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Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India has shed its traditional defensiveness toward the Middle East and engaged with all relevant actors in the region, including members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, Israel, and Iran.
Hours after he took over as the external affairs minister in the new Narendra Modi government, former diplomat S. Jaishankar had a situation on hand. U.S. President Donald Trump formally rescinded India’s designation as a beneficiary developing country under the Generalized System of Preferences.
The post-Tiananmen era in China had an element that reinforced Deng Xiaoping’s model of “open economy and closed polity”—the rise of the all-knowing surveillance state with enormous potential for digital repression.
The unfolding dynamic around Taiwan will have significant consequences for India’s Act East Policy and its emerging role in the Indo–Pacific region.
No other set of issues will shape India’s future global trajectory more than a pragmatic reorientation of its trade strategy and the reformation of its negotiating structures.
Beijing and New Delhi’s simultaneous rise has led both countries to take a more assertive approach to issues such as border disputes, resulting in the Doklam crisis. There are, however, opportunities for practical cooperation between China and India.
Rather than pray for the success of SAARC, the new government in New Delhi should double down on informal diplomacy that could help pave the way for more purposeful regional cooperation—both bilateral and multilateral.
The rejigging of the political relations between the United States, China, and Russia might present New Delhi with fleeting strategic opportunities that need to be seized quickly.
That China and India compete for foreign military bases is not merely an extension of their very familiar rivalry, but a definitive moment in their overall political evolution as modern states.
As technological innovation, commercial competition, and geopolitical rivalry put great strain on the old order in space, New Delhi will need all the strategic pragmatism, legal acumen, and diplomatic skill in shaping new rules for the regulation of outer space.
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