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Chaturanga

~ statecraft, strategy, society, and Σοφíα

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Tag Archives: UNSC

The Elephant and the Eagle at Sweet 16

05 Sun Jun 2016

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

≈ Comments Off on The Elephant and the Eagle at Sweet 16

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Ajmer, Allahabad, ASEAN, Association of South East Asian Nations, Australia Group, Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement for Geo-spatial Cooperation, BECA, China, CISMOA, Communication Interoperability and Security Memorandum of Agreement, Defence Technology and Trade Initiative, DTTI, European Union, free trade, India, intellectual property rights, Logistics Support Agreement, LSA, Make in India, Missile Technology Control Regime, MTCR, NSG, nuclear, Nuclear Suppliers Group, Pakistan, Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, PSLV, smart cities, TPP, Trans-Pacific Partnership, Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, TTIP, United Nations Security Council, United States, UNSC, Vishakapatnam, Wassenaar Arrangement, World Trade Organisation, WTO

It has been 16 years since George W Bush fundamentally altered the way the United States looked at India. As the old Cold War with the Soviet Union receded into memory and a new one with China appeared imminent, at least to the Bush White House, India emerged as an important potential ally in the new world order. India’s economy had recently started down the road to liberalisation too, making the South Asian country attractive to US industry as well as the government.

Despite frequent kerfuffles in the media – and there have been plenty – India-US relations have moved from strength to strength over the past 16 years. From the Strategic Quartet – high technology trade, space cooperation, nuclear energy, and missile defence – through the Next Steps in Strategic Partnership to the historic Indo-US nuclear deal and the Defence Technology and Trade Initiative, Washington and Delhi appear poised on the brink of a century-defining partnership. If state visits are any indication of warmth, prime minister Narendra Modi is visiting the United States at this moment for the fourth time in just two years – something his predecessor required nine years to necessitate.

Defence ties are usually the most prominent measure of relations between nations for obvious reasons: not only do they declare how much skin each state has in the other’s security, but they are also a statement of how much states trust each other with their prized technology. No wonder, then, that India’s defence purchases from the United States have attracted so much attention. Between CH-47 Chinooks, AH-64 Apaches, C-17 Globemasters, and C-130J Super Hercules, India’s aggregate defence acquisitions from the United States has crossed $13 billion. The loss of India’s Multirole Medium Range Combat Aircraft contract disappointed Washington but under Modi’s Make in India programme, US defence firms are considering moving the production of the F-16 and F-18 to India.

The United States has moved beyond the role of being a mere supplier of weapons to India: officials have been engaged in talks that, if successful, would result in the co-production of systems. Under the DTTI, the next generation of Raven unmanned aerial vehicle will be jointly developed and produced. Other projects include intelligence gathering and reconnaissance pods for the C-130J, mobile electric hybrid power sources, helmet-mounted digital displays for aircraft and helicopter pilots, high energy lasers, and chemical and biological warfare protection gear for soldiers.

Washington has also been keen to assist India with core defence technologies such as the development of jet engines and the catapult launching system on board US aircraft carriers. India’s Kaveri programme has been a miserable failure and with Delhi’s increasing focus on maritime security, the US offer could provide a healthy boost to Indian capabilities.

India’s change of mind on what the Pentagon calls the foundational treaties – LSA, BECA, and CISMOA – has been a welcome surprise. These agreements formalise the sharing of logistical facilities and align communication protocols between the US military and their partners, greatly enhancing the range and capabilities of both forces in joint humanitarian or security missions. Although the agreements will remain unsigned during Modi’s visit this June, it is reported that they are close to conclusion.

The United States’ support for Indian admission to the permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council and technology export control groups such as the Missile Technology Control Regime, the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the Australia Group, and the Wassenaar Group gives some weight to Philip Zelikow’s statement in 2005 that the United States intends to help India become a major power.

Although both India and the United States have come a long way in defence cooperation, one cannot shake the feeling that both sides are still hedging from a complete commitment. India has lost no opportunity to stress that the signing of the foundational agreements with the United States will in no way erode its sovereignty, that it is happy to conduct numerous maritime joint exercises but will not be persuaded to conduct joint patrols, and that India sees itself as a friend and partner of the United States but not quite an ally. On the American side, senators questioned the wisdom of a bill that proposed elevating India to the status of a NATO ally in all but name given that the South Asian country did not see itself in that role. The US bill would have amended the Arms Export Control Act and made defence transfers to India quicker and smoother.

One hurdle in closer ties is Pakistan: India is displeased with the continued sale of US weapons to the Islamic republic despite ample evidence pointing to terrorist ties and an unhelpful disposition towards US goals in South and Central Asia. However, the dynamics of these ties have remained relatively unchanged since the 1950s: Pakistan provides services in the region that the United States cannot get elsewhere in return for White House forbearance on matters Islamabad sees as vital to its interests. In the 1950s and 1960s, it was basing privileges for US reconnaissance aircraft conducting missions over China and the Soviet Union; in the 1970s, Islamabad served as the channel to Beijing and a rapprochement with China; in the 1980s, it was the shipment of arms to the mujaheddin in Afghanistan. In the 2010s, Islamabad has become the conduit to the Taliban, with whom Washington hopes to negotiate a “decent interval.” Even now, though the United States has been urging India to play a greater role in Afghanistan, Delhi has declined, choosing to involve itself more in important but not critical facets of Afghanistan’s development.

India’s reluctance to play a more significant role in its own interests may frustrate observers but this has, understandably, in large part to do with the country’s capabilities. Couched in the rhetoric of multipolarity and morality, India’s inaction misleads the casual observer. The ignored pachyderm in the room is that Delhi lacks the financial and industrial wherewithal to flex its military muscle in Central Asia or the South China Sea, and any attempt to persuade it to do so will fail. The remedy to this is economic growth, technological development, and strategic coalitions.

On the surface of it, economic relations seem to have grown substantially between India and the United States. Both countries are investing more in each other’s economies and trade between the two stands hovers around $70 billion. More and more US companies are setting up shop in India as Indian companies are expanding their business beyond the Atlantic. Washington is the lead partner for developing Allahabad, Ajmer, and Vishakapatnam as smart cities. There is still plenty of room to grow and Modi has ambitiously suggested aiming for $500 billion in trade in a few years. However, there are several issues that will plague relations. The first is subsidies: Washington recently won a case against India at the World Trade Organisation that prohibited the Indian government from giving preferential treatment to domestic solar panel manufacturers. US firms are also pushing Washington to act against subsidies the Indian Space Research Organisation gets from the government for its Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle programme.

A second hurdle is intellectual property. In several sectors, India has brought its laws into alignment with US and international norms yet there remain significant differences in philosophy. Pharmaceuticals is one such field, where Indian courts have been hostile to the US practice of evergreening patents, instead seeing a social dimension to the industry. India has also had disagreements with the United States on its agricultural subsidies and food security programme.

A sector-specific yet politically potent point of friction is nuclear energy. Although the Indo-US nuclear deal was announced in 2005 and came into force in 2008, there has been little movement on that front since. India’s nuclear liability laws were found to be at odds with international norms and it was only in 2015 when US president Barack Obama visited India during the Republic Day celebrations that some headway was made in easing the logjam. The Indian side came up with a convoluted mechanism to bypass its own law without losing face and satisfied Washington but private companies are still uncomfortable with the provisions. As a result, a number of nuclear energy projects have stalled across the country; GE has flatly refused to participate in the Indian nuclear energy market as long as the present law stands and Westinghouse has delayed the submission of its project proposals. The sins committed by the BJP while in Opposition have been visited upon the BJP while in power.

A probable future cause for concern is the US creation of large trading spheres via the Trans Pacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. India is not party to either of these blocs and its efforts to forge free trade agreements with important partners such as the European Union and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations has proceeded at a snail’s pace. There is a danger that the implementation of the TPP and TPIP will take trade away from Indian shores to within the bloc, dampening much-needed Indian economic growth.

Many of these frictions arise from the fact that the US and Indian economies are at different points: certain Indian policies may not optimize on economic efficiency but are geared towards lifting more of its population out of poverty or establishing its own industries firmly in the international arena. Delhi and Washington have much work to do to negotiate through the clashing policies that will certainly arise in the future and early recognition and amelioration will insulate relations from harsh market realities.

After 16 years, India-US relations are on a firm footing. Much has been accomplished though a lot more remains to be done. It was feared that the warmth between the two would dissipate after the exit of Bush and the election of Obama but despite the lull due to an international economic slowdown and a paralysed UPA government, ties have started to blossom again in the past two years since Modi took office. India enjoys bipartisan support in the US and Washington a hesitant embrace in Delhi. Can relations be derailed? There will always be swings and roundabouts but it seems to have dawned on both countries that the geopolitics of this century are best navigated as friends than estranged democracies.


This post appeared on FirstPost on June 06, 2016.

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730 Days…

26 Thu May 2016

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in India, South Asia

≈ Comments Off on 730 Days…

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Afghanistan, ASEAN, Bangladesh, BBIN Initiative, Bhutan, Central Asia, China, Defence Technology and Trade Initiative, DTTI, economy, foreign policy, France, India, Indian Ocean Rim Association, International Solar Alliance, IORA, Japan, Middle East, Narendra Modi, Nepal, NSG, Nuclear Suppliers Group, Pakistan, SAARC, SCO, security, Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, United Nations Security Council, UNSC

When Narendra Modi swept to power in May 2014, nobody could have dreamed that he would mould India’s foreign policy so decisively. Observers foreign and domestic all opined that Modi would not focus on international affairs much, choosing to pay attention to the domestic Augean stables he inherited instead. The wisdom was that, at most, Modi’s India might modestly reach out in its own neighbourhood but anything beyond the region was going to be primarily to buttress the country’s faltering economy.

If one is looking for unqualified and substantial successes, there is little the Modi government can boast about. Yet this is not to say that there have been no successes – rather, India’s track record in translating words into deeds has been poor throughout its history and it would be foolhardy to bet on noises in the pipeline too soon.

The achievements of the Modi government are also weighed down by the burden of public expectations – the Indian media has published report cards on the government’s performance after its first 100 days in office, at the six month mark, the one year mark, and now at the end of the second year in office. No other administration has ever faced such close scrutiny. Furthermore, the gargantuan scale of what needs to be done to bring the country in line with the ambitions of the younger generation dwarfs into insignificance any accomplishment of the National Democratic Alliance.

The general tenor on Modi’s India has been positive. The optimism in the international mood can be gauged from the increase in the flow of foreign investments into India; Japan has made substantial investments in infrastructure, the most visible project being the high speed rail project connecting Bombay to Amdavad. Similarly, France is playing an active role in developing smart cities in India as more and more of the country urbanises over the next few decades. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have also expressed interest in India’s road, maritime, and riverine infrastructure. All this is in line with expectations that Modi would focus on rebuilding India’s economy and developing the infrastructure needed for it to emerge as a regional power.

The past two years have also seen India take a greater interest in its backyard, Central and West Asia. Counter-terrorism and energy topped the agenda but Delhi’s pockets are not deep enough to spur breakneck development on visible markers of progress such as gas pipelines. India is also one of the largest investors in African countries. While previous administrations have also sought similar goals, the Modi government has brought an energy to the negotiations that leaves many observers cautiously optimistic of movement.

Frequent visits to the country by US defence officials also indicates the initial flowering of a mature security relationship that will have consequences for the entire greater Indian Ocean region. The US-India relationship that had been reincarnated by the George W Bush White House and stagnated since received new impetus once Modi took office. The Defence Technology and Trade Initiative has moved forward as Washington has been keen to help India build better aircraft carriers and talks have been going on to manufacture the M777 ultralight-weight howitzer in India under the Make-in-India scheme. Recently, there has even been talk of Boeing establishing a manufacturing line for its F-16s and F-18s in India and offering the F-35 to Delhi.

In the last two years, India has lost some of its timidity in participating in the Malabar naval exercises with the United States and Japan. Delhi is close to concluding a military logistics agreement with the United States that could significantly expand its influence over the Indian Ocean region. The Indian Navy – in the midst of a massive expansion and modernisation programme – may well evolve as the face of Indian soft power and diplomacy in the region as its augmented capabilities allow it to provide services such as security, search & rescue, and humanitarian relief for the regional commons. This will integrate India more closely with the ASEAN and SAARC nations who will become accustomed to seeing Indian power as a benign force.

In the neighbourhood, the Modi government can certainly report Bangladesh and Bhutan as success stories of its foreign policy. The border agreement and several agreements on energy, infrastructure, transportation, trade, and nuclear cooperation have made Bangladesh more comfortable with its parent state. However, things have been a mixed bag in Sri Lanka and disappointing in the Maldives and Nepal. These are difficult customers, trying to profit from playing India off against China as India tried – and failed – to do with the US and USSR during the Cold War. Without significant economic leverage, these states will continue to be a nuisance to Delhi.

Modi’s greatest diplomatic failure is alleged to have happened with Pakistan and China. Nothing could be further from the truth: while Pakistan sees India as an existential threat, China views its southern neighbour as eventually capable of sabotaging its rise and competition with the United States. The incursion by Chinese troops into Indian territory during a state visit by Xi Jinping to Delhi, not to mention Bejing’s obstructin of Indian accession to the Nuclear Suppliers Group and the UN Security Council as a permanent member, indicates that the Middle Kingdom is content to allow relations to simmer for now. The overtures to Islamabad, unequivocally rebuffed at Pathankot, suggests an ugly truth that Modi – and perhaps South Block – cannot admit publicly: that Pakistan is not a problem that can be solved with patient diplomacy. It is naïve to expect any improvement of relations with either of these two neighbours.

The Modi administration has done well in showcasing India economically and has also achieved a modicum of success on security matters given the options available to it. Afghanistan is an illuminating example: it can hardly be denied that it is in India’s interests that the war against Islamists, be they al Qa’ida, ISIS, or a Pakistani proxy, is best fought with Afghan sinew. Yet Delhi has been reticent to generously supply Kabul with training and material because of its own shortcomings. After decades of material and intellectual neglect, it would not be surprising if India’s armed forces find themselves shackled more by their own politicians than by the enemy.

Modi’s foreign policy has not stopped with nation-states – he has reached out to the Indian diaspora, multinational corporations, and potential technology disruptors to accelerate India’s growth. At the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Paris in December 2015, India played a key role in promoting solar energy as an alternative to fossil fuels by committing to expand solar energy to 100 GW (installed capacity) by 2022. The International Solar Alliance, launched by the prime minister, will keep the country at the centre of innovation and regulations concerning solar energy.

While India has been content to involve itself in international and regional groups such as the G-20, BRICS, ASEAN, SAARC, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation until now, the Modi government has taken the policy one step further and started to nurture groups in which it could assume leadership roles such as the 1997-established Indian Ocean Rim Association and the Bhutan Bangladesh India Nepal . Delhi has also started to bypass Pakistan in SAARC via multilateral treaties with other neighbouring states such as the connectivity project between Bhutan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and itself which Modi revived in November 2014; the BBIN Initiative was established in 1997 as the South Asian Growth Quadrangle but little had been accomplished since.

In the two years of the Modi government, Delhi has strengthened its foreign policy along all axes – economic, security, and diplomatic leadership. While it is easy to be impatient with the rate of progress, the limitations on India’s economic, military, and diplomatic power also ought to be borne in mind. With continued progress, the several frustrations observers feel with the elephant will gradually dissipate.


This post appeared on FirstPost on May 27, 2016.

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Reconsidering Nehru’s Foreign Policy Legacy

01 Sun Nov 2015

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in India, Opinion and Response, South Asia

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Burma, China, communism, foreign policy, India, Jawaharlal Nehru, non-alignment, Soviet Union, Thailand, United Nations Security Council, United States, UNSC

The birth of the Indian republic is not yet distant enough a memory for Indians for the hagiographies – or polemics – to stop. Few figures exemplify this more than Jawaharlal Nehru, perhaps the most iconic figure of the young republic. As the longest serving prime minister too, Nehru’s policies have left an indelible imprint on Indian politics. Although Nehru’s legacy has started to erode in some sectors like the economy, they remain a visible framework in others such as foreign policy – only recently did an Indian policy research group come out with a publication titled, Non-Alignment 2.0. Recollecting Hubert Humphrey’s characterisation of foreign policy as domestic policy with its hat on, the Nehruvian grip on Indian thinking is nowhere clearer.

Nehru began to shape India’s relations with the world even before independence. As the vice president in the Viceroy’s Executive Council, formed in September 1946, Nehru was responsible for India’s foreign affairs. The future prime minister – and foreign minister, for Nehru held that portfolio too – outlined his worldview as the head of the interim government of India. The September 26, 1946 edition of The Statesman reported Nehru as saying, “India will follow an independent policy, avoiding power politics.” In an interview given to the Hindustan Times around the same time, Nehru asserted, “we shall be friends and we intend cooperation with America. We intend cooperation fully with the Soviet Union.” Friendship towards the Communist powers was essential as was friendship towards all powers, but it is not a friendship that springs from mutual understanding through sympathetic ideologies.

Morality

Whether by design or accident, Nehru’s non-alignment was cast as moralpolitik in a world of atompolitik: here was a brave, new India refusing to prioritise the great global struggle over the fundamental needs of her own impoverished masses. Many hailed India’s foreign policy principles as a powerful moral force for peace within the United Nations. As Nehru reported to the Constituent Assembly, “they respected us much more, because they realised that we had some kind of an independent policy and that we were not going to be dragooned this way or that way.” India’s focus on diplomacy rather than military strength was showcased as a different approach to the chaotic machtpolitik world of international relations. Initially, it seemed that India was practicing what it preached. Nehru referred the crisis with Pakistan to a newly formed international organisation known as the United Nations, and it became the second non-communist country to recognise the Communist takeover of China. However, this morality on Nehru’s part might have been nothing more than pragmatism. As Henry Kissinger once stated, moderation is a virtue only in those who are thought to have an alternative. The Indian prime minister was a man without options: in a letter to the Burmese prime minister, Thakin Nu, Nehru explained, “there [was] not much choice left in the matter and the facts of the situation [led] only to one conclusion,” that the government of Communist China must be recognised…of course, however friendly we may be outwardly, there are inner conflicts and frictions and suspicion of each other.” As he explained to his friends in London, “Recognition does not involve approval of [China’s] policy…it is only a recognition of a political…fact, to ignore which is only to court embarrassment.” After the Chinese annexation of Tibet, Nehru observed with regret, “We cannot be happy to have a strong, centralised and Communist government in control of the Tibetan border with India and yet there are no obvious means of stopping this.”

Nehru was greatly disturbed at the developments in China, Burma, Tibet, Malaya, and even South Asia. India even supplied what financial and material support it could to the Burmese government against communist-supported groups such as the Red Flag Communist Party, the Communist Party of Burma, the People’s Volunteer Organization, and the Karen National Union. However, he was also aware that much of the communist insurgency in the region was anti-imperialist rather than anti-Western. The Marshall Plan, for example, was helping the French and Dutch maintain their control over Indochina and Indonesia, only strengthening the Communist cause. For a country that had just shrugged off the chains of imperialism, India could not countenance Western policies in Asia either. Finally, when India did recognise China, it was in close coordination with the governments of the United Kingdom, Canada, and other Commonwealth countries.

Serendipitously for Nehru, the United States and Britain saw India as a vital piece on the global chessboard board and did not want to write the South Asian country off just yet. It was perhaps this Western attitude more than non-alignment that enabled India to obtain developmental assistance from both, the Western and Communist blocs. Although the Soviet Union set up the steel plants at Bhilai and Bokaro, it was West German assistance behind the Rourkela Steel and Fertilizer Plant and the Durgapur Power Sation. The British tried to persuade the Americans that Nehru’s orientation was essentially pro-Western and urged that he should gain economic and military aid from the United States. In Sir Archibald Nye’s view, American aid was crucial to India, “for without it, the development of this impoverished sub-continent into an effective bastion against Communism [was] impossible.” Washington, however, was not pleased that “India was making no contribution to the solution of world problems…and that Nehru displayed little sense of the practical realm.” Similarly, India played an important role in the Soviet plan to foster good will in the newly liberated countries of the Third World.

Capability

Nehru’s morality was triggered by yet another stark reality: capability. This was primarily exhibited in India’s reluctance to use force in her immediate neighbourhood or even in international policing action such as in Korea. However much an idealist and a dreamer Nehru was, he was under no illusion of his new country’s capabilities. He sought to stay out of military pacts because he did not wish to incur an excessive burden of militarisation upon a fragile economy. If India had to “make full provision for [an attack],” Nehru wrote to his chief ministers, “this would cast an intolerable burden on us, financial and otherwise, and it would weaken our general defence position. There are limits beyond which we cannot go at least for some years.” In a meeting with his intelligence staff in 1952, Nehru said, “a hostile frontier with China alone would mean expenditure of all Indian resources just to defend it.” In a speech to Parliament in March 1954, Nehru admitted candidly that “India is backward in…industries, modern weaponry, etc. [India] cannot compete…in these areas.” In the late 1950s as tensions with China ran high, when a bombastic Jan Sangh Member of Parliament declared that he could have over a hundred thousand men on the border overnight, Nehru scathingly asked with what the honourable member intended to clothe or arm the men. Nehru also surmised that the United States and the United Kingdom were only interested in embarrassing China in the international community and did not truly care about the interests of Asians in Tibet, Burma, Korea, or India. Therefore, any appeal in the United Nations might fail, and India would not want to challenge China if it could not hope to win the challenge.

Critics have always been suspicious about Nehru’s motives for non-alignment, especially since it dovetailed with his Fabian socialist views and a condescension towards the American way. Nehru’s own predilections followed him into his job, of course. As one US ambassador to India wrote of the Indian Prime Minister, “Nehru has had an anti-American bias since his school days in England. There he obtained the idea that the United Sates was an overgrown, blundering, uncultured, and somewhat crass nation, and that Americans in general were an ill-mannered and immature people, more interested in such toys as could be produced by modern technique and in satisfaction of their creature comforts than in endeavouring to understanding great moral and social trends of this age.” More damning is Nehru’s unequal application of non-alignment – as the United States was quick to point out, Nehru leapt to condemn Britain and France when they invaded Egypt in coordination with Israel during the Suez Crisis of 1956 but failed to bring the same vigour to its delayed reprobation of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Hungary almost simultaneously.

In a manner, Nehru’s heterogeneous non-aligned principles exculpate his own understanding of the concept. To him, non-alignment was a way of putting Indian interests above those of the Soviet Union or the Western alliance. Non-alignment was neither neutral nor an abdication from responsibility, and Nehru bristled at the implication that his neutrality was a desire to escape world obligations: “We are not going to join a war if we can help it,” Nehru told the Lok Sabha, “and we are going to join the side which is to our interest when the time comes to make the choice.” Under domestic moral pressure from Jayaprakash Narayan, when Nehru did criticise the Soviet Union on its heavy handedness in Hungary, Moscow promptly abstained from a UN Security Council resolution that declared the results of elections in Indian-administered Kashmir as null and void instead of vetoing it. India’s non-aligned tilt towards Moscow, then, was possibly more pragmatic than ideological. As Kissinger wrote in a 1994 essay in Foreign Affairs, “A country that demands moral perfection in its foreign policy will achieve neither perfection nor security.”

Circumstance

Nehru also pushed the development of science and technology in his foreign policy in a manner that has not been seen until only very recently. He reached out to developed countries for assistance in nuclear, space, and industrial technology. The Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station (TERLS) was set up with American help and the hundreds of launches from the site by the Russia, United States, and European countries provided India valuable expertise in telemetry, tracking, and other ballistic operations. India also embraced US president Dwight Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace programme, absorbing whatever expertise was available from a growingly taciturn international nuclear environment for its own purposes. India also played a constructive role in disarmament negotiations and nuclear proliferation control. Although Indian fears on these issues were brushed aside in the 1960s, those same problems continue to plague international relations to this day. In some ways, Nehru was a man ahead of his time – or perhaps, as a leader of a lesser power, he could afford to listen to scientists’ warnings.

The defeat to China in the Himalayas in 1962 threw all of Nehru’s grand theories and gestures into question. Then, as now, the prime minister’s critics simply wanted to know what use Nehru’s diplomacy had been when it could not protect India in its most critical hour. This is a fair question but one that has no easy answers. Nehru’s foreign policy gave India stature on the world stage, as the country was invited to participate in fora such as the Neutral Nations Repatriation Commission to supervise the truce and facilitate prisoner exchange after the Korean War and the International Control Commission set similar tasks after the First Indochina War. India’s mediatory role in the Suez Crisis and its prominence at the Bandung conference of new Asian and African states gave the country an international presence. After Bandung, John Foster Dulles had even remarked that “it was better to lose an ally like Thailand than a neutral like India.” However, it is not clear how this soft power helped India where it mattered – the economy and national security. The non-aligned states were mostly too poor themselves to contribute to the Indian economy, and more harshly, did not even utter a word in support of India during the 1962 Himalayan war; not even the Soviet Union came to India’s defence. Even granting the nobility of the main planks of Nehruvian foreign policy – anti-imperialism, disarmament, and peace – it was of no avail to India in the final reckoning.

The Chinese debacle occurred towards the end of Nehru’s premiership and it left him a broken man. Sadly, the geopolitical winds had not favoured the prime minister. Nearly two centuries under British rule had left India economically, socially, and militarily weak. Nor were any of India’s leaders relentless dictators, willing to subject her citizens to even more privation in order to rapidly build a powerful military. When invasion came, it was not even because Nehru had failed in his strategy but because of something entirely unrelated: documents declassified over the past decade in Chinese and Eastern European archives indicate that Beijing’s primary purpose for bringing India to heel was to establish its primacy in the Sino-Soviet struggle for the leadership of world communism. By humiliating a Soviet ally, China would be able to subtly demonstrate to other communist countries that the Soviet Union was more intent on detente with the Americans than being a revolutionary power. Nehru’s correspondence with American officials show that he had foreseen this wrinkle in Sino-Soviet relations in the mid-1950s but had not expected it to be so severe, come so quickly, or, indeed, be its innocent victim. Without the Soviet catalyst, disputes over the MacMahon Line would have continued to plague Indo-Chinese relations but might not have come to a boil so soon, if at all. In fact, relations between the two Asian giants had genuinely seemed to hold potential until the late 1950s – China had even sent India a million tonnes of foodgrains in 1951 to help stave off famine.

More substantially, India had nowhere else to turn. The United States, for all its wooing of India, was not interested in a strategic relationship. American officials posted to India were clearly instructed to persuade Delhi over to the Western cause but make no commitments in return. The United States would have been happy to enlist India as an ally but was willing to settle for the country not going over to the Communist bloc. According to US calculations, a Marshall Plan for India would have to be far larger than the one Europe was offered and Washington could not afford to make such an investment in a secondary theatre of the Cold War. Nehru’s prickliness towards Americans did not persuade them either to make any additional efforts to see if India could be accommodated.

Impact

None of this is to suggest that Nehru was merely the subject of world forces. He did make mistakes in his assessments of others, that the new countries of Asia and Africa might be driven not just by anti-imperialism as Nehru was but also by nationalism or other motives. Nehru repeatedly spoke of a shared Asian heritage, which, to him, meant ancient greatness, the trauma of colonialism, and a new nationalism. There was no room for renewed regional and ethnic rivalries to surface. This led Nehru downplay the differences between the members of the coalition he tried to lead, leaving India alone in its greatest moment of crisis since independence.

Nehru also grievously underestimated the importance China attached to India’s support in diplomatic matters. India’s perceived political and moral power were seen by Nehru as promising protection from any hostile neighbour – it would be unthinkable to enrage the Soviet and American alliances, as well as the Third World. Additionally, since 1957, the Soviets had begun to support India on Kashmir in the United Nations. China had seemed least likely to risk global condemnation, and “common wisdom held that acceptance in the United Nations was essential for China.” Nehru had erroneously assumed that the existence of a Third World bloc with India in a position of leadership was in the interest of both major powers.

Another error on Nehru’s part was the refusal to accept a seat on the United Nations Security Council before one was offered to China. He wrote to his sister Vijayalakshmi Pandit, then the Indian ambassador to the United States, “India…is certainly entitled to a permanent seat in the Security Council, but we are not going in at the cost of China.” Nehru interpreted the offer from Washington as a stratagem to divide Asian countries and bring suspicion and rivalry between India and China. Although it is difficult to say how a place on the UNSC might have helped India in 1962, the position would have at least allowed India to act without fear of a veto – or lack thereof – on important resolutions in the Security Council. This strategic blunder cost India then and continues to do so to this day.

Though Washington did not approve of Nehru’s methods, they understood his game plan. A State Department communiqué in the mid-1950s observed that Nehru was pursuing a policy that would ring the periphery of China with a buffer of neutral states and that in was in the security interests of India that these states continue to remain outside the Communist Chinese sphere of influence. In early 1962, Thailand had approached India with a proposition – it would leave the US-led security pact in the region if India would guarantee her security against China. Bangkok was particularly worried about communist infiltration and the “Thai Autonomous Region” established in the Yunnan province of southern China. Delhi was evasive as Nehru was aware of the futility of such guarantees in the face of a preponderance of Chinese power in the region. After India’s defeat in the mountains, Bangkok rescinded its proposal, arguing that India cannot be expected to defend Thai interests if it cannot protect its own. India’s failure to emerge as a provider of economic and security benefits hastened the collapse of its foreign policy that had been until 1962 held together with only soft power.

In the final evaluation, Nehru emerges as neither hero nor villain…just human. Indian foreign policy could have undoubtedly been conducted better but it operated within the restraints of a weak military and economy, US unwillingness to make a serious commitment to Asian security, and Sino-Soviet rivalry. Of course, it also functioned within the parameters acceptable to the psychology of a newly decolonised nation and Nehru’s own social and economic inclinations. Yet Nehru’s foreign policy will be judged only by the outcome, and whether Nehru is guilty or not, it is only he who is responsible.


This article first appeared in the November 2015 print edition of Swarajya.

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