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Introduction: Regional powers in contest and engagement: making sense of international relations in a globalised world

The global order is yet again in the throes of a fundamental transformation. Not many would have imagined that this would be the case a mere 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In those heady days following the collapse of the Soviet Union, many scholars imagined that the world was at ‘the end of history’, and that the arrival of the unipolar world with the United States at its helm would continue for decades if not centuries. But after a mere decade there were already signs that the United States may have overstretched itself. By 2008, the credit binge of US citizens and the ideological fundamentalism of its political leadership had greatly eroded the fiscal foundation of its economy and its standing in the world arena. Two wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, its militarist posture, and the diplomatic ineptitude of the Bush administration had overstretched the superpower’s military capabilities and depleted its international political capital, prompting the rise of multiple competitors. The relative and perceived decline of American hegemony has prompted a flurry of studies on Russia, India and China, on regional blocs like the EU, on middle powers, and more recently on regional powers. Thus the question arises, is it necessary to study regional powers as a specific category of states? After all, there have been many studies of the foreign policies of these and other countries. Moreover, there have been studies of the category of states that has come to be referred to as middle powers which include not only industrialised countries like Canada and Norway, but also many of the states now referred to as regional powers Brazil, India, Mexico, and South Africa, among others. Is specific study of these countries as regional powers necessary?