Center for the Advanced Study of India
CASI Sixth Annual Fellowâs Lecture 2002
April 23, 2003
The Measure of India:
What Makes Greatness?
George Perkovich
Vice President for Studies
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Paper also available on-line at: [url="http://www.sas.upenn.edu/casi/papersonline.html"]http://www.sas.upenn.edu/casi/papersonline.html[/url]
Center for the Advanced Study of India
Dr Francine R.Frankel, Director
University of Pennsylvania
3833 Chestnut Street, Suite 130
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-3106
USA
URL: [url="http://www.sas.upenn.edu/casi/"]http://www.sas.upenn.edu/casi/[/url]
E-mail: casi@sas.upenn.edu
© 2003 by the Center for the Advanced Study of India
All rights reserved. Published 2003
Prologue
In 1999, months after India had tested five nuclear devices in the
Rajasthan desert, I was interviewing Inder Gujral, who had been Indiaâs prime
minister in 1997. Gujral was known as a peacemaker -- a soft-spoken, thoughtful
veteran of the Indian independence movement. With his white hair combed back
and his neatly trimmed moustache and goatee, he sat in the library of his
spacious home on Janpath Road and repeated the question I had just asked: âWhat
did testing nuclear weapons accomplish for India?â The answer, Gujral
explained, was basic and profound. âThe world gives respect to countries with
nuclear weapons. Do you think it is an accident that the five permanent members
of the Security Council have nuclear weapons?â Gujral insisted that India would
never use nuclear weapons offensively, or in a first-strike. He did not really
think of them as weapons. Rather, nuclear weapon capability manifested Indiaâs
world-class greatness. Nuclear weapons marked Indiaâs arrival as a major power.
Leaving the former prime ministerâs house, I admired the manicured
lawn adjacent to the driveway. I exited through a security-guarded gate, past
the wall protecting the house, and walked toward the taxi I had asked to wait
for me. The taxi sat under a shady tree, on the dirt buffer between the wall
and the wide capital boulevard. As I approached, the driver bolted upright from
the passenger seat. He had been napping and the sound of footsteps awakened him
and sent him scrambling out of the car and around to the hood. He held in his
hand a dark tool that resembled a tire iron. He raised the hood and pushed the
tool into the engine block and began cranking. He cranked and he cranked,
trying to get the engine to turn over. When finally the motor sputtered to
life, the driver looked up at me gleefully and bid me into the car. As the taxi
trundled along the boulevard leading away from Gujralâs house, I sat in the back
and chuckled. I thought of what the former prime minister had said. The driver
heard me and turned his head slightly back, shrugging his shoulders in humility.
âOld car,â he said, endearingly. âYes,â I said, as much to myself as to him,
âand it works.â
Introduction
I join you tonight to consider India on the scales of greatness. In
other words, to ask: by what standards do people regard a state as great? And
how does India conform to those standards?
I must say at the outset, that these are not questions on which I
personally would fixate. Greatness in terms of power is not a standard that
moves me as a human being. My impulse when looking at countries is to say,
âwhatâs so great about being great?â I think a countryâs taxi drivers tell us
more about it than the number of nuclear bombs it might possess. The number of
Ph.D. holders, engineers, and writers driving taxicabs in a country, and where
they came from, tells me a lot about the country weâre in and the country from
whence they came. The taxi driver in Iran who complains bitterly about the
ayatollahs and wants to talk about pop music and freedom, tells me something
about Iran. The engineer who fled Nigeria for the opportunity possible in
America, even if itâs driving a cab, tells me something about Nigeria and the
U.S. Great power has little to do with it.
Nevertheless, greatness is on peopleâs minds now when they think
about India. Not only Indian elites, but also American politicians, diplomats,
and scholars talk about Indiaâs looming greatness on the international stage.
Businesspeople who havenât done business in India talk about the greatness of
its market. So, it is not unnatural to delve further into the matter and ask,
what makes a great power, and is India emerging as one? As we begin this
consideration, I must warn you that at the end I will return to question this
question.
What Makes a Great Power?
Social scientists, in their quest to emulate natural scientists, have devoted
considerable effort to identify indices of great power. Unfortunately, while
laws of nature may exist for natural scientists to discover, human societies act
contingently. Freedom, irrationality, perception and misperception â these and
other human traits defeat the effort to discover objective and useful measures
of power. Power within and between states derives from intangible as well as
tangible attributes.
Thus, the United States was a great power in the 1960s and 70s yet lost a major
war to Vietnam, a developing country. Similarly, the Soviet Union foundered on
the rocks of Afghanistan and never recovered. Is France a major power today?
It possesses two seemingly vital attributes of major powerdom â nuclear weapons
and a veto in the UN Security Council â yet neither enabled France to deflect
the U.S. and the U.K. from resorting to war in Iraq. Many other examples can be
adduced to show the difficulties of measuring effective international power.
That said, Kenneth Waltz â perhaps the most famous contemporary
Western theorist of international relations -- provides a useful colloquial
definition of power as the âextent that [one] effects others more than they
affect [one].â A stateâs power is a combination of its capacity to resist the
unwelcome influence of others, and, conversely, to influence others to behave as
it wants them to.[i]
Of course, social scientists do not leave the definitional exercise
there. Searching for greater precision, empiricism, and testability, they have
sought to distinguish the most important, quantifiable determinants of state
power.[ii] Given the role of warfare in world history, analysts posit that
military power is perhaps most important.[iii] Military power in turn depends
at least to some degree on a stateâs (or allianceâs) human and material
resources. Hence, most evaluations of state power include measurements of
population, economic output, and technological/industrial capacity. [iv] These
indices add depth and quality to the assessment of a stateâs military power.
Still, in war as in other international contests for influence, the
state with the most military strength often does not prevail.[v] Military
hardware and troops, population, economic output, and technological
sophistication offer potential power, just as height offers potential basketball
talent. But not all tall people are great basketball players, and not all teams
with the tallest players win championships. Other attributes transform physical
potential into success at given challenges, including in international affairs.
The quality of governance helps determine the efficiency with which natural and
human resources can be converted into wealth and economic strength. A
government capable of providing health, education, and other public goods and
services can make the difference between a sick, hungry, ignorant population and
a healthy, educated, and productive workforce. The former is more likely to be
powerful than the latter.[vi] Governmental efficacy in turn depends at least in
part on social factors such as national cohesion and cultural unity.[vii]
In international affairs, a stateâs diplomatic, strategic, and intelligence
acumen can determine whether raw physical capacity translates into effective
power.[viii] Scholars and authorities recently have given greater due to such
non-material sources of international power â âsoft powerâ in Joe Nyeâs words.
States can gain influence through diplomacy, moral standing, market
attractiveness, intelligence-gathering capabilities, and the charisma of
individual leaders whether or not they have great military power.
Thus, power in the international system derives from material capabilities and
the wherewithal to translate those capabilities into the effective pursuit of
foreign policy objectives. Power cannot be measured satisfactorily through
quantitative indices alone. Measures of raw capability must be balanced with
subjective evaluations of a stateâs effectiveness.
Is India Emerging As A Major Power?
So, how does India fare on these scales?[ix] Allow me briefly to
survey Indiaâs performance in four key domains: socio-economic; political;
military-security; and diplomatic.
Socio-Economic Indicators
Overall GDP says something about a stateâs collective power potential. Yet, the
size of the population that both produces and lives off GDP tells us more (but
not all) about the societyâs productivity and about its citizensâ quality of
life. Thus, GDP measured on a basis of per capita purchasing power parity gives
a finer picture of a stateâs position. Here, for example, Indiaâs (and Chinaâs)
great populations bring down their rankings. Indiaâs estimated 2002 per capita
GDP at purchasing power parity was $2,540. Chinaâs was $4,600. (Brazilâs in
2000, was $7,400).
Relatively low per capita GDP probably indicates that citizens have many
unfulfilled longings and aspirations for basic social-economic goods. This in
turn establishes major challenges and priorities for government. Simply put,
states with low per capita GDP struggle to translate their aggregate
productivity into effective power. For example, India, China and Brazil, rank
near the bottom of per capita, PPP GDP comparisons of regional and global
powers. These statesâ leaders have much work to do to mobilize their societies
to be able to achieve first-order domestic objectives, let alone undertake
ambitious international projects.
Other measures help evaluate statesâ socio-economic health and
prospects. The United Nations Human Development Index, for example, provides a
rough assessment of how states meet their citizensâ basic needs, which in turn
affect current and potential productivity. The HDI is comprised of four
variables: life expectancy at birth, adult literacy rate, school enrollment, and
GDP per capita (PPP $US). While the value of this indicator is debatable, it
shows that India ranks 115th out of 162 countries for which data was available.
China is ranked 87th. Indiaâs National Security Council Secretariat uses a
variant of this index, which it calls the Population Index. This takes a
countryâs population and multiplies it by its Human Development Index
coefficient. The aim is to adjust the âvalueâ of a stateâs population to take
into account the development of that population. Of the twenty-nine countries
ranked, India places 27th, ahead only of Pakistan and Nigeria, according to
Indiaâs National Security Council Secretariat.[x]
Education strongly affects a societyâs prospects for increasing
economic productivity, obtaining greater value for each âexertion.â Here India
seems bifurcated. India has absolutely world-class scientific and technological
education institutions. The Indian Institutes of Technology admit and Graduate
a large number of the worldâs best young technologists, not only in information
technology but also other branches of engineering. The Indian Institute of
Sciences and other higher education institutions produce large numbers of
top-class scientists. Thus, India is recognized as a world-class player in at
least three vitally important sectors of the 21st century global economy:
information technology, biotechnology and space.
At the same time, however, India performs miserably in providing primary
education to its large population. Much of Indiaâs workforce lacks the basic
knowledge and skills required for effectiveness in a modern industrial and
service economy.[xi] With sixty percent of the population living rural lives
tied to agriculture, the lack of adequate rural schooling, especially for girls,
imposes a major handicap on Indiaâs prospects.
A stateâs share in world trade can indicate many things. On one
hand, a large share of world trade can give a state international power insofar
as others may depend on that state as a buyer of their goods and services or as
a seller of key goods and services to them. Power may be wielded either by the
promise of providing or withholding more or less of what others want. At the
same time, though, an internationally engaged state can be subjected to
influences by its trading partners. On balance, economic theory and history
suggest that trade heightens efficiency and the production of wealth. This
suggests a correlation between share of world trade and power potential. While
these statistics are difficult to aggregate, India accounts only for roughly 1
percent of world trade in goods and services.
Recently, analysts have developed indices of corruption. Corruption
would seem to indicate the quality of governance, rule of law, and general
levels of development. These attributes no doubt affect a stateâs capacity to
turn its resources into desired goods, to mobilize its potential. Corruption
levels also reflect the attractiveness of a state to investors, which again
speaks to power potential. India ranks low in international comparisons of
corruption, among the most corrupt 30% of those countries surveyed.[xii]
Corruption may help explain the fact that Indiaâs recently sound rate of growth
has not produced a commensurate reduction in poverty. Whereas GDP has grown by
six percent from 1992-93, the rate of poverty alleviation has been only a bit
over one percent per year. Accounting for population growth of 1.8 percent, the
rate of poverty alleviation still lags significantly behind the rate of growth.
In other words, economic growth does not automatically or magically reduce
poverty.
The World Bank economist, Martin Ravillon explains that the bulk of Indiaâs poor
live in rural villages dependent on agriculture and that Indiaâs agricultural
sector lags behind the overall level of economic growth which is driven largely
by services.[xiii] Also, Indiaâs economic growth has occurred chiefly in
regions that are already better off. The poorest regions of the country have
experienced the least growth and development. Thirdly, even within the rural
sector, some regions exploit economic growth to lower poverty while others
donât.
Analyses such as Ravillonâs highlight the role of governance in augmenting
economic growth and development. The state -- or states -- carries
responsibility for providing the infrastructure, educational, and health
resources necessary to improve the capacities of the twenty-five percent of
Indians who remain impoverished. As Ravillon reports, the Indian states with
effective programs to promote literacy and health care, especially for women,
grow better. The states with better rural roads, irrigation, and other
infrastructure also do better. Unfortunately, he concludes, no state in India
has developed good rural infrastructure and human resource programs.
India is caught in a vicious circle here. The central governmentâs fiscal
deficit has run at a debilitating ten percent of GDP since 1998. Interest
payments on this debt comprise the largest single government expense. Fiscal
debt servicing combines with defense spending and subsidies to total sixty
percent of the budget. Insufficient funds remain for necessary investments in
health, education and infrastructure. Economists identify several methods for
reducing the fiscal deficit, but in a democracy, interest groups mobilize to
block each of these pathways to fiscal solvency.[xiv] Indiaâs emergence as a
major global power will depend significantly on whether it can simultaneously
mobilize investment to improve the capacities of its poor and reduce its fiscal
deficit.
One last word about economics: commentators in India and around the world
compare Indiaâs economic performance to Chinaâs. This is natural: India and
China are neighbors, the only two countries with more than one billion citizens.
They both strive for global power. In such economic comparisons, India tends
to fall behind China. However, economic comparisons overlook the vital
qualitative distinction of Indiaâs democracy. Political evolution may (or may
not) bring unforeseeable destabilizing changes to China. Indiaâs economic
progress may be more sustainable for having been democratically produced. Most
important, though, the political freedom and justice available in India are
profoundly valuable in their own right. The ultimate measure of a state and
society is the quality of life its members enjoy. This transcends calories
consumed, television hours watched, and automobile rides enjoyed.[xv]
State Capacity and Political Cohesion
This discussion of economics points directly toward a second category of state
power, namely governmental capacity and political cohesion.[xvi]
To produce and sustain significant power a state must have a political system
that citizens support. A state with a disgruntled or dissident citizenry will
divert precious resources to impose order and will not be able to mobilize the
full creativity and energy of its people.
Politics also serve broader human needs than efficiency. People participate in
politics to pursue justice, liberty, glory, community and other virtues and
vices. To the degree that a government does not help its citizens to achieve
these values and aspirations, that stateâs long-term power probably will wane.
A societyâs morale depends heavily on the qualities of its governors â leaders.
Political leaders who do not embody justice, communal toleration, fraternity,
and altruism will not foster government that pursues these attributes.
Factiousness is an important but often ambiguous variable of state health. As
proponents of checks and balances note, government that allows factiousness can
protect the rights and interests of minorities by preventing a large majority
from coalescing and dominating a polity. One measure of liberal democracyâs
genius is its tendency to enable factions to cancel each other out. On the
other hand, a state constantly embroiled in factional disputes will find it
difficult to make and execute major strategic decisions or to satisfy the
aspirations and values even of a majority.
In each of the terms discussed above â legitimacy, order,
efficiency, moral-political values, factiousness, and initiative â India has
performed to mixed effect. This is no small achievement. No state in history
has been as populous, diverse, stratified, poor and democratic as India. The
attempt to resolve all of its internal conflicts through democratically
representative government leads to muddling, almost by definition.[xvii]
Francine Frankel has described the multi-faceted political transformations India
is now undergoing: âthe electoral upsurge of historically disadvantaged groups,
the political organization of lower castes and dalits in competition with each
other and in opposition to upper castes, fragmentation of national political
parties, violence between Hindus and Muslimsâ¦, and the emergence of Hindutvaâ¦as
the most important ideological challenge to the constitutional vision of the
liberal state.â[xviii]
Each of these phenomena involves competition to acquire the power and patronage
that come with government office at the state and union levels. Meanwhile,
imperatives of economic liberalization and globalization require diminishing the
role of government in overall national activity. Representative democracy gives
long-disadvantaged groups opportunities to mobilize and compete for control of
government and, therefore, patronage. At the same time, the ârulesâ of private
markets do not provide such clear avenues for the disadvantaged to advance. So,
will the shrinking of government intensify political conflict? Will, or should,
political actors concentrate primarily on how the pie is divided â patronage --
or on making a bigger pie -reform?
Here the current central government of India reveals conflicting tendencies. On
one hand, economic reformers seek to bake a larger pie. On the other hand, the
BJP, whipped onward by its highly mobilized and more extreme
sister-organizations the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamesevak Sangh) and VHP (Vishwa
Hindu Parishad) concentrates on the flavor of the pie and who is entitled to
partake of it and under what terms.
The carnage in Gujarat last year dramatizes the stakes in this conflict over the
very essence of the Indian nationâs and stateâs identity. Yet Indiaâs manifold
diversity precludes easy conclusions about the likely outcome. The BJP aspires
for sustained national leadership. This has required it to temper its social
agenda in order to attract diverse political partners into the coalition it
needs to rule the Union government. Among the current governmentâs 22 coalition
partners are many that do not subscribe to Hindutva. Geographically, the
Hindutva movement draws its strength primarily in northern Indian states.
The Hindutva movementâs campaign to define Indiaâs national identity in one
uniform way heightens tensions not only among Hindus and Muslims, but along
geographic and other lines as well. This campaign for cultural nationalism
contravenes the essence of Indiaâs âdemocratic nationalism,â in Achin Vanaikâs
words. Democratic nationalism seeks to âtry and build a sense of Indianness
which recognizes and respects the fact that there are different ways of being
and feeling Indian, and that it is precisely these plural and diverse sources of
a potential nationalism that constitute its strength.â [xix]
Thus, at the same time India is generating the material economic and military
resources to become a major global power, the Indian political system struggles
to clarify the nationâs essential identity. The outcome of this struggle cannot
be predicted. Yet, the character and conduct of the struggle will profoundly
affect Indiaâs cohesion and stability. It also will affect the way the rest of
the world regards India.
Will India gain greater global respect as a decidedly Hindu nation in a 21st
century world defined in civilizational terms?[xx] Or, as the writer Raja Mohan
has suggested, will India win global power and respect as an exemplar of the
Enlightenment project into Asia? Arguments can be made in behalf of either
course. Yet, if analysts of international power are correct, then the most
empowering course will be the one that provides the greatest mass of the Indian
populous with the education, infrastructure, and political-economic liberty and
security necessary to lead productive lives. The most successful course will be
the one that strengthens the cohesion and allegiance of the greatest number of
Indiaâs diverse citizens and groups. In an inherently pluralistic society,
pluralism, not cultural nationalism, offers the only viable model to release the
creative energies of a vast population. Or so it seems at least to this
observer.
Military-Security Indicators
Now I turn to the most classic indicator of great power: military
strength. Measuring military power is more complicated than it might seem.
First, for the measurement to be meaningful, there must be a requirement against
which the stateâs military power is being measured. What are the threats the
military is to deter and/or defeat? Second, measuring effectiveness itself is
difficult. (War provides a real empirical test, but states would like to know
the effectiveness of their military before they enter war.) Expenditures can be
measured easily, but do not necessarily indicate military effectiveness. So,
too, numbers of men under arms, and numbers of tanks, aircraft and ships do not
necessarily connote fighting effectiveness.
All states might naturally desire absolute security â confidence that no
adversary or combination of adversaries could do one any harm. Yet, in the real
world states settle for relative security. And the degree of security a state
practically seeks depends in large part on its basic capabilities at a given
time. In other words, a stateâs security ambitions can grow as its power
potential grows. This has happened in India.
Indiaâs military security challenges begin at home, with internal security
against insurgents and terrorists. The next and most dramatic ring of the
threat circle encompasses Pakistan. India seeks to deter or defeat Pakistani
support of subversion within India, including most prominently, in the state of
Jammu and Kashmir. India also must deter or defeat Pakistani attempts to
escalate the conflict between the two countries. India strives to retain a free
hand to punish Pakistani violence by imposing greater losses on Pakistan than
Pakistan imposes on India. This amounts to dominance of the potential
escalatory process. Beyond the need to dominate a potential escalatory process
with Pakistan, India also requires the capacity to deter or physically deny
China from imposing on India an unacceptable resolution of their border dispute.
India also wishes to deny China the prospect of coercive blackmail â of having
enough military power to compel India to heed Chinaâs demands for fear of
military action that India could not counter. Next, India seeks to protect its
sea lines of communication to the east, toward Indo-China and to the west
through the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean.
India recently has increased significantly its expenditure on and
accumulation of military instruments. The budget for fiscal year 2003-04 raises
defense spending by 17 percent. This is the fourth consecutive year of annual
defense budget increases greater than 12 percent. India has signed at least $4
billion worth of contracts with Russia in the last couple of years to purchase
advanced military equipment.
When Indian leaders tested nuclear weapons in May 1998 many in the
nation felt that India finally had entered the ranks of major power. Indian
scientists and engineers have continued to increase the stateâs stockpile of
nuclear materials and weapons. In 2003 India is estimated to possess 40 or more
nuclear weapons. The technical composition of Indiaâs nuclear arsenal remains
publicly unclear â we do not know how many, if any, of these weapons are
thermonuclear, boosted-fission, or fission. Indiaâs capacity to deliver nuclear
weapons also continues to expand. Fighter-bomber aircraft remain the principal
means of delivery. At least three models of mobile ballistic missiles are also
being developed and deployed â the short-range Prithvi, and the Agni I and Agni
II â with longer-range Agni IIIs and Ivs on the drawing board.
Yet, nuclear weapons are not sufficient to make a major power.
Otherwise, Pakistan, too, would be a major power. Pakistan possesses rough
nuclear parity with India. So, too, Israel and perhaps North Korea would
qualify as major powers if nuclear weapons were sufficient for this rank.
Neither nuclear weapons nor a recent dramatic increase in
conventional military procurement, largely from Russia, has freed India from
Pakistani security threats. Indiaâs growing military and economic strength
heightens the frustrated desire to âteach Pakistan a lesson once and for all.â
But Indian statesmen also recognize that Pakistanâs nuclear weapons make
decisive military intervention to punish Pakistan enormously risky. So India is
stuck with relatively manageable insecurity viz a viz Pakistan.
Regarding China, India finds itself on a more positive trajectory. Indiaâs
growing economic, military and diplomatic strength, combined with Chinaâs desire
to concentrate on internal political-economic development, induces Beijing to
improve relations with New Delhi. Indiaâs rather astute cultivation of better
ties with both the U.S. and China, has encouraged Beijing to seek better
relations with India. Beijing wants India not to align closely with the U.S.
against China. New Delhi and Beijing thus augment their military capabilities
while simultaneously engaging in mutual diplomatic reassurance. On balance,
India steadily has improved its security relationship with China.
In closing this section, let me anticipate a protest I have heard from many
Indian friends recently. India passionately seeks to decouple or de-hyphenate
Pakistan from India. Treating the two states like twins diminishes India.
India is greater than Pakistan in every regard except one: nuclear weapons.
But, unfortunately for India and the world, nuclear weapons are great
equalizers. The world, including of course the U.S. government, fears the
humanitarian horror that nuclear weapons could unleash in South Asia, but also
the dangerous disordering effects on the international system. So, when
Pakistan, or terrorist groups affiliated with it, instigates a crisis in
Kashmir, and India responds by threatening military retaliation, the world
worries that the escalatory process could lead to nuclear war. We know that
this fearful reaction might play into Pakistanâs interest. But the fact that
India naturally threatens military escalation makes it impossible to discount
the possibility of warfare that could lead to nuclear use. Nuclear weapons gave
Pakistan this capacity to stay in the game, to continue to pop up and grab India
by the dhoti. Neither the U.S. nor India has the power to compel Pakistan to do
otherwise. Neither one of us can take over Pakistan; and neither would benefit
from the results of economically strangulating Pakistan. Thus, neither India
nor the U.S. can escape from the reality that we have to deal with Pakistan.
Finally, on Pakistan, let me offer a highly debatable point that I have not seen
made elsewhere. I believe that the prominence and power of the Pakistani Army,
intelligence services and jihadis will not diminish as long as the prominence
and power of the Hindutva agenda are rising in India. These two internal
dynamics are related; they feed on each other. Pakistanis cite the RSS and VHP
as proof that Hindus are out to destroy Muslims and, of course, Pakistan. The
RSS and VHP, of course, use the prominence of Islamist parties and terrorist
organizations in Pakistan as proof that Muslims are evil. My point is simply
that pursuit of the Hindutva agenda will only tighten the handcuffs, the hyphen,
that connects Pakistan to India. The only way for India to liberate itself from
Pakistan is through pluralist liberalism, not cultural nationalism.
Statecraft Indicators
Statecraft can increase or decrease a countryâs influence relative
to its material capabilities. The combination of leadership, strategic vision
and tactics, moral example and suasion, and diplomatic acumen can earn a state
great international influence.
The potency of Indiaâs statecraft has ebbed and flowed in decades-long tides.
The currently rising tide follows decades of trough after the Nehru years.
The overt demonstration of Indiaâs nuclear weapon capabilities seems
to have heightened Indian leadersâ confidence in developing and prosecuting an
international diplomatic strategy. Since 1998, under the leadership of Prime
Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh, India
displayed new vigor and imagination in its interactions with the United States,
China, Pakistan, Russia, the European Union and other counterparts.[xxi]
In early 2003, Indian leaders showed how far their strategic and
diplomatic acumen has evolved since the days of knee-jerk moralistic
denunciations of U.S. power. India did not support the Bush Administrationâs
decision to intervene militarily in Iraq. At the same time, Indians have felt
that the U.S. displays disingenuousness or hypocrisy in waging war against
Saddam Hussein as a terrorist, while supporting Pakistanâs President Pervez
Musharraf. In Indian eyes, Pakistan is a greater source of terrorism than Iraq.
Whereas Indian leaders in decades past would have blasted the U.S. in morally
laden denunciations, New Delhi in 2003 displayed diplomatic savoir faire.
âIndia has not been happy with the US because of its inability to pressure
Pakistan on cross-border terrorism and lifting of sanctions,â an Indian official
declared, âbut the government did not go beyond saying that it was
âdisappointedâ over the move. The government was not going by the sentiment;
national interest weighed supreme in the minds of decision-makers.â[xxii] Prime
Minister Vajpayee summed up the new statesmanship tellingly: âWe have to take
the totality of the situation into consideration and craft an approach which is
consistent with both our principles and our long-term national interest. Our
words, actions and diplomatic efforts should be aimed at trying to achieve
pragmatic goals, rather than creating rhetorical effect. Quiet diplomacy is far
more effective than public posturing.â[xxiii] This insight, if applied
regularly, which is very difficult to do in a democracy, could greatly increase
Indiaâs influence in the halls of global power.
However, in terms of international institutions and regimes, as distinct from
bilateral relations, Indiaâs recent record is more mixed. Indiaâs Commerce
Minister Murasoli Maran, played a leading role in the November 2001 World Trade
Organization negotiations. To a large extent, Maran represented many weaker
developing countries, in addition to India. In this role, Maran contested the
U.S. and other major economic powers. Fairly or not, the richer countries,
particularly the U.S., felt that Maran typified an old, unwelcome and
counter-productive Indian style of moralism and doggedness. Indians from more
internationally competitive industries shared this evaluation, while others
favoring trade protectionism viewed him as a champion. Looking ahead, to the
degree that Indiaâs economic future and, therefore, its international standing
depend on a growing role in global trade, Indian diplomacy may need further
adjustment.
The international nonproliferation regime also comprises an arena for Indian
diplomacy. The global nonproliferation regime faces grave problems. India has
conflicting interests. It opposes the further spread of nuclear weapons and
other weapons of mass destruction. It also wants to be recognized as a
nuclear-weapon state and to be freed of export denials and other limitations
relating to Indiaâs non-membership in the NPT. Indian leaders exhort the U.S.
and others to remove bars to nuclear and other technology transfer to India.
The U.S., Japan and others resist, arguing that removing limitations on India
would reward proliferation and undermine the interests of the 180-plus states
that have foresworn nuclear weapons through adherence to the NPT. Current
evidence does not allow a sound prediction of how India and the world will fare
on this matter.
Finally, India, as other states, regards a permanent seat on the UN Security
Council as a measure of major power. But India would be unlikely to win a vote
to award it such a seat, either from the current Security Council members or the
General Assembly. One measure of Indian diplomacy in the future will be how it
either lowers the value of a Security Council seat and therefore makes Indiaâs
power ranking independent of such a position, or alternatively how India attains
a seat.
Conclusion
Where does this survey leave us? What can we say about measuring
India for greatness? Indiaâs National Security Council Secretariat has produced
a National Security Index that ranks countriesâ with a composite measurement of
military, demographic and economic indices. India ranks 10th in the world, just
behind Israel. (The ranking: U.S., Japan, China, South Korea, Germany, France,
Russia, UK, Israel, India.)[xxiv] Does being number ten make one a major power?
Is the cut-off at number five? Number twelve?
Subjectivity is inescapable here, so I suggest that the bottom-line
question is whether India gets what it wants from other states and the
international system. No state gets all of what it wants all of the time, but
does India get much of what it wants much of the time?
The answer appears mixed. India does not get what it wants in all
these domains; it canât make others say âyesâ to Indian demands. But India is
powerful enough to say ânoâ to most if not all demands of others. One way to
mark Indiaâs progress will be to see how often it exerts its power to say ânoâ
to othersâ preferences, versus the frequency with which India persuades others
to say âyesâ to its preferences. As the Indian ânosâ decrease and the rest of
the worldâs âyesesâ increase, Indiaâs power will rise.
I close with a thought experiment that may help American observers to appreciate
the magnitude of the Indian challenge and what it may tell us about power.
Imagine the United States admitting Mexico as the 51st state in the union. The
very proposition elicits visions of politicians in Washington decrying the drain
of resources to bring Mexicoâs millions of poor up to U.S. standards of health
care, income, and education. What of language? Will the new Mexican citizens
be obligated to learn English? How would education standards be set and
achieved? The burden of adopting Mexico is beyond the comprehension of most in
the U.S.
Continuing the thought experiment, letâs add not only Mexico but also Canada,
Central America and South America. Yes, letâs add to the United States of the
Americas Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvadorâ¦Chile, Uruguayâ¦.Venezuela with itâs
turmoilâ¦Columbia with its civil conflict, drug cartelsâ¦Brazil with its teeming
cities of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paoloâ¦Argentina with its fiscal crisis. If the
United States of America became the United States of the Americas, the
population would be 824 million. Itâs gross domestic product would be $12.46
trillion (compared to $10 trillion for the U.S. alone). Per capita GDP of the
new entity would be roughly $15,000 (compared to roughly $35,000 in the U.S.
alone). Imagine the conduct of elections in this population and the resultant
mélange of interests, accents, and histories that would animate the
deliberations of the new congress in Washington. Imagine the burdens the
president would feel â the attorney general, the FBI director, the Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs. In fact, the prospect defies imagination. It is
incomprehensible.
And yet, the United States of the Americas would still contain 200 million
people fewer than India. It would still be less diverse ethnically,
linguistically, religiously and historically than India. And it would be
twenty-five times richer than India.
The United States of the Americas would be much more troubled and difficult to
govern than the U.S. today. It would be poorer, less stable, more corrupt, and
less secure in many ways. Yet the size of the United States of the Americas
alone would make its leaders and people feel that it must of course be treated
as a great power. Citizens and, especially leaders, would feel that if we kept
our massive and diverse polity together and on a course of economic advancement
without either imploding or threatening our neighbors the United States of the
Americas would deserve world historical commendation. The idea that other
powers â outsiders with fewer challenges and many more resources per capita â
would impose their standards in determining whether to grant the United States
of the Americas a prime place in the international community would prompt
outrage. Politicians, pundits and barroom patrons would declaim: does the rest
of the world have any idea how hard it is just to maintain order, rule of law,
economic growth and democracy in this country?
This simple thought experiment may suggest that the relativity of great power in
the international system is misleading when thinking of a state and society as
enormous and complicated as India. Perhaps the notion and language of âgreat
powerâ is irrelevant when it comes to India. Maybe we should keep score a
different way. India, as an ancient and at once diverse and somehow unified
civilization of more than one billion people, deserves recognition for making
steady progress under democratic governance without trampling on its neighbors.
India achieves greatness by maintaining a democratic rule-of-law government and
living in relative peace. India achieves greatness by improving the quality of
life of its free citizens.
[i] Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics. (Reading: Addison-Wesley,
1979) 191-192.
[ii] RAND Corporation analysts led by Ashley Tellis recently developed one of
the most comprehensive and dynamic power-measuring models. The RAND group
concludes that ânational power is ultimately the product of the interaction of
two components: a countryâs ability to dominate the cycles of economic
innovation at a given point in time and, thereafter, to utilize the fruits of
this domination to produce effective military capabilities that, in turn,
reinforce existing economic advantages while producing a stable political order,
which is maintained primarily for the countryâs own strategic advantage but also
provides benefits for the international system as a whole.â Tellis, et al,
Measuring National Power in the Postindustrial Age: Analysts Handbook (Santa
Monica: RAND, 2000), p. 4. The RAND analysts then detail five building blocks
of power under the category of âNational resourcesâ: technology, enterprise,
human resources, financial/capital resources, physical resources. Three factors
under the category of âNational performanceâ augment or detract from the
utilization of national resources: external constraints, infrastructural
capacity, ideational resources. âMilitary capabilityâ is the product of an
interaction between national resources and national performance. While
interesting and realistically detailed, this model is explicitly geared toward
assessing the capacity of a state to achieve and sustain global hegemony.
Assessing the emergence of potential major powers does not seem to require a
model as detailed as that proffered by the RAND group.
[iii] For a summary of the historical methods of determining great power status,
see Jack Levy, War in the Modern Great Power System, 1945-1975. (Lexington:
University Press of Kentucky, 1983) pp. 10-19.
[iv] The most notable of these is the Correlates of War military capabilities
index. Singer, Bremer, and Stuckey, âCapability Distribution, Uncertainty, and
Major Power War, 1820-1965,â in Bruce M Russet, Peace War and Numbers (Beverly
Hills: Sage Publications, 1972). pp. 19-48.
[v] John Mearsheimer cites this failure of the stronger state to always prevail
in conflicts as a reason for measuring power in terms of material capabilities,
rather than the ability to prevail in conflict. He focuses his measure of
material capacity on military power because military force remains âthe ultima
ratio of international politics.â John Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power
Politics. (New York: W. W. Norton and Co. 2001) pp. 55-57. In 1977, Joseph Nye
gave four reasons why military force had become more costly to use, and
therefore was less singularly relevant to state power: risks of nuclear
escalation; resistance by people in poor, weak countries; uncertain and possibly
negative effects on the achievement of economic goals; and domestic opinion
opposed to the human costs of the use of force. Robert O. Keohane, Joseph S.
Nye, Power and Interdependence. (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1977) pg.
228.
[vi] For a further discussion of this point, see Bruce Russett and Harvey Starr,
World Politics: The Menu for Choice. (New York: W. H. Freeman and Company, 1989)
pg. 142-143.
[vii] National cohesion and universalistic culture are examined along with
international institutions as âintangibleâ sources of power by Joseph Nye in
Bound to Lead. (New York: Basic Books inc. 1990)
[viii] David Singer, one of the primary architects of the COW index, writes that
these type of factors are âcontributory to national power and the efficiency
with which material capabilities are used, but not a component of that power.â
His decision not to include them in the index is based, then, not on a refusal
to acknowledge their importance, but on a decision to make a semantic exclusion
of such vague, difficult-to-measure variables. David Singer and Paul F. Diehl,
Measuring the Correlates of War. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990)
pg. 55.
Kenneth Waltz includes the variable of âcompetenceâ in his list of the
components of power, along with size of population and territory; resource
endowment; economic capabilities; and military strength. Waltz, it must be
noted however, makes no attempt to quantify any of these variables, stating only
that their relative importance fluctuates with time, leading to frequent
miscalculations regarding the relative power of states. His list of power
components is more an acknowledgement of the measurement problem than a
solution. Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics. (Reading:
Addison-Wesley, 1979) pg. 131.
See also Russett and Starr, Politics, The Menu for Choice, pg. 149.
[ix] Two recent volumes, by Stephen Cohen and Baldev Raj Nayar and T.V. Paul,
similarly seek to assess Indiaâs power position, but in more detail than space
allows here. Stephen P. Cohen, India: Emerging Power (Washington, DC: Brookings
Institution Press, 2001), Baldev Raj Nayar and T.V. Paul, India In the World
Order: Searching for Major-Power Status (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2003). The Cohen volume is more interpretive, while Nayar and Paul complicate
their analysis of Indiaâs capacities with an argument that the U.S. and other
recognized major powers systematically prevent India from entering these ranks.
The problematic argument unfortunately distracts and detracts from the useful
analysis of Indiaâs strengths and weaknesses. Nayar and Paul consider ten power
indicators or âresourcesâ, in their term. Four âhard-power resourcesâ are
military power, economic power, technology, and demographics. Six âsoft-power
resourcesâ are normative, institutional, cultural, state capacity, strategy and
diplomacy, and national leadership. Ibid., 49-62.
[x] Satish Kumar, ed., Indiaâs National Security Annual Review, p. 359.
[xi] Pradeep Agarwal et al., Policy Regimes and Industrial Competitiveness: A
Comparative Study of East Asia and India (Houndmills, UK: Macmillan, 2000), p.
272.
[xii] Human Development in South Asia 1999, The Crisis of Governance, Karachi:
The Mahbub ul Haq Human Development Centre.
[xiii] Martin Ravillon, presentation to the Brookings Institution-Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace conference, âMaking Globalization Work,â
December 2, 2002, transcript of panel 1, pp. 7-8.
[xiv] Leading debt reduction options are to: reduce the size of government by
cutting payrolls and privatizing state enterprises (or alternatively, increase
the productivity of government workers and enterprises); attract foreign
investment, particularly in infrastructure; increase tax collections (not
necessarily tax rates).
[xv]Still, to achieve the level of economic development that can raise the
quality of life of all Indians, especially the poor, the nation must average
seven-to-eight percent annual growth over the next decade.
Sanjaya Baru, âThe Strategic Consequences of Indiaâs Economic Performance,â in
Satish Kumar, ed., Indiaâs National Security Annual Review 2002 (New Delhi:
India Research Press, 2003) 177.
[xvi] The RAND study, Measuring National Power in the Postindustrial Age,
considers a stateâs âcapacity to set goals,â the âextent of elite cohesion,â
ârelative power of social groups,â the capacity of the state to collect higher
levels of taxes from direct levies versus taxes on trade, and so on. Some of
these variables admit quantitative measurement, but most require subjective
analysis. Op. cit., 22-27.
[xvii] Nayar and Paul write that âIndia is often called a soft state, a state
that fails to enforce enacted policiesâ¦â This may be a function of
democratization itself. As Francine Frankel has noted, âdemocratization has
fragmented political parties along state, sub-regional, caste and religious
lines, creating unstable coalition governments, paralyzed from within, without
the capacity to carry out unfinished reforms.â Nayar and Paul, 60. Francine
Frankel, âContextual Democracy: intersections of society, culture and politics
in India,â in Francine Frankel, Zoya Hasan, Rajeev Bhargava, Balveer Arora eds.,
Transforming India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000), 20.
[xviii] Francine Frankel, âContextual Democracy: intersections of society,
culture and politics in India,â in Francine Frankel, Zoya Hasan, Rajeev
Bhargava, Balveer Arora eds., Transforming India (New Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 2000), 5.
[xix] Achin Vanaik, âInterface Between Democracy, Diversity and Stability,â in D
D Khanna, LL Mehrotra, Gert W. Kueck eds., Democracy, Diversity, Stability
(Delhi: MacMillan India Ltd., 1998), 301.
[xx] Using Samuel Huntingtonâs controversial categories, the world can be seen
as divided along the following civilizational lines: Western, Latin American,
African, Islamic, Sinic, Hindu, Orthodox, Buddhist, Japanese. Samuel
Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and The Remaking of World Order (New
York: Simon and Schuster, 1996).
[xxi] For a more thorough discussion of these developments, see pp. 495-501 in
Perkovich, Indiaâs Nuclear Bomb, paperback edition, 2001.
[xxii] Sanjay Singh, âThin Red Line: New Delhiâs Balancing Act,â Pioneer, March
23, 2003.
[xxiii] Sanjay Singh, âThin Red Line: New Delhiâs Balancing Act,â Pioneer, March
23, 2003.
[xxiv] In Kumar, ed., op. cit., p. 352.
<b>UN vote on self-determination a setback for Pakistan</b>?
By Khalid Hasan
WASHINGTON: The resolution on the ârealisation of the right of self-determinationâ adopted by a vote on November 20 by the United Nations General Assembly is being viewed as a setback to Pakistan because in the past the same resolution that Pakistan moves every year had been adopted by consensus.
<b>This year, it was India which called for a vote. The results came as a shock to Pakistan because out of total of 191 UN members, only 88 voted in favour of the resolution with India, Bhutan and Mauritius voting against. Four out of the five permanent members of the Security Council abstained.</b>
A Pakistan diplomat who did not wish to be identified told Daily Times, âThis resolution had been our creation and was adopted for years through consensus and without a vote. It used to be a genuine moral victory for Pakistan. This year, for whatever reason, India called for a vote, and the end result has been a major setback not only to the very concept of self-determination, a cardinal principal of the UN Charter, but also to our own stated cause. This vote has grave symbolic importance. The principle of self-determination has lost the traditional consensus support it always enjoyed, having received less than 50 percent of the UN votes in favour while the overwhelming majority of member states abstained or deliberately absented themselves only because the resolution was viewed largely in the context of India-Pakistan relations. In fact, some countries even withdrew their co-sponsorship of the draft resolution because they felt the prevailing context of the solution was not âappropriateâ, nor within the spirit of the universal principal of the right of self-determination. I feel deeply disturbed at this development because it has weakened the moral weight of a concept that Pakistan has always used in support of its position on Kashmir.â
The resolution opposes military intervention and occupation that are threatening to suppress, the right to self-determination of peoples and nations and declares opposition to acts of foreign military intervention, aggression and occupation, calling upon those states responsible to cease immediately their military intervention in and occupation of foreign countries and territories. Many speakers said during the debate that it appeared that the universal principle of self-determination had been used to refer to the specific situation between India and Pakistan. Believing that the context that had prevailed was not appropriate or within the spirit of the universal principle of the right to self-determination, some delegations, including Benin, Dominican Republic, Kenya, Botswana and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines withdrew their co-sponsorship of the draft resolution.
<b>Explaining his vote, the representative of India said that the statement made by the main sponsor Pakistan had challenged the unity and territorial integrity of India. The right to self-determination must not be construed to condone any action that would disrupt or threaten the territorial integrity of a state. India would oppose any attempts to misuse the principle of the right to self-determination for ulterior motives.</b>
The representative of Pakistan expressed his gratitude to all delegations that had reaffirmed their commitment to the principle of self-determination. A vote for this principle was not a vote in favour of any specific issues it was a vote for the principle of self-determination a principle central to the United Nations Charter, he added. The representative of India, explaining his vote, said that some of the references made by Pakistan on behalf of the co-sponsors, challenged and threatened the territorial integrity of India. It was therefore clear that for Pakistan the universal right of people to self-determination was a mere excuse to pursue its own political agenda. He said the draft was selective and unbalanced and did not deal with the right to self-determination in its entirety and any attempt aimed at the disruption of the territorial integrity of a nation State went against the purpose and principles of the Charter. The right to self-determinations implied free elections, democracy, equality, secularism and the rule of law, he said. The Pakistani people had been deprived of those rights for most of their history. The Government of Pakistan must therefore ensure the right to self-determination to its own people, before tabling resolutions on the universal right to self-determination. The representative of India would therefore vote against the draft resolution.
The Pakistani representative said that the draft resolution was unacceptable to India; however, India had joined the consensus on the text for several years in a row. This represented new thinking in New Delhi, and one must wonder what the causes were for this change. When a territoryâs final status was to be determined through the exercise of the right to self-determination through a United Nations plebiscite, it could not be described as an integral part of a State. It was a disputed territory, he said.
Both India and Pakistan had emerged as sovereign States through the right of self-determination, he said. He reserved the right to respond to the gratuitous remarks made about the Government of Pakistan and stressed that a Government made up of fascists and fanatics had no right to criticise any other Government.
The representative of Pakistan said a vote for this principle was not a vote in favour of any issue; it was a vote for the principle involved, a principle central to the United Nations Charter and the basis for the existence of the United Nations. It was not Pakistanâs intention to introduce controversy or polemics with India in the context of the resolution. Pakistan had introduced this resolution for almost one dozen years. He said it was a matter of record that over the years, Pakistan had mentioned Palestine, Namibia and also Kashmir in its statements related to the resolution. What happened this year was that the context had been changed, and polemics introduced by India. What changed was that India felt it could bully the United Nations and bully Pakistan into halting its advocacy of the cause of Kashmir. Pakistan would continue to support Kashmir, whether other delegations supported it or not.
He noted that 80,000 Kashmiris had been killed by the Indian army and thousands of others had been maimed and women raped. Kashmir was a disputed territory, wherein the Security Council had determined that people must be given the right to choose their destiny, as to whether to be a part of India or Pakistan. The territory of Kashmir shown on the map of the United Nations was disputed territory; it was not part of India and would never be a part of India. The people of a disputed territory should not be denied its right to self-determination.
Those who voted in favour of the resolution were: Albania, Algeria, Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Brunei Darussalam, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Canada, Cape Verde, Chile, China, Comoros, Congo, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cuba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Honduras, Iran, Ireland, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Mali, Mauritania, Mexico, Mongolia, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Portugal, Qatar, Republic of Korea, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Somalia, Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Syria, Thailand, Togo, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Uruguay, Venezuela, Viet Nam, Yemen.
Those who voted against were: Bhutan, India, Mauritius and those who abstained were:
Andorra, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Botswana, Cambodia, Colombia, Côte dâIvoire, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Democratic Peopleâs Republic of Korea, Denmark, Estonia, Federated States of Micronesia, Finland, France, Gabon, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Guyana, Hungary, Iceland, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Latvia, Lesotho, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Malawi, Malta, Monaco, Namibia, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Russian Federation, Rwanda, San Marino, Senegal, Serbia and Montenegro, Sierra Leone, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Tajikistan, The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Uganda, United Kingdom, United Republic of Tanzania, United States.
The following were absent: Afghanistan, Belarus, Central African Republic, Chad, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Fiji, Gambia, Grenada, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Iraq, Kiribati, Lao Peopleâs Democratic Republic, Liberia, Maldives, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Nepal, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Sao Tome and Principe, Seychelles, Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste, Tonga, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Zambia, Zimbabwe.
<b>Europeans are worse than cockroaches</b>
There is a Cold War between the US and the EU, says Mark Steyn, and it will end with the collapse of Old Europe New Hampshire
Hereâs a round-up of recent items from the worldâs press you may have missed: Item 1: In the last two weeks, two Toronto-bound El Al flights had to be diverted to other airports after credible terrorist threats were made about using surface-to-air missiles against them. The Canadian transport minister, David Collenette, responded by suggesting that the Israeli airlineâs service to Pearson International Airport might be ended.
Item 2: The Baghdad hotel in which Paul Wolfowitz was staying was blown up. Several people were killed, though the US deputy defence secretary emerged unscathed. Much of the death and destruction was caused by French 68mm missiles âin pristine conditionâ, according to one US officer who inspected the rocket tubes and assembly. In other words, theyâre not rusty leftovers Saddam had lying around from the 1980s. The Baathist dictatorship had acquired these missiles from the French rather more recently.
Item 3: According to Le Nouvel Observateur, âDâaprès un questionnaire de la Commission Européenne, 59% des Européens pensent quâIsraël est le pays le plus menaçant pour la paix dans le monde.â
Item 4: In the Guardian, Tariq Ali ended this weekâs column on the mounting American (and NGO) death toll in Iraq thus: âIraqis have one thing of which they can be proud and of which British and US citizens should be envious: an oppositionâ.
On 11 September 2001, I wrote that one of the casualties of the dayâs events would be the Western alliance: âThe US taxpayerâs willingness to pay for the defence of Canada and Europe has contributed to the decay of Americaâs so-called âalliesâ, freeing them to disband their armed forces, flirt with dictators and gangster states, and essentially convert themselves to semi-non-aligned.â âThe Westâ was an obsolete concept, because, as I put it later that month, for everyone but America âthe free world is mostly a free rideâ.
Two years on, most governments, at least officially, and most commentators, at least in the mainstream press, still donât believe the relationship between America and its âalliesâ is in a terminal state. But the above quartet of stories â and you can find equivalent items any week â illustrates why it canât be put back together.
One: Mr Collenetteâs response to terrorists is to take it out on their targets. Terrorists are threatening to use SAMs against El Al? No problem, weâll get rid of El Al. Thatâs a great message to send. How soon before similar threats are phoned in to similarly jelly-spined jurisdictions in Europe? Pretty soon El Al wonât be flying anywhere. But no matter: Air Canada and Air France and Lufthansa will still be flying to Tel Aviv â at least until a couple of anonymous phone calls are made hinting at fresh targets.
The threats against El Al came via phone calls from the Toronto area from terrorists claiming to have heat-seeking missiles. Police subsequently found a cache of weapons including a German-made shoulder rocket launcher that was smuggled into Canada through the ingenious method of dropping it in the mail and letting the Post Office deliver it. So there are two approaches to this problem: you can crack down on Toronto-based terrorist cells and try to get government agencies not to deliver their rocket launchers; or you can ban El Al. Mr Collenette inclines to the latter. This is a man, by the way, who marked the first anniversary of 11 September by publicly regretting the fall of the Soviet Union because now there is nobody to check Americaâs âbullyingâ.
Lesson: In the war on terror, the United States believes in pre-emption; Canada, like many other âalliesâ, believes in pre-emptive surrender. These two strategies are incompatible.
Two: Just suppose that one of those French rockets had killed Paul Wolfowitz. One of the greatest fictions of the interminable debate on Euro-American differences over Iraq is that itâs an argument about the means, not the end. If only Bush had been a little less Texan, less arrogant, less bullying, if only heâd been less impatient and willing to put in the hours, he could have brought the French and Germans round. After all, everyone agrees Saddam Hussein is a very bad man.
Not the French and Germans. Thereâs too much evidence suggesting the main reason they were unable to join the Bush side in this war is that theyâd already signed on to the other team and theyâd decided, in the sort of ghastly vernacular the cretinous Yanks would use, to dance with them what brung you. Theyâre being admirably consistent about this: at the recent Madrid conference France and Germany both refused to pony up one single euro to Iraqi reconstruction. It was never about the means, only the end.
Lesson: America and âOld Europeâ have different objectives in Iraq, and those objectives are incompatible.
Three: 59 per cent of Europeans think Israel is the biggest threat to world peace. Only 59 per cent? Whatâs wrong with the rest of you? But, hey, donât worry. In Britain, itâs 60 per cent; Germany, 65 per cent; Austria, 69 per cent; the Netherlands, 74 per cent. The good news is that Israel wonât be a threat to world peace much longer, at least not if Iranâs nuclear programme carries on running rings around the International Atomic Energy Agency and the ayatollahs fulfil their pledge to solve the problem of the Zionist Entity once and for all.
Let us leave for another day the question of whether Israel is actually a bigger global menace than North Korea, which has hung a big shingle on the street saying âNukes? We Got âEm! And You Wonât Believe Our Prices!â The fact is that 11 September bound America to Israel in ways that oblige Washington to regard European distaste for Jews as more than a mere social faux pas. Given the rate of Islamic immigration to Europe, those anti-Israeli numbers are heading in only one direction. At present demographic rates, by 2020 the majority of children in Holland â i.e., the population under 18 â will be Muslim. What do you figure that 74 per cent will be up to by then? Eighty-five per cent? Ninety-six per cent? If Americans think itâs difficult getting the Continentals on side now, wait another decade. In that sense, the Israelis are the canaries in the coalmine.
Lesson: Americaâs and Europeâs world views have diverged significantly, and those world views are now incompatible.
Four: Tariq Ali may not be the most representative political commentator, but itâs still quite something to find the house journal of the United Kingdomâs leftie establishment printing the assertion that Americans and Britons can only envy the vigour of the Iraqi âoppositionâ. So thatâs what Iain Duncan Smith was doing wrong! He should have been loading up ambulances with rockets and firing them into hospitals. Thatâs the way to draw attention to the problems of the NHS.
The other day I accidentally referred to Tariq Ali as Tariq Aziz and within minutes had a little flurry of emails from correspondents sneering that evidently all these guys sound alike to me. Well, I wouldnât say that. But Tariq Ali and Tariq Aziz are sounding very much alike. In fact, T. Ali sounds more Baathist than T. Aziz these days. When I was in the Sunni Triangle, I met many Iraqis who were grateful to the Americans; some who wanted a more visible US presence on the ground, a few who resented the infidel occupier â but not one who was as gung-ho for the Saddamite holdouts and Syrian and Iranian opportunists as Tariq Ali. For him, and for Mr Collenette, and for Goran Persson and Nelson Mandela and many many others, even on 11 September, the issue was never terrorism; the issue was always America.
Lesson: Washington and Europe do not agree on the problem, so theyâre hardly likely to agree on the solution.
Tariq and co. are right to this extent: in the scheme of things, itâs not about Islamic terrorism. The Islamist goal is a planet on which their enemies are either dead or Muslim converts. Thatâs not going to happen. But Islamism is sufficiently disruptive to rupture permanently the old âWestern allianceâ. A lot of things have been said on both sides, but whatâs impressive about the Europeans is the palpable desire for America to fail, and Bush to fall.
I canât see that happening. On election day next November, the Democrats have no chance of taking back the House of Representatives and theyâre all but certain to lose seats in the Senate. Bush is likely to be re-elected: with that 7.2 per cent growth in GDP, itâs hard even for the BBC to keep pretending Americaâs in the middle of some sort of recession; and whatever happens in Iraq itâs difficult to see the Democrats, running on a foreign policy of Cut & Run, being the beneficiaries. But the trouble with a war on terror is that the victories go unreported â the plotters who get foiled, the bombers who donât make it through. All you hear about are the defeats. Letâs say thereâs a terrorist attack in the US in the next 12 months and it kills several hundred people. On the one hand, you could argue that this shows the soundness of Bushâs judgment in making terrorism the priority of his administration. On the other, you could argue that this proves he never learnt the lessons of the failures of 11 September. Knowing the American media, Iâd bet on the latter line being the one they settle on.
But other than that, the arguments over the next few years are going to be between conservatives â between those who think it is worth pushing on with an ambitious programme to bring the Middle East within the non-deranged world, and those who figure thatâs doomed to fail and we should settle for something less. This project is in the national interest of the United States but, in the end, the fate of the worldâs hyperpower does not hinge on it.
Now letâs turn back to Europe. The Telegraphâs Adam Nicolson got irritated the other day because Denis Boyles of Americaâs National Review had dismissed the Europeans as âcockroachesâ. Boyles is wrong. The Europeans are not cockroaches. The cockroach is the one creature you can rely on to come crawling out of the rubble of the nuclear holocaust. Whereas the one thing that can be said with absolute confidence is that the Europeans will not emerge from under their own rubble.
Europe is dying. As Iâve pointed out here before, it canât square rising welfare costs, a collapsed birthrate and a manpower dependent on the worldâs least skilled, least assimilable immigrants. In 20 yearsâ time, as those Dutch Muslim teenagers are entering the voting booths, European countries, unlike parts of Nigeria, will not be living under Sharia, but they will be reaching their accommodations with their radicalised Islamic compatriots, who like many intolerant types are expert at exploiting the âtoleranceâ of pluralist societies.
How happy whatâs left of the ethnic Dutch or French or Danes will be about this remains to be seen. But the idea of a childless Europe rivalling America militarily or economically is laughable. Sometime this century there will be 500 million Americans, and whatâs left in Europe will either be very old or very Muslim. Thatâs the Europe that Britain will be binding its fate to. Japan faces the same problem: in 2006, its population will begin an absolute decline, a death spiral it will be unlikely ever to climb out of. Will Japan be an economic powerhouse if itâs populated by Koreans and Filipinos? Possibly. Will Germany if itâs populated by Algerians? Thatâs a trickier proposition.
Last Sunday, recalling the USâSoviet summits that helped âease the tensions of the Cold Warâ, the New York Timesâs Thomas Friedman proposed we hold regular US-Franco-German summits. Implicit in that analysis is the assumption that France and perhaps other Continental countries now exist in a quasi-Cold War with America. If thatâs so, the trick is to manage the relationship until the Europeans, like the Soviets, collapse. Europe is dying, and itâs only a question of whether it goes peacefully or through convulsions of violence. On that point, I bet on form.
Vishal wishful thinking by you !!! Perhaps that is what Nehru thought 50 years ago. Only think is that the Chinese proved to be the wrong neighbours for India. <!--emo&
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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->India has 3 options ->
1)choose china as closer ally or friend or business partner(its impossible due to lack of contacts between chinese and indian community)
2)choose US as strategic ally(i think we did this suicide already by leaning towards US and also showing hasty interest in missile defense program )
3)be neutral and treat both as per our needs on case by case basis(WE are too late to think over this BEST OPTION.
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Option 1 and 3 suits Chinese ambitions pretty well. But they will not serve Indian interests. You can't remain neutral in this game. Either you play and survive or you get played over and surrender. You have to be a player, or else you will be outplayed by everyone, both the west and the Chinese or perhaps both. Is that what you are sugesting ? I have posted a link in the clash of civilizations thread. Please read it carefully, before you comment on Indian strategists.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->We are doing same mistake again which we did in 1965 of ignoring China angle.
When our think tanks think about weapons deals with US(not Israel) they ignore what impact it will have on china-india equations in ASIA.This is a mistake.
We must INCREASE military co-operation with china.We must MAKE clear to US we are no way going to compete with china in defense modernisation.
CHINA will do modernisation bcoz it feels un-secure from WEST.By making defense deals with WEST we are making india-china relations more BAD.
A TIP from me : in long term,friendship with china is better and safer than with West.
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After having experienced 1961, if you still advise the Indians to trust and side with the Chinese would be like keeping your head safe under the Chinese gun pointed at your head. Chinese like Pakistanis and NKoreans and might call them as their allies, because they do almost everything they tell them to do. What I mean is that Chinese need slaves or would like to use you like a condom, without any greater freedom to their allies. Pakis and NKoreans will pay first for the mistake of joining hands with teh Chinese.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Bcoz west is noone's friend,never be.While china can become our best friend bcoz
1)we are neighbours
2)we don't have any old rivalry.If there is anything then its border problems which are not any big issues.
3)as far as china's help to pak is concerned it is bcoz china feels india is going closer US and feels in-secure.And india is ONLY INCREASING their feeling by going close and closer to US. IF china is given assurance they are secure from our side then pukki-support will get narrow year by year.(don't expect close-up bcoz china also need weapons market as pukki).
4)A powerfull neighbour in Asia as india's close friend.WHAT can be better thing for india(and most destructing thing for WEST)?......just imagine two biggest economies of world as close friends and neighbour too!!!(so they can fight together with any enemy of them in world!!)
5)Noone in the world(including US,brits) can think of attacking india or china due to this DEADLY combination of 2.5 billion people of ASIA! (this is the main reason why US is always un-easy when indian PM visits china).
6)If you agree with above 5 points then you will agree with me that washigton will DO EVERYTHING in his power and reach to avoid closer india-china relations. US may offer defense missile,phalcon(already did...a mess,it infuriated our neighbour
.......what can be worse THING that can happen to two neighbours in ASIA.....WEST must be laughing how they succeded again keeping DEADLY combination away from meeting... )
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All the reasons given here come out of naivity and ignorance of the relationship of India with China. Perfect defeatist analogy and thinking with no vision for India, but doing everything not to offend the Chinese even if it is not in Indian interests.
Let me Xplain ....
Point #1 Chinese being neighbour. Doesn't make them our ally. Being neighbour doesn't qualify them to dictate terms on India. Infact a militarily strong nation taht is suspicious about India dealing with the west, is a threat to India.
Point #2 Have you heard or Taimur and Cheingis Khan and what did their dynasty do to India ? Do you know Taimur's roots ? Do you know that there are more than millions of innocent Tibetian refugees living in India ? Do you know that China occupies and or claims more than 125,000 SQ Kms of Indian land apart from making Tibet an enemy land for India ? Do you think that since India wants to partner China, the Chinese will not give nukes to Pakistan ? Don't be naive and think like a defeatist or a child. In this era, Darwinism prevails. That's is the fitter will survive. If your aim is not to compete and play the games you will be outplayed and out smarted by everyone since you will remain the weak link and also since you are not in the game you will never understad the dynamics and the intencity of the game. You must talk to Chola on BRF. I think you missed his points.
Point#3 is utter garbage ... Why should Indian foreign policies be held hostage to China ? Why should India keep the US and the west away from India, just because it bothers the Chinese ? What will India get in return from China ? WHY should China gets concerned by our relationship with the west be it US or UK or anyone else for that matter of fact ? WHY do you want India to act based on what the Chinese concerns DICTATE, unless you are a Chinese stooge ? Why ????
Don't you know that India is a independent nation and can and should act independent of its bullying neighbours and address its concerns ?
Point #4 Tell your Chinese bosses that it takes two for a tango, and 1961 has created such a great distrust that Chinese will have to do more to erase the BAD memories. The memories of 1961 can not and will not be erased if Chinese keep funding the paki army and giving them the WMDs and missiles.
Point #5 Day dreaming. Believing China is as good as loosing the game at the very begining. If you can not think of any more moves to counter the Chinese mminent threats to India, you must form a team who can think of new moves and play your cards. That's the reason a dynastic rule is not good for any nation. Because one families thinkings are imposed on to the nation of a Billion people.
Point #6 I am not amused.
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Another mess was joint military excercises.Our leaders AGAIN neglected strategic consequences of this act in regard with china-india relations.AGAIN WEST is laughing.....they succeded.
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Should India care who is laughing and who is not ?
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->One more thing i forgot is that in this game Greatest Victory of West will be lowering the heat between india-RUSSIA relations by PUSHING more modern and latest weapons from ISrael or directly(HTCG-agreement) with India. Reaction of this will be increased HEAT of relations(defense deals) between CHINA and
RUSSIA(they simply need money....so won't mind selling large stuffs...carriers,submarines...updation) to counter the heat between india and US.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
What makes you think that Russia will not sell China more weapons if India doesn't buy weapons from Israel or the west ?
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->so guys think again,who we should go closer with.....having 2 million NRI community in US and more business ties is not enough reason to invite bigger mess and miss more healthy ties(india-china)as it can be superpower of asia which west never wanna see.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Why should China think that India dealing with the west is bad fo them, unless they are suspicious about India? If they are suspicious about India, how can Indians be their allies ?
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->MY FINAL WORDS ARE,
The Divide And Rule that Brits played with indian kings to rule India some centuries ago,today The Same Game WEST is playing with CHINA and India
expect more defense deals from west in coming days...Â
that was my assesment of things.....maybe right..
my suggestion : make realtions with all of our neighbours better first before dealing or running for WEST.bocz,it only our neighbour which matches in culture with us not the greedy West.
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The mistake Indians did in the past was that they fought among themselves and were not uinted, but now we are united. In the past we didn't give much attention to arm ourself to defend India, but now we must and we are moving in the right direction. India should concentrate on enhancing and strengthening both its economy and military. Development of only one is not going to help India. We must strike a balance and form appropriate alliance to counter our immediate threats which comes from Pakistan, BD and China.
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