Books for India and the World

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• By Nitin Pai of the Takshashila institution
• This is a polyvalent world in which one single formula is insufficient To deal with the complex reality that is emerging – Shiv Shankar Menon
• India’s strategic interests lie in closer alignment with the US
• A multipolar world order will have uneven distribution of power and the power of China is likely to grow with the US declining. In that scenario a multipolar world won’t serve India’s interests. New Delhi should enter into a deeper strategic embrace with Washington DC and delay the onset of a multipolar world where China is a significantly stronger pole in India
• US is the only power with adequate levels of both, capabilities and motivation to partner India in balancing china
• Four pronged strategy to deal with China-
• Engagement
• Collaboration
• Balancing
• Deterrence

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• India, as the authors coin the term ,can be the world’s first “development superpower” unlike Geopolitical superpower like USA and geoeconomic superpower like China.

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• How India sees the world by Shyam Saran

1. search for strategic autonomy” marks the running thread that binds India’s diplomatic initiatives. While he commends India’s foreign policy for being firmly grounded in the Kautilyan paradigm, he feels its diplomacy needs greater finesse and skill.
2. hangover of colonialism also makes us see borders as walls to protect us against hostile neighbours.
3. The writer talks of successive leaders’ reluctance in raising issues like Baluchistan which, he says, should be part of India’s “counter-constraint” strategy, for the objective is to manage this adversarial relationship and not any grand reconciliation or friendship.
4. In our world today, where networking and not hegemony provides the power to influence global trends he shows how our cosmopolitan outlook holds promise(John Burton's cobweb model)

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• It is only a multipolar Asia that can lead to a multipolar world
• International relations is an exercise of both forging convergences and managing divergences ( can be used in India's relations with china, pakistan)
• In dealing with India’s neighbours, generosity and firmness must go hand in hand.
• This is the time for us to engage America, manage China, cultivate Europe, Reassure Russia, bring Japan into play, draw neighbours in, extend the neighbourhood and expanded traditional constituencies of support. (EAMCCERRJP)

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• Has called India a reluctant global power
• challenges to Indian diplomacy posed by India’s domestic trajectory, tapering economic growth, lack of reforms in institutions, defence capabilities and the government’s struggles in providing for India’s burgeoning population.
• India in recent times has seen new “enthusiasm and passion” in its engagements with global powers

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  Shashi Tharoor calls challenges like terrorism, Climate change as problems without passports
• Soft power: said India's source of strength was not its large army, economy or nuclear weapons but “the power of example.”
• India's success is a proof that democracy could compete with Chinese model.
• The west has always viewed India as a “strategic partner” while china as a “strategic competitor.”
• India's global ambitions depend on its capacity to convince its neighbors that India's rise is an opportunity for them, not a threat.

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• In China’s view India cannot emerge as a challenger on its own merits. India is merely riding on the coattails of the US, happy to be used as a pawn in its rivalry with China. For them the relationship with India is not seen on its own merits but viewed in the context of China’s great rivalry with America

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• Beijing’s ultimate objective is to displace the US order globally in order to emerge as the world’s dominant state by 2049.
• China has only been hiding its capability and biding its time. But after 9/11 and 2008 financial crisis, it is convinced that US decline and china’s rise are inevitable
• China pursued what Mr. Doshi describes as a strategy of “blunting” American power.
• Economically, “China’s pursuit of permanent Most Favored Nation status as well as World Trade Organization accession were meant to tie American hands with respect to economic leverage.”
• The CCP now aggressively tries to shape a “community of common destiny,” which Mr. Doshi takes to mean “an Asia where others are dependent on China economically and divorced from US alliances militarily.”

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• Madan concludes early in the book that a U.S.-India partnership to tackle the challenge from China is “neither inevitable nor impossible”, and suggests that the key to a sustainable partnership between the three is to “manage expectations” of each other better than they did in the second half of the last century.
• Madan spells out another part of the unspoken narrative: that the triangle between the U.S.-India-China has always been distended with pulls from two other critical points: the relationship of each of those countries with Russia and Pakistan.