Dear Friends and Colleagues,
I hope everyone is heading into a relaxing summer. Here are some updates on my work at the Council since spring.
The beginning of the Trump 2.0 administration led to many questions about great power, the liberal international order, and the state of U.S. alliances and partnerships. I was happy to join, therefore, an episode of the Great Power Show podcast hosted by Manoj Kewalramani, chair of the Indo-Pacific Research Programme at the Takshashila Institution, to discuss what we mean by an international order, and how we can tell if the order today is stable or fraying. I also joined a panel organized by the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, with Mark Frazier, Professor of Politics at the New School, and Liu Zongyi, a scholar at the Institute for International Strategic Studies, about the complex political and economic dynamics behind Sino-Indian ties and what their competition means for the international order.
By the end of April, the major news was, of course, the rapidly-intensifying Indian-Pakistani tensions following the deadly militant attack in Kashmir—the implications of which I first analyzed in a CFR expert brief on April 25. After India retaliated, as expected, with military strikes on Pakistani soil, I followed up with further analysis for the Council on the delicate balance that the U.S. would need to strike in managing continued escalation. I also offered my thoughts on what this might mean for relations between the United States, India, and Pakistan and the threat of escalation across several media outlets, culminating in an extended interview with editor Benjamin Hart for New York Magazine’s Intelligencer on May 13.
In June, I published the second phase of my ongoing project studying India’s approach to the international order in different issue areas, under CFR’s China Strategy Initiative. This second phase—titled “Divergence Despite Convergence: The United States-India Strategic Partnership and Defense Norms”—featured policy memos by three experts from the U.S., India, and U.K. that explore India’s adherence to U.S. and global norms around national defense. I hope you will enjoy these fascinating contributions from:
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Sameer Lalwani, senior advisor to the Special Competitive Studies Project, who argues that the U.S. and India differ in their conceptions of deterrence—especially regarding issues of capability, geography, and interoperability—but that these differences may ultimately be surmountable;
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Dimitrios Stroikos, head of the Space Policy Programme at the London School of Economics, who contends that India is transitioning from a space policy focused primarily on socioeconomic development to one valuing national security and prestige; and
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Konark Bhandari, a fellow in the Technology and Security Program at Carnegie India, who finds that India’s traditional stance on export controls, between strategic independence and participation in multilateral regimes, is shifting amid the country’s growing defense exports and increasing U.S. unilateralism.
I am grateful to these authors for their contributions and for presenting their research at a CFR workshop in April, followed by an extensive discussion and revision process. I am also deeply indebted to Siddharth Iyer, former Special Advisor to the Vice President for Indo-Pacific Affairs, for leading the workshop discussion and for reading and commenting on memo drafts.
Finally, many of you have interacted with my wonderful Research Associate, Andrew Huang. Andrew is leaving the Council for the halls of Harvard Law School, and I wish him the very best.
Thank you for reading. Please feel free to share this newsletter with those who might be interested. I look forward to updating you again in the coming months.
Sincerely,
