How C Raja Mohan’s India and the Rebalancing of Asia rethinks India’s China challenge and US ties

Raja Mohan is at his best when he places today’s debate inside a longer Indian retreat from power politics. He reminds us that India was once central to a larger strategic space and then deliberately stepped back from that inheritance. Partition, non-alignment, suspicion of the West and chronic underestimation of China narrowed Indian strategy for decades. What can look like a recent turn, he argues, is really a long correction.

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio

He is especially sharp on China. For decades, Indian discourse oscillated between romanticism and evasion on the China question. The book shows how the challenge from Beijing is not confined to the disputed boundary. It extends across South Asia, into the Indian Ocean, and into multilateral institutions where China has repeatedly obstructed India’s ambitions.

The same realism applies to India’s neighbourhood. The book makes the valuable point that India does not inherit primacy. It has to keep earning it. The deterioration in ties with Bangladesh after Sheikh Hasina’s ouster, Pakistan’s continuing hostility and the broader difficulty of stabilising relations across South Asia show that geography gives India weight but not automatic influence. China’s rise in the subcontinent has deepened India’s unresolved neighbourhood frictions.

Raja Mohan argues that closer cooperation with Washington need not mean the surrender of Indian autonomy. He presents the relationship as a pragmatic alignment shaped by a common interest in preventing Chinese dominance in Asia. That captures New Delhi’s current predicament well. India needs the US as a force multiplier but has no wish to become an American appendage. He believes that this tension can be managed and that the deeper logic of India-US ties will outlast tactical turbulence. Perhaps. But the risk is obvious.

Russia figures in the story neither as India’s strategic future nor as a relic to be discarded. It remains a diminishing but still consequential relationship, especially in defence and as an energy hedge. Yet, it is no longer central to India’s Asian strategy.

India may wish to balance China politically and militarily, yet its place in Asia’s economic architecture remains thinner than its strategic ambition would require. Raja Mohan recognises the problem but does not quite bridge the gap between India’s strategic ambition and its economic weight in Asia. He does not fully explore whether the Indian state has the industrial depth, fiscal space and diplomatic bandwidth to sustain this role.

Viewed against the turmoil in West Asia, the book begins to feel a little narrow. Raja Mohan keeps West Asia outside the book’s central argument. This made sense in a tightly argued study of Asia and the Indo-Pacific. But for India, the Gulf is not peripheral. Energy dependence, shipping routes, diaspora interests and inflationary exposure make West Asia a significant part of India’s strategic environment. For India, the strategic map runs from the Gulf no less than from the South China Sea.

The conflict in West Asia sharpens one of the book’s central contrasts: China speaks the language of order, America still underwrites security. India must deal with both. Washington may be erratic, overbearing and increasingly transactional. It is still the most consequential security actor in Asia. Beijing has shown far less willingness to bear security burdens.

That leaves India facing a harder problem than the book fully confronts. It must work with the United States without becoming hostage to American volatility, and balance China without pretending that old evasions can return.

Few books explain India’s strategic turn over the past decade as clearly as India and the Rebalancing of Asia. Its deeper conceptual contribution is to present India as a balancing power in a contested Asia. Strategic autonomy here does not mean distance from major powers. It means working with others without surrendering independent judgment. That, in the end, is where the book’s real value lies.

Raja Mohan’s final question is the right one: can India become not merely a power in Asia but a power of Asia? To achieve that, India must build stronger capabilities, deepen its economic foundations and manage its neighbourhood with greater tact. By framing the problem so clearly, Raja Mohan has given India not a slogan but a test.

The writer is former permanent representative of India to the United Nations, and dean, Kautilya School of Public Policy, Hyderabad