Sreeram Chaulia’s latest book Friends: India’s Closest Strategic Partners focuses on India’s relationship with its closest strategic partners, i.e., Japan, Australia, the US, Russia, France, Israel, and the UAE. The book has seven main chapters with a long Introduction and an Epilogue.
It begins with an account of the G-20 Summit in New Delhi in 2023. The focus is on the Leaders’ Declaration, which, despite misgivings in some parts, was unanimous, without a single dissenting footnote or chair summary (p. 4). Chaulia attributes this success to India’s harnessing of key bilateral strategic partnerships. He argues that since India had made the G-20 Summit an event of national pride, if any of its strategic partners had not stood with India, their bilateral relations with India would have been affected negatively (p. 7). He quotes Alice Pannier to drive home the point that countries can be compelled to climb down from their maximalist positions in multilateral settings to preserve special bilateral relationships. Chaulia says that the current global trust deficit and how India overcame it in the G-20 communiqué shows the centrality of bilateral partnerships in the current conflict-ridden world order. He suggests that bilateral diplomacy is the most fundamental form of international relations. This is his rationale for focusing on India’s bilateral relations and how these partnerships have impacted India’s rise as a leading power.