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Can two countries be friends the way two individuals can be? Chaulia draws parallels, pointing out that a strategic partnership is akin to a live-in relationship and that an alliance evokes the exclusivity and commitments of a rigid marriage. Therein lies the crux.

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One of the key merits of this work is to demonstrate why, how, and under what conditions friendships between India and these seven friends emerged, evolved, are likely to subsist or could even dissolve. It is said that the master key of knowledge is the questions you ask and the highest wisdom stems from questions asked as much as the answers given.

I commend this book on the acuity of the questions Chaulia has asked and sought to answer under the rubric of rising powers, choices of friends, how each friend matters, how they become thick and resilient to shocks, and whether strategic partnerships might morph into alliances. As a multilateralist, I concur with Chaulia about the centrality of special bilateral partnerships and their extensions into plurilateral partnerships.

While the symbiosis between India and its best friends in economic, military and geopolitical domains is growing, one has to be wary of weaponization of interdependencies. What if the volatile regional and global situation changes and the dependability of some of these friends comes into question? India must continue to build self-reliance and diversification in critical areas as an insurance vis-a-vis the inbuilt risks of some of its strategic partnerships.

One could argue that other strategic partnerships could have been included in this book.

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But the seven that Chaulia has chosen are worthy enough. Some of them, like Russia, are time-tested friendships that have survived major tremors and tensions. With others, like Australia, Japan and the UAE, we have witnessed a metamorphosis in the Modi era, with a high degree of strategic closeness that no one would have imagined even one decade ago.

The personal chemistry that Modi has built with every American president from Barack Obama to Donald Trump is underpinned by this deeper strategic convergence. Still, given recent cross currents, India must have safeguards against slide backs and it should keep itself open to other friendships among and beyond the three dozen strategic partnerships that it has signed around the world.