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Chaturanga

~ statecraft, strategy, society, and Σοφíα

Chaturanga

Tag Archives: Vietnam

In Search of Great Power

07 Sat Jan 2017

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in Book Review

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Agalegas, Ayni, Bharat Karnad, China, city upon a hill, Farkhor, foreign policy, George Tanham, Great Power, India, Indian Ocean, Japan, Jawaharlal Nehru, John Winthrop, Ministry of Defence, Ministry of External Affairs, Monroe Doctrine, Nha Trang, Nine-Dash Line, nuclear, Pakistan, Shivshankar Menon, soft power, strategy, Taiwan, United States, Vietnam

Why India is not a Great Power.jpgKarnad, Bharat. Why India Is Not A Great Power (Yet). New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2015. 564 pp.

If India were to ever look for a Kautilya in the 21st century, Bharat Karnad would undoubtedly be at the top of a very short list. Some have compared him to Niccolo Machiavelli, the Renaissance Florentine political thinker, but that would be a grave injustice to Karnad, whose majestic breadth of national ambition in Why India Is Not A Great Power (Yet) surpasses even the wildest interpretation of The Prince. In his latest book, now marginally over a year old (but reviewed again because it simply has not got the attention it deserves), Karnad asks the question a whole new generation of young Indians are also wondering – why is their country not counted as among the major powers of the world?

The question is not the fatuous pretension of a strategist born in the wrong country or era, but a potent one. Consider, for example, that India has detonated nuclear devices, sent missions to the Earth’s closest neighbours, the moon and Mars, developed missiles that can strike anywhere from Japan to Austria, built nuclear-powered submarines, satellites, and once the first jet fighter outside the West, and has an advanced nuclear energy programme that includes an indigenously designed and built a fast breeder nuclear reactor that is about to go critical as well as a thorium reactor in the wings. Yet Delhi also appears to lack the power to dissuade its tiny South Asian neighbours such as the Maldives, Nepal, or Sri Lanka from  adopting policies that potentially put Indian national security in jeopardy; India has generally shied away from ever taking a clear stance on world issues, even when its own interests are at stake, such as over Iran or joint training operations in the Indian Ocean and its environs with friendly navies; and Delhi just cannot learn to use its increasing economic clout to influence bilateral trade terms or global commercial regimes in its favour.

The root of this problem, Karnad argues, is that the Indian republic’s leaders have never thought strategically. This echoes RAND analyst George Tanham’s famous 1992 report, Indian Strategic Thought: An Interpretive Essay, a much reviled essay in many Indian circles but with more truth than they care to admit: after all, if one has to think back 2,300 years to recall the last great strategic thinker in one’s culture, it might be prudent to concede the point. Karnad cites several public intellectuals and officials – Nobel laureate and economist Amartya Sen, historian Ramachandra Guha, former prime minister Manmohan Singh, former national security advisors MK Narayanan and Shivshankar Menon, Congress minister Shashi Tharoor – explicitly stating that India should not even attempt to become a great power in the traditional sense of the term. What makes India great, the argument runs, is its soft power and ancient civilisational values imbued with rich diversity that have much to offer the world by way of example – in essence, an Indian version of Puritan John Winthrop’s city upon a hill. In this Nehruvian strand of thinking, India is already great merely by dint of its long existence and the world must only be reminded of this. What little progress India has made in recent years in asserting itself on behalf of its national interests seems to be primarily at the urging of friendly powers invested in the idea of a normal India, with hard and soft power commensurate with its geographic size, location, population, and economy.

Karnad lays the genesis of such woolly thinking – bovine pacifism, he calls it – at the feet of Jawaharlal Nehru. Interestingly, his is not the simplistic assault on India’s first prime minister that one has become so accustomed to from the Indian “Right” in recent years, but a more nuanced understanding of the man. Karnad’s Nehru is an intellectual giant but a practical pygmy: according to Karnad, Nehru rightly saw the latent threat from China, envisioned a world order that would not leave three quarters of the world torn between American capitalism and Soviet communism, and articulated an important place for India and her interests on the world stage. Unfortunately, this was coupled with abject incompetence in implementation: Nehru abandoned his idea of an Asian Monroe Doctrine with India at its helm for fear of upsetting other newly independent third-world countries who only remembered the Indian military as agents of British imperialism, did not embrace the countries flanking China’s southern rim in a geopolitical and defensive association in an arrogant condescension towards geopolitics, rejected a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council over ideological vacuity, and failed to cross the nuclear Rubicon when the opportunity first presented itself in February 1964. Future leaders ossified Nehru’s vacillations much to India’s detriment.

Over seven chapters, Karnad discusses what it means to be a great power, India’s options in developing a coalition of littoral or rimland states to moderate Chinese aggression, Indian relations with the major powers – Russia and the United States – as well important countries in its near abroad – Israel, the Gulf states, Iran, the Central Asian Republics, the ASEAN, Vietnam, Taiwan, and Japan, the over-cautious, risk-averse nature of the Indian administration and its failure of strategic imagination, the shortcomings of the Indian military services in terms of procurement, silly and detrimental turf wars, silo-based decision-making, slow absorption of the latest technology, preference for short-term, tactical thinking over long-term, strategic planning, and organisational inelasticity, the weakness of Indian industry in not just developing but even assimilating technology, poor governmental policies favouring non-performing defence public sector undertakings, and the low motivation and budget for research and development, and finally the internal factors such as caste-driven politics, illiteracy, centre-state tensions, corrupt civil service, and socialist perpetuation of poverty.

Karnad regales the reader with ample anecdotes of stunted ambition, missed opportunities, and poor planning by Indian politicians, civil servants, and military brass that would make even the most committed teetotaler reach for a generous helping of liquid courage. The failure to become a founding member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the short-sightedness in not taking Vietnam up on developing a naval base at Nha Trang, the docile surrender of Indian national interests to American priorities in Iran, the absence of the armed forces in any higher echelon governmental decision-making, the turf wars between the Ministry of External Affairs and the military, the impossible logistics of the Indian Air Force, the exuberance over soft power in isolation, and the irresponsible comment repeated by senior bureaucrats that nuclear weapons are not weapons of war all make an appearance in this excoriation of seven decades of Indian policy. While it is not difficult to agree with the author’s simpler premise that India must shrug off its timidity and become a Great Power, it is the audacious road map offered to Great Power status that makes this book truly interesting.

Anyone who knows Karnad would not hesitate to peg him for a security hawk. Even those who have heard of him for the first time in this review would have by now probably come to agree with that sentiment. Fascinatingly, unlike most security hawks in India, Karnad suggests a reorientation of Indian military policy away from Pakistan and towards the real bête noire, China. His argument is simple – anything that can dissuade China from having its way with India will likely deter Pakistan too but not vice versa. With 60 percent of the Indian army and 90 percent of its armour deployed against Pakistan, India finds it difficult to come up with the resources for the urgently needed mountain regiments and other requirements along the Line of Actual Control. Karnad even goes so far as to suggest the removal of the nuclear-tipped short-range ballistic missiles pointed at Pakistan as a unilateral gesture of goodwill. In times of war, they are easy targets for the Pakistani air force and the break-away state is anyway amply covered by the Agni family of missiles deployed deeper and more safely in the hinterland. These measures would reassure Islamabad and allow the Pakistani army to save face in following the Indian example. Furthermore, India should incentivise its immediate neighbours, including Pakistan, with generous economic terms to plug into Indian markets and thereby cement the country’s role as a regional security provider as well as economic engine.

Putting China in India’s crosshairs has several layers in Karnad’s grand design, each to be initiated simultaneously. Delhi must reorient its military  towards China and order it to prepare for several scenarios, including pushing across the Himalayas and fighting China in Tibet, bombing the fragile ecology of the Tibetan plains and other high value targets such as the Three Gorges Dam, and setting up atomic demolition munitions in the Himalayan passes. Delhi should amplify its capability to prosecute expeditionary missions anywhere from Subic Bay to the Persian Gulf by establishing foreign military bases at Nha Trang, Agalegas, Farkhor, Ayni, Garden Island, and other important locations. This could be achieved in concert with other states of the Indian Ocean Region littoral, dissipating any resentment at India’s rise, increasing confidence in Delhi’s intentions, and forging a partnership for an Indian-led Asian Monroe Doctrine first envisioned by Nehru.

Yet to give its potential partners any confidence in India’s abilities, Delhi must actively seek to set up a defence-industrial complex led by the private sector that would initially absorb technology transfers and later further its own R&D. Defence independence would not only be good for India’s pocket book but it would also improve the Indian military’s operational readiness and psychologically nudge Southeast Asia towards betting on Delhi to balance China. If India emerges as an arms supplier to the Indian Ocean Region littoral, it would build long-term relations with the militaries Delhi hopes to partner with to contain China.

In its international relations, Karnad argues that India jettison the loaded vocabulary of non-alignment but actually behave in a manner Nehru had intended that term to describe. To this end, Delhi should side with the United States, Russia, Southeast Asia, East Asia, and Australia against China when it comes to curbing Beijing’s adventurism in the Himalayas or the Nine-Dash Line. However, India should also align with Iran, Russia, and China against the United States and its Western allies in matters of international trade pacts, environmental norms, labour agreements, and other structural treaties that prop up the status quo favouring the victors of World War II. As part of both groupings, India would become the balancer.

Finally, in what will certainly be considered the most outrageous policy recommendations, Karnad suggests that India resume nuclear testing to attain the thermonuclear grail as well as to make credible its fission designs. Further optimisation on existing designs to yield weapons of various payloads, from tactical to megaton-strategic would give India a richer nuclear palette of responses to an incoming attack. Furthermore, most egregious to prevailing nuclear morality, the author also advocates that Delhi arm Vietnam with nuclear weapons in a tit-for-tat policy to pay China back for supplying Pakistan with nuclear weapons and missile technology.

Karnad considers the argument that India’s best foreign and defence policy for the next two decades is nine percent annual economic growth as foolishly naïve. As he points out, past Great Powers did not become so once they became the industrial engines of their times but their military and economic trajectories complemented each other. Elizabethan England, Bismarckian Germany, and one might add the Soviet Union, Catherinian Russia, the Ottoman Empire, or Rome did not become empires after attaining economic hegemony but their military muscle supported their economic wherewithal and vice versa. Even China, though its rise has been noticed by the West only since Deng Xiaoping, was a military power not of little consequence before it embarked on a programme of economic rejuvenation.

Sometimes, however, Karnad appears to contradict himself. For example, he lambasts the set of treaties the United States has been pressuring India to sign, known as the Foundational Agreements, for coercing India into an American military geopolitical as well as operational order but at the same time admits to India’s own individual abysmal failure in these respects. Not only is communication between the different branches of the Indian military difficult, Karnad tells us, but even within the same service! Different procurement policies, short-term fixes, and the tendency of the different branches to exist in isolation from its sister services has necessitated several jugaads to make possible joint operations. India has also failed to take up offers to establish military supply stations on foreign soil on its on and working with Washington provides a medium-term fix. Similarly, Karnad is leery of the United States as a provider of military technology. Yet he also admits that Indian DPSUs and industry have been spectacularly unsuccessful at indigenous development of required equipment in quality or quantity. The Americans offer a route to plug the gaps in Indian defence more immediately that bringing domestic capability up to speed and then doing so indigenously.

While Karnad is undoubtedly correct about the necessity for credibility of the Indian nuclear deterrent, he does not consider the ramifications of renewed nuclear testing. India will most likely come under sanctions from at least some of its major economic and military partners – the United States, Japan, Britain, Germany, Canada, Australia – and that could effectively scuttle military modernisation and retard economic growth. Again, the lesson to learn here comes from China – economic indispensability provides a great cover for many sins.

Moreover, arming Vietnam with nuclear weapons is easier said than done – true nuclearisation of Vietnamese defence would require indigenous thinking on technical as well as geopolitical and strategic aspects of nuclear weapons, something  Hanoi will need time to develop. In addition, nuclear arms are financially unviable for Vietnam in its current status. It is not even clear if Vietnam perceives any need for its own nuclear arsenal. A case in point is Japan – despite its proximity to China and the regularity of anti-Japanese rhetoric in the Middle Kingdom, Tokyo feels comfortable even under an unsure American nuclear umbrella. Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe has had an uphill battle in convincing his countrymen to make even the smallest of amendments to the constitution to allow a healthier defence outlook and there is great public opposition to all things nuclear.

Similarly, the author is completely correct in emphasising China over Pakistan as the greater security concern for India. One may even agree with Karnad’s logical assertion that preparing a security contingency against China would automatically enable India to curb Pakistan’s periodic tantrums. However, his sanguine views on incorporating Pakistan into an Indian co-prosperity sphere in South Asia would do well to get a reality check from the works of scholars and practitioners of diplomacy such as former Pakistani ambassador to the United States Husain Haqqani and Georgetown professor Christine Fair who warn that the troubles India has with its western neighbour are not over territorial disputes but part of the Islamic republic’s very raison d’etre. Such deep-rooted hostility cannot be coopted by rationality, economic goodies, and unilateral nostalgia.

It is not the purpose of Why India Is Not A Great Power (Yet) to explore every policy option – for example, terrorism and cyber security are given short shrift – but to emphasise the lack of ambition in the Indian ruling elite, whence all other problems arise. Karnad’s heartwarming embrace of amoral machtpolitik is not for everyone, and for all his pessimism about the state of India’s affairs, he remains hopeful as the parenthetical part of the title indicates. Notwithstanding the provocations, disagreements, and the quibbles, the import of his argument should not be lost. This is a most important book anyone interested in Indian security policy should read; in fact, were the Indian prime minister, defence minister, and foreign minister to consider just one book in their entire term, this ought to be it.

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The Footballer

16 Sat Jan 2016

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in Book Review

≈ Comments Off on The Footballer

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84th Infantry Division, Ahlem, Andrew Roberts, bildungsroman, Bronze Star, Carl Friedrich, Charles de Gaulle, China, CIC, Counter Intelligence Corps, Fürth, Fritz Krämer, Harvard University, Henry Kissinger, idealism, Immanuel Kant, John F. Kennedy, Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, Konrad Adenauer, Krefeld, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Leopold von Ranke, Lord Castlereagh, Lyndon Johnson, MAD, McGeorge Bundy, MLF, Multi Lateral Force, mutual assured destruction, Nazi, Nelson Rockefeller, Neuengamme, Niall Ferguson, Niccolò Machiavelli, nuclear, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, Ostpolitik, realism, Robert Stewart, Salzwedel, Soviet Union, transzendentale Einheit der Apperzeption, United States Information Agency, USIA, Vietnam, wie es eigentlich gewesen, William Yandel Elliott III

Kissinger - The IdealistFerguson, Niall. Kissinger, 1923-1968: The Idealist. New York: Penguin Press, 2015. 1008 pp.

Le uova non hanno ballare affari con pietre (Eggs have no business dancing with stones) – Sicilian proverb

There are three things going for Kissinger, 1923-1968: The Idealist (henceforth The Idealist). The first is that the author, Niall Ferguson, has a felicity with words that is rare among academics. As anyone who has read the two-volume The House of Rothschild or The Cash Nexus can attest, Ferguson survived the systematic excoriation in graduate school that transforms the Queen’s English into dense, jargon-laden, and self-absorbed prose. The Idealist, for all its impressive archival and primary source research, remains a book for the general public and is not an impenetrable tract that only a few specialists will relish.

This leads to the second thing, that it is a biography – that too an authorised one – of “the most revered and reviled man” in international politics since Napoleon Bonaparte, Henry Kissinger. It is bound to attract more than the average Kissingerologist, be he an academic, journalist, activist, or quack. The third reason is, of course, the highly provocative assertion in the subtitle that Kissinger, universally seen as a ruthless and amoral arch-realist, the 20th century incarnation of Niccolò Machiavelli, is an idealist. This clever bait-and-switch, either by the publisher or the author, is, however, explicitly confessed in the introduction itself – what Ferguson actually means to argue is that his subject is an idealist of the Kantian variety, not the more commonly understood Wilsonian mould.

What is a Kantian idealist? Fundamentally, this is an epistemological inquiry that lays out a framework of what one can and cannot know, and the relationship between the subject and the object of inquiry. In Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Immanuel Kant argued that the world appears to us as we see it without implying any sort of truth claim about objects in it as they truly are, or ding-an-sich as the German philosopher put it. Kant was certainly not the first to postulate this – strands of this kind of thinking goes back to the pre-Socratics and can also be found in Hindu and Buddhist philosophy. How this affected Kissinger, which is what is important to our story, is in his rejection of materialist theories of capitalist – or socialist – superiority. For the young Kissinger, the Cold War was not a competition over who had more nuclear warheads, missiles, or submarines; those were, without doubt, the tools but the struggle was over something far greater – the idea of freedom. It was this positive message that would win the world over to the West better than any short-term inducement of economic or military aid, Kissinger believed.

There are two points of clarification here. The first is that Kantian or transcendental idealism can lead to empirical realism: though we may not know the true nature of objects, we may still know them as they appear to us. This is not the beginning of some radical subjectivity as Kant argues that all rational beings share an objective knowledge of the rational world that is derived from logical inferences about basic categories. There is, to use Kant’s words, a transzendentale Einheit der Apperzeption, or a transcendental unity of apperception without which it would be difficult to postulate a categorical imperative. Simply put, the young Kissinger could well have been a functional realist even as he was moved by Kantian idealism. This is the line between Kissinger the thinker and Kissinger the actor, a discontinuity that will only grow in the second volume of the biography as the German-Jewish émigré moves office into the most political square footage in the world.

The second point is that the overwhelming use of realism in opposition to (Wilsonian) idealism creates a situation ripe for misunderstanding, something the author himself teeters on at certain points in his tome. Ferguson contrasts the high-minded Kissinger with the technocratic and pragmatic administrations of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson who sought to win the Cold War not by championing the West’s ethical values but by pushing the utilitarian benefits of modern American industrial modernity. This mistakes the tools with which the Cold War was fought for the reasons it was fought; Kennedy and Johnson may not have had a greater moral mission – the Anglo Saxon fetish for empiricism ran particularly strong in that era – but this hypothesis is merely stated and not proven.

Ferguson has a nuanced treatment of idealism but he is less clear on what he means by realism. He mentions it only in passing, and that too in opposition to Wilsonian idealism. This is a facile treatment of realism, a school of thought that has become ever more refined since the end of the Second World War. Despite its several offshoots – classical realism, liberal realism, neorealism, offensive realism, defensive realism, and more – its core assumptions remain the same: that states are the most important actors on the world stage, they are rational, unitary, competitive, and driven by self-interest. Raisons d’état may be pursued by a variety of means, not excluding propaganda and other means of what is today called soft power. These non-military and non-economic methods of winning allies and influencing neutrals, in essence, propagate a moral framework which undergirds the greater struggle of the Cold War. Given the enormous efforts of the United States Information Agency in France, Italy, Scandinavia, India, and other countries, Ferguson’s binary of Kissinger as the moral Cold Warrior and the US leadership as amoral politicians is uncharitable. Realism need not be amoral – the lack of faith in other people, to view one’s fellow man as moved – if not driven – by self-interest is not amoral. In other words, Ferguson might consider if it is perfectly possible for Kissinger to have moral considerations and yet be a realist.

Despite an interesting yet eventually unconvincing central theme, the beauty of The Idealist is in the vast amount of information it provides on its subject. Ferguson keeps his word – he promises a bildungsroman wie es eigentlich gewesen (as it actually was – Leopold von Ranke’s conception of how history should be written) at the outset and does not disappoint. In keeping with Ranke’s advice, Ferguson allows the data to speak for itself as much as possible without lending his own voice at every turn. When writing a biography, it is important that the author not get too close to his subject; rather than judge, he must present the world the subject inhabited with all its choices and limitations. Ferguson does this admirably well – the wealth of archives, obscure collections of private papers, and interviews that went into producing this book – 111 archives worldwide and 37,645 pages of documents, we are told – itself makes it a worthwhile addition to one’s bookshelf.

Born Heinz Kissinger on May 27, 1923, to an Orthodox Jewish schoolteacher in Fürth, a small town barely seven kilometres northwest of Nürnberg in the German province of Bavaria, the future American secretary of state was an average student who loved football. Forced to flee Nazi Germany in 1938, the Kissingers were fortunate to have family already in the United States that was willing to sponsor them. Kissinger was barely 15, old enough to feel the persecution and hatred but not yet mature enough to understand why. In several interviews, the nonagenarian has rejected being a child of Weimar, downplaying the psychological impact of persecution and flight.

Kissinger returned to his hometown barely six years later in an American military uniform, and though the Kissinger clan had been culled by at least 30 members, he showed surprising equanimity, especially considering his age, and bore no ill will against the Germans. This is after his unit in the 84th Infantry Division had been part of the liberation of two satellite concentration camps of Neuengamme at Ahlem and Salzwedel and he understood full well just how his family might have perished. As he wrote to his father, “You, dear father, say: be tough to the Germans… I say be tough, yes. But show them also why you are tough. Prove to them that you are here in Germany because you are better, not that you are better because you are here. Be fair in your decision, be ruthless in your execution. Lose no opportunity to prove by word and deed the virility of our ideals.”

Kissinger has never made much of his military service though records show that he earned a Bronze Star; after the war, he was put in charge of de-Nazification efforts in Krefeld owing to his fluent German and passable French. Contrary to common belief, he did not reinstate former Nazis to their positions in the interest of efficient administration; in fact, it was US policy to gradually slow down and abandon de-Nazification. He was excellent at his job, earning promotions all the way to sergeant in the Counter Intelligence Corps before he returned to the United States.

One of the greatest influences on Kissinger in his formative years had been Fritz Krämer, the Mephistopheles to Kissinger’s Faust, as Ferguson describes. Krämer was also a German-Jewish refugee like Kissinger but 15 years his senior, and the two met at Camp Claiborne, Louisiana, where Kissinger had been stationed for training. He met the second great influence in his graduate advisor, William Yandel Elliott III, at Harvard University, which Kissinger attended on the GI Bill and wrote that famed 388-page senior thesis that his undergraduate advisor, Carl Friedrich, refused to read past page 150. Kissinger’s dissertation, published as A World Restored, has been misunderstood, Ferguson argues, as in praise of Prince Klemens Wenzel von Metternich when in fact the real hero of the work was British foreign secretary Robert Stewart, more popularly known as Lord Castlereagh. On this, Ferguson’s case is compelling and it is worth revisiting A World Restored.

The Idealist takes us through Kissinger’s career until 1968. His frustration at the difficulty in being heard in the corridors of power, his failure to secure a tenure-track position – the Holy Grail of academia – at Harvard, and the stupendous success of his book Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy in 1957 that at once made him a known figure. In it, Kissinger proposed the radical idea that nuclear wars could be fought, that they could remain small and localised for surely the Soviets would have the sense to distinguish between a strike on an armoured division in an open field from the annihilation of Moscow. In a world ensconced in MAD – Mutual Assured Destruction – Kissinger’s proposal was indeed radical. Nonetheless, MAD seemed a bluff to the young assistant professor from Harvard, and a particularly bad one at that. The biographer disagrees with the biographee on limited nuclear war and it is also clear that Kissinger was out of his depth then on nuclear strategy, considering a 500-kT nuclear device a small, tactical weapon!

Kissinger would advise the Kennedy and Johnson administrations but never get close to power himself. Partly, this was because he was seen as the Republican Nelson Rockefeller’s man, having supported his presidential bid in 1960, 1964, and 1968. It was also because the National Security Adviser and his one-time mentor from Harvard, McGeorge Bundy, repeatedly blocked him from access to the president. Kissinger’s perseverance is obvious, and he would remain close to government circles despite his unworthiness among “the best and the brightest.” Ferguson describes Kissinger’s positions on some of the key issues that occupied the United States in the 1960s – Berlin, the Multi Lateral Force, the Vietnam War, German reunification, Ostpolitik, China – all the while arguing for Kissinger’s idealism. It is only with his experience in the negotiations on bringing peace to Indochina that realism first posed a serious challenge to Kissinger’s idealism, setting the stage for the sequel to The Idealist to be called, The Realist.

Ironic in hindsight, when news got out that Nixon had appointed Kissinger as his National Security Advisor despite the latter’s campaign on behalf of the former’s rival, there was general satisfaction that the right man had been chosen for the job. The American public would soon change its mind though his popularity – his high-flying social life and his dark humour – would keep them enchanted for at least another five years.

It is intriguing why Kissinger, were he so Machiavellian a realist, would back a losing horse thrice for the Republican nomination for president. Was he that clueless about American politics, or was it that he simply supported whom he believed to be the best man for the job? Although Ferguson holds this up as another indication of Kissinger’s idealism, the biography has no satisfying answer to offer either way.

Kissinger’s unyielding position on compromise over Berlin, in contrast with his willingness to abandon Vietnam, may also give an insight into the professor’s world view. Kissinger has always been the oddball in US politics, fitting in none of their four broad schools of thought – Hamiltonian, Jeffersonian, Jacksonian, or Wilsonian. At his core, despite the external trappings of an American education, Kissinger was still European in outlook. His countenance of an independent European nuclear deterrent – anathema to the White House – and hostility to Ostpolitik also lends weight to this suspicion. In fact, it might even be worth exploring if Kissinger was not a European realist rather than a Kantian idealist. His ease in relating to Europe’s pre-eminent realpolitikers like Charles de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer over the state of Berlin, the future of China, and nuclear strategy is worth noting. In a 1963 article in Foreign Affairs, the future secretary of state described their thinking as: “their reality is their concept of the future or of the structure of the world they wish to bring about.”

Some might fault Ferguson for not covering in greater detail some of the events of the Cold War that transpired between 1951 when Kissinger set up the Harvard International Seminar and 1968 when he accepted Richard Nixon’s offer to become the NSA. However, The Idealist is ultimately a biography of Henry Kissinger and not a textbook of Cold War history – at 1,008 pages, perhaps Ferguson can be let off the hook for not being sufficiently thorough.

There are a couple of other burrs – putting the blame on India’s Forward Policy for the Chinese invasion of 1962, for example, or holding North Vietnam solely responsible for the failure of talks in 1967/68 – that will irritate the specialist but as Ferguson confesses, he is no Cold War historian and it would be a particularly persnickety reviewer who holds that alone against a generally excellent work.

Ferguson’s cursory dismissal of most of Kissinger’s critics might also be found unconvincing. However, the author makes a powerful case that by the ethical standards even middle-of-the-road critics of Kissinger want to impose, several senior US officials who have served before and after Kissinger ought to be in the docks right alongside him. Yet it is only Kissinger who is at the brunt of all the ire.

Kissinger’s own point about blame is also interesting – historians study what happened but it is equally important to understand what did not happen or what could have happened to obtain a full picture of the choices and limitations of office bearers. Yet that which did not happen does not leave a trail as rich as that which did; in mining only the latter, scholars sometimes completely miss the zeitgeist.

This biography has evinced interest for one other reason: Kissinger sought out this author. Admittedly, the offer had first gone to another British historian, Andrew Roberts, but he turned it down for personal reasons and Ferguson was seduced by the promise of new documents – at least 145 boxes of them. As is the question with any authorised biography, how independent was the author? And as is the answer each time, completely! In this case, it might even be true. Ferguson’s portrait of Kissinger in the first half of his life is neither flattering nor admiring; the subject was a man of substantial achievement and that would be hard to hide. Furthermore, it is equally dishonest to be harsher to your subject in the hope of appearing impartial before your peers and readers.

Kissinger has been called many things, even if we stick to the polite epithets. Jussi Hanhimäki called him a flawed architect in his 2004 publication, The Flawed Architect: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy. It was soon after this that a friend of mine went to visit Kissinger and in the course of the conversation, the topic came to Hanhimäki’s work. “You know,” my friend said, “perhaps a more useful way to look at you is as a footballer.”

“How so?” Henry wanted to know.

“Well,” continued my friend, “in football, you have a clear goal…but the situation is very dynamic. And in heading towards that goal, you may pass, dribble, foul, get fouled, fall back, surge… But none of it changes the goal.”

In his deep German-accented voice, Henry said, “I like that.”

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100 Days of Narendra Modi

28 Thu Aug 2014

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in India, South Asia

≈ Comments Off on 100 Days of Narendra Modi

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100 Days, ASEAN, Australia, Bangladesh, Bharatiya Janata Party, Bhutan, BJP, BRICS, FDR, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, India, Iraq, Israel, Japan, Lok Sabha, Napoleon, Narendra Modi, National Democratic Alliance, NDA, Nepal, Rajya Sabha, SAARC, Sushma Swaraj, United States, Vietnam

It was US president Franklin Delano Roosevelt who borrowed the term ‘100 Days’ from Napoleonic history to describe the feverish working of the 73rd US Congress which had sat for a 100 days from March 09 to June 17, 1933. The term was first used in a radio address on July 24 of the same year and contrary to popular belief, it does not refer to FDR’s first 100 days in office – he was sworn in five days earlier – but that session of Congress.

Since then, 100 Days has gone on to become a barometer of performance of all US presidents, much to their chagrin, and now an Indian prime minister. Few leaders have enjoyed the sort of control FDR and the Democrats had over the House and Senate in 1933 – a 196-vote margin in the former and a 23-vote margin in the latter. Unfortunately for Modi, he holds a small majority of 64 in the Lok Sabha but is 67 votes short of a majority in the Rajya Sabha.

Beyond numbers, the 100 Days barometer is unsuited to a system of government wherein the Executive is not as powerful as it is in a presidential system. Furthermore, the short time frame is not as fair a judge of a new government as an annual address to the nation, taking stock of the achievements, shortcomings, and ambitions of the next year, would be…the first one after a full year in office. As Sir Humphrey would have reminded his audience, diplomacy is about surviving until the next century whereas politics is about surviving until Friday afternoon.

In the realm of foreign policy, Modi’s 100 days have been been interesting; right off the bat, he invited the leaders of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) to his inaugural address and spent time each of them the day after his swearing-in ceremony. It was an interesting choice of guests, shunning all the major powers and even strategic partners like Israel or Japan. However, it appeared to be the first play of the new prime minister’s decision to pivot India towards Asia. During his conversation with Nawaz Sharif, Modi pushed Sharif again on the granting of Most Favoured Nation status by Pakistan to India, which has been pending for almost two decades. This initial optimism towards Pakistan was dampened after India cancelled foreign secretary-level talks after the Pakistani high commissioner to Delhi met with the leaders of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) leaders.

In line with the Bharatiya Janata Party’s manifesto to reinvigourate SAARC, Modi’s first international visit was to Bhutan, followed by a visit to Nepal; his foreign minister, Sushma Swaraj, also visited Bangladesh. The flurry of foreign visits to the neighbours, has resulted in agreements on Indian aid, the joint development of hydroelectic power, and discussions on any grievances such as the India-Nepal Friendship Treaty of 1950.

Another major foreign policy initiative by Modi Sarkar came during the BRICS summit at Fortaleza right after the World Cup finals. The New Development Bank was established, with India as its first chairman and its headquarters in Shanghai. The bank provides yet another avenue for India to develop its soft power while fostering new markets for its goods and services. Modi had previously met with Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi in Delhi regarding Beijing’s investment in Indian manufacturing and special economic zones. China has also accepted India’s full inclusion into the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).

True to the election manifesto, Modi’s international contacts so far have prioritised economic development. Beyond BRICS and SAARC, India set a delegation to Vietnam, a country that will play a strategic role in any “Look East Policy.” Easier trade with the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) was also promised. However, his rejection of the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) Trade Facilitation Agreement despite pressure from the United States and other Western states has cooled the ardour for Modi’s reforms in the West. It indicates, however, a clear awareness India’s problems and the solutions it would need to develop. In fact, Modi’s medium-paced economic reforms show far more wisdom and maturity than many of his followers’ urgent appeals do.

The new government has also played host to several international leaders. Swaraj met with her Omani counterpart and Russian counterparts in her first month in office, as well as French (Laurent Fabius), German, British (William Hague, George Osborne), and American (John McCain, William Burns, John Kerry, Chuck Hagel) leaders. The international community’s eagerness to do business with India is a heartening sign that the acerbic rhetoric before the elections has given way to pragmatism in foreign capitals and boardrooms.

Two international crises intruded on Modi’s 100 Days – the kidnapping of Indians by ISIS in Iraq and Israeli action against Hamas in Gaza. Delhi’s response was deemed slow but there were hardly any options either. Thankfully, the crisis was resolved with many of the Indians returning home. On Gaza, the government initially refused to even hold a parliamentary discussion but in a very unpopular move with BJP supporters, eventually voted against Israel at a United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC).

India has also sealed a nuclear deal with Australia which is to be signed in September. Also on the books for the month just beyond his 100 Days is a visit to Washington DC and one to Tokyo, where the Indian delegation has already signed a historic defence agreement with Japan and has agreed to institute a 2+2 dialogue (foreign and defence minister) between them; Japan has such dialogues only with the United States, France, Australia, and Russia.

Modi has earned a reputation for being a meticulous planner and it shows; India’s initiatives with its neighbours and other partners have proceeded according to a plan and gone well. However, Delhi’s slow and muddled response to sudden crises reveals a weakness in the Ministry of External Affairs, one that has been known for decades. If Modi is to rely on his MEA over the next five years, some attention should be paid to acquring area studies, language, and cultural experts on regions of interest to India.

In the realm of security, Modi Sarkar has sped up clearance for critical border roads along the frontier with China and moved to strengthen troop deployment as well as civilian settlements in the region. Over ₹30,000 crores of procurement proposals have been cleared and 100% FDI in the defence sector has been allowed. Given the long gestation period of defence development, these initial steps indicate that the government is headed in the right direction – a little long-term reform without ignoring the pressing needs of the day.

On the whole, it has been a decent 100 Days. Compared to the lethargy of the previous administration, Modi Sarkar has indeed set a refreshing pace. While the list of concrete achievements may be small, Modi’s period in office has been equally small. By reaching out to SAARC and BRICS first, Modi did exactly what he had said he would during his campaign. The slight surprise was, however, his warm response to US overtures of friendship; many analysts had predicted a sour relationship between the two democracies given the visa imbroglio. Modi has proven to be a far more pragmatic leader than his critics or even his supporters had thought.

The most important task for Modi in his first 100 days in office was to maintain the enthusiasm about India, both within and without – India was the land of opportunity, the next growth miracle. The prime minister had to make people believe that the country is headed in the right direction; in that, he has succeeded. The barometer is inadequate for anything more substantial. As they say, Rome was not built in a day.


This post appeared on Daily News & Analysis on September 01, 2014.

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