Since its independence in 1947, India’s leaders have sought to grasp the greatness that the country seemed destined for.
C. Raja Mohan is no longer with Carnegie.
C. Raja Mohan was a nonresident senior fellow at Carnegie India. A leading analyst of India’s foreign policy, Mohan is also an expert on South Asian security, great-power relations in Asia, and arms control. He is the foreign affairs columnist for the Indian Express, and a visiting research professor at the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore. He was a member of India’s National Security Advisory Board.
From 2009 to 2010, Mohan was the Henry Alfred Kissinger Chair in Foreign Policy and International Relations at the Library of Congress. Previously, he was a professor of South Asian studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi and the Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. He also served as the diplomatic editor and Washington correspondent of the Hindu.
Mohan’s most recent books are Modi’s World: Expanding India's Sphere of Influence (Harper Collins India, 2015) and India’s Naval Strategy and Asian Security (Routledge, 2016) (co-edited with Anit Mukherjee). His other books include Samudra Manthan: Sino-Indian Rivalry in the Indo-Pacific (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2012), Power Realignments in Asia: China, India and the United States (Sage, 2009) (co-edited with Alyssa Ayres), Impossible Allies: Nuclear India, United States and the Global Order (India Research Press, 2006), and Crossing the Rubicon: The Shaping of India’s New Foreign Policy (Palgrave, 2004).
Since its independence in 1947, India’s leaders have sought to grasp the greatness that the country seemed destined for.
We hosted Vijay Gokhale, C. Raja Mohan, Indrani Bagchi, and Ashley Townshend for a discussion on the crises in Ukraine and the emerging challenges for the Indo-Pacific. The talk was moderated by Shibani Mehta.
As nations around the world close their borders, halt international trade, and craft national responses to limit the spread of the disease, the current crisis has reinforced nationalist rhetoric on economic protectionism and anti-immigration.
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.
Europe’s huge stakes in the economic stability of Asia, the sea lines of communication connecting Europe and Asia through the Indo-Pacific, and threat of U.S. retrenchment may force Europe to reconsider its role in Asia. Asia needs a robust European contribution to connectivity and security.
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.
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.