The Great Power Show: A Realist Reckoning - India Between the US & China

There is a school of thought in international relations that strips away the comforting language—the values, the norms, the rhetoric of solidarity—and looks at the world as it is. States pursue power. Interests are permanent. And the gap between what countries say and what they do is almost always explained by material calculation, not moral commitment.

That school of thought is realism. And when you apply it to India, the picture that emerges is considerably less flattering than the one New Delhi prefers to project.

India likes to see itself as a civilisational voice, a bridge-builder, a leader of the Global South, a power with the strategic autonomy to chart its own course. Realism asks a simpler question: given India’s neighbours, given the gap in material power between India and them, given the choices India actually faces—what are its real options?

The answer is not comfortable. China is on India’s border, vastly more powerful, and actively hostile. The United States is India’s most important strategic partner, but it is also pushing India around on trade, tariffs, and technology. India cannot side with China, and the US seems to increasingly be demanding an uncomfortably higher price for its partnership. Squeezed between two great powers, with neither the material strength to resist alone nor the luxury of genuine non-alignment, India seems to be a power constrained by capabilities.

To discuss all this, Manoj Kewalramani's guest for this episode of The Great Power Show is Professor Rajesh Rajagopalan, who teaches International Politics at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. He is one of the sharpest realist voices in Indian strategic studies.

They discuss what the world looks like today from the Realist prism. Can the US and China really build a relationship of constructive strategic stability? What bipolarity actually means for a country in India’s position? Is strategic autonomy is an aspiration rather than a strategy? And what India should be doing in BRICS and the SCO, and how to think about the Russia relationship as it atrophies?

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