Lead us not into temptation

 India strives harder for external recognition than to build up its own strength

Hindustan Times

Manmohan Singh’s address to the US Congress will attract more attention in India, where it has been billed as a major event, than in the US. In this interregnum between the Fourth of July holiday recess and Congress’ month-long August break, many lawmakers will be absent, and their seats will be filled by congressional staffers and their friends to create an impression of a full audience.

            Few in the US take such an event seriously. This is not the equivalent of a US president addressing the Indian Parliament, as Bill Clinton did, with appreciative MPs in full attendance and a live telecast captivating the nation’s attention. Yet because the Indians make a big deal of such an event, as when Vajpayee addressed Congress, the Americans find it useful to pander to Indian pride through such a gesture.

            India’s craving for international recognition and status is so apparent that other powers play to that weakness through pleasing if empty gestures or statements. The best way a foreign power can get a good press in India is by mouthing sweet nothings on India or lavishing attention on a visiting Indian dignitary. Each time the US president has ‘dropped by’ his national security adviser’s meeting with a visiting Indian minister, India has read the gesture as a sign of its growing importance in US policy.  

            India has come a long way since the gloom of the 1960s, a decade in which the Chinese invasion shattered its confidence, socialism began to fail and US wheat aid caricatured it as a begging-bowl nation. Today, a buoyant India is a knowledge powerhouse, a nuclear-weapons state and a food exporter. But it still manifests some of the same weak spots that led it to the earlier depths of despair.

            Much of Indian foreign policy quintessentially remains a search for status, a recognition from rich foreigners that India is not an assemblage of poor people repeatedly conquered by bands of outside invaders for nearly a thousand years. In seeking to play a greater international role, India unsuspectingly displays signs of its long subjugation, including a psychological dependency on outsiders to assist its rise. Pakistan also seeks status, as recompense for lacking a national identity, but it has a clear and immediate goal — undermining India. That aim gives a distinct focus to its foreign policy.

In contrast to India’s fuzziness on goals, China, also ravaged by colonialism, has defined a clear objective for itself — to emerge as “a world power second to none” — and is expanding its capabilities at the fastest pace possible. India strives more for external recognition than to build up its own economic and military strength, even though status comes with might. Indeed, it began economic reforms, unlike China, not by choice but under external compulsion.

Much of the Indian discourse centres not on how India can grow strong and rich speedily but on gauging how popular the nation is becoming with foreigners — to which clubs it is being invited, which country is offering to sell what arms to it, the level of FII flows, and the latest ‘special’ gestures and laudatory references by a foreign power. India allows China to dump cheap manufactured goods but will not open up competition in labour-intensive manufacturing at home to provide productive employment to a quarter billion impoverished Indians who constitute the world’s largest underclass. All important powers subsidise their military modernisation through arms exports but such is the lure of kickbacks and foreign trips that India’s ruling classes have developed a vested interest in keeping the nation dependent on imports for almost all its main conventional weapons.   

The absence of clear, long-term strategic goals and political resolve only swells the longing for outside approbation and recognition. India is the only known country that overtly moulds its policies to win international goodwill. Even when faced with aggression, like in Kargil, India did not open a new front to relieve pressure and allowed the US to midwife an end to the war because its main concern was international goodwill. The desire for external endorsement and certification is deep-seated.

The rise and fall of great powers is testament to the critical role of vision, leadership, tenacious goals, capability growth and enabling ideas. India, however, faces a triple deficit in the key propellants of national power — a leadership deficit, a strategic foresight deficit and an idea deficit. Old, tired, risk-averse leadership operating on the lowest common denominator can hardly propel any nation to greatness.  

A nation’s influence and prestige are built on capability and what it stands for. Ideas and themes serve as the rationale to the assertive pursuit of national interest, providing the moral veneer to the ruthlessness often involved in such endeavour. The philosophy of non-violence, on which India was founded, was crushed in 1962. Non-alignment has become passé. India is left only with advertising itself as a liberal, secular democracy — a notable achievement but hardly a galvanizing element. Some may ask what sort of liberal democracy India represents when its president and prime minister are both bureaucrats who never won a single direct election and came to office by accident.

India has to start thinking the ideas that would enhance its appeal and help aid its rise as a great power. What does India wish to promote or offer internationally? Like in domestic policy, would India shy away from hard decisions if it were in the UN Security Council, as it should be in the seat of international power? The old ways of thinking are breaking down in India. But clear new political ideas are still to emerge in their place. The idea deficit has been laid bare by the PM’s homage to British colonial rule and the leader of the opposition’s homage to the founder of Pakistan — a double blow to the dogmas on which India was founded.  

India’s love of flattery makes it particularly vulnerable to seduction by praise. Remember the elation that greeted Washington’s offer — made the day it decided to sell F-16s to Pakistan — to “help India become a major world power in the 21^st century”? India has shown it can exercise power self-protectively to withstand external pressures. But the same India can be sweet-talked into ceding ground in a process of engagement. One act of defiance in May 1998, for instance, was followed by several acts of compliance, as Jaswant Singh fed the nation dreams sold to him by Strobe Talbott.

The itch to join every club, even if it’s just a talk-shop or doesn’t treat India fairly, needs to be contained. From showing up as an observer at the anaemic Shanghai Cooperation Organization to seeking membership of the US-led Nuclear Suppliers’ Group even as it remains its target, India weakens its leverage. On the way back from the G-8 meeting, the PM said India will “apply for membership” of the fusion-power consortium. India should join a group by invitation, not by application. An invitation, however, will not come to a supplicant. The best way India can end the nuclear embargo against it is not by flaunting its ‘impeccable non-proliferation credentials’, as it childlike does, but by employing proliferation as a strategic card like China.  

India should persist with its efforts to build a mutually beneficial strategic partnership with the US to help underpin its long-term interests. But if India allows process to matter more than results, the US will continue to play to its quest for status through syrupy promises while it develops aspects of the relationship beneficial to US interests. The warm ambience of Manmohan Singh’s meetings in Washington should not deflect India from insisting that the relationship progress in a balanced way so that it secures clear economic and strategic gains, not status-enhancing inducements.  

(c) The Hindustan Times

First published: July 18, 2005

Talleyrand, the illustrious foreign minister of Napoleon and the Bourbons, prescribed one basic rule for pragmatic foreign policy: by no means show too much zeal. In India’s case, gushy expectations, self-deluding hype, and oozing zealousness have blighted foreign policy since Independence, constituting the most enduring aspect of the Nehruvian legacy, other than the hold of the Nehru family dynasty over the Congress party and the continued strength of Indian democracy.

Zeal is to Indian diplomacy what strategy is to major powers. India has rushed to believe what it wanted to believe. Consequently, India is the only known country in modern history to have repeatedly cried betrayal, not by friends but by adversaries in whom it had reposed trust.

Reflecting India’s decline in its own eyes, however, while one ‘betrayal’ in 1962 hastened the death of Jawaharlal Nehru, another in 1999 kept Atal Bihari Vajpayee going as if it did not happen despite his public admission that his ‘bus to Lahore got hijacked to Kargil.’ It was finally the voters who decided they had had enough of Vajpayee.

Earlier, in 1972, even the strategist Indira Gandhi slipped up at Simla by trusting her opponent’s word on Kashmir.

Also Read: The Errors of Simla

The strength of any nation’s foreign policy depends on the health of its institutional processes of policy-making, on realistic goals, strategies, and tactics, and on the timely exploitation of opportunities thrown up by external conditions. Indian foreign policy, regrettably, has been characterised by too much ad hocism, risk aversion, and post facto rationalisations.

Institutional processes are operationally weak and there is no tradition of strategy papers to aid political decision-making. An uncritical media only encourages a political proclivity for off-the-cuff decisions.

In the absence of a set of clear, long-term goals backed by political resolve, Indian foreign policy has not been organised around a distinct strategic doctrine. Without realistic, goal-oriented statecraft, the propensity to act in haste and repent at leisure has run deep in Indian foreign policy ever since Nehru hurriedly took the Kashmir issue to the UN Security Council without realising that the Security Council, as the seat of international power politics, has little room for fair dealing.

From the Rediff Archives: ‘Jawaharlal, do you want Kashmir, or do you want to give it away?’

The India-China territorial dispute is another problem bequeathed by Nehru to future generations of Indians. Nehru’s first blunder was to shut his eyes to the impending fall of Tibet even when Sardar Patel had repeatedly cautioned him in 1949 that the Chinese Communists would annex that historical buffer as soon as they had installed themselves in power in Beijing. An overconfident Nehru, who ran foreign policy as if it were personal policy, went to the extent of telling Patel by letter that it would be a ‘foolish adventure’ for the Chinese Communists to try and gobble up Tibet — a possibility that ‘may not arise at all’ as it was, he claimed, geographically impracticable!

In 1962, Nehru, however, had to admit he had been living in a fool’s paradise. ‘We were getting out of touch with reality in the modern world and we were living in an artificial atmosphere of our creation,’ he said in a national address after the Chinese aggression.

Nehru had ignored India’s military needs despite the Chinese surreptitiously occupying Indian areas on the basis of Tibet’s putative historical ties with them and also establishing a land corridor with Pakistan-occupied Kashmir through Aksai Chin. Although Indian military commanders after the 1959 border clashes began saying that they lacked adequate manpower and weapons to fend off the People’s Liberation Army, Nehru ordered the creation of forward posts to prevent the loss of further Indian territory without taking the required concomitant steps to beef up Indian military strength, including through arms imports. Nehru had convinced himself grievously that China only intended to carry out further furtive encroachments on Indian territory, not launch a full-fledged major aggression.

In fact, Nehru accepted the Chinese annexation of Tibet in a 1954 agreement without settling the Indo-Tibetan border. While Nehru thought he had bought peace with China by accepting Chinese rule over Tibet on the basis of the five principles of peaceful co-existence, Mao and his team read this as a sign of India’s weakness and a licence to encroach on strategically important areas of Ladakh.

So betrayed was Nehru by the 1962 attack that he had this to say on the day the Chinese invaded: ‘Perhaps there are not many instances in history where one country has gone out of her way to be friendly and co-operative with the government and people of another country and to plead their cause in the councils of the world, and then that country returns evil for good.’

Also Read: Remembering the China War

Four decades after Nehru’s death at the age of 74, the Nehruvian legacy in foreign policy continues to influence Indian policy-making. Much before the recent national election made Sonia Gandhi the most powerful political figure in India, the Nehruvian legacy was intact in Vajpayee’s foreign policy. In fact, nothing pleased Vajpayee more than to be compared with Nehru.

Vajpayee’s foreign policy was in reality an updated, post-Cold War version of Nehruvian diplomacy.

Nehru and Vajpayee mistook casuistry and word games for statecraft, with the latter addicted to parsing and spinning his words. Both valued speech as a substitute for action or camouflage to concession. Vajpayee’s fascination with telling the world about the ‘greatness’ of Indian culture was his rendering of Nehru’s moralistic lectures to the mighty and powerful. Like Nehru, he was so enthralled by his own illusions and desire for international goodwill that he could not deal with ill will from India’s implacable adversaries. Even in war, Vajpayee declined — unlike Lal Bahadur Shastri — to take the fighting to the aggressor’s territory, battling the enemy on the enemy’s terms and relying on the United States to midwife a ‘victory’ in Kargil.

Also Read: The Kargil War

Except for a period under Indira Gandhi, India has found it difficult to kick its ‘hug, then repent’ proclivity. Take the case of the past decade. The 1990s began flamboyantly with the famous I K Gujral hug of Saddam Hussein and ended spectacularly with Jaswant Singh’s hug of the thuggish Taliban, as the then foreign minister chaperoned three freed terrorists to Kandahar. In the midst of the IC-814 hijacking saga, Jaswant Singh fed to the media his hallucinations about driving a wedge between the Taliban and its sponsor, Pakistan.

Also Read: The Hijacking of Flight 814

Until India fully absorbs the fundamentals of international relations, it will continue to get ‘evil for good.’ The fundamentals include leverage, reciprocity, and negotiating strategies that do not give away the bottom line. For five decades, India has put itself on the defensive by publicly articulating its Kashmir bottom line as the starting line — turning the LoC into the international border.

Some nations have a built-in craving for revision or hazardous gain, while others want only the status quo. Randall L Schweller, in his brilliant study Deadly Imbalances, labels the revisionist nations ‘wolves’ and ‘jackals’, while the status quo states are either ‘lambs’ or ‘lions’. India certainly qualifies as a ‘lamb,’ surrounded by ‘wolf’ China and ‘jackal’ Pakistan. The ‘lamb’ status is in keeping with its intrinsic disposition and meek objectives. Although its borders have shrunk since Independence and it is a poor state, India is, lamb-like, content with the status quo.

Only a ‘lamb’ state will make unilateral concessions and deal with invaders and hostage-takers on their terms. Again, only a ‘lamb’ will accept the outside portrayal of Kashmir as a bilateral dispute between India and Pakistan, condoning the third-party role of China, in occupation of one-fifth of J&K. A ‘lamb’ state is wary of traditional friends, but wishes to cuddle up to elusive new buddies or even enemies. Its diffidence makes external affirmation and certification important for its policies. A ‘lamb’ also assumes that others change their beliefs and policies as rapidly as it meanders to a new course.

http://in.rediff.com/news/2004/jun/02spec1.htm

Hindustan Times, November 27, 2006

While emphasizing cooperation, India needs to leverage its policy towards China

Mastering martial arts

By BRAHMA CHELLANEY

A key challenge for Indian foreign policy is to manage an increasingly intricate relationship with an ascendant China determined to emerge as Asia’s uncontested power. For different reasons, New Delhi and Beijing wish to play down the competitive dynamics of their relationship and put the accent on cooperation. This was on full display during Chinese President Hu Jintao’s New Delhi visit, which yielded a rhetoric-laden joint statement with nice jingles, such as “all-round mutually beneficial cooperation”.

            It makes sense for India to stress cooperation while working to narrow the power disparity with China. Cooperation holds special appeal to India, given that territorially it is a status quo state that has traditionally baulked at anchoring its foreign policy in a distinct strategic doctrine founded on a “balance of power”, or “balance of threat”, or “balance of interest”.

            By contrast, an accent on cooperation suits China because it provides it cover to step up a strategic squeeze of India from diverse flanks. It also chimes with its larger strategy to advertise its ‘peaceful rise’. China’s choir book indeed has been built around a nifty theme: its emergence as a great power is unstoppable, and it is incumbent on other nations to adjust to that rise.

            In keeping with India’s growing geopolitical pragmatism, the wooden-faced Hu received a friendly but formal welcome in New Delhi. The prime minister did not shy away from giving vent to India’s disquiet over the slow progress of the 25-year-old border negotiations by calling for efforts to settle the “outstanding issues in a focused, sincere and problem-solving manner”. And by urging that the progress in ties be made “irreversible”, the PM implicitly pointed to the danger that blunt assertion of territorial claims or other belligerent actions could undo the gains.

            Still, the visit was a reminder that Indian foreign policy has yet to make the full transition to realism. Consider the following two paragraphs in the joint statement:

“The Indian side recalls that India was among the first countries to recognize that there is one China and that its one-China policy has remained unaltered. The Indian side states that it would continue to abide by its one China policy. The Chinese side expresses its appreciation for the Indian position.

“The Indian side reiterates that it has recognized the Tibet Autonomous Region as part of the territory of the People’s Republic of China, and that it does not allow Tibetans to engage in anti-China political activities in India. The Chinese side expresses its appreciation for the Indian position”.

Gratuitously and without any reciprocal Chinese commitment to a one-India policy, New Delhi again pledged to “abide by” a one-China policy despite the recent bellicose Chinese territorial claims. Needlessly and unilaterally, it reiterated its recognition of the central Tibetan plateau (what Beijing calls the “Tibet Autonomous Region”, or TAR) as part of China.

How can bilateral diplomacy become so one-sided that India propitiates and China merely records its ‘appreciation’? What about getting China to recognize Arunachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Sikkim as part of the Republic of India? China has merely suspended its cartographic aggression on Sikkim without issuing a single statement thus far unequivocally recognizing it as part of India.

It is true that mistakes made in the past weigh down Indian policy. But should India continue or correct those slip-ups? Why should the present PM stick with his predecessor’s 2003 folly in recognizing TAR as “part of the territory of the People’s Republic of China”? In any event, Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s blunder did not come with an obligation for New Delhi to one-sidedly reaffirm that recognition at the end of every meeting between an Indian and Chinese leader.

A second clue of the Indian predilection to bend backwards was the manner New Delhi willingly shielded Hu from the media by permitting no questions at what was officially labelled an ‘interaction’ with the press. Knowing that Indian and foreign journalists would ask searching questions, among others, on China’s expansionist territorial demands, the Chinese side persuaded the hosts to limit the ‘interaction’ to a reading out of statements by Hu and the PM.

It is paradoxical that to welcome the world’s leading autocrat, the largest democracy cracked down on Tibetan demonstrators and allowed Hu to appear at a news conference in the scripted style he sets at home. Not that this won India any gratitude: the scattered Tibetan protests were enough to rankle Beijing to demand that New Delhi live up to its word not to let Tibetans wage political activity.

What makes Hu’s shielding by India more surprising is that the official talks brought out his hardline stance on the territorial disputes. Yet the next day at Vigyan Bhawan Hu disingenuously called for an “early settlement of the boundary issues”. The reason the two countries are locked in what is already the longest and most-barren negotiating process between any two countries in modern world history is that China — not content with the one-fifth of the original state of J&K it occupies — seeks to further redraw its frontiers with India, coveting above all Tawang, a strategic doorway to the Assam Valley.

Seeking to territorially extend the gains from its 1950 annexation of Tibet, Beijing has followed a bald principle in the border talks: ‘what is ours is ours to keep, but what is yours must be shared with us’. India, having thrust aside potential leverage due to an unfathomable reluctance to play its strategic cards, has retreated to an unviable position to ward off demands flowing from China’s insistence that what it covets is ‘disputed’ and thus on the negotiating table.

It is past time India started building needed room for diplomatic manoeuvre through counter-leverage, even as it keeps cooperation the leitmotif of its relations with Beijing. Without strategic leeway, India will remain on the defensive, locked in unproductive negotiations and exposed to the Chinese use of direct and surrogate levers to nip at its heels. It is not that India has only two options: either persist with a feckless policy or brace for confrontation. That is a false choice intended to snuff out any legitimate debate on the several options India has between the two extremes.

Military and economic asymmetry in interstate relations does not mean that the weaker side should bend to the diktats of the stronger or pay obeisance to it. If that were so, only the most powerful would enjoy true decision-making autonomy. Diplomacy is the art of offsetting or neutralizing the effects of a power imbalance with another state by building countervailing influence.

A realpolitik approach offers India multiple cards to exert a counteracting power. The PM’s scheduled visit to Japan next month is an opportunity to discuss adding strategic content to a fast-growing relationship with a natural ally. Through close strategic collaboration, Taiwan can be to India what Pakistan is to China. Prosperous, democratic Taiwan indeed offers better economic lessons than China.

New Delhi can begin modestly. Let it refine its Tibet stance to add some elasticity and nuance on an issue that defines the India-China chasm and forms the basis of Chinese claims on India. Without retracting its present Tibet position, can’t India propose to China that its path to greatness will be assisted if it initiated a process of reconciliation and healing in Tibet and reached a deal that ended the Dalai Lama’s exile? Seeking such a settlement is not a tactical ploy but a strategic necessity, because the Tibet issue will stay at the core of the India-China divide until it is resolved.