The strategic partnership between Saudi Arabia and the US withstood the test of time despite occasional challenges. Even as the US dependence on Gulf oil weaned, the partnership continued due to foreign policy convergences and the security nexus. The Arab Spring uprisings challenged the partnership leading to foreign policy divergences. While the US looked for reducing its regional commitments, the Kingdom diversified relations with emerging powers. Notwithstanding the divergent foreign policy choices, which are likely to continue given global and regional geopolitics, the strategic partnership flourished, and is likely to continue for the foreseeable future.

The 21st century’s central economic nexus will be centred on the Indo-Pacific region. Simultaneously, the intensifying US-China competition in the Indo-Pacific is deepening. Regional middle powers must negotiate this competition to ensure their interests remain intact. This article applies a realist framework to analyse the strategic alignment of Australia, Japan, and India in response to the great power competition. It examines the strategy each middle power is pursuing to protect their interests and the motivations behind their approaches. It finds a convergence in middle power interests centred on maritime behaviour, adherence to international law, and investment in regional institutions.

Through the lens of land acquisition by the State for development in India and China, an extensively and compulsorily strong State intervention has been witnessed. It pushes forward asymmetric neoliberal reforms, draws value surpluses from land development, and frequently uses mandatory coercive measures, when necessary, to accelerate the economic development process. The current reform has not substantially revised, but in fact, has sustained this model of development. It is a combination of a developmental State in the neoliberal era along with a well-controlled market mechanism, which constitutes the basic features of Asian neoliberalism and distinguishes itself from its Western counterparts.

Going by the economic growth patterns of China, India, Japan, South Korea and ASEAN countries with corresponding decline in the Western economic heft, it was often claimed that the 21st century will be the Asian Century. This might be in doubt due to the pandemic and geopolitical contestation between China and the US, where new faultlines are being drawn. Moreover, India and China being in a potential conflict zone, the dream of the Asian Century might have receded even further. But Asianism, given its intrinsic strength, has gone through its own evolution over the centuries, as the major Asian civilizations and cultures have interacted often seamlessly and occasionally competed with one another. Assimilation has often been the result. Ancient is intrinsic to the Asian thought, philosophy, and existence. Harmony with nature and a share-and-care attitude have been the hallmarks of the quest for eternal peace and co-existence. Yet, political Asianism has occasionally witnessed conflicts and wars in the name of supremacy and superiority which was hardly the real essence of the Asiatic value systems. The battle between the West and East accentuated them through the 19th and 20th centuries and the First and Second World Wars. The Western system moved forward, as Japan was defeated but eventually became part of the Western alliance system. India became independent and avoided the Cold War with the global governance architecture by virtue of her ancient mystical heritage and knowledge, new-found democratic credentials, a moral and principled stance reflected through her non-aligned approaches and pragmatic emphasis on peace and development for one-sixth of humanity, thereby leading the newly-independent developing countries from Asia to Africa, from the clutches of colonialism. This has provided India with an authoritative international voice of reason. And this is what will combine her software, powered by the civilizational heritage and universality of her cultural ethos, to enhance and extend her soft power appeal which is the subtext of her very existence.