Indian Foreign Policy

[ramana]

MEA and IFS babus have to introspect afte the DK arrest incident as to why there was shadenfraude glee among some NRIs. The govt will not back them. Its the people who will ultimately back them.

And if there is perception of helplessness in the people, that allows the expression of glee at the punishment then the IFS has lost the first battle for its the people they are representing.


So need to have some introspection and figure out how to get back the goodwill.

I know the post Khalistan terrorism was challenging period but better treatment of Indian passport holders should now be a priority.

Another is coming clean on how David Headley got the visa in Chicago to help the 26/11 attackers would help reducing the sigma of the covering up for a big failure there.

They should look at who their real customers are?
Majority are people of Indian origin and there is uniform expression of distaste among them at the experiences with at-least Embassy staff in at-least US locations.

[Najunamar]

+1 Ramanaji, However, personally I have had the best experiences with the consular staff in Chicago and they even had visa melas in Detroit for folks who would be inconvenienced by traveling to Chicago. In one of those instances, the queue was really long but I got the visa on the same day at 9 PM!! I was talking about it for weeks on end (getting outstanding service during a weekend and that too with a very polite and courteous demeanor).

I was furious and did not feel any Schadenfreude/pleasure in this sordid saga - In fact, feeling very pissed off and scared - "Vinaasha Kaale Vipareedha Buddhi" is what I feel about the Ombaba administration, which has now successfully antagonized almost 80% of the world population (not just India)

[ramana]

X-pot...
Ok What would bring closure to this case?
US point of view:
- Indian diplomats dont bring domestic help from India on work visa.
This is political for Ombaba can't generate any jobs in the US economy and has been on a high horse againSt India. Further Indian diplomats have had repeated case filed against them in New York. Seems to be a hot button issue there.

Indian point of view:
1) Charges against Devyani Khobargade has to be dropped and an apology given by the right people to her.
2) US has violated Indian laws and facilitated human trafficking from India.
3) US appears to have conspired by the long list of events to entrap and ensnare DK
4) US has repeatedly claimed Vienna Convention does not apply to all Indian diplomats.
5) Custodial rape of diplomats claiming standard procedure is not acceptable.

Other things:
- Very clear that GOI has given undue non-reciprocal facilities to US diplomats in India
- Even now the measures announced, no one is coming forward how they can be reciprocal measures to the custodial rape of Indian diplomat.
- Very clearly RAW (if there are foreign workers) and IB (if there are Indian workers) have not vetted domestic help for Indian diplomats. This is a NSA failure to exercise due diligence.
-MEA is relying too much on Vienna Convention which is being observed in breach by US. Need to negotiate additional protcols with US (as they seem to have a gap in understanding) which bring all Indian diplomats under protection.
-MEA has to strictly apply Indian laws to all foreigners and not be vindictive of their personnel when they apply the laws and rules.
- MEA should insist on following protocol.
How is the NSA, even if he is former IFS, allowed to take calls from abroad? Kerry should have called Khurshid PERIOD. NSA should know his roles and responsibilites and should have told Kerry to call Khurshid. He has no locus standi in this issue.



MEA should close the New York Consulate (looks like local police and law want to target Indian diplomats hence dont appreciate the business. Atlanta Consulate is enough for the visas on East Coast) and demand the Hyderabad Consulate (reciprocal) be closed.

[Najunamar]

Yes, they should but will they? I also think there is a lot of calculated moves by the US knowing India is at an inflection point and will soon leave their chelas in the dust and chart a glorious path for herself. Hence the attempt now that is not even hidden but in plain view as they see there is a very small window to hamper India.

[ramana]

Looks like a big mess up with two bit actors playing large roles.

[vishvak]

It is not just case of mistreatment of lady diplomat, but also a case of missing diplomacy!

See also link where American troops kidnapped and raped a 12 year old Japanese school girl in uniform and then American diplomats refused to hand over rapist USA soldiers!

[ramana]

The recent DK case in Us shows there are two weaknesses in Indian MEA
- Crisis management not amounting to war is woeful
- Complexity in foreign relations is getting to affect MEA performance

DK case is very complex. I will comment tomorrow on complexity and DK case.

[ramana]

We can look at it from multiple angles and every one shows the MEA in need of drastic reform.

Lack of oversight or rather passive oversight by the Foreign Secy and the Ministers
Unquestioning acceptance of rules and precedents despite evidence to contrary
Persisting in incorrect path despite repeated US actions to put consular diplomats out of Vienna Convention.
Relying on tribal knowledge even when it is incorrect.
Lack of coordination across departments and more importantly ministries
No vetting of IBDAs despite multiple failures on many occasions.
No monitoring of Indian domestic help working in foreign embassies in Delhi and elsewhere
Failure to serve Delhi HC orders on Indian residents.

One can go on and on....

Then from complexity theory it looks even worse as MEA is not organized to deal with modern hot button issues in host countries but is stuck in Tallyrandian Elysium.

[panduranghari]

The recent DK case in Us shows there are two weaknesses in Indian MEA
- Crisis management not amounting to war is woeful
- Complexity in foreign relations is getting to affect MEA performance

DK case is very complex. I will comment tomorrow on complexity and DK case.

A satellite state of the west does not need a strong MEA. Heck even Maldives caused India problems.

[ramana]

A TOI blog that puts the facts between the 'their" and "our" view.


http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.co ... proportion


Their view

It is possible to dismiss these and argue in an absolute sense that a clear violation of American law took place, and the law of the land acted without making any exceptions. Allegedly, visa fraud was committed, the nanny in question was paid wages way below the legal minimum and made to work hours that were inhuman and this led to the diplomat’s arrest.

.....

Viewed from this lens, the Indian outrage merely underlines several Indian shortcomings in this area. For one, it highlights the fact that domestic labour in India is an unregulated area, and one where exploitation is the norm rather than the exception. It also points to the excessive regard that hierarchy is held in India, and reveals a comfort with a feudal mindset which believes that rules are meant only for the ordinary and that the privileged need not comply. Overall, there is reason to lecture India on what is wrong about its reaction, and that is precisely what a section of the international media have done.

Our view

For the American action is rooted in a smug assertion of its own worldview that must get challenged. The setting of $4500 as the minimum salary that must get paid is a reflection of American affluence more than its sense of fairness. If one were a private citizen in the US, then clearly it is American prerogative to set this benchmark, but when it applies to foreign diplomats who do not have access to American salaries, then the notion of fairness becomes more complicated. It then becomes, in effect, the price that is extracted for the poverty of other countries when they have the temerity to employ anyone in the US. Also, different cultures have different norms in the treatment of domestic staff and while that certainly does not justify physical abuse, it does call for a more measured and context-sensitive reaction to perceived infractions, particularly when dealing with foreign embassies.

The argument that the law is an inflexible being that does not care for who the offender is makes for sound theory but dodgy practice particularly when a diplomat is involved. Had Khobragade been designated as a diplomat with full immunity, she could have got away with much more. Given that in dealing with international consulates, which is by definition an intermediate cultural space, there are grey areas that need to be respected, it would have been more sensible of Attorney’s office to be more well, diplomatic.

In a larger sense, the reason why the American action is perceived to be provocative is because it is a part of a foundational hypocrisy that America is blind to but the world sees only too well. At one level, the US talks endlessly about the equality of all human beings and the need to uphold the rights of each individual, no matter who they are and at another there is a deep and implacable belief in the superiority of the American individual and of the fact that American interests legitimately override the rights of everyone else in the world. Terrorism has affected many countries in the world, including India but somehow 9/11 seems to have America the right to flout any international law in the name of safeguarding its own interests. Whether it comes to spying on world leaders including its own allies or violating all human rights in setting a facility like Guantanamo Bay, the American disregard for the rights of others is there for all to see. Could an American diplomat, for instance, have been treated in this way is a similar violation of the law occurred in a country like India?

Facts....

First the Americans decided to arrest a senior member of the Indian consulate in public and subject her to among other indignities, a strip search. Then the Indian side, much to the approval of all the political parties and media, retaliated by removing security barricades in front of the American Embassy, in effect reminding the Americans that they could not take their safety in India for granted.

{unfortunately due to the slow pace of Indian bureaucracy this action which is supposed to be for a different action got implemented now and is being mis-read. It was supposed to be a tit-for-tat move to reclaim parking space in both countries and has nothing to do with the current incident except the tardy timing. Seen in tis light the Indian actions of cutting liquor permits and canceling parking privileges are tiny baby slaps being magnified by boasting and whining}

At the heart of the matter lies the decision to criminalise behaviour that asked to be understood with some sensitivity.
The face-off is the result of a mismatch between two different contexts, both in terms economic and cultural. It is possible to dismiss these and argue in an absolute sense that a clear violation of American law took place, and the law of the land acted without making any exceptions.

Allegedly, visa fraud was committed, the nanny in question was paid wages way below the legal minimum and made to work hours that were inhuman and this led to the diplomat’s arrest.


The fact is that this fundamental power asymmetry is such a fact of life that everyone is expected to be practical about America’s special place in the world . But when this special self-regard is rubbed in the face of another country, like it was in this case, by taking an overly self-righteous view of an infraction, then a reaction is not unexpected. It is true that the Indian reaction is way over the top but that does not make the reaction itself invalid.

The idea of diplomacy itself seems to have taken a knock for diplomacy is the fine art of substituting action with gestures and words. Instead of the blunt instrument of action, which generates very few options, diplomacy invents an intermediate dictionary of possibilities, which allow for nuanced responses and a gradual escalation of temperatur. Both sides here seem to forsaken the language of diplomacy for the crude flourish of action. The stand-off is but to be expected.

One country believes that it owes the world no explanations while the other is convinced that the world owes it reparations for nameless injustices done to it in the past. If being friends is about being able to show one’s worst side to each other, Indo-American friendship is on solid ground.

So at the end the facts need to be addressed and not the emotions.

[ramana]

X-post....

A couple of examples to amplify the point in my previous post:

The Indian embassy in Tehran had an Indian diplomat at the visa desk whose work is to handle routine visa queries/ give out forms / check
visa status of applicants etc. It was nice to hear him speak good Farsi, but that work could easily have been handled by a local English
speaking Iranian, at a lower salary. On the other hand, there was no one in the Embassy who could help me with laws governing foreign investment. I got far more help at the British embassy (at that time I worked for a UK MNC in India and was sent to Iran to set up a possible
India-Iran JV) as they had a trade expert whose role was to facilitate British investment in Iran.
Similarly, in Moscow, members of our diplomatic staff handled routine visa queries and manned the library at the Indian cultural centre. Either task could have been done cheaper and more efficiently by a local Russian speaking Indian, or English Speaking Russian.

Its the same with Western embassies in India, which have `local MUTU's' to interact with the `natives' on routine tasks.

In the mid 80s, Satinder Lamba, then Indian Consul in San Francisco, when he was told about the potential fo Silicon Valley and the need to improve ties to high technology, said " We are trained to negotiate and sign treaties. These commercial bania stuff is not for diplomats, chodo yeh baatein!!!'

That worthy still casts a big shadow as special negotiator for Afghanistan!

[ramana]

The recent DK case in US shows there are two weaknesses in Indian MEA
- Crisis management not amounting to war is woeful
- Complexity in foreign relations is getting to affect MEA performance

DK case is very complex. I will comment tomorrow on complexity and DK case.

A relevant book reiew:

Sidney Dekker, "Drift into Failure"
English | 2011-02-01 | ISBN: 1409422224 | 234 pages |

What does the collapse of sub-prime lending have in common with a broken jackscrew in an airliner's tailplane? Or the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico with the burn-up of Space Shuttle Columbia? These were systems that drifted into failure.

While pursuing success in a dynamic, complex environment with limited resources and multiple goal conflicts, a succession of small, everyday decisions eventually produced breakdowns on a massive scale. We have trouble grasping the complexity and normality that gives rise to such large events.

We hunt for broken parts, fixable properties, people we can hold accountable. Our analyses of complex system breakdowns remain depressingly linear, depressingly componential - imprisoned in the space of ideas once defined by Newton and Descartes. The growth of complexity in society has outpaced our understanding of how complex systems work and fail. Our technologies have gotten ahead of our theories. We are able to build things - deep-sea oil rigs, jackscrews, collateralized debt obligations - whose properties we understand in isolation. But in competitive, regulated societies, their connections proliferate, their interactions and interdependencies multiply, their complexities mushroom. This book explores complexity theory and systems thinking to better understand how complex systems drift into failure. It studies sensitive dependence on initial conditions, unruly technology, tipping points, diversity - and finds that failure emerges opportunistically, non-randomly, from the very webs of relationships that breed success and that are supposed to protect organizations from disaster. It develops a vocabulary that allows us to harness complexity and find new ways of managing drift.

[Kamboja]

Apologies for interrupting the DK conversation, but cross-posting from the Russia thread:

Has Modi made public what he wants in terms of policy towards Russia should he become PM? I would hope he pays more attention to cultivating the relationship than MMS has.

[abhishek_sharma]

First Person Second Draft: Diplomatic, undiplomatic... My very Indian Foreign Service: Shekhar Gupta

[ramana]

X-Post...

chaanakya (Did I get the spelling right!), Arent we assuming too much? Who knows what non-reciprocal stuff the MEA babucracy has been hanging on to?

They still need to come clean as to how the US Embassy was allowed to Occupy the Delhi Street and what did the govt do about it till the DK arrest?
And even here why did they do that?
How come there was no communication that the safety and security was never compromised and in fact augmented?
Is this all below the line for the MEA spokeman to handle?

The perception in US was that somehow the security was reduced and that it was tit for tat for DK arrest when it was not so.

Yes

Well I think I am. But MEA has not been too transparent about non reciprocal stuff. It has been unsatisfactory response in BRF members opinion going by the views expressed.

And no, MEA spokesperson is fairly high official, remember , Jaishankar was also Spokesperson and was considered for FS post before being given US amby post since Sujata Singh was senior. So yes , he could have handled it well , but for political direction of not antagonizing US too much, I again assume.

[ramana]

For referecne as to how India became a US vassal state under UPA

Vicarious Pleasures K. P. Nayar

VICARIOUS PLEASURES
- Watching Uncle Sam being outwitted on his own terrain
Diplomacy: K.P. Nayar


This has been another good week to be an Indian journalist in Washington. It felt nice to be sought out at venues such as the National Press Club, where diplomats from regions as diverse as Latin America and Europe to Africa and Asia are associate members; and sought out, not merely for trading stories, for a change, but sought after to bend elbows together only because you are Indian. The joy among Washington’s diverse diplomatic corps, one of the largest for any city in the world, over the perception that India showed Americans where to get off on the Devyani Khobragade episode is surprisingly boundless.

The vicarious pleasure that the foreign diplomatic community living in the United States of America has drawn from Washington being outwitted by a Third World country on its own terrain is a startling indication of how deeply foreign governments — even some close allies of the United States of America — resent American bullying. But very often they are helpless and unable to do anything about it. That India stood up to Uncle Sam is something many of these diplomats would like to emulate. Unfortunately, even as they daily face from the American bureaucracy the kind of treatment that the Indian deputy consul-general in New York faced — albeit in lesser and varying degrees — they are made to suffer in silence more by their own political bosses back at headquarters, who like to be more American than the Americans themselves.

Manmohan Singh is not the only head of a foreign government to have claimed in public, in the White House Oval Office, and to the eternal discomfiture of his aides (to which I was witness), that the people of India love George W. Bush. I was once at a Central European embassy in Washington, whose diplomats were being treated like dirt in that city even as the Americans were demanding and getting whatever they wanted from that country in return. That country’s prime minister was visiting the US and the occasion was its ambassador’s reception for him.

The word, ‘reciprocity’, was unknown in this particular bilateral relationship and that country’s diplomats, though professional and proud, could do nothing about it. The more the Americans treated these Central European diplomats as they treated Prabhu Dayal, India’s consul-general in New York and Neena Malhotra, a consular official also in New York — both of whom were implicated in bleeding-heart-for-the-maid-business — the more craven their political bosses back in Central Europe became.

At the first opportunity, they supplied troops for Bush’s megalomanical and tragedy-laced aggression against Iraq in 2003. Then they bent over backwards to please the US on any militaristic adventure. Whenever Washington asked leaders in a Central European capital to jump, pronto, came a telegram or phone-call from headquarters to that country’s embassy in the US to find out from the state department, “How high should we jump and when?”

The Americans never gave a visa waiver to citizens of most of these Central European States, although that has recently changed. But all along, Washington got away with a one-way street in the visa-free regime with those countries. Americans naturally began to assume that, for them, being able to land in those countries was their birthright even as citizens of those countries had to queue up at US embassies and routinely face humiliation while applying for American visas.

It was into such an environment that this European prime minister waded during his visit to the White House. The man spoke very little English, but he made it a point to depart from the speech in his native tongue and read out in English, “We love President Bush.” Just in case there was any confusion on account of his accent, he repeated for clarity and emphasis, “We love President Bush.” I have rarely seen an ambassador’s face become as ashen as the visage of this envoy when he heard his prime minister utter these words. After that the envoy was no longer the host of the evening, he was a ghost among his guests.

But such treatment in Washington — and to a lesser extent in New York — is not reserved for America’s new allies from Central Europe alone. I know of a lady diplomat from Western Europe, a country very closely aligned to Washington, who was once waiting in her car, parked on the roadside outside an apartment block in the US capital. She was expecting a friend from the high-rise building to join her to go for dinner. For whatever reason, some residents of the apartment block became suspicious of her presence in the waiting car and called 911, the emergency police helpline. Promptly the police arrived and asked what she was doing in the neighbourhood. The lady diplomat told the law enforcement officer that she was picking up a friend. The officer told her to move on. When she pointed to her diplomatic car plates as proof of her authenticity and tried to reason with the police, the officer became aggressive. She moved on: there was every possibility that the diplomat would have been physically removed from the scene for disorderly conduct if she did not comply, even if she may not have been arrested because of her immunity.

There was a time when reciprocity was sacrosanct in New Delhi’s dealings with Washington. When Bill Clinton was going to India in 2000, the first American presidential visit in 22 years, T.P. Sreenivasan, then deputy chief of mission at the embassy in Washington, received a phone-call from a senior US official a few days before Clinton’s travel. The official matter-of-factly informed the senior diplomat that US marines, who were part of the president’s security detail, would be leaving for New Delhi that afternoon. In the course of the conversation, Sreenivasan asked as a gesture of courtesy if everything went well with the visa procurement for the marines and if he could help with any arrangements. Sreenivasan could not believe his ears when the US official said the marines had made no effort to get visas. “Our marines do not travel with passports. They do not need visas,” was the reply. Sreenivasan curtly told the American that if the marines did not have visas they do not go to India. Period. The contingent put off their trip, but the mission did help with the visas, which were issued the next day so that the presidential schedule was not disrupted.

However, over several subsequent years, India fell into the same rut into which the Central Europeans have been trapped in their dealings with the US since the collapse of communism and regime change in the former satellite states of the Soviet Union. Some years ago, the head of India’s consular section at its embassy in Washington — since transferred back to India and subsequently retired from service — told me that New Delhi had simply sat on his repeated pleas for parity in visa fees for Indians applying for US visa and American citizens seeking Indian visas.

Because of the Indian government’s repeated failure to ensure reciprocity in visa fees, Indians applying for US entry documents in New Delhi, Calcutta, Mumbai and Chennai at that time paid three times more than what US citizens seeking similar documents had to pay at the Indian missions and posts in Washington, New York, San Francisco, Chicago and Houston. What is worse, Indian applicants had to forfeit more than half of these exorbitant charges as visa application fee even if they did not get visas at the end of the process. Americans faced no such prospect at Indian missions: more often than not, they got their visas compared to a high rate of rejection of US visa applications from Indians.

Devyani Khobragade’s experience is a wake-up call. Hopefully India will not go back to sleep on matters of its honour and prestige now that the diplomat has returned to India.

telegraph_dc@yahoo.com

Time for MK Bhadra Kumar or other retirees to bring more light on these matters.

In essence what UPA did was to bring India to the status of the FSU allies who were up the creek without a paddle.

[Karan Dixit]

^ I kind of knew that it was UPA, more specifically Man Mohan Singh. But this confirms it.

[ramana]

I think in 1960s immediately after the China war there were some unilateral concessions which are waved to justify the wholesale giveaways later on.

[arshyam]

I think in 1960s immediately after the China war there were some unilateral concessions which are waved to justify the wholesale giveaways later on.

Ramana sir, as they say, "give someone an inch, they'll take a mile"

[ramana]

"Give an inch they think they are the ruler!"

[nawabs]

Trade and terrorism incompatible: Sujatha Singh

http://www.business-standard.com/articl ... 053_1.html

India on Wedensday asked Pakistan to do the needful to take the trade normalisation dialogue between the two countries forward.

“Until such time as there is political will to implement the required measures, it is difficult to see how we can move forward on any front. The desire is certainly there on both sides, especially at the business level,” Foreign Secretary Sujatha Singh said during her talk on Normalising India-Pakistan Trade at ICRIER here on Wednesday.

Urging Pakistan to take the necessary steps on the measures agreed by both the governments, Singh said while India had always responded to their demands swiftly, Pakistan had failed to return the favour.

“It requires Pakistan to take the first step as specified, in order to trigger the subsequent actions that have been agreed to by both sides,” she said, adding that “trade and terrorism are incompatible” and Pakistan should create an environment in which both were viewed separately.

Rejecting Pakistan’s claims that India’s ”non-tariff barriers” acted as a hindrance to trade, the foreign secretary said: “While it is true India must take more steps to liberalise its external sector, it can be no one’s serious argument that the lack of flight connections between Delhi and Lahore, the visa regime operating between the two countries, or India’s quality and safety certification procedures that are accepted around the world, are in some way aimed at creating a regime of non-tariff barriers against Pakistan-made goods.”

On allowing more goods to be imported from Pakistan through the Attari-Wagah land border stations, Singh said it should be done immediately, as was agreed by both sides in September 2012.

At present, only 137 items are traded through the Attari-Wagah border.

She also asked Pakistan to develop its infrastructure at the Attari-Wagah land border similar to what India had done in April 2012 when a swanky-new integrated check-post was opened for trade at Attari.

Singh said while India has taken several measures to normalise trade with Pakistan, the latter had not reciprocated with the same enthusiasm even after a new government took over in May last year.

Pakistan had recently suspended cross-border trade and the bus service between the two countries after India took into custody a truck plying from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) allegedly carrying narcotics.

[Philip]

http://www.newindianexpress.com/opinion ... 014552.ece

Refocus on Defence and Diplomacy

By Arvind Gupta (DG-IDSA)
Published: 23rd January 2014

Due to a close link between the security and foreign policies of a country, there are many intersection points between defence and diplomacy. In India’s history, the defence-diplomacy interface has been and remains intense. In 1947, the war in Kashmir at once brought to fore the role of diplomacy when India decided to take the Pakistani aggression issue to the UN. The consequences of the fateful step are still with us.

In 1962, a better interface between defence and diplomatic establishments would have helped read the Chinese intentions better. In 1965, India did better on the military front but failed to prevail on the diplomatic front at Tashkent, constrained by the stalemated position. In 1971, the brilliant diplomatic effort before the Bangladesh liberation war and the mobilisation of international opinion helped India withstand the combined pressure of the US, China and Pakistan. But again, on the diplomatic front India could not clinch the final solution of the Kashmir problem despite holding nearly 93,000 Pakistani POWs. At Kargil, as India was pursuing a peace initiative with Pakistan, the latter’s army was planning the intrusion. The lack of co-ordination between defence and diplomacy was apparent.

In all these years, the nuclear factor had been playing out at the international level. India’s inability to test the nuclear weapon after the Chinese test in 1964 and the so-called peaceful nuclear explosion of 1974 kept India out of the emerging nuclear order which had a major impact on our security. After India’s nuclear tests of 1998, defence and diplomacy have become even more closely tied with each other. Diplomacy has brought India back in the international mainstream without being a member of the NPT regime. But, a new factor has arisen—the ability of Pakistan to wage sub-conventional war against India under a nuclear overhang. Diplomatically, India is trying to engage with nuclear non-proliferation regime in innovative fashion while the Indian military is faced with the task of fashioning new doctrines for war fighting incorporating sub-conventional, asymmetric warfare, cyber warfare and so on.

The changing regional and global security environment has led to new challenges demanding an even closer interface between defence and diplomacy. A few examples can be given.

International terrorism: At the diplomatic level, new counterterrorism partnerships are being forged. At the domestic level, the Indian forces, including our paramilitaries and law enforcement agencies, have to craft new counterterrorism doctrines in consistency with international standards and conventions.

Maritime security: A realisation is taking shape that India is as much a maritime power as land power. Its strategic interests extend beyond its immediate territorial waters. India has interest in a stable order at sea. Major maritime challenges have arisen including maritime territorial disputes, sea piracy, terrorism, pollution, natural disasters, implementation of the law of the sea, safety of the sea lanes of communications, etc. These challenges are multidimensional and require combined diplomatic effort and maritime operations. The Indian navy has played an important role in fighting sea piracy in the Gulf of Aden and provided international relief during the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004. India is also cooperating in regional security structures such as ADMM-Plus. The commissioning of the aircraft carrier Vikramaditya by the Indian navy will raise India’s power projection capabilities and the nuclear-capable submarines will enhance India’s deterrent capabilities.

Defence cooperation: Defence cooperation, a manifestation of defence-diplomacy interface, has emerged as a major component of Indian diplomacy helping raise its regional and global profile. India has signed numerous strategic partnerships in which security cooperation is an important part. Defence cooperation agreements have been signed with many countries including the US, Japan, Russia and France.

Defence procurements and exports: Defence procurement and indigenisation are a vital component of India’s military preparedness. In all these areas, diplomacy comes into play, especially in the context of joint defence production, technology transfer, etc. When India develops the capabilities to export defence items, diplomacy will get a new task of promoting exports.

India as a net security provider: India needs to protect its substantial political, diplomatic, economic and national interests through an effective combine of defence and diplomacy. The evacuation of large number of Indians from conflict zones, Indian operations in East Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the Maldives are some examples of the out-of-area contingencies undertaken by Indian forces.

UN Peacekeeping: India has been a major contributor to UN peacekeeping operations. This has helped raise Indian profile on international security issues and given its diplomacy an impetus. But there are many problems in the area, the most fundamental being that India does not have a role in UN decision-making. It may change if India becomes a permanent member of UNSC.

In the absence of a formally articulated national security strategy and security objectives, the politico-military approach in Indian diplomacy remains weak, reactive and ad hoc. Indian initiatives are often taken sans adequate preparation and thought. This is a serious lacuna in the defence-diplomacy synergy. Rigid bureaucratic structures do not help promote efficient co-ordination among various agencies as shown during the Mumbai terror attacks. Also, there is urgent need to modernise defence and diplomatic infrastructure. It will require sustained financial and human resources. With economic slowdown, India for the next few years will face resource crunch that might hamper modernisation of defence and diplomatic efforts.

Few exceptions apart, Indian diplomats are not trained to think like soldiers and vice-versa. Their perspectives differ widely. This problem can be addressed through joint trainings and cross postings. Budding diplomats and soldiers should be taught defence and diplomacy right from the beginning. Regular institutionalised interactions among senior diplomats and defence personnel should be encouraged.

Defence and diplomacy are Siamese twins. The interface between the two must be improved and given higher priority in India’s foreign and security policies. A conscious politico-military approach on issues of security is needed. The ministries concerned and the National Security Council must reflect over this and take appropriate actions. In this context, the suggestions made in the IDSA’s two Task Force Reports—Deliberations of a Working Group on Military and Diplomacy and Net Security Provider: India’s Out of Contingency Operations—available on http://www.idsa.in are worth looking at.

The author is director general, Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses.

Defence and Diplomacy,"two sides of the same coin".Excellent advice from the DG IDSA.

[ramana]

Indian Defence Review:

Good Governance and Foreign Policy

Kind of expalins how SSM has hijacked the MEA despite being the ex Foreign Secy. I suspect he is directly responsible for the DK arrest and humilation.

Good Governance and Foreign Policy VN:F [1.9.16_1159]
please wait...0 votes castPrakash Nanda | Date:30 Jan , 2014 0

Prakash Nanda Prakash Nanda is a journalist and editorial consultant for Indian Defence Review. He is also the author of “Rediscovering Asia: Evolution of India’s Look-East Policy.”

As had been the practice with his predecessors, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has started the exercise of rewarding or taking interests of his close civilian officers before demitting office. That it is a distinct sign of his realisation that the Congress stands no chance of retaining power in the coming general elections is a different matter. It is natural for him to ensure that officials closely associated with him get good positions before his innings comes to an end. It is in this context that the running gossips in the power corridor here that Vikram Mishri, Joint secretary to the Prime Minister, is being shifted to Spain as Ambassador in place of Sunil Lal, who, in turn, is being shifted to Turkey. It is also rumored that the Prime Minister is keen to send National Security Advisor (NSA) Shiv Shankar Menon to Jammu and Kashmir as the Governor, under the belief that even a possible Narendra Modi-led government at the Centre will not disturb Menon as he is reportedly close to a senior BJP leader, who was a very important minister under Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.

As an institution, the MEA has never been as weak as it is today, virtually surrendering, as it has, its authority to the Prime Minister’s Office.

I have deliberately chosen to cite these two officials because of the fact that they are members of elite Indian Foreign Service (IFS). Of course, Menon is a retired Foreign Secretary and his present job is a political appointment. But what is important is that under Manmohan Singh’s tenure the Ministry of External Affairs, the ministry that handles the IFS and is supposed to be managing the country’s external relations, has lost most of its sheen. As an institution, the MEA has never been as weak as it is today, virtually surrendering, as it has, its authority to the Prime Minister’s Office. The base of the foreign-policy making, always small, has become smaller under Manmohan Singh. MEA’s inputs to the foreign policy making have become virtually negligible, everything being determined by the Prime Minister along with his NSA, a close coterie supporting them.

I am not going into the issue of the foreign policy achievements/failures under Manmohan Singh. I will deal with that issue in a separate column in future. Here, I want to focus on the institutions, processes and practices pertaining to India’s foreign policy making. This is important to be highlighted as the term “good governance” is the most important slogan these days in the Indian polity. If “good governance” is going to be a determining factor in the formation of the next government, then it is worth exploring how this will affect the country’s foreign policy.

Until recently foreign policy was considered to be specialised subject needing specialised treatment. IT hardly mattered in the country’s elections. Hardly, the Indian Parliament witnesses lively debates on foreign policy and security issues. The country’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru kept the portfolio of the foreign affairs with himself. It is he and his immediate coterie set the direction of foreign policy. Parliament was only being informed of his decision. In a sense, the same continues to be the trend even now. As has been pointed out by union minister Shashi Tharoor, otherwise a reputed scholar of international affairs, only about 5% of questions posed in “Question Time” in Parliament concern foreign policy issues. If the Consultative Committee of Parliament for the MEA met rarely under Nehru and his immediate successors, today’s Standing Committee on External Affairs, according to Tharoor, generally spends its time meeting and greeting foreign delegations!

The chiefs of the armed forces are not present at the highest councils of government and nor are they routinely consulted about major foreign or even security policy issues.

It is not only the Parliament of the world’s largest democracy that does not play an active role in the foreign policy or strategic matters. Another vital institution – the military – also has not been able to play this role. In fact, the military has been scrupulously kept at a self distance as far as providing inputs are concerned. As Stephen Cohen, one of the most perceptive scholars on Indian Military, says, “probably no military of equivalent importance or size (of India) has less influence over the shaping of policy at the highest level”. The chiefs of the armed forces are not present at the highest councils of government and nor are they routinely consulted about major foreign or even security policy issues.

In a highly perceptive piece in highly influential Foreign Affairs (May/June 2013) magazine, Manjari Chatterjee Miller, who teaches at Boston University, found out three limitations in India’s foreign policy making process. First, she thinks that “New Delhi’s foreign policy decisions are often highly individualistic — the province of senior officials responsible for particular policy areas, not strategic planners at the top. As a result, India rarely engages in long-term thinking about its foreign policy goals, which prevents it from spelling out the role it aims to play in global affairs”. Secondly, she argues that “Indian foreign-policy makers are insulated from outside influences, such as think tanks, which in other countries reinforce a government’s sense of its place in the world”. And thirdly, “the Indian elite fears that the notion of the country’s rise is a Western construct, which has unrealistically raised expectations for both Indian economic growth and the country’s international commitments”, she writes.

{India doesn't rely on outside think tanks for they all are penetrated by US insitituions/scholars which want to remake India as new Gungadin for US dominance. They want Indian military but not Indina nukes!}

Talking of the Indian Foreign Service, whose officers are vital to India’s successful diplomacy, Manjari says that unlike in the United States and elsewhere, career diplomats in India dominate all the top diplomatic positions. “The powerful role of the Indian Foreign Service produces a decision-making process that is highly individualistic. Since Foreign Service officers are considered the crème de la crème of India and undergo extensive training, they are each seen as capable of assuming vast authority. What is more, the service’s exclusive admissions policies mean that a tiny cadre of officers must take on large portfolios of responsibility. In addition to their advisory role, they have significant leeway in crafting policy. This autonomy, in turn, means that New Delhi does very little collective thinking about its long-term foreign policy goals, since most of the strategic planning that takes place within the government happens on an individual level”. A former ambassador to several European countries told her, “I could never find any direction or any paper from the foreign office to tell me what India’s long-term attitude should be toward country X. Positions are the prerogative of the individual ambassador.”

This lack of top-down instruction means that long-term planning is virtually impossible. This problem is further compounded by the fact that the Foreign Service is a highly exclusive outfit. Manjari writes, “ The foreign service’s exclusive admissions policies leave New Delhi short-staffed in that arena, and overburdened foreign service officers have little time or inclination for strategic thinking. As the ambassador with ties to the national security adviser’s office told me, ‘It’s hard for people to focus on a long-term strategy because they deal with day-to-day thinking’.” And this absence of grand strategic thinking in the Indian foreign policy establishment is further amplified by what she says “the lack of influential think tanks in the country. Not only is the foreign service short-staffed, but its officers do not turn to external institutions for in-depth research or analysis of the country’s position. U.S. foreign-policy makers, by contrast, can expect strategic guidance from a broad spectrum of organizations that supplement the long-term planning that happens within the government itself.”

What Manjari has not written on is that that even this exclusivist MEA has become powerless under Manmohan Singh. If MEA is exclusive, more exclusive is the system in the PMO that is controlling the country’s foreign policy these days. But that does not detract from the point that as is the case with other public services, the IFS must be strengthened and encouraged to value accountability and performance management. And what is equally important is that India’s foreign policy-making must be “democratised”. All told, the nature of Indian polity and governance is changing. Gone are the days of a single-party rule, a factor that facilitated the ruling party leader (the Prime Minister) to dictate foreign policy. This is an age of coalitions. And here, the regional parties are playing an important role. It so happens that most of the important regional parties that happen to govern the border states have important concerns with the neighboring countries that are different from the concerns seen from New Delhi. See the way Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir look at Pakistan, West Bengal looks at Bangladesh, and Tamil Nadu looks at Sri Lanka. Even national parties like the BJP and CPM have their respective world views. Besides, there are development-oriented chief ministers like Narendra Modi who are interacting directly with the foreign players on issues such as loans and investment. They now travel abroad regularly. Even otherwise, free trade agreements on agriculture and other industries that the central government negotiates with foreign governments can succeed only if the chief ministers of the states concerned agree. Viewed thus, the foreign policy of India is getting increasingly federalised. This development is getting further buttressed by the emergence of a series of new think-tanks, pressure groups and the educated middle class keen to shape public opinion on foreign policy issues.

Given these emerging trends, the extremely narrow-base of the foreign policy making under Manmohan Singh is really surprising. For example, he has not been able take Mamata Banerjee and Jaya Lalitha along in deciding the contours of our policies towards Bangladesh and Sri Lanka respectively. His idealistic policies towards Pakistan and China are not working realistically because there have been no inputs of the military in them. No wonder why the present government’s neighbourhood policy is most disappointing. In other words, democratisation of India’s foreign policy needs a relook at the very process of foreign policy-making. There has to be “Good governance” here.

[svinayak]

In a highly perceptive piece in highly influential Foreign Affairs (May/June 2013) magazine, Manjari Chatterjee Miller, who teaches at Boston University, found out three limitations in India’s foreign policy making process. First, she thinks that “New Delhi’s foreign policy decisions are often highly individualistic — the province of senior officials responsible for particular policy areas, not strategic planners at the top. As a result, India rarely engages in long-term thinking about its foreign policy goals, which prevents it from spelling out the role it aims to play in global affairs”. Secondly, she argues that “Indian foreign-policy makers are insulated from outside influences, such as think tanks, which in other countries reinforce a government’s sense of its place in the world”. And thirdly, “the Indian elite fears that the notion of the country’s rise is a Western construct, which has unrealistically raised expectations for both Indian economic growth and the country’s international commitments”, she writes.

{India doesn't rely on outside think tanks for they all are penetrated by US insitituions/scholars which want to remake India as new Gungadin for US dominance. They want Indian military but not Indina nukes!}

This kind of analysis is a western view on an eastern state and India has long historical capital with its neighbors and in Asia. West has lost its historical capital from the past. They have to reinvent their relations.

Why do they needs India's policy for the rest of the world and global affairs. They should be only concerned about their state.

Indian influence after Independence is still nascent and yet to grow globally for a larger role. Indian economic relations with other trading partners are still in early stages.

[Vipul]

Visa-on-arrival facility extended to tourists from 180 countries.

Putting to rest the reservations of the ministries of home affairs and external affairs, India on Wednesday allowed visa-on-arrival facility for tourists from 180 countries, including US, UK, China, UAE and Bangladesh . The move is expected to give a major boost to tourism in the country.

However, tourists from eight "prior reference" countries - Pakistan, Sudan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia and Sri Lanka - will continue to apply for visa through embassy.

Till now visa-on-arrival facility was available to tourists from only 12 countries that included Japan, Finland, Singapore, Indonesia, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Cambodia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Laos and Myanmar.

Under the liberalised visa regime, which is likely to kick in from September this year, tourists from these countries can apply online for electronic travel authorisation at least three days prior to their date of travel. Once in India, they will have to undergo just one biometric identification to get the visa, which will be valid for 30 days and would not be renewed. The facility will be available on 26 airports across the country.

"This is a major breakthrough for tourism as we have now extended the visa-on-arrival facility for 180 countries as against the initial proposal of adding just 40 countries," said minister of state for planning Rajeev Shukla, adding that all concerned ministries are now on board to liberalise the visa regime.

It is estimated that the tourism industry can generate $42.8 billion by 2017, a 42% surge from 2007.

Planning Commission had called a meeting in October last year to address the reservations of the concerned ministries on the issue. While the Ministry of Home Affairs was opposing the move citing security reasons, Ministry of External Affairs wanted the identified countries to reciprocate similarly for Indian tourists.

[arshyam]

Why, oh why? Now there won't be any reciprocity for Indians travelling elsewhere, since we have given something for free to the entire world. I hope this is not really implemented in the full form. Extend it to friendly countries, and those that reciprocate. Other countries, on a case by case basis, based on threat perception. I am especially wary of extending this to the US. Remember Headley? How will we check the antecedents within 3 days without access to an applicant's passport?

Planning Commission had called a meeting in October last year to address the reservations of the concerned ministries on the issue. While the Ministry of Home Affairs was opposing the move citing security reasons, Ministry of External Affairs wanted the identified countries to reciprocate similarly for Indian tourists.

For once, I can agree with them. Why should I shell out thousands of rupees to apply for a visa and hand over my passport for weeks with the hope that I will get it back without any problems, given that the corresponding country's citizens don't have to do the same? Another example of shooting ourselves in the foot.

I am all for making things simpler for tourists, but there needs to be balance and reciprocity. Every action of GoI has to take into account of how it benefits/affects its citizens first. This one doesn't.

[Philip]

Veteran SPore diplomat Kishore Madhubani and his advice to India.However,under a servile WBank/US lackey like "Surrender Singh",India's diplomacy has reached its nadir where we cringe and crawl like latter day slaves to the wise men of the west.If anyone thought that the DK affair showed some spine,it was at the height of the crisis that India rewarded the US with another mega defence deal of over $1B for 6 more C-130J Hercules transports!

http://bharatkarnad.com/

“Can India be Cunning”
Posted on February 4, 2014 by Bharat Karnad

The above was the title of a talk at the Subbu Forum, at IDSA, this evening by the West’s go-to Asian savant, Kishore Mahbubani, former Foreign Secretary of Singapore and currently Dean of the Lew Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. There was a big audience because everybody expected something novel, but they’d have been disappointed. “Cunning”, a word Mahbubani conceded in the Indian context is “by definition evil”, in his telling, turns out to be an inapt word to describe what in essence and substance is nothing more than hard-headed realpolitik that a few of us have been advocating for well nigh two decades now. His choice of the word cunning apparently serving his purpose of being “provocative” rather than being otherwise useful. His thesis that India needs to wisely use the geopolitical space that’s opened up with the international system poised between the ending of the 200-year old era of Western dominance and the emergence of an Asia-on-top world order by befriending China and not getting in too thick with the declining West is an unoriginal take on the unfolding global drama and the historical power shift to the East. His example of cunning: China’s supporting the US invasion of Iraq, winning President Bush’s gratitude enough for Washington to put the clamps on Taiwan’s move to declare itself a sovereign state while Beijing opened up access of the Taiwanese people to mainland China, thus solidifying China’s position on Taiwan and affording Beijing ten years of “peaceful rise” even as the US was got more and deeply embroiled militarily in the worsening Iraqi mess of its own creation. He suggested India adopt a similar strategy with Pakistan — open up people-to-people relations, and separating this from the govt-to-govt ties. Yes, fine, but will Islamabad allow this? A 2nd example of “cunning” — Japan’s nonproliferation rhetoric combined with the acquisition of capability that can beget Tokyo nuclear weapons in a few weeks. But this is well known.

His main theme was that New Delhi should cultivate both China and the US & the West, and play them off against each other using “cunning” (the word he repeated relentlessly until grated on the ear!) and that this would fetch India geopolitical “dividends”, But such policy is what the Manmohan Singh government and the NSA Shivshankar Menon helming its foreign policy can reasonably claim they have been pursuing in the past decade!

A more practical recommendation by him published in today’s Indian Express, which he repeated, is for India to jettison its efforts to gain membership to the UN Security Council as member of the Group of Four (India, Germany, Japan, and Brazil) for the obvious reasons that China’d veto Japan and the UN General Assembly would consider Germany’s inclusion (in addition to UK and France) excessive representation for Europe — precisely the reason, he said, why London and Paris are pushing for it, guaranteeing the failure of any such attempt to enlarge the SecC. Anecdote-wise, he recalled from his time as the Singaporean Permanent Representative at the UN HQrs in New York, how his Italian counterpart, Paolo Pucci (?) exasperatedly shouted in the meeting of the Open-ended Committee for Restructuring the Security Council, in the context of Japan’s and Germany’s membership membership case gaining some traction in the mid-1980s, that Italy too deserved a permanent Council seat because “ït too lost the War”!

Mabhbubani felt that India stands the best chance if it campaigned for a reconstitution of the council with 7 members — US, Russia, China, European Union (UK and French seats being merged), India (to join China as a second Asia rep), Brazil to represent Latin America, and Nigeria the continent of Africa. And another 15 states — such as Pakistan, Argentina, South Korea, Germany, Japan, South Africa, Egypt, etc accorded the status of semi-permanent members (chosen by population, GDP, etc), each of whom will thus be assured a Council seat every eight years, giving them a stake in this new UN system and making them more agreeable to supporting such structural changes.

[raj.devan]

For once, I can agree with them. Why should I shell out thousands of rupees to apply for a visa and hand over my passport for weeks with the hope that I will get it back without any problems, given that the corresponding country's citizens don't have to do the same?

There may be reasons - justified or not - why western nations put us through paces even for an airport transit visa. But the solution to that cannot be to exact retribution on the people of those countries. Displeasure on a country's visa regime that discriminates against us should be directed towards the government and diplomats of that country.

Now imagine if we had tightened the screws on UK diplomats in India (the way we did on the Americans after the DK incident) in return for their new bond visa requirements. That would have made a mark.

Unfortunately our government is more likely to swing into such action to help the daughter of some IAS officer wriggle out of a criminal case, than to pursue real policy goals.

[ramana]

He is doing fine and is entitled to his views.

[ramana]

X-Post....

@@BhairavP, not to scare you, but you might want to read this and take precautions. Our ever helpful GoI will not release travel advisories for such things as they don't want to offend anyone. Apparently the Indian embassy had/has some notice, does not sound very useful though.

Crime robs City of Romance of its sheen - Vaiju Naravane, The Hindu, Dated PARIS, July 4, 2013

Is Paris slowly shedding its title of the City of Romance to become the theft and pickpocketing capital of Europe where tourists are regularly fleeced of their belongings in myriad ingenious ways?

This past year, amid rising unemployment and a sluggish economy, there has been a massive upsurge in street crime against unsuspecting tourists, and the authorities are trying to battle this phenomenon by deploying policemen in plainclothes, making public announcements in several languages and handing out warning leaflets to tourists.

The fallout of this increase in crime is that tourists, especially from China, India, Brazil and other emerging nations who have money to spend, are beginning to avoid the city altogether.

That criminality directed at tourists is serious is evident from the fact that personnel at the Louvre went on strike in April to protest against “gangs of minors” entering the museum without paying and emptying the pockets of visitors. France gives youngsters free museum passes in an attempt to inculcate a love for culture in them.

The Chinese are the real big spenders, and he present criminal trend worries France’s luxury goods industry. On an average, a Chinese tourist spends an estimated €1470 each time he visits a luxury goods store. The Colbert Committee (Comité Colbert), the federation of 75 leading luxury goods manufacturers, has expressed its disquiet at this increase in crime.

“Paris is in the process of acquiring a reputation for absolute insecurity,” Elisabeth Ponsolle des Portes, a member of the Colbert Committee, told journalists on May 24. “We must ensure that the tourism sector which creates jobs is protected,” she said. The committee has taken up the matter with the Finance and Industry Ministry, Lucie Cazassus, public relations officer of the Colbert Committee, told The Hindu in an email.

The Paris police reacted sharply to these remarks, saying: “Every day, over 200 police officers are deployed in the capital and on its transport networks to fight such delinquency.”

In an exclusive interview to The Hindu, Xavier Castaing, head of Communications in the cabinet of the Prefect of Paris, said: “At a recent high-level meeting, we adopted 26 measures to prevent crimes targeting tourists. Earlier, policemen could not be posted on the premises of museums etc. We now have permission for policemen to be at tourist attractions, and the results are excellent. Within the Louvre, for instance, the number of complaints has come down from 120 a month to about 30, a drop of 75 per cent. We have also established good partnerships with embassies and tourist offices of different countries and improved the ways in which victims are welcomed in police stations. We are also aiming to inform the public better by making multi-lingual announcements.”

Chinese tourists are among the favourite targets of thieves and pickpockets who almost always operate in gangs. Recently, an entire Chinese tour group of 23 persons was physically attacked and their passports and cash were stolen. The Chinese tourism association has made a formal complaint, calling on French authorities to offer “effective protection” to Chinese citizens.

Indians have not been spared, either. Between May 6 and June 26, the Indian embassy in Paris registered 74 complaints from Indian tourists robbed of passports and valuables — a quantum jump when compared with the fact that in the whole of 2012, there was a total of only 238 such cases reported.

“In all, it took less than a minute. My wife placed her bag on the floor in Cafe Rivoli. A second later, when she turned around, it was gone,” Colonel Sunil Kohli, who was holidaying in France with his wife, told The Hindu. “The police were not helpful. It took us an hour-and-a-half to get our complaint registered, and no one spoke a word of English even in a highly touristic zone like Rue de Rivoli. But the Indian Embassy was extremely helpful. It was a Saturday, and the gentleman came in his own car to issue us fresh passports. Kudos to them,” Colonel Kohli said.
{Take that, IFS critics}

The Kohlis are not the only Indians to tell such stories of woe. Professor A.K. Darpe, who is on the faculty of the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi, his wife and two children were also robbed of their passports and other valuables in a metro station. “The person whose flat we had rented came to the police station with us to help us translate. My husband received a hard push in the metro, and the bag that was hanging around his neck had vanished. I think they just cut the strap. The police were extremely rude. They just did not care. I have to thank a certain Mr. S.K. Goel of the Indian Embassy who went out of his way to help us. He has all my blessings,” Mrs. Darpe told this correspondent.

The Indian Embassy has put out a travel warning on its website but refused permission for this correspondent to quote embassy officials. “Indian tourists visiting Paris are advised not to carry too many valuables, cash and credit cards while travelling by public transport, including metros,” the advisory says. The warning tells tourists to take adequate precautions with valuables, including passports in hotels, adding that bags tend to disappear from hotel lobbies even if left unattended for a few seconds. Travellers are also advised to keep photocopies of passports separately.

This advisory hardly gives the real picture of the situation, which is extremely worrisome. Thieves, officials told this correspondent, use credit cards within minutes of having stolen them. People have been robbed even on the second stage of the Eiffel Tower. An Indian couple were robbed in the Gare de Lyon station en route to their honeymoon destination in the south of France. People have had their suitcases snatched while on the RER fast train network on the way to the airport to catch their flights home.

“Thieves know their suitcases will be full of gifts and shopping. Indians and Chinese are shopping-mad and carry lots of cash and jewellery,” an official told The Hindu.

The thieves are generally identified as belonging to the following categories: Romanian and other East Europeans, Black Africans, North African Arabs and Roma gypsies, particularly minor children who encircle tourists and attack them as a group.

“The problem with the Roma is that they are often minors aged 13-15. They cannot be put in detention. Even if caught, they are produced before a magistrate and let off. These are extremely well-trained thieves and they act together,” the official said.

Mr. Castaing said the Roma children posed a particularly delicate problem. “These children are exploited by those who control them. We have therefore established strong working relationships with the Romanian police, and in several cases, we have been able to trace the leads back to those who give the orders and exploit the children. We often have Romanian police officers visit us here and we conduct joint operations with them. But… the problem is not just criminal. It is social, educational and cultural as well,” Mr. Castaing said.

[svinayak]

India cannot be a superpower anymore
It has been declared in this article!

Imprudent foreign policy sours India’s superpower dream

Harsh Pant

March 4, 2014 Updated: March 4, 2014 17:47:00

As one surveys the landscape of Indian foreign and security policy at the end of the Congress-led coalition’s 10 years in office, it appears strewn with wreckage on all sides.

The Chinese have upped the ante on the border dispute, ties with Washington have plateaued, Russia is looking elsewhere, the European Union is disappointed, the morale of the defence forces is low, the Maoists are gaining ground in large parts of the nation, and the peace process with Pakistan is going nowhere. There is a whiff of fragility and underconfidence in the air, as if at any moment the entire facade of India as a rising power might simply blink out like a bad idea. The national security adviser, Shiv Shankar Menon, thinks India “should not want to” emerge as a superpower. He need not worry; his government has done enough over the past few years to make sure that India’s emergence as a global power of any reckoning is not going to happen anytime soon.

Policy paralysis within the government, the strategic diffidence of the Congress party’s leadership and the insistence of the BJP on destroying its own credibility as a national party – all have ensured that foreign policy continues to drift without any real sense of direction.

As India’s weight grew in the international system in recent years, a perception gained ground that India was on the cusp of achieving “great power” status. It was repeated ad nauseam in the Indian, and often global, media and soon India was being asked to behave like one. There was just one problem: Indian policymakers were not clear as to what this status of a great power entailed. At a time when the Indian foreign policy establishment should have been vigorously debating the nature and scope of India’s engagement with the world, it resorted to intellectual gimmickry by coming up with documents such as “Non-Alignment 2.0”, which neither has anything new to say, nor has credible in the context of dramatically evolving global realities.

This intellectual vacuum allowed Indian foreign policy to drift without any direction and the result was that as the world was looking to India to shape the emerging international order, India had little to offer except some platitudinous rhetoric that did great disservice to the country’s rising global stature.

Bismarck famously remarked that political judgment was the ability to hear, before anyone else, the distant hoofbeats of the horse of history. In India’s case, everyone but the policymakers it seems is hearing the hoofbeats of history’s horse. Indian policy­makers seem to have come to believe that just because their nation was experiencing robust economic growth, they didn’t really need a serious foreign policy, that they could afford to get by with ad hoc responses or grand finger-wagging. And once economic growth faltered, there was hardly anything with which they could anchor the nation’s foreign policy.

India’s foreign policy elite remains mired in the exigencies of day-to-day pressures emanating from the immediate challenges at hand rather than evolving a grand strategy that integrates the nation’s multiple policy strands into a cohesive whole to be able to preserve and enhance Indian interests in a rapidly changing global environment. The assertions, therefore, that India does not have a China policy, an Iran policy or a Pakistan policy, are irrelevant. India does not have a foreign policy, period.

It is this lack of strategic orientation in foreign policy that often results in a paradoxical situation where on the one hand India is accused by various domestic constituencies of angering this or that country by its actions, on the other hand the country’s relationship with almost all major powers is termed as a “strategic partnership” by the government.



Read more: http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalco ... z2v1R9MepC

[Bharath.Subramanyam]

Very good analysis from Ashok Malik & Rory Medcalf. One important thing is to they talk about how Singapore got the strategic relationship with India through the trade route. Also they show the diaspora can be cultivated for greater leverage.



Can read the full pdf in the below site:


http://lowyinstitute.org/publications/i ... ign-policy


INDIA’S NEW WORLD: CIVIL SOCIETY IN THE MAKING OF FOREIGN POLICY
2 MAY 2011 | ANALYSIS | BY ASHOK MALIK AND RORY MEDCALF


Ashok Malik and Rory Medcalf argue that Indian foreign policy is being shaped increasingly by three dynamic aspects of civil society: business, the Indian diaspora and the aggressive Indian news media. Indian diplomacy needs to adapt to these new realities. And foreign nations need to understand them to engage with this rising power.

'Foreign governments would also be well advised to assess their communities of Indian origin. What is the nature and social profile of this community? Can it assist as a bridge in ties with New Delhi?'

KEY FINDINGS
India’s external engagement now goes far beyond traditional diplomacy
Business, media and the diaspora are causing new challenges for Indian foreign policy but are also sources of opportunity
Governments need to engage with these new drivers of Indian foreign policy

FULL TEXT
Twenty years after it began to deregulate its economy, India is a more externally engaged country than ever. A long-insular nation and society is expanding the definition of what constitutes foreign relations. Much of this change is driven by three new sources of pressure on India’s diplomatic establishment: an ambitious business community, a vocal diaspora and a rambunctious and aggressive news media.



The support of Indian capital and Indian nationals abroad is now a legitimate expectation on New Delhi’s diplomacy. Indian politicians are regularly lobbied by voters whose relatives face very local challenges abroad. ‘Tabloid television’ stirs public emotion and constricts the space for India’s diplomats.


These are realities of the new India that are not going to go away. Anyone who seeks to influence Indian strategic and foreign policy will have to understand and work within this framework. The Indian policy establishment will need to adapt – for instance, through better coordinating or even merging its external affairs and commerce ministries. If cleverly handled, the media, the diaspora and especially the convening power of Indian business peak bodies offer avenues for New Delhi to exert indirect influence on some increasingly important relationships, such as with the United States, Japan, Singapore and potentially Australia. Astute foreign partners can use these avenues to influence India’s worldview as well.

[Prem]

Another Failure of MMS and Co's Foreign Policy
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-26668107
Saudi Arabia's growing role in the Maldives

Foreign holidaymakers in the Maldives, one of the world's most popular luxury honeymoon destination, were not happy earlier this year when their hotel bookings were cancelled at short notice. The reason was that Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, had booked out three whole islands for nearly a month. It is just one example of the growing role of Saudi investment in the archipelago, a factor which may make the Maldives' government unwilling to ruffle the feathers of Saudi Arabia's rulers. "The well-being of our guests is always our primary concern," a spokeswoman for the Anantara resorts told the British newspaper, the Daily Mail, which reported that some tourists were angry at being moved to make way for the Saudi prince.Prince Salman, who is also Saudi Arabia's defence minister, was on an official business visit at the invitation of Maldives President Abdulla Yameen, who was elected in November after two years of political turmoil.
This reflects growing co-operation between the two countries. Saudi Arabia has already promised the Maldives a five-year soft loan facility of $300m (£181m), pledged last year when the country's previous president visited Riyadh. The Maldives currently has a yawning fiscal deficit averaging 14% of GDP over the past five years, according to the Asian Development Bank. Air links are opening, with Maldivian carriers set to fly to Saudi Arabia for the first time - and 14 flights a week are envisaged. t the same time, the Saudi property company Best Choice says it is building a family holiday resort worth $100m in the Maldives, which it says will have "world-class facilities". The country is also seeking Saudi partnerships in energy and transport, but the biggest co-operation sector is Islamic affairs. The Saudi prince has pledged to build 10 "world-class" mosques in the archipelago, seven of them this year, while visiting Saudi scholars recently pledged a grant of $100,000 for Islamic education. They also announced 50 scholarships for students to study in Saudi Arabia, though the response is said to be sluggish. Like Saudi Arabia, the Maldives is dominated by Sunni Islam. And Mr Yameen, the half-brother of the former autocratic president Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, has laid stress on religious conservatism.Yet the country has also come under criticism internationally for other issues. The Maldives now has a $300m loan from Saudi Arabia No such criticism comes from Riyadh, whose cash is being sought to sustain the large civil service. Mr Yameen's government has tightened up laws against permitting other religions and is considering a ban on importing kosher food. In seeking Saudi investments, however, the Maldives cannot afford to alienate too many tourists as tourism remains by far the archipelago's biggest earner. While the top resorts are owned or managed by international brands such as the US-based Hyatt or the French Club Med, it is China that is delivering more and more of the tourists.

[Rony]

Just wondering were there any articles written on Christian nationalism and foreign policy when reagan, thacher and bush came to power ? Did we not already saw (moderate) "Hindu nationalist" foreign policy under ABV ?

Hindu Nationalism and ... Foreign Policy? What does Hindu nationalism have to say about international relations?

India’s general elections are drawing close, and the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi is the frontrunner. Despite this, little is known about Modi’s intentions for Indian foreign policy. When I covered what little Modi had said about foreign policy in the past, I observed that on an intellectual level, Modi expressed appreciation for the foreign policy beliefs and practices of India’s last BJP prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. In Modi’s words, Vajpayee demonstrated an ability to maneuver Indian foreign policy between shanti (peace) and shakti (power). In the realm of domestic policy, much is made about Modi’s Hindu nationalist credentials – his critics and supporters alike dwell on the fact that his election to power would bring a decidedly non-secular leader to the fore. While the implications of a Hindu nationalist in the prime minister’s office has important implications for India’s domestic politics, what does a Hindu nationalist reading for foreign policy look like?

Hindu nationalism means many things to many people today in India. At its most extreme poles, self-identified Hindu nationalists want to preserve India as the bastion of Hinduism, resorting to violence if necessary (see groups like the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or RSS). However, more moderate Hindu nationalists – a category in which I believe the likes of former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, Narendra Modi, and other BJP leaders can be included – take the view that India’s unique heritage as the birthplace of Hinduism and its overwhelming Hindu majority warrant that its government undertake policies cognizant of that reality. In this sense, the BJP largely opposes India’s post-independence tendency to pursue secular redistributive and populist policies. This topic is vastly more complex but, in general, this is where modern Indian Hindu nationalists take issue with India’s Congress leaders.

On the foreign policy front, contemporary Hindu nationalism is poorly understood. Salient features of Indian foreign policy, such as non-alignment and strategic autonomy, emerge from the Nehruvian tradition of international relations. Hindu nationalists have a markedly different view of the world. Two intellectual heavyweights of the Hindu nationalist movement, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and Madhav Golwalkar, have written quite a bit about what Hindutva (a term coined by Savarkar roughly equivalent to Hindu nationalism) means for India’s engagement with the outside world.

The most relatable element of Hindu nationalism’s underlying logic of international relations is that it is largely a realist tradition. Savarkar and Golwalkar understand the world as a Hobbesian world of competing sovereigns where states are self-interested and outcomes are zero sum. Consequently, the Thucydidean notion of the strong doing what they can and the weak suffering what they must is very much real and relevant for foreign policy-making.

Where Hindu nationalists depart with Western realists like Thucydides, Morgenthau, and Waltz is with their insistence that for a country to be strong it must cultivate a strong sense of national identity. This idea is most explicitly made by Savarkar in his Hindu nationalist magnum opus Essentials of Hindutva. Savarkar writes that national identity is conferred by three critical criteria: common blood, common laws and rites, and common culture. This might surprise readers who would expect religion to feature strongly in a description of nationality by the supposed godfather of Hindu nationalism. Savarkar was an odd fellow in this sense; he was an atheist and pragmatist himself and saw a need to incorporate India’s multiple religious traditions into Hindutva. Above those three factors, he argues that a common geography must circumscribe the nation. In this sense, if Savarkar were alive today, he would see Pakistan and Bangladesh as belonging to the Hindu “nation.”

This definition of national identity has important implications for foreign policy and national defense. Always the pragmatist, Savarkar sees a strong national identity as ultimately necessary for a strong national military. In his view, a shared national identity gives soldiers something to fight for and those with a strong sense of identity will always fight better than those without. He writes in Essentials of Hindutva:

Moreover everything that is common in us with our enemies, weakens our power of opposing them. The foe that has nothing in common with us is the foe likely to be most bitterly resisted by us just as a friend that has almost everything in him that we admire and prize in ourselves is likely to be the friend we love most.

This is the true essence of Hindutva. Savarkar can be read in this context as a defensive strategist focused on nationalism as an instrument of martial cohesion and national unity. He follows the above passage with the following, which further cements his interest in national cohesion:

What was the use of a universal faith that instead of soothening [sic] the ferociousness and brutal egoism of other nations only excited their lust by leaving India defenseless and unsuspecting ? No; the only safe-guards in future were valor and strength that could only be born of a national self-consciousness.

For Savarkar, the objective of Hindutva is defensive readiness — to prevent the sort of subjugation India had experienced under the British. The relationship of this strategic assertion is tenuous with regards to religion. Instead of Hinduism the religion, what drove the original Hindu nationalist’s understanding of foreign policy was Indian-ness (for lack of a better term).

Before I end this very rough description of Hindu nationalist thought and what it has to say about foreign policy, I should caveat that like most ideologies, Hindutva and Hindu nationalism as imagined by Savarkar has been corrupted by his contemporary followers in several important ways. Contemporary critics of Hindu nationalism on the Indian political scene see the movement as Hindu supremacism more than anything else, and not entirely falsely in many cases. Hinduism rather than Indian-ness has take the core of contemporary Hindu nationalism. Therefore, an ideology with its roots in realism has been usurped by the politics of identity.

Fortunately, sixty-some years of Congress supremacy in determining India’s foreign policy have resulted in a foreign policy bureaucracy and intelligentsia in India that sees Hindu nationalism as an entirely irrelevant framework for framing foreign policy. Even with the most ardent Hindu nationalist prime minister in office, Indian foreign policy will be driven by economic growth and preserving national security. To be sure, India’s propensity for non-alignment and strategic autonomy has its own problems, but its dominance over the years insulates Indian foreign policy from suddenly swinging towards an opposite extreme.

If Narendra Modi comes out on top in India’s upcoming electoral contest, those of us who study and watch India’s behavior on the world stage will nonetheless need to more seriously examine the ideas underlying the Hindu nationalist’s understanding of the world. The intellectual tradition is as old as independent India itself but has remained confined to the political opposition for the most greater part of a century. This could change in 2014.

[svinayak]

Fortunately, sixty-some years of Congress supremacy in determining India’s foreign policy have resulted in a foreign policy bureaucracy and intelligentsia in India that sees Hindu nationalism as an entirely irrelevant framework for framing foreign policy.

Foreigners talking about Indian policy and trying to find what is best for India and Indians

[Philip]

They still think that the "natives" in their loincloths,chewing (betel) leaves and worshipping "idols" (without understanding the religion) need to be converted en masse,in a socio-religious context,change eating habits to Yanqui junk food like Coke,Pepsi,Burgers,fried chicken and pizzas-responsible for the global pandemic of obesity,wear western branded clothing,listen to rap music,stop reading and watch more TV,watching Hollywood films distort history ,while chewing on GM popcorn made with carcinogenic transfats,and provide vast quantities of fighting men to do their dirty work around the world,as was done a century ago,in WW1! This they call civilisation!

Our morons in the MEA,genuflect,bow and scrape,and even prostrate themselves at the western god of power and pelf.Just dangle a case,(why even a bottle will do the trick at times!) of fine whisky or preferred hooch in front of an MEA babu,and presto-doors are opened to the paleface ad nauseum. Some of diplomutts swing from either total obeisance to the paleface or stubborn resistance,perhaps due to an inferiority complex,of not being enough of a brown sahib in the art of diplomacy as is practised by western nations.Here,the unerring standard should be "Is it good for India? Will it enhance Indian interests? Will it reinforce or damage our security interests? Instead we often fall for personal flattery and drop our dhotis at the first whiff of flattery!

I am reminded of a famous story about legendary Soviet foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko,(the only diplomat who Kissinger rated as his equal) who was being fawned over by the then US ambassador,who claimed to love Russia and its people so much,an attempt to win him over by flattery .Gromyko cut him short and told him in the bluntest way possible,that he cared a hoot about the ambassador's views ,but considered only the views of his country. The ambassador slunk out of the room with his tail well tucked in!

[Rony]

[chetak]

X-pot...
How is the NSA, even if he is former IFS, allowed to take calls from abroad? Kerry should have called Khurshid PERIOD. NSA should know his roles and responsibilites and should have told Kerry to call Khurshid. He has no locus standi in this issue.

kerry did call kurshit multiple times but the moron did not take the calls to show his "displeasure"

Just to make a moot point and keep his yardarm clear, kerry talked to the NSA, another prime MORON. How do you wind up NSA without some intelligence background?????

From which hellish septic tank do we get such 1@#$%s and why only us!!!

[Prem]

What will be the effect of India's general election on relations with its neighbors, the EU, and the United States?
Question submitted by Najibullah Adamji, from Mithibai College, Mumbai University
Answered by Shooting in dark: Alyssa Ayres, Senior Fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia

http://www.cfr.org/india/effect-indias- ... tes/p32723

Historically, India's foreign policy has not oscillated on a partisan basis, exemplifying the American adage: politics stops at the water's edge. This doesn't mean politics has no effect on foreign policy in India; it is, however, more attenuated with powers farther away, and amplified with smaller neighbors.Support for a strong strategic relationship with the United States has held across party lines, from the BJP-led opening in 2000 to the Congress-led past decade. On the economic front, while the Congress document highlights a pledge for India's "greater integration with the global economy," disappointments during its recent term have resulted in frictions. Many analysts assess the BJP as more focused on economic reform and trade, and see the party as likely to rekindle a positive economic spark with the U.S.
Both major parties have taken similar approaches to the insoluble question of Pakistan, with Prime Minister Vajpayee and later Prime Minister Singh offering the "hand of friendship" even while securing India's borders and strengthening India's counterterrorism capabilities. However, in general the BJP is seen as tougher on the issue of terrorism traced to Pakistan.On China, the BJP's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi gave a speech in February 2014 exhorting China to drop its "expansionist" mindset, a reference to Chinese claims on Indian territory. But Modi has a record of pursuing close commercial ties with China. The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government has sought to manage differences with China through a joint border working group, and through consultations on trade and investment.India has national security stakes in ties with neighbors Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Those are also the two countries in the region more likely to be the focus of regional state politics. ( BRF Ahead of the curve) With India's coalition dynamics, should the next government find itself reliant for support on either of the two major parties in the state of Tamil Nadu or from the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal, it could face political pressures on its foreign policy, as has been the case in the last three years.

[ShauryaT]

Foreign Policy à la Modi - India's Next Worldview By Manjari Chatterjee Miller

In these conversations, some officials, both Indian and foreign, did express discomfort with what they believed to be Modi’s complicity in the 2002 Gujarat massacre. But they also believed that the Singh government had lost its way. Certainly, the shadow of the Gujarat riots makes Modi a very different political figure from the last BJP prime minister, Vajpayee. However, if Modi were to assume office, any hint of less than complete acceptance of his status as prime minister by the United States would be seen as an unforgivable insult, not just by the Indian elites who support him but by those who do not. And Washington should remember that, at least in the past five decades, Indian foreign policy has been broadly consistent and any changes had little to do with the prime minister’s political ideology.