Diplomatic Drift

God moves in mysterious ways his wonders to perform', so goes a hymn I read in school. Or perhaps it was a line in PG Wodehouse, I forget which. But no matter, the point is that miracles usually happen outside of the knowledge of us mortals. Higher powers are at work.

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Something similar is happening in India's foreign policy. Great things have been achieved in this domain, at least according to the government publicity and the television media (which is admittedly the same thing), but one is unclear about the details.

To understand our triumphs during a week in which the United Nations held its General Assembly, I thought it might be useful to compile a list of our friends. A foreign policy panchnama, if you will, so that we can better understand precisely where New India stands in the world.

Starting with our neighbourhood, I can report that relations with Pakistan are bad. In fact we might be at 'war' with them because our wildly successful military operation against them stands suspended but not yet over. And 'war' sits under quotation marks because we have not actually declared war with them. But this is normal now.