Peace and Security Review, Vol.1 No. 2 - International Centre for ...

Badrul A. Khan South Asia and Regionalism 87
India US$1022 million against exporting to India to the value of US$50.28
million) may be resolved if a preferential treatment arrangement with
Bangladesh is signed. Duty free access to pharmaceuticals, toiletries, cosmetics,
steel and plastic furniture and copper wire, which India has offered to
Bangladesh to reduce the said trade imbalance has not been enough, as the
deficit has not come down but jumped to US$971.72 million in 2001-2002
compared with US$332.12 million in 1992-93. Preferential treatment could
also help to overcome the trade deficit which other countries of the region
suffer in trade with India. Trade may be one way of finding a way to
resolving political issues ranging from illegal immigrants to Islamic terrorism,
and lead to a process of cooperation between countries.
V. THREADING A DIFFICULT GEO-STRATEGIC TERRAIN
Any enquiry into the prospect of regionalism in South Asia must take into
account an extremely complicated strategic context in which South Asia is in
today. Two distinguishing trends need highlighting. One ⎯ the rise of India
and China, both from the same continent and both with superpower ambition
seem to constitute the major underlying condition, upon which the shape of
South Asian’s future would take place. This trend has the potential to influence
the procedures of South Asia’s regionalism either positively or negatively
and how far regionalism will succeed may depend firstly on how South Asia
is able to balance between the dialectic of the global and the regional. Second,
world politics in a post cold war era has become dispersed into a number of
centres driven by issues such as Islamic militancy, nuclear issue and global
trade. “The movement of political ideas, military and economic power in the
post cold war world” as Kumar explains, “has an inter-regional character”
(Kumar, 2006: 12) affecting international alliance and agendas. And South
Asia remains at the cross road of all those major issues such as Islamic
militancy, nuclear and missile proliferation; global trade and drugs, illicit
arms and human migration. It is therefore an important aspect in South Asian
politics to balance between the issues and the interested stakeholders who
belong to various regions (Kumar: 12), a significantly departure from the kind
of scenario which the uni-centred world of the post-cold war had provided.
Clearly, this dispersion of power in various centres has underscored the
uni-polar arrangement (PINR, 02 February 2006) that came into effect immediately
after the collapse of the Soviet Union forcing to reshape US geostrategic
policy. The absence of cold war threat has visibly destabilized the
previous alliance and cooperation premised on that threat that kept the past
bi-polar system functioning (Mearsheimer, 1990). And to reinstate its previous
dominance within the context of China’s rising power the USA has to make a
Vol.1, No.2 2008 pp.77-93