Managing Close Relations with Bhutan in the Post-Cold War Era: India’s Dilemma amid Strategic Rivalry with China

Abstract

This paper examines how India has managed close relations with Bhutan in the post-Cold War era when the expected relaxation of great power tensions was less evident in Asia due to the deepening China Pakistan strategic partnership and China’s growing activism along the Himalayan rim. The purpose is to explain why Bhutan remains central to India’s security calculus and how New Delhi has sought to sustain a trusted partnership while accommodating Bhutan’s expanding constitutional and diplomatic agency. Methodologically, this research article uses qualitative process tracing and document-based analysis. It relies primarily on treaties, parliamentary records, official policy documents, joint statements and border related diplomatic communications, supplemented by a focused secondary works. The analysis reconstructs key turning points from the early 1990s to the mid-2020s including insurgency related security cooperation, treaty revision, border negotiations with China and the Doklam episode. The findings show that India has pursued a dual strategy. It has broadened economic and development interdependence through trade transit governance, hydropower cooperation and financial stabilisation tools, while simultaneously treating Bhutan’s China facing boundary process as a high sensitivity security domain. India’s support for Bhutan’s sovereign equality in treaty language and its acceptance of Bhutan’s multilateral profile have been paired with firm expectations that Bhutan will prevent any security relevant Chinese footprint near tri junction areas. Bhutan, for its part, has sought to enlarge diplomatic space through constitutional rules and calibrated internationalisation while using legal principles and status quo commitments to manage border pressure. Practically, the study suggests that the resilience of the partnership depends on rule-based consultation, predictable economic support and coordinated boundary management that preserves Bhutanese autonomy while addressing India’s core security anxieties.