Table of contents

Contributed articles.

India faces a defining period. Its status as a global power is not only recognized but increasingly institutionalized, even as geopolitical shifts create both opportunities and challenges. With critical interests in almost every multilateral regime and vital stakes in emerging ones, India has no choice but to influence the evolving multilateral order. If India seeks to affect the multilateral order, how will it do so? In the past, it had little choice but to be content with rule taking—adhering to existing international norms and institutions. Will it now focus on rule breaking—challenging the present order primarily for effect and seeking greater accommodation in existing institutions? Or will it focus on rule shaping—contributing in partnership with others to shape emerging norms and regimes, particularly on energy, food, climate, oceans, and cyber security? And how do India's troubled neighborhood, complex domestic politics, and limited capacity inhibit its rule-shaping ability? Despite limitations, India increasingly has the ideas, people, and tools to shape the global order—in the words of Jawaharlal Nehru, "not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially." Will India emerge as one of the shapers of the emerging international order? This volume seeks to answer that question.

Long plagued by poverty, India's recent economic growth has vaulted it into the ranks of the world's emerging powers, but what kind of power it wants to be remains a mystery. Our Time Has Come explains why India behaves the way it does, and the role it is likely to play globally as its prominence grows.

A clear-eyed look at modern India's role in Asia's and the broader world One of India's most distinguished foreign policy thinkers addresses the many questions facing India as it seeks to find its way in the increasingly complex world of Asian geopolitics. A former Indian foreign secretary and national security adviser, Shivshankar Menon traces India's approach to the shifting regional landscape since its independence in 1947. From its leading role in the “nonaligned” movement during the cold war to its current status as a perceived counterweight to China, India often has been an after-thought for global leaders—until they realize how much they needed it. Examining India's own policy choices throughout its history, Menon focuses in particular on India's responses to the rise of China, as well as other regional powers. Menon also looks to the future and analyzes how India's policies are likely to evolve in response to current and new challenges. As India grows economically and gains new stature across the globe, both its domestic preoccupations and international choices become more significant. India itself will become more affected by what happens in the world around it. Menon makes a powerful geopolitical case for an India increasingly and positively engaged in Asia and the broader world in pursuit of a pluralistic, open, and inclusive world order.

The rise of India and China as two major economic and political actors in both regional and global politics necessitates an analysis of not only their bilateral ties but also the significance of their regional and global pursuits. This book looks at the nuances and politics that the two countries attach to multilateral institutions and examines how they receive, react to and approach each other’s presence and upsurge. The driving theme of this book is to highlight the enduring and emerging complexities in India-China relations, which are multi-layered and polygonal in nature, and both a result and reflection of a multipolar world order. The book argues that coexistence between India and China in this multipolar world order is possible, but that it is limited to a medium-term perspective, given the constraints of identity complexities and global aspirations these two rising powers are pursuing. It goes on to discuss how their search for energy resources, quest to uphold their own identity as developing powers, and engagement in balance-of-power politics to exert authority on each other’s presence, are some elements that guide their non-cooperative relationship. By explaining the foreign policy approaches of Asia’s two major powers towards the growing Asian and global multilateralism, and highlighting the policies they carry towards each other, the book is a useful contribution to students and scholars of Asian Politics, Foreign Policy and International Relations.