Rescuing the Future: Bequeathed Misperceptions in International Relations

Rescuing the Future: Bequeathed Misperceptions in International Relations

By- Jagat S. Mehta

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 wrote 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. Big 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.

Jagat S. Mehta was Foreign Secretary, Government of India, during 1976-9 appointed at a comparative young age of 53.

After retirement, his primary interest has been in voluntarism for social and economic development. However he has woven these with spells in academia. He was an Associate at Harvard Centre for International Affairs in 1980, Fellow at Woodrow Wilson Centre in Washington in 1981 and appointed Tom Slick Distinguished Professor of World Peace at Austin (Texas) in 1983. His predecessor in this chair included Nobel Laureates Gunnar and Alva Myrdal.

ISBN  81-7304-752-9    2007   540p.   Rs.1250/ pounds 70

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