We can move directly into politics because the sociological features governing the behaviour of countries are not too different from the behaviour of atoms and molecules. I say this at the risk of sounding anthropomorphic. Atoms and molecules are not thinking, sentient entities; of course not. However, they exhibit both simplicity and complexity when they interact with each other—just like countries. If one considers the bipolar world that prevailed between 1945 and 1991, it was a simple system. The USA and the USSR interacted strongly, albeit negatively, and many countries, such as those in NATO and the Warsaw Pact, aligned with one of these superpowers. Their interactions, however, were so weak, actually inconsequential to the superpowers, that the overall system remained simple.
A strange situation prevailed in a monopolar world between 1991 and 2020. The USA did not interact with any other country on an equal footing. It was the world’s policeman, and it could do pretty much whatever it wanted, wherever and whenever it wanted. The pandemic and the growing importance of China put an end to all this. Rather than reverting to a bipolar model, with the USA and China as the two poles, the world became multipolar, and interactions among various groupings of countries, such as the G7, NATO, G20, BRICS+, the Quad, and the SCO, became important. Other groupings have been suggested: USA, India, Russia, Japan; Russia, Iran, China, North Korea; India, Germany, Brazil, Japan. A characteristic of complex systems is that they are hard to define. The invoking of so many of these country groupings is the clearest indication, and I say this as a scientist, that we are dealing with a complex system here.
The world moved from a paradigm of simplicity to one of complexity. Many weak interactions between countries, rather than one strong interaction, have actually conferred huge advantages on the world because they have forced countries to get along with each other in small, contextual ways rather than become adversaries according to the older, more simplistic binary formulation: if you are not my friend, you are my enemy. This move from simplicity to complexity is of enormous significance in geostrategies. Take the byzantine manoeuvres of countries today as they seek to carve out space for themselves in West Asia, a region of critical importance as a source of petroleum products and natural gas. An intriguing alliance of India, UAE and Israel is making itself seen, while an alternative in the form of Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan seems poised against it. Is it one set of weak interactions against another? Who will win? Or will both dissolve away, like a crystallisation that does not proceed beyond some pre-nucleation stage?
We are currently witnessing unanticipated shifts in Indian politics. Political parties are actively trying to appeal to various caste groups, often risking alienating others in their pursuit of votes in the upcoming elections. These alliances and appeals seem to be fragile. The Indian political system has become increasingly ambiguous, as it is no longer grounded in clear party ideologies. Nowadays, no political party in India appears to maintain a consistent ideology; even if one did, it seems to have been abandoned in pursuit of votes under a first-past-the-post system, where the winner takes all, and the loser loses everything. The Congress party began to lose its ideological footing around 2000 when it realised that securing the crucial 272 Lok Sabha seats in a parliamentary election was becoming increasingly difficult. Similarly, the BJP fell short of this magic number in the 2024 elections, and it too has succumbed to this shifting landscape.
Truly, sociology has become the central discipline governing the behaviour of people, countries, and empires. My recent book, “India, Science, Politics, Geostrategy: A 30 Year Thought Journey”, discusses the above themes in detail and derives from the fact that humans instinctively want to interact with other humans and that when taken to the level of nations, this will shape who leads and who follows in the new world order. For a scientist, it is particularly easy to see this complexity.