Prof. C. Raja Mohan is one of India’s leading strategic thinkers. Educated at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Raja Mohan started out as a student of nuclear weapons and non-proliferation and then branched out into broader areas of inquiry, including Indian foreign policy, maritime strategy, Asian geopolitics, great power relations and global governance of advanced technologies.
In his first book, Crossing the Rubicon, Raja Mohan traced the changing contours of Indian foreign policy after the Cold War, especially its shift away from idealism to realism. Since then, his work on Indian foreign policy argued for grounding India’s external relations in geography and power. In Samudra Manthan, he explored the emergence of the Indo-Pacific as the new regional anchor for India’s international relations. In his latest book, India and the Rebalancing of Asia, Prof. Mohan situates India’s contemporary choices as a response to the new imperatives created by China’s rise and assertion, Delhi’s growing security cooperation with Washington, and the changing Asian regional order. For this issue of India’s World, Dr. Manu Sharma spoke with Prof. Mohan about India’s turn toward balancing in Asia, the structural and domestic limits that shape policy, and why rebalancing must be assessed in material terms rather than rhetorical ones.