Amitav Acharya

So the bottom line is that there is no reason why India cannot have good relations with multiple powers.

But when one of these big powers is saying that you have to choose, then it becomes complicated.

You know, there is an argument that India doesn't have a grand strategy.

I don't believe in that.

But let me say Indians don't want to be a superpower anymore.

in the same sense as China.

I mean, I have lived in China actually much longer in the last 20 years than I have lived in India.

And in China, there's an obsession of being number one.

They won't say, they won't admit it, but the United States compete with the United States, overtake the United States.

They have all sorts of studies looking at the relative power of nations.

India has very little of that.

India just want to have status, and the key word is status as a great power, status as respect in the internal community, what it used to have.

And I think that means a little more kind of realistic view of what India can do.

But on the other hand, some Indians see their economy growing.

I mean, it's overtaken its former colonial master, Britain, and they see India, large country, number one in terms of population.

Many projections put India within the top at least three leading economies in the world after the United States and China or China and the United States.

So they see a potential to be recognized as a great power.

However, they look around the world and they see that they're not getting that respect.

And because everybody's obsessed with China.

Everybody's obsessed with, yeah, at the moment, China is the name of the game.