RPI Director Deepa M. Ollapally was featured in a roundtable on rising powers in Ethics and International Affairs. Read the article here.
Abstract: India is gradually changing its course from decades of inward-looking economics and strong anti-Western foreign policies. It has become more pragmatic, seeing important economic benefits from globalization, and some political benefits of working with the United States to achieve New Delhi’s great-power aspirations. Despite these changes, I argue that India’s deep-seated anti-colonial nationalism and commitment to strategic autonomy continues to form the core of Indian identity. This makes India’s commitment to Western-dominated multilateral institutions and Western norms, such as humanitarian intervention, partial and instrumental. Thus, while Indian foreign-policy discourse shows little sign of seeking to fully challenge the U.S.-led international order beyond largely reformist measures of building parallel institutions such as the New Development Bank, India will continue to strongly resist Western actions that weaken sovereignty norms.
