Book Review: Friends | A realist view of India’s place in the global order

Friends: India’s Closest Strategic Partners - By Sreeram Chaulia | Rupa (Pages: 296; Price: Rs 795)

Sreeram Chaulia has written about India’s foreign policy shifts and options from a ‘realist’ standpoint. That is a nuanced assessment of India’s relations with Japan, Australia, France, Russia, the United States and Israel, with whom India has strategic partnership agreements. The bias in favour of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Government lurks in the background, but it does not come in the way of placing facts upfront.

The basic thesis of the book is that India being friends with everyone does not define India’s foreign policy. There is a need for an ‘enemy’ to crystallise friendships, alliances and partnerships with other countries. So, China is identified as the ‘enemy’ along with Pakistan. This does not however lead to the simplistic hunt for looking to those countries which are also inimical towards China.

It is conceded by Chaulia that India’s friendship with the United States is complicated enough because of the “asymmetry in power”. He writes, “In 2023, President Biden rhetorically acknowledged that the USA and India were “two great powers”, but the history of the USA-India friendship suggests that asymmetry in power, and related sensitivities it engenders, have been and will be a constraint.”

In an admirable academic manner, Chaulia looks at the many definitions and many examples of “middle power”, he rightly concludes that India does not fit into the slot of middle power, that is being a camp follower of the United States like Canada, Australia, Japan, South Korea. That India jealously holds on to its ‘strategic autonomy’ status makes it different. He concludes that India falls into the category of “rising power” because, among all the other middle powers, India alone is capable of reaching the top of the “totem pole”.

Chaulia’s realistic assessment of India’s position in the global order as a rising power is expressed well in his over-stated chapter on Israel with the heading, “Brothers in Arms: Israel and India Take on Common Dangers” (Chapter 6). He admits, “Neither Israel nor India has a foolproof record in successfully preventing all cross-border jihadist terrorism.” And he is conscious that “In overall anti-terrorism strategy, Israel and India do diverge.”

He says that Israel “enjoys a nuclear asymmetric superiority over its rivals”, while “India faces two nuclear-armed adversaries, Pakistan and China, and lacks the asymmetrical leverage…” At the same time, as an aspiring great power, India has a broader concern for its international image which Israel does not.

The book is fully appreciative of the Modi government’s moves and counter-moves where according to the author India used the carrot-and-stick policy at the G20 Summit in 2023 when it managed a joint statement by playing off on the fears of the USA and its allies on the one hand and the Soviet Union on the other hand about the reference to the war in Ukraine.

But these are short-term tactics, which have their uses. What Chaulia is not willing to acknowledge is the continuity in India’s foreign policy since its Independence, which was based on realistic, rather than ideological or idealistic, assumptions. And he gives exaggerated importance to the Indian Leftists in the USA and at home of putting hurdles in India’s relations with the USA.