•Given your hypothesis that at times the West, particularly America, guards its interests more closely than its values, do you see any kind of grand plan on part of the US to further its interests when it offers an Indo-US nuclear deal could not have been imagined earlier?

In geopolitics, you will always have all kind of pragmatic deals. And I think the Indo-US nuclear deal is not just a pragmatic deal, it’s also a result of a geopolitical alignment.

•Do you foresee any differences within the Asian block?

Rising tension between China and Japan or China and India is conceivable. But there is also a growing interdependence within Asia. A case in point is that of ASEAN which provides a platform for the leaders of Japan, China, and India to hold discussions. Asians should not feel that they have arrived. They have not arrived. They have just begun on the road to modernity and they done a good job so far.