It’s no easy task navigating through heavy fog in the dead of night. But on one memorable occasion in New Delhi, my driver wasn’t going to be stopped.
It was 3 a.m. as we careened out of Indira Gandhi International Airport and onto the highway leading to my downtown hotel. The fog was so thick that our headlights barely illuminated the vehicles in front of us. Yet my driver kept plowing ahead, even though he wasn’t very sure where he was going.
India’s foreign policy is on the same kind of path. The country is moving away from the nonalignment doctrine it followed during the Cold War, but it doesn’t know what should take its place. The contours of a new worldview are emerging, but remnants of the old one linger, reflecting an uncertainty about India’s proper role abroad that is tied to the country’s complicated situation at home.
looking beyond borders 