There is clearly an appreciation in the Indian policymaking circles of India’s rising capabilities. It is reflected in a gradual expansion of Indian foreign policy activity in recent years, in India’s attempt to reshape its defence forces, in India’s desire to seek greater global influence. But all this is happening in an intellectual vacuum with the result that micro issues dominate the foreign policy discourse in the absence of an overarching framework. The recent debates on the US-India nuclear deal, on India’s role in the Middle East, on India’s engagements with Russia and China, on India’s policy towards its immediate neighbours are all important but ultimately of little value as they fail to clarify the singular issue facing India today: what should be the trajectory of Indian foreign policy at a time when India is emerging from the structural confines of the international system as a rising power on way to a possible great power status? Answering this question requires one big debate. However much Indians like to be argumentative, a major power’s foreign policy cannot be effective in the absence of a guiding framework of underlying principles that is a function of both the nation’s geopolitical requirements and its values.

The assertions, therefore, that India does not have a China policy or an Iran policy or a Pakistan policy are plain irrelevant. India does not have a foreign policy, period. It is this lack of strategic orientation in Indian foreign policy that often results in a paradoxical situation where on the one hand India is accused by various domestic constituencies of angering this or that country by its actions while on the other hand India’s relationship with almost all major powers is termed a ‘strategic partnership’ by the Indian government.

... contd.