Economic Interdependence and Strategic Interest: China, India, and the United States in the New Global Order John Echeverri-Gent, April Herlevi, and Kim Ganczak Department of Politics P.O. Box 400787 University of Virginia Charlottesville, VA 22904-4787 Corresponding Author Email:
[email protected] Phone: (434)924-3968 Fax: (434)924-3359 Economic Interdependence and Strategic Interest: China, India, and the United States in the New Global Order1 “If the last century was the age of alliances, this is an era of inter-dependence.” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Address at Tsinghua University, Beijing May 15, 2015 International political economy and strategic studies are usually analyzed by distinct scholarly communities. Thus, the consequences of the changing global economy for the pursuit of strategic interests has not been adequately analyzed. This paper calls for a new approach to analyzing the relationship between global markets and the pursuit of strategic interests by rigorously documenting changes in the global economy and employing insights from social network theory. We then elaborate on the implications of these changes for relations between China, India, and the United States. Social network theory is a promising methodology for describing these issues because it introduces concepts such as centrality and density that better measure changes in the global economy. Concepts of indirect dependence and interaction among networked actors offer novel insights that illuminate the complexity and contingency of strategic interests in the contemporary global setting. The development of global markets has made the world more economically interdependent. Our paper shows how this change is not only a matter of increased interdependence but involves qualitative change.