Fazed by the future?

Manmohan Singh’s world view is not one of total global goodwill. It is a highly nuanced one in which major powers will continue to compete with each other to maximise their own individual interests. Instead of the simple bipolar alignment that characterised the Cold War there will be alignments and realignments based on issues. There are no longer security concerns among major nations stemming from ideological rivalries.

The G8 in the recent summit endorsed India being brought into the international non-proliferation regime — not into the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty since that is not possible — through the waiver by the Nuclear Suppliers Group rules. It should be recalled that the NSG, originally called London Suppliers Club, was founded by the US, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, Japan, Germany and Canada as a response to the Indian Pokharan test in 1974. All of them now present in the G8 are endorsing India’s incorporation in the global non-proliferation regime by waiving the NSG guidelines.

There must be some analysis why there has been such a major reversal of stand by not only the US but all major powers of the world. India of the ’50s and ’60s was dependent on food imports and needed US aid as well as other multilateral aids. India was militarily weak, beaten by China in 1962 and held to a stalemate by Pakistan in 1965. India was notorious for its Hindu rate of growth at 3.5 per cent. Therefore, India as a country, in spite of very nostalgic notions entertained by many of us, was not held in high esteem in the first three decades of its independence though Gandhi and Nehru commanded respect as national liberator and nation builder under democratic conditions in the developing world.

The world started taking notice of India as a worthwhile player in the international system when it started growing at 6 per cent after economic liberalisation, when it conducted nuclear tests based on that economic performance and foreign exchange balance built up as a result, launched satellites into space, and became an IT power. This is not very different from what happened to China in the ’80s, some 15-20 years earlier than India. Now China is becoming the foremost power in Asia. While the rise of China was useful to balance Soviet power, now the various major powers of the world — the US, the European Union, Russia and Japan — would like China to be balanced not militarily but economically, technologically and politically in Asia. Therefore they are in favour of a non-threatening emergent India, growing at a fast pace.

In a sense, even China cannot disfavour India’s growth and progress. For China, the US is the main rival. It cannot hope to catch up with the US for a long time to come. However, it will be in a better position to countervail and balance the US if the US share of the global GDP and technology can be shrunk to a smaller proportion by the global GDP growing faster than the American GDP. That depends on fast-growing developing economies — Brazil, Russia, India, China, Mexico, Indonesia, South Africa, etc. Therefore China is reconciled to India’s fast growth. This is the reason why it was noted in the recent International Institute for Strategic Studies and CITI Bank India Global Forum meet that it is a historically unique event that the emergence of India as a major power is generally seen as not threatening all over the world.

While in respect of the international balance of power, ideological rivalry and globalisation, the world has undergone major changes, security problems created by religious extremism, failing states, organised crime, pandemics and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction need to be dealt with globally. Within individual states there can be security problems arising out of mis-governance and parochial secessionisms of various kinds. But in today’s world there is general agreement that wars embroiling major powers against each other, and involving nuclear weapons, are extremely unlikely. There are, no doubt, lingering mindsets conditioned by the Cold War era. President Bush displayed it when he repeated in Iraq the US blunder in Vietnam. Osama bin Laden and the Taliban are confident they can defeat a second superpower (the US) as they think they did the first (the Soviet Union). People on the left and right of the political spectrum in our country too are wringing their hands about India getting entrapped into a Cold War type of subordination — which many other countries accepted and we did not in spite of our weakness then.

Till the Cold War ended, India was isolated and only had the Soviet Union as a meaningful friend. Thereafter, there was an interregnum in which the economic reforms unleashed the potential of India. This country has been regarded as a significant global player only in the last 8-10 years. This is a new experience for the Indian political class. We can look ahead and make use of the vast opportunities unfolding before us or we can look back and adopt a paranoid outlook on the rest of the world and cocoon ourselves. Today, the entire industrial world is inviting India to interact with it. The Indo-US nuclear deal is just an opening. As President Roosevelt said, what we have to fear is fear itself.

The writer is a senior defence analyst expressexpressindia.com