Foreign dreams must take flight

challenge. On other South Asian relationships, Tharoor admits that “India is not blameless in its own conduct” and throws down the gauntlet for New Delhi to “evolve a new paradigm with no hint of hegemonism but still capable of exercising leverage”.

To stabilise Afghanistan, Tharoor banks on American military presence and pressure. But he does not ruminate on how India could aspire to be a great power if it outsources its core international security functions to the United States. Tharoor displays rare big picture analysis in this book on many facets of India’s power, but does not dwell upon building our strategic capacities to reduce dependence on extraregional interveners.

There are touches of Machiavelli as well in parts of this book. For India’s self-interest and in order to pay back China in its own coin, the author ingeniously proposes closer Indian engagement with Taiwan, particularly by our state governments. He also ventures into urging more proactive Indian mediation in the conflicts of West Asia between Israel and the Palestinians and between Iran and the West.

True to his global outlook, Tharoor also devotes attention in the book to how India can work with major powers like China and the United States for constructing international structures to cope with 21stcentury problems of global governance. His focus on “broad international questions” and “global public goods” is a refreshing departure from the hackneyed fare dished out by most Indian writers on foreign policy. Sreeram Chaulia is a profes

sor and dean at the Jindal School of International Affairs