Foreign policy needs a mid-term correction

There is a drastic and urgent need to have a mid-term reappraisal of India’s US-centric foreign policy, particularly given that the US is cosying up to India for its own twisted ends while denying India what the country needs. There is no contesting the fact that the self-appointed ‘global policeman’ has had its nose bent. The UPA government has to set a correction course for the rest of its term.

By Prakash Karat

The completion of two and a half years of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government has more or less coincided with the appointment of a new foreign minister. This is an appropriate juncture to assess the foreign policy pursued by the government and, in particular, the focus on India-US relations. The mid-term provides the backdrop to see how the Manmohan Singh government has undertaken to implement the Common Minimum Programme (CMP) provision to pursue an independent foreign policy and promote multi-polarity in international relations.

The Left parties, in their note on two years of the UPA government, summed up the performance on foreign policy as follows: “The UPA government’s foreign policy faces serious distortions because of the obsessive drive to somehow harmonise positions on regional and global issues with the US’s global strategies. This runs counter to the commitments made in the Common Minimum Programme to promote multi-polarity in international relations.”

The period since then has only confirmed the negative consequences of harmonising our stand in tune with US global strategy. Today, the US is experiencing some of the backlash due to the arrogant, unilateralist drive of the Bush Administration to extend and consolidate US hegemony. The US is trapped in a bloody quagmire of its own making in Iraq. The bloodletting goes on daily without respite. Iraq, a modern Arab secular state, has been destroyed with sectarian strife plaguing this unfortunate land. The government put in place by the US and the police forces raised by them are themselves part of the internecine strife. Police and security forces, which are often armed militias in disguise, prowl around as death squads. Iraq is proving to be the US’s “Vietnam” of the 21st century. But the imperial ruling classes do not learn any lessons. The Bush Administration is flailing around for a nonexistent solution, because it refuses to accept that the agony of Iraq today is due to the US’ criminal aggression.

The more they got bogged in their stupid adventure, the more Bush and his cohorts looked to widen the circle of enemies. The targeting of Iran, the threats to Syria and the backing of the Israeli aggression on Lebanon have neither advanced the fight against terrorism nor won the US friends in West Asia. During the Vajpayee government, India had begun to acquiesce in the charade enacted in occupied Iraq. Having failed to find the nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, the Bush project of planting democracy in Iraq found quite a few takers in the Indian establishment. Unfortunately, the UPA continued this approach. The July 2005 Joint Statement issued during the prime minister’s visit to Washington declared India to be a partner of the US in the global democracy initiative. Having seen how democracy has been implanted in Iraq and how “democracy” has become the rallying cry for regime change in country after country, it is imperative that India dissociate from this disgraceful enterprise.

Equally, the enthusiasm displayed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government for partnering the US in the war on terrorism needs to be re-examined. The Bush regime has sown a dangerous harvest with its global war on terrorism. It is now precariously placed in Afghanistan. It has got the NATO involved for the first time in Asia in a warlike situation, and this has already created a crisis for the newly extended Western military alliance. The Taliban have resurfaced. The fundamentalists and extremists who did not exist in Saddam’s Iraq are multiplying in numbers. Thanks to Bush’s Christian rhetoric, condemnation of “Islamic fascism” and brazen support to Israel’s aggression on Palestine and Lebanon, the serious problem of terrorism has got devalued. It has been reduced to the US gaining hegemonic advantage over its perceived rivals.

Making India party to the “war on terror” has resulted in closer identification and deepening strategic cooperation with Israel. Israel is the frontline state in the US global strategy to reorder the oil-rich West Asia. India has to distance itself from the US idea of a “Greater Middle East”. The aggression on Lebanon, which Condoleezza Rice described as part of the travails of the birth of a “new Middle East”, has shown the pitfalls of such a concept. The failure of the Israeli military to crush the national resistance led by the Hizbollah has isolated the US further from Arab and West Asian popular feelings. India’s identification with the “war on terror” and the strategic alliance with the US and Israel will undoubtedly have unfortunate consequences.

As the US and Israel harp on the battle against Islamic terrorism, the idea of a “Christian-Jew-Hindu” line-up is propagated by the conservative Jewish lobby and the neo-conservatives. This would be palatable to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and echoes Brajesh Mishra’s notorious advocacy of a US-Israel-India axis. But the UPA has to seriously consider where this would lead India.

It was shortsighted on the part of the UPA government to have sought the help of pro-Israeli neoconservative and Jewish lobbies in the US to canvass support in the US Congress for the Indo-US nuclear deal. Such a stance encourages Washington and Tel Aviv to coordinate their India policies still further.

The argument that Israel is indispensable for our defence needs is also specious. Apart from the traditional supplier of weaponry, Russia, there are a host of countries that would be prepared to meet India’s needs for sophisticated equipment—for instance, France, Sweden, Germany and Italy. There is also the harm done by the corrupt nexus that Israeli arms companies have fostered, as seen in the Barak antimissile deal.

The UPA government uncritically accepted the US declaration in March 2005 that the United States aims to help India become a world-class power in the 21st century. It has not looked deeper to see what the US motives are. The implications of the Defence Framework Agreement are unfolding. The visit of the US Pacific Command chief Admiral Fallon recently indicated how this agreement would be implemented. The US is pressing India to go forward with the Defence Missile Cooperation and the Maritime Cooperation Framework.

In a newspaper interview, the US Pacific commander said that given the emerging threat from North Korea “and the very offensive rhetoric from Iran”, the US is speeding up the defence missile capability. He also said, “The most immediate area of overlap between India and the US is concern over Beijing’s military build-up.” Under Maritime Cooperation, the Indian navy is to conduct joint operations with the US navy to “enhance military security” that will include antipiracy, antiterrorism measures and address “emergent threats” which will presumably cover counter-proliferation measures. As far as the joint military exercises are concerned, they continue apace, the aim being to achieve “interoperability” between the two armed forces. All the briefings to the media about the growing military collaboration with the United States show that there are determined lobbies at work within the foreign policy and defence establishments to make India a reliable junior partner of the United States.

The US vulnerabilities have been glaringly exposed in the past few months. That Bush is a president with his powers in decline is not in doubt. While this is a welcome development for the world, what is troubling is the facile manner in which the government hitched India’s fortunes to a presidency and an administration that has the worst record in trampling on international laws. This administration has reduced the United Nations to irrelevance, and repeatedly justifies with brazen arrogance aggression, mass murder and torture as inherent rights to protect the US from terrorism. Under Bush, the US has singlemindedly aimed for nuclear primacy and is today faced with the collapse of the nuclear non-proliferation order.

The Indo-US nuclear cooperation agreement will not go ahead easily. It is extremely unlikely that the lame-duck session of the US Congress will see the passage of the bill in the Senate and the reconciliation of the two bills passed in the House of Representatives and the Senate before the life of the Congress ends. Given the prime minister’s clear exposition in Parliament on the vital issues pertaining to the agreement, which has been widely endorsed in both houses, it is extremely doubtful that the Bush Administration can accept the framework set out. On energy security, the US is clearly trying to bind India to its side. Hence, its hostility to the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline, and its attempts to dissuade India from linking up with any energy grid outside the US ambit. The earlier votes against Iran in the International Atomic Energy Agency meetings were inimical to India’s interests and energy security.

Despite all the US talk of India being the largest democracy and an emergent world power, when it came to Shashi Tharoor’s candidature for secretary-general to the United Nations, the US exercised its veto power—the logic being that it is better to have therepresentative of a “trusted ally” than from a country that only aspires to be one.

At the same time, the recent period has shown the potential for realising the genuine content in foreign policy as set out in the NCMP. The visit of the prime minister to Brazil, the holding of the India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) summit with two of the most important developing countries, one in Latin America and the other in Africa, and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in Havana, showed how India can play an important and constructive role in advancing the platform of defence of national sovereignty against hegemonic trends, strengthen multilateral relations and forge South-South ties. The correct stand that India has taken in supporting Venezuela’s candidature for the United Nations Security Council seat through 35 rounds of voting in the General Assembly is also in line with India’s position as a major developing country and as part of the Non-Aligned Movement. This in a situation where the United States has aggressively campaigned to get Guatemala elected to the Council.

The other arena that can play a major role in promoting multi-polarity in international relations is the immense potential for trilateral cooperation between Russia, China and India. The prime minister did have a joint meeting with President Vladimir Putin and President Hu Jintao during the G8 summit in St Petersburg. This interaction, coming in the background of the meetings of the three foreign ministers, indicates the convergence of interests and the growing potential for cooperation between the three countries. (India has, however, not given due importance to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, which has emerged as a regional security organisation and a regional cooperation grouping in the field of energy and economic relations.)

But all these steps do not contribute to an overarching framework of an independent foreign policy, as the trend to accommodate US interests remains dominant. Pranab Mukherjee is the member of the Union Cabinet with the most political experience. The new entrant to the cabinet is A K Antony, who has taken over the defence portfolio. Both are well acquainted with the earlier role of the Congress party, particularly during the time of Indira Gandhi, in formulating a foreign policy based on nonalignment and the safeguarding of India’s vital interests. Assuming their new responsibilities, it would be expected that the UPA government will reappraise the foreign and security policies so that a proper direction can be given in these spheres during its remaining term in office.