Xi’s rousing words at CCP’s centenary celebrations have reaffirmed China’s intentions to make every effort in actualising its domestic goals and global ambitions—without holding much regard for the rules-based order.
Even as he continues to work towards reviving the Ottoman glory and ‘Ittihad-I Islam' (‘Unity of Islam’), there are significant limitations in Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan pursuing his Islamist approach to statecraft abroad.
Turkish global power aspirations are hindered by a lack of regional influence. Ankara wishes to enhance strategic depth in the neighborhood. Deviating from a soft power approach, President Erdogan has increasingly adopted a confrontational foreign policy.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made a foreign policy course-correction after realising that the strategic tilt towards the United States has not only grossly upset India’s geopolitical image but also undermined national interests.
Geopolitical competition between the great powers with or without direct conflict will lead to a situation where productive cooperation among them on critical international issues is likely to prove difficult.
External balancing is re-emerging as an element of policy driven by the yawning power asymmetry between India and China and China’s turn towards assertive behaviour and territorial claims.
The current policy is premised on the understanding that unless India hurts the principal architect of Pakistan’s Kashmir policy, that is, the Army, terrorism would continue unabated.
The discipline of International Relations (IR) is deeply enmeshed in the history, intellectual traditions and agency claims of the West, thus obscuring the contributions from the non-Western world. IR theory fails to take cognisance of the global distribution of the various actors along with their contribution to a heterogeneous and rich discipline. There is a pressing need for a departure from IR’s historic complicity with marginalisation and the silencing of alternative epistemologies, thereby making its process of knowledge production truly global and democratic.
The various connectivity projects put forward by India show its involvement as an investor in capacity-building efforts in the recipient countries across sectors of their particular needs and choices, not as an overarching and imposing economic power.
