Book summary “Pax Indica”: summary

Introduction

You live in a rapidly shifting world where India's rising prominence alters the global balance of power. You need to understand how New Delhi navigates ancient rivalries, nuclear neighbors, and great-power competition without sacrificing its internal development. The central argument is that India's foreign policy must serve its domestic transformation through pragmatic multi-alignment, strategic autonomy, and a commitment to global public goods. Shashi Tharoor demonstrates this through an onion-structure approach that moves outward from immediate regional challenges to global multilateral governance.

To make sense of this grand strategy, you must examine several core questions:

• How does India balance its troubled relations with Pakistan and China?
• What role do the United States and the extended neighborhood play in Indian grand strategy?
• Can soft power and institutional reform elevate India's diplomatic capacity?

1. Foundations and Evolution of Indian Foreign Policy

The fundamental objective of India's foreign policy is to facilitate and protect the domestic social and economic transformation of the country.

Foreign policy directly impacts your daily life by securing resources, managing trade, and creating a peaceful international environment. This permits the nation to focus on eliminating poverty and improving living standards for over a billion people.

A fisherwoman in Thiruvananthapuram may not know the foreign minister, but her livelihood is directly impacted by the price of diesel. Foreign trawlers poaching in traditional fishing waters and security restrictions caused by piracy create additional burdens.

Historical Context

Non-alignment originated as a necessary strategy to safeguard India's hard-won independence and strategic autonomy during the bipolar Cold War. Nationalist leaders rejected military blocs to preserve freedom of decision, judging each issue on its merits.

Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru maintained an independent path despite pressure. He accepted public-sector steel plant assistance from the Soviet Union when the West refused, while also receiving Green Revolution technology from the United States.

Economic Transformation

The 1991 balance of payments crisis forced India to abandon rigid protectionism and embrace economic globalization. A severe financial crisis required the physical shipment of national gold reserves to London as collateral for an IMF loan, shattering the old protectionist consensus.

Surrendering the nation's gold to foreigners betokened a national humiliation that ended old policies. India subsequently transformed into a poster child for globalization under Manmohan Singh.

Scholar David Malone observed that post-1990 India stopped viewing itself through unique moral terms. The nation began acting like other powers, cultivating reliable trading partners and participating in global rules.

A democratic country's foreign policy can be evaluated using six specific criteria established by scholar Richard A. Falk:

• evaluate whether the foreign policy is desirable by using approved means for approved ends with explicit bases of approval;
• assess if the foreign policy is effective in successfully accomplishing the ends sought;
• ensure the foreign policy is popular by maintaining high levels of public support in a democracy;
• verify that the foreign policy is legitimate by aligning both means and ends with the Constitution and international law;
• check that the foreign policy is populist by reflecting public participation and upward-filtering influence;
• confirm that the foreign policy is equitable by fairly distributing domestic costs, burdens, and sacrifices within society.

2. Managing the Difficult Pakistan Relationship

Unlike India, where the state controls the army, in Pakistan the army controls the state, making the military elite the primary obstacle to genuine peace. The Pakistani military has ruled directly or indirectly for 32 years of direct military rule out of Pakistan's 64 years of existence and maintains its disproportionate share of national resources by perpetuating the myth of an Indian threat.

Pakistan's military dominance and proxy terrorism present a persistent security threat, requiring India to balance strategic patience with international pressure.

The Threat of Terrorism

The November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai (26/11) represented a qualitative change in Pakistan's proxy war, demonstrating how non-state actors can strike a commercial hub to humiliate India and shock its national psyche. Ten Pakistan-trained terrorists belonging to the Lashkar-e-Taiba docked near the Gateway of India and systematically targeted high-profile symbols of India's globalization, pluralism, and economic success. 188 people killed in the Mumbai attacks included 49 Muslim civilians killed out of the total victims.

Ajmal Kasab, the sole surviving terrorist, was tracked through his native village of Faridkot in Punjab after extensive investigations by journalists and intelligence agencies.

Diplomatic Strategy

India faces a persistent diplomatic dilemma where it must balance the imperative of pursuing peace against domestic outrage. Pakistan previously initiated 4 unsuccessful wars initiated by Pakistan in 1947-48, 1965, 1971, and 1999.

Despite horrific attacks, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh engaged in cricket diplomacy in Mohali to keep channels open.

International legal frameworks offer viable mechanisms to pressure Islamabad. You can use these tools:

• Insist that Islamabad dismantle training camps, freeze terrorist bank accounts, and prosecute leaders like Hafiz Saeed.
• Use the UN Counter-Terrorism Committee to question Pakistan on its non-compliance with international obligations.
• Consider advocating for selective sanctions, such as travel bans on specific military leaders and cutting off foreign military assistance.

$11 billion in US military assistance given to Pakistan since 9/11 and a $10 million bounty announced by the US in April 2012 on Hafiz Saeed's head mark important pressure points. You should also adopt a magnanimous approach through people-to-people ties. Apply these specific practices to build grassroots trust:

• Create a list of prominent Pakistanis in business, entertainment, and media eligible for rapid processing and multiple-entry visas.
• Remove current restrictions on points of entry and exit, permitted travel locations, and police reporting requirements.
• Open the Indian market to Pakistani exports by reducing non-tariff barriers related to security inspections and lab checks.

3. The Periphery: Neighbors and Regional Integration

India must overcome regional fears of hegemony by practicing unreciprocated magnanimity and strengthening economic connectivity across South Asia.

Geopolitical Realities

India accounts for 70 per cent of the population of the eight countries that make up SAARC and 80 per cent of the region's collective GDP. You face a region where smaller neighbors resemble 98-pounders confronting a 298-pound gorilla on the beach. This vast asymmetry creates pangs of proximity. Neighboring nations define their nationalisms largely through not-Indianness and treat the meganarrative of Indian power with suspicion.

Regional Strategy

Building upon the Gujral Doctrine, you must prioritize regional ties with the same gravity you afford global powers. You can turn a volatile periphery into a collaborative asset by offering trade concessions and avoiding heavy-handed interference.

India built the Zaranj-Delaram road, strung electrical cables across mountains from Pul-e-Khumri to bring 24-hour power to Kabul, and operates the Indira Gandhi Hospital connected via telemedicine. These projects are part of $1.5 billion initially undertaken in projects, supplemented by $500 million additional assistance announced in May 2011. You also offer 675 scholarships a year to Afghan students.

Regional commerce displays the benefits of proactive integration. The 1996 trade treaty resulted in a sevenfold increase in bilateral trade within a decade. During this period, Nepal's exports to India multiplied eleven times, while Indian exports to Nepal increased six times.

Bhutan provides another model of successful good-neighbourly cooperation. India constructed hydroelectric projects like Chukha, Kurichhu, and Tala, making hydropower exports the single largest contributor to Bhutan's GDP growth. These efforts aim at 10,000 MW of hydropower targeted by 2020. Indian products constitute 70 per cent of Bhutan's total imports, while 99 per cent of Bhutan's total exports go to India, leaving 61 per cent of Bhutan's debt stock held by India.

Restoring transit routes with Bangladesh can reverse the historical damage of Partition. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's September 2011 visit to Dhaka led to an agreement to settle small border enclaves and grant duty-free access for least developed country exports. This push helped Bangladeshi exports cross the $1-billion mark in 2012. You must also account for the 20 million Bangladeshis reliably estimated to have slipped into India over two decades, alongside a proposed $10-billion project to provide transit through Bangladesh to the seven sisters of north-eastern India.

Sri Lanka remains India's largest trading partner in SAARC under an FTA in force since March 2000. Indian firms obtained nearly $500 million in FDI approvals for prominent Indian brand names. You also provided 225 million Sri Lankan rupees worth of medicines as humanitarian relief, amounting to about $1.8 million, to assist 300,000 Tamil civilians housed in camps for internally displaced persons after the conflict.

Realpolitik also guides relations with Myanmar, where bilateral trade reached $1.071 billion in 2010-11. India purchases 70 per cent of Myanmar's exported agricultural produce. This proximity is underscored by the 20 kilometres distance between India's Andaman tri-services command and Myanmar's Coco Islands.

Multilateral frameworks reinforce these bilateral ties. India contributed nearly $200 million for the SAARC Development Fund and $230 million out of a $300 million total cost for South Asia University in New Delhi. Despite these funds, 5 per cent of South Asia's trade is conducted within the SAARC region, representing 22 per cent of the world's population producing 6 per cent of its GDP.

4. The China Challenge and Greater Asia

While economic complementarities exist, unresolved border disputes, systemic governance differences, and strategic competition define the complex India-China relationship.

China initiated economic liberalization in 1978, thirteen years before India, achieving double-digit growth and building extensive infrastructure through top-down state planning. In contrast, India is a fractious democracy where infrastructure projects are often delayed by legal and political challenges.

When China built the Three Gorges Dam, it created a 660-kilometer-long reservoir displacing 2 million people in fifteen years without resistance; when India built the Narmada Dam, it faced thirty-nine years of protests and legal battles. China and India are often labeled as Chindia, reflecting massive economic growth, yet China operates on a vastly superior scale. By the end of 2010, China maintained an 8,358-kilometre high-speed rail network and a 66,000-kilometre expressway network, alongside $70 billion in annual foreign direct investment compared to India's $19 billion.

The contrasting Olympic performances of China and India reflect the fundamental differences between a top-down authoritarian state and a chaotic pluralistic democracy. China approached the Olympics with military precision through state-funded programmes like Project 119, while India relied on amiable amateurism and bureaucratic ineptitude. At the Beijing Olympics, China ranked first with 51 gold medals and 100 total, while India placed 50th with three medals, its only gold won by 25-year-old self-financed entrepreneur Abhinav Bindra.

Growth Divergence

Despite being viewed as direct rivals, the economies of China and India are largely complementary rather than competitive due to their distinct comparative advantages. Total trade between India and China reached $73 billion in 2011, moving toward an agreed target of $100 billion by 2015. China excels in hardware, manufacturing, and state-backed resource extraction, whereas India excels in software, IT services, and corporate governance.

The key operating components of Apple's iPod were invented by the Hyderabad company PortalPlayer, while the iPods themselves are manufactured in China. When an American purchases a Chinese-made laptop for $700, only $15 remains in China.

India's pluralist democracy successfully manages deep internal diversity and political shock absorbers, whereas China's autocratic system relies on top-down control and repression. India's Hindu population stands at 81 per cent, yet national elections have seen a Roman Catholic leader make way for a Sikh prime minister sworn in by a Muslim president, while a Dalit woman rose to rule India's largest state through the ballot box. Conversely, Beijing employs 40,000 cyber-police to monitor politically undesirable web activity.

Risk of Conflict

The unresolved border dispute along the Line of Actual Control and geopolitical friction over Tibet and Pakistan create a persistent trust deficit between India and China. The frontier spans 3,488 kilometres, across which China won 23,200 square kilometres of Indian territory in the 1962 war and claims an additional 92,000 square kilometres, mainly in Arunachal Pradesh as Southern Tibet. Chinese troops once entered 15 kilometres into Ladakh to burn an Indian patrolling base, and in another incident damaged a stone wall inside the Tawang area.

India should expand its economic, educational, and diplomatic engagement with Taiwan to capture investments and assert its national interest, despite Beijing's objections and adherence to the One China policy. Taiwanese businesses have invested $300 billion in mainland China alongside millions of citizens working there, proving pragmatism overrides formal political rigidity, whereas Taiwanese investment in India remains a measly $1 billion with only 500 Indian students currently in Taiwan. You can navigate this dynamic through specific steps:

• Encourage Indian states like Kerala and Gujarat to sell their wares directly to Taiwanese investors.
• Encourage Indian students to learn Mandarin and undertake advanced study in Taiwan.
• Increase official-level contact, tourism, and journalistic exchanges with Taiwan while drawing the line short of formal political recognition.

5. The Extended Neighborhood: Arab World and Southeast Asia

India's energy security, diaspora remittances, and economic growth depend heavily on deep engagement with the Arab world and Southeast Asia.

The Arab World

The Arab world constitutes a critical region for your political, strategic, and economic security due to energy imports, trade volumes, and diaspora remittances. Shashi Tharoor notes that the Arab world accounts for 63 per cent of India's crude oil imports, trades $93 billion with India, and hosts 6 million Indian expatriate workers who remit over 65 per cent of India's inward remittances. Total inward remittances reached $57 billion in 2011.

Historical, cultural, and scientific exchanges pre-date modern nation states and form a bedrock of mutual affinity. Arab traders acted as historical middlemen connecting India to the Mediterranean. Indian learning in mathematics, astronomy, and medicine was translated and absorbed into Arabic scientific writing, notably transmitting the zero and decimal system. In 825 CE, al-Khwarizmi wrote his book on Hindu calculation at Baghdad's House of Wisdom.

The traditional sailing boat Jewel of Muscat was built in Oman in 2010 with coir fibre instead of nails, replicating ninth-century dhows to commemorate historic seafaring routes.

New Delhi maintains an unwavering, principled diplomatic record of support for the Palestinian cause, dating back to the pre-independence freedom movement. India was the first non-Arab country to recognize the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and consistently supports a sovereign Palestinian state alongside Israel. Mahatma Gandhi wrote in 1938 that Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English. Palestine Day was first observed in India in 1936, the PLO was recognized as sole representative in 1974, and Palestine was recognized as a state in 1988.

Look East Policy

Following the end of the Cold War, India upgraded relations with Israel, establishing a robust partnership centered heavily on defense technology and intelligence sharing. Israel has become one of India's largest defense suppliers, providing sophisticated equipment, missile defense components, and the Phalcon AWACS system that are difficult to source elsewhere. Bilateral trade reached $5 billion in 2010, while total Israeli defense supplies are estimated at $10 billion following full ambassadorial diplomatic relations established in 1992. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon visited India in 2003 under a BJP-led coalition.

Initiated in 1991, India's Look East policy transformed foreign policy by shifting focus toward economic, diplomatic, and strategic integration with Southeast and East Asia. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pushed through the India-ASEAN goods free trade agreement in 2009 despite domestic opposition from farmers. Trade with ASEAN increased by 30 per cent in the three years following the agreement, alongside $5.5 billion in Japanese foreign direct investment.

BIMSTEC serves as a vital multilateral vehicle to link India's underdeveloped and landlocked north-eastern states directly to the dynamic economies of Southeast Asia. Founded in 1997 as BIST-EC, the member countries share a combined GDP of $2 trillion. The Kaladan Multimodal Transit Transport facility was initiated to establish connectivity between Indian eastern seaports and Sittwe port in Myanmar, connecting onward to Mizoram.

The Indian Ocean Rim Association for Regional Co-operation unites 18 diverse littoral states across three continents, holding immense untapped potential for engagement. Despite sparse secretariat staffing of half a dozen staff members in Mauritius, the framework provides unique cooperation on maritime security and anti-piracy. Shashi Tharoor attended the ministerial meeting in Sana'a in 2009 and worked to secure Australia as the next rotational leader.

6. Transforming Relations with the United States

Decades of Cold War estrangement have given way to a vital strategic partnership centered on trade, defense technology, and democratic values.

During the Cold War, the United States and India remained largely estranged due to opposing geopolitical orientations. Washington favored anti-communist allies and leaned toward Pakistan to contain the Soviet Union, viewing India's non-alignment policy with distaste and as a tilt toward Moscow. Conversely, India perceived US hostility, notably when Washington dispatched the Sixth Fleet into the Bay of Bengal during the 1971 Bangladesh conflict. President Harry Truman reacted to Chester Bowles' proposed ambassadorship by stating he thought India was filled with poor people, cows, witch doctors, and people sitting on hot coals, unaware anyone considered it important.

Diplomatic Milestones

The 2008 civil nuclear cooperation accord marked the centrepiece of transformed India-US relations and created a unique Indian exception. The Bush Administration strong-armed the 45 countries of the Nuclear Suppliers' Group to admit India into the global nuclear club despite India's refusal to sign the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. This acknowledged US exceptionalism's sibling and gratifyingly ended Washington's constant hyphenation of India with Pakistan.

Scholarship also shifted. Scholars like George Perkovich and Ashley Tellis argued that a successful, democratic India acts as a structural constraint against Chinese assertiveness and supports a balance of power that favours freedom. The thriving 3 million strong Indian-American community has become a massive driving factor in strengthening bilateral political and economic ties. Indian-Americans secured high elective offices including state Governors Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Nikki Haley of South Carolina.

Bilateral Irritants

Economic ties, trade interdependence, and frugal innovation have created powerful mutual benefits across the two economies. Multinational giants like GE and Philips employ more researchers in India than in the US or Europe, and Indians designed aircraft parts for Boeing.

Persistent US reliance on Pakistan and Cold War-era bureaucratic structures in Washington remain major irritants in the partnership. Washington's extensive military aid to Pakistan and its dependence on Islamabad for Afghan logistics create deep Indian mistrust.

• $11 billion in US aid to the Pakistani military since 2001
• non-proliferation ayatollahs within the State Department and Pentagon
• hyphenators who continue to view New Delhi through an Islamabad lens

India's rejection of American contenders in its massive fighter aircraft tender reflected professional technical evaluations rather than political bias. The Indian Ministry of Defence eliminated Boeing's F/A-18 Superhornet and Lockheed's F-16 Superviper from the MMRCA tender on technical grounds, choosing European jets instead. US Ambassador Tim Roemer resigned following the decision, and analyst Ashley Tellis remarked that India chose to invest in a plane rather than a relationship.

7. Engagement with Africa, Europe, and Latin America

India offers a distinct model of capacity building and private-sector investment in the developing world, while managing selective ties with European capitals.

Africa

You see institutional relations with Europe lack strategic weight despite 68 billion euros of commerce in 2010 between the EU and India. India shares more substantive ties with capitals like London, Paris, and Berlin.

India bypassed the British-backed Eurofighter in favor of France's Rafale, enjoying deep military and nuclear cooperation with Paris.

India's partnership with Africa is founded on South-South cooperation, focusing on human resource development and non-prescriptive assistance. You can apply these principles across developing regions:

• Base partnerships on equality, mutual respect, and understanding
• Respect independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of states
• Encourage dialogue among civilizations to promote a culture of peace and tolerance
• Complement existing sub-regional integration initiatives in Africa
• Consolidate and develop plural democracy

India committed $5.4 billion in new lines of credit at the 2008 summit and offers 1600 training positions annually under ITEC. Cumulative Indian investments reached $90 billion in Africa by 2010.

Vedanta Resources acquired and successfully turned around Zambia's nationalized copper mining industry.

Latin America

Latin America represents a major untapped continent of opportunity for India. Trade between India and Latin America reached $21 billion by 2010, supported by $12 billion in Indian investments.

8. Soft Power and National Branding

Joseph Nye coined the term soft power to describe the ability to shape behavior through attraction rather than coercion or payments. You can see soft power rely on three main resources: culture, political values, and legitimate foreign policies.

India's greatest soft power asset is its civilizational pluralism, though its global appeal depends heavily on resolving internal domestic challenges.

Roots of Soft Power

Indian nationalism is based on an idea rather than a single language, geography, ethnicity, or religion. It functions as a thali where many distinct elements belong together on the same plate. The Indian Constitution recognizes 23 languages, while 35 languages are spoken by more than a million people alongside 22000 distinct dialects.

St Thomas the Apostle arrived on the Malabar coast before 52 CE and was welcomed by a Jewish girl. Kerala boasts the oldest mosque, church, and synagogue on the subcontinent.

Popular culture exports like Bollywood, cuisine, and yoga serve as powerful, organic instruments of a nation's soft power. Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi was dubbed into Dari as Tolo TV's most popular show in Afghan history. It interrupted wedding banquets and caused a spike in generator sales. Ninety percent of customers at a principal cinema theater in Oman were Omani Bollywood fans.

Internal Realities

A nation must resolve its internal crises of poverty and sectarian intolerance, or its soft power will ring hollow. One third of India's population still lives below the poverty line. Sectarian violence such as the savagery in Gujarat in 2002 or nativist attacks on women in Mangalore in 2010 caused major setbacks to India's soft power.

Heavy-handed bureaucratic and visa restrictions can severely undermine a nation's soft power and alienate well-disposed foreigners. Post-26/11 tourist visa rules prohibited tourists from returning to India for at least two months. This resulted in absurd situations, such as a man barred from attending his mother's funeral or an NRI missing his own wedding.

9. Institutional Capacities and Foreign Policy Bureaucracy

The Ministry of External Affairs suffers from severe understaffing, structural deficiencies, and executive over-concentration that limit India's diplomatic reach.

Indian foreign policy has historically been dominated by the Prime Minister and the PMO, sidelining both the Ministry of External Affairs and the Cabinet. Under Nehru and Indira Gandhi, the logic of the parliamentary system was inverted to concentrate executive power along presidential lines.

Indira Gandhi operated with informal dominance, and major decisions like voting against Iran in 2007 or Sri Lanka in 2012 were made in the PMO rather than the MEA.

Diplomatic Corps Capacity

India suffers from severe understaffing in its foreign service compared to other major and emerging nations, forcing diplomats to punch below their weight. With roughly 900 IFS officers to staff 120 missions and 49 consulates, India maintains one of the smallest diplomatic corps among major nations.

A single joint secretary is responsible for all 19 Latin American and Caribbean countries, assisted by just one mid-ranking professional.

Coordination Failures

Administrative heterogeneity and turf wars among government ministries render internal and external policy coordination extremely difficult. Older ministries control vital functional areas related to foreign policy, leaving the MEA bypassed and heavily dependent on intelligence channels controlled directly by the PMO.

When you examine the ideal foreign minister, retired ambassador I.J. Bahadur Singh noted that several personal criteria apply:

• Position in the party and the Lok Sabha must be strong.
• Must enjoy the confidence of the Prime Minister and his voice must carry weight within the Cabinet.
• Must not be too immersed in Party affairs to devote his full attention to his office.
• Must be the kind of politician who can temper the professionals beneath him, by knowing enough about foreign policy to assess advice, by having a mind of his own and making his views clear to the bureaucracy and by being self-assured enough to delegate responsibility.
• Must possess the temperament and stamina required for success in the world of diplomacy.

10. Global Governance, Multilateralism, and Human Security

India must actively pursue reform of the United Nations and Bretton Woods institutions while championing human security and leveraging its global diaspora.

UN Security Council Reform

The Security Council reflects 1945 geopolitical realities with only 15 members out of 192. Europe controls 33 per cent of Council seats despite accounting for barely 5 per cent of world population.

Amending the UN Charter requires a two-thirds majority of the General Assembly, meaning 129 of 193 states. Proposals by the Group of Four or G4 nations are thwarted by the Uniting for Consensus coalition and rival regional powers. Italy's former foreign minister Susanna Agnelli dismissed bids by Germany and Japan by asking what the talk was about since they lost the war too.

Prolonged deadlock risks alienating rising powers who may bypass the UN and shift focus to the G20.

Human Security

Global governance now recognizes trans-border challenges affecting humankind collectively rather than just traditional state defense. On 11 September 2001, 2,600 people died in the World Trade Center while 26,000 people died on that same day worldwide from starvation, unclean water, and preventable disease. The SARS epidemic in China quickly hopped on a plane to Toronto, demonstrating that biological threats require international governance.

India has transformed its relationship with its global diaspora into an active embrace. Nearly 25 million people of Indian descent live abroad. Non-Resident Indians provided $57 billion in remittances for 2010-2011 compared to $19 billion in Foreign Direct Investment for 2011.

10 Key Ideas

1. The fundamental objective of India's foreign policy is to facilitate and protect the domestic social and economic transformation of the country.
2. Non-alignment originated as a necessary strategy to safeguard India's hard-won independence and strategic autonomy during the bipolar Cold War.
3. Pakistan's military dominance and proxy terrorism present a persistent security threat, requiring India to balance strategic patience with international pressure.
4. India must overcome regional fears of hegemony by practicing unreciprocated magnanimity and strengthening economic connectivity across South Asia.
5. While economic complementarities exist, unresolved border disputes, systemic governance differences, and strategic competition define the complex India-China relationship.
6. India's energy security, diaspora remittances, and economic growth depend heavily on deep engagement with the Arab world and Southeast Asia.
7. Decades of Cold War estrangement have given way to a vital strategic partnership with the United States centered on trade, defense technology, and democratic values.
8. India's greatest soft power asset is its civilizational pluralism, though its global appeal depends heavily on resolving internal domestic challenges.
9. The Ministry of External Affairs suffers from severe understaffing, structural deficiencies, and executive over-concentration that limit India's diplomatic reach.
10. India must actively pursue reform of the United Nations and Bretton Woods institutions while championing human security and leveraging its global diaspora.