• Home
  • About
  • Reading Lists
    • Egypt
    • Great Books
    • Iran
    • Islam
    • Israel
    • Liberalism
    • Napoleon
    • Nationalism
    • The Nuclear Age
    • Science
    • Russia
    • Turkey
  • Digital Footprint
    • Facebook
    • Instagram
    • Pocket
    • SoundCloud
    • Twitter
    • Tumblr
    • YouTube
  • Contact
    • Email

Chaturanga

~ statecraft, strategy, society, and Σοφíα

Chaturanga

Tag Archives: Asia

The Indo-US Nuclear Deal – Ten Years On

18 Sat Jul 2015

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in India, Nuclear, South Asia, United States

≈ Comments Off on The Indo-US Nuclear Deal – Ten Years On

Tags

Additional Protocol, Afghanistan, Asia, China, Devyani Khobragade, IAEA, India, Indo-US nuclear deal, International Atomic Energy Agency, NSG, nuclear, Nuclear Suppliers Group, Pakistan, United States

It is ten years to the day since the Indo-US nuclear deal was announced. At the time, there were great expectations – for Indians, the deal signified an end to the US-led era of atomic apartheid while the United States hoped that it had opened up a huge market for its wares while simultaneously securing an ally to balance a rising potential rival. A decade down the road, these illusions have evapourated and there are recriminations on both sides. Critics of the deal had repeatedly warned that Washington would not find in India the ally or market that it sought. This has borne out to be true, though it is difficult to tell whether the prognosis was insightful analysis or just fate that the Bush administration overlapped significantly with the “lost decade” in Indian politics. Whatever be the reason, India’s slavish adherence to a foreign policy ideology well past its due date compounded with its ill-advised nuclear civil liability law doused any hope of transformative politics in the Indian Ocean Region.

The first warning that the Indo-US nuclear deal was not going to usher in an era of growth and prosperity was in the length of time the Lok Sabha took to ratify the agreement and the manner in which it was done. After three years of histrionics in parliament and a cash-for-votes scandal, the nuclear agreement was finally accepted just before the end of the strongly supportive Bush administration. There was a great deal of suspicion about the United States and its motives in India, not entirely unreasonable given Uncle Sam’s unabated mischief in neighbouring Pakistan. Few Indian parliamentarians demonstrated the imagination to look past antiquated Cold War binaries and fewer still could fully fathom the implications of a civilian nuclear programme separated from military goals and targets. The passing of a strong ally in the Bush administration from Washington while Delhi dithered was a lost opportunity for India to hasten the several benefits of the nuclear deal.

The Manmohan Singh government was able to squeak the historic nuclear deal through Parliament but at great cost. Among the stipulations of the agreement on civil nuclear cooperation was that an explicit nuclear insurance system be established. Convention dictated that the operator was solely responsible for any accidents at a nuclear facility but the India’s lawmakers, in their infinite wisdom, thought it best to make suppliers of nuclear equipment just as liable. Perhaps the psychosis of the 1984 Union Carbide accident clouded their judgment or their arrogant faith that the Indian market was too big to be ignored was their undoing or even their bloody mindedness not to give the historically anti-US United Progressive Alliance the fruits of four years of labour by the National Democratic Alliance, but the Bharatiya Janata Party along with the Communist Party of India made the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill an albatross around the neck of the nuclear deal. Despite Russian, French, and American interest to build some 24 reactors at four sites across India, only one at Kudankulam from a 1988 deal with the Soviet Union was completed in the ten years since the nuclear deal.

It is not true to say that the Indo-US nuclear deal was dead on arrival: it did have an anaemic pulse. Thanks to the opening of nuclear commerce to India, the supply of nuclear fuel was suddenly not a bottleneck in India’s nuclear energy programme. Reactors that had been operating at load factors between 35 and 50 per cent almost overnight caught up to international levels of operation. The average load factor at a nuclear plant in India today hovers around 72 per cent and some units like RAPP V have shown the remarkable potential of the entire programme by operating at continuously for 765 days with a load factor frequently above 95 per cent. Even this, sadly, is a drop in the bucket to what could have been achieved over the past ten years.

The Indo-US nuclear deal did not occur in a vacuum. While some Indians view it as merely setting right a a four-decades-old wrong, a breakthrough in such a sensitive area is always coupled with greater expectations of broad geopolitical synergy. For the United States, this primarily meant a response to a growing Chinese menace. Washington reasoned that a stronger, more confident, and assertive China that also shares a border with India would be reason for concern to Delhi. Given the overlapping interests, it was only reasonable to expect enthusiasm from India on closer defence cooperation and consultation on issues of geopolitical interests. If only.

Washington did not count on the cold reception to their proposal in Delhi. After all, how could cooperation against a common foe concern elicit ill will? However, Indians read the opening as a US offer to India to play second fiddle in a grand alliance against China. The Indian ego could certainly not accept this, regardless of the indubitable American superiority in military, economic, and technological capabilities. With a disregard for reality that has rarely been seen outside postmodern theory classes, India fell back on its old platitudes of strategic autonomy and non-alignment to spurn an alliance with the United States but pretend to a “relationship of equals,” The prevailing wisdom of the time – and all the times before then – was that India should not antagonise China unnecessarily or it may invite hostility from Beijing.

That wisdom turned out to be not so wise after all. Delhi’s supplication did not bring the result it sought. Over the past decade, China’s military assistance to Pakistan has increased and it continues to develop Islamabad’s nuclear programme. Of late, Chinese submarines have become more frequent in the Indian Ocean and there have been at least two major incursions into India by the Chinese Army at Aksai Chin. The Chinese presence in the Gilgit-Baltistan region has only solidified with Pakistan handing over some of the Indian territory it occupies to Beijing. China still supports insurgents in India’s northeastern sector, not to mention their sympathisers in the neighbourhood. None of this has abated while Delhi chose not to antagonise Beijing but ten years were wasted in empty posturing between the United States and India. To be sure, the tempo of joint military exercises between the two nations has increased as has defence sales but those are accidental and insufficient causes that will not deliver their full potential until an honest chat on Asia’s geopolitics has been had.

The tepid response from Delhi strengthened the hand of the Pakistan lobby in the US legislature. The United States continued to court Pakistan beyond a level India was comfortable with to the detriment of the latter’s position in Afghanistan. Unfortunate misunderstandings such as the Khobragade affair soured relations even further between two countries that were both already disappointed with each other. Ironically, the US denial of a visa to present prime minister, Narendra Modi, in 2005 turned out to be almost a non-issue despite the media painting it as a bit of a train wreck in the run-up to India’s general elections in May 2014. There have been disagreements over the sale of some military equipment but that has been largely due to India’s refusal to sign what the Americans call ‘foundational documents.’ These agreements allow the United States to verify that India is indeed the sole end user of the equipment that is sold to them and that they are not selling it to anyone else. The agreements also allow the US and Indian militaries to work in a more integrated manner in their zones of mutual interest. However, India has refused to accept such close scrutiny or linkages and as a result has been refused some equipment and has been given more primitive versions of other systems.

The nuclear deal was supposed to signify a change in mindset and be the dawn of a new era in Indo-US relations. It was not just about the sale of reactors and nuclear fuel but about a common vision of a new world order. Almost upon its tenth anniversary, we see that those dreams have not yet taken off. For all the effort that went behind making the Indo-US deal – special waiver for India from the Nuclear Suppliers Group, an India-specific Additional Protocol from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the amendment of domestic laws in at least a couple of countries – no one has anything to show for it. If anything, the nuclear deal is an epitaph to unbridled optimism and faith in reason in the realm of international affairs. As PG Wodehouse wrote in My Man Jeeves, “…it’s always just when a chappie is feeling particularly top-hole, and more than usually braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up behind him with a bit of lead piping.”

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)

Like this:

Like Loading...

The Return of the Russians

05 Fri Sep 2014

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in Europe

≈ Comments Off on The Return of the Russians

Tags

Abhkazia, ABM Treaty, Aleksander Prokhanov, Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, Asia, autocracy, Boris Yeltsin, China, CIS, Commonwealth of Independent States, Crimea, EU, Eurasian Union, Europe, European Neighbourhood Policy, European Union, Georgia, Gleb Pavlovsky, Islam Karimov, Kremlin, Moldova, NATO, Nursultan Nazarbayev, R2P, Right To Protect, Rodina, Russia, South Ossetia, Soviet Union, Transnistria, Ukraine, United States, Uzbekistan, Verkhovna Rada, Viktor Yanukovych, Vladimir Putin, Zavtra

Despite the best efforts of the Middle East, Russophobia seems to be the retro-chic fashion statement of 2014. Spurred on by either the naïveté of millennials participating in the political process for the first time or the opportunism of Arab Spring, or perhaps in a phase of moralising, the West has mocked, patronised, belittled, criticised, blamed, and threatened Vladimir Putin over Russian actions in Ukraine throughout the year.

The crisis in Ukraine started in November 2013 when Viktor Yanukovych chose to accept a Russian economic aid package rather than one from the European Union. Though the Russia promised $15 billion in loans, lower gas prices, and did not interfere in Ukrainian affairs, Yanukovych’s rejection of the EU offer was seen as a move to take Ukraine closer to Russia. The EU offer – $815 million in loans upon a change in several Ukrainian laws and regulations – was paltry but symbolised a more transparent and less corrupt system.

In February 2014, the calm protests suddenly exploded into violence at the Euromaidan in Kiev. Rioters marched onto the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, to demand that the 2004 constitution that Yanukovych had repealed soon after coming to power in 2010 be reinstated. Yanukovych had criticised the old constitution as ineffective as it diluted the powers of the Executive to the point that the President could not even appoint his own ministers and they had to be approved by Parliament. Fearing for his life in the violence, the Ukrainian president escaped to Moscow.

Although the dissatisfaction in Ukraine was over corruption and nepotism, Russia saw it as a shift towards the West. Indeed, many Ukrainians felt that reforms could be achieved only if they were forced from outside and the EU seemed the best candidate to do so. The Kremlin acted in support of their ally, demanding that France and Germany honour their earlier agreement and reinstate Yanukovych as president, under whom a new constitution would be written and fresh elections held.

To bring pressure to bear upon the Ukrainian opposition, Russia cancelled its gas subsidies to its neighbour and encouraged ethnic Russians in Ukraine to protest what it saw as a West-sponsored coup d’etat. This was most effective in Crimea, where a separatist movement had been simmering for the past 20 years. In a referendum boycotted by many and dismissed by the West as rigged, an overwhelming majority of Crimean voters chose to secede from Ukraine and join Russia.

Western powers were alarmed by the principle that ethnic Russians in former Soviet lands could vote to return to a neo-Soviet empire; applied across the former Soviet republics, it gave Russia a powerful hand in their internal affairs. To deter Russia from further adventures in the region, Washington imposed sanctions on certain sectors of the Russian economy and put selected individuals on a no-visa list. The sanctions would prove reckless as the dependence of western European economies on Russian energy and US need for Russian space services would underscore very soon. However, Russia imposed a ban on several exports to the EU in retaliation, hurting several countries in Central and Eastern Europe.

Perhaps drawing from the lessons of Arab Spring on the use of social and conventional media, an unending stream of articles denouncing Russian actions started to appear. Saved from embarrassment only by the ham-handed propaganda of outlets like Russia Today, Western journalists and analysts decried the violations of human rights in Ukraine and labelled the Russian strategy as naked aggression. Vladimir Putin, the argument ran, is a disgruntled former KGB agent who has never accepted the breakup of the Soviet Union and dreamed of forming a Greater Russia yet again. Putin’s heavy-handedness with his critics and disregard of civil liberties was emphasised repeatedly, his shirtless photos morphed and the subject of puerile humour on social media platforms.

Despite their hypocrisy and weak grasp of Sovietology, there is little doubt that Western accusations about the authoritarianism of the Russian regime are accurate. It would be difficult to deny that Putin has mysteriously sidestepped several of his rivals and critics, or argue that he does not envision a Russia readmitted to the superpowers’ club. Yet Russian aims are no different from any other aspiring or reigning power and have been consistent over the past decade. The new batch of Western Russologists, complacent that their fathers won the Cold War, have failed to notice the consistent warnings from Moscow as the United States shifted from a mature policy towards its defeated foe in the early 1990s to basking in its own triumphalism in the 21st century as the world’s only remaining superpower.

It is not just Putin who has not accepted the collapse of the Soviet Union; by any imagination, his increased popularity after the takeover of Crimea should indicate that a return to Soviet grandeur is prominent in the minds of ordinary Russians, young and old alike. Just a couple of years after the 15 republics went their separate ways, Boris Yeltsin attempted to bring back together its former countrymen in a Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). In its bilateral relations, it attempted to control the former Soviet republics by creating economic dependencies, particularly through energy politics and migrant workers, and prolonging other political and military dependencies such as the stationing of troops and support to public figures sympathetic to Moscow. In a marked departure from his predecessors, Putin is the first Russian leader to use the purse before the sword to subdue Russia’s neighbours.

Barely a year after the Soviet Union broke up, in 1992, Moscow encouraged separatists in the Georgian region of South Ossetia and the Moldovan region of Transnistria to break away; in 1993, Yeltsin extended Abkhazia similar support. All three states are recognised by only three or four other countries in the world and have maintained their independence largely through the presence of Russian forces on their soil. In 1994, had it not been for the election of a leader in Kiev that the Kremlin liked, Yeltsin may well have achieved in Crimea then what Putin did now. Russia also intervened in the Tajik civil war (1992-1997) and helped Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov to put down a democratic rebellion in 2005. In an uncannily similar set of events to those in Ukraine in 2014, Russia’s involvement in the 2008 hostilities between Georgia and South Ossetia coincided with rumours that the former Soviet republic might join the Western alliance.

What the West sees as Russia goosestepping over its neighbours, the Kremlin sees as traditional power politics. Indeed, Russian behaviour in the sphere of influence it has carved out for itself would be familiar to leaders everywhere. The revolution in France saw British and Austrian adventurism in southern France and Italy as the Russian Revolution saw opportunistic manoeuvres from Britain and the United States post-World War I. Much more recently, the Iranian revolution in 1979 provided the opportunity for Saddam Hussein, backed by the United States, to invade his eastern neighbour.

The history of the Cold War is replete with Western interventions around the globe, not always on the side of holy liberty and democracy. The support to military dictatorships in the Middle East, coups in Iran and Chile, political violence in El Salvador and Nicaragua, and dozens of other incidents hardly gives the United States room to act astonished and horrified at Russian involvement in Ukraine. In fact, Washington’s reaction to the communist takeover of Cuba was not at much variance with Moscow’s actions in Ukraine today. US appeals to liberty in Ukraine comes amidst Washington’s silence on the elimination of minorities in Pakistan and the brutal suppression of Shia Muslims in Bahrain and eastern Saudi Arabia.

Yet where does one draw the line between imperial vision and securing a sphere of influence? Chinese entry into the Korean War may be legitimately seen as the defence of its peripheries against Western encroachment but the US role in Central and South America over the past century smacks of an imperial complex. Is Putin safeguarding Russia’s peripheries or does he dream of reestablishing a Russian empire?

Born in October 1952, Putin grew up in the heyday of the Soviet Union with Sputnik and the Tsar Bomba. Little is known about his childhood and there have even been questions regarding who his actual parents were. After an undistinguished career in school, Putin studied law at Leningrad State University and started his career in the KGB during detente, entering politics just as the state he had grown up in and served for so long collapsed. In 1997, he was picked out of obscurity by Yeltsin and named his Deputy Chief of Staff. The Russian premier is rumoured to have been impressed by Putin’s loyalty to his mentor, Leningrad mayor Anatoly Sobchak. Putin rose through the ranks rapidly, becoming the head of the state intelligence services and then prime minister in August 1999. Within four months, Yeltsin resigned as president and appointed Putin his successor for three months until the next elections. In March 2000, Putin won the elections in a landslide.

Russia’s leader is by no means a teddy bear but neither is he as bad as some of America’s other friends. During Putin’s meteoric rise, several opponents of Yeltsin and himself mysteriously disappeared, met with unfortunate accidents, or were murdered. Though there is little to implicate the political leadership in any case, investigators, witnesses, and lawyers revealed that they had received threats from the FSB. Even if the Russian premier is innocent of the suspicions about him, the open season on rights activists in Russia since the ascent of Putin has claimed many lives – Sergei Yushenkov, Yuri Shchekochikhin, Andrei Kozlov, Anna Politkovskaya, Alexander Litvinenko, Stanislav Markelov, Natalia Estemirova – and is disturbing.

Russia has, no doubt, slipped into a more autocratic form of government since Putin’s rise and there is discontent over increasing corruption in government and the muzzling of the press. However, Putin also oversaw one of the country’s greatest economic booms; during his first stint in the presidency, Russia’s real wages tripled, unemployment halved, taxes fell, and nominal GDP rose over 600%. This record makes him popular with the average, politically disinterested voter. Luckily for Putin, his term in office ended just as the unprecedented decade of international growth stumbled to a halt.

During his first presidency, Putin had supported Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev’s idea a Eurasian Union that would create a common economic space from Vladivostok to Lisbon. The proposal met with lukewarm interest in the West, whose European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) was more aligned with the economic reality of Russia being a junior partner. Putin’s overtures were snubbed.

More significantly, Putin bears a deep resentment against the United States for the eastward expansion of NATO. Although disputed by US academics, Russia believes that the West had promised not to expand east if the Soviet Union loosened its grip on Eastern Europe and its republics. In 1999, Belgrade and Kosovo were bombed over the wishes of Moscow; in 2002, the United States unilaterally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty; in 2004, NATO absorbed Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia; proposals were considered to station missile defence infrastructure in Poland and Ukraine, and there were discussions about Georgia joining NATO. In this backdrop, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine seemed like part of NATO’s eastward creep into the Russian sphere of influence. As a result, the confrontation with the West over Ukraine has seen a huge boost in Putin’s domestic popularity.

Putin feels a deep pain, along with millions of Russians, for the loss of Russian imperial glory in the flames of the Soviet Union. However, Putin is no ideolgue – as one of his former advisers, Gleb Pavlovsky, related, Putin admitted to him in 1999 that communism was a blind alley away from the mainstream of civilisation. Putin’s Rodina is a socially conservative state that derives its values and Russianness from the Russian Orthodox Church.

There is plenty of support for a more significant role for Russia on the international stage among Russians. Still not past the generations that vividly remember the last two decades of the Cold War, the idea of an important Russia, if not Greater Russia, retains much resonance. Despite its defeat in the Cold War and frequent newspaper stories about the fragility of the Russian economy, Russia still has the sixth largest economy in the world by purchasing power parity; its advanced military technology and nuclear weapons, combined with its demographics and size make Russia a natural power even in its weakened state.

The sting of the loss of empire is not unknown in international affairs. In the 1950s, Britain and France pursued their independent nuclear weapons programmes for la grandeur. The two invaded Egypt in 1956 with the impunity of world powers, forgetting their irrelevance in the post-war world order. Putin has the same saudade for Russian glory, which nationalists like Aleksander Prokhanov, the editor of the far-right newspaper Zavtra, paint in four empires – the Kiev confederacy felled by the Tatars, the Moscovy tsardom, the empire of the Romanovs that was hollowed by the Bolsheviks, and finally the Stalinist state that lasted until 1991. Putin would be the author of the fifth empire.

Since the last decade, rising oil prices due to war in the Middle East and greater demand from rising economies has given Moscow a new lifeline. Plush with energy wealth, the Kremlin could afford the desperately needed military modernisation drive and Putin could do what Yeltsin could not. Snubbed by Europe and with the United States snapping at its peripheries, Moscow has started to look for friends elsewhere. A rising China, hungry for energy, advanced weaponry, and mistrustful of the United States – seems like the perfect partner. The United States, which has repeatedly shown an inability to think across theatres, has pushed the Kremlin into Beijing’s arms and reversing Richard Nixon’s Sino-US rapprochement. BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) are potential avenues for the expansion of Russian trade and interests outside the framework of Western globalisation. However, Russia imagines itself as a European power and the fraternity it feels to its west is unlikely to develop towards its east. “Russia is part of European culture,” Putin told the BBC in a 2000 interview, “and I cannot imagine my own country in isolation from Europe and what we often call the civilized world.”

Putin does not seek confrontation with the West; Russia is yet weak. However, Moscow will play a major role in shaping an alternative world order to the West. Russia’s membership in BRICS and the SCO affords it the indirect cooperation of some of the worlds largest markets and fastest growing economies. Additionally, the Kremlin has two products there is enormous demand for worldwide – energy and advanced weaponry. This will make sanctions on Russia unpopular and difficult to enforce. While Moscow will refrain from repeating the United States’ mistake of lending weight to Islamists, cooperation on Syria, Iran, and other trouble spots will become more difficult. Putin will most likely withdraw Russia from the Intermediate Nuclear Force (INF) Treaty and participation in the European Court of Human Rights ended.

Humanitarianism was rarely, if ever, a driver of international affairs. If anything, it is another weapon in the public relations arsenal of a country. In the era of embedded journalism and social media, the impact of the lofty rhetoric of the Right To Protect (R2P) is immeasurably higher on a public largely untrained in the ruthlessness and cynicism of international politics than in the past. Yet politics is ugly and power politics even more so.


This post first appeared on Swarajya on September 18, 2014.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)

Like this:

Like Loading...

Modi’s Pivot to Asia?

02 Wed Apr 2014

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in India, South Asia

≈ Comments Off on Modi’s Pivot to Asia?

Tags

ASEAN, Asia, Bharatiya Janata Party, BJP, China, Deng Xiaoping, foreign policy, INC, India, Indian National Congress, Japan, Jawaharlal Nehru, Jiang Zemin, Manmohan Singh, Narendra Modi, non-alignment, Non-Alignment 2.0, SAARC, Singapore

First, it was the Americans who spoke of a “pivot” to Asia; then, it was the Russians’ turn to consider a pivot to Asia. The Europeans, not to be left far behind, also debated a pivot to Asia. Now, it seems Narendra Modi, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s prime ministerial candidate for India’s general elections next week, is also hinting at a pivot to Asia.

Much has already been written about how Modi should order his international relations were he to become prime minister but much less has been said on what he has indicated in his dozens of public addresses so far. While assumptions have been made about Modi’s possible weltanschauung based on his criticism of the Congress’ policies over the past couple of years, they only reinforce stereotypes about the BJP and right-wing politics (though calling the BJP right-wing is problematic).

However, Modi’s speeches – to the public at large as well as to specialised audiences – indicate a different mode of thinking and potentially a new direction for India’s foreign policy. The net effect of Modi’s ideas on how India should conduct itself in the international community may well be considered an Indian pivot to Asia.

At first glance, describing Modi’s foreign policy as a pivot to Asia might seem dramatic, especially in the backdrop of talk of an American, Russian, and European pivot to Asia. Besides, India is already in Asia! However, there are several factors that make “pivot” the most apt term to describe what may most likely be India’s new approach to international affairs.

India has seen itself essentially as a Western power; despite its Indic heritage and historical influence in Asia, Indians tend to study, vacation, and do business far more in the West than in the East. Westerners also feel less alienated in India than they do further east – familiarity with cricket, curry, and Bollywood has made the country more comprehensible to Western sensibilities.

Yet the importance of Asia to India has been expounded from the very beginning. Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, declared that with independence, the former colonised countries of Asia would rise again and take their rightful place in world affairs. Despite the rhetoric, however, Nehru and the next half-century of governments after his death did little to realise this prognostication. Perhaps because of his own education or by virtue of India being a British colony, Nehru led his newly independent country into the Anglosphere which was then defined by the titanic struggle between the communist Soviet Union and the capitalist United States even though India had no quarrel with either power.

Nehru’s need to occupy centrestage in international politics meant that he framed his foreign policy – non-alignment – in terms of the Cold War. India participated in the peace talks over the Korean War, the International Control Commission for Vietnam, and opined on other proxy conflicts between the United States and the Soviet Union that had little to do with India. Even after the Cold War ended, India still follows the Western framework in conceptualising its region. In 2012, a quasi-governmental group in Delhi penned “Non-Alignment 2.0,” a foreign policy document that continued the Nehruvian legacy of a Western-focussed foreign policy.

Modi has so far shied away from commenting on most of the foreign policy issues observers are used to hearing from Indian politicians with ambition. Instead, Modi has repeatedly stressed the importance of trade to his foreign policy; each Indian province might have a trade representative to international partners and an economic delegation will be attached to every diplomatic mission. As Chief Minister of the western Indian state of Gujarat, Modi has made several trips to Australia, China, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand, reputedly developing particularly close relations with China, Japan and Singapore.

These relations are even more noteworthy when Modi’s other agenda is considered – infrastructure. The dilapidated state of Indian roads, railways, waterways, housing, and power have created a bottleneck around India’s economic growth and analysts have projected the need for at least a trillion dollars of investments in infrastructure over the next five years if the country is to continue growing. Modi’s response has been to challenge Indians to develop a hundred new smart cities, bullet trains, national broadband coverage, and other infrastructural improvements in the next few years.

To deliver on this vision, India will need large investments from foreign partners in terms of finance, machinery, and skilled labour. The most suited countries for such assistance are India’s Asian neighbours who have experience with similar mega-projects and are also able to extend financial aid. In addition to the vibrant Southeast Asian economies, China is India’s largest trading partner and Japan has been its largest aid donor since 1986.

Modi has also emphasised the development of manufacturing in the country to provide jobs as well as to spur exports and growth. Part of this strategy relies on better relations with the countries of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation and Association of Southeast Asian Nations. If Modi can address key bottlenecks such fear of India becoming an Asian Big Brother and trade protectionism, India can fuel a regional dynamo. Beyond trade, tourism, and education, the countries of the Indian Ocean rim naturally have a far greater convergence with Indian interests than others in terms of climate change, narcotics trafficking, regional security, and climate change.

The development of infrastructure and trade in the Indian Ocean Region will also ameliorate demographic problems at home. India has long talked about a Look East Policy but done little to deliver on it. An Indian pivot will develop links between the country’s troubled northeast and its southeast Asian neighbours, bringing development to the region and hopefully calming demographic friction between Muslims and tribals that erupted in 2012. This fits well with Modi’s strategy of development as panacea – in a country as impoverished as India, it just might be.

Traditional foreign policy analysts may worry that Modi’s approach ignores India’s three largest conundrums – China, Pakistan, and the United States. This is not the case. While Modi has made it no secret that he does not expect India’s relations with the United States to improve until the Obama administration, thought to be lukewarm towards India, leaves office, it is unlikely that he will ignore the world’s largest economy either.

However, Modi may be acting on what many South Asia analysts have realised but are afraid to accept – the road to Islamabad does not pass through Washington. Pakistan’s acquisition of nuclear weapons in the late 1980s forever changed power dynamics in South Asia. Since then, Islamabad has been waging asymmetric warfare from behind its nuclear shield. The United States has not only been unable to help curtail this cross-border terrorism by Pakistan but has even been selling Islamabad weapons for its fight against terrorism. India is forced to find a solution to Pakistan’s low intensity warfare on its own, potentially through improving its economic strength and defence manufacturing capabilities.

Similarly, India must face a rising China on its own – Southeast Asia and Japan may be of some assistance but demographics and geography dictate that any viable balance to Chinese power in the region must be provided by India. Given the massive disparity in military and economic power that exists between the two Asian giants, India’s defence must rely first, as Nehru realised, ironically, on its economy and ties in the neighbourhood. No doubt, Modi’s response to incursions into Indian territory or to terrorism may indeed be firmer than Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s but that would be tactics and not strategy.

Modi’s pivot to Asia would help India augment its internal and regional balancing before taking on greater international responsibility. In this, the Modi seems to have paid attention to Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin: 1. 冷靜觀察 – observe and analyse developments calmly; 2. 守住陣腳 – secure your own position; 3. 沈著應付 – deal with changes with confidence; 4. 韜光養晦 – conceal your capabilities; 5. 善於守拙 – keep a low profile; 6. 有所作为 – take action; 7. 把握机遇 – seize the opportunity; and 8. 因勢利導 – make the best use of the situation. Nehru’s Cold War-informed non-alignment had its limitations; it remains to be seen if Modi’s Asia-centric policy will pay India more dividends.


This post appeared on Fair Observer on April 07, 2014.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)

Like this:

Like Loading...
← Older posts

Chirps

  • Haredi MK labels female IDF converts as shiksas: bit.ly/306Dwmk | At least they served, which is a lot mor… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 10 hours ago
  • Why does a UK academic spewing antisemitic conspiracies attract eager apologists on the US Left?… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 10 hours ago
  • Israeli Supreme Court says converts to Conservative or Reform Judaism can also claim citizenship:… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 14 hours ago
  • How California's Jewish community won the battle against the state's education system: bit.ly/2ZZ8pcg | Fi… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 3 days ago
  • US diplomat openly calls for Christian nation-states, rails against Jews: politi.co/3sxwl30 | I guess the "op… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 3 days ago
Follow @orsoraggiante

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 213 other followers

Follow through RSS

  • RSS - Posts

Categories

Archives

Recent Posts

  • The Mysterious Case of India’s Jews
  • Polarised Electorates
  • The Election Season
  • Does Narendra Modi Have A Foreign Policy?
  • India and the Bomb
  • Nationalism Restored
  • Jews and Israel, Nation and State
  • The Asian in Europe
  • Modern Political Shibboleths
  • The Death of Civilisation
  • Hope on the Korean Peninsula
  • Diminishing the Heathens
  • The Writing on the Minority Wall
  • Mischief in Gaza
  • Politics of Spite
  • Thoughts on Nationalism
  • Never Again (As Long As It Is Convenient)
  • Earning the Dragon’s Respect
  • Creating an Indian Lake
  • Does India Have An Israel Policy?
  • Reclaiming David’s Kingdom
  • Not a Mahatma, Just Mohandas
  • How To Read
  • India’s Jerusalem Misstep
  • A Rebirth of American Power

Management

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com
Considerate la vostra semenza: fatti non foste a viver come bruti, ma per seguir virtute e canoscenza.

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
%d bloggers like this: