BY ANTONIA FILMER

The newly released book Cold War 2.0 completes the author’s 2023 trilogy, all three are connected by his take on foreign policy.

Prof Nalapat is India’s first professor of geopolitics, since 1999 he has been the UNESCO Peace Chair at Manipal University, and has concentrated much of his effort at keeping peace between states in conflict.

This last book is a feast of historical facts, political insights and opinion, cautions and predictions. The title reveals the crux of the book, Cold War 2.0 (CW2.0) is the existential global threat of the twenty first century, it became crystal clear with the absorption of Hong Kong in 2020 although China’s plans had been brewing long before. Nalapat chronicles how CW2.0 came about, at first surreptitiously and since 2012 more aggressively and overtly. India had a taste of Xi’s expansionist dreams at Doklam in 2017 and Galwan 2019; unlike some experts Professor Madhav Nalapat does not imagine China will become more like the US. Nalapat is well known for his prescience in predicting events and consequences, in this compact book he shatters any illusions that Europeans or Atlanticists may have held about China becoming an ally or commercial partner with the West, he analyses twentieth century relations and the clashing ideologies between the protagonists in Europe, China, Russia and the US with precision.  

This is an epic about the great power rivalry of our time condensed into 200 pages, concentrating on the perspective from and implications for India. Beginning with an introduction by Shivshankar Menon, former NSA and former Foreign Secretary of India. Menon compliments Nalapat on how rapidly his views on Chinese behaviour have become mainstream and is optimistic that Nalapat’s solutions for India’s progress and prosperity should evoke consensus across the political spectrum. 

Nalapat traverses the C20th and C21st history of the globe from his geopolitical perspective, seamlessly threading together cause and effect across numerous geographical locations. What follows are some abbreviated excerpts from his book.

According to Nalapat the “great” in Britain started to go downhill after WW1, whereafter America became the preeminent power, today Beijing is seeking to replace Washington as the centre point of global geopolitical gravity and make the RMB the global reserve currency in place of the USD. Despite President Putin’s early inclinations to better relations with the EU and US, the latter two were determined to keep the Russian Federation (RF) in the cold, nobody wanted the RF in NATO. Thus the PRC received advantages in technology and manufacturing from Moscow, all the while following a policy of working with Russian industry, science and agriculture that were helpful to its own progress. 

Nalapat summarises why he is not surprised by the RF’s reclamation of Crimea, Luhansk and Donbass, and expresses the security risks to Russia due to the ‘all-weather’ relationship between China and Pakistan; the RF is now in danger of ceding primacy in the Central Asian Republics that were once part of the USSR to China. China’s plan for the Ukraine war is to ensure that Russia continues the special operation, hoping relations between Moscow and the Atlantic Alliance worsen,  prompting accommodation within the Atlantic Alliance towards China. He believes the proxy war being waged by NATO against Russia on the territory of Ukraine has had the effect of giving oxygen to PRC efforts at expanding its control over land, sea, air and now space in various locations.

A joint serial misreading of each other’s (Russia and US) positions as offensive led to modernising the US defence capability. Nalapat follows with an analysis of might, which is more to do with ideas and accurate perceptions rather than size; military successes and failures due to misperceptions and overreach examples are given, evidencing that recognising the adversary and a willingness to consider conclusions different from past preconceptions are often necessary ingredients for success. Nalapat’s strategy of ‘constrainment not containment’ was difficult to implement because the Chinese method of war is hybrid, embracing efforts at hobbling not just a rival military but economies, healthcare and social stability. Nalapat summarises the governance techniques particularly of Mao Zedong whose effort was to create a ‘New China’ and a ‘New Chinese Citizen’, of men and women committed to the ‘Middle Kingdom’ objective of the CPC, which aimed to make the expanded PRC the global centre of gravity, replacing the US; followed by analyses of Deng Ziaoping’s, Jiang Zemin’s and Hu Jintao’s leaderships that have culminated in the supreme authority of Xi Jinping; he suggests that for personal survival the views and policies offered to Xi only reflect his vision. 

 Xi has responded to the economic crisis in China by boosting ‘patriotic’ feelings among the Han people, persuading them that the hardships they are facing are not the result of CPC policies but the consequence of the hostility of countries that are envious about China’s rise. Nalapat references other examples where Chinese media twists the narrative.

Nalapat has been studying US and China for 30 years plus, there is no doubt in his mind who India should align with. He quotes a precedent set by Charles de Gaulle and Jacques Chirac for an ally to have its own mind and own policy on selected issues while being anchored to the fundamentals of an Indo-Pacific Alliance system, the Quad, in this arrangement India will back the US in the Indo-Pacific, but not always in Atlanticist policies that prioritize Europe over Asia. He goes into detail why the Indo-Pacific theatre of operations will decide the victor of Cold War 2.0.  It is worth noting that in the past Nalapat has defined the Indo-Pacific as reaching from all the way from the Horn of Africa, to Vladivostok, to Chile.

Nalapat sees an opportunity for India to become a global manufacturing hub as the global supply chain delinks from China, the US would find outsourcing helpful as it would cut costs and improve competitive capability. Since 2004 China has aimed to prevent India from emerging as an equal of the PRC especially in defence capability and in economic performance, non-state actors have played a divisive role, ‘attacks’ on fronts as diverse as the media, the courts, politics, society and industry. Now the Sino-Russian alliance expects Moscow to stymie relations between Washington and Delhi so that they cannot effect a US military partnership. Moscow hopes to establish the same relationship with Beijing that Delhi is developing with Washington. Nalapat believes a key objective of Cold War 2.0 is to break the pairing between Russia and China, and India is only country that has the potential to displace China as the lead power within Asia.

A section is devoted to the multiple errors of Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi who restricted private enterprise and democracy. Nehru’s stance of ‘Strategic Autonomy’ and ‘Strategic Ambiguity’ Nalapat condenses into “Strategic Ambivalence”, which confused the other great powers and gave Pakistan and China licence to invade India, and the recent incursions on the border prove this is still going on. Due to the ties that have established between the PRC and Russian Federation defence and security establishments Nalapat advocates eliminating purchase of and reliance on Russian defence platforms, instead India needs to substitute its defence relationship with a comprehensive economic partnership with Russia.

Nalapat presents an argument for India to establish deeper ties with Iran that would not damage Delhi’s ties with the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia, all of which are important in sustaining India’s trajectory towards the aspiration of becoming the world’s third superpower. He opines Prime Minister Modi will need to convince Jerusalem and Washington that it is in the fundamental interests of both the US as well as Israel that a friend and de facto ally (India) retain a relationship of trust with Iran that may be of value in a future contingency. He presents examples of improved relationships with Israel, South Africa, GCC, Brasil and the countries of Southeast Asia as a result of Narendra Modi’s practice of marrying culture with diplomacy as well as a comprehensive review of history; he suggests the same approach in Africa and in South America as India’s colonial history as compelling in those countries.

A chapter illustrating the damages and consequences of colonialism explains why the UK failed to establish a lasting long-term relationship with India. According to Nalapat the colonial mindset lingers to this day, when in 2022 former colonies in Asia, South America and Africa were petitioned to follow the instructions of their former colonial masters in how they reacted to the Ukraine conflict. 

A fascinating chapter about the Clinton era, as the hostile-to-India Clintons lavished “cooperation” on Beijing which made further collaboration with India problematic. The US made efforts to cripple India’s ISRO  cryogenic programme while India was exceptionally generous to the newly formed Russian Federation, in 1993 the Indo-Russian agreement set a grossly overvalued price for the rouble for the purposes of loan repayment; according to Nalapat this represents another of the numerous decisions taken within the “Lutyens Zone” that need examination and accountability.

The world has witnessed how boundaries of ‘normal’ behaviour are being altered in the IPR, to Taiwan’s and some members of ASEAN’s disadvantage, Nalapat explains how the probability is rising that the PLA will be engaged in a kinetic exchange with the US and its allies before the present term of the CPC general secretary is over. Nalapat observes Xi is as confident of Putin’s backing for his warring against Taiwan as Mao was of Stalin’s support in his intervention in the Korean civil war of the 1950s. He expresses surprise how the PRC/PLA’s expansionary moves have been tolerated with almost no response from any other country. Nalapat posits Xi may require a military victory to keep the people’s faith in him.

Different times require different thinking, Cold War 1.0 thinking is now way behind the curve and can result is serial misreadings of a present situation. Nalapat is critical of ‘confused’ powers who are not reading the lessons of the past, he admits this is an unwelcome trait that is still visible in some parts of the foreign, security and economic policies of India. Nalapat advocates rather than a rearview mirror perspective on the current geopolitics, what is needed is a forward looking view of the overall relationship between not just the four Great Powers (China, the US, Russia and India) but also key players such as the European Union.

Impossible to mention all the information in this compact book, issues arising from Myanmar to Turkey; issues from the corrupted Sovietized school system used in Central Asia having the potential for global Wahhabi radicalisation, inspired by Xi and the CCP the battle for supremacy between the Wahhabi and Khomeinist theologies vs the moderate version of Islam is being fought not just in the broader Middle East but in the Indian subcontinent, Malaysia and Indonesia. Nalapat touches on several of his previous concepts, such as the Anglosphere, a horizontal society, Africa on the cusp of transformation, a Jewish State with GCC alliances and a two-state Palestinian solution.

The epilogue describes how China has successfully used distant events to distract scrutiny, then Nalapat loops back to Cold War 2.0, which has led to a shift in resources and attention by the western powers from the Indo-Pacific back to the Atlantic, from Asia back to Europe, from China to Russia, introducing circumstances parallel to 1937, to avoid a re-run of 1939-45 you will have to read the book.

Madhav Nalapat’s Cold War 2.0 can be acquired here.

Antonia Filmer is former British Vogue Fashion Editor, Home Furnishing Design Director of Laura Ashley Ltd, producer of Garden Operas for 10 years to benefit a children’s charity. Antonia is an inveterate traveller and is currently the London correspondent for The Sunday Guardian of India.