 China, India, and Pakistan, what we're calling Southern Asia. Nor else in the world do you have three nuclear-armed states with hotly contested borders that have come close to war many times. While we're focused on Russia's invasion of Ukraine, this is a hotspot you can't ignore. This is the latest. How does the Biden administration's new Indo-Pacific strategy consider security dynamics in Southern Asia? The Biden administration's new Indo-Pacific strategy is significant in that it integrates India and South Asia into what has previously been largely an East Asia strategy and seeks to really define both Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean equities when it comes to free, open, and connected Indo-Pacific. But the reality is, when we're thinking about Southern Asia, a crisis between India-Pakistan or India-China will most likely start on land, and that's somewhere where the strategy really hasn't adequately addressed what might be crisis escalation and how the United States would factor into preventing or mitigating a future crisis. How might the Russian invasion of Ukraine impact an already tense security situation in Southern Asia? Well, it's a really good question. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is having impacts across the world on everything from food security to energy security, and Southern Asia is not immune to that. But what's most interesting here potentially is how the Russian invasion is impacting India in particular. India has long depended on Russia as a critical security partner. Most of its military gear and material is actually of Russian origin, and its major threat is from China. That's where India is most fearful that it could get into a war that it could lose. And this war is leading China and Russia to get closer and closer. China has basically stood by Russia right before the invasion. China and Russia announced what they call the No Limits Partnership, which is a great concern to India. And I think it leads to a lot of questions about how these states will behave. Will Russia back up India if there's a conflict with China? Will China back up Pakistan if Pakistan and India have a conflict? Or will China try to take advantage of that kind of conflict and potentially open a two-front war for India? And I think Russia's actions in Ukraine lend more uncertainty to all of those sorts of questions. India and Pakistan appear to be upholding their latest ceasefire agreement. What lessons should we draw? It is very significant that the February 2021 resumption of India and Pakistan's ceasefire agreement along the line of control has held as long as it has. And I think it's interesting the lesson here is twofold. One that I think both India and Pakistan recognize the dangers of escalation, that it's much harder to de-escalate and contain crisis between the two countries, especially with China as a complicating factor. But I think the other lesson is that without some sort of durable formal mechanism for crisis management and conflict resolution, these ceasefires have a tendency to break down. Over the last 20 years, India and Pakistan have had ceasefires that have broken down, whether due to a terrorist attack or domestic political constraints. And so we risk going back into periods of high ceasefire violations and cross-border incidents that can spiral out of control. What are the prospects for future nuclear talks in southern Asia? This is a really good question. The fact is, even though these countries have been advancing, developing their nuclear arsenals, have been building their capabilities and have had violent clashes in recent years, they really don't have a lot of mechanisms for coordinating, de-conflicting, talking about whether something was deliberate or an accident. And I think the prospect for actual talks, actual strategic stability dialogues like we saw between the U.S. and the Soviet Union decades ago, it seems really low. Just a few weeks ago, India accidentally fired a cruise missile into Pakistani territory, which fortunately did not lead to an escalation. But it's the kind of thing that highlights why it would be really stabilizing for China, India, and Pakistan to figure out a way to talk about how they approach conflict and stability and how they manage their nuclear arsenals.