13 November 2014

Powerful Eurasia & Indian foreign policy

Ever since Halford Mackinder's Russia containment strategy disguised as a grand theory first appeared, the Eurasian heartland has been perceived by the Anglo-American world as a threat to their global position and interests.

Zorawar Daulet Singh

PM Narendra Modi greeting U Thein Sein, the President of Myanmar at the presidential palace during his recent visit to Myanmar.

India lays BRICS for a proactive role in foreign policy: (Left) President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, President of Brazil Dilma Rousseff, President of People’s Republic of China Xi Jinping, and President of the Republic of South Africa Jacob Zuma, at the Sixth BRICS Summit, in Fortaleza, Brazil.

IRONICALLY, when Mackinder was writing his paper, The Heartland Power, czarist Russia, was on its death throes. Japan's 1904-1905 naval victories in the Pacific over Russia removed all illusions about Russia's status as a first-rate power. Yet, within three decades, revolutionary Russia had re-industrialised and was emerging as a potential superpower. Stalin's crushing, albeit costly, annihilation of Hitler's Third Reich established Soviet power and prestige as the second global pole. China's own revolution inspired and financed by Stalin's Russia produced the first major consolidation of the Eurasian heartland.

Force in world politics

The West led by America initiated a sustained grand strategy of countering this new force in world politics. Nicholas Spykman provided a theoretical precursor to this strategy in his 1942 book, America's Strategy in World Politics, which argued for America to project its strategic influence on the Rimland regions around the Soviet periphery.

Middle powers like India, however, reacted differently and consciously chose an approach that sought to maintain friendly ties with both these formidable blocs. Despite some material costs, the overall developmental and security advantages of such an independent approach has never been credibly challenged. In fact, this notion of sustaining a balance between the Atlantic and Eurasian worlds became an ingrained feature of Indian thinking and foreign policy practice. During the interlude between 1991 and the resurgence of the Eurasian powers in the last decade, any notion of a balance between the two worlds became irrelevant. But the dramatic revival of the Eurasian world, and, its second phase of consolidation since the 1940s and 1950s has revived the logic of balance in world politics.

Russia & China alignment

How should India view the contemporary alignment of Russia and China?

First, US policies have played an important part in driving Russia away from the West. But China's new identity as a great power seeking to improve its own bargaining equation with the US is also a factor in Beijing's outreach to Moscow. Gilbert Rozman of Princeton University perceptively notes, “Moscow and Beijing have disagreements about the future order they envision for their regions. But they agree that the geopolitical order of the East should be in opposition to that of the West.” Unlike the US, India has absolutely no problem with a stronger Russia and a Moscow buttressing its Asian identity. A Moscow-Beijing alignment, however, poses some challenges although not nearly as serious as this development is for America's global position.

Global development

What are the implications of this global triangular development for India?

A modicum of a balance of power is a positive development for the overall international system. The short history of unipolarity leaves no doubt about the adverse impact of an unrestrained superpower on the lesser powers. As Putin recently remarked, “The very notion of ‘national sovereignty’ became a relative value for most countries.” While India shares some values with the West such as a commitment to democracy and a liberal vision of a rule-based system, it finds many Western norms on global governance and managing international security often contradicting that liberal vision. A challenge to Western pre-dominance, and, certainly against its unilateralist urges, is not unwelcomed by the Indian strategic elite.

At the regional level, the rise of China is producing a variety of challenges some evident, others still in flux. For example, China's evolving role beyond its core focus on East Asia is bringing new forms of Sino-Indian strategic interactions, especially in states that overlap the peripheries of India and China. Just as India is discovering the logic of multipolarity, smaller states in South-East and South Asia are also recognising the virtues of multiple options to advance their developmental and security interests.

Indian lack of statecraft

The foreign policies of Vietnam and Sri Lanka exemplify this. Both these states have lived under Chinese and Indian power for most of their existence and are seeking opportunities to make new friends. In the Sri Lankan case, it is Indian apathy and lack of statecraft that has enabled Colombo to acquire more than the usual maneuvering space. In Vietnam's case, it is the sheer consequence of China's growing power that is impelling Vietnam to pursue multiple strategic partnerships. Ironically, it is Moscow that has assumed the leading role in modernising Vietnam's military capabilities. For both India and China, the challenge is to ensure that their smaller neighbours remain at the very least non-aligned and sensitive to their respective concerns. India needs to rediscover a rich tradition of statecraft that had got subsumed in domestic instability and parochialism in recent decades.

Globally, India is facing an interdependent world but with the Atlantic and Eurasian great powers intensifying their competition over many issues and regions. Dmitry Trenin argues that the “US-Russian crisis” will spill over into a struggle waged “in the realms of geoeconomics, information, culture, and cyberspace.”

While the instinct for a balanced posture comes naturally to Indian policymakers, the pursuit of India's own interests has invariably been a more challenging endeavour. Indeed, this was always the most powerful critique of non-alignment: India got the meta-vision right but struggled with the micromanagement of its own interests and role. Yet, rather than focus on defining Indian interests clearly and sensibly, the contemporary narrative around Indian foreign policy typically revolves around challenging the meta-vision by posing absurd questions such as: “Will India will swing West or East?” This is the wrong analytical level to advance a debate on India's foreign policy.

Managing stalemates

Only once Indian interests are defined can India pursue and defend these. On core frontier issues, India has recognised it needs to manage its disputes by itself. No great power can solve these questions for India. Fortunately, nuclear conditions have obviated several scenarios of conflict escalation on India's frontiers. As a territorial status quo power, India's future challenge is managing its stalemates with China and Pakistan, and, exercising political will if opportunities for genuine border settlements arise.

But on several other fronts, the opportunity for constructing issue-based partnerships often with different great powers is becoming logical. For example, on climate change, Suresh Prabhu has perhaps expressed a new realistic position where India cannot secure its interests by riding Chinese coattails because the latter's capacity to assume responsibilities outpaces India's. As Prabhu said, “India and China must cooperate. But we must remember that India's interests are not the same as China's…There is no way India could be asked to take the same kind of climate actions as China.”

Cross-border terrorism

On developing a framework for cyber governance, India does not agree with the US position. In the July BRICS summit at Fortaleza Modi noted, “BRICS countries, should take the lead in preserving Cyber Space, as a global common good.” On terrorism, beneath the veneer of a global consensus, India has found its partners have fleeting attention when it comes to operationalising a shared revulsion for cross-border terrorism. On global finance, the gradual trend line towards a multiple reserve currency system with an internationalising yuan offers benefits in terms of a less imbalanced and thus stable system, and, access to diverse forms of international capital.

On the maritime commons, India has common interests with big trading nations such as US and China, who all seek security of shipping lanes, even as India simultaneously seeks to shape the geopolitics on its own maritime frontiers, which are in proximity to international shipping lanes. On energy security, India seeks to leverage Western technological advantages when it comes to tapping non-conventional hydrocarbons but also has more immediate interests with the energy rich powers such as Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia. On pursuing new lines of communication to Eurasia, India has a long-term common interest with Iran and Russia, the two leading powers, to access that space.

Inflexion point

Sans the Cold War ideological rhetoric, world politics is at an inflexion point where the competition between the Atlantic and Eurasian worlds could fuel more instability. As Putin remarked, “The goal of reaching global equilibrium is turning into a fairly difficult puzzle, an equation with many unknowns.”

India needs a more sophisticated outlook and conversation on global and regional affairs, and, the skill and poise to both agree and disagree with a variety of great powers.

Dynamics of foreign policy
US policies have played an important part in driving Russia away from the West. But China's new identity as a great power seeking to improve its own bargaining equation with the US is also a factor in Beijing's outreach to Moscow.
On global finance, the gradual trend line towards a multiple reserve currency system with an internationalising yuan offers benefits in terms of a less imbalanced and thus stable system.
The short history of unipolarity leaves no doubt about the adverse impact of an unrestrained superpower on the lesser powers.
Globally, India is facing an interdependent world, but with the Atlantic and Eurasian great powers intensifying their competition over many issues and regions.
Unlike the US, India has absolutely no problem with a stronger Russia and a Moscow buttressing its Asian identity.

— The author is a research scholar at King’s College, London.

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