Editorial

Post the 2019 national elections, it seems appropriate to examine India’s foreign policy. In the context of the global disruptions of the last few years, India’s policy makers are faced with new challenges and yet many of the old challenges remain. The chief issues of the last four years of the Modi government are not likely to diminish and some of these may become even more significant. India’s rise is still at the level of a ‘potential’ rise. The end of globalisation, as we know it, and the weakening of its structures of power and hierarchy provide an opportunity to fulfil this potential.

This issue, therefore, looks at India’s strategic challenges in an emerging multipolar order and its ability to project itself as a power whose rise will be positive for the world. Yet India faces many challenges in its journey to this goal. In its efforts to shape global norms and regulations on issues such as counterterrorism in multilateral institutions, the realities of global politics and national interest limit its endeavours.

Papers in this issue also indicate where policy needs to be more nuanced and confront contradictions as in the announcement of the Act East policy and the fencing along the Manipur–Myanmar border. The region remains important in India’s future policy agendas. Pakistan’s relations with China remain a strategic concern, especially China’s increasing economic and financial footprint in the China Pakistan Economic Corridor. China’s actions also create concerns elsewhere and encourage new partnerships. Its growing military projection in the East and South China Seas, coupled with North Korea’s nuclear policy, has already pushed Japan to change its security policy despite its strong pacifist inclinations. The Indo-Pacific as a strategic idea has taken force in the last few years.

Even as India looks to its rise, it is also faced by global challenges that raise ethical issues and speak to sovereign concerns: the securitisation of migrations and questions over the United Nations’ right to intervene in states on humanitarian grounds. These are concerns that emanate from the global South and are still grounded in national concerns even as they form part of a more global debate. Many of these issues relate to the capacity of states to resolve internal security and economic issues and of regional institutions to deal with cross border non-state elements as the last paper on the continued existence of the Boko Haram in West Africa indicates.