India’s Foreign Policy In The Gutter
By S.Faizi
23 November, 2004
Countercurrents.orgThe NDA rule led by the far right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), together with the Hindutwa harangue, has stripped India of nearly all the respect the country had earned as a legitimate leader of the developing world. As the mercilessly unipolar world desperately wishes for a balancing world player India is just not there where it should have been-as a moderating global force, on the strength of its democratic resilience, cultural diversity, relative economic autonomy and sheer immensity. The Hindutwa foreign policy has reduced India into a competitor to Pakistan to become a client state of USA. However, the NDA cannot claim the whole credit for this decline, it was in fact of a progression of the course set by the Narsimha Rao regime, discarding the country’s cherished principles on foreign policy.
The UPA ought to undertake a rigorous review of India’s foreign policy in the context of the recent global developments and set a course for the nation that is based on the values of our own Independence. This is not to suggest that we should be overly idealistic to ignore the realpolitik, but on the contrary, to affirm that the realisation of our self interest, in the long term, lies in seeking to build and stand for the global majority.
The global majority has no credible political leadership today and it is this niche that is begging India to occupy. The rigorously cultivated Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) has become crippled in a world unable to resist the US ferocity without a balancing USSR. As country after country has been successfully targeted by the US as part of its empire building project, the developing countries, devoid of any tangible unity, have fallen into fear (the latest acknowledgement of this fear was made in the sarcasm filled speech of South African President Tabo Mbeki on the opening day of the current session of the General Assembly). Nobody would want to provoke the tyrannical empire by asserting independent positions such as NAM’s.
The US hegemony is not just an opportunistic exploitation of the world’s helplessness caused by the absence of a balancing force and the emergence of imperialism’s blissful alibi that is terrorism. Those who still have a doubt about the designs of imperialism may consult Project for the New American Century that serves as the blueprint for American foreign policy, authored by the top wolfish pack of the Republican administration. And if you believe in the imaginary difference of the Democrats, The Grand Chessboard, authored by the Democratic strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski, that prescribes an equally violent strategy to expand the empire, should be able to heal you of the delusion. If further left unchallenged, the US will turn Africa, Asia and Latin America into outright colonies and vassal states within a few years time. Forty wars by a single country in half a century and yet we have no means in sight to face this pandemic threat.
Can India remain insensitive to this threat. Shall we remain complacent until they come knocking at our door. Or shall we pursue the Hindutwa line and turn the country into a client state of US imperialism. The government must undertake a critical review of the foreign policy in the light of the contemporary realities and seek to position the country as a major world player that can articulate the concerns of the global South, while fully engaging the US on the bilateral front. In playing this role India could also count on the support of the powerful civil society movement in the West as well as the tacit support of some western European governments.
The country must attach priority for revitalising the NAM. Agreed that NAM has always been no more than a talk shop, but lately it has even stopped speaking up. A permanent secretariat and some operational fund should be thought of for the Movement. This would be easily possible if India and a few other key countries in the South decide to contribute to this cause half of the money we provide the West any given a year for patronising their arms industry. Since a strengthened NAM can significantly improve our collective security it should not be too difficult to convince countries about the need for such a contribution. I believe Malaysia, the current chair of NAM, would readily welcome any serious move to transform the Movement into a relevant entity.
Political mobilisation of the countries that live in fear is an even more important task. When there is an anchor for formulating the collective voice, this fear could be overcome. NAM should also utilize the possibility of building an institutional linkage with the Group of 77 (the grouping of developing countries within the UN forums). The G-77 performs well at least occasionally and the developing world, thanks to G-77, has won many a battle in the democratic forums of the Organisation.
It is a different story in the anti-democratic UN organ that is the Security Council. For many years now India’s foreign policy ambitions have been centered around obtaining a permanent seat in an expanded Security Council. This is a self defeating pursuit for many reasons. The Security Council is an inversion of the democratic principles vis a vis the democratic General Assembly. A tiny fragment of the community of nations making critical decisions that are mandatory denying these rights to the General Assembly that represents the full membership of the UN is an antithesis to the democratic doctrine. More than two thirds of the current membership of the UN had no role at all in the formulation of the UN Charter that created the skewed Security Council with eternal membership and veto power.
What is needed urgently is a modernisation of the UN system by entirely eliminating the Security Council of 15 countries and transferring its mandate to the General Assembly represented by all the 191 countries of the world. Since the first time I described the permanent membership aspiration of the few developing countries including India as a self defeating pursuit in 1988, nothing has happened within the UN parlance that could prove me wrong. The overwhelming majority of the UN membership wishes to see the empowerment of General Assembly to be able to make enforceable decisions on peace and security by unmaking the historical anachronism that is the Security Council. The General Assembly voting system, based on one country one vote principle, can be formulated to require consensus, two thirds majority or simple majority based on the nature and gravity of the issues in question. We see democracy working in the WTO, despite the green room manipulations.
The improbability of the expansion of permanent membership of the Security Council in favour of developing countries lies in the statutory requirement of two thirds majority in the General Assembly and ratification by all the five permanent members for the amendment of the UN Charter. The West will promote all aspirants from the South so that the resulting chaos would help divert attention from the real need to do away with the Security Council itself. President Abdul Kalam’s recent ‘personal’ call for a world without veto power, I believe, will have some takers. It will serve India’s interests and that of the developing world better if the country demonstrates the resourcefulness and political will to lead a global campaign to abolish the anti-democratic Security Council and to empower the General Assembly.
How about the Commonwealth ? Has the government ever explained to the people the rationale for becoming a member of this imperialist fans club. Had it been a multilateral forum of former victims of imperialism to develop forward looking strategies to overcome the historical damage and exploitation caused by imperialism, that would have been more than welcome. But here is an apologist of imperialism, without a statute, headed by the British Queen and pursuing an agenda that has no meaning for the former colonies. It displays a sardonic benevolence towards the loyal countries and mercilessly targets those who fail to fall in line, like Zimbabwe.
For western outposts like Australia and New Zealand that still hold Union Jack on their national flags (and Canada,for that matter), Commonwealth is a natural thing. But for the people of India, it is an affront to our Independence and an insult to our martyrs (like it was for Ireland before they denounced this absurd guild). The charming Chief Anyaoku, the former Secretary General of Commonwealth Secretariat, had a hard time trying to defend the absence of a negotiated statue and the unelected position of the British monarch as the head of the organisation, when I opened the subject during an in informal chat in Durban last year.
If India has to justify its continued alliance with the imperialist nanny we should strive to a) formulate a statute for the body that among other things, provides for the periodic election of its head, b) seek an unconditional apology for the occupation of our countries, c) institute a process to repatriate the wealth plundered during colonialism and d) create a mechanism to transfer back to Britain the foreign debt that was illegally forced on the new nations upon the departure of Britain. If India takes the lead in setting such an agenda for the Commonwealth, in an incremental but firmly consistent manner, all members of the body except the four Caucasian nations, would be fully with us.
The foreign policy should be radically shaken to incorporate a range of existing and emerging global issues. Debt relief, global denuclearisation, unsustainable consumption pattern, fair trade, environment, civil society engagement, etc should be firmly on the agenda of the foreign ministry, without compromising the traditional tracks of bilateral relations. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s promise to participate in the structuring of a ‘just and dynamic world order’ made in his maiden address to the UN will simply be taken as an act of self deception if the country fails to make the necessary reforms in its foreign policy to be able to seriously pursue this goal that we share with the greater part of humanity.
S Faizi is an environmentalist who lives in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. He can be reached at [email protected]
