If Bajpai's conundrum makes him sound like a nuclear hawk, he is in fact a top Indian advocate of cooperation with China. His war game is meant to highlight an issue of vital strategic importance to his country. We don't have one. The professor's suppositions point to the security nexus linking South Asia and East Asia.
Many Indian strategists see China as their nation's greatest and longest-term security challenge.
Beijing, too, knows its southern neighbor has the size and wherewithal to test it militarily in the long run. Then there is Pakistan, sworn rival of India and long backed by the Chinese. The developments have cast a pall of potential instability throughout southern Asia. Particularly troublesome is the damage done to Sino-Indian ties, which had been slowly but steadily improving in recent years. That changed with the advent in India last year of a government led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.