Every nation is like a human being. It starts from humble beginnings, Its inhabitants, at one point, are not united but in time the Union or Federation is eventually formed. The form of Government notwithstanding, this state is usually not rich right from the beginning but slowly and surely rises and eventually (sometimes over a span of a few centuries) the nation becomes a superpower. The problem starts when more than one rich state exists in a given point in time. Eventually, other states realise the necessity of being a superpower and start attempting to attain parity with the developed states. In this race to thwart a global monopoly, the strongest nation invariably feels threatened and then we have a situation where a number of developed nations fight each other in the definitive war which not only brings an end to an empire or two but it seems that it is, in hindsight, necessary to stabilise that part of the world. Take the first half of the 20th Century for example. Western Europe fought itself into ruin and it was only after this that all those States attained some form of permanent parity among each other. Patrick Buchanan in his book called the World War the Civil War of the West.
According to a recent U.S. report, India is now the 3rd most powerful nation in the world. Now, we've never been the sort of people who support war or seek to wage it but in this multipolar world, now that the west has perhaps more or less stabilized, although at the cost of millions of lives and great destruction of the planet, the central and eastern parts of our world are yet to go through that phase. I hope that our nations evolve differently, but I fear that India is yet to see its own Great War. It may come soon, it may come after decades or it may never come at all but unless the we, the Eastern states do not embrace the concept of coexistence, we may well have already embarked on the path of suicide, the Great Civil War of the East.
