The Importance of Shinzo Abe: India, Japan and the Indo-Pacific

by Sanjaya Baru

" Shinzo Abe, who was tragically assassinated on 8 July 2022, is widely regarded as the most influential Prime Minister of post-war Japan. Not only was he Japan's longest-serving Prime Minister, but he is also credited with giving a new direction to the country's economic, foreign and national-security policies. Abe left an indelible imprint on Japan-India relations, establishing close ties with two successive Indian Prime Ministers and signing up to a new global and strategic partnership between Asia's major democracies. He enabled a radical shift in Asian security architecture and India's external security environment by promoting the concept of the Indo-Pacific. Building on the 'Confluence of the Two Seas' in his historic address to the Indian Parliament in August 2007, Abe became the architect of the Quadrilateral Security Initiative, known as the Quad. The Importance of Shinzo Abe brings together experts from diverse backgrounds to evaluate Abe's unparalleled contribution to global security and the future of Asia and Japan-India relations. Insightful and absorbing, these definitive essays celebrate the statesman as much as the geopolitical strategist. "

284 pages, Hardcover

Published August 30, 2023

About the author

Sanjaya Baru is an Indian political commentator and policy analyst, currently serving as Director for Geo-Economics and Strategy at the International Institute of Strategic Studies. Previously he had served as associate editor at The Economic Times and The Times of India, and then chief editor at Business Standard. His father B. P. R. Vithal served as Finance and Planning Secretary during former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's stint as Secretary of Finance. Before he became a journalist, he was a member of Communist Party of India (Marxist) when he was a student at University of Hyderabad. He became Manmohan Singh's media advisor and chief spokesperson, a role in which he served from May 2004 until August 2008. In April 2014, Penguin India published The Accidental Prime Minister, Baru's tell-all memoir about his time at the Prime Minister's Office (PMO). In it, Baru alleges that the prime minister was completely subservient to Congress President Sonia Gandhi, who wielded significant influence in the running of the Singh administration, including the PMO itself. The book has sparked off a controversy, with the PMO officially denouncing it as "fiction". Baru, however, has said that he set out to show an empathetic portrait of the prime minister.

(from Wikipedia)