India as a Global Power: The Strategic Culture Problems

Abstract

The article reviews India’s contested role of a great power in global politics. Although showing tangible results across all the aspects pertaining to the great power status, in international relations India is still largely underestimated and even overlooked. Politicians and scholars generally mention three main reasons behind that phenomenon: weak social and economic figures, the country’s relatively narrow global impact and the absence of strategic culture. We argue that the latter is key, and that it is in the process of being remedied. In fact, India already has all the prerequisites for being recognised as a ‘great power’, since it has political, military, economic and cultural capabilities corresponding to the status. It is simply a matter of time and coordinated efforts of the government to formulate and implement a consistent foreign policy and economic strategy as well as a change in Indian elite’s strategic thinking which will enable untapping India’s existing potential and successfully meeting the objective of increasing its influence in global politics.