The book arose out of the outrage expressed by Senator D.P. Moynihan at the author’s statement that the ‘Cold War was the greatest intellectual failure of history’. In a reaction, Prof. Stephen Cohen renewed his suggestion to compile the author’s occasional writings. Stephen Cohen made the selection and grouped them into the following five parts: ‘With Nehru’, ‘The Cold War and its Shadow’, ‘Fresh Water Diplomacy’ ‘Diplomacy between Unequal and Equal Neighbours’, and ‘Looking Ahead’. On the express suggestion of J.N. Dixit, the volume also includes a letter the author write on his book War and peace on India’s relations with Pakistan. The three-part essay on Non-proliferation was written at different times, but the last one after the US Congress approved the Bush-Singh Agreement on Civil Nuclear Cooperation. What binds these essays, written over twenty-five years, is that the consequence of technological gallop was not contemporaneously comprehended. Bog countries and small aggravated the handicaps for two-thirds of mankind by their misperceptions. The author argues that in a nuclear world, professional diplomacy demands a more consistent adherence to the vision of a socially just and peaceful world. The old arrogance of size and conventional or nuclear military superiority has lost the old coercive capability. In the twenty-first century, democracy and transparent accountability has to supplement traditional means of security.
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