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From navel-gazing to arm-twisting the USA
BOOK:Crossing the Rubicon: The Shaping of India`s New Foreign Policy AUTHOR:C Raja Mohan
BOOK:Crossing the Rubicon:
The Shaping of India’s New Foreign Policy
AUTHOR:C Raja Mohan
In the last chapters of this important book on Indian foreign policy, Raja Mohan says other countries have an image of India as being a porcupine — “vegetarian, slow-footed and prickly.” This is not just a flight of fancy. It was a term used by one of France’s seniormost diplomats.
Until recently, India’s foreign policy had the unenviable reputation of being indecisive, prone to moralizing and marked by navel-gazing. Today, India is seen more as a country on the track to being a major global player. Consider how out of character the country’s diplomacy has been the past few years: unilateral nuclear tests, diplomatic coercion with the US and Pakistan, and maybe troops to Iraq. Other countries are impressed.
Rubicon, part history, part prescription and part advocacy, is about this transformation. It’s “about the journey from the uncertainties of the early 1990s to a more self-assured diplomatic posture by India at the turn of the century” and “about the changing philosophical premises of India’s engagement with the external world.”
The turning point, the author argues, occurred in 1992 when P.V. Narasimha Rao felt the world would shut the door on any future Indian nuclear tests. After much fretting, India took the big step with Pokhran II. The results were “counterintuitive.” India had sanctions revoked. Countries lined up to hold security dialogues and “began to treat India more seriously than ever before.”
Raja Mohan says this fundamentally changed the way India’s elite thought about foreign policy. A “new maturity and self-assurance” entered its relations with the world. New Delhi “exorcised the well-known Indian penchant to substitute pious sounding slogans for effective action.”
India hasn’t looked back since. It went ahead and endorsed missile defence. Its restraint during Kargil impressed the world. It arm-twisted Washington during 2002’s mobilization drama. After 50 years of living in the margins, New Delhi now wants “to improve its own standing in the global order, if necessary by working to change the rules of the system.”
The book outlines how India can earn itself a place on the high table of global politics. At the heart of this strategy is putting flesh to the bones of the “natural alliance” between India and the US. Raja Mohan makes a persuasive case for such a relationship not only because of a convergence of hard-nosed interests, but also because of the shared values of both countries.
Other elements include preserving the military link to Russia, being more generous to our smaller neighbours and, finally, developing the patience to wage a containment campaign against Islamabad “to engineer, through external pressures, an internal transformation of Pakistan.”
“The new foreign policy of India is a work in progress.” But the flyovers being constructed around the old nonalignment highway are coming up rapidly.
New Delhi has done a poor job of explaining the rationale for the new foreign policy. Rubicon helps bridge the gap. But its failure to tangibly link economic liberalisation with the rise of a worldview of substance is a major lacuna. It accepts that 1991 gave India the sinews of its new foreign policy but expects the reader to take this on faith.
This needs explanation if there is to be broader acceptance of why India must now make “arguments of power” rather than depend on the “power of the argument” when it speaks to the world.
Bureau Report
AUTHOR:C Raja Mohan
In the last chapters of this important book on Indian foreign policy, Raja Mohan says other countries have an image of India as being a porcupine — “vegetarian, slow-footed and prickly.” This is not just a flight of fancy. It was a term used by one of France’s seniormost diplomats.
Until recently, India’s foreign policy had the unenviable reputation of being indecisive, prone to moralizing and marked by navel-gazing. Today, India is seen more as a country on the track to being a major global player. Consider how out of character the country’s diplomacy has been the past few years: unilateral nuclear tests, diplomatic coercion with the US and Pakistan, and maybe troops to Iraq. Other countries are impressed.
Rubicon, part history, part prescription and part advocacy, is about this transformation. It’s “about the journey from the uncertainties of the early 1990s to a more self-assured diplomatic posture by India at the turn of the century” and “about the changing philosophical premises of India’s engagement with the external world.”
The turning point, the author argues, occurred in 1992 when P.V. Narasimha Rao felt the world would shut the door on any future Indian nuclear tests. After much fretting, India took the big step with Pokhran II. The results were “counterintuitive.” India had sanctions revoked. Countries lined up to hold security dialogues and “began to treat India more seriously than ever before.”
Raja Mohan says this fundamentally changed the way India’s elite thought about foreign policy. A “new maturity and self-assurance” entered its relations with the world. New Delhi “exorcised the well-known Indian penchant to substitute pious sounding slogans for effective action.”
India hasn’t looked back since. It went ahead and endorsed missile defence. Its restraint during Kargil impressed the world. It arm-twisted Washington during 2002’s mobilization drama. After 50 years of living in the margins, New Delhi now wants “to improve its own standing in the global order, if necessary by working to change the rules of the system.”
The book outlines how India can earn itself a place on the high table of global politics. At the heart of this strategy is putting flesh to the bones of the “natural alliance” between India and the US. Raja Mohan makes a persuasive case for such a relationship not only because of a convergence of hard-nosed interests, but also because of the shared values of both countries.
Other elements include preserving the military link to Russia, being more generous to our smaller neighbours and, finally, developing the patience to wage a containment campaign against Islamabad “to engineer, through external pressures, an internal transformation of Pakistan.”
“The new foreign policy of India is a work in progress.” But the flyovers being constructed around the old nonalignment highway are coming up rapidly.
New Delhi has done a poor job of explaining the rationale for the new foreign policy. Rubicon helps bridge the gap. But its failure to tangibly link economic liberalisation with the rise of a worldview of substance is a major lacuna. It accepts that 1991 gave India the sinews of its new foreign policy but expects the reader to take this on faith.
This needs explanation if there is to be broader acceptance of why India must now make “arguments of power” rather than depend on the “power of the argument” when it speaks to the world.
Bureau Report