Wounds That Fester -- The Drift -- India's Search for a Grand Strategy -- Assessing Pakistan's Grand Strategy -- Military Doctrines and Deterrence Stability -- Gray Zone Warfare and Arms Race Instability -- Strategic Futures.

"While several books have examined the security challenges faced by India and Pakistan in isolation, as well as the strategies they have each adopted in response, this book places the two sets of clashing outlooks, policies, and strategies together and analyzes the causes and consequences of the drift in South Asia. This study maps out and explains India and Pakistan's respective interests, motivations, and long-term objectives from a contemporary perspective. Much has happened in the intervening period since the nuclear tests in 1998 that has shaped the rivalry between these two countries, including advances in their strategic capabilities, domestic political shifts, and changes in the global balance of power. Hence the book considers to what extent the "drifting" Subcontinent is affecting the political, military, and economic dynamics on the international stage and causing a "global drift." This study identifies the latent and emergent drivers behind the mounting acrimony in South Asia-notably, India's ambitions as a "rising power" coupled with the resurgence of China and Pakistan's strategic anxiety as the United States unmoors itself from Afghanistan and embraces India. India is similarly concerned as China advances its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) across the region, developing a network of economic and strategic hubs and bringing India's neighbors into China's embrace through its strategy of peripheral diplomacy. The aim of this book is to conduct a detailed analysis of the India-Pakistan impasse without losing sight of the regional complexities and sensitivities that are often ignored or subsumed in purely comparative works"--