On a fundamental level, the book would push the young reader to question humanity’s invincibility and technological advancement in times of climate change, artificial intelligence and COVID-19. Though this book will not answer all the questions, it puts forth more complex questions for readers to follow and explore. It can be an excellent classroom book experiment with varied pedagogical methods for different age groups.
Regardless, the book’s framework still makes the following speculations possible.
First, even as the societal consensus around America’s ruling ideology of democracy, capitalism and freedoms has collapsed at home, the number of its takers internationally has dwindled, including within the West, as the rise of inward looking, nationalist and far-Right forces across the West indicates.
The first section of Part Two deals with Trudeau’s foreign policy, Canada’s failure to win a non-permanent seat in the UN Security Council and his challenges in dealing with US President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The book is structured imaginatively in two sections, A and B. Section A deals with Northeast Asia and B with South Asia. In Section A, there are three sub-chapters which discuss extensively the countries in the region, such as North Korea, Japan and South Korea and their relationship with China, in particular under Xi Jinping, and separately the influence of Donald Trump in Northeast Asia. In Section B, relations of the US with three countries of South Asia, namely, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan are studied in detail followed by the developments in these countries under President Trump.
The Indo-US nuclear deal and the Sri Lankan affairs count for Basrur as exemplars of drift. These two cases show why the Indian state got checkmated by domestic conflicts and institutional infirmities. In contrast, Basrur argues that the absence of a cohesive policy in Indian nuclear strategy and its approach to cross-border terrorism caused a ‘responsibility deficit’.
‘The Age of Nationalisms: Competing Visions’, the first chapter sets the stage by exploring the rise of nationalism in early twentieth century. The author highlights the diversity within nationalist movements in South Asia, showing how they were marked by competing visions and internal conflicts.
