Abstract: India is gradually changing its course from decades of inward-looking economics and strong anti-Western foreign policies. It has become more pragmatic, seeing important economic benefits from globalization, and some political benefits of working with the United States to achieve New Delhi’s great-power aspirations. Despite these changes, I argue that India’s deep-seated anti-colonial nationalism and commitment to strategic autonomy continues to form the core of Indian identity. This makes India’s commitment to Western-dominated multilateral institutions and Western norms, such as humanitarian intervention, partial and instrumental. Thus, while Indian foreign-policy discourse shows little sign of seeking to fully challenge the U.S.-led international order beyond largely reformist measures of building parallel institutions such as the New Development Bank, India will continue to strongly resist Western actions that weaken sovereignty norms.
Keywords: rising powers, strategic autonomy, Indian foreign policy, India and multilateralism, G-20, BRICS
The full essay is available to subscribers only. Click here for access.
More in this issue
Spring 2018 (32.1) • Essay
Introduction: Rising Powers and the International Order
This roundtable brings together distinguished international scholars to reflect on grand power transition, focusing on the ways that rising states may be shaping and reshaping ...
Spring 2018 (32.1) • Review
The Global Health Crisis: Ethical Responsibilities by Thana Cristina de Campos
In this book, Thana Cristina de Campos focuses on identifying the moral responsibilities of nonstate actors, particularly the pharmaceutical industry, in the field of global ...
Spring 2018 (32.1) • Review
Ethics in an Age of Surveillance: Personal Information and Virtual Identities by Adam Henschke
This book presents a philosophically sophisticated examination of metadata collection and the ethical issues that it raises.