IntroductionThe 21st century is being called the Asian century and a rising India is in a prominent geo-strategic and geo-economic position in the community of nations to be a key factor in shaping this emerging notion. Helping India's quest is its insistence on continuously building its military capabilities to wage all types of warfare, be it irregular, conventional or nuclear in asserting its core values, interests and national security. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get Original Essay Examples of this perception can be observed in Indian government approaches, such as, when citing the primacy of national security, Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her 2020 budget speech set aside Rs. 4,71,378 crore for the Ministry of Defense (MoD), of which Rs. 90,649 million has been allocated for the modernization of the Indian armed forces. Another example observed is an outstanding reformative move in India's senior defense management when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in August 2019, approved the position of Chief of Defense Staff (CDS) to coordinate the activities of all the branches of the armed forces. Balanced approaches, ranging from military modernization to structural reforms and others, are partly emerging from an understanding of the regional and international security environment. India's foreign and defense policies are also determined by factors that prevail outside the scope of South Asia, however regional geopolitics is of immediate concern and forms the basis for major policy orientations. The contemporary international structure is witnessing dynamic changes as the global hegemony of the United States, established after the fall of the Soviet Union, is challenged by emerging powers, who are creating their own spheres of influence due to significant advances in the fields technological and economical. This structure can be ascertained as an asymmetric bipolar nucleus with fluid economic multipolarity orbiting the nucleus. The United States and China can be considered the two poles of this new asymmetric bipolarity and these nations are central in the calculations of any actor with interests in regional and international affairs and the element of asymmetry derives from the military and economic pre-eminence of the United States . The implications of such a structure have led to the development of the Indo-Pacific as a new geopolitical construct, and the emerging India-China-US triangular dynamic in the Indo-Pacific has highlighted India's role in the evolution of such a construct. However, India's role is also limited by its capabilities and intentions and in a complex environment, to allay the uncertainty generated in placing allies and adversaries and ensuring reliability, the impetus given to internal balancing may be imperative to preserve national security. This essay would make a modest attempt to conceptualize internal balancing theory and its association with national security, evaluate India's military approaches to internal balancing, analyze the prospects and challenges in the efforts made so far, and determine the implications on the architecture regional security. Internal balancing theorization and association with national security “National security” has been linked primarily in the social science literature to national existence, the exercise of sovereignty, and territorial integrity, although complications arise when it comes toconceptualize the term in its entirety. Adding to the complexity is the awareness that a variety of perspectives compete in defining such a broad term as security. Concerns have also been raised about the ambiguity of national security itself, whether considered an objective to be achieved or the means to achieve an objective. However, it is significant to note that any concept of security is built around the perception of threats and, therefore, any national security policy formulated by a nation must reflect on the elements that constitute a threat to orient its strategy accordingly. Threats evoke fear and are a stimulating factor in a nation's pursuit of a security strategy. Threat perception arises from the asymmetry of power between various nations and the fact that threat perception is also directly proportional to a weak position in terms of military power. “In the international relations literature, a threat is defined as a situation in which one agent or group has the ability or intent to inflict a negative consequence on another agent or group. Threats are probabilistic because they may or may not be implemented.” India's threat perception regarding its security architecture is based on the threat perception matrix which classifies threats into immediate, short, medium and long-term threats. This classification of threats guides India's military strength and has provided the impetus for the modernization of its armed forces, including airpower, especially given the immediate and near-term threats emerging from regional geopolitics. India is not a regional hegemonic power in South Asia, yet it is perceived as such by its western neighbor, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, which constitutes its immediate threat. An emerging economic power with a surplus youth population, India is seen as a competitor by China in its bid to gain more resources and have a say as a dominant power in global politics, and poses its own near-term threat. The security context has seen the loss of the Western liberal international order and the emergence of rivalries between great powers that have shed light on the traditional conception of national security characterized by the idea of ​​protecting a state from external threats in the form of military attack. Momentum has emerged in using the neorealist theoretical perspective to understand the dynamics of international relations after it failed to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union by the end of the last century, leading to the development and importance of new lenses theories such as Constructivism in addressing identities, structures and events. Realism has provided primacy to national security over other approaches as its core principles of "statism", "survival" and "self-help" help a nation understand the essence of power in international relations and develop capabilities to accumulate power to safeguard national interests. Structural realists, in particular, emphasize that the distribution of power in the international system has a direct impact on a nation's behavior. National security is understood as a function of power, and each nation aims to expand its power relative to that of other states. To ensure their survival, nations that lack the military capabilities to challenge the might of a hegemonic power or an emerging power must resort to balance of power. The balance of power in international relations is based on a multitude of factors including the size of thepopulation and territory, resource endowment, extraction and exploitation, economic flourishing, military strength, political stability, competence and will for political leadership. However, the immediate military balance is considered the most important variable by realists since it is the best measure of the ability of a state or an alliance of groups of states to influence another state or alliance in its pursuit of national or alliance interests . The other power factors mentioned can in the long term transform into military power. “If a neighboring state has more power than you, your state should feel at risk because nothing in the anarchic international system prevents that state from using force against you to resolve a conflict. In this world of “self-help,” states are forced to rely on domestic military spending and temporary international alliances to balance the power of other states. “It is upsetting for states when there is an uneven distribution of power and can cause weaker nations to fear being dominated and dislike their lower position in the hierarchy of power. And conversely, the stronger party may fear an inevitable shift in the long-term balance of power and a challenge to the status quo. This could lead to the acquisition of new armaments or modernization of existing capabilities by both stronger and weaker parties to maintain the balance of power and create a security dilemma. Conventional deterrence is a theory proposed by John Mearsheimer that seeks to prevent the outbreak of conflict during times of crisis between states by maintaining the ability to deter and deny an adversary its battlefield objectives through the use of conventional forces . This theory also gains greater relevance in the South Asian context since, once nuclear parity is achieved, nations will not have to resort to all-out war and rely more on their conventional capabilities to gain a decisive advantage in achieving objectives. To build an effective national security policy and balance of power, nations can step on the external balance by building a coalition of powers to address threats or use the internal balance to increase their own capabilities in order to deter the threat or use both balancing mechanisms. In a multipolar system, the number of powers ensures that the cost of defection is low and therefore military interdependence is low. Military interdependence also testifies to the decline of a bipolar system as Great Powers rely largely on themselves and their military capabilities to balance each other. “States are less likely to misjudge their relative strengths than the strength and reliability of opposing coalitions.” Internal balancing gains importance over external balancing as Kenneth Waltz believes it to be accurate and reliable. Uncertainty is a fundamental rule of war, and miscalculations can cause wars, which is underlined in the case of the Cold War, when the United States and the Soviet Union relied primarily on themselves and not on their allies. In response to a potential hegemon, Kenneth Waltz again espouses the benefits of internal balancing that is guided through a process of emulation. In this process, a lesser power implements the institutions and practices of the hegemonic state to compete effectively. The probability of emulation is directly proportional to the perception of hegemony. Internal balancing is desired by nations as it offers control and independence, which are reserved in partnerships.