Yogesh Joshi

Prior to joining CISAC as a Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow, Yogesh Joshi was an Associate Fellow in the Strategic Studies Program at the Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi. He recently received his PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University specializing in Indian foreign and security policy. 

At CISAC, Yogesh is finishing a book manuscript on the history of India's nuclear submarine program. His research traces the origins, process, and development of India's nuclear submarine program using multi-archival sources and extensive oral history interviews. Yogesh’s data-driven research posits that India’s nuclear submarine program was riddled with shifting motivations, ambivalent rationales and halting progress. Rather than being driven by a single coherent strategic plan, India stumbled upon a submarine-based nuclear deterrent. By situating the nuclear submarine program in India’s Cold War security policy, its nuclear policy, its naval strategy in the Indian Ocean, the bureaucratic politics of its military-scientific complex and its quest for technological prestige, this research is an attempt to understand path-dependency in one of India’s most secretive military-scientific programs. It not only has implications for explaining India's nuclear program and policy but also provides an avenue to explain the process of decision-making behind state's pursuance of specific kinds of nuclear delivery systems. This research is supported by the Stanton Foundation. 

He has held fellowships at George Washington University, King’s College London and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington DC. His research has appeared or is forthcoming in Diplomacy and Statecraft, Asian Security, International History Review, International Affairs, Survival, US Naval War College Review, Comparative Strategy, Harvard Asia Quarterly, India Review, Asia Policy, Journal of Asian Security and International Affairs, War on the Rocks, World Politics Review and The Diplomat. He has co-authored two books: The US ‘Pivot’ and Indian Foreign Policy: Asia's Emerging Balance of Power (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) and India and Nuclear Asia: Forces, Doctrines and Dangers (Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 2018).  A short introduction to India’s Nuclear Policy was recently published by Oxford University Press.