Indian Foreign Policy

[abhishek_sharma]

A gentleman prime minister: Inder Malhotra

I.K. Gujral may have been PM only for a few months, but he was a quintessential politician from the start

The wave of sorrow and the outpouring of tributes after Inder Kumar Gujral’s death bespeak of the respect and affection he enjoyed among a wide circle of people cutting across party lines. He, a thorough gentleman, had endeared himself to one and all. He may have been prime minister for only a few months, but he was a quintessential politician from the very start. Politics was indeed in his genes.

His father was a freedom fighter in Jhelum, now in Pakistan’s Punjab, and he jumped into the fray as a student in Lahore. Migrating to Delhi after Independence and Partition, he began his political career as member of the New Delhi Municipal Committee. Those were the years when he was also a regular at that famous (and long defunct) meeting place, India Coffee House on Janpath. Whoever shared coffee and conversation with him there remained his lifelong friend.

Inder Gujral came into prominence in 1966 as a member of Indira Gandhi’s “kitchen cabinet” and a year later also became a minister of state in her council of ministers. In November 1969, the year of Mahatma Gandhi’s centenary, the Congress split. Soon thereafter, her minority government won a vote of confidence impressively; the two beaming acolytes walking behind her, as she left the House, were Dinesh Singh and Gujral. However, like most Indira loyalists, these two also fell from grace. Gujral’s fall came on the very first day after the proclamation of Emergency, when he was minister for information and broadcasting. The moving spirit of the new dispensation, Sanjay Gandhi, rudely told him that All India Radio’s performance was not up to scratch. He had the “temerity” to tell the young man to learn to talk to his elders. That afternoon he was transferred to the planning ministry and V. C. Shukla was put in charge of I&B.

Later, Gujral was sent as ambassador to Moscow, where he served three PMs: Indira Gandhi, Morarji Desai, Charan Singh and Indira Gandhi again. However, she ordered his exit from the embassy in Moscow in circumstances that hurt him. In his autobiography, Matters of Discretion, he recorded that in her time, he was “kept out of the loop” in most crucial dealings with the Soviet Union.

On his return home, he sat out the Rajiv Gandhi years though he tried to bridge the Hindu-Sikh gulf in Punjab. Gujral joined V.P. Singh when the latter ceased to be Rajiv’s most senior colleague and became the rallying point of all opposition to the then PM and the Congress. In Singh’s distressingly fractious government, Gujral was foreign minister, but because this government fell within 11 months, he could not do much besides spelling out his basic agenda of befriending all neighbours, particularly settling all disputes with Pakistan through peaceful negotiations and establishing a national security of sorts.

Only after returning as foreign minister in the United Front government, headed by H.D. Deve Gowda, did Gujral come into his own. His great achievement then was to conclude and sign the Ganga Waters treaty with Bangladesh. Frustrating negotiations for this agreement had dragged on since 1947, when Bangladesh was East Pakistan, and with Dhaka since the liberation of Bangladesh. Gujral’s masterstroke at this point was to involve West Bengal’s eminent chief minister, Jyoti Basu, into delicate negotiations and, indeed, give him the lead role.

It was at this juncture that the Gujral Doctrine was also propounded. It so happened that I was present at the creation. In Dhaka he told the media that he wanted India to be generous to its neighbours without demanding any reciprocity. A Bangladeshi journalist asked: “Does this mean that you have given up your demand for transit rights across Bangladesh in return to a treaty on waters”? Gujral: “I never said so”. Journalist: “Then what do you mean”? Gujral: “I mean that let Bangladesh decide whether transit rights for us are good for itself or not”. And then, as was his wont, he recited an apt Urdu couplet: “Tu agar mera nahin banta, na bann, apna toh bann (if you refuse to be mine, at least be true to yourself)”. His love for Urdu poetry was phenomenal and contagious. Some of his books are in Urdu.

After the then Congress president, Sitaram Kesri, brought down the Deve Gowda government, Gujral seemed his natural successor. He was acceptable to the Congress, which propped the U.F. government, and the Janata Dal warlords were happy that they would rule while he would reign. That is what happened most of the time. For Gujral was not one of those politicians who know only the use of muscle, but belonged to a generation that was of high sophistication and taste.

The writer is a Delhi-based political commentato

[putnanja]

National Interest: Accidentally, in history

From the link above ...

...
THERE was one significant and scary juncture in India’s foreign policy under his charge that he has left unexplained. In fact, the eternal debate is about just how scary that moment was. It was during V.P. Singh’s government in the summer of 1990, when India and Pakistan came close to war over Kashmir. Benazir Bhutto, feeling pressured by her army, was making speeches of the kind that would make Hafiz Saeed look relatively moderate. She was threatening to cut Jagmohan, then governor of Kashmir, into little pieces: jag-jag, mo-mo, han-han, she said making chopping motions from one hand on the other arm at a Muzaffarabad rally. She repeated her late father’s favourite rant of waging a 1,000-year war against India. V.P. Singh responded in Parliament by asking if Pakistan would last 1,000 hours. It’s an aside, but I made a semi-facetious calculation in India Today (in partnership with defence expert Ravi Rikhye) to show how expensive a 1,000-hour (nearly 45-day) war would be, and even if India won decisively, how little it would achieve. But this story really opened up much later.

First, Seymour Hersh claimed (“On the Nuclear Edge”, The New Yorker, March 29, 1993) that Pakistan had indeed threatened to start that war with a nuclear attack against India and that threat had been conveyed to South Block by Bob Gates, then deputy national security advisor, who was the US president’s emissary to the subcontinent. This was immediately denied. But a much more detailed description of those perilous days appeared in a subsequent book (Critical Mass: The Dangerous Race for Superweapons in a Fragmenting World, William E. Burrows and Robert Windrem, Simon & Schuster, 1994). Again, there were denials. But now they sounded thin.

The story, that Gates brought the warning to New Delhi, was never conclusively established. But at one point, many years later, after a great deal of cajoling and pleading, Gujral admitted to having had a curious conversation with his Pakistani counterpart Sahibzada Yakub Khan. Sahibzada had come to India ostensibly to defuse tensions. But he said, as they walked down the South Block corridor, “Gujral sahib, this will not be like any of the decent, clean wars we have fought in the past. Your rivers, mountains, cities, will all be on fire, a fire of the kind you cannot imagine, and on the first day itself.” Gujral admitted he was taken aback. But he said he gathered his wits and replied: “Aisi baatein na karein toh achcha hai, Yakub sahib... kyunki humne bhi unheen daryaon ka paani piya hai jinka aapne...” The closest translation would be, keep these threats to yourself, because you will be paid back in kind.

I did persist with researching this over the years. That the Pakistanis threatened to begin the war with a nuclear attack is a fact. It is, truly, the first example of a nuclear blackmail. Did it work? That question is not fully answered yet. The one key witness who was most directly in the picture, Air Chief Marshal S.K. “Polly” Mehra, was the most forthcoming. He confirmed the threat and recounted how he was called by V.P. Singh and nervously asked, in front of Gujral, if he could prevent a Pakistani plane from delivering that “bomb”. Mehra said no air force could guarantee that. He could reasonably make sure, though, that the intruder wouldn’t go back. But, if such a thing happened, we need to retaliate, he said, and then asked an important question: “If the IAF has to deliver something in retaliation, can we at least see what it looks like? We can then figure out on which platform to put it, and how to deliver it. What are its aerodynamics, and so on.” Mehra said while this conversation was on, he saw Gujral in some sort of a panic, almost sprinting in and out of the room carrying fresh sheets of paper, obviously cables of some kind, and showing them to V.P. Singh. This much I was able to confirm with V.P. Singh himself, on the record. The implicit, and shocking story is, that if India did have a credible, deliverable deterrent then, its armed forces had not even seen it. More likely, India did not. We can say with certainty that this is when India finally dropped all notions of nuclear ambiguity and embarked on full-fledged weaponisation. Whether the Pakistani nuclear blackmail then worked, whether it intimidated V.P. Singh’s truly weak government, and if so, into what, is what we do not yet know. It is one of the most important questions Gujral has left unanswered.

...

[Aditya_V]

Someone in the one of the Deterrence threads asked about references to Pakistan wanting to Nuke us and F-16's with Nukes at Chacklala, they are in the above references.

Take it as a fact, if we did not have NUkes, Pakis would have moved to Hiroshima and Nagasaki solution

[Aditya_V]

National Interest: Accidentally, in history

From the link above ...

...
THERE was one significant and scary juncture in India’s foreign policy under his charge that he has left unexplained. In fact, the eternal debate is about just how scary that moment was. It was during V.P. Singh’s government in the summer of 1990, when India and Pakistan came close to war over Kashmir. Benazir Bhutto, feeling pressured by her army, was making speeches of the kind that would make Hafiz Saeed look relatively moderate. She was threatening to cut Jagmohan, then governor of Kashmir, into little pieces: jag-jag, mo-mo, han-han, she said making chopping motions from one hand on the other arm at a Muzaffarabad rally. She repeated her late father’s favourite rant of waging a 1,000-year war against India. V.P. Singh responded in Parliament by asking if Pakistan would last 1,000 hours. It’s an aside, but I made a semi-facetious calculation in India Today (in partnership with defence expert Ravi Rikhye) to show how expensive a 1,000-hour (nearly 45-day) war would be, and even if India won decisively, how little it would achieve. But this story really opened up much later.

First, Seymour Hersh claimed (“On the Nuclear Edge”, The New Yorker, March 29, 1993) that Pakistan had indeed threatened to start that war with a nuclear attack against India and that threat had been conveyed to South Block by Bob Gates, then deputy national security advisor, who was the US president’s emissary to the subcontinent. This was immediately denied. But a much more detailed description of those perilous days appeared in a subsequent book (Critical Mass: The Dangerous Race for Superweapons in a Fragmenting World, William E. Burrows and Robert Windrem, Simon & Schuster, 1994). Again, there were denials. But now they sounded thin.

The story, that Gates brought the warning to New Delhi, was never conclusively established. But at one point, many years later, after a great deal of cajoling and pleading, Gujral admitted to having had a curious conversation with his Pakistani counterpart Sahibzada Yakub Khan. Sahibzada had come to India ostensibly to defuse tensions. But he said, as they walked down the South Block corridor, “Gujral sahib, this will not be like any of the decent, clean wars we have fought in the past. Your rivers, mountains, cities, will all be on fire, a fire of the kind you cannot imagine, and on the first day itself.” Gujral admitted he was taken aback. But he said he gathered his wits and replied: “Aisi baatein na karein toh achcha hai, Yakub sahib... kyunki humne bhi unheen daryaon ka paani piya hai jinka aapne...” The closest translation would be, keep these threats to yourself, because you will be paid back in kind.

I did persist with researching this over the years. That the Pakistanis threatened to begin the war with a nuclear attack is a fact. It is, truly, the first example of a nuclear blackmail. Did it work? That question is not fully answered yet. The one key witness who was most directly in the picture, Air Chief Marshal S.K. “Polly” Mehra, was the most forthcoming. He confirmed the threat and recounted how he was called by V.P. Singh and nervously asked, in front of Gujral, if he could prevent a Pakistani plane from delivering that “bomb”. Mehra said no air force could guarantee that. He could reasonably make sure, though, that the intruder wouldn’t go back. But, if such a thing happened, we need to retaliate, he said, and then asked an important question: “If the IAF has to deliver something in retaliation, can we at least see what it looks like? We can then figure out on which platform to put it, and how to deliver it. What are its aerodynamics, and so on.” Mehra said while this conversation was on, he saw Gujral in some sort of a panic, almost sprinting in and out of the room carrying fresh sheets of paper, obviously cables of some kind, and showing them to V.P. Singh. This much I was able to confirm with V.P. Singh himself, on the record. The implicit, and shocking story is, that if India did have a credible, deliverable deterrent then, its armed forces had not even seen it. More likely, India did not. We can say with certainty that this is when India finally dropped all notions of nuclear ambiguity and embarked on full-fledged weaponisation. Whether the Pakistani nuclear blackmail then worked, whether it intimidated V.P. Singh’s truly weak government, and if so, into what, is what we do not yet know. It is one of the most important questions Gujral has left unanswered.

...

See see folks , it was a disastrouses decesion not to weaponise until Pakistan threatened us with a Hiroshima/ Nagasaki situation. And we had DDM blaiming NDA in 1998 for weaponsing in 1998 when leaders before that put us in peril by not weaponsing.

[Chinmayanand]

See see folks , it was a disastrouses decesion not to weaponise until Pakistan threatened us with a Hiroshima/ Nagasaki situation. And we had DDM blaiming NDA in 1998 for weaponsing in 1998 when leaders before that put us in peril by not weaponsing.

Even after weaponising , we are trailing behind in the number of warheads despite having nuke threat on two borders. The pacifist nature and the neglect of security is Awesome . i think the politicos and bureaucrats in Delhi believe in paying jajiya tax aka protection money to whoever threatens their oligarchy in Delhi, be it pakistan or China. Some things never change.

[Aditya_V]

See see folks , it was a disastrouses decesion not to weaponise until Pakistan threatened us with a Hiroshima/ Nagasaki situation. And we had DDM blaiming NDA in 1998 for weaponsing in 1998 when leaders before that put us in peril by not weaponsing.

Even after weaponising , we are trailing behind in the number of warheads despite having nuke threat on two borders. The pacifist nature and the neglect of security is Awesome . i think the politicos and bureaucrats in Delhi believe in paying jajiya tax aka protection money to whoever threatens their oligarchy in Delhi, be it pakistan or China. Some things never change.

One small nitpic here , all these reports of Pakistan expanding its aresenal with mainly Plutonium must be taken witha pinch of salt. If pakistan aresenal is expanding soo fast how come there is neglible Nuclear power being generated, Both Russia, USA, China were all making nuke material and heat generated in the process to generate power.

How come our supposedly power starved Pakistan has deceided to forego the electricity generated in the process?? And nobody is going to Pakistan the where withall to be making decesions on its own to increase its Nukes. In fact even the CHashma plants were claimed as operational they produced little power to Pakistan during the summer power crises. and Nuke plants trip, wonder what happens to Nuke material generating process whent hey trip. Besides they are under IAEA safeguards and Pakis can't reprocess the material. Chashma Nuclear Power Plant II fails They have only 1 tiny plant in Karchi apart from that.

Those articles are generally issued by Nuclear ayotollah groups in Washington to shape Indian public opinion in favour of giving concessions to Pakis.

The same group was saying Paki missiles are more advanced than India and long range and they belive that Pakistani Ghauri III with 3000km range was a sucess.

so please don't get too frightened with Nuclear ayotollahas and Paki claims of bravado. Cause they are not generating any weapons grade material for it.

[SSridhar]

India's Foreign Policy - Future Options - Kanwal Sibal at YB Chavan Memorial lecture

Defining national interest is not as easy as it might seem. National polls are not conducted to define a country’s national interest. A broad consensus can be built over years on the essential parameters of such interest. But situations change and judgments have to be made. Often wrong and highly controversial ones are made. Vietnam, Iraq and unleashing Islamic fundamentalism against the Soviets are examples in the American case. India made an error of judgment, for instance, at Simla in 1972.

In reality, countries do not always act in their national interest. It is no country’s interest, for example, to have difficult relations with neighbours, but many countries do, either because they want to dominate them or are insensitive to their concerns. Smaller countries too overplay their hand and provoke their bigger and stronger neighbours.

The enlightened interest of any country is undermined by tensions and conflict. Yet, many countries willfully pursue policies that threaten peace.

If pride makes individuals obstinate and unwilling to compromise, nations too suffer from the “loss of face” syndrome.

Is the form of government relevant in properly defining what would be best in a country’s national interest? In other words, do democratic systems with public debate on policies enable leaders to form a better view of national interest, rather than dictatorial or authoritative systems where policy formulation is personalized and can be whimsical?

But we see that even the most democratic countries make huge mistakes in foreign policy choices and impose costs on themselves and others.

There is the issue of national power and national interest. A powerful country will expand the scope of its national interest in tune with its ambitions and the reach of its power. A weaker country will interpret its national interest more narrowly so as to avoid unnecessary problems.

Globalization and interdependence has also changed notions of national interest because countries know they do not have a free hand and have to give and take much more than before.

In some cases, like the European Union, national interest has been submerged in many ways within a larger community interest. Even sovereignty has been pooled in some key areas.

National interest is a fluid and uncertain concept. A big challenge for India is therefore to be able to define its national interest with discernment, realism, objectivity and foresight.

This is not easy as the backdrop against which analysis and choices are made keeps changing. A broad national consensus on what constitutes national interest is important.

I had earlier spoken of coherence and balance in foreign policy as a continuing challenge.

The international scene has changed a great deal in the last two decades or so. India has needed to adjust its foreign policy accordingly. During the Cold War India considered the Soviet Union a reliable strategic partner, even though the term strategic partner was not used then.

With a world divided into two blocs, India’s compass was nonalignment, with its political empathies more with the eastern bloc whose rhetoric was more friendly towards the third world.

India‘s relations with the western bloc were problematic because of the west’s non-proliferation injunctions, pro-Pakistani policies and economic philosophy.

The nature of our relations with US has been altered in the last few years. Our policies have become convergent in many ways. Improved relations with US has given India more room for manoeuvre regionally and internationally. Strategically, we are being pulled towards US. This means that our relations with US allies have become better too, as, for example, with Japan, South Korea and Australia.

Simultaneously, our relations with Russia have lost the centrality of the past. Even as India’s economic growth is changing its global profile, our economic ties with Russia have relatively shrunk.

Yet Russia is important for the balance of our foreign policy. A weak Russia is not good for the global system. In fact, the space vacated by Russia has been filled by China. US political lobbies still see Russia as a geopolitical threat, as Romney’s statements during the US presidential election showed.

India can do little to boost Russia, except by maintaining the regularity of summit meetings, nurturing the traditionally close defence ties that assure non-disruption of supplies at critical moments as well as access to sensitive technologies, and partnering it in political groupings such as the Russia-India-China dialogue and the BRICS where the west is absent.

The challenge for us to expand our economic ties with Russia. Energy cooperation provides an opportunity so far insufficiently exploited.

India and Russia share the agenda of multipolarity, respect for sovereignty, non-interference in the internal affairs of countries, geo-political abuse of the human rights issues, regime change policies, the proclivity to use military means to find solutions to highly complex issues.

This agenda puts India at cross purposes with many policies of the west. The challenge for India is to maintain the basics of its position but avoid a direct clash with the west over these issues.

Yet, in terms of markets, investment needs- especially to develop our poor infrastructure, access to modern technologies in health, energy, agriculture, industry, building a knowledge economy, participating in global supply chains etc, India needs are much better served by the west. Our people to people relations with the west are strong.

In fact, the needs of India’s growing economy are such that we cannot avoid doing business even with an adversary like China. Not surprisingly, China has therefore emerged as India’s biggest trade partner in goods.

The challenge for India is to successfully play on all geo-political chess boards and optimize what it can extract from others for its own development. This means India should preserve it independence of judgment and action as much as possible even as it conducts itself as a good and reliable partner where partnerships have been formed.

US rhetoric about its relationship with India being a defining one in the 21st century is heady. India-US relations have certainly achieved a degree of balance and maturity, with rapid expansion of bilateral and multilateral engagement. Contentious issues between them have receded into the background.

The US robustly affirms its strategic partnership with India, presenting India with the challenge of leveraging its new strategic ties with that country while maintaining its strategic autonomy.

It has to be borne in mind, however, that in maintaining its global supremacy, but with declining means, US needs to co-opt partners outside the Euro-Atlantic bloc, and India stands out as an obvious one because of its size, human resources, expanding economic base, reasonable military strength and democratic polity.

Even with regard to its new policy of rebalancing towards Asia, intended without being openly stated to put constraints on China’s ambitions, US sees India as a lynchpin. The assumption is that India alone is big enough in Asia to counter China and that India has concerns about China’s rise for its own security, given outstanding border differences and Chinese policies in India’s neighbourhood.

Some political elements in US find India’s ambivalence towards the west and its unwillingness to endorse western policies as the lingering malaise of nonalignment. They see India’s desire to preserve its strategic autonomy as a smokescreen for its nostalgia for nonalignment.

This is, to my mind, a misreading of reality. By strategic autonomy India means friendly ties and mutually beneficial relations with all countries, with its own legitimate- not purely selfish- interests primarily in mind.

It is in this spirit that India has strategic partnerships with a variety of countries. The idea is to develop the basis of long term relationships to mutual advantage, create trust and avoid any policy that hurts the legitimate interests of the other partner.

US has interests spread all over the world by virtue of it being a global power. It cannot expect India to support its policies everywhere. US would want to fit India in the global architecture of its policies. India has no such global architecture in which it wants to fit US. It cannot easily fit US even into the regional architecture of its policies, whether this relates to Pakistan, China’s territorial claims on India, the post Dalai Lama phase in Tibet, Iran etc.

The challenge for India’s foreign policy in the years ahead is to be courted by all and to succumb to no one. Even if India cannot lead, it must not be led.

India has, in fact, shown great resilience, despite its economic and military weakness, to try and stand on its own feet strategically in international affairs. Even big European powers, which have in the past ruled many parts of the world, do not have strategic autonomy today despite the collapse of Soviet Union and communism as an ideology. They willingly subordinate themselves to US.

By choosing strategic self-reliance India has to cope with challenges largely on its own. This requires that India avoid getting into situations it cannot handle, in the main, on its own. It does not have allies to shore up its positions.

The west has never supported India so far on issues of core concern to it, whether political, military or technological. It has now removed certain technological disabilities on India but far from fully.

The developing countries haven’t supported India either on Pakistan, China or nuclear related issues.

This explains why Indian foreign policy tends to be cautious and reticent in taking partisan positions on highly divisive issues.

There are pressures on India to be more forthright, not sit on the fence, be willing to incur costs in upholding the international order and not be a free-loader. India will have to resist such pressures in the years ahead, because many of these arise from the aggressive, dominating habits that the west has not been able to shed, which drives its efforts to shape the world according to its values which it considers universal.

India’s challenge is not to be simply co-opted into the existing international order that is controlled by the west. It must find its due place in it in its own right and be in a position to change the rules rather than simply adhere to existing ones.

The reform of international institutions is therefore very important and India’s discourse on this is legitimate. India should have a greater say in these institutions. Getting a permanent seat in the Security Council will remain a challenge as resistance to this will not go away soon.

Self-esteem and confidence are reflected in India’s claim to a permanent seat. India is not begging; it is claiming. India should pursue this quest, if only to remind that the existing international institutions that uphold the present world order are no longer representative of the international community.

We have to carefully weigh the China factor in seeking redistribution of power at the global level. The gap between India and China has grown so big that in any re-ordering of the world order China can gain more. With China’s world view, its sense of itself, its historical grievances and its territorially expansionist policies, India, which has serious differences with China, cannot be comfortable with a more powerful China within the international system.

China has become too powerful economically and financially and too integrated with the global economy to be contained in the way the Soviet Union was and the way Russia is still being pressured by the west. US pivot towards Asia is not intended to actively confront China; it is to caution it against any adventurism.

US-China relationship is much more intensive than the US-India relationship. We should not pay much attention to the democracy rhetoric. China becoming more democratic is no guarantee against a more muscled Chinese foreign policy.

US and its democratic allies have muscled foreign policies too, as they are using force in many parts of the world at great human cost. Political and moral justification for military action can always be found, with globally powerful media helping to rationalize such action.

Democracy is no insurance against the use of military means to achieve national ends.

Nationalism can be a powerful driver in foreign policy. A more democratic but nationalist China will not be any less of a problem for others.

Unfortunately, China has made it clear that it does not intend to solve the border issue with India; it says it wants it to remain dormant and leave it to the next generation to resolve it. But then, as we have seen in the latest maps on Chinese passports, China is establishing its claims in insidious ways. These actions reveal the longer-term strategy China has in mind.

It is clear Tibet is not reconciled to China’s rule. Dalai Lama’s succession can revive tensions between India and China. India has to make sure Bhutan does not yield to China’s blandishments. China’s rising profile in Sri Lanka and Nepal is a cause of concern. The China-Pakistan axis remains a grave problem.

India has to develop its economic and military muscle to counter the China threat. There is no other way. This is a big challenge for us ahead, even as engage China as others do.

India cannot risk a confrontation with China; its strategy should be to dissuade China from taking the risk of confronting India with visible and independent strategic strength.

India has to find the right balance between engaging China and hedging against it.

Some would say that a critical foreign policy challenge confronting India is the maintenance of friendly ties with its neighbours. India, it is claimed, cannot rise to its potential if it is embroiled in conflicts or tensions with its neighbours. India has supposedly failed in this regard.

Having good relations with neighbours is not a unilateral exercise; it is a reciprocal one. If India should have good relations with its neighbours, then it is equally incumbent on the neighbours to have good relations with India. No one can argue that India’s conduct alone is deficient.

India should, of course, try to do its best to win over the neighbours, but if the neighbours see it in their interest to balance a much larger India by drawing in external powers, and prevent their national identities from being overwhelmed by India’s civilisational and cultural pull by emphasing differences with India and stoking anti-Indian national sentiments, there is little India can do. This challenge will not go away.

The argument that India as the bigger country should be more generous with its neighbours is fallacious. Big countries like China and US do not believe in the merits of this approach. Vietnam and Cuba come to mind.

India’s economic growth will be of key importance for tying our neighbours economically to the Indian market. It will be important to give stakes to a cross section of people in our neighbouring countries in various sectors our economy. In this context the strengthening of SAARC should be a priority.

Our improved relations with US has excluded one external factor that in the past complicated our relations with our neighbours. China, however, remains a problem in this regard.

Pakistan remains a perennial problem. While some aspects of our relations with that country are improving, as for example, in the trade area, larger questions about the rise of Islamic radicalism there and fears that Pakistan could become a failing state are being debated.

There is little that India can do help Pakistan fight its own internal demons. India is, in fact, the reason why these demons exist in the first place. Unless Pakistan radically changes its attitude to India, ceases to whip up religious sentiments against us that feed the jihadi groups, the problem of radicalism in Pakistan cannot be successfully controlled.

India should continue to encourage more economic and people to people ties with Pakistan, but should also be clear-sighted about the serious obstacles in normalizing relations with that country.

We should shed the belief that concessions will make Pakistan more amenable.

India does not need to re-assure Pakistan about its intentions or make Pakistan trust us. The reverse is needed: it is Pakistan that needs to make the requisite effort to convince India that it has abandoned the use of terrorism as state policy.

Do we have a stake in Pakistan’s survival as a united country, or should we encourage the break-up of the country? So long as Pakistan is adversarial, we have no stakes in Pakistan’s territorial integrity. It would be ironical for India to be supportive of Pakistan’s geographical health when it wants a slice away a part of Indian territory.

We should not, however, actively seek to de-stabilize Pakistan, as managing a fragmented Pakistan would raise its own problems.

On the other hand, a broken up Pakistan loses value for the Chinese. Even a chronically unstable Pakistan loses value. It is unlikely that the Chinese will want to rescue Pakistan with economic largesse. In that context, disarray in Pakistan is not unhelpful to us.

Obversely, we cannot have a viable Central Asia and even Afghan policy if Pakistan remains unstable. If this whole region is to be integrated economically, with energy and trade connectivities, the geo-political key is in Pakistan’s hands.

US is backing the project to link Central Asia with South Asia, with TAPI symbolizing this vision, but US’s ability today to bend Pakistan to its will has suffered erosion.

Stability in Afghanistan and containment of the Taliban threat there in a regional context is another challenge that will acquire sharper contours post 2014.

The west is looking for a compromise with the Taliban, believing it can live with an Islamized Afghanistan so long as it is not anti-west. The backing the Muslim Brotherhood is receiving from the west in the Arab world would indicate that practical, realpolitik deals can be made with Islamic radicalism and rationalized. Such a scenario is not in our interest, but the means we have to forestall this are limited.

We have therefore a multifold challenge in Afghanistan, of retaining our presence and influence in that country, creating internal support for us there that can be used to counter the Taliban and the revival of radical forces there that can threaten our security directly with Pakistani support.

Lack of direct access to Afghanistan exposes the lack of a credible Indian policy towards Central Asia. We have to galvanize Iran to cooperate with us for an alternative access to Afghanistan trough Chabahar.

The Iranian nuclear issue has serious implications for India should there be recourse by the west to military action against that country. The de-stabilization of the Gulf region which will occur as a result would be very costly for India, as India has huge energy, manpower and financial interests in the region. India would have to steer clear of the rising Shia-Sunni conflict in the Muslim world.

India’s Look East policy is now facing new challenges with the erstwhile equation between China and East and Southeast Asia disturbed by China’s muscle-flexing in the South China sea.

India has concerns about the freedom of passage through international waters, but otherwise India’s priorities concerns are in the Indian Ocean area. However, for geo-political reasons, India would need to come closer to those countries targetted by Chinese claims, though without getting directly embroiled in the territorial disputes.

In the Indian Ocean area, India should try to maintain its dominant status as a littoral state as much as possible, knowing however that at some stage Chinese presence in these waters will increase, as is portended by China’s active search for port facilities in this area.

India’s declared openness to cooperation with China on maritime issues should be based on the legitimacy of not only China’s presence in the Indian Ocean but also India’s maritime presence close to China’s shores.

India would need to give priority to its relations with Myanmar, now that the latter wants to loosen the Chinese grip over the country. Myanmar is of key importance to create east-west connectivity in this region from which India can benefit greatly. Our challenge is to implement our infrastructure projects in Myanmar without inordinate delays.

As part of our Look East policy, keeping the Chinese dimension in view and bilateral benefits that can accrue to us, India would need to boost its relations with Japan, including mobilizing Japan’s clout in the ADB to finance the east-west corridors in Asia. Our increasing strategic engagement with Japan is a welcome move.

Beyond all these challenges, there are those of energy, food security and of climate change.

The energy issue is not one of foreign policy alone, but it has a strong external dimension for us because of our huge dependence on energy imports.

Our diplomacy will need to facilitate investment in hydrocarbon fields abroad as part of our energy security drive, besides working for avoidance of conflict in areas which are our biggest source of oil and gas. We have a shared interest with US in this but US policies in the Gulf region, driven by the Israeli and Iranian factors, are not in line with our interests as they keep the area on the boil.

Energy, of course, is one area where technology can achieve such breakthroughs as can change the global energy scenario.

Climate change issues, in which energy use and environmental concerns intersect with issues of competitivity and market openings for western technologies, will become a source of increasing external pressure on India in the years ahead.

The water issue in South Asia-Tibet region looms ahead. Apart from countering Pakistan’s cynical manipulation of the water issue to sustain its negative postures towards India, securing Chinese cooperation in transparent handling of the Tibetan dimension will be a challenge.

In the competition for access to natural resources, China is already far ahead of India because of greater financial resources at its disposal and its ability to organize a coordinated national effort to that end which our system does not permit.

A new Indian approach that goes beyond relying on the private sector to make economically rational decisions from their perspective would be needed, but that implies a different way of economic governance.

At the end of it all, the internal and the external cannot be compartmentalized in any country. Success or failure at home will mean success or failure abroad.

The economy is the building block of a successful foreign policy, as required resources then become available to erect defenses at home and to pursue interests abroad.

While it may not be a foreign policy issue per se, the establishment of an indigenous defence manufacturing base is vital for acting independently on the world stage. No country that cannot independently defend itself can reach big power status.

Our external dependence on arms and technology supplies limits the options available to our foreign policy.

In conclusion, it can be said that India faces unique geo-political challenges that will remain in the years ahead.

It has two strategically hostile neighbours, China and Pakistan. Both are strategic partners against India. China has transferred nuclear and missile technology to Pakistan to neutralize India strategically.

Both have claims on India territory. India is the only country of magnitude and importance in the world whose borders are contested, with a Line of Control in J&K with Pakistan and the Line of Actual Control with China. This is an unstable situation inherently whatever the agreed CBMs.

The challenge for India is to engage with both constructively and yet be prepared to confront them if necessary. India needs to avoid a two-front situation but it cannot make any undue concessions to either adversary.

India cannot expect backing from external powers on its border differences with China and Pakistan. In fact US is responsible for drawing the LOC in J&K from NJ9842 to the Karakoram Pass arbitrarily. We should demand redress and a return to legality on this issue from US.

US supports China’s territorial integrity but has not extended such support to India’s territorial integrity. We should engage US on this point as a strategic partner.

India gets better understanding on the terrorism issue it is faced with, but the west is unable and unwilling to sanction Pakistan adequately because it needs Pakistan for ensuring an orderly withdrawal from Afghanistan, besides the need to engage Pakistan as a major Islamic and nuclear-armed country.

This explains why despite the west’s willingness to use military means to combat proliferation elsewhere, Pakistan’s rapidly expanding nuclear arsenal is being countenanced, adding to threats to India’s security. The signs of revival of the agenda to limit proliferation in South Asia, excluding the Chinese factor, have to be scotched by us.

The political turmoil in the Arab world, with the Muslim Brotherhood gaining political power in many countries, is steering the Islamic world away from secularism. The growth of influence of Saudi Arabia and Qatar as well as an increasingly Islamized Turkey is not likely to encourage more liberal and modernist thinking in our neighbourhood in the mid-term.

The disturbance of the existing balance between Shias and Sunnis in our neighbourhood can have negative repercussions for us, even internally. We have to remain watchful of these developments in the years ahead.

Upgrading the military infrastructure in the north quickly and accelerating our naval strength in the Indian Ocean are challenges ahead.

The priority of priorities is to improve governance at home because the strength of our external limbs depends on the strength and depth of our roots in the ground.

Finally, if there is any truth in the dictum that more things change the more they remain the same, then it would seem that the future foreign policy challenges for India will remain the same in a different form: protection of our independence and sovereignty, friendship with all and enmity with none and a peaceful environment in which we can economically grow and meet our internal challenges.

[prashanth]

Thanks a lot SSridhar ji. That speech is a keeper.

[abhishek_sharma]

The lasting legacy of a PM by fluke

Gujral’s brief tenure at the helm highlighted the diffusion of power at the Centre and the increasingly local calculus of survival of later governments

The tenure of I.K. Gujral as India’s 13th prime minister since Independence, from April 1997 to March 1998, evokes faint memories now. The United Front (UF, 1996-1998), like most dispensations of the Janata parivar, was fleeting and unruly. Indeed, Gujral’s elevation to the highest political office was a fluke. Its catalyst was the growing personal animosity between the Congress’s Sitaram Kesri and then-PM H.D. Deve Gowda. Hazy political intrigues on both sides ultimately cost the latter his post. The contending regional satraps of the UF agreed upon Gujral in the middle of the night at Andhra Pradesh Bhavan to neutralise their own rivalries.

Indeed, upon hearing that he had been chosen, Gujral was reportedly overwhelmed with anxiety. He had good reason. The Congress precipitated the downfall of his ministry several months later after the UF refused to capitulate to its ham-fisted demand to remove the DMK from its ranks on the basis of the deeply flawed interim report of the Jain Commission. Put harshly, Gujral was a temporary PM of a caretaker administration, now largely consigned to the footnotes of history.

To accept such an appraisal, however, would be a mistake. As PM, Gujral was dealt an extremely difficult hand. This was partly due to his political standing: he lacked an independent power base. Situational factors also played a role. Given the Congress’s track record in toppling similar administrations after briefly propping them up — Charan Singh in 1979 and Chandra Shekhar in 1991 — nobody thought the Gujral ministry would last for long. The prospects of accommodation grew increasingly narrow. Yet the conflicts that ensued within the coalition also demanded a more resilient temperament. Gujral controversially dismissed the CBI director Joginder Singh during the encroaching fodder scam in Bihar, which nevertheless snared Lalu Prasad, to whom he owed his Rajya Sabha seat. Similarly, Gujral proved unable to enjoin collective discipline upon his ministry during the negotiations over the Fifth Pay Commission, which saw many of his colleagues openly support the unions’ demands by joining their rallies in the streets. Finally, despite his strong personal opposition, the Gujral ministry recommended the imposition of Article 356 in Uttar Pradesh at the behest of the SP and CPM. It was only President K.R. Narayanan, asking the cabinet to reconsider its decision, who allowed restraint to prevail.

In short, Gujral proved unable to impose his formal political authority as PM upon colleagues or events. Hence his acceptance of the Akali Dal’s support for his election in Jalandhar in the subsequent 12th general election in March 1998 occasioned dismay in some quarters, but little surprise. If anything, his brief tenure at the helm of state highlighted the diffusion of power at the top and the increasingly local calculus of survival that marked subsequent national multi-party governments, regardless of their ideological persuasions.

A fairer assessment of Gujral’s outlook, judgement and skill, thus, requires a focus on his stints in external affairs. His first came during V.P. Singh’s short-lived National Front government (1989-1990). The desire for better relations in the subcontinent led to forays in Sri Lanka and Nepal, as well as softer political rhetoric vis-à-vis Pakistan. His second innings, during the UF, proved to be more distinctive. It saw the unveiling of the so-called “Gujral doctrine”. On the one hand, Gujral reiterated the need to respect national sovereignty and favour the peaceful resolution of bilateral disputes. On the other, he claimed that India should offer concessions to its smaller neighbours without expecting reciprocity, evoking the Gandhian notion that unconditional acts would help demonstrate political solidarity and enhance mutual trust.

Cynics decried the Gujral doctrine as cant. Sceptics mused that improving political “atmospherics” would do little to alter the ground realities driving particular conflicts. Self-professed realists perceived its organising principle to be a sign of weakness.

Yet, these judgements failed to explain for the signing of the Ganga Waters Accord, in December 1996, which exemplified its latent promise. The accord devised a three-point formula that guaranteed Bangladesh a comparatively greater share during its annual lean season. The election of Sheikh Hasina had provided a crucial opening. Yet it could not have succeeded without Gujral, the first external affairs minister to visit Bangladesh since 1971, or the full acquiescence of then West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu, whom Gujral had sent to Dhaka to demonstrate India’s credibility, despite its possible cost to the state in lean years. For both figures, the strategic calculus of subcontinental relations extended beyond the narrow vantage of zero-sum gain. A similar posture informed Gujral’s other trips across the subcontinent during these years.

The significance of the Gujral doctrine was twofold. First, it represented a more conciliatory strategic approach towards India’s neighbours based on enlightened self-interest. Second, it explicitly fostered the participation of the states in foreign policy, which required the latter in turn to demonstrate requisite statesmanship. Put differently, the Gujral doctrine represented the ideals of the third force more generally. Arguably, it represented a more progressive interpretation of the “federal nationalist” principle, as Balveer Arora has put it, that has shaped the post-colonial Indian state. The recent debacle over the Teesta, which saw Mamata Banerjee undermine the possibility of progress, underscores the difference.

In the end, of course, its real test lay vis-à-vis Pakistan. The UF simultaneously resisted pressure to sign the CTBT while refusing to test the country’s nuclear capabilities. Gujral oversaw the resumption of foreign secretary-level negotiations and the implementation of small confidence-building measures after a long hiatus. The resumption of prime ministerial talks between Gujral and Nawaz Sharif in the spring of 1997 — with the media highlighting the “personal bonhomie” of the two sons of the Punjab — hinted at possibilities. There were limits. Despite supporting “maximum autonomy” in Kashmir, the UF had failed to engage secessionist forces prior to holding flawed state assembly elections in October 1996. It revealed the limits of its federal reflexes and the deeper systemic failure of every political administration in New Delhi to lessen its military presence in the region. Yet one of Gujral’s first acts as PM was to suspend the RAW’s covert activities in Pakistan. The prudence of the decision, which fully came to light following the Lashkar-e-Toiba’s attack on Mumbai in November 2008, showed the risks of making such unilateral concessions. Nonetheless, the move accorded with the spirit of his doctrine.

The opportunities and challenges India faces, in the subcontinent and beyond, are significantly more complex today. The idea of the third force, regardless of what happens in the next general election, is also far less coherent. Yet the principles of the Gujral doctrine are still relevant. They deserve renewed public debate.

The writer is visiting fellow, Project on Democracy and Development, Princeton University, US. He teaches politics at the New School for Social Research, US

[SSridhar]

The above writer is very confused.

[ramana]

Agreed. Quite a quixotic article.

samples

Despite supporting “maximum autonomy” in Kashmir, the UF had failed to engage secessionist forces prior to holding flawed state assembly elections in October 1996. It revealed the limits of its federal reflexes and the deeper systemic failure of every political administration in New Delhi to lessen its military presence in the region.

These elections were to be held in Dec 1995 and thanks to Seshan's fear that PVNR would become invincible he prevented the elections at that time.
Besdies if the terrorists dont participate how does the election become flawed?

Yet one of Gujral’s first acts as PM was to suspend the RAW’s covert activities in Pakistan. The prudence of the decision, which fully came to light following the Lashkar-e-Toiba’s attack on Mumbai in November 2008, showed the risks of making such unilateral concessions. Nonetheless, the move accorded with the spirit of his doctrine.

How does this compute? If such activities were available Saeed and his ilk/Dawood Ibrahim would have got their raisins deniably and be more circumspect in his terrorist activities.

[prashanth]

Dealing with Pakistan’s brinkmanship - Shyam Saran

[rsingh]

India's Foreign Policy - Future Options - Kanwal Sibal at YB Chavan Memorial lecture

Defining national interest is not as easy as it might seem. National polls are not conducted to define a country’s national interest. A broad consensus can be built over years on the essential parameters of such interest. But situations change and judgments have to be made. Often wrong and highly controversial ones are made. Vietnam, Iraq and unleashing Islamic fundamentalism against the Soviets are examples in the American case. India made an error of judgment, for instance, at Simla in 1972.

In reality, countries do not always act in their national interest. It is no country’s interest, for example, to have difficult relations with neighbours, but many countries do, either because they want to dominate them or are insensitive to their concerns. Smaller countries too overplay their hand and provoke their bigger and stronger neighbours.

The enlightened interest of any country is undermined by tensions and conflict. Yet, many countries willfully pursue policies that threaten peace.

If pride makes individuals obstinate and unwilling to compromise, nations too suffer from the “loss of face” syndrome.

Is the form of government relevant in properly defining what would be best in a country’s national interest? In other words, do democratic systems with public debate on policies enable leaders to form a better view of national interest, rather than dictatorial or authoritative systems where policy formulation is personalized and can be whimsical?

But we see that even the most democratic countries make huge mistakes in foreign policy choices and impose costs on themselves and others.

There is the issue of national power and national interest. A powerful country will expand the scope of its national interest in tune with its ambitions and the reach of its power. A weaker country will interpret its national interest more narrowly so as to avoid unnecessary problems.

Globalization and interdependence has also changed notions of national interest because countries know they do not have a free hand and have to give and take much more than before.

In some cases, like the European Union, national interest has been submerged in many ways within a larger community interest. Even sovereignty has been pooled in some key areas.

National interest is a fluid and uncertain concept. A big challenge for India is therefore to be able to define its national interest with discernment, realism, objectivity and foresight.

This is not easy as the backdrop against which analysis and choices are made keeps changing. A broad national consensus on what constitutes national interest is important.

I had earlier spoken of coherence and balance in foreign policy as a continuing challenge.

The international scene has changed a great deal in the last two decades or so. India has needed to adjust its foreign policy accordingly. During the Cold War India considered the Soviet Union a reliable strategic partner, even though the term strategic partner was not used then.

With a world divided into two blocs, India’s compass was nonalignment, with its political empathies more with the eastern bloc whose rhetoric was more friendly towards the third world.

India‘s relations with the western bloc were problematic because of the west’s non-proliferation injunctions, pro-Pakistani policies and economic philosophy.

The nature of our relations with US has been altered in the last few years. Our policies have become convergent in many ways. Improved relations with US has given India more room for manoeuvre regionally and internationally. Strategically, we are being pulled towards US. This means that our relations with US allies have become better too, as, for example, with Japan, South Korea and Australia.

Simultaneously, our relations with Russia have lost the centrality of the past. Even as India’s economic growth is changing its global profile, our economic ties with Russia have relatively shrunk.

Yet Russia is important for the balance of our foreign policy. A weak Russia is not good for the global system. In fact, the space vacated by Russia has been filled by China. US political lobbies still see Russia as a geopolitical threat, as Romney’s statements during the US presidential election showed.

India can do little to boost Russia, except by maintaining the regularity of summit meetings, nurturing the traditionally close defence ties that assure non-disruption of supplies at critical moments as well as access to sensitive technologies, and partnering it in political groupings such as the Russia-India-China dialogue and the BRICS where the west is absent.

The challenge for us to expand our economic ties with Russia. Energy cooperation provides an opportunity so far insufficiently exploited.

India and Russia share the agenda of multipolarity, respect for sovereignty, non-interference in the internal affairs of countries, geo-political abuse of the human rights issues, regime change policies, the proclivity to use military means to find solutions to highly complex issues.

This agenda puts India at cross purposes with many policies of the west. The challenge for India is to maintain the basics of its position but avoid a direct clash with the west over these issues.

Yet, in terms of markets, investment needs- especially to develop our poor infrastructure, access to modern technologies in health, energy, agriculture, industry, building a knowledge economy, participating in global supply chains etc, India needs are much better served by the west. Our people to people relations with the west are strong.

In fact, the needs of India’s growing economy are such that we cannot avoid doing business even with an adversary like China. Not surprisingly, China has therefore emerged as India’s biggest trade partner in goods.

The challenge for India is to successfully play on all geo-political chess boards and optimize what it can extract from others for its own development. This means India should preserve it independence of judgment and action as much as possible even as it conducts itself as a good and reliable partner where partnerships have been formed.

US rhetoric about its relationship with India being a defining one in the 21st century is heady. India-US relations have certainly achieved a degree of balance and maturity, with rapid expansion of bilateral and multilateral engagement. Contentious issues between them have receded into the background.

The US robustly affirms its strategic partnership with India, presenting India with the challenge of leveraging its new strategic ties with that country while maintaining its strategic autonomy.

It has to be borne in mind, however, that in maintaining its global supremacy, but with declining means, US needs to co-opt partners outside the Euro-Atlantic bloc, and India stands out as an obvious one because of its size, human resources, expanding economic base, reasonable military strength and democratic polity.

Even with regard to its new policy of rebalancing towards Asia, intended without being openly stated to put constraints on China’s ambitions, US sees India as a lynchpin. The assumption is that India alone is big enough in Asia to counter China and that India has concerns about China’s rise for its own security, given outstanding border differences and Chinese policies in India’s neighbourhood.

Some political elements in US find India’s ambivalence towards the west and its unwillingness to endorse western policies as the lingering malaise of nonalignment. They see India’s desire to preserve its strategic autonomy as a smokescreen for its nostalgia for nonalignment.

This is, to my mind, a misreading of reality. By strategic autonomy India means friendly ties and mutually beneficial relations with all countries, with its own legitimate- not purely selfish- interests primarily in mind.

It is in this spirit that India has strategic partnerships with a variety of countries. The idea is to develop the basis of long term relationships to mutual advantage, create trust and avoid any policy that hurts the legitimate interests of the other partner.

US has interests spread all over the world by virtue of it being a global power. It cannot expect India to support its policies everywhere. US would want to fit India in the global architecture of its policies. India has no such global architecture in which it wants to fit US. It cannot easily fit US even into the regional architecture of its policies, whether this relates to Pakistan, China’s territorial claims on India, the post Dalai Lama phase in Tibet, Iran etc.

The challenge for India’s foreign policy in the years ahead is to be courted by all and to succumb to no one. Even if India cannot lead, it must not be led.

India has, in fact, shown great resilience, despite its economic and military weakness, to try and stand on its own feet strategically in international affairs. Even big European powers, which have in the past ruled many parts of the world, do not have strategic autonomy today despite the collapse of Soviet Union and communism as an ideology. They willingly subordinate themselves to US.

By choosing strategic self-reliance India has to cope with challenges largely on its own. This requires that India avoid getting into situations it cannot handle, in the main, on its own. It does not have allies to shore up its positions.

The west has never supported India so far on issues of core concern to it, whether political, military or technological. It has now removed certain technological disabilities on India but far from fully.

The developing countries haven’t supported India either on Pakistan, China or nuclear related issues.

This explains why Indian foreign policy tends to be cautious and reticent in taking partisan positions on highly divisive issues.

There are pressures on India to be more forthright, not sit on the fence, be willing to incur costs in upholding the international order and not be a free-loader. India will have to resist such pressures in the years ahead, because many of these arise from the aggressive, dominating habits that the west has not been able to shed, which drives its efforts to shape the world according to its values which it considers universal.

India’s challenge is not to be simply co-opted into the existing international order that is controlled by the west. It must find its due place in it in its own right and be in a position to change the rules rather than simply adhere to existing ones.

The reform of international institutions is therefore very important and India’s discourse on this is legitimate. India should have a greater say in these institutions. Getting a permanent seat in the Security Council will remain a challenge as resistance to this will not go away soon.

Self-esteem and confidence are reflected in India’s claim to a permanent seat. India is not begging; it is claiming. India should pursue this quest, if only to remind that the existing international institutions that uphold the present world order are no longer representative of the international community.

We have to carefully weigh the China factor in seeking redistribution of power at the global level. The gap between India and China has grown so big that in any re-ordering of the world order China can gain more. With China’s world view, its sense of itself, its historical grievances and its territorially expansionist policies, India, which has serious differences with China, cannot be comfortable with a more powerful China within the international system.

China has become too powerful economically and financially and too integrated with the global economy to be contained in the way the Soviet Union was and the way Russia is still being pressured by the west. US pivot towards Asia is not intended to actively confront China; it is to caution it against any adventurism.

US-China relationship is much more intensive than the US-India relationship. We should not pay much attention to the democracy rhetoric. China becoming more democratic is no guarantee against a more muscled Chinese foreign policy.

US and its democratic allies have muscled foreign policies too, as they are using force in many parts of the world at great human cost. Political and moral justification for military action can always be found, with globally powerful media helping to rationalize such action.

Democracy is no insurance against the use of military means to achieve national ends.

Nationalism can be a powerful driver in foreign policy. A more democratic but nationalist China will not be any less of a problem for others.

Unfortunately, China has made it clear that it does not intend to solve the border issue with India; it says it wants it to remain dormant and leave it to the next generation to resolve it. But then, as we have seen in the latest maps on Chinese passports, China is establishing its claims in insidious ways. These actions reveal the longer-term strategy China has in mind.

It is clear Tibet is not reconciled to China’s rule. Dalai Lama’s succession can revive tensions between India and China. India has to make sure Bhutan does not yield to China’s blandishments. China’s rising profile in Sri Lanka and Nepal is a cause of concern. The China-Pakistan axis remains a grave problem.

India has to develop its economic and military muscle to counter the China threat. There is no other way. This is a big challenge for us ahead, even as engage China as others do.

India cannot risk a confrontation with China; its strategy should be to dissuade China from taking the risk of confronting India with visible and independent strategic strength.

India has to find the right balance between engaging China and hedging against it.

Some would say that a critical foreign policy challenge confronting India is the maintenance of friendly ties with its neighbours. India, it is claimed, cannot rise to its potential if it is embroiled in conflicts or tensions with its neighbours. India has supposedly failed in this regard.

Having good relations with neighbours is not a unilateral exercise; it is a reciprocal one. If India should have good relations with its neighbours, then it is equally incumbent on the neighbours to have good relations with India. No one can argue that India’s conduct alone is deficient.

India should, of course, try to do its best to win over the neighbours, but if the neighbours see it in their interest to balance a much larger India by drawing in external powers, and prevent their national identities from being overwhelmed by India’s civilisational and cultural pull by emphasing differences with India and stoking anti-Indian national sentiments, there is little India can do. This challenge will not go away.

The argument that India as the bigger country should be more generous with its neighbours is fallacious. Big countries like China and US do not believe in the merits of this approach. Vietnam and Cuba come to mind.

India’s economic growth will be of key importance for tying our neighbours economically to the Indian market. It will be important to give stakes to a cross section of people in our neighbouring countries in various sectors our economy. In this context the strengthening of SAARC should be a priority.

Our improved relations with US has excluded one external factor that in the past complicated our relations with our neighbours. China, however, remains a problem in this regard.

Pakistan remains a perennial problem. While some aspects of our relations with that country are improving, as for example, in the trade area, larger questions about the rise of Islamic radicalism there and fears that Pakistan could become a failing state are being debated.

There is little that India can do help Pakistan fight its own internal demons. India is, in fact, the reason why these demons exist in the first place. Unless Pakistan radically changes its attitude to India, ceases to whip up religious sentiments against us that feed the jihadi groups, the problem of radicalism in Pakistan cannot be successfully controlled.

India should continue to encourage more economic and people to people ties with Pakistan, but should also be clear-sighted about the serious obstacles in normalizing relations with that country.

We should shed the belief that concessions will make Pakistan more amenable.

India does not need to re-assure Pakistan about its intentions or make Pakistan trust us. The reverse is needed: it is Pakistan that needs to make the requisite effort to convince India that it has abandoned the use of terrorism as state policy.

Do we have a stake in Pakistan’s survival as a united country, or should we encourage the break-up of the country? So long as Pakistan is adversarial, we have no stakes in Pakistan’s territorial integrity. It would be ironical for India to be supportive of Pakistan’s geographical health when it wants a slice away a part of Indian territory.

We should not, however, actively seek to de-stabilize Pakistan, as managing a fragmented Pakistan would raise its own problems.

On the other hand, a broken up Pakistan loses value for the Chinese. Even a chronically unstable Pakistan loses value. It is unlikely that the Chinese will want to rescue Pakistan with economic largesse. In that context, disarray in Pakistan is not unhelpful to us.

Obversely, we cannot have a viable Central Asia and even Afghan policy if Pakistan remains unstable. If this whole region is to be integrated economically, with energy and trade connectivities, the geo-political key is in Pakistan’s hands.

US is backing the project to link Central Asia with South Asia, with TAPI symbolizing this vision, but US’s ability today to bend Pakistan to its will has suffered erosion.

Stability in Afghanistan and containment of the Taliban threat there in a regional context is another challenge that will acquire sharper contours post 2014.

The west is looking for a compromise with the Taliban, believing it can live with an Islamized Afghanistan so long as it is not anti-west. The backing the Muslim Brotherhood is receiving from the west in the Arab world would indicate that practical, realpolitik deals can be made with Islamic radicalism and rationalized. Such a scenario is not in our interest, but the means we have to forestall this are limited.

We have therefore a multifold challenge in Afghanistan, of retaining our presence and influence in that country, creating internal support for us there that can be used to counter the Taliban and the revival of radical forces there that can threaten our security directly with Pakistani support.

Lack of direct access to Afghanistan exposes the lack of a credible Indian policy towards Central Asia. We have to galvanize Iran to cooperate with us for an alternative access to Afghanistan trough Chabahar.

The Iranian nuclear issue has serious implications for India should there be recourse by the west to military action against that country. The de-stabilization of the Gulf region which will occur as a result would be very costly for India, as India has huge energy, manpower and financial interests in the region. India would have to steer clear of the rising Shia-Sunni conflict in the Muslim world.

India’s Look East policy is now facing new challenges with the erstwhile equation between China and East and Southeast Asia disturbed by China’s muscle-flexing in the South China sea.

India has concerns about the freedom of passage through international waters, but otherwise India’s priorities concerns are in the Indian Ocean area. However, for geo-political reasons, India would need to come closer to those countries targetted by Chinese claims, though without getting directly embroiled in the territorial disputes.

In the Indian Ocean area, India should try to maintain its dominant status as a littoral state as much as possible, knowing however that at some stage Chinese presence in these waters will increase, as is portended by China’s active search for port facilities in this area.

India’s declared openness to cooperation with China on maritime issues should be based on the legitimacy of not only China’s presence in the Indian Ocean but also India’s maritime presence close to China’s shores.

India would need to give priority to its relations with Myanmar, now that the latter wants to loosen the Chinese grip over the country. Myanmar is of key importance to create east-west connectivity in this region from which India can benefit greatly. Our challenge is to implement our infrastructure projects in Myanmar without inordinate delays.

As part of our Look East policy, keeping the Chinese dimension in view and bilateral benefits that can accrue to us, India would need to boost its relations with Japan, including mobilizing Japan’s clout in the ADB to finance the east-west corridors in Asia. Our increasing strategic engagement with Japan is a welcome move.

Beyond all these challenges, there are those of energy, food security and of climate change.

The energy issue is not one of foreign policy alone, but it has a strong external dimension for us because of our huge dependence on energy imports.

Our diplomacy will need to facilitate investment in hydrocarbon fields abroad as part of our energy security drive, besides working for avoidance of conflict in areas which are our biggest source of oil and gas. We have a shared interest with US in this but US policies in the Gulf region, driven by the Israeli and Iranian factors, are not in line with our interests as they keep the area on the boil.

Energy, of course, is one area where technology can achieve such breakthroughs as can change the global energy scenario.

Climate change issues, in which energy use and environmental concerns intersect with issues of competitivity and market openings for western technologies, will become a source of increasing external pressure on India in the years ahead.

The water issue in South Asia-Tibet region looms ahead. Apart from countering Pakistan’s cynical manipulation of the water issue to sustain its negative postures towards India, securing Chinese cooperation in transparent handling of the Tibetan dimension will be a challenge.

In the competition for access to natural resources, China is already far ahead of India because of greater financial resources at its disposal and its ability to organize a coordinated national effort to that end which our system does not permit.

A new Indian approach that goes beyond relying on the private sector to make economically rational decisions from their perspective would be needed, but that implies a different way of economic governance.

At the end of it all, the internal and the external cannot be compartmentalized in any country. Success or failure at home will mean success or failure abroad.

The economy is the building block of a successful foreign policy, as required resources then become available to erect defenses at home and to pursue interests abroad.

While it may not be a foreign policy issue per se, the establishment of an indigenous defence manufacturing base is vital for acting independently on the world stage. No country that cannot independently defend itself can reach big power status.

Our external dependence on arms and technology supplies limits the options available to our foreign policy.

In conclusion, it can be said that India faces unique geo-political challenges that will remain in the years ahead.

It has two strategically hostile neighbours, China and Pakistan. Both are strategic partners against India. China has transferred nuclear and missile technology to Pakistan to neutralize India strategically.

Both have claims on India territory. India is the only country of magnitude and importance in the world whose borders are contested, with a Line of Control in J&K with Pakistan and the Line of Actual Control with China. This is an unstable situation inherently whatever the agreed CBMs.

The challenge for India is to engage with both constructively and yet be prepared to confront them if necessary. India needs to avoid a two-front situation but it cannot make any undue concessions to either adversary.

India cannot expect backing from external powers on its border differences with China and Pakistan. In fact US is responsible for drawing the LOC in J&K from NJ9842 to the Karakoram Pass arbitrarily. We should demand redress and a return to legality on this issue from US.

US supports China’s territorial integrity but has not extended such support to India’s territorial integrity. We should engage US on this point as a strategic partner.

India gets better understanding on the terrorism issue it is faced with, but the west is unable and unwilling to sanction Pakistan adequately because it needs Pakistan for ensuring an orderly withdrawal from Afghanistan, besides the need to engage Pakistan as a major Islamic and nuclear-armed country.

This explains why despite the west’s willingness to use military means to combat proliferation elsewhere, Pakistan’s rapidly expanding nuclear arsenal is being countenanced, adding to threats to India’s security. The signs of revival of the agenda to limit proliferation in South Asia, excluding the Chinese factor, have to be scotched by us.

The political turmoil in the Arab world, with the Muslim Brotherhood gaining political power in many countries, is steering the Islamic world away from secularism. The growth of influence of Saudi Arabia and Qatar as well as an increasingly Islamized Turkey is not likely to encourage more liberal and modernist thinking in our neighbourhood in the mid-term.

The disturbance of the existing balance between Shias and Sunnis in our neighbourhood can have negative repercussions for us, even internally. We have to remain watchful of these developments in the years ahead.

Upgrading the military infrastructure in the north quickly and accelerating our naval strength in the Indian Ocean are challenges ahead.

The priority of priorities is to improve governance at home because the strength of our external limbs depends on the strength and depth of our roots in the ground.

Finally, if there is any truth in the dictum that more things change the more they remain the same, then it would seem that the future foreign policy challenges for India will remain the same in a different form: protection of our independence and sovereignty, friendship with all and enmity with none and a peaceful environment in which we can economically grow and meet our internal challenges.

One of the finest post ever on Indian Foreign policy. IMO should be preserved in good post dhaga

[member_23686]

http://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/viewto ... 8#p1375228

here you go

[Ramesh]

http://news.rediff.com/commentary/2012/ ... pdates.htm

19:34 Stop dialogue with Pak on Sir Creek: Modi to PM: Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday asked Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to stop dialogue with Pakistan at once on the Sir Creek issue and demanded that it should not be handed over to the neighbouring nation.

"I am writing on a serious issue of talks being held on Sir Creek being handed over to Pakistan. Any attempt to hand over Sir Creek to Pakistan would be a strategic blunder considering the history and sensitivity of the region," Modi has written in a letter to the PM.

"I would earnestly request you to stop this dialogue with Pakistan at once and Sir Creek should not be handed over to Pakistan," Modi further wrote in the letter.

[ShauryaT]

One of the finest post ever on Indian Foreign policy.

Seriously? I have never been able to understand what he says. Every time he opens his mouth, his words are that of a "babu" who at the end of the day gives us a run down of how things are as reported, without any firm ideas or plans on a way forward. Sibal is the quintessential definition of the Indian diplomat. Always has a view, is never committal.

[Virupaksha]

The order of these priorities is just a regurgation of the utterly failed Nehru's panchsheel policy. I shudder to think that this nonsense is still being peddled. Its not even an old wine in a new bottle. The bottle itself is old.

Finally, if there is any truth in the dictum that more things change the more they remain the same, then it would seem that the future foreign policy challenges for India will remain the same in a different form: protection of our independence and sovereignty, friendship with all and enmity with none and a peaceful environment in which we can economically grow and meet our internal challenges.

panchsheel
Mutual respect for each other's territorial integrity and sovereignty,
Mutual non-aggression,
Mutual non-interference in each other's internal affairs,
Equality and mutual benefit, and
Peaceful co-existence.

[nawabs]

India at the UN security council: a retrospect

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1130123/j ... QYYcVIcanJ

After a gap of two decades, India gained temporary membership of the United Nations security council for a two calendar-year term of 2011/12 in an election that was almost a grand slam triumph, joining at the famous horseshoe table other UN security council aspirants like Germany, Brazil, Nigeria and South Africa. But the Indian spokesman was the only one who exulted, saying that having stepped through the door, India would never leave again. This was obviously hyperbolic; having left the council at the end of 2012, an examination of the Indian profit and loss account is merited.

The government’s view is that India’s membership bolstered its standing as a major global player and received all-round recognition. It took balanced positions on issues of international peace and security, and furthered progress towards security council reform.As chair of the counter-terrorism committee, India ensured that the link between the Taliban and al Qaida was maintained and raised benchmarks to counter terror and address concerns on maritime piracy. A council statement last November recognized for the first time the problem as a global one rather than region-specific and urged all states to cooperate to suppress piracy and release hostages, and constantly to review the piracy high risk area. India stressed the perspective of troop-contributing countries on peacekeeping mandates and the importance of consultations with those countries, rather than passing decisions based merely on discussions among the permanent five members.

This view is to be given full weight, because our ambassador acts as an instrument of New Delhi’s directives, and if the government feels that India has concluded its term with its reputation enhanced, that is cause for satisfaction. However, the view from outside cannot be so sanguine.

In spite of our membership pro tem of the UN security council and our claim to be there permanently, discussions still continue in many UN overlapping forums on the expansion of permanent and non-permanent members — the intergovernmental negotiations, the G-4 (Brazil, India, Germany, Japan) the L-69 (the ‘South’) and the African C-10. But the obstacles remain the same; each contender is strenuously opposed by other countries in its own region, the United States of America is indifferent, and China enjoys being the only Asian permanent member. No formula is available that can command consensus or even secure the required two-thirds majority at the UN general assembly and the support of all the five permanent members. Meanwhile, non-permanent candidates have been nominated from the regional groups till 2034, hardly a measure of confidence in any early outcome.

On Syria, India’s stand appeared confused and contradictory. In March, 2011, India’s representative echoed the BRICS’s neutral position, tending to support the Bashar al-Assad government’s position, supporting Kofi Annan’s mission, a Syrian-led peace process, the commitment of Damascus to such a process and by implication blaming Turkey and some Gulf states for fanning the flames by supporting the insurgents. Also that month, India abstained on a UN human rights council resolution alleging human rights violations by Damascus. India also supported an impartial observer group for supervision and monitoring, although India was not a part of that group and it is not known if India offered to join.

When the security council, led by the US and Europe, tilted against Assad and towards the insurgents, India broke ranks with the Russian/ Chinese position and aligned itself with the West — as it was to do in the UNHRC vote on Sri Lanka. India backed accusations of Assad failing to live up to Syria’s commitments under UN resolutions, and called on Damascus to cease using heavy weapons, even as it became increasingly clear that human rights violations were perpetrated equally by the insurgents, who were being armed by the West, Turkey and the Gulf states.

By 2012, India’s position was allied increasingly with the US and the Gulf, and parted from Russia and China, who continued to veto draft resolutions equating the Syrian government with the insurgents. India voted for a resolution sponsored by the US and Turkey in the UNHRC. In July 2012, it voted in the security council for a one-sided motion sponsored by the West which Russia and China vetoed. Pakistan abstained as did South Africa. So India broke with all the BRICS states, and did not gain credibility with disingenuous explanations after the event. Supporters of India’s vote assert that to abstain would have been to abdicate responsibility as an aspiring permanent member, but critics dubbed India’s vote “dishonest, unprincipled and opportunistic”.

In August 2012, at the UN general assembly, India reaffirmed our abhorrence of regime change in abstaining to vote on a Saudi-sponsored resolution condemning Syria because it implied that Assad should step down, though Russia and China went further and voted against.

Five days after the Israeli attack on Gaza in November 2012, New Delhi finally took a neutral equidistant position, calling on both sides to show restraint, which actually favoured Israel, which seems to have become our ‘strategic partner’. India will not comment on the disproportionate violence used by Israel and on the blockade of Gaza, the root cause of the problem. While no nation disputes Israel’s right to defend itself, an IBSA statement from New York correctly emphasized the urgent lifting of the blockade and supported Palestine’s observer status at the UN.

From the American standpoint, the Middle East has been an important yardstick in its relationship with India, though India has no common cause with the US and self-styled champions of democracy and human rights like Saudi Arabia and Qatar, who have their scores to settle with Assad, Iran and the Shias. India is not interested in inciting sectarian strife in the Arab world or elsewhere and no one has the least idea what a regime change in Syria may portend. We cannot surely be complicit in toppling secular authorities by authoritarian Islamist ones. India was buffeted by contradictory considerations. Reluctant to oppose the US, perhaps it had a pragmatic eye on relations with Assad’s successor government, and manpower, remittances and energy from the Gulf, against exiguous economic ties with Syria.

There was little India could do against general support for Annan’s successor, Lakhdar Brahimi, as the UN special envoy to Syria, but the appointment will result in nothing: Brahimi is a busted flush who failed in his previous UN roles as facilitator in Iraq (2004) and Afghanistan (1997-99).

Pakistan joined the UN security council in January 2012, the election being won in the first round by the smallest margin, with 55 countries voting for rival no-hoper Kyrgyzstan as an obvious negative vote. India voted for Pakistan and proclaimed it had done so, resulting in a rare display of Indo-Pak amity at the UN until the political appointee, Hussain Haroon, was replaced by a career diplomat who reverted to Pakistan’s default uncooperative attitude. The Pakistani army does not hold the UN as priority other than for peacekeeping benefits cherished by its soldiery.

From the outset, Washington had indicated that “responsible behaviour” at the security council, in keeping with that of a permanent member, was expected of India. Such criteria may have weighed on India when it voted with the West on Libya and Syria. India regarded its term on the UN security council as a rehearsal for permanent membership, and in seeking to win the confidence of the West, especially the US, and perhaps consolidate ties with the Gulf states, compromised our position as a progressive free-thinking state. It was an opportunity lost. India did not display the independence to carve out a distinctive made-in-India foreign policy. One sixth of humanity deserves creative thinking and an independent opinion.

India was unable to contribute substantially to thematic, macroeconomic and humanitarian issues such as HIV/AIDS, climate change, and empowerment of women, and introduced no new ideas. There was no progress on cross-border terrorism or its financing although India was the chairman of the counter-terrorism committee. We were unable to use this position to put pressure on Pakistan.

We were not able to capitalize on association in the security council with Germany, Brazil, Nigeria and South Africa. No resolution on Syria was introduced by this group, and neither Annan nor Brahimi visited India for consultations. Manmohan Singh did not attend the UN general assembly in 2012, although he was at the Tehran non-aligned summit the same month. This displayed scant interest in the security council or permanent membership.

The ministry of external affairs is not to blame. It receives eleventh hour instructions from multiple sources: the national security adviser, the prime minister’s office and even 10 Janpath. There is tension between India’s traditional foreign policy positions and the new demands of international relations, resulting in a lack of any definition of India’s role in the world. What might endure in the memory about India’s latest tenure in the UN security council might be the unlamented former foreign minister, S.M. Krishna, reading out someone else’s speech.

[sum]

X-post:

Very interesting article from a very high powered person:
Lesson on diplomacy, from an Iranian

Chinmaya R. Gharekhan

Track II meetings can be useful when participants express their views candidly, without worrying about offending the sensitivities of others. When the event is held in India, visiting think tankers take pain not to upset their hosts. Since most foreigners have rightly concluded that Indians are not only flattery prone but credulous as well, they are usually complimentary about India’s role in various situations such as in Afghanistan, Syria, Middle East, etc.

It is therefore refreshing when a visiting participant in a Track II meeting gives free rein to his views about India’s foreign policy as was the case when an Iranian expert, familiar with the official thinking of his government, spoke his mind at an event in Delhi some time ago. Other Iranian participants at the same meeting spoke in a similar vein.

India, he said, was anxious not to make the United States unhappy. “Your ‘qibla’,” he said, “is Washington.” India was much inclined towards the U.S. and should reconsider striking a balance in its foreign policy; India had some shortcomings and should reconsider its relations with Iran; India was not being pragmatic but opportunistic. Traditionally, India enjoyed huge social capital in Iran; it was hugely popular with the Iranian people. All that had been destroyed for generations in one stroke because of India’s anti-Iran vote in the International Atomic Energy Agency. India could not vote against Iran and claim, at the same time, that Iran was important for India; it just did not make sense. A little later in the interactive session, he reiterated his view that India could not vote against Iran and, at the same time, say it wanted to work with Iran. “I repeat this because it was a very harmful act and it is very hard for any friend of India in Iran to accept this.”

Some Indian participants, evidently upset and taking advantage of this candour, reminded the Iranian gentleman that Iran had always sided with Pakistan and asked him what it was that Iran had done for India, that Iran was buying wheat from the U.S. but was not willing to buy it from India, that Iran was spreading radicalisation among the Shia community in India, that India says Iran is important for India but Iran never says India is important for Iran, etc. Someone pointed out that Shiite Iran supported the Taliban in Afghanistan, which was a diehard Sunni movement.

The Iranian friend — we have to describe him as a friend since friends are supposed to talk frankly without worrying about offending anyone — was not nonplussed. It was not Iran which placed obstacles for Indian wheat sales in Iran; this was a matter of business considerations. He added that India could not have an unfriendly attitude towards Iran and, at the same time, expect special consideration. Iran was a land of moderation, not a land of extremism; it never exported Shia extremism to India. If there is Shia extremism in India, there is also Hindu extremism, he added for good measure. As for supporting Pakistan, he said Iran had to, since Pakistan was a neighbour and a friendly country, but Iran had never done anything against India and wanted to be helpful to both. He rubbished the reports about supporting the Taliban and added that India had been in touch with the Taliban.

The red bolded part is a term gifted from UPA to all of India's enemies which India will have to bear for the rest of its history

As of today — and this must be emphasised — Iran certainly needs India’s friendship. It is true that our anti-Iran vote in IAEA has harmed our relations with Tehran, but international relations cannot forever be held hostage to past actions. We ourselves have long forgotten even the fact that many countries had voted against us in the United Nations at the time of Bangladesh’s war for independence in 1971.

No section of Iranian society saw nuclear weapons as a matter of privilege or security. Islamic jurisprudence specifically forbade intentionally polluting the atmosphere. Nuclear weapons did not provide security to nuclear weapon states; the U.S. and Nato had nukes but of what use had they been in Afghanistan? Had India been able to use them against Pakistan? As for some ‘evidence’ contained in a laptop revealed in Vienna, it was fabricated and a cheap argument.

The ‘friend’ used the very point raised by the Saudis and others; India, he pointed out, could easily get oil from other sources, Iran was not really important for India as an energy source.

Instead of taking offence at his remarks, we ought to draw some lessons from them.

Unlike Iran, which never says India is important for it, Indian strategic community never tires of repeating how crucial Iran is to us for its energy resources, for alternative access to Afghanistan and for the northern corridor to Central Asia. For good measure, we often remind ourselves of the fact that there is a large Shia community in India, the assumption being that the Shias in India expect the government to be mindful of their religious sentiments while deciding on the policy towards Iran. Such talk only strengthens Iran’s attitude of being somewhat contemptuous or dismissive of India. It further makes people in Iran and India conclude that India needs Iran much more than Iran needs India, if at all.

The Iranian friend was right; there are other sources from where India can buy oil. Saudi Arabia would be delighted if we were to turn to it to make up the shortfall, since it would clearly be interpreted as India siding with it in the undeclared politico-sectarian war against Iran. (This is one reason why India would not want to do so.) But the number of buyers of Iranian oil is dwindling fast and Iran is hard put to find alternative buyers, even at discounted prices. Contrary to what our friend said, his Oil Minister has publicly acknowledged that Iran’s oil exports fell by 40 per cent last year.

Iran needs India’s friendship

The Prime Minister paid an official visit to Iran last year for the non-aligned summit, no doubt upsetting the Americans. The fact that he was ‘granted an audience’ by the supreme leader should not flatter us. Iran certainly needs friends like India. Would the supreme leader have ‘received’ the Prime Minister if his country did not face sanctions? Iran surely knows that India has not joined in the unilateral sanctions imposed by the West. If Iran, in the face of these facts, has convinced itself that India’s ‘qibla’ is in the direction of Washington, there is nothing we can do to disabuse it of its thinking.

The above analysis is not an argument for downgrading Iran’s importance for us and for the region of which it is a part. Rather, it is meant to keep in mind what Harish Khare, the respected columnist, recently observed: Appeasement policy does not serve national interest, in domestic politics or in international relations. His advice is aimed at the government but is equally true at the non-governmental level. International relations must be conducted on the basis of reciprocity and mutuality of interests. We also have to keep in mind that countries which at present have strained, even hostile relations with Iran, can and will change their policy at a time of their choosing; we should not be left surprised.

[SSridhar]

Very interesting article from a very high powered person:
Lesson on diplomacy, from an Iranian - Chinmaya R. Gharekhan

Since most foreigners have rightly concluded that Indians are not only flattery prone but credulous as well, they are usually complimentary about India’s role in various situations such as in Afghanistan, Syria, Middle East, etc.

Absolutely true. Most especially with our Prime Ministers (without exception) and that was why we Indians tremble whenever a one-on-one meeting is said to have taken place between the Indian PM and his/her counterpart. We know for certain some concession would have been made without much in return but the worrying thing is we wouldn't know what these are.

[ramana]

SS, Read about Helsinki accords and what was the fallout. And about Ostpolitik of Helmut Khol.

[ramana]

From Vsunder:

I am not sure if you know the story of the Jam Saheb of Nawanagar/Jamnagar.
He saved over 2000 Polish children in WW2. Later the Maharaja of Kolhapur
also chipped in. It is a fantastic story. I had heard it years before.
Here are two links. The second one is a documentary.

http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?268578

http://kresy-siberia.org/galleries/refu ... s-in-india

The son of this Jam saheb that is the current one had some minor
role to play during the 1971 ops. There are some comic
incidents also and related in PC Lal's book and also
somewhere in interviews with Pete Wilson.


There was another Pole who seems to have played a role
in getting other Maharaja's to bring the children.
This is Maurice Frydman the disciple of Ramana Maharshi.
Later he got sanyas from Swami Ramdas of Kanhangad,
Kerala. Frydman also was a friend of Appa Pant and
initiator of the Aundh experiment. Frydman
also started the refugee camps for Tibetans in 1959
and may have influenced Appa Pant to escort the Dalai
Lama on his first tour of India. Appa was a "surya namaskar"
fanatic and has written a book on that. There is even a story
that Frydman took him to see Ramana Maharshi and Appa then
demonstrated surya namaskar to the old man. The old man
shrewd as he was ( I say it affectionately) had some very
interesting things to say. Enjoy the links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aundh_Experiment

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Frydman

http://www.among-friends.ca/spiritual-w ... rydman.htm

Appa Pant was the crown prince of Aundh and then became indian
ambassador to East Africa after independence and also was posted to
Sikkim and gave many reports to JLN about Chinese perfidy
you can read about all this in many books.

Later during 1971 he was Indian high commissioner to the UK.

Bollywood could have made own Schindler's list but then they are all about ersatz Hollywood!!!

ramana

[SSridhar]

We Would Rather be Called a Re-emerging Power: NSA - Sandeep Dikshit, The Hindu

National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon caused a bit of consternation at the Munich Security Conference when he pointed out that the Western construct of labelling India, China and other developing countries as “emerging nations” did not do justice to their history.

Speaking at the first-ever special session on “rising powers and global governance,” an accommodation to the economic rise of India, China, Brazil and other countries at the Security Conference, Mr. Menon felt he was not sure if this label fitted the description.

Contrary to the western discourse of calling these nations emerging powers, he pointed out that several others felt these countries were in the process of restoring the historical norm in the international hierarchy and distribution of power. “Re-emerging powers would be less condescending,” he suggested.

Along with Chinese Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs Song Tao, he sought to debunk the notion — largely inspired by Western history — that the re-emergence of these countries on the global stage would lead to conflict and dissonance in the global order. Such concepts were a result of the European experience since the Treaty of Westphalia — four out of five instances of reordering of the balance of power had involved conflicts of massive proportions. This led to the assumption that the rest of the world will follow a similar course.

“Why not a smooth readjustment?”

Past experience and logic suggests that readjustment can be smooth. For instance, the redistribution of economic power over the past two decades had been peaceful.

“It is natural that those who worry about readjustment of power look to instruments of global governance to prevent it. The world suffers from a deficit of global governance. It is noticeable by its absence,” Mr. Menon said, while observing that though there were 300 multilateral instruments, their legitimacy had declined and effectiveness questionable. That is why military solutions were being implemented to check crises, whether it was in Libya or Syria.

“India realises that established powers were not going to willingly share power unless it became imperative in their self-interest due to unprecedented developments. This was human nature,” he reasoned, to keep such developments in abeyance as long as possible. As a result, no European power was laying down new rules of global governance nor were they projecting an alternative vision of a world order.

In the coming days, Mr. Menon suggested genuine global governance to face future challenges to security in areas such as cyberspace, outer space, food and energy.

Food for thought from Africa

If Mr. Menon went against the flow, Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala too gave the organisers further food for thought by asking why Africa was not at the podium along with representatives from China, India, Singapore and Brazil. With one billion people, the African continent was as populous as China and India. While China would be facing an ageing problem, 60 per cent of Africa was under 30 years of age. Economic growth was five per cent annually and will continue to remain at that level in the years to come.

Its countries were gradually becoming stable democracies and key topics at the Conference were about African countries — Mali and Egypt, she said.

“I support your view,” said Singapore Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen while Mr. Menon and Brazilian Foreign Minister Antonio de Aguiar Patriota nodded approvingly.

[chaanakya]

x-posted
Purulia arms case: Denmark asks India to give fresh proposal for Davy extradition

New Delhi: Talks between India and Denmark on expediting the extradition of prime accused in Purulia arms drop case Kim Davy to face trial here failed to make any headway on Thursday as the European country asked for a fresh proposal which will be examined by their justice department. "The talks were held in a cordial manner and there was a discussion on extradition of Kim Davy," Union Home Secretary RK Singh told reporters.

However, sources in the delegation said the Indian side expressed their disappointment over sending a fresh proposal and conveyed that this would delay in bringing the accused to justice. It was conveyed that it took nine years for Denmark to decide on the earlier extradition request and the fresh proposal appeared to be a delaying tactics yet again.

The visiting Danish delegation headed by Deputy Permanent Secretary in the Justice Ministry Jens Christian Bulow assured India that any fresh proposal might be expeditiously processed. CBI reiterated its earlier offer asking them to handover Davy to India so that he could stand a trial here and, if sentenced, can serve the prison term in Denmark, the sources said.


The Home Secretary also said there was a provision in the law whereby prisoners can be transferred to their country for serving the prison term. The Indian delegation comprising officials from Home, Law and External Affairs Ministries and CBI was led by Special Secretary (Internal Secretary) in the Home Ministry S Jayaraman.

India has also made an option to try Davy in a special court within the Indian Embassy in Copenhagen. After a Denmark court had turned down the extradition plea and the authorities in Copenhagen refused to go in for appeal, India, in a bid to put pressure, scaled down its diplomatic relations with that country last year.

The case relates to an incident on the night of December 17, 1995, when an AN-26 aircraft dropped arms and ammunition in West Bengal's Purulia district. The consignment had hundreds of AK-47 rifles, pistols, anti-tank grenades, rocket launchers and thousands of rounds of ammunition.

Five Latvians and British national Peter Bleach were arrested in connection with the incident. However, Davy, a Danish citizen, and the prime accused in the case, had managed to escape. Since then, the Indian government has been pressing for his extradition to India with the Danish government.

The extradition order was passed by Danish government on April 9, 2010. However, Davy had approached a local court challenging the order of the Danish government. The court set aside the order.

Thereafter, an appeal of Danish government was also set aside by the High Court in Denmark on the ground that if Davy is extradited to India for prosecution, there would be a real risk that he would be subjected to treatment in violation of article 3 of the European Human Rights Convention.

The arrested Latvian crew members were released from a prison in Kolkata in 2000 after requests from Russian authorities while Bleach was given a presidential pardon in 2004 following requests by British government.

[abhishek_sharma]

When India drew Top Secret ‘red line’ in Mauritius

[arun]

X Posted from the "India-EU News and Analysis" thread.

The Italian Government has reneged on its commitment to send back the trigger happy Italian Marines who murdered India fishermen.

It will be interesting to see what spin the Italian born Party Boss of Congress Party , namely Mrs. Sonia Gandhi will have to put on this matter. As party leader of the ruling Congress Party led UPA coalition administration of Dr. Manmohan Singh it is not going to be easy to shift the blame for this error in judgement.:

Italy Won't Send Accused Marines Back to India

[pentaiah]

Our BS Raman will write a ten point article of no value
in out look

[shyamd]

x post

Mission Afghanistan

ANANTH DURAI 15 March 2013 Subjects:Afghanistan India Security in South and Central Asia Peacebuilding Policing Bordering on Peace?
India must take on a global leadership role, providing both economic and military aid together with regional/global partners, in support of the Afghan government.

The recent visit of Afghan president Hamid Karzai to India has highlighted the strong and growing cooperation between the two countries. Since the toppling of the Taliban regime in 2001, India has offered close to $2 billion in mostly economic and humanitarian aid. The signing of a strategic partnership agreement in 2011 paved the way for deepening bilateral relations. The Indian government's Public Sector Units (PSU) consortium won a large mining concession in Hajigak, an investment that will lead to the construction of a steel mill – and that some estimate in the region of $8 billion. India has also paid in blood for the stability and support of Afghanistan, most recently in an attack on Indian Army doctors.

But what exactly is India’s game plan in Afghanistan? To answer this, we need to understand the regional picture.

All quiet on the northern front

India has had tremendous success in eliminating terrorists inside Jammu and Kashmir state (J&K) over the last five years with intelligence reports appearing to indicate frustration among the ranks of the terrorists at the lack of support by the Pakistani authorities for their war in Kashmir. Terror attacks are at an all time low and have been low in the last three years in J&K. Tourism to the state has reached record levels (9 million visitors as of October 2012) and progress is being made economically in the lives of ordinary citizens in the region.

During 2012, Indian police received over 1000 amnesty applications from youths who had crossed over to Pakistan at the height of the insurgency from J&K for arms training, wishing to return to India and rebuild their lives. This has been encouraged by cutbacks in Pakistani funding for Kashmiri organisations, as well as the futility of terrorist activity.

Unfortunately all this success cannot be attributed to Indian diplomacy, so much as to the regional geopolitical situation. Evidence arising from the interrogation of terrorists under arrest supported by intelligence reports suggest that the Pakistani establishment appears to be encouraging Kashmiri groups to turn their gaze towards fighting US/ISAF troops in Afghanistan. This is supported further by numerous arrests and intelligence reports from the ISAF in Afghanistan. It is no secret that Pakistan continues to provide support/sanctuary to the Taliban and its allies such as the Haqqani network.

We can conclude as a result that Pakistani efforts and priorities appear to be lie in securing its ‘backyard’ and ensuring that the ISAF/US forces vacate Afghanistan, paving the way for the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, post 2014.

But why? The main reason appears to be to put a stop to Pashtun nationalism thereby also ensuring that the current Afghan security establishments don’t become a further tool to be used against Pakistan, forcing them to deploy their armies in the defence of two borders.

So what is India doing to prevent a Taliban takeover in Afghanistan?

India is following a three-fold approach:

- Training Afghan National Security Forces to fight the Taliban.
- Encouraging economic investment in the Afghan government to enable them to raise tax revenue to fund the fight against the Taliban.
- Helping support the functioning of the Afghan government in a variety of ways – training officials, building the National Parliament building and many other programmes designed to deliver effective governance to the people of Afghanistan.
India has already trained hundreds of mid-level Afghan military officers according to analysts, and this now appears to be escalating. India has agreed to train 600 officers every year since the visit of President Karzai, and in addition will also help train companies (100 men) of ANA soldiers in order to develop the cohesion of ANA units.

In addition to this, Indian Air Force pilots will help train their counterparts in the ANSF to support operations. Efforts will only increase over the next few years to ensure that a viable and sustainable government stays put in Kabul. But India can and needs to do more in Afghanistan.

Solutions for a global problem

A return of the Taliban after 2014 will mean that jihadis battling US/ISAF troops will now look around for a new focus and this is likely to be regional hotspots – J&K, Chechnya, Iran, Xinjiang amongst others. Of most concern to India is obviously J&K. Thankfully our security establishment is preparing for such a flare up post 2014. However, an escalation in J&K or at the Indian Line of Control will mean all the hard work of improving the economy and weaning away jihadists over the last ten years could go to waste. Perhaps another Kargil could be planned by Pakistan, in which thousands of lives and billions of dollars are spent on fighting each other which could be devoted to improving the lives of citizens.

However, India at the moment has chosen a bilateral approach together with Russia and Iran to discuss Afghanistan at a National Security Council level. But it is important to remind security establishments worldwide that a Taliban return is a problem for everyone. India has an opportunity to lead a regional and even global partnership effort to support the Afghan government. This will have to involve economic and military aid.

Rawalpindi fears

The Pakistani position is that India’s close relations with Afghanistan stems from India’s ambition to encircle Pakistan. But it’s never too late to remind the Pakistani’s that they continue to support terrorist acts in India and have used Afghanistan as a base for attacks against India. Nations have two choices – cooperation or conflict. Despite the continued acts of terrorism supported by the Pakistani military – India has made every attempt to seek cooperation –as is proved by the Sharm El Sheikh agreement delinking terror from bilateral relations (despite lack of support for this from the Indian public). Despite these efforts, we look across the border and we see the terror infrastructure largely intact. To date, the Pakistani Army has not revised its doctrine of ‘strategic depth’ in Afghanistan – a view we share with the US and its allies.

During the Taliban-controlled Afghanistan years, Pakistan left their northern borders largely undefended while a major proportion of Pakistani military resources were used to support their military on the borders with India.

Eventually, India will be forced to take the view that the continued support of terror by Pakistan will have to be met with a longterm response. That response is likely to involve supporting the Afghan government with military supplies (thus far India has refrained from doing so despite Afghan requests in the hope that Pakistan will maybe opt for cooperation instead of conflict) and even a military presence that ensures that Pakistan will have to guard their northern borders. Guarding their northern borders will mean deploying their meagre resources towards developing new infrastructure, more weapons and leaving the southern borders much less defended. This will make Pakistan vulnerable. This weakness is likely to result in Pakistan having to stop their terror support activities due to lack of resources and also to the absence of resources enabling their defence against any Indian military retaliation.

To conclude, India is likely to revisit their decision not to supply the ANSF with offensive weapons in 2014, if Pakistan continues to support terrorism on Indian soil. In the coming year, the PM of India, Manmohan Singh should also consider having a serious dialogue with the military leaders of Pakistan offering a no-war agreement in exchange for total cessation of support for terror.

This can only be secured with the support of Pakistan’s close allies – the GCC, China and the USA. This is precisely the reason why Indian strategists have done well to open a good line of communication between these three parties. Whether Pakistan will agree to such a proposal remains to be seen. The ball is in Pakistan’s court: will Pakistan decide between cooperation or conflict?

India must also take on a global leadership role, providing both economic and military aid together with regional/global partners in support of the Afghan government. A failure to do this could cost citizens in the region very dearly.

[SSridhar]

On the whole, our foreign policy appears to be completely in tatters wherever we look at.

[member_23858]

^^Or May be we are just waiting for mama and baba to leave the sultanate gaddi...we were not so poor during Vajpayee government

[arun]

X Posted from the "Indo-French Ties" thread.

France does an Italy as French troops kill two Indians in the Central African Republic:

French troops kill two Indians in accidental shooting

[RajeshA]

Shri Narendra Modi talks on 'Vibrant Growth Model' with Chambers of Industry, Kolkata on Apr 09, 2013



@1:17:42

[ramana]

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/ ... ign-policy

FOREIGN AFFAIRS MAGAZINE
India's Feeble Foreign Policy

A Would-Be Great Power Resists Its Own Rise

By Manjari Chatterjee Miller

May/June 2013

Article Summary and Author Biography

The world may expect great things from India, but as extensive reporting reveals, Indians themselves turn out to be deeply skeptical about their country’s potential. That attitude, plus New Delhi’s dysfunctional foreign-policy bureaucracy, prevent long-term planning of the sort China has mastered -- and are holding India back.

MANJARI CHATTERJEE MILLER is Assistant Professor of International Relations at Boston University. She is the author of the forthcoming book Wronged by Empire: Post-imperial Ideology and Foreign Policy in India and China.

For the last decade, few trends have captured the world’s attention as much as the so-called rise of the rest, the spectacular economic and political emergence of powers such as China and India. Particularly in the United States, India watchers point to the country’s large and rapidly expanding economy, its huge population, and its nuclear weapons as signs of its imminent greatness. Other observers fret about the pace of India’s rise, asking whether New Delhi is living up to its potential, whether the country’s shoddy infrastructure will hold it back, and whether it is strong enough to counter an increasingly ambitious China. All of this frenzied discussion, however, overlooks a simple fact: within India itself, the foreign policy elite shies away from any talk of the country’s rising status. As a senior official who has worked on India’s relations with Western countries recently told me, “There is a hysterical sense, encouraged by the West, about India’s rise.” A top-level official in India’s foreign ministry echoed the sentiment: “When do we Indians talk about it? We don’t.”

What explains this discrepancy? As I found through a series of interviews with senior officials in the Indian government, many of whom requested anonymity, it is a result of three important facts that have gone largely unnoticed in the West. First, 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. Second, 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. Third, 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. As one senior official with experience in the prime minister’s office said, the West’s labeling of India as a rising power is “a rope to hang ourselves.” By contrast, Chinese political leaders and intellectuals pay a great deal of attention to the international hype surrounding their country’s emergence, and Chinese think tanks and media outlets regularly try to shape and respond to this discourse.

India’s discomfort with being labeled a rising power should lower Washington’s ambitions for its partnership with New Delhi. India can be convinced to play an international role in areas where its narrow interests are at stake, but it will not respond positively to abstract calls for it to assume more global responsibility.

TACTICS WITHOUT STRATEGY

By and large, three bodies in the Indian government work together to make foreign policy: the prime minister’s office; the National Security Council, led by a powerful national security adviser; and the foreign ministry. The prime minister’s office is seen as the ultimate seat of authority, and other foreign-policy makers jockey to move closer to it. One factor, however, cuts across all three bodies. All three offices and their top positions are filled by Indian Foreign Service officers. Understanding the structure of the foreign service and the role of its officers is essential to explaining why the rise of India garners more attention in New York than it does in New Delhi.

The Indian civil service was created by the British government in the nineteenth century to help administer its vast colonial empire. Known as “the steel frame” of British rule on the subcontinent, the civil service was retained by India after it won its independence in 1947. The service remains highly prestigious today: new officers are selected through a competitive civil-service exam and sorted into the various branches based on their rank. The foreign service stands out as one of India’s most elite institutions, reportedly accepting recruits at a rate of only 0.01 percent. Unlike the diplomatic corps in China, for example, in which officers are recruited according to need, a fixed number of Indians are admitted into the foreign service each year. And unlike in the United States, in India, the most significant ambassadorial and foreign policy jobs are usually filled by career civil servants rather than political appointees.

Once they survive the cut-throat admissions process, the foreign service officers go on to serve as key advisers in the prime minister’s office, on the National Security Council, and at the foreign ministry. They also tend to hold the most powerful positions within these bodies: the foreign secretary, the administrative head of the foreign ministry, is always a foreign service officer. And three of the four people who have held the position of national security adviser since the post was created in 1998, including the current one, Shivshankar Menon, have been foreign service officers.

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.

My interviews with top officials revealed that there are few, if any, top-down guidelines for the making of Indian foreign policy. The senior official who has dealt with Western countries told me, “We have a great deal of flexibility and autonomy in shaping policy on a day-to-day basis within the overarching framework of policy.” Pressed to explain that framework, the official said, “It is not written anywhere or formalized. . . . It’s expressed in speeches and parliamentary statements.” After a brief pause, the official admitted with a laugh, “But those damn things are also written by us,” referring to the foreign service officers.

Several current and former ambassadors confirmed this situation, stressing the lack of top-down planning. One ambassador with close links to the national security adviser’s office put it this way: “You make up your own goals, which is hugely enjoyable and has impact. But it would be nice to have direction from time to time.” A former ambassador to several European countries agreed, saying, “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.” Another former ambassador elaborated:

I was completely autonomous as ambassador. There is little to no instruction from the [prime minister’s office], even in cases of major countries. I had to take decisions based on a hunch. I sometimes got very, very broad directives. But I violated virtually all of them. The prime minister was a temperamental man who told me that politically it was suicide and that if it were made public, he would disown me. The fact that I got it right had a lot to do with luck.

Not only do India’s foreign service officers wield enormous power; they also enjoy near anonymity of action. The ultimate responsibility for their decisions lies with the political figures in charge: the prime minister and the foreign minister. They must play the tricky game of persuading the political leadership to accept their decisions, resulting in a bottom-up policymaking process. As Jaswant Singh, a former foreign minister, explained, “If a [foreign] minister has the skills to command the respect of the [foreign ministry’s] officers, he will make policy and implement it. Otherwise, it is the civil servants who make the policy and the minister is simply the figurehead.”

This lack of top-down instruction means that long-term planning is virtually impossible. Many of the officials I interviewed confirmed that India produces no internal documents or white papers on grand strategy. Moreover, newly minted ambassadors are given very loose guidelines and little background information about their regions of responsibility, and they are not required to produce reports on their goals.

Other factors contribute to the lack of long-term planning. 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.” Officials at both the foreign ministry and the prime minister’s office described their roles as too often consisting of either putting out fires or getting bogged down with the mundane, and they expressed concerns about the shortage of personnel. Moreover, the two departments within the foreign ministry that are supposedly meant to handle long-term strategizing, the Policy, Planning, Research Division and the Public Diplomacy Division, are widely seen as lacking clout.

The absence of grand strategic thinking in the Indian foreign policy establishment is amplified by 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. But in India, there are very few policy-oriented research institutions that focus on international relations. Those that do are often private organizations funded by large corporations, so they inevitably focus chiefly on trade issues. Even when Indian think tanks house retired foreign service officers and ambassadors -- who often have access to senior government officials -- they are still not seen by the government as useful sources of advice. This is true even for India’s best-known think tanks, including the Centre for Policy Research, which houses first-rate experts, and the Ministry of Defense–funded Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses.

When asked whether policymakers ever consult with think tanks, the senior official who has experience working with Western countries replied, “It is very different from the United States. . . . I sometimes talk to individuals [at think tanks] but on a personal basis -- the problem is think tanks don’t have much information or access to government information.” Another official who has worked in the foreign ministry similarly stated, “We just don’t have that kind of intellectual input yet. We recognize that we can’t become a superpower without it.” This lack of consultation stands in sharp contrast to the situation in China, where regular interaction among the government, intellectuals, and think tanks results in prolific debates about the domestic and international ramifications of the country’s rise.

Countries that aspire to great-power status usually look beyond tactical challenges, imagine a world that best suits their interests, and work to make that vision a reality. The problem for New Delhi is that its foreign policy apparatus is not yet designed to do that. India’s inability to develop top-down, long-term strategies means that it cannot systematically consider the implications of its growing power. So long as this remains the case, the country will not play the role in global affairs that many expect.

EXPECTATIONS GAME

Although perhaps flattering to Indian officials, the international discourse on India’s rise also makes them deeply uneasy. This is because it risks raising expectations -- for the Indian economy to grow at a pace that is simply not achievable and for New Delhi to take on an international leadership role that it does not want to assume.

Several of the officials I interviewed referred to the fiasco of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s 2004 “India Shining” campaign as an example of this liability. During the 2004 national elections, the ruling BJP campaigned on the successes of the Indian economy, all but ignoring the daily struggles of the vast majority of the population without access to basic services. The BJP’s subsequent trouncing served as a cautionary tale to Indian leaders about prematurely promoting their country’s emergence. Now, as the ambassador who is close to the national security adviser’s office pointed out, “The prime minister does not have one speech where he talks about the rise of India but not about [the need for] growth.” To be successful, Indian politicians need to spend more time focusing on domestic issues and the economy than on trumpeting their foreign policy clout.

New Delhi’s caution about raising expectations is tied to its fear that a growing India might have to take on responsibilities commensurate with its power. Officials who have worked with the foreign ministry and the prime minister’s office told me that the disadvantage of the international discourse on India’s rise was that the West, particularly the United States, might pressure India to step up its global commitments. India might have to abandon its status as a developing country and could be forced to make concessions on environmental issues, such as limiting its carbon emissions, and on trade, such as opening up the Indian market further to U.S. exports. India has not adequately thought through what its growing clout will mean in terms of assuming global leadership.

This fact has had significant bearing on New Delhi’s foreign policy, and it should be taken into account by other countries when they consider how to approach India. India’s discomfort with the idea that great power brings great responsibility means that the United States and other Western countries must be cautious about asking India to assume a larger international role. New Delhi is not likely to take the lead on climate change or support ambitious humanitarian interventions. Nor will it eagerly sign on to efforts to bring down barriers to global trade -- after all, India still sees itself as a developing country that needs to rely on protectionism to nurture its infant industries. And despite India’s tense relations with China and its pride in being a democracy, New Delhi will be wary of Washington’s efforts to impose on it the status and the burdens of acting as a liberal counterweight to an authoritarian China.

New Delhi’s strategic thinking may be strengthened by the recently proposed expansion of the Indian Foreign Service, the growing number of Indian think tanks, and the increasing interest of the Indian diaspora -- which has come to play a large role in New Delhi’s economic diplomacy -- in Indian foreign policy. In the meantime, if the West wants India to play a larger international role, it needs to offer the country concrete incentives and assurances that discussions of its rise are not simply excuses to force it to make concessions. By supporting India’s long-standing desire to join the UN Security Council as a permanent member, for example, the international community can signal that it wants to both empower India and give it a greater say in world affairs. India might eventually find that although global leadership can be a burden, it also has its benefits.

A lot of people want India to adopt a US type trajectory of the 1890s and be assertive. Well India has some challengers and challenges which have to be settled. And the US trajectory may not be the ideal one.

_______________________________________

[RajeshA]

Published on May 13, 2013
By M K Bhadrakumar
Foreign policy and jingoism don’t go together: Russia Report

India's Anti-National-Foreign-Policy-Journalist-in-Chief tries to sell why India should do GUBO before each and everybody!

[kmkraoind]

Ambassadors in revolt as several threaten to quit if overlooked for foreign secretary's job - DailyMail

The clear favourite for the position was the most senior official Sujata Singh, the Indian Ambassador to Germany. She is the top officer in contention, and is also the daughter of T.V. Rajeshwar, former chief of the Intelligence Bureau and Uttar Pradesh Governor.
But Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's choice is S. Jaishankar, India's Ambassador to China, who has a good record as a bold envoy.

While the PM now is asserting himself to get his favourite the top job, National Security Adviser Shiv Shankar Menon, a former foreign secretary is believed to be backing the current Secretary (West) Sudhir Vyas as foreign secretary.

Sources say that amongst those who are believed to have conveyed their desire to quit are Singh, currently the Indian Ambassador to Germany, Jaimini Bhagwati, the Indian envoy to the UK, the Indian Ambassador to Turkey besides two senior secretaries in the foreign ministry, Vyas and secretary, Public Diplomacy Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty.

"He is junior to us. They can't do this. We certainly can't work under him," a senior official told Mail Today on the move to pitch Jaishankar for the top post.

At one point Singh's appointment seemed to sail through as even the UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi would have also been supportive of the idea pushing for the senior-most official, who comes from a family of an old Gandhi family loyalist.

But Jaishankar's stock rose following the visit of the Chinese Premier, and the argument in his favour was that the envoy has impeccable credentials and is known for out of the box ideas. He also saved the Government from a big diplomatic crisis with China.

I have an idea. Better for Kiddo Rahul to play the dart game, the person who get first hit with a dart with the next foreign secretary. Do not whether to weep or laugh.

[KLNMurthy]

National Interest: Accidentally, in history

Can this link please be put on the first page link list of TSP thread of not already there? This seems to be the rare bit of documentation that shows that pokhran 2 was a reaction to Paki blackmail, and not a provocation in itself as DDM propaganda has it.

[ramana]

Also S Jaishankar had worked on the IUCNA deal and ran the gamut of the land mines.

[ramana]

A year ago the following posts were made in the US-PRC and their relationship to TSP thread...
We should have x-posted them here.

The US and its allies have agreed on a design(a structure) wrt to world governance. Believe it or not, both china and russia play(consciously) a positive role in "maintaining" and "developing" this structure. The whole US v/s Russia v/s China is just a power tussle. It does not mean that any of these N5 states oppose this "structure". Note the importance of N5 in this structure; some are of lesser strength compared to the other but none of them are "subordinates" to the other. Their strategic plans match most of the time but sometimes they do not (eg: Afg) and this disagreement prevents a solution.

India is not a part of this structure. Nehru might have been prevented by compulsions during the indo-china war but his idea of "disassociation" from the structure continues to this day whether it be nda or upa.

The decision by the MMRCA is a substantial proof of this idea. Most people do not understand india's strategic decisions. They do not understand that india wouldn't have chosen the US and its allies even if the F22 was up for sale. The hierarchy of autonomy flows like below:

1) US
2) US allies
3) N5
4) Spectator states(sheeps?)

Autonomy decreases to a complete zilch once you move from bottom to the top. France is still a part of the N5 and its structure. Lets hope that india bought the whole rafale program because that alone can guarantee unquestionable autonomy.

It's very important that everyone understands the concept of N5 to avoid confusion. I know everyone "instinctively" recognizes the convergence between US and china but are not able to put it in words or a narrative. First read the NAM which was an attempt to bring down the structure. This is why india is more at odds with the N5 than they are with themselves.

and...

What don't you understand about the concept of an "ally"? Pakistan is US's ally. Wrt china, pakistan is it's strategic ally; china and pak have a relationship that US can never get from pakistan.

Expect an arms transfer to pakistan(from US and china) to account for india's rafale purchase.

You have to appreciate panditlal nehru's vision; is was definitely long term. Had he not, india would have just become another subordinate aka spectator nation in world geopolitics of 21st century(this era).

There is an intolerable cost for the N5 in the long term. Plus a nuclear shia state will add a whole another dimension and alter the great game from the beginning. All india has to do is keep neutral and avoid exhausting itself by reacting to proxy/low intensity attacks.

reply..

What don't you understand about the concept of an "ally"? Pakistan is US's ally. Wrt china, pakistan is it's strategic ally; china and pak have a relationship that US can never get from pakistan.

There is no concept of "ally" in geopolitics. The word is a gentleman's term for ***** (apologies for the term). Take US-UK, UK does what the US says when the US says. Both countries speak of a "special relationship", where did this relationship go when it came to giving the UK codes for the F35? As long as a country does things that are in your interest, they are your ally, thats how geopolitics works. The minute Pak starts fighting back against the US, MNNA will go out the door. Both the US and China are using Pak for their own benefit, in the case of China it is to help hold India down, while in the case of US, it is to help control central asia (not really against India) - you see, Central Asia is where the game is being played, for oil, gas etc.. The key is Afghanistan, but Afghanistan can't be controlled directly, hence they need to feed Pak.

You have to appreciate panditlal nehru's vision; is was definitely long term. Had he not, india would have just become another subordinate aka spectator nation in world geopolitics of 21st century(this era).

As for the above.. I don't know whether to laugh or cry. I'm sorry.. but vision?? what vision?? He was gullible and naive! He thought the world was all kiss-kiss-hug-hug (most politicos at the time were the same... today, its slightly better but the same thinking exists - hence the lack of strategic long term goals and going to the UN every time something happens when something goes wrong) - Dont get me wrong, the UN has its purpose, but when it fails, India lacks the will power to do something about it. He donated the UNSC seat that was handed to us on a platter to a china, which stabbed us in the back a decade later! Lets also not forget his "hindi-chini bhai bhai" campaign which made us look like idiots! During the war with china, the man didn't even know what to do, he went and begged the US for help.. TWICE!

Remember the time when MPs discussed how can we get back land that was grabbed by China and Nehru responded by saying "the land that was lost wasn't fertile, so its not worth much" (after which he was rebuffed when he was told that there was no hair on his head, so maybe it should be chopped off too).

Let us not be blinded and forget the betrayal these people have done to our country. Its one thing to be patriotic, but it is foolish to ignore all the mistakes that have been done and not learn from them.

Nehru did have a strategy which we can discern by his actions and not by his rhetoric.

He joined the Commanwealth to ensure India is part of a cricle not controlled by US. Its another matter that UK became a pauper and lost its clout due to lack of strategic independence. The fifties were deep decline of UK. Its very coincidental that the Aglo-French invasion of Egypt with Isreal in 1956 was right after formation of NAM in 1955!

NAM was to replicate a grouping without the colonial powers. Again here Egypt and Indonesia turned out to be duffers.

US sided with PRC for Cold War exigencies and weaned it away from NAM.

The collapse of FSU made NAM irrelevant in the big theme. So India was left alone in NAM.

Yet the idea of a grouping outside the Colonial and Great Power construct is still appealing to India for it is a step away from the pecking order listed above. So India supports the new order and is working for it in its own way.

[abhishek_sharma]

Indira Gandhi’s leftward swing: Inder Malhotra

Lyndon B. Johnson's retaliation for India's condemnation of the Vietnam war was swift and searing.

HAVING made up her mind to return to left-wing policies, Indira Gandhi acted fast. But for this policy switch she chose Vietnam, not a domestic issue. On July 1 — after three months of complete silence on the Vietnam War and three weeks of storminess over devaluation — her government issued a statement "deploring" the bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong. The timing of the statement was dictated partly by her visits some days later to Egypt, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union.

By the time she left for Cairo on the first leg of her journey, what was said to be a mere statement had morphed into an "Indian initiative" to bring peace to war-ravaged Vietnam. However, the proposals in it were vague enough not to cause any offence to Washington. But, as the three-nation mission progressed, her "initiative" became sharper until, in Moscow, she signed a joint statement with Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin that not only called for an "immediate and unconditional" end to the bombings of Hanoi and Haiphong but also condemned the "imperialist aggression in Vietnam".

Washington's reaction was instant and indignant. The Vietnam War was almost sacrosanct to then President Lyndon Johnson. He frowned at even minor criticism of it. Yet, the extent of his fury with Indira and India far exceeded anything New Delhi had expected. He retaliated at once and put the desperately needed wheat supplies on a very short leash. His strict instructions were that no shipment should be sent without his personal authorisation, which was always late in coming.

Consequently, India literally almost lived from "ship to mouth", and those of us who lived through that era swallowed a measure of humiliation with every morsel of American food. Many started demanding that India should refuse American wheat, in response to which Indira Gandhi remained stoically silent publicly, but privately said that if food supplies stopped, the "agitating ladies and gentlemen won't suffer but millions of poor people would starve".

Sensitive Americans were as appalled as Indians by Johnson's handling of food supplies to India and appealed to him to show some compassion, but to no avail. Chester Bowles, then US ambassador to India, ventured to point out to his president that what Indira Gandhi was saying was no different from what the UN secretary-general, U. Thant, and the pope were also saying. The irascible Texan in the White House growled at him: "U. Thant and the pope don't want our wheat."

Luckily, after two years of savage drought, rains were plentiful and the food problem eased. But there was no end to Indira Gandhi's woes. In November, protagonists of a complete ban on cow-slaughter, with an eye to the approaching elections, started a virulent agitation in support of their demand. A procession spearheaded by hundreds of sadhus that, in accordance with the practice those days, was allowed to go right up to the doorstep of Parliament caused such mayhem that police firing became necessary and six persons were killed.

Indira Gandhi's decision to suppress the agitation was implemented easily enough but what followed was acutely embarrassing, indeed mortifying, to her. She had wanted to use the mayhem to ease out her home minister, G.L. Nanda, who was not only ineffectual but also sadhu-loving to such an extent as to formally head the "Sadhu Samaj". In fact, she had wanted to divest Nanda of the home portfolio even while forming her first cabinet in January. But she was advised that the man had been temporary prime minister twice, after the deaths of Nehru and Shastri, and should be left alone. In November, however, she wasn't prepared to heed this argument. Nanda had to go, flailing his skinny arms and protesting that he was being made a "scapegoat".

Together with Nanda's ouster, Indira Gandhi had also planned to replace finance minister Sachin Chaudhuri and commerce minister Manubhai Shah. But, to her consternation, the Syndicate, still headed by Congress president Kamaraj, summarily vetoed this. The country thus knew how limited the prime minister's powers were, and who really called the shots. Worse was yet to follow.

In December, the Congress Parliamentary Board started choosing Congress candidates for the general election due in February-March 1967. Soon enough, Indira Gandhi discovered to her dismay that the Syndicate was giving her little say in the choice of candidates. She was alarmed because how could she be sure of her continuance as PM if a sufficient number of her supporters were not included in the list. Her humiliation was acute when, despite her repeated plea that Krishna Menon be given the party ticket in his traditional constituency, the Syndicate refused to do so. Surprisingly, even her plea that a decision on Menon be postponed by a few days was brushed aside. She had no option but to pocket the rebuff.

Menon did not. He resigned from the Congress and fought the election as an independent candidate but lost. Like him, a fairly large number of Congressmen whose claims were disregarded because the party bosses did not like them voted with their feet and left the party. Some of them joined opposition parties that were delighted at the thought that the Congress was embarked on a self-destruction course. Indira Gandhi kept her counsel but in a personal letter to P.N. Haksar, still deputy high commissioner in London, gave vent to her feelings.

No wonder, by this time word went around the country that there was no certainty that Indira Gandhi would be PM after the 1967 polls. It was obvious that the Syndicate was totally opposed to her and was likely to make common cause with Morarji Desai, who was proclaiming loudly that he would again challenge her leadership because he did not want to be "cheated out" of what was his due a third time.

It was against this backdrop that on Christmas Day Indira Gandhi gave the public the first glimpse of her strategy to turn the tables on those confident of removing her from office after the polls. "Here is a question," she told the press, "of whom the party wants and whom the people want. My position among the people is uncontested."

The writer is a Delhi-based political commentator

[abhishek_sharma]

India's Feeble Foreign Policy: A Would-Be Great Power Resists Its Own Rise