2,300 Words Essay on Is India’s Foreign Policy Tilting?

Our objective is to focus on the centrality of national interests in the conduct of our external relations and the pursuit of our economic interests. We have taken important initiatives, keeping in mind the imperative of retaining our freedom of options, remaining alive to our concerns.

Our efforts have contributed to making the international environment for India’s development more secure. Iam confident that our foreign interlocutors have a better appreciation of our position on issues of importance to India. We will continue to remain engaged in this endeavour.

Talleyrand, foreign minister of Napoleon and the Bourbons, is memorized as an astute foreign policy maker. He advocated pragmatism and Western nations have always followed ragmatic foreign policies. He also advised avoided excessive fervor while pronouncing foreign policy.

The art of diplomacy, as that of water colors, has suffered much from the fascination which it exercises on the amateur’, said Harold Nicholson. This observation fittingly applies to India’s diplomacy during the second half of twentieth century. Indians, somehow, have been generously affectionate, steadily delusive and high sounding while pronouncing their foreign policy.

The cold war era provided a near-perfect setting for spewing idealism at an ideologically divided world that was clumsily recovering from the holocaust of a disastrous world war. Those times also saw the end of colonialism and dawn of freedom for India.

It gave a larger than life world stage to a Universalist Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru who illumined it with the light of romanticism and like an angel befittingly trembled his wings over it ineffectually while the Victors of World War Two-The USA, UK, France, Russia and China- grabbed the World Stage as Leaders of Peace!

According to Lord Carrington, “Foreign and defense policy essentially has to be about the obtaining and management of supremacy”. Foreign Policy demands perceptive sense of timing and shrewdly worked out strategies. Integrity is certainly not an Achilles’ heel of the major world powers. International diplomacy and relations have always been and remain unscrupulous.

In the prevailing international dispensation bargaining, national interest and cool computation determine relations among nations. India has yet to master the art of diplomatic negotiations and striking accurate equation with important world powers.

In 1947, India emerged as the largest democracy in the world. It, however, lacked the matching military and economic power. Since then it has fully participated in international politics adhering to the letter and spirit of international treaties, conventions and modus operandi. India substituted word power for effective power to vie with the world powers.

The tactic worked, at times poorly, when popular and maximum leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi were the prime ministers. Under their rule, India’s foreign policy was more for domestic consumption than for impacting on the international order. They could afford to make errors and yet have their way.

But for the nation costs were heavy. For some of their foreign policy errors of judgment India had to bear terrible consequences because they placed trust not in India’s friends but in its antagonists.

High-sounding principles of Panchsheel led to a shocking betrayal by China from which India has yet to recover. “Jawaharlal, do you want Kashmir, or do you want to give it away?” Sardar Patel is known to have asked Nehru. Patel warned him in 1949 that the Chinese Communists would annex Tibet, the historical buffer between India and China.

Nehru, however, cajoled China and went to the UNO on Kashmir against Patel’s wish. Nehru’s “Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai” turned out to be a bitter shibboleth and Kashmir became the source and fount of Terrorism and remains an unhealed, self-inflicted international wound.

According to observers, Jawaharlal, the architect of India’s Non-alignment Policy died of the Chinese treachery. Atal Bihari Vajpayee, a man of sterling qualities yet imitated Nehru and his diplomatic “bus to Lahore got hijacked to Kargil”. Earlier, in 1972, though a better strategist and negotiator “Indira Gandhi slipped up at Shimla by trusting Zulfikar Bhutto’s word on Kashmir”.

Currently, India is militarily and economically a stronger country, though it has weaker and minimum leaders. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is not even a member of the Lok Sabha. He is a Congress- nominated member of the Rajya Sabha from Assam where he has no popular roots but only an address to meet legal requirements to be a Member of Parliament. But happily, and perhaps compulsively, our Foreign Policy is more pragmatic and in tune with the times and practices of the so-called international community.

The disintegration of the Warsaw Pact or Soviet Union in 1990 is regarded as the verge of a new era in international polity. The USA emerged as the sole, unrivalled super-power with global reach. By force of its military presence in Central Asia, the Gulf region, the Afghan-Pak area, the Indian Ocean, South-East Asia, the China Sea and North-east Asia, it also became a next-door neighbor to India, China and Russia. Its interests and stakes in Asia are extensive and appear to be long-term, even permanent. It has obviously become an “Asian power” also.

The Yankee stranglehold can be felt from Egypt to Pakistan in West Asia and from Philippines to Thailand in East Asia. Uncle Sam no longer attaches very great importance to its client states, such as, Japan, Australia and Pakistan.

On the other hand, it is seriously engaged in developing new political equations, and if need be, alliances with more and hitherto adversarial countries, including India. The US security interests and concerns fall together with India’s security arc at this time.

China’s rise as the Super-Asian military and economic power and India’s own increasing military and economic power just behind China are equally important developments of recent years. “The US, China and India along with Japan and Russia constitute the pentagonal power complex of the 21st century; four of them are acknowledged nuclear weapon powers”, says Mr. M.K.Rasgotra, a former Foreign Secretary of India.

Europe is no longer the focus of international power politics as it was in the twentieth century. At the very onset of the twenty-first century, it has shifted to Asia and promises to stay there in the predictable future. Europe is moderately free of clash and hazard to its peace. It is going through a period of political transition and is occupied with the challenges of its political amalgamation and economic incorporation. The world’s peace and security now onwards depend on what kind of conditions will prevail in Asia. The World and Asian powers, at this moment, feel compelled to work out new equations among themselves to meet the challenge of emerging Asian realities.

The world has drastically changed within a decade. It has little or only illusive resemblance with the fading fin de siecle picture of the world. Of necessity, the Five World Powers and other nation-states are recasting their foreign policies to encounter new developments.

The shift in Washington’s India policy is a part of this ongoing international process. It is a response to and recognition of the reality of a changed world. India too is called upon to break out of its stuffy mould and revamp its foreign, economic and security policies. It has to, like other big countries and nations safeguard its interests internationally.

The USA is beginning to recognize India as a responsible nuclear weapon power. It is in the USA’s long-term interests to see India as a strong and stabilizing power in its region. Therefore, it feels persuaded to assist India in enlarging its global role. Can or should India shun Washington’s overtures?

During the last half-a-century of diplomatic experience, India is expected to have gained enough diplomatic maturity to understand that there are no “free lunches” in international relations. Reciprocity has to be on a “give-and-take” basis. It is no use saying that India abhors being a US-client state like Japan, Australia or Pakistan. International exigency is compelling India to decide its course of action and pay the price for the choice or choices it makes.

India’s changed stature does not permit it to blame others for its own diplomatic errors or justify them on moral grounds. It has itself to decide how far, fast or slow it wishes to develop its relations with the USA and other countries and on what terms. China, only three decades ago, was a sworn enemy of the USA but now it is the USA’s most dynamic trade partner.

China, in fact, has become a world economic, and consequently a world military power, with the American support. Yet China, by no means, is a client state of the USA like Japan. Obstinately, it is a pain in the US neck. On the Currency issue and revaluation of Yuan, it has not yielded to pressures and warnings from the USA.

The USA can think of getting out of Chinese trade partnership at its own peril! India too is free and independent and big enough to look after itself. If it chooses to renounce the present opportunity, its inaction could prove too costly. Evading the foreign policy challenge will mean evading the future itself.

India right now stands at the crossroads and must choose its direction. It must know and practice the maxim that there are no “permanent friends or foes” for reshaping its foreign policy competently. Ideological forces have disappeared from the international scene.

Pragmatism is in the ascendant. India must recognize and evaluate its National Needs and Interests because National Interest alone is the all-encompassing coordinate that accurately structures a country’s foreign policy.

No country is self-sufficient in all respects. Interdependence and exchange of goods and services form the basis of abiding relationship among nation – states. India today is well placed to seek diplomatic accords and agreements for mutual benefits. It has to assess its needs and the extent to which foreign resources are required to satisfy them. For example, India needs enormous measure of nuclear energy and state of the art technologies for its industry and agriculture. India also needs speedier expansion of trade and investments, an infrastructure conforming to international standards and to modernize its military. Can a vast underdeveloped democracy find or raise internal resources to satisfy these needs?

If the answer is “No”, then, India has no alternative but to find friends and partners from amongst other nations to provide the necessary resources. At the same time, it must calculate coolly what it has to part with as a price.

India has to remember that even the so- called international assistance from the Soviet or Western bloc in the cold war days had price tags. Assistance and cooperation were not free then and they will certainly be not free now. In fact, India today has sufficient bargaining power and should go into the international “diplomatic market” as a confident diplomatic bargainer.

India’s immediate goal in international power politics is to become an equal member of the nuclear suppliers group. Currently, we are blocked by the Non- Proliferation Treaty restraints. Therefore, in order to accomplish our abrupt objective we need active cooperation and support of the USA and other nuclear powers.

As a mutual gesture, it is absolutely in our national interest, to oppose nuclear proliferation, especially within and near our regional boundaries as it affects our security. Whether it is Pakistan or Iran, possession of nuclear weapons of mass destruction by them poses danger to us.

Our opposition to Iran’s nuclear stand is uttered by our own national interest. It is not surrender to the USA. The UPA government, like its predecessors, has dismissed US pressures on Kashmir showing that it shall resist illegitimate overtures from the super or hyper-power.

India’s voting for the IAEA resolution critical of Iran has been interpreted in some quarters as kowtowing to the USA. But foreign secretary Shyam Saran’s “forthright opinions favouring a new global non- proliferation order show that the vote wasn’t a one-off, extemporized reflex rather, it was backed by an articulated and rational sense of India’s foreign policy priorities”.

India’s proclivities are independent of both US and Iran. They put Indian interests first. India has objected to American double standards in chastising Iran, but indulging Pakistan whose nuclear advisor A Q Khan set up a nuclear Wal-Mart.

Iran is shunning its Non-Proliferation Treaty obligation. India and France had given advance notice to Iran that it must face consequences of its non­compliance. India is observing a self-imposed Non- proliferation regime more faithfully than members of the so-called Nuclear Club-the USA, China Russia, UK and France. India’s voting for an amended resolution at the IAEA gives Iran a chance to work closely with EU members so as to avoid being referred to the UN Security Council.

It must be noted here that western countries and major world powers too cannot escape the charge of proliferation. China has been extending nuclear know- how to North Korea and Pakistan. Israel’s nuclear capabilities have been gained with West’s connivance. Pakistan’s nuclear scientists have smuggled sensitive 182 Book of Advance Essays for Competitive Exams data from western countries.

Moreover, India cannot be expected to fight for other countries’ interests at the cost of its own interests. Therefore, India should oppose Iran at the next IAEA voting irrespective of the UPA Left Allies’ hue and cry.

Sentimentality, romantic attachment to the Non- alignment will only blur our foreign policy focus. The Left allies of the UPA government betray lack of objectivity and sense of responsibility when they interpret India’s IAEA voting as anti-Iran or anti-NAM. They are even more zealous than Iran in their protests against their own country’s principled stand on nuclear security.

The Left parties are heaping flak on their own coalition government while Iran is eschewing suggestions for scraping the India-Pak-Iran gas pipeline. Besides, Iranian Ambassador and Foreign Minister have been seeking meetings with the Indian Foreign Minister for support at the next IAEA vote.