Speeches Index

Speech by
DR C RAJA MOHAN
Strategic Affairs Editor of The Hindu

“The Shaping of India’s New Foreign Policy”
and Implications for Australia-India Relations

Ambassador Woolcott, Ambassador Gribble, thank you very much for hosting this fabulous gathering today. Having come to Australia for the first time, there could not be a better place to open my innings than here at the Asia Society, Sydney. It's a real honour and privilege. I'm really grateful to you both.

I must confess that I'm pinching myself to believe I'm really here. I've had many invitations in the last five years to come to Australia. Each time it had to be aborted. Some kind of a jinx, it seems. This time too - I missed a flight in Singapore, the Qantas connection, I missed my baggage and in the morning the hotel was kind enough to get my laundry done in three hours flat. I thank John Fisher for giving me a tie this morning -- the Australian Foreign Office hospitality is perfect. I'm here and I'm really glad to be with all of you today.

Just as there has been a jinx about my visit-- and I can take the liberty of extending the metaphor—the same appears to hold true for the relations between India and Australia. A recent paper about bilateral relations between our countries talks about the innumerable times that India and Australia have tried to discover each other only to feel let down pretty quickly and go our own separate ways. I believe, however, there is a moment here now that India and Australia can seize and do business – political, economic and security -- together in the coming months and years.

In the next 20-25 minutes, I propose to offer a sense of the great changes in India’s world view and its foreign policy and explore its implications for a different India-Australia relationship.

Much been written about change in India in the last 10 years, and particularly about its watershed economic reforms since 1991 in which India discarded its old state-led socialist economy in favour of new globalising, and liberalizing strategy. Unlike the story on economic transformation, very little has been said or written about the changes -- fundamental I believe - in India's foreign policy.

This is partly because the Foreign Offices, everywhere, always insist that there is no change in policy. And the Indian political class India--which has made very significant, I would say historic, changes in terms of the past premises and approaches to the world--doesn't want to take too much credit. For it is under attack at home for changing economic policy. It is loath to go out and say 'We’ve changed our foreign policy as well.”

In their public presentation, the professional practitioners of diplomacy as well as the political leaders, always emphasise continuity rather than change in foreign policy. But if you step back and take look at India's foreign policy in the last 10 years, the story is about discontinuity; it is about fundamental change. It's about change of philosophical premises underlying policy. It's also about a different strategy and another world view.

What is the big idea that underlies the transformation of Indian foreign policy? I think the central change in India is the shift from the traditional Indian emphasis on the “power of the argument” to the “argument of power”. The Indian foreign policy establishment used to insist passionately that India's strength, India's unique standing in the world were rooted in its commitment to a set of moral principles. Within India and outside it, it was believed that the defining characteristic of India's foreign policy was its determination to bring a moral and normative perspective to the global debate on various issues.

Our own political elite was proclaiming that that power is not central - power is not important—and that it is the principle that matters. That was seen as the great moral legacy of the Indian national movement as well as India's unique contribution to international affairs. Of course, no statement like this is always and entirely true. India was not alien to power politics. India was not averse to pursuing its crass national interests; but the broad understanding of how the world saw India, and how India saw itself, was about the emphasis on the “power of the argument”.

It was in the 1990s and with the nuclear tests in particular - certainly many Australians, most Australians didn't like it when India did those tests --India began to come to terms with an approach that was not very unusual for major powers. But it was revolutionary for India to begin to actually behave like a normal power. And subscribe unabashedly to the view that military, economic and political power matters and that no great nation like India can do without having an adequate amount of power.

There was a pretence in New Delhi, if you let me put it rather bluntly, that power didn't matter. That's what changed when did those tests in 1998. India already had nuclear weapons from around 1989-90 - but it continued to pretend it did not. In 1998 India ended its moral ambivalence about nuclear weapons. The Indian Republic finally buried the moral ambivalence about nuclear weapons inherited from its founding fathers. It was saying 'Look, here is India, a nuclear weapon power and the world will have to live with them.'

I believe the nuclear decision provided the fulcrum in many ways for the changes that India effected in its foreign policy in the last 10 years. In the 1990s, a lot of our diplomatic and political energy went into handling the nuclear question--in dealing with the pressures from the West and Australia to roll back our strategic options. India ducked and dodged; it almost conducted the nuclear tests in 1995 but then backed off. There it was again in 1995 the trade mark hand wringing of the past in relation to nuclear weapons. Finally it was all over in 1998.

I believe the nuclear decision provided the confidence in India to engage the rest of the world on nuclear issues with greater pragmatism. An India that did not test would have continued to emphasise disarmament, total elimination of nuclear weapons, and collective security – a whole set of principles. An India that felt secure about its nuclear insurance could now say 'Look, let's do a deal with Americans on CTBT”. The changed nuclear template provided the room as well as the self confidence to deal with the world on a different basis.

The second big change in India is in the change of political attitudes to the West during the 1990s. A defining feature of India’s policies in the first four decades was the sense of deep–rooted opposition to the West. Although India was led by Nehru -- no-one could be more Western than him -- in terms of his intellectual and philosophical inclinations. But India's policies acquired a profound anti-Western orientation that was reflected in two ways. One, the anti-Colonial legacy acquired an “anti-imperialist tone” in foreign policy. Two, the consequences of the Cold War alliances in the subcontinent pitted India against the West. India became the only democracy that was not part of the Western Alliance throughout the Cold War. That provided a framework in which everyone has assumed - both Indians as well as the outside world – that India is fundamentally and permanently anti-Western.

I don't think anyone outside the geographic west has a better claim than India to be part of the political West. Let us forget for the moment the proposition on “Asian values”--a nice self-serving argument for a lot of Asian dictators. India was a democracy before many Western nations—states located in the geographic west-- were democracies. I think India is part of the intellectual West and India matters because it is the living example outside the Western world demonstrating that the principle of democracy and the ideas of Enlightenment have universal relevance. I think that remains the central significance of India to the current world –a proof that the ideas of democracy, freedom, and multiculturalism do work.

This meaning of India has become far more important in the context of the new security threats we face, whether it is the threats to the core values of capitalism and democracy and the rejection of Enlightenment ideas by extremists of all hues in our shared neighbourhood. This special significance of India, anchored in the intellectual West, in the post-Cold War period, I believe has created a basis for a different set of alliances, structures and relationships for India over the long term.

Given these two big ideas, it's not surprising that the ideas of non-alignment or non-aligned movement are no longer central to India's foreign policy. Like all good shops in the diplomatic arena, the non-aligned movement will not be shut down, - nobody shuts down these institutions. NATO may have become less relevant as a strategic entity, but nobody is going to shut down NATO. Similarly, we are not going to shut down the non-aligned movement. It will be there but it is not going to be the trademark feature of India. India today insists on taking care of its own interests and standing for certain values in the world and then defining policies on those bases. This is a radically different approach from the past self-perceived role of India as a Third World trade union leader.

India believed in the past that championing third world causes was the ticket to a special status in international affairs. India knows that if it grows at 7 per cent, 8 per cent, annually it will soon stop being a part of the third world. India is now conscious of its power potential and is determined to take its rightful seat at the head table of the international system. If India improves itself, it will automatically take care of a lot of the Third World. With improved capabilities, India is in a position to contribute to the development of the rest of third world –in Africa and other parts of the world. So, it's a very different approach today. I don't know how many of you heard the recent debate in India about the decision to stop taking loans and aid in small quantities from a lot of countries. Meanwhile India is stepping up its own aid to other countries--I think you are going to see a lot more of this big new trend.

So, those were the three big ideas—new emphasis on the importance of power, the changed relationship with the West, and the shift from the past stress on the idealist impulses of the non-aligned movement to a policy based on self interest—that are driving the changes in India's foreign policy. The changes in the actual diplomatic practice can be analysed in relations to three different sets of issues.

One is about relationships with the great powers. When the Cold War ended in 1991 our best friend the Soviet Union had disappeared from the map and our relationships with the US, China, Europe, Japan, South-East Asia were way below par. We had very little relationships actually with all these major power centres. On the economic front, there was not much trade between India and the rest of the world to write about. Politically India was daggers drawn against most of the great powers. After 1991, then, the Indian focus was naturally on rebuilding the relationships with the major powers. To sum it up very quickly India was determined to hang on to the residual Russian ties because it was such a dense strategic relationship. Mr. Ganapathi, our Consul General here in Sydney and is with us today here, was one of the key Indians who made it possible both when he was in was Moscow and Delhi to salvage and rebuild the relationship with Russia. This was managed in spite of President Yeltsin and a whole bunch of others in Moscow whose interests in India began to wane. While retaining the relationship with Russia, India also reached out to US, Europe, Japan and to China. India was truly liberated from the confining logic of the Cold War.

India today has created a far more diverse, broad, and intensive relationships with all the major powers, which we never had before, throughout the previous 50 years. That is something entirely new and the strategy was largely pursued by unabashedly making a changed relationship with the US as the number one priority. That strategy was based on good reasoning—“If you don't move the big piece, the small pieces are not going to move”. The relationship with the U.S. was the key to creating space elsewhere. Over the last 10 years, a large portion of the energies of the Foreign Office have gone into transforming the relationship with the US. That's created a different basis in which we could deal with the rest of the world.

When the Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said in September 1998 that India and the United States “are natural allies”, there was surprise and skepticism all around. Here was the self-proclaimed leader of the non-aligned world saying five years ago, merely six months after the nuclear tests which brought sanctions from the United States seeking alignment with the United States. New Delhi and Washington are not yet allies in the normal sense but have begun to move in that direction over the last few years. Meanwhile the ties with China, Japan and Europe too have rapidly improved since the turn of the century.

Besides expanding ties with the great powers, India has also begun to focus a lot more on its extended neighbourhood -- what we call the Indian Ocean Region or the Asia Pacific. India was so immersed in the past, during the Cold War, to preen itself on the Third World Stage – of fighting trench warfare against the West in mid-town Manhattan at the United Nations, 44th Street, 1st Avenue. It had not time to do real business with many of its third world neighbours in its own neighbourhood. The only business we were doing with the Third World was through the Foreign Office, drafting resolutions, making those brilliant speeches and drafts about how the world ought to change.

But, since our domestic emphasis was on building “socialism in one country”, there was little trade with our own neighbours-- with West Asia, with Central Asia, with South-East Asia. While espousing the causes of the third world with radical rhetoric of a new world order, India was increasingly disconnected from its neighbours in the real world of trade and commerce. But since 1991 India began to rediscover its historic markets, its natural geographic extensions and historic economic flows that were forgotten for nearly four decades. Reconnecting to the extended neighbourhood in East and South East Asia was the central important feature of India’s “Look East policy” since the mid 1990s. Similar initiatives were later launched towards Central Asia and the Persian Gulf.

India’s new story in the Gulf is quite exciting. More has happened between India and the Gulf politically in the last three or four years than in the previous 40 years when our policy was essentially mercantilist -- buy oil, send over labour. There was little else for India in the Gulf. Today we have a political dialogue, energy partnerships and security ties with key nations of the Gulf.

The only under-developed link in this policy towards extended neighbourhood, I think, is Africa - the East Coast of Africa. You are going to going to see some fresh initiatives on the Indian side to reach out to the African Continent, as part of claiming India’s natural political role in the Indian Ocean littoral. Some of India’s biggest foreign investments are already in Africa--- a $750 million investment in an oil project in the Sudan. I think India is beginning to rediscover Africa. In the past the focus was on the anti-apartheid movement and Third World solidarity. Today economics is taking over India’s agenda in Africa. India is going to present itself not as a Third World leader but as someone interested in the security and development of Africa and as a potential partner with much to offer. That is a huge shift and tells you how India is changing and India's foreign policy has come a long way.

Finally, to our neighbourhood -- if you think you have a difficult neighbourhood you should know ours. Nobody has a rougher neighbourhood in the world than what we have. Our relationship with China, with Pakistan - even with Bhutan, Bangladesh – has been a God-awful mess. What India has seen in the last 10 years, I think, is to move away from the past rigid positions and begin to focus on problem-solving. It is no longer about merely defending India’s past positions on disputes with its neighbours.

The Indian establishment has finally woken up and is saying “let's experiment with our neighbourhood policy. Let's change positions. Let's see what we can do. Let's re-jig the old approaches'. Previously we used to emphasise bilateralism with its neighbours and strict reciprocity. India now wants to act unilaterally on some issues so that we can change the dynamic. We no longer insist on reciprocity with our smaller neighbours. We are saying 'Look, we'll go more than half the distance if you're willing to walk the rest'.

This, clearly, is not a uniform policy to all the neighbours, but it's beginning to have an effect on the neighbourhood itself. Our traditionally difficult relationship with China--I don't know how many of you have followed Mr. Vajpayee’s visit to China—is in for a big transformation. It's not what he said on Tibet that was important. What was interesting was for the first time India has told China 'lets settle the border dispute on a give and take basis,'. The two sides have appointed special representatives to explore a political solution to the border dispute.

If our Foreign Office had its way, of course, the problem would be very simple to solve - China had to get out of what we believe is occupied territory. That was the only the solution to the problem. But today our Prime Minister is saying 'Look, I am prepared to cut a deal with China” on the boundary. This of course involves a huge shift in the entrenched domestic political positions on the boundary dispute with China. Carrying that deal with China through the Parliament - I've not seen a bigger political risk that's been taken by the Indian leadership in the last 40 years than this.

With Pakistan, there obviously is less of a chance of cutting historic deals. After the failed attempts by Mr. Vajpayee to explore political deals with Pakistan at Lahore and Agra, there is less optimism about the relationship with Pakistan. But the very act of experimentation that Mr. Vajpayee has undertaken marks a big change in India’s approach towards Pakistan.

There is also interesting movement in India’s policy towards the smaller neighbours. India has begun to understand that globalisation offers it a historic opportunity to reintegrate the South Asian market into one.

Flanked by Afghanistan, Tibet and Burma, the Subcontinent was a single market until 1947 under British rule. Today globalisation is going to force all of us to integrate with the world and that inevitably would mean integrating with each other. Pakistan will be the slowest camel that has set the pace of the caravan but India doesn't have to be detained by that. We can do bilateral free trade agreements with all other countries restoring old free flow of commerce in the region. Trade has increasingly become an instrument for changing the political dynamics of the sub-continent and as India becomes a trading state you're going to see a fundamental restructuring of the borders and the politics of the sub-continent - at least the non-Pakistan sub-continent.

Finally, to sum up, what you have then is an India that has moved from the emphasis on idealism of the past to a pragmatic policy. A policy that emphasises economic power, that is no longer ashamed of having military power and, at the same time, not to let these take aggressive postures but to use them to change the condition of the sub-continent. This I believe would take us to a situation where we could actually begin to think of constructing new relationships that we didn't have before--particularly with Australia.

Earlier we used to call the Australians “Americans lackeys” and you returned the compliment saying we were “Soviet lackeys”. The occasional attempt to improve relations between us had to be quickly abandoned. Today, in the changing context of the shared region, Asia, we have a huge potential for bilateral cooperation and partnership—from economics to security. I think there are massive possibilities we need to tap urgently and purposefully. Even on the questions of non-proliferation, where we have differed so violently in the past, there is opportunity for engagement and cooperation-- to prevent rogue states and extremist forces from acquiring nuclear and missile capabilities. There is a new convergence of interests and we must work together.
The question of Indian Ocean security divided us in the past. Today if the Americans are forced to share a lot of its traditional security burden in Asia pacific and the Indian ocean region--India and Australia as two foremost democracies will have to work together in this part of the world. I don't see too many other democracies around. I think whether it is naval cooperation, protection of sea lanes, or more fundamentally bringing stability to parts of South East Asia and to the South Pacific. I think the sky is the limit, if we can get over our past inhibitions. A whole new agenda I think is beginning to unfold between India and Australia on Indian Ocean security, South East Asian security, Pacific Ocean security, naval cooperation, and energy security.

I believe this broad agenda for intensive cooperation is based on the premise that India and Australia have the same core political beliefs, and both are propagators of the Enlightenment ideas in Asia. They are committed to a set of values which are scarce in this part of the world and I think that provides the essential basis on which a new phase of cooperation between India and Australia could soon begin. Thank you.