Contemporary World Politics Class- XII (Part-A)

The Sixth Edition of the book ‘Contemporary World Politics’ (for Class XII) incorporates the following major changes from the book’s earlier editions.

• There began a period of hostility and tension between the Soviet Bloc and the Western powers soon after the Second World War. That was the era of Cold War. The US and the Soviet Union both tried to attract India to their respective camps, with offers of benefits arising naturally from an association with the Global Powers. But we refused to be “the plaything of others”. Under India’s leasdership most of the Afro-Asian nations approved the “basic general principles of Non-alignment”. The 18^th Non-aligned Summit was held at Baku in Azerbaijan in 2019 (Chapter 1).
• The demand for democracy and representative institutions has started in Tunisia. But form 2009 nowards many Arab countries in West Asia-Egypt, Libya, Syria and others-became entangled in similar protests. There was a strong disapproval and anger shown by the public in all these countries against corruption, poverty and autocratic regimes. Such an awakening of ‘democracy’ and ‘national consciousness’ in people was termed “the Arab Spring” by the political analysis (Chapter 2).
• We shall now refer to a few New Centres of Power-the European Union, the ASEAN and the BRICS nations. Britain’s decision to exit the European Union will, no doubt, weaken the organization. The term ‘BRICS’ refers to Brazil, Russian, India, china and South Africa respectively. India’s relations with China are far from being normal. What is significant from our viewpoint is that India nowadays counts in world affairs. During the last few years India-US Security Cooperation moved at tremendous speed. Under the US President Joe Biden also the relation will not change, especially because of geopolitical considerations, i.e., the US need for counterbalancing China in Southeast Asia (Chapter 3).
• Efforts for peace and democracy in Southeast Asia, Especially Pakistan, Nepal and Maldives, remained the real Achilles heel or the weakest point in their nature. In Pakistan the anger against Imran Khan seemed to be mounting, People’s perception is that Military is very much involved in Pakistan’s national politics. In September 2018 Ibrahim Mohamed Solih defeated Abdulla Yamin. The new President is a strong supporter of “India first” Policy (Chapter 4).
• The UN must reform. The Security Council needs to be expanded to provide Permanent seats for emerging power like India, Japan and Brazil. But it can only reform it there was sufficient unity among its members to that effect. On the 75^th anniversary of the UN’s foundation the Prime Minister Narendra Modi stressed the need for real “Multilateralism” to ensure UN continued relevance in the World (Chapter 5).
• There are various types of terrorism, such as political terrorism, terrorism motivated by religious factors that draws its sustenance from Islamic fundamentalism and the State sponsored terrorism. But there is no such thing as good or bad terrorism. All manifestations of terrorism needed to be combated mercilessly and collectively (Chapter 6).
• India supports Rio Declaration, also known as Agenda-21 on concerns about Sustainable Development and other environmental issues. The 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change came into force on 4 November, 2016. Katowice Climate Conference, 2016 attempted to evolve a rulebook for enforcing the Paris Agreement. Global Climate Action Summit was organized by the UN Secretary General in September 2019, because the steps taken by the international community of climate change were not enough (Chapter 7).
• Globalisation is irreversible. It is here to stay, whether we liked it or not (Chapter 8).