The following Analysis was published by the Lowy Institute on September 16, 2020. The Executive Summary is below, and the full text can be accessed here. After five decades of testy or distant strategic relations, India and Australia began in the early 2000s to forge an increasingly cooperative defence and security partnership. The primary drivers were similar concerns about China’s rise, behaviour, and assertiveness, as well as converging views about the regional strategic landscape. The decreasing salience of their divergences — Cold War-era geopolitics, India’s nuclear status, strained pe ..read more

The following article originally appeared in The Hindustan Times on August 26, 2020.  So many major issues appear to be at stake in this November’s elections in the United States (US) — the recovery from Covid-19, race relations, unemployment, US-China competition, the composition of the Supreme Court — that Washington’s largely cooperative relations with India should normally be but an afterthought. But that did not prevent the Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, his running mate Kamala Harris, and several senior campaign advisers from participating in a virtual event on Augus ..read more

The following article appeared in the Hindustan Times on July 21, 2020.  Earlier this year, United States (US) President Donald Trump used his prerogative as G-7 host to suggest inviting the leaders of India, Australia, and South Korea to the annual conclave. “I don’t feel that as a G-7 it properly represents what’s going on in the world. It’s a very outdated group of countries,” Trump said in May. While he later considered adding Brazil, Trump’s proposal was overshadowed by his suggestion that Russia be included, a move opposed by many of his advisers. Meanwhile, questions persist abou ..read more

The following article - coauthored with Andrew Small - originally appeared in War on the Rocks on July 20, 2020. An excerpt is included below and the full text can be accessed here.  China’s ambassador to Sweden, Gui Congyou, has a colorful turn of phrase to describe his country’s approach to foreign policy: “We treat our friends with fine wine, but for our enemies we have shotguns.” The “enemies” he has attacked in the last two years encompass a bewilderingly expansive range of media and political targets, one of the contributory factors behind China’s rapidly deteriorating reputatio ..read more

The following document published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) was based on a meeting at Rancho Mirage, California, from January 23-25, 2020, to achieve consensus on a vision for regional cooperation to advance democratic governance norms in the Indo-Pacific.  "The basis for all these diverse and inclusive efforts should always remain the promotion of human dignity. We are optimistic about the future of democracy in the Indo-Pacific region, but old challenges remain and new ones have arisen. Diverse approaches to advancing democracy must be more conscio ..read more

The following Q&A is adapted from a Reddit ‘Ask Me Anything’ for IndiaSpeaks between April 10-12, 2020. Both the questions and answers have been edited and sorted for clarity and flow. Jump to: ·       Part I: China’s Rise and India’s Response ·       Part II: The U.S.-India Strategic Partnership ·       Part III: Rethinking South Asia ·       Part IV: India’s International Partnerships - New and Old ·       Part V: The Study and Prac ..read more

Many countries are reconsidering their relationship with China — the United States (US) and the European Union, Australia and Canada, Indonesia and Japan, Brazil and Russia. Their policies have generally involved a combination of three approaches, often pursued simultaneously. The first is internal balancing, strengthening themselves and developing capabilities in response to China’s growing power. The second is engagement, working with China to reach understandings, although this requires some give and take by both sides. The third is external balancing, cooperating with others to gain more ..read more

When US President Donald Trump visited India in February 2020, he was riding high. The American economy looked healthy, unemployment was low, and the US Senate had just acquitted him of charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Just three months later, everything looked different. The global COVID-19 pandemic had resulted in over 100,000 deaths in the United States alone, unemployment had skyrocketed to record levels, and protests triggered by the killing of George Floyd, an African-American man, by Minneapolis police had erupted in over 100 American cities. The dramatic chan ..read more

The following essay appeared in a collection published by the Council on Foreign Relations (Discussion Paper Series on Managing Global Disorder No. 1) in June 2020. The full text can be accessed here. The international order has changed radically over the past three decades in ways that are clearly discernible but not easily conceivable. This shift is evidenced by the lack of a commonly recognized term to characterize the emerging international order, beyond the increasingly inappropriate post–Cold War, which describes what the order is not. Without question, the prevailing international ..read more

The following article was originally published by the Observer Research Foundation on May 16, 2020.  Few trends have been as evident or exasperating over the past weeks as the use of the ongoing novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic to advance preexisting political arguments. To those who see the pandemic and its management as a vindication of authoritarianism, or evidence of the necessity of public healthcare, or confirmation of flailing democracies, it is easy to cherry-pick examples to support these arguments. No less than Ben Rhodes, the former U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser ..read more