“‘China wants to be No. 1, Bharat stands in its way’: Ex-diplomat on Beijing, BRICS and America”, Firstpost, 5 Sep 2026.
“In an exclusive interview, Rajiv Dogra, former Ambassador to Italy, Romania, Moldova and Albania, and the last Indian Consul General in Karachi, Pakistan, discusses the forces that make nations rise and decline, the weakening of the US-led world order, and the wars in Ukraine and West Asia. In conversation with Firstpost, Dogra, who has just written a book, How Nations Fail and the Unmaking of America’s World, also discusses China’s ambitions, BRICS and the strategic choices confronting India.
The following is the first part of edited excerpts from the interview:
Q: In your new book, How Nations Fail, you examine democracies and authoritarian regimes. You say democracies are resilient in the long term but also have their own weaknesses. Can you explain what you mean?
A: Democracy is essentially a chicken-and-egg issue. You hold elections and, for four or five years, depending on the term, a certain set of people at the top carries out the mandate given to them. But the issue does not end there. Democracy must be constantly sustained. There has to be a bridge of trust between the leadership and the people, and there has to be constant dialogue. When that dialogue breaks down, when the leadership trusts only the people around it, democracy is in danger because the feedback system gets fractured. That is why democracy has to be more than just a game…………..”
Read the full article at Firstpost.
