Japan Archive

In the short time since Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi took office in May, he has revolutionized his country’s foreign relations. Modi has defied conventional wisdom, upended national traditions and launched a peripatetic campaign of rebuilding India’s ties to other nations. The hallmark of India’s foreign policy under Modi is the pursuit of tangible, preferably signed results. Its motivating objective is fomenting investment and economic growth. Ideological concerns have been relegated far down the priority list. Modi’s international relations early in his term are reminiscent of Turkey’s old “Zero Problems” formula from a few years ago, a philosophy that collapsed […]

As the end of each year rolls around, foreign policy pundits inevitably churn out columns reviewing the past 12 months and guessing at what comes next. These pieces will make for consistently bleak reading this year. Viewed in geopolitical terms, 2014 has been egregiously nasty. It is now conventional wisdom that the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, coupled with China’s increasing assertiveness in the Pacific, signal the looming implosion of the American-led international order. Like most conventional wisdoms, this may prove to be incorrect. While many analysts will make pronouncements about the future of the world in 2015, […]