The Prime Minister has returned from China after signing some extravagantlytitled documents. The British Prime Minister has come and gone after making someequally grandiose noises. And India has hosted the French President on itsRepublic Day celebrations. The world, it seems, is India’s oyster. India isbeing touted as the next great power on the horizon by one and all (even by theChinese!) but the Indian foreign policy continues to drift without any realsense of direction.
The seemingly never ending debate on the US-India nuclear deal has made itclear that today Indian policy stands divided on fundamental foreign policychoices facing the nation. What Walter Lipmann wrote for US foreign policy in1943 applies equally to the Indian landscape of today. He had warned that thedivisive partisanship that prevents the finding of a settled and generallyaccepted foreign policy is a grave threat to the nation. "For when a people isdivided within itself about the conduct of its foreign relations, it is unableto agree on the determination of its true interest. It is unable to prepareadequately for war or to safeguard successfully its peace." In the absence ofa coherent national grand strategy, India is in the danger of loosing itsability to safeguard its long-term peace and prosperity.
As India’s weight has grown in the international system in recent years,there’s a perception that India is on the cusp of achieving "great power"status. It is repeated ad nauseum in the Indian and often in global mediaand India is already being asked to behave like one. There is just one problem:Indian policy-makers themselves are not clear as to what this status of a greatpower entails. At a time when the Indian foreign policy establishment should bevigorously debating the nature and scope of India’s engagement with the world,it is disappointingly silent. This intellectual vacuum has allowed Indianforeign policy to drift without any sense of direction and the result is that asthe world is looking to India to shape the emerging international order, Indiahas little to offer except some platitudinous rhetoric that does greatdisservice to India’s rising global stature.
There is clearly an appreciation in the Indian policy-making circles ofIndia’s rising capabilities. It is reflected in a gradual expansion of Indianforeign policy activity in recent years, in India’s attempt to reshape itsdefence forces, in India’s desire to seek greater global influence. But allthis is happening in an intellectual vacuum with the result that micro issuesdominate the foreign policy discourse in the absence of an overarchingframework.
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The recent debates on the US-India nuclear deal, on India’s role in theMiddle East, on India’s engagements with Russia and China, on India’s policytowards its immediate neighbours are all important but ultimately of littlevalue as they fail to clarify the singular issue facing India today: What shouldbe the trajectory of Indian foreign policy at a time when India is emerging fromthe structural confines of the international system as a rising power on way toa possible great power status? Answering this question requires one big debate,a debate perhaps to end all minor ones that India has been having for the lastfew years. However much Indians like to be argumentative, a major power’sforeign policy cannot be effective in the absence of a guiding framework ofunderlying principles that is a function of both the nation’s geopoliticalrequirements and its values.
Bismarck famously remarked that political judgment was the ability to hear,before anyone else, the distant hoofbeats of the horse of history. In India’scase, everyone but the Indian policy-makers it seems is hearing the hoofbeats ofhistory’s horse. Indian policy-makers seem to have come to believe that justbecause their nation is growing at an 8 % rate of economic growth, they don’treally need a serious foreign policy, that they can afford to get by with ad hocresponses or grand finger-wagging. Foreign policy requires a serious look at thecausal chain of events as opposed to mere reaction and a strategic framework isnecessary to bring some measure of order out of an increasingly chaotic world.India needs a coherent, holistic approach to its foreign policy that is rootedin the deepest tectonic plates of its geography and history. It is theunderlying and immutable characteristics of a nation that shapes its interestsas it struggles for power and survival in an anarchic international environment.
But India’s foreign policy elite remains mired in the exigencies of day-to-daypressures emanating from the immediate challenges at hand rather than evolving agrand strategy that integrates the nation’s multiple policy strands into acohesive whole to be able to preserve and enhance Indian interests in a rapidlychanging global environment. The assertions, therefore, that India does not havea China policy or an Iran policy or a Pakistan policy are plain irrelevant.India does not have a foreign policy, period. It is this lack of strategicorientation in Indian foreign policy that often results in a paradoxicalsituation where on the one hand India is accused by various domesticconstituencies of angering this or that country by its actions while on theother hand India’s relationship with almost all major powers is termed as a"strategic partnership" by the Indian government..
More recently, Indian government has been accused of betraying its"time-tested friends" such as Iran and Russia as if the only purpose offoreign policy is to make friends. A nation’s foreign policy cannot be gearedtowards trying to keep every other country in world in good humour. India hasbeen extremely fortunate that it has encountered an incredibly benigninternational environment for the last several years, making it possible for itto expand its bilateral ties with all the major powers simultaneously. This hasgiven rise to some rather fantastic suggestions such as India being well-placedto be a "bridging power," enjoying harmonious relations with all majorpowers--the US, Russia, China, and the EU. Such a suggestion not only impliesthat the major global powers are willing to be "bridged" but also that Indiahas the capabilities and influence to be such a "bridge." Moreover, theperiod of stable major power relations is rapidly coming to an end and soondifficult choices will have to be made and Indian policy-makers should haveenough self-confidence to make those decisions even when they go against theirlong-held predilections. But a foreign policy that lacks intellectual andstrategic coherence will ensure that India will forever remain poised on thethreshold of great power status but won’t be quite able to cross it.
Let not history describe today’s Indian policy-makers in the words WinstonChurchill applied to those who ignored the changing strategic realities beforethe Second World War: "They go on in strange paradox, decided only to beundecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity,all-powerful to be impotent." India is being told that it is on the verge ofbecoming a great power. But no one is clear what India intends to do with theaccretion of economic and military capabilities and with its purported greatpower status. India today, more than any other time in its history, needs a viewof its role in the world quite removed from the shibboleths of the past. Anintellectual renaissance in the realm of foreign policy that allows India toshed its defensive attitude in framing its interests and grand strategy is theneed of the hour.
Despite enormous challenges that it continues to face, India is widelyrecognised today as a rising power with enormous potential. The portents arehopeful if only the Indian policy-makers have the imagination and courage toseize some of the opportunities.
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Harsh V. Pant teaches at King’s College London.
