New focus of Indian foreign policy
In the ultimate analysis India's ambition to play a global role by becoming a permanent member of the UNSC would largely depend on her relations with her South Asian neighbours. She would get global respect as a regional leader only when regional countries have tension free relations with India. To achieve that aim sagacity and not pursuit of narrow nationalism, secularism and not religious militancy, statesmanship and not state politics would be expected of the leaders of the largest democracy in the world.
ON 10th January Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Sinha addressing a seminar on South Asian Cooperation suggested that the South Asian countries should move forward from SAARC to a South Asian Union. He argued that if Africa could translate OAU into African Union, if the EEC could be converted into European Union, if ASEAN and Latin American countries could make progress then why not South Asian states? " So I am putting this idea on the table" he said, "We would be interested into negotiating a new agreement which will create a South Asian Union and in course of time, the South Asian union -- SAU -- will not merely be an economic entity. It will acquire a political dimension in the same manner which the European Union has come to acquire a political and economic dimension". Speaking of commonalities existing among the countries of the region Indian Foreign Minister expressed India's commitment to the Gujral Doctrine enunciated in the Chatham House speech in 1996 and promised to go beyond the Doctrine if it would serve the cause of peace and prosperity in the region. He expressed his disappointment over the lack of progress of the SAARC process during the last seventeen years and thought preferential tariff arrangement irrelevant in the present context. He declared India's political will and readiness for a free trade arrangement. He regretted the atmosphere of suspicion of each other's intention enveloping the SAARC region. As an example he cited the existence of a school of thought in Bangladesh, which believed that India was conspiring to exploit Bangladesh for its gas. Such a view, he felt lacked factuality because India was discovering gas within its own territory and has offers of gas from the Gulf and Central Asian countries. South Asian Union would remain a dream, he said, unless South Asian countries respected the second point of the Gujral Doctrine i.e. to be aware and to be sensitive of each other's security concerns. He felt "connectivity" through land, sea and air routes to be of extreme importance for greater regional trade and for people to people contact.
Jaswant Sinha's intellectual activism and insurrectionary ideas are breath taking and wildly visionary. Indeed if the Europeans could leave behind the baggage of centuries of conflicts and till recently eye ball to eyeball unrelaxed vigil of the Cold War era and extend the boundary of freedom and potential prosperity to the edge of Baltic Sea, then surely the inheritors of centuries old civilization in South Asia would find Sinha's challenge not a poisoned chalice but an effervescent idea congruent to the present situation and coterminous of mutual interest. But talismanic as the proposal is it has an apocryphal ring to it if one were to note January 7th address of Richard Haas, Director, Policy Planning in the State Department at Hyderabad. To Bush administration India is a critical presence in Asia and " the US-India relationship should be and can be a cornerstone" of US' global network of partnership in a globalised world where the unrivaled US power would require " the help of capable, like minded countries" to meet the threats and challenges facing the world, a vicious contagion being terrorism whose "dramatic and devastating outrages" in the words of Tony Blair "knows no bounds of geography, of inhumanity or of scale".
But Richard Haas felt that India would not be able to realise its immense potentials in the global stage unless relations with Pakistan were normalised. Festering conflict with Pakistan would continue to distract India's attention and divert resources to unproductive (albeit necessary) defence expenditure. Haas described the present state of Indo-Pak relations as "distinctly abnormal" and " less developed than that between the United States and the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War". Citing examples of Germany and France, Japan and Korea, Brazil and Argentina, Haas felt that India and Pakistan could also move beyond the contentious past. He appeared to endorse Mufti Syed government in Kashmir and advocated " a solution that would be peaceful and honourable for all sides". He refused to be a soothsayer as to when a solution could be found but expressed his deep conviction that the status of the Line of Control would not be changed unilaterally nor could be changed by violence. He expressed Bush administration's determination to urge Pakistan to permanently end infiltration. "Pakistan" he said, "must realise that this infiltration is killing their hopes for a settlement of Kashmir". He also criticised Indian position of not to have any dialogue with Pakistan until terrorism emanating from Pakistani territory ended because such a policy did not provide for a basis for a sound long term policy towards Pakistan. In any analysis of Indian foreign policy one has to assume axiomatically the centrality of terrorism. India has been a victim of cross border terrorism long before the Americans got a taste of it on Nine-Eleven. The world at large has ignored this festering wound inflicted upon India till Al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden started terrorist attacks on western targets first in Kenya and Tanzania and then on New York and the Pentagon. In the interregnum on the US ship off Yemeni coast and most recently the carnage at Bali brought home to the West the realisation that despite their unrivaled power -- military, economic and technological -- they are now most vulnerable to attacks from the shadowy world of terrorism. The global perception of the changed nature of security threats that the world is likely to face in the Twenty-first century has now included the issue of cross border terrorism faced by India. This acceptance is reflected in the Delhi Declaration issued during Putin's December visit to India; Prime Minister Bajpayee's description of US and India being "natural allies," during his visit to Washington as both countries are victims of international terrorism; Indian leaders and officials' unending articulation of this fact at every available opportunity etc.
On the downside one wonders whether the march of society's progress from anarchy, through periods of despotism when liberty was non-existent or limited to the privileged few to a state of liberty for all individuals under democratic governments may not see a reversal as a reaction to the perceived threat by the West. It is possible that Homeland Security Acts may find governmental and popular acceptance in other free societies, which were used to libertarian values. The argument that Asia is a kind of "Antarctica of Freedom" where freedom is controlled by social order as opposed to Western libertarianism and therefore state-ordained enslavement would not be too much traumatic may not necessarily hold good (Freedom- Eurasian Mosaic by David Kelly). Overpowerment of the "assailed" replacing empowerment of a segment of developing countries because of their presumed guilt by association with the terrorists because of shared religious faith would be contrary to all civilized norms. This argument, however, is somewhat diluted by Tony Blair's assertion to the press (on 13th January) that the demand on Saddam Hussein to disarm is not because he is a Muslim as NATO fought Christian Serbs in Kosovo to protect Muslim Kosovians. Regardless of Prime Minister Bajpayee's assertion of the US and India being natural allies and President Bush's commitment to "developing a fundamentally different relationship with India based upon trust and mutual values" without being weighted down with Cold War baggage, it is difficult to see these relations developing to the exclusion of Russia. Indeed President Putin's recent visit to India emphasized the excellence of Indo-Russian relations, which served both well over the last fifty years. Besides, the Delhi Declaration pointedly favoured strengthening of the UN's central role in promoting international security in a multi-polar world, which could be read as a counter to Bush Security Strategy of preemption and doctrine of preventive war "based on a distinctly American internationalism that reflects the union of our values and our national interests". US was uncaring that the Strategy could be seen in Moscow as a declaration of US unilateralism and in Europe as profoundly uncomfortable, as Chris Patten wrote, because of Europe's bloody experiences of centuries of war caused by fervent nationalism and of European preference for consensus over conviction.
American attempts to draw in India could be partly due to reported fissures in the US-Pakistani relations as evidenced by recent exchange of fire between the forces of the two countries dismissed by both as "a misunderstanding" which could be symptomatic of deep malaise, an inevitable conflict of interest between the US forces sworn to eliminate the Taliban/Al-Qaida and the Pakistani troops indoctrinated by Islamic ideology for decades and now ordered to kill their Islamist brothers. Bush administration is also happy over India's role in the adoption of IAEA resolution that insists that North Korea end its nuclear weapons programme and open its facilities to IAEA inspectors. India is also on board with the US demanding that North Korea do away with its uranium enrichment facility and meet her international obligations under IAEA. This treatise on new focus of Indian foreign policy would be incomplete without a mention of its "Look East Policy". Convinced of SAARC's failure to develop into a meaningful regional organisation India is putting greater emphasis on her relations with ASEAN countries. She is already a member of ASEAN Regional Forum and has just become a summit partner. She is now looking towards ASEM and APEC forums. It is difficult to assess whether India looks at China as a rival for Asian dominance or as a complement for economic advancement. Given Japan's abhorrence of militarisation possibility of Indo-China rivalry remains a distinct possibility. In that scenario US involvement in Asian affairs with India at her side against China would depend on Chinese treatment of Taiwan. In the ultimate analysis India's ambition to play a global role by becoming a permanent member of the UNSC would largely depend on her relations with her South Asian neighbours. She would get global respect as a regional leader only when regional countries have tension free relations with India. To achieve that aim sagacity and not pursuit of narrow nationalism, secularism and not religious militancy, statesmanship and not state politics would be expected of the leaders of the largest democracy in the world.
Kazi Anwarul Masud is a retired Secretary to the Bangladesh government and former ambassador.
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