Engaging in Power

India is as affected by global challenges as the major powers ? but while they act upon them, we wait upon others, writes K Shankar Bajpai.

For nations, as for human beings, different stages of life, or circumstances, demand different levels of maturity. Today’s India is as different from that of independence as today’s world is from that of the Cold War. Have our speech, understanding, thought — our whole behaviour, as a people and as a state, matured accordingly?

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Oddly, sadly, while others see us among tomorrow’s big players, we remain stuck in yesterday. Terrorism, religious extremism, WMD proliferation, the security of the Gulf — and energy generally, Central Asia’s stability, the power equations to our East — choose any current challenge to world order, India is as affected as the major powers, but while they act upon them, we wait upon others. Delhi’s handful of strategically-conscious policy-makers recognise what needs to be done, but our state as a whole lacks the conceptual and operational tools needed.

Our reactions to last July’s Washington agreement starkly illustrates this. Indo-US relations cannot be the be-all and end-all of our foreign policy, but they affect and distil many other concerns, not just our nuclear future (important enough as that is) but broad security interests and relations with other states, most immediately Iran, perhaps most importantly China. Major interests with such other states need balancing against possibly conflicting interests with America. Seriously debating the serious pros and cons would help reach optimum decisions maturely. Instead, what passes for debate is in yesterday’s terms: third-world solidarity (unrequited), anti-imperialism (but whose?), above all that hallmark of patriotism and sophistication, mistrust of America. Thus Iran’s nuclear ambitions are viewed as a matter of its sovereign rights which we, as champions of non-alignment, should support, disregarding our vital interest in seeing that no other power develops nuclear weapons. Similarly, India’s interests favour good relations, not confrontation, with China, but astonishingly numerous commentators prefer to ignore the detrimental implications of China’s giving Pakistan its nuclear capabilities, or its development of naval facilities in Myanmar and Gwadar.

At Independence, we were completely new to world affairs, idealistic, naïve. We were also essentially isolationist. Our colonial rulers developed us from an object of power into a base of power, anchoring their influence from Suez to Shanghai, but far from acquiring their attributes of statecraft, we identified power with the imperialism we opposed. Our denunciations of the balance of power and power politics were not just the standard rhetoric of the weak, they grew out of our philosophical and historical background. Moreover, no Indian had experience of handling international relations, indeed, of exercising state power at high strategic level for almost two centuries; this did not prevent us from international activism, but limited us to espousing generalities without much involvement in the realities of power.

Our introduction to world affairs coincided largely with the Cold War, with its constant risk of global nuclear conflagration. Our concern to avert that, and our twin dedication to consolidating our own independence and obtaining it for others, were valid determinants of foreign policy, and non-alignment both a conceptually and practically justifiable instrument (our actual practice of it being more debatable). To imagine that old approach has any relevance today is, simply, failure to mature.

The change suffering most from hang-ups from our childhood days is our own rise. We find difficulty in realising that relations are usually mixed, with cooperation and differences co-existing, or in developing broad policy-frameworks within which to fit specific actions: e.g. our statement on Baluchistan would well suit a deliberate design to expose Pakistan’s hypocritical concern for values regarding Kashmir which it despises at home; by itself, despite some polite approval, it is a meaningless irritant to Islamabad and a painful reminder to the Baluchis of disillusionment with us.

Our greatest deficiency is in understanding the role of power in the world, power meaning simply the capacity to make others act, even think, more as you would have them do than they would on their own. Consider one illustration: at least with neighbours other than Pakistan we should have so much leverage as to evoke circumspection if not respect for our interests, yet they treat us like a stranded whale.

At Independence, despite partition, we were in real terms one of the strongest countries in the world, with its tenth largest industrial base, one of its largest armies, an exceptionally strong domestic administration, a large and diverse pool of talent, and no foreign exchange problem. Yet we had no concept of what these assets enabled us to do; far from building on them, we gradually discarded our advantages.

Today, although our machinery for state action has deteriorated alarmingly, we have revived and, thanks to economic achievements, improved our earlier assets, but the mental approach remains blinkered and narrow. While appallingly underdeveloped in too many respects, we are simply not part of that Third World to which we have clung so long. A self-confident, increasingly self-reliant power does not worry about external arm-twisting.

(The writer is former ambassador to Pakistan, China and the US, and Secretary, External Affairs)