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We live in
a world that has become dangerously fraught with messy wars and conflicts in
different parts of the world threatening to jeopardise a global order that had largely ensured peace
in large parts of the globe in the decades since the end of the Second World
War. In fact, the end of the Cold War between the West and the Soviet Union and
its allies had raised the hopes of a permanent peace finally descending on most
parts of our planet.
Alas, that
was not to be as the events over the past two or three decades have shown us.
It was the US that was the moving force behind the global order that ushered in
peace, trade and unprecedented prosperity in more parts of the world than had
ever been the case in the long history of mankind. The end of the Cold War led
to the US losing interest in becoming the global guarantor of peace and
security. Its involvement in the Middle East via the two Gulf Wars and
Afghanistan was on account of the US needing to respond to the 9/11 terrorist
attacks came to an end as soon as its strategic objectives were achieved.
The US
today is more inward-looking than it was before its forced entry into the
Second World War and focused mainly on securing the interests of its own
people. The events in Ukraine and Israel may have forced it to engage more
deeply with NATO and the Middle East for now, but it is not a long-term area of
interest for it. The Americans are more deeply concerned with stymying the
threat emerging from an increasingly aggressive and belligerent China that
seeks to topple the US from its perch at the top-economically and militarily.
For that, it has decided to ally with countries like India, Australia and Japan
that lie in the Indo-Pacific region to contain the dragon and ensure that it
does not flap its wings around the world the way it wants to.
This has
more to do with ensuring that nothing threatens the US's preeminent position in
the world and that it continues to be a hugely wealthy and powerful nation
capable of exercising its writ around the world. That suits the Indo-Pacific
nations as well as most of the world since it is a liberal democracy that
offers a better way of doing things than the draconian and repressive way
followed by totalitarian and despotic China.
The biggest
advantage that the US has over most parts of the world is that it is totally
self-sufficient when it comes to food and energy. That is something that the
largest democracy in the world India could learn from the oldest continuous
democracy in the world-the USA. It has already to its huge credit (considering
it is the most populous country in the world) achieved self-sufficiency in the
former. It is in becoming an energy-independent nation that India will find its
true destiny.
The nation
currently imports 84% of its crude oil requirements, leaving the economy
susceptible to inflationary pressures on account of price and supply
fluctuation in international energy markets.[1]
The Economic Survey which was released some time back laid out an ambitious
plan for making India energy-independent by 2047 and it hasn't come a day
moment too soon in a nation of 140 billion people with gargantuan energy needs.
As a matter of fact, a study released by the US Department of Energy's National
Berkeley Lab came out with a report that India could achieve energy
independence by 2047 with the help of clean technology.[2]
This may
seem like a tall order but is eminently doable considering that most of the
energy infrastructure required to meet its burgeoning energy needs is still to
be built. There is an almost two-decade window of time to achieve this
much-required and desired transition from fossil fuels to clean and
environmentally friendly sources of energy. Doing so will enormously benefit
India- economically, environmentally and strategically. It would be in a
position of strength largely unrivalled in the world
[1] https://groww.in/blog/where-does-india-get-its-oil-supply
[2] https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/the-write-wing/indias-energy-independence-by-2047-a-certainty/
