Ramachandra Guha, in his perceptive essay Will India Become aSuperpower? is absolutely on the mark in diagnosing the ills that plague Indian democracy and that might prevent India from attaining the status of a superpower. In his tour d’horizon of the last sixty years of the Indian democratic experience, he forcefully underlines the inability and/or unwillingness of the Indianstate to provide for a more egalitarian socio-economic order thereby de-legitimising itself in the process. The result isthat notwithstanding the talk of a rising India all around us today, the countrycontinues to suffer from fundamental vulnerabilities that Guha so vividly captures in his piece. His essay is also a much needed rebuke to the misplaced priorities of our mainstream media that religiously covers every rave and rant of Bollywood actors, conducts detailed dissection of seemingly never-ending cricket matches, goes overboard in dealing with superficialities even as the nation’s real heroes continue to go unsung. Guha’s tribute to the extraordinary work that our civil society activists are doing is richly deserved.
What is disconcerting about the piece, however, is the negligible space Guha gives to foreign policy apart from an odd reference to Pakistan and China. It may be that he thinks the domestic challenges facing India are so formidable that only once India had tackled them should it start worrying about the rest of the world. Or what’s more likely is that he thinks if India is able to take care of its internal problems and becomes successful in living up to the highest aspirations of its founding fathers, foreign policy will take care of itself. A truly liberal, democratic, secular India will garner the respect from the rest of the world that it would most certainly deserve.
It is this understanding (or should we say misunderstanding) that leads him to make his subjective desire known-- that India should not even attempt to become a superpower because in his view, international relations cannot be made analogous to competitive examination. The problem with this argument is that states do not attempt to become superpowers. They are superpowers, or great powers or major powers by virtue of their capabilities-- economic, military, technological, societal -- and, contra Guha, international relations is indeed analogous to a competitive examination because only the most capable states in an international system, defined by its anarchical nature, are the ones that are able to keep their citizens most secure and retain their autonomy in foreign policy. States seek power not to become superpowers per se but to survive in a world that is nasty and brutish, to maintain their territorial integrity and the autonomy of their domestic political order.
Guha is right: India is a unique nation and it should be judged in light of its norms and ideals. But all nations think they are unique, that their norms and ideals are the most superior. Only those with adequate capabilities are able to effectively leverage their norms and ideals on the international stage. Guha’s discomfort with power is palpable throughout his essay. In domestic politics, too much power with any single institution is most certainly a recipe for disaster. But foreign policy is not merely an extension of domestic politics and therefore, power needs to be understood differently in the context of international politics.
A fundamental quandary that has long dogged India in the realm of foreign affairs and that has become even more acute with India’s ascent in the international order is what Sunil Khilnani has referred to as India’s lack of an"instinct for power". Power lies at the heart of international politics. It affects the influence that states exert over one another, thereby shaping political outcomes. The success and failure of a nation’s foreign policy is largely a function of its power and manner in which that power is wielded. The exercise of power can be shocking and at times corrupting but power is absolutely necessary to fight the battles that must be fought. India’s ambivalence about power and its use has resulted in a situation where even as India’s economic and military capabilities have gradually expanded, it has failed to evolve a commensurate strategic agenda and requisite institutions so as to be able to mobilize and use its resources most optimally.
Hans Morgenthau has written, "The prestige of a nation is its reputation for power. That reputation, the reflection of the reality of power in the mind of the observers, can be as important as the reality of power itself. What others think about us is as important as what we actuallyare." India faces a unique conundrum: its political elites desperately want global recognition for India as a major power and all the prestige and authority associated with it. Yet, they continue to be reticent about the acquisition and use of power in foreign affairs. Most recently, this ambivalence was expressed by the Indianminister of commerce in a speech when he said: "this word power often makes meuncomfortable". Though he was talking about the economic rise of India and the challenges that India continues to face as it continues to strive for sustained economic growth, his discomfort with the notion of India as a rising power was indicative of a larger reality in Indian polity. This ambivalence about the use of power in international relations where any prestige or authority eventually rely upon traditional measures of power, whether military or economic is curious as the Indian political elites have rarely shied away from the maximization of power in the realm of domestic politics, thereby corroding the institutional fabric of liberal democracy in the country. It was Indira Gandhi who long back,while addressing a foreign audience, suggested that India doesn't believe in power (apparently only when it came to foreign policy it might seem).
In what has been diagnosed as a "mini state syndrome", those states which do not have the material capabilities to make a difference to the outcomes at the international level, often denounce the concept of power in foreign policy making. India had long been a part of such states, viewing itself as an object of the foreign policies of a small majority of powerful nations. As a consequence, the Indian political and strategic elite developed a suspicion of power politics with the word power itself acquiring a pejorative connotation in so far as foreign policy was concerned. The relationship between power and foreign policy was never fully understood, leading to a progressive loss in India’s ability to wield power effectively in the international realm. Today when India wants to shape the international system, as opposed to being merely its referent object, it is more important than ever that its foreign policy is anchored on a planned augmentation of the power of the nation as a whole. Even the pious declarations of world peace, disarmament and global development, that India continues to propound on the world stage, will be taken seriously if they come from a nation that the international community perceives has the will and the ability to convert its rhetoric into reality. In other words, even the rhetoric of powerful nations matters.
It is also striking that there is no mention in Guha’s piece of the Indian armed forces as if the success that India has had in surviving as a nation, despite a plethora of internal and external threats, has come about solely due to our politicians, bureaucrats and civil society. Yes, we no longer fear for our existence as a sovereign nation or as a functioning democracy as Guha suggests but a large part of this confidence comes from the ability of our highly professional armed forces to take care of Indian interests. Guha is right in celebrating India’s vibrant civil society but ignoring the role of one institution in the nation that continues to work reasonably well in spite of political apathy and bureaucratic callousness and that has safeguarded our unity amidst diversity is a bit jarring to say the least.
However, in so doing Guha is certainly in the exalted company of his hero, Nehru, who envisioned making India a global leader without any help from the nation’s armed forces, arguing,"the right approach to defence is to avoid having unfriendly relations with other countries-- to put it differently, war today is, and ought to be, out of question." A defining feature of any state, however, is its ability to make war and keep peace. The modern state system, in fact the very nature of the state itself, has been determined to a significant degree by the changing demands of war and it has developed through a series of what Philip Bobbitt has called"Epochal Wars". Guha’s analysis underscores the inability of the Indian state to"keep peace" domestically. The same is true of external challenges where War has been systematically factored out of Indian foreign policy and national security matrix with the resulting ambiguity about India’s ability to withstand major wars of the future.
Military power, more often than not, affects the success with which other instruments of statecraft are employed as it always lurks in the background of inter-state relations, even when nations are at peace with each other. It remains central to the course of international politics as force retains its role as the final arbiter among states in an anarchical international system. States may not always need to resort to the actual use of force but military power vitally affects the manner in which states deal with each other even during peace time despite what the protagonists of globalisation and liberal institutionalism might claim. A state’s diplomatic posture will lack effectiveness if it is not backed by a credible military posture. In the words of ThomasSchelling, "Like the threat of a strike in industrial relations, the threat of divorce in a family dispute, or the threat of bolting the party at a political convention, the threat of violence continuously circumscribes internationalpolitics."
Few nations face the kind of security challenges that confront India. Yet, since independence, militaryhas never been seen as a central instrument in the achievement of Indian national priorities; the tendency of Indian political eliteshas always been to downplay the importance of military power. Divorcing foreign policy from military power was a recipe for disaster as India realized in 1962 when even Nehru was forced to concede that"military weakness has been a temptation, and a little military strength may be adeterrent." Military power rests substantially on the willingness to use it: perhaps less so in war than in peacetime as a means of leverage and coercion. A state’s legitimacy is tied to its ability tomonopolise the use of force and operate effectively in an international strategic environment and India had lacked clarity on this relationship between the use of force and its foreign policy priorities.
Guha is probably right, India will never become a superpower. But he is wrong to suggest that it should not attempt to be one because that implies that Indian policy-makers should not be working towards improving the material capabilities of its citizens, that they should not be concerned about making India more secure and autonomous. A weak and powerless India will continue to be on the periphery of global politics and it is doubtful if Indians will be satisfied with being a Switzerland or a Madagascar. Indian policy-makers should be working towards the acquisition of greater material capabilities for the welfare of their citizens, for a more prosperous, more secure and more autonomous India. It is in such an India that Guha’s dreams about a more equitable socio-economic order are more likely to come to fruition. And if that ends up making India a great power or a superpower, well, Indians, I am sure, can live with that.