In the past 20 years, there have been three clear instances when India’s actions have not only forced its diplomacy out of South Block and to the rest of the world, but have been inflexion points in its larger foreign policy, forcing India to articulate its way forward. One was the nuclear tests of 1998 and the second, the India-US nuclear deal of 2008. The third was India’s decision on August 5 to nullify Article 370 and reorganise Jammu & Kashmir.

As India’s diplomats led by foreign minister S Jaishankar work overtime to convince the world that the Indian action would not lead to nuclear war or a Xinjiang-like situation, the new Modi government is also using the opportunity to lay out the contours of its foreign policy this time around. Three fortuitous developments are helping the Modi-Jaishankar-Doval trio to effect some subtle changes – Modi and Jaishankar’s high octane diplomatic blitz in the US to re-energise the US relationship; the crafting of Wuhan II at Mamallapuram when Chinese president Xi Jinping visits later this week, and the unexpected opening up of the field in the Afghanistan peace process.

The post-370 diplomacy has, by and large, completed its first phase, with the general report card being sort of favourable to India by governments, less so by the media or civil society. Chinese governments apparently find it much easier to place opinion articles in Western media. Indian ministers and ambassadors struggle. India has found, to its cost, that liberal opinion particularly in the Anglosphere is today taken with “Islamophobia” (it was no coincidence that Imran raised it in his UN speech) that has coloured the criticism against Indian actions. It’s quite another matter that this does not extend to China’s actions in Xinjiang, or, for that matter to Pakistan’s own actions in different parts of its country. But nobody said the world had to be fair.

Second, the infusion of nationalism into foreign policy is seen as a net positive. Developed countries are steeped in what Jaishankar calls “insecure” nationalism. In an outstanding speech to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington last week, Jaishankar said, “India in many ways will be a contrary case where I would argue that India is today both more nationalistic, but also more internationalist at the same time. I’m not sure that in every part of the world nationalism means the same thing and leads to the same consequences. To some extent, there could be some other cases like that where a country wants, feels more confident about itself.”

That segues neatly with the most important bilateral relationship that India will be working on this weekend when President Xi Jinping arrives for the second informal summit with Modi. The setting will be perfect to show Xi that India’s maritime imperium stretched centuries before Zheng He was even a twinkle in the eye. But the real conversation between a putative superpower and a neighbouring rising power will be about bilateral management and bilateral stability. Neither Modi nor Xi are likely to read out a laundry list of grievances, that’s not the purpose. Instead they will assess the other’s ability and will to play larger global roles and the means each uses to get there.

China has been surprised at India’s ability to play the international system for its ends, with far less at its command. This came out clearly in the August 16 UNSC joust on Kashmir, at the UNHRC, and in the week-long UNGA jaw-jaw. China’s playbook is likely to harden, but India’s will too. Pakistan will continue to be used by China by tapping into its insecurities while India will use its innate political skills to stay nimble and on the go. China might have the best chance of being a superpower but India wants to tweak the rules of the game to suit 21st century realities and make space for itself.

In an unnoticed remark, Jaishankar informed the UN’s new grouping on multilateralism that “The Kindleberger trap on the shortage of global goods is far more serious than the Thucydides Trap.” Basically he was saying China’s mercantilism rendered it a selfish superpower because it disregarded existing international norms (like UNCLOS) without helping to create a new order.

It was the clearest indictment of the Chinese view of power, as well as an excoriation of the US’s withdrawal from its traditional role of being the provider of global goods (defined as “stable climate, financial stability, or freedom of the seas” by Joseph Nye). That is the space India sees for itself in the coming decades, a middle power rising by sharing the global burdens in providing for global goods in coalition with large powers like the US.

Jaishankar outlined India’s Modi 2.0 foreign policy mantras – greater pluralism, pragmatic cooperation, convergence with many, congruence with none, not pure transactionalism, but accommodation, nationalism and internationalism to co-exist. “In this intensely competitive world India’s goal should be to move closer towards the strategic sweet spot. … even as we look at an era of more dispersed power and sharper competition, the way forward is more likely to be new forms of accommodation rather than pure transactions. While nations will, naturally, each strive to advance their particular interests, similarities and affinities will always remain a factor.”

This could provide the recipe for a management of the increasingly fragile India-China dynamic, but only if India can grow at 9%. That is India’s real strategic sweet spot, currently elusive because India’s economic stewardship is without vision and dependent on Band-Aids.