‘Rise of India’: Views on the sustenance of the discourse

Francis Fukuyama in his highly acclaimed article “The End of History?” published in the National Interest (1989) argues that the advent of Western liberal democracy may signal the end point of humanity’s sociocultural evolution and the final form of human government.

One of the eminent realists, John Mearsheimer had opined that Cold War history has been misread and the new found optimism in Cold War in International Security, 1990). Another realist who had dwelled on a similar pessimism was Robert Kaplan, who in his seminal work, The Coming Anarchy published in the Atlantic Monthly (1994) foresaw a return to the Hobessian state of nature in the post Cold War era where most of the conflicts would take place on availability of resources. Samuel P. Huntington shot to fame with his original exposition about the nature of conflicts in the post Cold War era in his outstanding work, The Clash of Civilizations? published in the Foreign Affairs (Volume 72, Number 3, 1993), where he had forecast that the future conflicts in the world would take place on the dominant civilisational fault lines.

So far as the emergence of new centers of power was concerned, Krauthammer defied the conventional wisdom that economic power would translate to political and military power, and that it alone determines the position of a country in the hierarchical structure of power.

According to Ikenberry, what had ended with the Cold War was bipolarity, the nuclear stalemate, the decades of containment of the Soviet Union-seemingly the most dramatic and consequential features of the post war era With the end of the Cold War however, the basic principles which had come into existence after the end of the Second World War have not withered away. Rather, they are operating with a renewed vigor. The end of the Cold War has reinforced the liberal democratic order.

The central aim of the US foreign policy, according to Mearsheimer has traditionally been to dominate regions like Europe or North East Asia, where the US never wanted a peer competitor. He quotes an important Pentagon planning document of 1992 in his article which clearly states that, the first and foremost objective of the US would be to prevent the reemergence of a new rival which would pose a threat of similar dimensions like that of the erstwhile USSR. The document states that, US foreign policy would pribritize in refocusing on the emergence of any ‘potential future global competitor’ and would thereby preclude it.

According to Mahabubani, the area which was increasingly becoming significant in the post cold war era was East Asia which was evolving with a fast pace.

Prospects of a stable Asian continent had according to Hoge diminished because of the long standing disputed areas which dot the continent, like Kashmir, the unresolved Sino Indian border, Taiwan, North Korea and her nuclear ambitions etc. Therefore Hoge contends that to arrest such an instability caused by the global shift in power, US needs to play an assertive role in the Asia Pacific, thereby reinforcing the nature of a multipolar world order.

Economic power, she adds has become increasingly diffused and has got distributed among both the state and non-state actors-which have become exceedingly significant as components of the post Cold War world order. She has used terms like ‘power centers’ and ‘power brokers’ to denote states and non-state actors as the two important players that define the post Cold war structure. These new power centers (countries like India and China) have a wide range of military and political resources, some capacity for state action and more over a belief in their entitlement to a more influential role in world affairs.

Ashok Kapur emphasizes at the international level that, India has developed a presence in the global strategic economic mainstream; at the level of the Asian continent the author argues that India has a substantial and consequential involvement in the issues which merit international attention sometimes in convergence with the US, while at times otherwise. The final level of the immediate neighborhood Ashok Kapur argues. that India has repositioned herself militarily, politico-diplomatically and economically.

The nuclear tests of 1998; the end of the cold war which led to questions being raised on the relevance of non Alligned Movement; the way India related since the 1990s with the major powers with the USA at its helm; India’s policies to address an ever more ‘aggressive’ Pakistan and India’s policies towards her small neighbors and that of the extended region are ail intrinsically connected to the basic shift.

The issues namely are: India’s relations with the US, the idea of a strategic triangle revolving around Russia, India and China, India’s nuclear doctrine and its impact on the emerging civil-military relations, India’s position on the ballistic missile defense system, India’s relations with Iran and Israel and her quest for energy security.

The reasons forwarded by Sumit Ganguly which according to him have been primary are: India consciously is not seeking any coalition aimed at challenging the existing international order; India has accepted the percepts of the by and large neo liberal global orde, and that it has remained a functioning democracy.

A considerable number of works on the theme of India’s rise/emergence have premised on the future course of US policies vis-à-vis emergent/rising India. For example, one of the most celebrated works of Stepehen C.Cohen reads that, the book examines the proposition that India is becoming a major power and that such development has important implications for the United States.

The emergence/rise of China has been invariably perceived as a threat by scholars of International relations. Factors which have sustained and justified such a notion are China’s revisionist tendencies which are often expressed in her vows and passing references that she makes against the West led hegemony. China’s socialist history and her continuation in the same lines, even after the fall of the Berlin wall also leads many a scholars to conclude that China is intrinsically against the neo-liberal ethos.

Baldev Raj Nayyar and T.V. Paul edited volume on the theme regards the way India defied the non proliferation regime and went ahead with the 1998 nuclear tests, finally overcoming the sanctions which were imposed upon her as a penalty for non-conformation to the rules to be a modem day power transition conflict between the upholder of the order and its challenger.

In spite of having territorial disputes, resource sharing disputes and likewise India has undertaken policies like that of the Gujral Doctrine which hinged upon unilateral good neighborliness and the decision makers have since the 1990s been focusing upon the area of cooperation giving the irritants a backseat Such policies can be also explained in the light of India’s basic shift from being ideationally determined to that of being economically.

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Subacchi Paula 2008, ‘New Power Centers and New Power Brokers: Are they Shaping A new Economic Order?’, International Affairs, vol. 84, no. 3, pp. 485–498.