Paper short abstract:

Although South Asia's security structure is conceived to be realist oriented, there is growing sign that a liberal security order will replace it. The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation will play an important role in restructuring South Asia's security order.

Paper long abstract:

South Asia is traditionally known as a region of mistrust and conflict. Hence, power balancing is conceived to be the main trend in South Asia's security structure. In particular the history of India and Pakistan's bilateral relations and their strategic rivalry highlight a realist-orientation in South Asia's security and strategic landscape.

However, beneath the apparent realism dominated structure, there has always been an undercurrent of liberalism in South Asian international relations. Notwithstanding their strategic rivalries, the South Asian states cooperated in the past in numerous ways. Further, the institutional framework for a liberal security order in the region was inherent in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), although it could not achieve its full potential due to strategic rivalries of the regional states, particularly between India and Pakistan. Recently Indo-Pakistani relationship has been in the mend. Pakistan has decided to provide India an MFN status. India granted such a status to Pakistan in the mid-1990s. It is expected that growing economic interdependence will be the hallmark of regional international relations in the days to come which will transform South Asia's security order.