New properties emerge because of our embeddedness in social networks, and these properties inhere in the structure of the networks, not just in the individuals within them.

China s incursion reaffirms the ancient strategic axiom that geography is the real determinant of history and, as a result, of foreign and security policy, too. Robert Kaplan wisely observes that Indian geography is the story of invasions from a northwesterly direction, and India s strategic challenges still inhere in this fact, which is why Afghanistan, to Indian eyes, is linked to the sub continent s history, and thus our future.