Category: International Relations

Performance, Profile, and the Global South The concurrence of India’s Chandrayaan-3 landing with the BRICS Summit in South Africa crystallized a salient feature of India’s contemporary statecraft: performance as diplomacy. The lunar touchdown did more than validate technological competence; it reframed the summit’s atmospherics and discourse. Leaders across the Global South claimed vicarious pride that…

Recalling Leaders, Revisiting History The Contingent Inheritance of Early Foreign Policy India’s early foreign policy was not a settled canon but a product of contingent choices made under the towering influence of Jawaharlal Nehru. For nearly two decades after Independence, Nehru’s personal predilections were projected as national tenets, even as peers who differed ideologically mounted…

Corrosion as the New Mode of Competition The contemporary strategic environment is characterized less by the exclusive use of open force and more by a slow, diffuse process best described as “corrosion.” Under this rubric, states and non-state actors leverage interdependence, information flows, economic linkages and social vectors to infiltrate, influence and degrade rivals over…

The Nehru–Patel cleavage and its enduring imprint The debate that frames India’s policy toward China has been, from the outset, a contest between two political-philosophical postures: a Nehruvian internationalism that trusted in ideological affinity, moral persuasion and pan‑Asian solidarity; and a Patel‑like realpolitik that read power relations, geography and the historical behaviour of large neighbours…

Indo-Pacific Realignments and the Quad’s Strategic Maturation The Indo-Pacific has emerged as the decisive geopolitical theatre where technological, economic, and security trends are reshaping the global order. This evolution predates the Covid-19 pandemic, yet the crisis sharpened perceptions of interdependence and vulnerability, catalysing patterns of cooperation that had been gathering momentum for more than a…

Navigating Twin Fault Lines in the Amrit Kaal India’s aspiration to be a leading power unfolds amid two simultaneous and sharpening fault lines. The first is the East–West divide, accentuated by the Ukraine conflict and the strategic contestation it has unleashed across military, economic, and technological domains. The second is the North–South gap, aggravated by…

From Aspiration to Strategy: India’s Leading-Power Horizon India’s foreign policy over the past decade has been animated by a declared ambition to be a “leading power,” a formulation first articulated publicly by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2015. It was an aspiration, not a claim of arrival; nonetheless, a decade on, it has become serious…

As National Security Balances Globalization Receding Certitudes: From Globalization’s Optimism to Strategic Caution Until the mid-2010s, much of India—like large parts of the world—treated globalization as a structural reassurance. The European integration project appeared to validate notions of irreversible interdependence, and the prevailing policy wisdom prized efficiency-enhancing linkages in technology, finance, trade, and resource flows….

A World in Transition: 2020–Present In September 2022 at Samarkand, the prime minister’s assertion that this is not an era of war resonated far beyond its immediate setting. It captured, in a single phrase, the hard reality that dense interdependence renders conflict costly for all, even for those not directly engaged. It functioned as a…

Citizen-Centric Criteria for a “Good” Foreign Policy A foreign policy is “good” only when it tangibly serves individual citizens while securing national interests. In practical terms, it must make everyday needs easier to meet, assure national security, enable aspirations, and deliver concrete dividends—access to technology, capital, best practices, and work opportunities. Effectiveness is therefore judged…

Calculations, Culture and Clarity Strategic plurality under stress An earlier articulation of India’s external posture argued for a multi-vector strategy: simultaneous engagement with the United States, management of China, cultivation of Europe, reassurance of Russia, activation of Japan, drawing in neighbours, extending the periphery, and enlarging traditional constituencies of support. The subsequent years have validated…