{"id":677,"date":"2026-07-16T18:15:55","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T12:45:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/psir\/?p=677"},"modified":"2026-08-19T03:48:37","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T22:18:37","slug":"download-psir-gs2-daily-brief-16-july-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/psir\/download-psir-gs2-daily-brief-16-july-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Civilisation as a claim to power, the ocean as India&#8217;s answer to China, and the price of a war fought to change a regime \u2014 PSIR &#038; GS2 Brief, 16 July 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"bf\">\n<div class=\"bf-shell\">\n<header class=\"bf-head\">\n<p class=\"bf-stand\">Today&#8217;s brief reads three articles. Prerna Gandhi of the Vivekananda International Foundation writes that civilisation has become the working vocabulary of foreign policy. Utpal Kumar in Firstpost holds that geography is China&#8217;s weakness and India&#8217;s strength. Shashi Tharoor in the Indian Express counts what the war on Iran cost the state that began it.<\/p>\n<div class=\"bf-meta\"><b>PSIR &amp; GS2 Daily Brief \u00b7 Issue 101<\/b><span class=\"d\">\u00b7<\/span>16 July 2026<span class=\"d\">\u00b7<\/span>Paper II-A, Paper II-B<span class=\"d\">\u00b7<\/span>Amit Pratap Singh<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"bf-get\"><b>Issue 101 as a PDF<\/b><span>The full brief, ready to print for your folder.<\/span><a href=\"\/psir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Daily-brief-Issue-101.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Download PDF<\/a><\/div>\n<section class=\"bf-item\">\n<div class=\"bf-eyebrow\">Paper II-A \u00b7 International Relations<\/div>\n<h2 class=\"bf-h2\">States are asking for a larger place in the world by naming their civilisation rather than their ideology.<\/h2>\n<div class=\"bf-src\"><b>Vivekananda International Foundation<\/b><span class=\"d\">\u00b7<\/span>Prerna Gandhi<span class=\"d\">\u00b7<\/span>15 July 2026<span class=\"d\">\u00b7<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.vifindia.org\/2026\/july\/15\/Civilizational-Statecraft-India-and-the-Emerging-World-Order\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Read the article<\/a><\/div>\n<p>Prerna Gandhi writes that civilisation has entered the working language of foreign policy. She defines a <span class=\"bf-term\">civilizational paradigm<\/span> as the worldview through which a state understands its identity, its legitimacy and its role in the international system. She argues that this is a real change in how states speak of themselves. Power is now spread across economic, technological and military measures. More states therefore want the world agenda set on their own terms. The old divisions do not hold. Capitalism against communism, and later liberal democracy against authoritarian rule, no longer sort states neatly, because many of them refuse to choose.<\/p>\n<h4>The record<\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li>The National Security Strategy of the United States of 2025 speaks of civilizational pride.<\/li>\n<li>Russia&#8217;s Foreign Policy Concept of 2023 calls the country a country-civilization. It gathers Russians and other peoples into a common civilizational community under the Russian world.<\/li>\n<li>Xi Jinping announced the Global Civilization Initiative in March 2023. It sets out civilizational diversity, paths to modernisation chosen by each nation, and a refusal of imposed values and models of development.<\/li>\n<li>India&#8217;s G20 Chairmanship of 2023 took the theme Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, and One Earth, One Family, One Future. India used it to act as a bridge builder between the Global North and the Global South.<\/li>\n<li>Turkey reconstituted the Turkic Council as the Organization of Turkic States in 2021. It adopted the Turkic World Vision-2040 to build its influence along the Middle Corridor. It also works through TIKA and Diyanet across Eurasia and the Balkans.<\/li>\n<li>Samuel Huntington defined civilization as the broadest grouping in the international system, spanning religion, language, history and values. He held that civilizations would take the place of ideological blocs after the Cold War. He expected the West to decline in relative terms, and the Sinic and Islamic civilizations to rise.<\/li>\n<li>Huntington also argued that the West should recognise the limits of its power, and the danger of trying to impose its values on everyone.<\/li>\n<li>Francis Fukuyama&#8217;s End of History argument stood for the post-Cold War assumption that the world would converge on liberal, secular democracy. Gandhi reads Huntington&#8217;s The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order as an answer to that hubris.<\/li>\n<li>India and China have gone back to their own political thought. India returns to Kautilya&#8217;s <span class=\"bf-term\">Arthashastra<\/span>. China uses Tianxia and the phrase community of shared future for mankind.<\/li>\n<li>Gandhi lists four works that widened the theory: Qin Yaqing&#8217;s A Relational Theory of World Politics, Ahmet Davutoglu&#8217;s Strategic Depth, Alexander Dugin&#8217;s The Fourth Political Theory and S. Jaishankar&#8217;s The India Way.<\/li>\n<li>Western states cut their national identity away from culture and history after the Second World War, because of the Holocaust, fascism and Nazism. Eastern states kept their past despite colonial rule, and used civilizational pride in nation-building.<\/li>\n<li>India now reads <span class=\"bf-term\">strategic autonomy<\/span> and <span class=\"bf-term\">multi-alignment<\/span> as more than the choices of a young state after 1947. Gandhi anchors them in civilizational antecedents. Yoga, Buddhism and Ayurveda have become a source of soft power, and the Ram Mandir movement carried this language into public life.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h4>The argument<\/h4>\n<p>This is material for the question on the shape of the emerging world order. The dividing line is no longer an ideology. A state now argues from what it has been, and asks for a place to match. Gandhi is careful about the limits. Civilizational pride can add to confidence. It cannot stand in for growth, for technology or for arms.<\/p>\n<p>For Indian foreign policy the use is direct. Strategic autonomy and multi-alignment are usually taught as the conduct of a weak new state in a bipolar world. Gandhi reads them instead as the conduct of an old civilisation. That gives you a second line on the determinants of foreign policy, and a way into the 2025 question on the phases of Indian foreign policy. The open question is the one she ends on. Nobody yet knows whether this turn holds up multipolarity or pulls the present order apart.<\/p>\n<div class=\"bf-quote\">\n<p>&#8220;A civilizational paradigm is an overarching historical-philosophical worldview through which a state understands its identity, legitimacy, and role in the international system.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Prerna Gandhi<\/cite><\/div>\n<div class=\"bf-quote\">\n<p>&#8220;civilizational discourse can enhance, but not substitute for economic growth, technological innovation and military capability&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Prerna Gandhi<\/cite><\/div>\n<\/section>\n<section class=\"bf-item\">\n<div class=\"bf-eyebrow\">Paper II-B \u00b7 India and the World<\/div>\n<h2 class=\"bf-h2\">Geography is China&#x27;s lasting weakness, and the ocean that carries India&#x27;s name is where India can use it.<\/h2>\n<div class=\"bf-src\"><b>Firstpost<\/b><span class=\"d\">\u00b7<\/span>Utpal Kumar<span class=\"d\">\u00b7<\/span>14 July 2026<span class=\"d\">\u00b7<\/span><em>Firstpost turns away automated requests from this machine, so no link is printed here. The article is named on the brief&#x27;s front page, and its opening screen is reproduced inside the brief.<\/em><\/div>\n<p>Utpal Kumar writes that geography is China&#8217;s lasting weakness and India&#8217;s lasting advantage. China&#8217;s trade and its energy move through narrow water that China does not command. India sits across that water. The article reads the recent three nation tour of Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a sign that Delhi has grasped this, and is ready to use it in the contest with Beijing.<\/p>\n<p>The article could not be opened here, because Firstpost turns away automated requests from this machine. The headline, the writer, the date and the line quoted below are read from the screen of the article that the brief prints on its fourth page. The facts and the argument that follow are the faculty&#8217;s note on it.<\/p>\n<h4>The record<\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li>Beijing&#8217;s Malacca Dilemma, as the brief sets it out: 80 per cent of China&#8217;s energy imports and trade pass through the South China Sea and the Strait of Malacca.<\/li>\n<li>India is described as an unsinkable aircraft carrier. It commands the sea lanes that join East Asia to Europe, Africa and West Asia.<\/li>\n<li>India&#8217;s maritime footprint runs through Port Victoria in Seychelles, Sabang in Indonesia, Duqm in Oman and Changi in Singapore.<\/li>\n<li>China&#8217;s answers to the problem are on land and around it: Tibet, CPEC, Taiwan and the String of Pearls.<\/li>\n<li>The brief records the argument in one line. India does not have to match China ship for ship. It has to play the ocean that carries its name.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h4>The argument<\/h4>\n<p>Take this as the maritime half of the China question. The land border is where India is tested. The sea is where China is exposed. A state whose trade and fuel cross a strait it does not hold has a weakness that no army can remove. That is the value of the Malacca Dilemma in an answer on national interest, security and power.<\/p>\n<p>The brief draws out the consequence for the border. Beijing gains by keeping the Line of Actual Control unsettled, because an India kept busy in the Himalayas is not building at sea. The aim is not a victory in battle. The aim is to stop India from ever using its advantage in the water. Set that against India&#8217;s list of ports and access agreements, and you have both sides of an answer on India and China.<\/p>\n<div class=\"bf-quote\">\n<p>&#8220;China&#8217;s enduring vulnerability is geography, which is Bharat&#8217;s enduring advantage.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Firstpost<\/cite><\/div>\n<\/section>\n<section class=\"bf-item\">\n<div class=\"bf-eyebrow\">Paper II-A \u00b7 International Relations<\/div>\n<h2 class=\"bf-h2\">A war announced as regime change ended with the attacker signing worse terms than it had before.<\/h2>\n<div class=\"bf-src\"><b>The Indian Express<\/b><span class=\"d\">\u00b7<\/span>Shashi Tharoor<span class=\"d\">\u00b7<\/span>15 July 2026<span class=\"d\">\u00b7<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/indianexpress.com\/article\/opinion\/columns\/america-fought-a-war-with-iran-to-sign-a-worse-deal-than-before-10787575\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Read the article<\/a><\/div>\n<p>Shashi Tharoor writes on the return of the war with Iran. The invading coalition launched an offensive named Epic Fury, built on overwhelming force. He calls the campaign an Epic Failure. Regime change was announced as the principal objective. The war instead fortified the state it targeted, raised its standing, and left the coalition pausing the fighting on far worse terms than it began with. Muddled objectives, a misreading of the adversary and the loss of partners turned the offensive back on the people who ordered it.<\/p>\n<h4>The record<\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li>The turning point was the sudden closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Mines laid offshore and cheap drone warfare made it hard for Western naval planners to take back control of the chokepoint. A single deterrent of that kind held the world economy hostage and forced a rush to talks.<\/li>\n<li>United States Vice President J D Vance and Iranian Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf signed a 14-point MoU on June 15. It opened a 60-day negotiation framework, which has since collapsed. Peace talks are being attempted in Oman.<\/li>\n<li>The MoU gave phased sanctions relief, Iranian export of over 40 million barrels of oil, the unfreezing of tens of billions of dollars in foreign assets, and a multinational reconstruction fund. Details of the nuclear deal remain unclear.<\/li>\n<li>The eradication of Iran&#8217;s ballistic-missile capacity was a core demand of the invasion. It was left out of the MoU. The waterway that the invaders claim to have reopened was not closed before their war began.<\/li>\n<li>The JCPOA of Barack Obama restricted Iran&#8217;s nuclear capacity without a single bomb being dropped. Donald Trump scrapped it in 2018. Bombing has now given Iran reason to move faster towards a weapon, because developing that capacity drew attacks while North Korea, which already has weapons, is handled with far more care.<\/li>\n<li>Iran then tried to charge commercial ships compulsory transit fees at Hormuz. Most of the world refused, citing freedom of navigation. The Panama and Suez Canals are man-made and charge for services. Straits such as Hormuz and Malacca need no human work, and international law recognises them as <span class=\"bf-term\">global commons<\/span>.<\/li>\n<li>United States attacks hit coastal surveillance, air defence networks, drone and missile storage, and logistics hubs on Iran&#8217;s southern coast, among them railway corridors and bridges. Iran answered with drone and ballistic missile attacks on United States bases in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and Jordan.<\/li>\n<li>Killing the ruling elite did not break the Iranian state. Its institutions held. The place of the dead leaders has gone to a younger generation that is more radical, more angry and set on regional dominance.<\/li>\n<li>Iran puts the cost of the conflict to its own economy at roughly $200 billion. Energy dependent countries were hit almost as hard. Oil prices and inflation strained public finances in India, raised the cost of imports and weakened the rupee.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h4>The argument<\/h4>\n<p>This is a case study on the limits of force. A superpower with every technical advantage could not reopen a narrow sea against mines and cheap drones. The weaker side did not have to win a battle. It had to hold a chokepoint, and that was enough to bring the stronger side to the table. Use it on national interest, security and power, and against the realist assumption that capability decides the outcome.<\/p>\n<p>There are three further uses. The first is proliferation. One state was attacked while it built capacity. Another has the weapon and is handled with far more care. Put the two cases together, and any state with ambition has a reason to build the bomb. The second is decapitation. Killing leaders did not produce moderation, and it did not produce collapse. The third is the cost to countries that had no part in the war. Tharoor writes that the ruinous toll fell on the Global South, and that India paid through oil prices, inflation and a weaker rupee.<\/p>\n<div class=\"bf-quote\">\n<p>&#8220;military hubris, when detached from coherent objectives and historical reality, inevitably yields a fractured international order, severely compromised allies, and a dramatically more dangerous world&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Shashi Tharoor<\/cite><\/div>\n<div class=\"bf-quote\">\n<p>&#8220;the war underscored the severe limitations of coercive military power in an era where asymmetric capabilities can disrupt global superpower superiority&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Shashi Tharoor<\/cite><\/div>\n<\/section>\n<section class=\"bf-syl\">\n<h3>Where this belongs in your syllabus<\/h3>\n<p class=\"s\">Open the note and read the full topic.<\/p>\n<div class=\"bf-chips\"><a class=\"bf-chip\" href=\"\/psir\/notes\/vision-of-a-new-world-order\/\">Vision of a new world order<\/a><a class=\"bf-chip\" href=\"\/psir\/notes\/collapse-of-the-soviet-union-unipolarity-and-american-hegemony\/\">Collapse of the Soviet Union, unipolarity and American hegemony<\/a><a class=\"bf-chip\" href=\"\/psir\/notes\/hegemony\/\">Hegemony<\/a><a class=\"bf-chip\" href=\"\/psir\/notes\/realist-approach\/\">Realist approach<\/a><a class=\"bf-chip\" href=\"\/psir\/notes\/national-interest-security-and-power\/\">National interest, security and power<\/a><a class=\"bf-chip\" href=\"\/psir\/notes\/balance-of-power-and-deterrence\/\">Balance of power and deterrence<\/a><a class=\"bf-chip\" href=\"\/psir\/notes\/determinants-of-foreign-policy\/\">Determinants of foreign policy<\/a><a class=\"bf-chip\" href=\"\/psir\/notes\/continuity-and-change-in-indian-foreign-policy\/\">Continuity and change in Indian foreign policy<\/a><a class=\"bf-chip\" href=\"\/psir\/notes\/india-and-china\/\">India and China<\/a><a class=\"bf-chip\" href=\"\/psir\/notes\/india-and-the-usa\/\">India and the USA<\/a><a class=\"bf-chip\" href=\"\/psir\/notes\/afghanistan-iraq-and-west-asia\/\">Afghanistan, Iraq and West Asia<\/a><a class=\"bf-chip\" href=\"\/psir\/notes\/india-s-look-east-policy\/\">India&#x27;s \u201cLook East\u201d policy<\/a><a class=\"bf-chip\" href=\"\/psir\/notes\/arthashastra\/\">Arthashastra<\/a><a class=\"bf-chip\" href=\"\/psir\/notes\/nuclear-proliferation\/\">Nuclear proliferation<\/a><\/div>\n<\/section>\n<section class=\"bf-q\">\n<h3>The questions this feeds<\/h3>\n<p class=\"s\">Questions from earlier years that today&#8217;s reading speaks to. Where the answer is written, the red link opens it. The full set is in the <a href=\"\/psir\/pyq-vault\/\">PYQ Vault<\/a>.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><b>PSIR Paper II \u00b7 2025 \u00b7 20m<\/b>Critically analyse the different phases of India&#x27;s foreign policy since independence. How justified is S. Jaishankar&#x27;s classification of the current phase as &#x27;energetic diplomacy&#x27;?<a class=\"ans\" href=\"\/psir\/psir-pyq\/critically-analyze-the-different-phases-of-indias-foreign-policy-upsc-psir-2025-3910\/\">Answer<\/a><\/li>\n<li><b>PSIR Paper II \u00b7 2025 \u00b7 15m<\/b>India maintains strong ties with countries that will assure a free and open Indo-Pacific and guarantee greater connectivity with the rest of the world. Analyse.<a class=\"ans\" href=\"\/psir\/psir-pyq\/india-maintains-strong-ties-with-countries-that-will-assure-a-upsc-psir-2025-4909\/\">Answer<\/a><\/li>\n<li><b>PSIR Paper II \u00b7 2024<\/b>Does the idea of the 21st century as the &#x27;Asian century&#x27; remain feasible given the growing friction between India and China?<\/li>\n<li><b>PSIR Paper II \u00b7 2024 \u00b7 15m<\/b>Do you agree that the USA uses NATO as a traditional tool of strategy to perpetuate its hegemony in the world?<a class=\"ans\" href=\"\/psir\/psir-pyq\/do-you-agree-with-the-view-that-the-usa-uses-nato-as-a-upsc-psir-2024-3312\/\">Answer<\/a><\/li>\n<li><b>GS-2 \u00b7 2024<\/b>The West is fostering India as an alternative to reduce dependence on China&#x27;s supply chain and as a strategic ally to counter China&#x27;s political and economic dominance. Explain this statement with examples.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/section>\n<div class=\"bf-foot\">A new brief on every working day. Facts and quotes are taken from the articles named above.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Prerna Gandhi of the Vivekananda International Foundation writes that states now argue from who they are, and that India reads strategic autonomy back into its own past. Utpal Kumar holds that geography is China&#8217;s lasting weakness, and that the Indian Ocean is where India can use it. Shashi Tharoor writes that the war with Iran ended in a worse deal than the one the United States tore up in 2018.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":679,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"fx_brief_v2":"1","fx_brief_issue":"101","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-psir-gs-2-daily-brief"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/psir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-07-16-at-3.05.04-PM.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/psir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/psir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/psir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/psir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/psir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=677"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/psir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5105,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/psir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677\/revisions\/5105"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/psir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/psir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/psir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/psir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}