NATO-India Geostrategic Convergence

“Only the dead have seen the end of war,” famously remarked General Douglas MacArthur, attributing this quotation to ancient Greek philosopher Plato in his farewell address to the graduating class of West Point in 1962, highlighting the intertwined nature of the growth of human civilisation and the inalienable role of conflict between humans. The foundation of the realist school of international relations is augmented by this belief.

Cover by The Geostrata

Realists believe that the world as we live in functions as a state of anarchy in which the ultimate objective of any state is maximisation of its power capacities and attaining the status of what theoretical scholars call 'hegemon'. Political scientist and international relations scholar John Mearsheimer, in his pivotal work, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, charts out the course of history from this perspective, tracking down how the history of conflicts in modern times was the history of what he described as the quest for regional hegemony.

This quest for hegemony can rightly be observed in the twentieth century, first during the First World War and then during the Second World War and the Cold War. While during the First World War, British and French hegemony was challenged by Wilhelmine Germany and its hegemonic ambitions, the Second World War was the result of Germany’s ambition to become a European hegemon and the failure of the global balance of power due to persisting multipolarity.

However, nowhere is this quest for hegemony and balance of power more visible than during the Cold War, when both the then-great powers—the United States and the USSR- engaged each other in the global race to supremacy.

The genesis of the Cold War can be traced back to the end of the Second World War, when allies turned against each other initially due to ideological divergences and later due to the inception of nuclear weapons on the global stage, which further intensified the mutual security dilemmas.

In a way, the emergence of the Cold War was the example of what the ancient Indian political thinker and strategist, Kautilya, called a 'Mandala theory', in which he described how with the elimination of a common enemy, one competes with one’s ally to maximise its chances of survival in the brutal balance of power game. Nazi Germany is a case in point.

At the global stage, the Cold War led to the formation of blocs, with the United States leading one and its ideological competitor and adversary, the USSR, leading the other. The emergence of many multinational and transnational organisations, some of which are heavily active today, can be traced back to this era. The most important of these organisations was the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).

This report aims to highlight the contribution of NATO in maintaining peace and security during the Cold War and after. The following sections will cover the historical and theoretical underpinnings for the establishment of NATO and its relevance and necessity in maintaining global peace, while simultaneously also highlighting the converging interests of NATO countries and India in terms of security cooperation.

To download the report, please click the button below-

DOWNLOAD NOW

For all official and academic purposes, use the following as a citation, which follows the Chicago Manual Style.

Darshan Gajjar

“NATO-India Geostrategic Convergence”

THE GEOSTRATA, August 25, 2025.

---

BY DARSHAN GAJJAR

TEAM GEOSTRATA

info@thegeostrata.com