Abstract
This article explores Brazil and India’s alternative paths in their search for great-power status. It examines the competing expectations of alternative IR theories regarding the conditions for great-power status in the post-Cold War era and their limited explanatory and predictive power. Although constructivism offers a more sophisticated approach, one also needs insights from realism/neorealism, neoliberal institutionalism, and globalization theory to understand the possibilities and limitations of the Brazilian and Indian strategies to be admitted to the great-power club. The article compares Brazil and India’s foreign policies and nuclear diplomacy and challenges the idea that India’s status as a nuclear weapon state enhances its prospects for joining the great-power club. Brazil does not possess nuclear weapons, but it has successfully created a consensual hegemonic regime in South America, which allows it to use a regionalist project (Mercosur, UNASUR) as a launching pad to gain admission to the great-power club. In contrast, despite possessing nuclear weapons, India has been unable to establish a consensual hegemonic regime in South Asia, and its “Pakistan problem” holds back her prospects for joining the great-power club. The article argues that a US blessing may not help India to gain entrance to the “board of the world” if other board members, such as China, resist India’s admission. The conclusion examines the implications for IR theory of Brazil and India’s alternative pathways to great-power status, and the impact of progress—or lack of progress—in global nuclear disarmament negotiations on both countries’ possible admission to the great-power club.
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