Lack of friends at a time when India is a significant military and economic power surprises oldtime diplomats. Within living memory, the pendulum has swung from one extreme to the other; in the 1950s and 1960s when we had little to offer to the world except moral guidance, we were the undisputed leader of developing nations. Now, after five decades, we are probably the most hated country in our neighbourhood; our erstwhile friend and protector, Russia, takes pleasure in our discomfiture, USA, our new-found friend, takes pains to point out that it is not part of any military alliance with us, and loses no opportunity to rub it in that our friendship is not of equals ~ all the while China and its proxy Pakistan thumb their noses at us, with little reaction from any country in the world. We have ourselves to blame for most of our recent foreign policy failures. With a transactional foreign policy, we continued with China as our largest trading partner at a time when we had a simmering territorial dispute with her.

Also, our leadership ignored the fact that two of our major foreign policy goals, enunciated as late as 2014 viz. securing membership of the UN Security Council (UNSC) and Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), could not be realised due to strident opposition from China. It would appear that after giving full market access to China, we had nothing to offer in return for China’s support for our membership of these fora, which would have enabled us to claim equivalence with China. Additionally, no major power wants the status quo to change in our favour, by admitting us to the high table. Sceptics cast doubts on the terms of the recent disengagement with China fuelled by the Government’s insistence on not making the terms public, and evading discussion on this issue in Parliament.

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As of now, China is planning to build a 60 GW mega-hydropower dam across the Yarlung Zangbo (Brahmaputra) at the Great Bend region of the Medogcounty in the Tibetan Autonomous Region in China, which will have serious implications for downstream riparian states, India, Bhutan and Bangladesh. Protests from India have been met with bland denials from China. Our Look East, and neighbourhood policies, lie in tatters because of intemperate statements by our leaders aimed at domestic audiences. For example, calling Bangladeshis........

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