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Why is India unable to maintain regional leadership in a nuclearized South Asia? In this paper, we explore the impediments to India's regional leadership by examining Delhi's foreign policy behavior within the nuclearized rivalry with Pakistan since 1998. Based on a comparison of Indian foreign policy elites' responses to a set of dyadic crises since overt nuclearisation in 1998, we argue that structural parameters of South Asia's current security environment undermine the prospects of coercing or influencing the behavior of India's most potent contender. More specifically, we argue that Delhi's failure to develop an effective strategy to deter armed resistance is largely due to the combined presence of militant groups and inadequate deterrence strategies. Recurrent, undeterred militant attacks have thus become a symbol of resistance against India's predominance in the region.

Over the last decade, many scholars and analysts have tried to assess India’s emergence as a major actor in the global arena by looking at such material indicators as economic growth, military expansion or demographic evolution. As a consequence, these accounts have mainly overlooked New Delhi’s increased emphasis on developing its ‘soft power’ credentials by using the attractiveness of Indian culture, values and policies. Indian diplomats like Sashi Tharoor have recently argued that if India is now perceived as a superpower, it was not just through trade and politics but also through its ability to share its culture with the world through food, music, technology and Bollywood. However, it is difficult to determine India’s actual soft power resources, or which of these resources have actually helped strengthen India’s global status. With such a difficult concept to define and measure, is it possible to monitor the evolution of India’s soft power over the last decade? Most saliently, can we compare India’s efforts with those of another emerging Asian power, China?