India’s
foreign relations are in tatters and the Modi government has only itself to
blame, SHEKHAR GUPTA 30
June, 2018
Modi’s diplomatic ‘conquests’
are history and India’s foreign relations resemble a train-wreck. Here’s how
government’s missteps have broken its own momentum.
India’s external and strategic
environment is looking like a train-wreck and it isn’t just to do with the
American humiliation of “postponing” the vaunted “two-plus-two” dialogue for
the third time.
The picture today has no resemblance to what we saw until about a
year earlier. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was then hopping from one capital to
another, hugging heads of states. India was a rising power and Modi, its
powerful, extroverted, energetic new leader, a star. He wowed the world with
his decisive, and positive intervention on the Paris climate deal, for example.
Much of this has unravelled over the past six months. India’s
decline from global consciousness has been as rude as its rise was steady and
smooth.
Modi supporters will protest. But, while political partisans can
be delusional, a nation, with pretensions of great power status, can’t duck
reality. We need to examine why a great forward march has fizzled out of gas. Some
factors are beyond India’s control, such as a Black Swan event like the rise of
Donald Trump. At the same time, recent pro-active blunders have made India’s
external relations a man-made disaster.
Leaders bring their preferred approach to diplomacy. The Modi
enthusiasts in South Block celebrate the fact that his style of diplomacy is
transactional. This is also endorsed in the BJP and sections of the strategic
community friendly to it, which is nearly all of it today barring the odd,
brave sceptic. As a consequence, we spent the first three years of his
government celebrating one “great diplomatic victory” after another. India was
admitted to three global missile-nuclear technology groupings as a responsible
power. The American policy in the subcontinent was fully dehyphenated. A
strategic relationship looked a reality. India’s external environment had been
improving since Bill Clinton’s second term. Policy continuity, fuelled by 15
years of economic growth, had set the direction. Modi, with his energy, personal
style and a full majority accelerated it nicely. What threw the train off the
rails?
Two external negatives were not the Modi government’s fault: The
rise of Trump and a new Chinese assertion. Trump’s actions, particularly the
change in Iran policy directly led to rising oil prices, destabilising India’s
domestic economy and politics. The Chinese push for CPEC, unmindful of Indian
concerns, and its moves in Sri Lanka, Nepal, the Maldives and Bangladesh showed
that China is no longer willing to leave the subcontinent as a zone of India’s
pre-eminence. The days when a George W. Bush could speak to Hu Jintao on the
phone to get India an NSG waiver are over. Xi won’t listen, but more
importantly, Trump won’t do it. Because, if Modi is transactional, Trump is
more so.
The Modi government’s greatest
blunder is to exploit sensitive external relations in its domestic politics.
The first essential attribute of successful leaders in history is strategic
patience. They move firmly, but never get so committed publicly as to deny
themselves room for manoeuvre, front, back, sideways. In building strategic
relations, the best leaders bat like Sunil Gavaskar, not Virender Sehwag. Modi
has left himself no such room.
In all major state election campaigns he made his foreign policy
“conquests” the centre-piece, and it worked. But there are perils in declaring
victory too soon. It narrows your strategic space. Instead of keeping quiet as
the past governments did, it made one set of local, tactical and limited
“surgical” raids into a feat rivalling the securing of Siachen in the spring of
1984. Indira Gandhi never even whispered about it. And she wasn’t stupid or
apolitical.
If you use tactical actions for immediate political benefit, you
close your options going ahead. Worse, your enemies know that. Encouraged by
the popular response in the Uttar Pradesh elections, it led to much
irresponsible loose talk around the establishment that some such action, albeit
on a much larger scale later in 2018, could swing national elections. A short,
sharp skirmish you could end by declaring victory. With Doklam, and subsequent
moves, an alarmed China made it clear that it won’t let India flex its military
muscle beyond a point. It’s left no doubt that Pakistan is under its protection
now.
Similar misjudgements were made on trade. Radical controls on
prices of medical devices especially stents were made a part of election
discourse. It closed your options when Trump, even more transactional, reacted.
His fight for lower duties over Harley Davidson bikes is hilarious. But a
handful of large engine bikes are sold in India and no Indian manufacturer is
threatened by these imports. You could have given the man-child of White
House this little victory, brought in direct subsidies for the poor on stents
instead of sweeping price controls and salvaged the situation. You can’t do it
when you make economic nationalism central to your politics. Definitely not
when India’s economy has slowed, unable to recover from demonetisation. India
has squandered the clout a decade of near-8 per cent growth had given it.
The most poorly kept secret in
diplomatic circles is the terrible meeting Modi and Trump had in Manila on 13
November 2017. Not only did Trump’s behaviour and body language lack his
earlier warmth, his conduct bordered on being disrespectful. This came on top
of his leaked videos mocking Modi’s manner of speaking. Then Trump hit India on
trade. It coincided with British action on visas. It hurts when you’ve been
hailing the rising respect for the Indian passport as your big achievement.
It is risky to keep punching above your weight, as India has been
lately. You have to be cautious, not reckless, egged on by a Boswellian media,
commentariat and unquestioning think tanks. Self-congratulation is a most tempting
trap you set for yourself. For four years India has been celebrating becoming a
“natural strategic ally” of the US, but has let its military decline. You can’t
plan high strategy while your military remains tactical, border defence
oriented.
Four years have effectively seen four defence ministers, the
current one being an ineffectual photo-op caricature. Our military pensions
budget will exceed the salary budget in two years and both are
already way above the capital budget. This is a baroque, bulky, outdated
military power, not a nifty, punchy, strategic one. You can celebrate the
Americans declaring the Asia-Pacific as Indo-Pacific, but you won’t carry
strategic weight merely by sending a couple of ships to a fancy allied navies’
exercise. The Chinese make three warships per year. We struggle to make one in
three and still take a couple more to fit missiles and sensors on it. After
much noise over Make in India and private sector, our achievement is a big
cipher. You can throw stuff at me for saying this, but the world knows it. It
won’t stop laughing.
Declining military might is compounded by economic slowdown. You
can fool your people by changing how you calculate your GDP. It becomes
dangerous when you start believing it. There has been breathless talk of the
rise of India, of how the world looks up to us for wisdom and direction, that
Yoga Day has now become a global celebration of Indian soft power and
spirituality to rival Christmas. Watch that speech by RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat
(at the Pranab Mukherjee event) where he triumphantly declared India is on its
way to becoming a Vishwaguru (teacher of the world).
Why then is our relationship with our “best, all-weather friend”
America on decline, all neighbours in the Chinese embrace, and, barring Bangladesh,
hostile and suspicious? How can Trump dare to be boorish with the prime
minister of this Vishwaguru? How can Nikki Haley, who’s
really not such a somebody in the Trump administration, come to India and order
it to change its Iran policy? And check how Modi’s body language has changed in
his engagement with Xi. How long has it been since Indian leaders stopped
protesting that CPEC is passing through Indian territory in PoK?
It’s time to stop breathless celebration. It will be wiser to take
a deep breath, make a reality check, and introspect.
