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Raja Mohan, India’s leading foreign policy and strategic
affairs analyst, believes in "change" (the only
permanent feature of the universe). He looks at the changing
circumstances and compulsions, and the resultant foreign policy
changes optimistically. He goes into the details of three major
events of 1990s—the end of the cold war; economic
liberalisation and globalisation; and India’s nuclear weapons
tests in May 1998 and its resultant status—that impacted India’s
relations with the outside world and ended up as the fulcrum of
change. On that basis, he "weaves together a single
narrative on the changing orientation of the Indian
diplomacy."
After the cold war
period, during which India leaned heavily on the Soviet Union,
India’s return to the West was inevitable. India "shed
the dirigisme anti-Western orientation that was popular among
the generations of the Indian elite after the
Independence". It deftly injected political, economic and
strategic substance into the somewhat emaciated relationship
with the US, the sole super power, and reconfigured its
relations with other major powers, including China.
Economic
liberalisation and globalisation opened up the prospects of
regional economic integration and a renewed engagement with the
extended neighbourhood, in a "framework that emphasises
economic relations and energy security rather than the
traditional notions of the Third World solidarity."
The third but the
most significant event was Pokharan 2. Nuclear weapons and
strategic capabilities made India a noticeable regional power
and "countries lined up to hold security dialogues and
began to treat India more seriously than ever before". But
this also affected the bilateral Indo-Pak equation and, at least
for the time being, has increased Pakistan’s ability to
intervene in J&K through cross-border terrorism.
The treatment of
this issue, including India’s coercive diplomacy posture after
December 13, 2001, leaves one less than satisfied. These events,
according to the author, gave India a new set of assumptions
about the nature of its diplomatic interaction. These
assumptions are: transition from building a socialist policy to
a modern capitalist one; shifting of emphasis from politics to
economics—trade and not aid to become the national priority;
move from being a "protesting leader of the Third
World" to promoting national interests by management of the
current international system; and shift from "moralism and
idealism to pragmatism."
Notwithstanding
the dynamism of international relations and the world order, the
author feels that "just as India cannot go back to the old
economic policies, it cannot return to the earlier stress on
non-alignment and anti-Western orientation." India has now
crossed the Rubicon. There is a "new maturity and
self-assurance" in its policies. It wants to "improve
its own standing in the global order, if necessary by working to
change the rules of the system." He strongly advocates ‘natural
alliance’ with the sole superpower, the US, because of our
national interests and shared values. His other prescriptions
are: continuing military links with Russia; engaging China
through greater economic cooperation; practising the Gujral
Doctrine with smaller neighbours; and engineering an internal
transformation of Pakistan through external pressures.
With the conscious
re-discovery of wholesome national power as the crucial dynamic,
India, the author concludes, has reconfigured its "foreign
policy mix between power and principles"; from the past
emphasis of the ‘power of argument’ to a new stress on the
‘argument of power’. "If India stays true to the values
of the Enlightenment, deepens its democracy, pursues economic
modernization and remains open to the external world, it will
inevitably become a power of great consequence in the coming
decades."
Rubicon
focuses on the ‘change’ and advocates still more change. It
is an important book that critically analyses every major event
of the period with its different facets, and with convincing and
logical arguments weaves them into a fine piece.
The writer is
former Chief of Army Staff and currently President of the ORF
Institute of Security Studies, New Delhi
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IN
a recent talk, Mr Brajesh Mishra, Principal Secretary to the Prime
Minister and India’s National Security Adviser, enumerated his
four principles for pursuing India’s foreign relations and
national security. These are: (a) know the ground realities, (b)
there is no place for sentiments, (c) the only interest is national
interest, and (c) never hesitate in engaging anyone. Foreign policy,
he said, had to be based on realpolitik and not on ideological or
sentimental considerations.
