South Asia Center
Atlantic Council