Where China is headed and what it means for India
Ashutosh Varshney writes: As India debates the latest border clashes with China, Delhi should keep in mind that China has moved to a security over economics mode, making a Chinese compromise less likely.
Globally, the most significant geopolitical event of 2022 was the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But the Ukraine war is not simply a geopolitical clash; it also dealt a massive blow to globalisation. As the energy and grain markets were disrupted, an old contradiction, first noted by John Maynard Keynes, returned. In 1914, the world economy was more integrated than ever before, but a World War erupted, severely undermining the decades-long international economic integration. Economic globalisation and major wars, Keynes suggested, simply could not go together. In our times, too, so long as wars were confined to Iraq and Afghanistan, globalisation proceeded apace. But as Russia brought war next to the heart of Europe, the logic of security triumphed over the logic of economics. That, by creating interdependence, trade generates peace is a theory once again in ruins.
