World Affairs

Vol. 4, Number 2 (Apr.–Jun. 2000)

Letter from the Editor
By Harish Kapur

 

The scope of this issue is wide-ranging. A host of topical subjects are included in it, ranging from India’s foreign policy to the problems that have surfaced in Crimea.

Given that some significant mutations have been introduced in India’s foreign policy, we have given pride of place to an interview with Jaswant Singh, India’s External Affairs Minister. Although the minister did not answer all the questions we submitted, he has nonetheless provided a broad overview of India’s foreign policy, highlighting his views on some important issues, and on the pattern of relations the country has established with the principal actors of the international system.

Indeed, there have been a number of transmutations in India’s foreign policy. While continuity is unavoidably substantial, the changes are increasingly visible — changes that include nationalism, the nuclear option, and the inauguration of a benign and communicative phase in Indo-American and Indo-European Union relations, the most dramatic manifestations of which were President Clinton’s visit to India, and Prime Minister Vajpayee’s presence at the bilateral Indo-European Union summit meeting in Lisbon.

The four articles that appear in the journal deal with themes that are central to contemporary international relations: the growing phenomenon of Islamic fundamentalism and its ramifications on Kashmir; NATO and Western expansion into Eastern Europe and Asia, and the docile Russian response to this development; the Crimean problem including the troublesome Russian-Ukrainian relations, and the growing demand of ethnic Russians and Crimean Tartars for greater freedom from Ukraine; and finally the new dimension of the increasing role of NGOs as pressure groups to international organisations, and as viable partners in sustainable development.

The Review Essay is a real tour de force. It is a treatise about money and the human quest for it, highlighting how the power of knowledge, through the years, has dramatically enlarged the "realm of desirable objects".

The documents included in this issue mirror some of the major developments of the last few months: the Indo-American vision and institutional dialogue documents, formulated during Clinton’s visit, are really a benchmark in the history of relations between the two countries. The joint communiqué highlights the "resolve" of both "to create a closer and qualitatively new relationship". The second document focuses on the concern of the international community at the Oslo meeting regarding "the excessive availability, accumulation and uncontrolled proliferation of small arms and light weapons, while the famous "Vilamoura Declaration" concluded between the European Union and the so called Rio group of Latin American states is an enactment of the shape of things to come — the increasing emergence of the European Union as an international actor.

Harish Kapur
Geneva
June 2000