India can resist China by acting in concert with its adversaries

At an emergency cabinet meeting, the Prime Minister indicated that the border fighting did not constitute a threat to India. The strategic Chinese threat, he maintained, lies in the rapidly increasing industrial power base of China as well as the building of military bases in Tibet. The only Indian answer, he continued, is the most rapid possible development of the Indian economy to provide a national power base capable of resisting a possible eventual Chinese military move." Arthur Cohen of the United States’s Central Intelligence Agency wrote this in his 1963 study of border skirmishes that occurred in Ladakh in 1959. The Prime Minister he refers to was Jawaharlal Nehru.Read moreThis is part 1 of a 3-part series of essays for Livemint. You can read the entire series at:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3

The global upheaval caused by China’s premature power games

As a sign of its arrival as a major power, global developments this decade have largely been shaped by China’s acts of commission and omission, and by the world’s response to it. Although Beijing’s exercises of power took a sharper turn after the global economic crisis of 2007-08, China’s leaders had been preparing their country to assume the mantle of great power at least a decade before that. In 2003, the very first year of his term as party leader, Hu Jintao organised a “collective study session" of the entire Politburo for a historical investigation into the world’s great powers. His government then commissioned a slickly produced 12-part documentary, aired on state-run TV from 2006, that got a star cast of scholars to discuss the rise of great powers from Spain and Portugal in the 15th century to the US and Soviet Union in the 20th. One of the most important lessons they must have drawn is that great power status does not just settle on you, and must be fought for and won.

Read more

This is part 1 of a 3-part series of essays for Livemint. You can read the entire series at:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3

Power is the only currency that will work in dealing with China

In January 2016, Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China—a position that outranks his commonly used job title of president—made an important speech assessing the global situation. China, in his view, was faced with “three unprecedented situations" and “three dangers". On the opportunity side of the ledger, it was “closer than ever before to being the centre of the world stage", he said; “It is closer to achieving its goals, and it now has the ability and the self-confidence to achieve its objectives." The dangers he spoke of were external aggression and internal division, an economic slowdown and political challenges to the party’s supremacy.Read moreThis is part 1 of a 3-part series of essays for Livemint. You can read the entire series at

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3