Shared insecurity, divergent responses: Pakistan, India, and China after the Return of the Taliban

The return of the Taliban to power in Afghanistan in August 2021 transformed the regional security environment, intensifying concerns regarding terrorism, cross-border militancy, refugee flows, and geopolitical competition. Yet Pakistan, India, and China responded in markedly different ways to this common source of regional insecurity. Why do states facing the same regional security shock adopt divergent policies? Drawing on Regional Security Complex Theory (RSCT), this article argues that variation in state responses is best explained by different modes of exposure to insecurity. Through a comparative qualitative analysis, it identifies three distinct pathways: direct borderland exposure, indirect strategic exposure, and adjacent corridor exposure. The findings demonstrate that shared insecurity does not produce policy convergence. Instead, states respond through distinct security pathways shaped by geography, strategic interests and threat perceptions, refining RSCT and introducing modes of exposure as a framework for explaining divergent state responses.