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  The policy messaging  trips also carry more weight as the prospect of a presidential reelection campaign looms large over the White House. Biden has been working intensively on his State of the Union Speech speech – including over the weekend – which his team views as a launching pad for the reelection bid. His speeches around the East Coast week will offer a preview of his message as he touts new infrastructure projects. Behind the scenes, aides are building up a campaign infrastructure and the West Wing is in the process of restructuring for a politically intense two years. Peppered in between stops to visit projects funded though the proposals which were the bedrock of his 2020 presidential campaign, Biden will participate in events that are part of an intense fundraising push ahead of the campaign announcement.

  His approach is novel because it highlights how endemic features of India’s political system have gotten in the way of its decision-making; a single-minded focus on India’s external environment doesn’t adequately explain its choices. Basrur’s decision to fold his argument into neoclassical realism advances understanding of New Delhi’s foreign policy. He makes clear that unless India’s political leaders can harness domestic forces toward their aspirations to play a more significant role in Asia and beyond, they will remain hamstrung. Basrur shows how features of India’s domestic politics have influenced its responses to foreign-policy challenges using four case studies: the U.S.-India civilian nuclear agreement, India’s role in the Sri Lankan civil war, its nuclear strategy, and its response to cross-border terrorism from Pakistan. He draws  on a vast array of secondary sources and archival material for context and argues that in each case India’s policymakers responded to ex...