India And The World

[acharya]

Center for the Advanced Study of India











CASI Sixth Annual Fellow’s 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 India’s 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: “What

did testing nuclear weapons accomplish for India?” The answer, Gujral

explained, was basic and profound. “The 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?” 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 India’s

world-class greatness. Nuclear weapons marked India’s arrival as a major power.

Leaving the former prime minister’s 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 Gujral’s 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.

“Old car,” he said, endearingly. “Yes,” I said, as much to myself as to him,

“and it works.”



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,

“what’s so great about being great?” I think a country’s 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 we’re 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 it’s driving a cab, tells me something about Nigeria and the

U.S. Great power has little to do with it.

Nevertheless, greatness is on people’s minds now when they think

about India. Not only Indian elites, but also American politicians, diplomats,

and scholars talk about India’s looming greatness on the international stage.

Businesspeople who haven’t 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 – 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 – nuclear weapons

and a veto in the UN Security Council – 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 – perhaps the most famous contemporary

Western theorist of international relations -- provides a useful colloquial

definition of power as the “extent that [one] effects others more than they

affect [one].” A state’s 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 state’s (or alliance’s) 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 state’s 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 state’s 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 – “soft power” in Joe Nye’s 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 state’s effectiveness.

Is India Emerging As A Major Power?

So, how does India fare on these scales?[ix] Allow me briefly to

survey India’s performance in four key domains: socio-economic; political;

military-security; and diplomatic.

Socio-Economic Indicators

Overall GDP says something about a state’s collective power potential. Yet, the

size of the population that both produces and lives off GDP tells us more (but

not all) about the society’s productivity and about its citizens’ quality of

life. Thus, GDP measured on a basis of per capita purchasing power parity gives

a finer picture of a state’s position. Here, for example, India’s (and China’s)

great populations bring down their rankings. India’s estimated 2002 per capita

GDP at purchasing power parity was $2,540. China’s was $4,600. (Brazil’s 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 states’ 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 states’ socio-economic health and

prospects. The United Nations Human Development Index, for example, provides a

rough assessment of how states meet their citizens’ 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. India’s National Security Council Secretariat uses a

variant of this index, which it calls the Population Index. This takes a

country’s population and multiplies it by its Human Development Index

coefficient. The aim is to adjust the “value” of a state’s 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

India’s National Security Council Secretariat.[x]

Education strongly affects a society’s prospects for increasing

economic productivity, obtaining greater value for each “exertion.” 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 world’s 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 India’s 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 India’s prospects.

A state’s 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 state’s 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 India’s 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 India’s poor

live in rural villages dependent on agriculture and that India’s agricultural

sector lags behind the overall level of economic growth which is driven largely

by services.[xiii] Also, India’s 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

don’t.

Analyses such as Ravillon’s 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 government’s 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] India’s 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 India’s economic performance to China’s. 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 India’s democracy. Political evolution may (or may

not) bring unforeseeable destabilizing changes to China. India’s 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 state’s long-term power probably will wane.

A society’s morale depends heavily on the qualities of its governors – 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 democracy’s

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 – legitimacy, order,

efficiency, moral-political values, factiousness, and initiative – 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: “the 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 Muslims…, and the emergence of Hindutva…as

the most important ideological challenge to the constitutional vision of the

liberal state.”[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 “rules” 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 – 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 nation’s and state’s identity. Yet India’s 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 government’s 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 movement’s campaign to define India’s 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 India’s “democratic nationalism,” in Achin Vanaik’s

words. Democratic nationalism seeks to “try 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.” [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 nation’s essential identity. The outcome of this struggle cannot

be predicted. Yet, the character and conduct of the struggle will profoundly

affect India’s 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

India’s 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 state’s 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 – 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 state’s security ambitions can grow as its power

potential grows. This has happened in India.

India’s 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 – of having

enough military power to compel India to heed China’s 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 state’s stockpile of

nuclear materials and weapons. In 2003 India is estimated to possess 40 or more

nuclear weapons. The technical composition of India’s nuclear arsenal remains

publicly unclear – we do not know how many, if any, of these weapons are

thermonuclear, boosted-fission, or fission. India’s 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 – the short-range Prithvi, and the Agni I and Agni

II – 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. India’s growing military and economic strength

heightens the frustrated desire to “teach Pakistan a lesson once and for all.”

But Indian statesmen also recognize that Pakistan’s 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. India’s

growing economic, military and diplomatic strength, combined with China’s desire

to concentrate on internal political-economic development, induces Beijing to

improve relations with New Delhi. India’s 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 Pakistan’s 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 country’s 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 India’s 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 India’s nuclear weapon capabilities seems

to have heightened Indian leaders’ 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 Administration’s

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 Pakistan’s 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.

“India has not been happy with the US because of its inability to pressure

Pakistan on cross-border terrorism and lifting of sanctions,” an Indian official

declared, “but the government did not go beyond saying that it was

‘disappointed’ over the move. The government was not going by the sentiment;

national interest weighed supreme in the minds of decision-makers.”[xxii] Prime

Minister Vajpayee summed up the new statesmanship tellingly: “We 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.”[xxiii] This insight, if applied

regularly, which is very difficult to do in a democracy, could greatly increase

India’s influence in the halls of global power.

However, in terms of international institutions and regimes, as distinct from

bilateral relations, India’s recent record is more mixed. India’s 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 India’s 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 India’s 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 India’s

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? India’s National Security Council Secretariat has produced

a National Security Index that ranks countries’ 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 can’t make others say “yes” to Indian demands. But India is

powerful enough to say “no” to most if not all demands of others. One way to

mark India’s progress will be to see how often it exerts its power to say “no”

to others’ preferences, versus the frequency with which India persuades others

to say “yes” to its preferences. As the Indian “nos” decrease and the rest of

the world’s “yeses” increase, India’s 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 Mexico’s 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, let’s add not only Mexico but also Canada,

Central America and South America. Yes, let’s add to the United States of the

Americas Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador…Chile, Uruguay….Venezuela with it’s

turmoil…Columbia with its civil conflict, drug cartels…Brazil with its teeming

cities of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paolo…Argentina with its fiscal crisis. If the

United States of America became the United States of the Americas, the

population would be 824 million. It’s 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 – 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 – outsiders with fewer challenges and many more resources per capita –

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 “great

power” 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 “national power is ultimately the product of the interaction of

two components: a country’s 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 country’s own strategic advantage but also

provides benefits for the international system as a whole.” 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 “National resources”: technology, enterprise,

human resources, financial/capital resources, physical resources. Three factors

under the category of “National performance” augment or detract from the

utilization of national resources: external constraints, infrastructural

capacity, ideational resources. “Military capability” 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, “Capability Distribution, Uncertainty, and

Major Power War, 1820-1965,” 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 “the ultima

ratio of international politics.” 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 “intangible” 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 “contributory to national power and the efficiency

with which material capabilities are used, but not a component of that power.”

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 “competence” 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 India’s 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 India’s 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 India’s strengths and weaknesses. Nayar and Paul consider ten power

indicators or “resources”, in their term. Four “hard-power resources” are

military power, economic power, technology, and demographics. Six “soft-power

resources” are normative, institutional, cultural, state capacity, strategy and

diplomacy, and national leadership. Ibid., 49-62.

[x] Satish Kumar, ed., India’s 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, “Making Globalization Work,”

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, “The Strategic Consequences of India’s Economic Performance,” in

Satish Kumar, ed., India’s 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 state’s “capacity to set goals,” the “extent of elite cohesion,”

“relative power of social groups,” 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 “India is often called a soft state, a state

that fails to enforce enacted policies…” This may be a function of

democratization itself. As Francine Frankel has noted, “democratization 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.” Nayar and Paul, 60. Francine

Frankel, “Contextual Democracy: intersections of society, culture and politics

in India,” in Francine Frankel, Zoya Hasan, Rajeev Bhargava, Balveer Arora eds.,

Transforming India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000), 20.

[xviii] Francine Frankel, “Contextual Democracy: intersections of society,

culture and politics in India,” in Francine Frankel, Zoya Hasan, Rajeev

Bhargava, Balveer Arora eds., Transforming India (New Delhi: Oxford University

Press, 2000), 5.

[xix] Achin Vanaik, “Interface Between Democracy, Diversity and Stability,” in D

D Khanna, LL Mehrotra, Gert W. Kueck eds., Democracy, Diversity, Stability

(Delhi: MacMillan India Ltd., 1998), 301.

[xx] Using Samuel Huntington’s 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, India’s Nuclear Bomb, paperback edition, 2001.

[xxii] Sanjay Singh, “Thin Red Line: New Delhi’s Balancing Act,” Pioneer, March

23, 2003.

[xxiii] Sanjay Singh, “Thin Red Line: New Delhi’s Balancing Act,” Pioneer, March

23, 2003.

[xxiv] In Kumar, ed., op. cit., p. 352.