The purpose of this article is to present the China-US rivalry in South Asia through the lens of offensive neorealism, which assumes that states seek to maximise their power. The article analyses the strategies and foreign policy tools of Washington and Beijing in South Asia since 2013, with special focus on the US Indo-Pacific strategy and the China’s Belt and Road Initiative. It also identifies the reactions of South Asian states – both the nuclear powers: India and Pakistan, and smaller states of Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and the Maldives – to the rivalry between the USA and China. In this way, the article points to a gap in the literature and key theories of international relations, which focus on the superpowers, while the issue worth exploring is the conditions for the rise of medium and small states. These states aim to gain as much as possible from the rivalry between the USA and China in the region, cooperate with them without taking sides.
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