Sumitha Narayanan Kutty

King's College London | KCL · Department of War Studies

This essay examines Iran’s enduring interests in Afghanistan after 2014, when the United States will begin winding down its military presence in the country. It finds that Iran has worked meticulously to maintain several critical political, economic and ethnic assets in the country. In contrast with Pakistan, Iran’s influence in Afghanistan today p...

This article examines the India-U.S. strategic partnership and argues that the Iran factor is not as big an impediment to the bilateral relationship as is often assumed. main argument The India-U.S. relationship is not as sensitive to the Iran factor as is frequently depicted. Both sides are accommodative of each other's strategic interests and hav...

The three pillars of India’s foreign policy strategy under an overarching preference for ‘strategic autonomy’ are security, economic development, and status. Japan plays a significant part with respect to all three. We employ an analytical framework that assesses how Narendra Modi, in line with a trend set in motion by his predecessors, has attempt...

The withdrawal of US troops and the subsequent return of the Taliban to power have resulted in India and Iran aligning over Afghanistan’s future once again. India risks facing isolation and sees its relationship with Iran as essential to preventing Pakistani hegemony in their shared neighbourhood. Their renewed regional convergence overlaps with an...

The editors pull together the main analytical threads of the volume in this concluding chapter. They review the key security and economic features of the India–Japan strategic partnership, placing it within the triangular relationship with the United States. They address its future prospects and emphasize that the volume provides both a clearer sen...

The India–Japan “special strategic and global partnership” has been described as one that will define the Indo-Pacific and shape the Asian century. This introductory chapter introduces the reader to a brief history of the growing relationship, defines the hitherto inadequately explored concept of “strategic partnership” in a post-alliance world, ex...

Iran wants a stable Afghanistan and has meticulously worked to protect its interests before and after 2001 to this end. Prior to 2001, Iran was the primary backer of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, and after September 2011 it was one of the earliest supporters of the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan to rout the Taliban. Since then, the country...

Indo-Iranian security cooperation provides a critical case for evaluating theories of cooperation such as Robert Axelrod’s Cooperation Theory which stipulates two conditions under which cooperation between two players or states emerges in an anarchic world – 'reciprocity' and 'shadow of the future' (where both sides anticipate long term interaction...

This essay examines Iran’s enduring interests in Afghanistan after 2014, when the United States will wind down its military presence in the country. We find that Iran has maintained several critical interests in the country that are likely to remain highly important to the Iranian Republic. However, as Iran’s standoff with the global nonproliferati...