Sreeram Chaulia's latest book, Friends: India's Closest Strategic Partners, stands apart from other works on Indian foreign, economic and security policy in the 21st century. It brings together, in one treatise, not only the doctrines at play but also the variegated dynamics of seven case studies of India's valuable friends to illuminate the opportunities and challenges, larger purposes and thrust of India as a rising power.
Chaulia explains the intricacies of India's vital bilateral partnerships with Japan, Australia, USA, Russia, France, Israel and the UAE in the context of India's ambition and ascent as a "great power to be" or a leading power. The title, Friends, and the author's usage of Kautilya's characterisation of friendships in the epigraph are intriguing. But then Prime Minister Narendra Modi has spoken of India as a Vishwamitra, or friend to the world, and so this seems apt.
Can two countries be friends the way two individuals can be? Chaulia draws parallels, pointing out that a strategic partnership is akin to a live-in relationship and that an alliance evokes the exclusivity and commitments of a rigid marriage. Strategic partnerships give both sides benefits but also accord space to each side to pursue other friendships, as long as those are not inimical to the two sides' interests. Therein lies the crux. They must have each other's backs.
Recent developments in Bangladesh and controversies over harbouring and encouraging violent extremists against India are tests of India's strategic partnerships and highlight the need to draw some red lines, even given the tectonic shifts possible when governments change in democracies like USA. How strategic partners of India navigate relationships with Pakistan or China in terms of countering terrorism and checking threats to India's territorial integrity and security also calls for maturity and restraint.
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