Reimagining the world

There is much hype about India’s nuclear weaponisation, the peace initiative with Pakistan, forward movement in relation with the US under the NDA government. The substantive points of critical evaluation, however, are that nuclear weaponisation and foreign economic policy — for which the NDA government claims credit — were essentially based on the long-term foundations laid by the Congress from 1984 to 1996, when it was in power.

An objective assessment of the NDA government’s foreign policy indicates that, for one, its policies towards Pakistan have been full of contradictions swinging between ‘‘Now we will fight to the finish” and “Now we will make up”. There is no clarity or a structured negotiating stance on the issues at dispute. Also, even as we acknowledge the undoubted importance of Indo-US relations, they need not have led to the kind of submissive subaltern policies which the present government adopted towards the US.

The focus here is not to indulge in a partisan criticism of the NDA government. The Congress party’s focus is on the future. Among the foreign policy challenges India will face in the foreseeable future would be the requirement to structure new equations with important power centres of the world after the end of the Cold War and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, because of the disappearance of leverages which India had in fashioning its foreign and security policies of the last 50 years. An important dimension of this concern is the creation of a stable and calibrated relationship with the US without, at the same time, losing the ability to take independent decisions on foreign and security policies. South Asia, constituting nearly one-fifth of the world’s population, also happens to be one of the poorest regions of the world. Meeting socio-economic requirements through appropriate policies is another challenge.

Within the ambit of the above concerns, particular attention has to be given by all south Asian nations to ensuring energy security. A rational management of energy resources of both these categories moving away from narrow political considerations is imperative. There are also some fundamental security concerns affecting the region. The religious, ethnic and linguistic characteristics of the civil societies in these nations overlap with each other. This results in apprehensions about respective national identities. The challenge is to resolve the contradiction between the nature of the civil societies and anxieties about consolidating individual national ide-ntities by promoting civic nationalism that is integrative rather than separative.

The complexes and aspirations generated by the asymmetry between India, on the one hand, and other south Asian countries, on the other, has resulted in tensions in the region which need to be overcome. India has a special responsibility in this regard, while the other countries need to make an effort to overcome the burdens of history. Contentful regionalism is the only solution. The establishment of SAARC was an attempt at such regionalism. It has been stalled primarily due to political tensions. The solution is, therefore, to deal with the political problems in a pragmatic manner to move on to the more desirable objective of regional cooperation.

Nonproliferation is another issue which requires a change of approach. There is a shift in international nonproliferation policies. The agenda of the established nuclear weapons powers is not so much about comprehensive disarmament as to ensuring an arms control programme on a discriminatory basis only to prevent the further horizontal proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. India should clearly emphasise its determination to preserve its nuclear weapons and missile assets. While doing this, it should endeavour to formulate an approach where it can assure the major powers that its weapons capacities in no way threaten their security interests, given its record as a responsible nuclear weapons state.

There are reservations about America’s dominant influence in world policies. But the reality is that no individual country has the ability to resist its influence effectively. The choice is to confront and resist the US and get isolated, or to make ourselves a subordinate ally of the US, or adopt a strategy of engaging the US on the basis of equality while developing equations with other major powers to redress the imbalances of US dominance.

While India should maintain its relations with the international coalition on terrorism, in all its political and operational dimensions, we must be clear in our mind that we will have to fight our battle against terrorism on our own. It must also be kept in mind that crossborder terrorism does not emanate only from Pakistan. There are other groups operating in the Northeast and other states which have their origins, even links, with terrorist organisations like the LTTE. A sustained effort should be made to see that terrorist violence is not blindly applied to one religious community or the other, or one case or the other.

So the macro-level objectives of India’s foreign policy would be to safeguard India’s security and vital strategic interests. The endeavour would be to form a foreign policy based on informed national consensus.

The writer is vice-chairman, Foreign Affairs Department of the AICC. The views expressed here are his own.