Valdai Club

India has had to work hard to strike a balance in its relations with the West and Russia, making it clear that it is not an anti-Western country, just a non-Western one. While India remains worried about the increasing closeness of the Sino-Russian partnership amidst concerns about China’s rise, Russia is wary of New Delhi’s ties with Washington.

Given that India would prefer to deal with the disputes with its neighbours bilaterally, how can its partners help? Apart from direct mediation, friendly partners can assist through a variety of ways, depending on the willingness of the parties. These involve backchannel talks, support at international forums, and the facilitation of meetings between disputing parties, writes Valdai Club expert Nivedita Kapoor.

Indo-Pacific is still is a work in progress but given its salience for the stakeholders, it is unlikely to disappear in the near future. It has emerged as an important part of the geopolitical landscape amidst an emerging world order, has attracted support from some major players, and has cemented its position through sustained high-level interactions that indicate a commonality of interests in specific areas, writes Valdai Club expert Nivedita Kapoor. The article represents one of the opinions within the framework of the discussion among the experts of the Valdai Club on the topic “Asia-Pacific Region or Indo-Pacific Region?”.

A decade since Russia formally began to focus on its pivot to Asia, questions about its effectiveness linger, writes Valdai Club expert Nivedita Kapoor.

The European Union and BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) are formally similar interstate organisations according to the institutional theory of international relations. However, in reality they are antagonists, and their antagonism is conceptual — the EU and BRICS embody the old and the new in international politics and the methods of interstate institutional cooperation. Now that legitimate grounds have arisen to question the future of institutional forms of interstate cooperation in principle, the fates of the EU and BRICS are of equal interest for understanding the foundations on which these states can preserve such major achievements of the 20th century.

The current period of flux is exactly the time for the two sides to bank on their “special and privileged strategic partnership” to pursue a multi-vector foreign policy. The most important, critical takeaway from the relationship for both countries is the strategic space they provide each other to deal with the US, China and other great powers, write Nandan Unnikrishnan and Nivedita Kapoor. The article is published as part of the Valdai Club’s Think Tank project, continuing the collaboration between Valdai and Observer Research Foundation (New Delhi).

RIC, BRICS and SCO will have the unenviable task of managing bilateral divergences, setting the future agenda and retaining relevance for its constituents – all in the midst of contestation about structure of a future world order, writes Nivedita Kapoor, Junior Fellow with Observer Research Foundation’s Strategic Studies Programme. The article is published as part of the Valdai Club’s Think Tank project, continuing the collaboration between Valdai and Observer Research Foundation (New Delhi).

Since its first mention in an official policy document by Australia in 2013, the idea of Indo-Pacific has steadily gained prominence amongst the polity and commentariat in several countries. The concept, which acknowledges the salience of economic and maritime connectivity of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, has more recently acquired a complex political dimension as well.