The Adjustment And Trend Of India’s "Eastward Policy"（2014-2019） ——An Explanation Based On Neoclassical Realism

India’s "Eastward policy" was launched in the early 1990 s.This policy aims to improve India’s relations with ASEAN countries and seek opportunities for trade and investment,so as to improve India’s unfavorable strategic environment after the end of the cold war.With the continuous development of the eastward policy,its policy practice has been expanded to areas outside ASEAN,covering a wider range of East Asia and now the Indo Pacific region;Its policy content is not limited to economic cooperation,but towards greater political interaction and security cooperation.This policy development ushered in a new change under modi’s leadership,India renamed the "Eastward policy" to the "Eastward action policy" to show that India will adopt a more active and action oriented policy than before.This paper aims to study the reasons why modi government promotes India’s eastward policy transformation and make a theoretical prediction of the future trend of this policy.Most of the existing studies focus on the strategic logic of India’s eastward policy,the content and effectiveness of the eastward policy,and there are insufficient explanatory power and theorization respectively.Based on the comparison and analysis of the environmental differences between India at home and abroad during the Singh government and modi government,this paper draws lessons from the analytical framework of Neoclassical Realism Theory,extracts the strategic environment as the system variable,and takes the leader’s cognition,strategic preference and domestic social relationship as the intermediary variable to analyze the motivation of India’s eastward policy adjustment during modi government.In addition,this paper also uses the Neoclassical Realism analysis framework to analyze the short-term and long-term future trend of India’s eastward policy.This study found that modi’s adjustment to the eastward policy in 2014 was driven by the comprehensive action of system level variables and unit level variables.In this process,the system level variable is the main motivation for modi government to upgrade the "Eastward policy" to "Eastward action policy".The rise of China and the implementation of the us return to the Asia Pacific strategy have further promoted the transformation of the international pattern in Asia.With the continuous improvement of India’s strength,India can maintain a high degree of Strategic Autonomy,which makes India’s strategic environment in the international system more inclusive and provides a basis for the adjustment of India’s eastward policy.Due to the change of intermediary variables,that is,the change of Indian leaders leads to differences in leaders’ cognition,the rise of the Indian people’s party also changes India’s diplomatic strategic preference,and the impact of Hindu nationalism on India’s domestic social relations,there are differences in the conception and practice of the eastward policy between Singh government and modi government facing the stimulation of the same system.Under the condition that the competition between China and the United States will remain unchanged for a long time,the change of Hindu nationalism will continue to affect the future trend of the eastward policy.