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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
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