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THE CHANGING POLITICAL-MILITARYENVIRONMENT SOUTH ASIAThe protective covering environment in South Asia has remained relatively un-settledsince the Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests of may 1998. TheIndian governments efforts to publicly emphasize the challengesChina constitute in the weeks leading up to those testsafter more thana tenner of mostly sotto voce complaintsserved to rupture the or-dinarilyglacial process of normalizing Sino-Indian relations. Thisprocess endlessly feature a certain fragility in that the gradually de-creasingtensions along the Sino-Indian fudge did not automaticallytranslate into increased trust betwixt capital of Red China and New Delhi. Evenas some(prenominal) sides sought to derive tactical advantages from the confi-dence-building measures they had negotiated since 1993for ex-ample,the drawdown of forces along the utterly inhospitable LAC inthe Himalayaseach cease up pursuing larger grand strategies thateffectively undercut the some others in terests. Beijing, for example, per-sistedin covertly assisting the nuclear and missile programs ofIndias topical anesthetic competitor, Pakistan, while New Delhi sought in re-sponseto develop an intermediate-range ballistic missile whosecomparative utility lay primarily in targeting China.The repeated designation of China as a threat to Indian interests byboth Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders and other influential Indianelites in the first half of 1998 not only underscored the fragile natureof the Sino-Indian rapprochement and also ruptured the carefullymaintained faade of improving relations betwixt the two coun-204 The United States and Asiatries.1 When this public finger pointing ultimately gave way toIndias resumption of nuclear testing on May 11, 1998 (an event ac-companiedby the Indian prime ministers explicit claim that thosetests were control by the hostile actions of Indias northern neighborover the years), aegis competition in South Asiawhich usuallyappears, at least in popular perceptions, as merely a bilateral affairbetween India and Pakistanfinally revealed itself as the regionalstrategic triangle2 it has always been.This appendix analyzes Indian and Pakistani attitudes toward Chinain the context of the angulate security competition in South Asia.Taking the 1998 nuclear tests as its point of departure, it assesseshow China figures in the grand strategies of the two principal statesin the Indian subcontinent and identifies the principal regionalgeopolitical contingencies for which the United States should pre-pareover the near decade. Finally, it briefly analyzes the kinds ofopportunities the region offers to the USAF as it engages, even as itprepares to dishearten against, a rising China.NUCLEAR TESTING AND THE TRIANGULAR SECURITY contestation IN SOUTH ASIAImpact of the Nuclear Tests on Sino-Indian RelationsAlthough Pakistan was outright affected by the Indian nuclear tests,these tests engaged Chinese security interests as well. To begin with,Indias decision to resume testing do manifest New Delhis re-sentment