ABSTRACT
The dismantling of Empire heralded by the Independence of India, Pakistan and Ceylon from British rule coincided with a radical re-ordering of world geopolitics. Through the period from 1947 until the end of the Cold War in 1991, the countries of South Asia were forced to come to terms with developing their own foreign policies in a world that had frozen in a wholly new configuration. The superpowers of the US-led West on the one hand and the Soviet bloc on the other saw their interests as operating on a global scale, albeit in ways that were strategically highly differentiated.
