Changing Landscapes

The book under review is a compilation of papers presented at the Asian Security Conference organized by the Institute for Defence
Studies and Analyses (IDSA) in 2008, the tenth such annual event since it was started in 1999. The IDSA should be congratulated for their commendable initiative to hold this annual event, which attracts eminent scholars—and some practitioners of diplomacy—not only from India and other parts of Asia but from across the world to discuss the implications of the gradual but inexorable shift of the fulcrum of global politics to Asia. The title of the book aptly encapsulates this fundamental feature of the changing Asian strategic landscape. Sujit Dutta is right in stating that China remains at the heart of many questions about future peace and stability in Asia. Its amazingly rapid rise has called into question conventional notions about Asian geopolitics. China occupies a central place in the foreign policies of all powers, whether Asian or not.

All countries have to work out for themselves how to manage the rise of China. There is also the rise of India. However, as Robert Ayson points out, India’s place in the wider regional picture is important but not yet crucial.