July 30, 2025
What Kind of Great Power Will India Be? | The Quad Power
This article was originally published on Foreign Affairs.
As Tellis makes clear, India’s long-held strategy of promoting a multipolar world order has become counterproductive for New Delhi. The concept of a multipolar order is seductive to Indian policymakers, who think India would have more influence if global power were dispersed. Such calculations may have made sense 25 years ago, when India, with its rapid economic growth, seemed poised to challenge China’s influence in Asia. In the last two decades, however, China has widened the power gap with India considerably, in economic as well as military terms.
That deficit means that India’s vision of a multipolar order, in which power is evenly distributed among a handful of countries, is no longer realistic. Worse, seeking such an order now plays directly into China’s hands. China and Russia both push for a multipolar world to overturn international norms and institutions that have largely kept the peace in the Indo-Pacific for the last 50 years. Far from aiding India’s rise, multipolarity would only confirm Chinese hegemony in Asia and make India more vulnerable to Chinese aggression.
Read the full article on Foreign Affairs.
More from CNAS
-
Podcast
Indo-Pacific Security / Transatlantic Security
Why the U.S. Should Unlock Allied CooperationAmerica’s allies are cooperating in a growing variety of domains. In their recent Foreign Affairs piece, former NATO Ambassador Julie Smith and former National Security Counci...
By Andrea Kendall-Taylor & Jim Townsend
-
Commentary
Indo-Pacific Security / Technology & National Security
CNAS Insights | The Cost of Silence on China’s Cyber AggressionJust weeks before the much anticipated meeting between President Donald Trump and General Secretary Xi Jinping, the United States discovered yet another major China-backed cyb...
By Morgan Peirce
-
Seoul, Washington Formalize Nuclear Sub Talks; North Korea Contact Eyed via Condolence Diplomacy
Video
South Korea and the United States are deepening their military cooperation, with nuclear-powered submarines on the table and wartime operational control once again under discu...
By Dr. Go Myong-Hyun
-
Trump’s Week in Asia: Gifts, Deals, and Submarines
Commentary
This article was originally published on War on the Rocks. Trump’s trip generated several positive outcomes. He showed up, which matters disproportionately in far-flung Asia. ...
By Jacob Stokes
