| Summary/Abstract |
We live in a world in which a post-cold war order is still in the making, as the sole super power shares the global stage with multiple state actors of varying weights, jostling for space to assert their national aspirations.
In this complex environment, India’s foreign policy seeks to maximise India’s political and economic space to further its global ambitions. This includes sustaining the vibrant India-US strategic partnership, forged since the early 2000’s, even while preserving the traditionally strong relationship with Russia from the decades of the Cold War. A comprehensive partnership has also been developed with China, though recent differences have somewhat dimmed its intensity. India needs a combination of domestic capacity building and external partnerships to reconcile the contradictory pulls of strategic cooperation and competition with China. Relations with the US, Russia, Japan and Europe are also elements of this effort. India’s multilateral activism in G-20, BRICS and SCO serve to enhance its room for manoeuvre in the dynamics of the US, Russia, China triangle. India’s strategy in the India-Pacific seeks to promote bilateral, plurilateral and multilateral partnerships in search for a cooperative and sustainable architecture in the region that promotes objective of a multi-polar order.
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