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South Asia
India: Don't fight with the crocodile
By Sultan Shahin
NEW DELHI - With the world in a state of changing allegiances over the United States-led war in Iraq, India's foreign policy makers appear to be paralyzed. But this is not so much paralysis as a desire on the part of the leadership to keep its policy in a sort of suspended animation while it debates new options to cope with new and emerging realities.
Both houses of parliament spent two days this week debating whether to "condemn" or merely "deplore" the invasion. The salvation lay in the poverty of the vocabulary of the national language, Hindi. Why not just drop the resolution in the English language, whose rich vocabulary was proving so problematical, and instead adopt only one in Hindi, which has only one word, ninda, to describe a whole range of ideas?
And just as beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder, the meaning of ninda lies in the mind of the translator. The US and UK could cheerfully interpret it merely as "criticize", the rest of the world could happily interpret it as "condemn" and India could take it to mean "deplore", the official position, thus making for a unanimous resolution in the Indian parliament, even though on the 20th day of the invasion.
Even in paralysis, then, India's foreign policy has the ability to surprise the world with its ingenuity. Until the war started, the world was witness to the strange spectacle of all the leading parties to the conflict, the US, the UK, Spain, Iraq, Russia, China, France, Germany, etc, claiming that India’s position was identical to theirs. The invasion changed this. Now India has to take a position, which it doesn't want to do. At least until it has thought things through.
The dilemma before India, is, however, not to be scoffed at. It has to contend with numerous conflicting thoughts, emotions, interests and anxieties. Not blessed with a robust leadership, confident of its ability to judge the rapidly-changing currents of time, India would probably just bide its time, hoping that things will clear up, in the meanwhile keeping its foreign policy on hold and debating furiously the pros and cons of its policy options.
The Iraq crisis has created an environment foreign to many Indians. This is reflected in the way different sections of society and polity view the US-led invasion.
The coalition government led by the Hindu fundamentalist Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) may normally have been ambivalent. But the BJP and its mentor Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), traditionally pro-West and ideologically wedded to the idea of a clash of civilizations with the Christian, Jewish and Hindu on the one side and Muslim and Confucian on the other, have taken a radically different view this time. They have both condemned the invasion unequivocally. "The US has not been able to convince the world that Iraq has any links to terrorism," said Ram Madhav, the RSS spokesperson.
One important member of the larger Hindu fundamentalist family known as the Sangh Pariwar, Praveen Togadia of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP or World Hindu Forum) suggested a month ago that India should support the US as it was a war against Islam. But now even Togadia has retracted his statement and RSS leaders say that he had been misled. RSS ideologue Devendra Swarup says, "At the people's level, there is complete opposition to the war. All of us are watching helplessly as one superpower imposes its will on the world. No one in the Sangh can support what is happening."
The RSS chief K S Sudershan laid down the line some weeks ago when he said that the US was being a hypocrite vis-a-vis Iraq. "If they want to fight terrorism, they should look at Pakistan, which is the epicenter of terrorism. Why Iraq, which has no proven links to international terrorism?" Many RSS thinkers are also bitter at the way the US continues to pander to President General Pervez Musharraf's regime in Pakistan, when they believe India should have been the natural ally in the war against terror.
Dinanath Mishra, BJP lawmaker and ex-editor of the RSS mouthpiece Panchajanya, articulates the outrage of the entire Sangh Pariwar: "This is completely different from the attack on the Taliban and [Osama] bin Laden. Despite the smart media management, George W Bush has become the most unpopular leader in the world today, while Saddam [Hussein], the despot, is in the process of becoming an Islamic hero and getting sympathy from even outside the Islamic world." Like other RSS thinkers, he is worried that the concept of sovereignty of nations has been undermined. "This is jungle raj [rule] where might is right. Tomorrow they may want to change regimes in Iran, Libya. It is not far-fetched to imagine that if this goes on, some day they may talk down to India and dictate terms."
India, however, cannot help viewing the world through the prism of Pakistan. Inevitably, there is a section in the RSS not wholly opposed to the idea of preemptive strikes against a hostile nation, as it may someday justify an Indian strike against Pakistan. Says Seshadri Chari, editor of the RSS mouthpiece Organizer: "I do not support the US action but at the same time I believe a nation has a right to act if it perceives a threat to its security. What is worrying is that the US has not been able to build a convincing case." A senior leader of the RSS, Dattopant Thengadi, accused the US of "adding military terrorism to its policy of economic terrorism".
Clearly, the overwhelming mood in the pro-American Pariwar has turned anti-American. Underlying all this is a fear that some day India, too, may become a US target for similar invasion. No matter how far-fetched, this fear is only in line with the fear being felt and expressed by all developing countries. Even some Russians expressed this fear of becoming the next US target recently in a BBC-world TV program.
Like the Sangh Pariwar, opposition politicians, too, are fearful of the implications of this invasion for India. Criticizing the government for adopting an "ambivalent" stand on the Iraq issue, two former prime ministers have warned that the US could soon turn its "attention" on India and Pakistan, making the excuse that they possess nuclear weapons.
"It is feared that after the US imposes its rule on Iraq, it will be the turn of Syria and Iran. But the day may not be too far off when India and Pakistan are included in that list because they both have nuclear capability," former premier V P Singh said this week.
"The US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, has already thrown a challenge to the Indian leadership by saying that they must resume talks with Pakistan. This sort of implied threat is very dangerous," another former prime minister, I K Gujral, said.
Hopes that India would be able to use the precedent set by the US in Iraq to take on Pakistan have been dashed by the US response to Indian External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha describing Pakistan as "a fit case for preemptive strikes”.
Pakistan’s Ministry of Information has circulated a report by the Washington Post saying, "The US has strongly condemned India's attempts to draw parallels between Iraq and the Kashmir situation and has warned India to restrain itself from using the US-led preemptive war on Iraq as a pretext for an attack on Pakistan." It quoted State Department spokeswoman Joanne Prokopowicz as saying that the circumstances that made military actions necessary in Iraq do not apply in the subcontinent and should not be considered a precedent.
New Delhi is also annoyed by frequent admonitions and exhortations from Washington that India should hold a dialogue with Pakistan to settle all outstanding issues, including Kashmir, even though the Indian demand that Pakistan-sponsored cross-border terrorism should stop first, has not been met. All shades of opinion in India point to perceived American double-standards. After all, Washington did not hold any dialogue with either the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan or Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
Against this backdrop of renewed India-Pakistan war rhetoric and all-round disenchantment with the US, however, some vigorous pro-US lobbying has also been going on in official circles in Delhi. A section of bureaucrats, influential academics and journalists is convinced that the American far right ideologue Richard Perle's thesis about the shape of the world polity minus the encumbrance of the United Nations suits Indian interests, particularly as the demise of the UN would make the Kashmir resolutions of 1948-49 defunct.
This section is studying the political and economic implications for India of a world without much UN clout and encouraging politicians at the helm to rethink their attachment to the world as it existed before the US invasion of Iraq. The debate has not yet come out in the open, but sensing the move, several old UN hands have come out supporting the old order and basically stressing that the unilateral US invasion has made the UN more and not less relevant.
In their view, the UN would have become irrelevant if it had succumbed to the US threat either to legitimize its invasion or become irrelevant like the League of Nations. By standing up to the world's only superpower and its minions, the UN has acquired new relevance and has emerged as a new beacon of hope for smaller countries, they feel. No wonder that the US has now begun to seek UN legitimacy for its occupation of Iraq.
Foreign policy mandarins who support of the idea of India abandoning the UN, along with the US and joining the "coalition of the willing" are being very careful and reticent. On assurance of anonymity, however, several officials, particularly those close to Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishan Advani, told Asia Times Online that this is a very serious move, and its implications are still being studied. One official said, "I am certainly advocating a reconsideration of Nehruvian foreign policy paradigms. The world has changed and we must change accordingly. After all, Saddam Hussain is paying the price for trading in euros and not doing business with Halliburton as the Taliban paid the price for not dealing with Unocal. Remember the old Indian adage: pani mein rahkar magarmach se bair nahi karte [If you live in water, don't fight with the crocodile]. Had Saddam built a business relationship with companies run by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and George W Bush, he would have been sitting pretty at this moment, perhaps even gassing his own people with chemicals supplied by these same people."
As the US itself is talking of getting its occupation of Iraq legitimized by involving the UN, the Indian debate may appear rather premature. But if the US doesn't get what it wants at the cost it wants, it may again threaten to render the UN irrelevant. In any case at the moment the international system does appear to be divided into the United Nations and the so-called coalition of the willing, though some members of this coalition, like the Solomon islands, have expressed their ignorance of having joined this coalition.
The core argument of those who support India joining the coalition of the willing and coming out of the UN system along with the US, if and when that happens, is derived from the contrasting experience of Iraq and Israel. Saddam had the audacity to cock a snook at the US, start trading in euros and refusing to deal with US multinationals, while all the time being in "active, indeed proactive" compliance with UN resolutions. The result: his country is invaded and occupied, his regime decapitated. The US violates the UN charter, devastates a sovereign country, in order, it claims, to uphold and implement one of the UN resolutions. On the other hand, Israel refuses to comply with any of the 29 UN resolutions against it, some of them asking it to vacate occupied Palestinian territory for 35 years. But since it is a close ally, the US continues to use "unreasonable" vetoes to protect it.
With no need to be as inhibited as the officials, journalists and politicians are more open in their support for India abandoning the UN in favor of the US-led coalition of the willing and not so willing. The first to come up with his thesis on the subject was Shekhar Gupta, editor of the Indian Express, the second largest chain of newspapers in the country. In a seminal contribution, he criticized Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee for having expressed India's commitment to the UN: "While 'we are one with whatever the UN decides' may be a useful line for so many Europeans and others loathe to oppose Bush or to side with him prematurely, it is the one thing we should have avoided. We can choose so many other formulations: That Iraq has to come clean; that the US cannot decide unilaterally and so on. But can't we, please, and in our own supreme interest, go a bit easy in asserting such commitment to the UN?"
Gupta goes on to articulate fears that several officials and lawmakers have expressed in conversation with Asia Times Online recently. He says, "The danger in this lies not simply in the fact that at some stage the Pakistanis could remind us that since we had such faith in the UN, why don't we also express it by implementing the 1947-48 plebiscite resolution on Kashmir. The danger is greater. If the principle that the UN Security Council resolutions authorizing intervention in any situation that presents a global danger has universal legitimacy, what is to stop it from passing a similar resolution should Kashmir come to a boil yet again tomorrow? We will defy it, sure enough. But the touching words we speak today, expressing our faith in the Security Council, will come back to haunt us.
"Nobody should know better than us how unfair and ineffective the UN can be. In the past decade it has rubber-stamped every single thing the US has demanded of it and while it does enjoy the momentary glow of the latest French Resistance, it is unlikely that institutionally it will ever be able to stand up to the powers that be. The world over it is known to be an inefficient, lazy, wasteful and ineffective organization. It has done more for perpetuating dictatorships around the world than for furthering democracy. Every September, thugs and despots from around the world congregate at its General Assembly to hold forth to the world, but also to their domestic audiences. Not one of them may have voted for you, but they cannot ignore the fact that when you speak, so many other heads of state listen."
Speaking in the same vein while talking to this correspondent, a member of parliament from the beleaguered state of Jammu and Kashmir, Abdur Rasheed Shaheen, asked, "In any case, what has the UN done for India? A country of a billion people is not even a permanent member of the Security Council. How can we forget that throughout the Cold War it was the Soviet veto alone that saved us on numerous occasions?"
Shaheen goes on to assert, "We are the biggest democracy in the world and the second largest population. Yet we often have less power in the present UN system than several small dictatorships. When we went to the UN in 1948, complaining that our land had been invaded by Pakistan, instead of getting justice and support, we were simply embroiled in a debilitating dispute and have remained entangled since. The Damocles sword of the two plebiscites resolutions has remained hanging over our heads since. It is not without reason that we do not even acknowledge the presence of the UN Observers' Group in Kashmir. Indeed, only last year we refused to give a visa to [UN secretary general] Kofi Annan as he had seemed inclined to mediate on the Kashmir question. I am all for restructuring of the UN or some other such solution that gives India its due."
The nay-sayers argue that even if India joins the coalition of the willing, it is hardly likely to be allowed to practice the Bush doctrine of preemption. "Every country has the right to preemption and the doctrine is not the prerogative of any one nation," Jaswant Singh, former external affairs and now finance minister, said in Washington six months ago, setting off alarm bells in both Washington and London.
Angry with Indian officials having the chutzpah to equate their international rights with those of a mighty superpower like the United States, American Secretary of State Colin Powell and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw cautioned India as recently as March 27 not to equate Iraq with Kashmir. In fact, realizing the dangers inherent in any preemptive action by New Delhi, the US and the UK, as well as France, have issued a series of cautionary appeals for restraint.
Former foreign secretary Muchkund Dubey considers all talk of the US bringing about sweeping changes in the UN system as unrealistic. It would be naive to suggest, in his view, that the US would deprive France and Russia of their permanent membership, and hence their veto in the Security Council. This would simply not be possible because it would require an amendment of the charter, which cannot be carried out without the positive votes of these countries in the Security Council. Again, if the US wants to legalize preemptive use of force in self defense, it will have to get Article 51 of the charter amended. There is no way member-states would agree to such an amendment.
In the view of Dubey, a coalition of the willing without France, Germany and Russia and the vast majority of the Third World countries is not likely to carry any credibility. The US can of course muster rump coalitions of this kind from time to time, he says, but this can only serve propaganda purposes in the absence of a legal framework like that of the charter. The support of such coalitions would not legitimize unilateral and arbitrary use of force.
What India doesn't seem to understand, say the opponents of the Bush doctrine of unilateral preemptive strikes, is that even the superpower only chooses to invade small, helpless countries like Afghanistan and Iraq which do not have the capacity to stand up and inflict any real damage on US troops. US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had justified the plans of invasion of Iraq on the ground that it was "doable".
Is an invasion of Pakistan "doable" when the US itself apparently doesn't consider even the invasion of North Korea, with much smaller nuclear capability than Pakistan, doable? If the US answer to North Korea's chest-thumping is a promise of eventual dialogue and conciliation after a little posturing, the US is indeed not practicing double standards if it advises India to hold dialogue with Pakistan, says this group.
The original propounder of the irrelevance of the UN, Richard Perle, said recently, "Saddam Hussein's reign of terror is about to end. He will go quickly, but not alone: in a parting irony he will take the United Nations down with him. What will die in Iraq is the fantasy of the United Nations as the foundation of a new world order. As we sift the debris of the war to liberate Iraq, it will be important to preserve, the better to understand, the intellectual wreckage of the liberal conceit of safety through international law administered by international institutions."
What has actually happened, point out his Indian critics, is that the people of the world have defected from the US and converted to the UN. No less than 30 million people joined peace marches around the world. The focus shifted from the UN's relevance to legitimacy of the US war on Iraq. The Security Council played a more important role in this crisis than at any other time in its history. Bush himself had to say that he also wanted to bolster the credibility of the UN by implementing its resolutions. It is the beguiling ideology of Western universalism rather than UN relevance that lies shattered along with Saddam's palaces.
The debate continues. India is thinking hard. It is discussing pros and cons while waiting for the military outcome and political fallout of the war on Iraq to fully play out. Which way it will eventually turn will be vital for determining its place in the comity of nations for decades to come.
(©2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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