The Six Phases of Indian Foreign Policy

4th Ramnath Goenka Lecture · New Delhi · 14 November 2019

Six months into the job, a history of Indian foreign policy in six phases and five lessons, and the line that the obstacle to India’s rise is no longer the world but the dogmas of Delhi.

The most cited speech of his ministry. Commentators have called it the single speech that explains India’s new strategic thinking.

Watch the recording (The Indian Express) · Full text, Ministry of External Affairs

The argument, paragraph by paragraph

¶ 1–4 · A different world, different partners

Opening with Einstein’s definition of insanity, he argues that the international order is being transformed: American nationalism, China’s rise, Brexit, the return of old empires and new contests over technology, connectivity and trade. India’s partners and their relevance have changed with it.

¶ 5–8 · Against consistency for its own sake

India has advanced most when it broke with its past: 1971, 1991, 1998 and the 2005 nuclear deal. Holding a course despite changed circumstances cost it dearly with China in the 1950s and with Pakistan. He calls for an unsentimental audit of foreign policy.

¶ 9–16 · Six phases

Optimistic non-alignment (1946–62); realism and recovery (1962–71); regional assertion (1971–91); strategic autonomy in a unipolar world (the 1990s); India as a balancing power in the 2000s; and from 2014 a more energetic diplomacy of convergences and issue-based arrangements in a multipolar world.

¶ 17–25 · Five lessons

Greater realism about hard security; leveraging the global environment for growth, with a hard look at trade deals such as RCEP; engaging multiple players at once; taking more risk; and reading the global tea leaves right.

¶ 26–30 · The sixth phase and its dogmas

He weighs labels such as multi-alignment and India First, asks whether India lost time on China, the economy and the nuclear question, and argues that thinking on Pakistan and Kashmir must move beyond the past. Putting dogmas behind us, he concludes, is the starting point.

In his words

not anymore the barriers of the world, but the dogmas of Delhi (Paragraph 5)
Think of it, not just as arithmetic but as calculus. (Paragraph 23)

Since then

The speech’s framework of multiple partnerships became the standard description of India’s approach in his books and interviews. (The Diplomat)

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