Direction: Study the following information carefully and answer the question given below.

Paragraph1. Unlike Russia and China, who have sought to reform and even transform the US-led order, India has been quite content to integrate with the post-1991 order, albeit with perfunctory reforms. Consequently, neither was a post-unipolar world imagined, nor its contours fathomed. Operating under The comforting assumption of prolonged US preponderance, much of contemporary statecraft and geo-strategies have been formulated under such a world view. And, nothing has shaped India–US ties more than the rise of China. 

Paragraph 2. But, this shared threat perception has always found itself at odds with the complex reality of US–China relations and the enduring characteristics of US–Pakistan relations. An optimistic framework for an Indian balance-of-power strategy has relied on a hypothesized replay of the old Indo–Soviet congruence in Asia and the subcontinent. Yet, unlike the old Cold War geo-strategy that was underpinned by leveraging fundamental cleavages in the international and regional systems, India’s US play has been crafted upon a more complex geopolitical landscape, yielding paradoxical outcomes. For instance, each successive China move with the US by Delhi has precipitated a proportional Pakistan and sub-continental countermove by Beijing. Significantly, most of these moves by China have not been de?ected by the US–India partnership, leaving Delhi worse off than when it started. 

Paragraph 3. Until Trump’s victory, Delhi had been willing to absorb the costs. Perhaps, the premise was that a more enduring Indo–American strategic partnership would ultimately emerge to stabilize the sub-regional environment as well as provide options to bargain with China. The uncertainty around Trump’s South Asia policy suggests that Delhi’s bold policy is now even more of a gamble. Trump’s basic impulse to stabilize the great power setting of US–Russia–China, as well as a reluctance to heighten competition in non-core regions like the subcontinent will further complicate Delhi’s balancing strategies, even if Washington maintains general continuity on its India policy. Beyond geopolitics, the shifting fulcrum of economic globalization from the West to the East will again challenge the dominant assumptions of the past two decades.

Paragraph 4. Curiously, unlike in China, Indian policymakers have not engaged in serious debates about the post-2008 global economy. Trump’s likely displacement of the old geoeconomic approach (where the US evaluated economic choices through its global ambitions) towards a more national and allied-centered economic strategy (prioritizing socio-economic stability and the American middle class over ambitious geopolitics) will compel Delhi to muddle its way towards a changing economic order. 

Paragraph 5. While all three would naturally frame and pursue their policy goals based on their intramural and regional contexts, the window for order-building and contribution to global governance by the non-Western world has been jarred open. As Dmitri Trenin recently suggested in the Global Times (22 February 2017), “China, India and Russia can build a core group to lead the order-building process.” Not only are there possibilities for in?uencing the orderly re-orientation of America’s global role, there is a necessity to stabilize the transition and channel the world order in more sustainable directions. 

Paragraph 6. A central question for all three states is as to how they can ensure that a multipolar world retains elements of interdependence and multilateralism. As each have independent national interests—both material and ideational—in promoting such a polycentric order, the policy and academic discourse ought to now thoughtfully examine the diverse pathways that could be charted by Eurasia to promote regional and global stability.