Under the Empire

Does the UPA government's foreign policy represent any shift away from the pro-U.S. foreign policy of the previous NDA government? Indeed, was the NDA government's foreign policy itself a continuation of previous policy, or did it represent a major shift? Ninan Koshy traces the paradigm shift in India's foreign policy to its nuclear weapon programme started in 1998. Fully endorsing all unilateralist actions of the Bush administration meant to destabilize the international order, the NDA government entered into a strategic and military alliance with the U.S. Koshy shows how the Congress-led UPA government went much further along the new policies of its predecessor on nuclear weapons, West Asia, and alliance with the U.S.

Abandoning all principles of non-alignment and independence in foreign policy, and ignoring the relevant directives of the Common Minimum Programme, the Manmohan Singh government accepted all conditions dictated by the U.S., tantalized by its promise to 'help India become a major world power in the 21st century'. The induction of India as a junior partner of the U.S., which meanwhile had transformed itself into an Empire, was celebrated during the Prime Minister's visit to Washington in July 2005.

India's vote at the end of September the same year against Iran in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was an ignominious display of the abject surrender of its strategic autonomy before the U.S. empire. Ninan Koshy makes a lucidly argued and well-substantiated critique of the foreign policy of the UPA government, an issue that has become the, locus of a stormy political debate in India.