Response to Comments

Right away I plead guilty to Amitabh Mattoo's charge that I am not sufficiently sensitive to the critique of interdependence. In writing this article, I had in my mind the influential columnists on strategic affairs who talk often persistently, loudly and incoherently, that we are a ‘balancer’ between China and America. What this balance is and how a six-power global balance (US, Europe, Japan, China, India and Russia) has emerged is not explained with any consistency and coherence by these columnists. But they are influential opinion-makers and also decision-makers.