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 DOI: 10.1177/0020881713485165

2011 48: 343International StudiesPartha Pratim Basu

.Growing Ties and ChallengesEmerging India as a Global Player:Book Review: Raj Kumar Kothari (Ed.),

  

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International Studies, 48, 3&4 (2011): 337–372

Book Reviews 343

China’s encircling of India by using its smaller neighbours as proxies, a Wei Qi strategy, which Henry Kissinger has elaborated in his book, On China. But rather than blaming the South Asian states for being opportunistic in nature, as many nationalistic opinions tend to proffer in terms of analysis, Pant singularly blames the lack of leadership on India’s part for the increasing welcome that China has been offered by the South Asian states.

This is a powerful argument against those who predict China’s rise as having an essentially benevolent effect on India’s external as well as internal develop-ments. The doctrine of ‘harmony of interests’—euphemistically captured in the phrase Chindia—between the two rising stars of Asia propounded by many in academia as well as by the Indian political class has been destroyed or at the least put under serious doubt. The most important message which the volume has tried to convey is the fact that the rhetoric of co-operation and simultaneous rise not-withstanding, conflicts between India and China cannot be wished away by indulging in sweet talk. Since interdependence between the two is marked by asymmetry, the liberal idea of complex interdependence may not be helpful in creating a peaceful trajectory of India–China relations. China still uses Pakistan as a proxy and wants to contain India in the South Asian region. It is uncomfortable with India’s elevation on the global scene as was quite evident during the Indo-US negotiations on a civilian nuclear deal. And, finally and most importantly, it is hesitant to discuss the boundary issue because the territorial dispute acts as a hedge against a more assertive India.

The book also sends a clear policy message to the Indian government: notwith-standing the efforts to create bonhomie with China, India needs to be prepared for future contingencies, which may involve hard actions to protect hits vital interests.

Yogesh JoshiDoctoral student

Centre for International Politics, Organisation and DisarmamentSchool of International Studies

Jawaharlal Nehru UniversityNew Delhi

India

Raj Kumar Kothari (Ed.), Emerging India as a Global Player: Growing Ties and Challenges. New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers. 2012. 302 pp. `795.

DOI: 10.1177/0020881713485165

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 triggered off speculations about the imminence of a unipolar world order under the hegemony of the US. Things, however, unfolded differently in the course of the 1990s and beyond. Some schol-ars noted unmistakable signs of the decline of American power in its huge budget deficits and mounting external debt as well as its protracted and costly engagements

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344 Book Reviews

in Afghanistan and Iraq. This, in turn, was matched by the emergence of new contenders, on the one hand, of states belonging to the erstwhile developing world, namely, China, India, Brazil and lately South Africa, and on the other hand, of formidable regional entities such as the European Union (EU) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The immediate backdrop of these portentous changes, many claimed, was set by the triumph of geo-econom-ics over geopolitics in the aftermath of the Cold War. Under these circumstances, India’s foreign policy also took a new turn: from non-alignment (with a distinct pro-Soviet tilt) to ‘multi-alignment’. The US, the sole superpower, was vigor-ously courted but simultaneously, New Delhi sought to engage a host of powers, established as well as emerging, as listed earlier. Similarly, attempts were also under way to enhance its visibility in multilateral platforms, from the United Nations (UN) to the World Trade Organization (WTO). The volume under review probes from diverse angles the burgeoning ties between India and the major pow-ers/leading states in the developing world, both at the bilateral level and within multi-state framework, to bring out their global and regional ramifications. The chapters have been arranged into four clusters: the first and second focus on India’s exchanges with select ‘major powers in the developed world’ and ‘leading powers in the developing world’ respectively; the third examines India’s engagement with international organizations and the final section captures its interaction with vari-ous regional bodies.

The first section, quite expectedly, opens with India’s ties with the US, its ‘natural ally’, according to some authors. However, Aneek Chatterjee seeks to draw up a balance sheet of ‘expectations and reality’ as he asserts that opposing foreign policy objectives and national interests continued to keep the two democ-racies apart even after the end of the Cold War. He undertakes to explode three ‘pervading myths’ pertaining to post-Cold War Indo-US relations: the ‘upswing’ in economic relations, the expanding ‘strategic partnership’ and the boost to bilateral ties from the civil nuclear agreement. If Chatterjee sounds a sceptical note, M.J. Vinod presents a more buoyant perspective on the Indo-US strategic co-operation and analyzes the various dimensions of this unfolding synergy: military and defence, management of the high seas, China and Pakistan factors, ‘war on terror’, technology transfer and so forth. However, he also concludes with some reflections on the probable tension areas, for example, the question of New Delhi’s freedom of action in order not to appear as Washington’s subsidiary partner or the intended/unintended consequences of the developments in US–Pakistan or US–China relations. Thus, in the final analysis, both these scholars seem to keep their fingers crossed regarding the future course of Indo-US relations that currently display an upbeat spirit. To come to the third chapter in the line, however, the hopes raised by the theme of Ankhi Sanyal’s chapter, ‘Energy Security and Energy Diplomacy: New Dimensions of Indo-US Relationship’, remain largely unfulfilled. What the chapter provides is basically an overview of the evolution of India’s energy policy, and Indo-US exchanges—and the civilian nuclear agreement—come in rather tangentially in the course of this exercise.

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Book Reviews 345

As to Indo-Russian equations, it is true that Moscow, at present, has no special concessions to offer to New Delhi; India also requires a strategic partnership with the US to ensure that China’s rise continues to be peaceful. Still, Rama Sampath Kumar argues that India should not alienate Russia by aligning itself with the US and explains why Russia still matters a great deal for New Delhi. Nevertheless, Kumar is palpably wary about the prospects for organizations such as Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) or the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO), which involve the triangular participation of Russia, India and China as a strategic and/or economic counterweight to US superiority. Madhuchhanda Ghosh, while accounting for the perceptible turnaround in Indo-Japanese relations in the new millennium, emphasizes Japan’s concerns about a rising China in a politico-strategic sense, but more importantly, its positive reading of the future prospects of the Indian economy. But she contends that for cementing existing ties further, asymmetry in trade needs to be corrected and foreign direct investment (FDI) flows expanded, for which a propitious climate already exists.

Contributions under the second section arguably deal with the most critical dimension of India’s contemporary foreign policy, that is, its rapport (or other-wise) with the ‘emerging’ powers––China, Brazil and South Africa. Tracing the course of Sino-Indian relations, which is undoubtedly closely followed through-out the globe, Prosenjit Pal’s chapter covers a lot of ground even if in a somewhat haphazard manner. The crux of his argument is that though the Sino-Indian ‘regional struggle for power’ is often regarded as a testimony to the neo-realist account of international relations, both China and India are beginning to realize that there is much more to be gained from co-operation rather than from conflict. He draws attention to developments such as advancing Sino-Indian economic integration, the soaring energy needs that have pushed the two towards conver-gence and a growing elite-level consensus, which call for fresh theoretical insights. The growing warmth between India and Brazil, the two economic dynamos of the developing world, has also become a global talking point in recent times. Dattesh D. Prabhu Parulekar captures in detail the development of economic complemen-tarities and the prodigious diversities of bilateral economic engagement together with their rising status at international financial gatherings. Attention is also drawn to the distinctive character of India, Brazil, South Africa Dialogue Forum (IBSA), although the shadow of China over the otherwise growing bilateral relations has not been missed altogether. Badruddin’s interesting chapter on the Indian diaspora in South Africa ultimately turns out to be rather disappointing, for it hardly sheds any ‘light on the critical areas of India–South Africa relations in recent years’, as the introduction to the volume maintains.

India, ever since Nehruvian times, has always paid the highest respect to the functioning of international organizations, which underscores the importance of the third set of chapters. In one of the two chapters on India’s involvement with the UN, Peu Ghosh observes that while the UN Security Council in the post-Cold War era has been largely hijacked by the US and its allies, India’s present role as a non-permanent member of the Security Council assumes special significance.

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346 Book Reviews

She also highlights the issue of UN reform, which also constitutes the core of Brijesh N. Mehrish’s chapter. Mehrish examines the Indian perspective on reform-ing and restructuring the UN and offers suggestions for the overhaul of its princi-pal organs. The final chapter in this section by Sajal Jana, dealing with international economic institutions—World Bank, International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organization—falls short of expectations as it provides a rather general account of the functioning of these institutions in the global economy while India’s engagement with these bodies has received only marginal attention.

The surge of ‘new regionalism’ constitutes a remarkable feature of post-Cold War international relations. Purusottam Bhattacharya convincingly argues that it is their shared commitment to promote ‘effective multilateralism’ in the post-Cold War world threatened by US hegemonic ambitions that has of late brought EU and India closer than ever. The limitations of this relationship (namely, differences within the EU over India’s refusal to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty [NPT] and Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty [CTBT] or New Delhi’s charge of protectionist practices against EU members) notwithstanding, potential areas of co-operation, including trade and investment, science, technology and culture, combating terrorism and fighting environmental degradation and climate change, provide a sound foundation for a stronger partnership. Anindya Batabyal’s chap-ter is refreshing in that it highlights the political and strategic—as against the often-covered economic and commercial—dimensions of India’s interest in forg-ing closer ties with the ASEAN. It explores how New Delhi sought to capitalize on the worries of Southeast Asian states about the rise of China, which prompted them to look to India as a potential counterweight, to advance its political and strategic interests in the region.

In the first of the two chapters on the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), Sucheta Ghosh identifies three preconditions for revital-izing the problem-torn organization—introduction of a cartel or guild type arrangement as a solid base for the regional economy, greater civil society level exchanges and deepening democratic practices in the subcontinent. She puts a rider that India has to assume a lead role by asserting itself without being either overbearing or buying friendship without reciprocity. Pratip Chattopadhyay, on the other hand, notes some welcome signs of vivacity in the SAARC’s activities during the last few years and goes on to examine how a politically and economi-cally ‘emerged’ India can utilize this ‘new’ SAARC, and how the two could play complementary roles in the context of the contemporary global order.

In the final chapter, Jayita Mukhopadhyay turns her attention to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), an economic bloc that consists of twenty-one Pacific Rim countries (and the only one that has US, China and Japan as members). The chapter builds a strong case for an Indian seat in the APEC and argues that the grounds, on which membership was denied earlier, namely, politi-cal instability and tardy progress of economic reforms, no longer exist.

On the whole, the volume makes a timely contribution and captures a water-shed moment in Indian foreign policy, that is, its shift from non-alignment to

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multiple alignments, a strategy to survive and forge ahead in a post-Cold War world order that is still very much in a state of flux. Of course, it contains no uncritical narration of the story of the ‘rising India’: achievements that have bol-stered India’s claim to permanent membership of the UN Security Council have been recorded; simultaneously, it also spells out where New Delhi needs to be more proactive, or where a lot more ‘catching up’ is needed. The grey zones and tension areas in India’s contemporary foreign policy have been duly taken note of, although the hangover of its non-aligned foreign policy—especially the way it championed the cause of the ‘Third World’ in the 1970s and 1980s—could have been probed further. Indeed, India’s engagement with international economic institutions, especially the WTO, calls for more exhaustive and in-depth treat-ment. A separate chapter on India’s involvement in BRICS and IBSA and its pros-pects and constraints could have also been devoted.

Partha Pratim BasuProfessor, Department of International Relations

Jadavpur University, KolkataIndia

Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan (Eds), Non-Western International Relations Theory: Perspectives On and Beyond Asia. London and New York: Routledge. 2010. 256 pp. £25.99.

DOI: 10.1177/0020881713485166

This edited volume brings together six authors who evaluate the state of non-Western oriented International Relations Theory (IRT) in China, Japan, Korea, India and Indonesia. Accompanying micro-level case study evaluation are micro - and macro-level analyses from the Southeast Asian, Islamic and world historical perspectives. The authors provide key insights into the fundamental question of why there is no non-Western IRT. More pointedly, why there is a lack of apprecia-tion, exposure and dissemination of non-Western oriented International Relations (IR) theoretical scholarship?

The issue of the relative neglect of non-Western perspectives on IR theorizing assumes importance in view of the shift in power relations and international influ-ence towards the Asian region. Students of IR are keenly aware of the need for rigorous studies on the classical theories in order to develop a theoretically sound and testable base for scholarship. However, the limited scope of theoretical inquiry, which has centred on a few debates such as neorealist versus neoliberal, realist versus ideational, positivist versus reflexive, has led students and scholars of IR to face a situation characterized by increasing inflexibility in terms of analysis, which often tends to ignore the nature of international society and the effects of globalization. These effects include increasing divisiveness, diversity, and a recon-nection with lost traditions that stem from post-colonial studies and a recapturing of