The geopolitical determinants of India's Central Asia strategy

• Thesis title in Czech: Determinanty indické geopolitické strategie ve Střední Asii
• Thesis title in English: The geopolitical determinants of India's Central Asia strategy
• Key words: Indie, Geopolitika, Střední asie Grand Strategy, Bezpečnost, Obchod, Energetická bezpečnost, Měkká síla,
• English key words: India, Geopolitics, Central Asia, Grand Strategy, Security, Trade, Energy Security, Soft Power
• Academic year of topic announcement: 2014/2015
• Thesis type: dissertation
• Thesis language: angličtina
• Department: Department of Political Science (23-KP)
• Supervisor: prof. PhDr. Bořivoj Hnízdo, Ph.D.
• Author: hidden - assigned by the advisor
• Date of registration: 01.04.2015
• Date of assignment: 01.04.2015
• Date and time of defence: 07.12.2015 00:00
• Venue of defence: IPS U Kříže 8, Praha 5
• Date of electronic submission: 01.04.2015
• Date of proceeded defence: 07.12.2015
• Opponents: prof. RNDr. Vladimír Baar, CSc.

Preliminary scope of work in English

This dissertation aims to identify the drivers and determinants of Indian strategy and
policy with regard to the five post-Soviet, Central Asian states of Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan within a geopolitical
framework. Contemporary scholarship recognises three determinants (drivers) of
Indian strategy in the region – security and strategic necessity, energy diversification
given Central Asia’s abundant natural resources, and, economic engagement and
connectivity. Using this identification as a stepping-stone, the dissertation seeks to
test the validity of these assumptions, and explore these determinants in detail. In
addition, it attempts to identify other determinants of Indian strategy, and offers a
conceptual framework through which to comprehend Indian agency in Central Asia.
In its exploration, the dissertation finds the initial hypothesis to be valid, and in
addition suggests India’s great-power ambitions (and its subsequent use of soft power
in the region) as an additional determinant of its strategy. It further argues that not
only can Indian agency in Central Asia, be conceptually framed within a classical
geopolitical perspective, but also suggests that the motivations for Indian agency in
the region should be viewed from the lens of a nascent all-encompassing Indian grand
strategy. As an ancillary objective, the dissertation offers commentary on India’s
interactions with two status-quo powers in the region Russia and China, and offers
some thoughts on the limited efficacy of Indian strategy and its way forward in the
region. Using a qualitative case-study paradigm, empirical data was sourced from
interviews conducted with Indian and Central Asian elites, and official Indian
documentation and narratives on the subject in the last two decades. As its
contribution to the literature, the dissertation offers a contemporary insight into Indian
thinking on the region, and postulates an alternative conceptual framework using
Indian grand strategy and India’s great power ambitions as explanation for its agency
in the region.