Manjari Chatterjee Miller is Professor of International Relations and the inaugural Munk Chair in Global India at the Munk School. She is an expert on international relations, security, and foreign relations in South and East Asia. She’s also a Senior Fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations. Prof. Miller spoke with the Munk School about India, China, international relations and trying to understand why countries behave the way they do.
Tell us about your area of research and your current projects.
I work on power transitions. I look at why some countries rise and others don’t. My last book, for example, Why Nations Rise (2021), looked at why India and China are rising in very different ways. China has done a lot of things that historical powers have done while India has taken a different road.
I also have theoretical and historically rooted interests. One of my most recent papers looked at the issue of reconciliation. Why are there so many states that decolonized but so few that have asked for redress from their former colonizers? Many have institutionalized those historiesbut without asking for reconciliation.
I looked at the cases of Namibia, which has asked for redress from Germany, and of India, which has not asked for redress from the U.K. It turns out that, to ask for reconciliation, there needs to be some consensus in domestic public opinion. In India that consensus doesn’t exist; in Namibia, it was forged very painfully and very slowly, but it was forged.
A lot of your work has compared China and India. How did you come to that dual focus?
I tell my students that, when it comes to research, you should follow your instincts. When I started working on Indiathere were no China-India comparisons. Despite the two countries’ very different experiences of colonialism, I was interested in the similarities in how my Indian and my Chinese friends spoke about colonialism and how it had been taught to them at school. I had an instinct that there was something there and that I should compare them.
In my first year of graduate school [at Harvard University], I met Professor Roderick MacFarquhar at a dinner. Rod was somebody who knew both countries well. He said, “You should learn Chinese. It’s easy.” It turned out to not be true; Chinese wasn’t easy to learn but I was young and fired up and that’s how I started. And I kept finding similarities between the countries but also differences. So, in a sense, my first book [Wronged by Empire (2013)] was about the similarities and my second book [Why Nations Rise (2021)] was about the differences.
Your research shows that ideas are a crucial factor in whether a growing nation sees itself as a rising power. Has there been any change to the reluctance you observed in India seeing itself as a rising power?
Whereas China has a much more defined vision of itself as a great power, India’s vision of itself isn’t as clearly defined; it’s still evolving. One thing I have found is that there is not one single idea about a country’s role: it’s a marketplace of ideas that determines behavior. And while there are currently more ideas about India’s prominence on the world stage in circulation, older ideas that are institutionalized are hard to shift.
Among the youth and among the elite, there’s certainly a consciousness that India’s role is changing.
How will a dominant power like the United States negotiate the demands of rising powers?
If you look at power transition theory in international relations, it’s a grim prediction. There is a cycle: a great power is faced with a challenger who is unsatisfied with the status quo, and they go to war as the challenger tries to revise the international order. The question is whether the great power can manage the aspirations of the challenger in some other way. The United States has multiple challengers now, China is the most important one; the question is how the United States will be able to manage the international order, particularly in newer issue areas such as emerging technologies or cybersecurity and continue to set the rules.
There is a bipartisan consensus today in the United States about the threat posed by China. There’s also a bipartisan consensus on the potential for a partnership with India. Not only does India have a huge economy and represent a market for American investments and goods, but its historically terrible relationship with China is at rock bottom. So, the United States sees an opportunity to align with India in ways it hadn’t before
We will have to see how strong a U.S.-India partnership will prove itself to be. India does not think the same way about the international order or about how to manage China. Their trajectory in the next ten years will depend on the geopolitical context but also so on the domestic political context of both countries.
What role has the digital revolution had on India’s perceive role in global power negotiations?
There are so many aspects to the digital revolution; there is almost no aspect of the economy or politics that has not been touched by it in some way.
Let’s take something like manufacturing. Traditionally, countries grow their economies when their manufacturing sector takes off. Until now, in India, it’s been the service industry that has driven growth. But recently India has been concentrating its potential and investment on the high-tech manufacturing market: it wants to become producer of semi-conductor chips, for example, and Apple has shifted some of its manufacturing to India. In these sectors, you need a skilled labour force, where it has a supply shortfall. Making this situation work is something India is trying to figure out but it’s going to be a challenge.
Another effect of the digital revolution is social media and misinformation, particularly during elections. How do you allow democracy and freedom while also reining in social media that spreads misinformation? That’s been an ongoing challenge for many countries including India and is another way in which technology is affecting how India grows and sees its place in the world.
Now that you’re in Canada, what would be some good strategies for Canada to negotiate the tensions among rising and great powers?
First, I’m excited to be here and to learn about Canadian politics and foreign policy. One of the wonderful things about being an academic is that new avenues of research constantly emerge. I’m eager to take advantage of them.
Canada must negotiate the tensions among rising powers. I’m guessing some of Canada’s strategy in foreign policy is inevitably influenced, for better or worse, by the United States. This puts Canada in a tricky position vis-à-vis both India and China.
On the one hand, even though India is very fiercely independent in its foreign policy, the United States has been able to use carrots and sticks to negotiate a partnership. The United States has had to negotiate Indian domestic politics, particularly because the Modi government has been accused of illiberalism, but the foundations of this strategic partnership have been laid and the relationship is on a trajectory that is hard to change.
It’s more challenging for Canada. Canada would like to take advantage of the Indian economy, and its companies would like to invest in India. I recently learned, for example, that India is one of one of the largest markets for Canadian lentils, which are an essential part of the Indian diet. So clearly opportunities exist for both countries. But it will be tricky for Canada to navigate diaspora politics, Indian domestic politics, the United States’ relationship with India and its own relationship with the U.S. Doing all of that will be quite a feat.
