Research Fellow, IDSA, Dr Jagannath P. Panda’s commentary on India’s Foreign Policy, titled, ‘As India rises and aspires to great-power status, does its foreign policy need an overhaul?’ was published in the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR) on July 10, 2012.
This has been a frequently debated topic among Indian strategic thinkers since the February 2012 release of Nonalignment 2.0: A Foreign and Strategic Policy for India in the Twenty First Century, a policy paper by the Centre for Policy Research (CPR) in New Delhi, an independent, nonpartisan research institution and think tank. Nonalignment 2.0 advocates crafting a strategic path for India without entirely rejecting the previously accepted path of “nonalignment,” which bespeaks the “strategic autonomy” the country has enjoyed over the years. The focus of the document is the Asian theater and India’s two most urgent security concerns—China and Pakistan—as well as India’s move toward multilateralism and its approach to international institutions.