Underdogs End Empires: A Memoir by I.P. Khosla

Ambassador I.P. Khosla, the author of the book Underdogs End Empires: A Memoir, started his career in the Indian Foreign Service in 1960 and retired in 1996. Holding important positions, he witnessed at first hand the historic events that unfolded during this period and in the book under review he narrates all these experiences. The canvas of the book is large in terms of the geography as well as the time period it covers. It traces the changing relationship between power and war from pre-colonial times to colonial times, and from the Cold War period to the post-Cold War period, from the traditional as well as the modern perspective. Both have been applied separately to the same set of events, resulting in completely divergent conclusions. The author supports the traditional approach for arriving at an understanding of international relations.