One Year of AUKUS: An Assessment of Progress and Challenges AUKUS illustrates the growing strategic depth between the US and Australia, the UK’s return to ‘East of Suez’ and Australia’s attempts to revolutionise its defence industrial base. R. Vignesh , Abhay Kumar Singh | November 02, 2022 | Issue Brief
‘Strategising’ the India-EU Partnership India’s foreign policy, as in the case of any other sovereign state, aims at protecting and promoting the country’s ‘national interest.’ Strategic autonomy, which has been its defining value and goal, remains at the core of India’s global engagements. India maintains political, diplomatic, economic, strategic, science and technological, and cultural relations to achieve a stable, secure, peaceful, and prosperous India. The largest ‘democracy’ in the world, India, joins hands with the EU, the largest cluster of ‘democracies’ in the world. Manoj Babu Buraga | November 2022 | Strategic Analysis
Quad and the Indo-Pacific: Examining the Balance of Interest Theory in Quad Coalition In light of China’s rise, the Quad coalition has gained momentum in its efforts to maintain a Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP). While scholars have discussed the relevance of Quad, little work has been done to theorize the balancing behaviour of individual Quad countries. This article examines Randall Schweller’s Balance of Interest theory—which emphasizes the underlying ‘profit motives’ in alliance formations—in the Quad coalition. Adarsh Badri | November 2022 | Strategic Analysis
Colonialism Matters: Benefits of Metropoles with a Focus on India and Great Britain The history of colonialism normally focusses on the socio-economic losses of colonies, and the benefits of metropoles are a much less-studied field. Our study indicates that the flow of resources, rent and personal wealth should not be downplayed as factors of economic growth in the key Empires, although information on most subjects is limited. This importance could be demonstrated (although not fully quantitatively evaluated) by India–United Kingdom relations before 1913. Leonid Grigoryev , Alexandra Morozkina | November 2022 | Strategic Analysis
Eastern Mediterranean: A Natural Gas Hub Worth Exploring The Eastern Mediterranean offers India strong prospects for import of natural gas, given strong bilateral relations with regional countries, including Egypt, Israel, Greece and Cyprus. Md. Muddassir Quamar | November 01, 2022 | IDSA Comments
New Russia-West Confrontation: War of Attrition or Escalation? The article analyses the ongoing Russia-West confrontation manifested mainly in the armed conflict in Ukraine, the world’s largest war of sanctions, a growing confrontation in cyberspace and politics, the erosion of the system of arms control treaties and a sharp reduction of cooperation in the humanitarian sphere. Russia and the West are fighting not only for influence in Ukraine but also over the future of international relations on a global scale in the coming decades. Konstantin Khudoley | November 2022 | Strategic Analysis
The Comrades and the Mullahs: China, Afghanistan and the New Asian Geopolitics: Ananth Krishnan and Stanly Johny, HarperCollins, Gurugram The conspicuous US withdrawal from Afghanistan has resulted in a political vacuum, garnering immediate attention of regional and great powers alike. In The Comrades and the Mullahs, presenting Afghanistan’s long history of foreign invasions and resistance, journalists Ananth Krishnan and Stanly Johny show how the country was a theatre for the Great Game between the British and Russian Empires, and later got caught in Cold War rivalry between the US and the Soviet Union. The return of the Taliban in Afghanistan has certainly become a diplomatic predicament for India. Muneeb Yousuf | November 2022 | Strategic Analysis
The False Promise of Liberal Order: Nostalgia, Delusion and the Rise of Trump: Patrick Porter, Polity Press, Cambridge and Medford The coming of Donald Trump to power as the 45th President of the United States amounted to a moment of reckoning for the American foreign policy establishment. With his unconventional posturing and populist moorings, the Trump presidency seemed antithetical to Washington DC’s ‘Blob’ worldview that guided American foreign policy in the post-Cold War years. Sanjeet Kashyap | November 2022 | Strategic Analysis
Independent Kashmir: An Incomplete Aspiration: Christopher Snedden, Manchester University Press, Manchester Independent Kashmir: An Incomplete Aspiration by noted author and expert Christopher Snedden touches upon a raw nerve in the discourse on Kashmir—the aspiration for independence. Snedden describes how and where exactly the idea germinated, sequentially tracing its evolution. This is Snedden’s third book on Kashmir; the first focussed on the so-called ‘Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK)’ that together with Gilgit-Baltistan forms Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). The second book focused primarily on Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) in India. Priyanka Singh | November 2022 | Strategic Analysis
China in India’s Post-Cold War Engagement with Southeast Asia: Chietigj Bajpaee, Routledge, Abingdon, UK The commemoration of 2022 as the ‘ASEAN-India Year of Friendship’ marks thirty years of the partnership between India and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Beginning in 1992 with India’s ‘Look East Policy’ (LEP), renamed ‘Act East Policy’ (AEP) in 2014, India has progressed from being a Sectoral Partner of ASEAN in 1992 to a Dialogue Partner in 1996 and a Summit-level Partner in 2002. Amrita Jash | November 2022 | Strategic Analysis
