NonAlignment 2.0: A Foreign and Strategic Policy for India in the 21st Century (4 page)

South Asia is home to the largest number of poor people in the world. This poverty has complex causes, but in a region where natural geography and cultural–historical linkages could provide great advantages, the political factors that have kept South Asia one of the least economically integrated regions in the world are an immense obstacle to its economic development. One of India’s top strategic and foreign policy priorities must be to deepen economic engagement in South Asia.

India is the major power in the region. But this is of ambivalent strategic value. On the one hand, it is the economic dynamo that has the potential to drive better economic performance and social development across the region. On the other hand, we cannot neglect the fact that the history of interstate relations in South Asia is such that India’s neighbours fear it or chafe at its perceived condescension. The reality of these perceptions matters less than the strategic challenge they present. At the very least, they make it more difficult for all our neighbours to act on policies of mutual economic benefit. The
prospects of regional integration will depend not merely on a cold calculus of material interests but on whether countries in the region can reach a state of maturity and self-confidence—where they do not need a fearsome ‘Other’ to secure their sense of self and identity. South Asia is a strategic challenge because its problems lie as much in the realm of collective moral psychology as that of conventional strategy.

Meeting this challenge will require sensitivity and agility on India’s part. First, India will have to be willing to go the extra mile to reassure its neighbours, particularly the smaller ones. India has to safeguard its vital interests, and must recognize that its neighbours also have an interest in playing up the India threat to extract as many concessions as possible. This makes the task of crafting a South Asian strategy more challenging. For India will also have to be prepared for many more unilateral concessions on trade, investment and aid. Rather than insist on reciprocity or short-term equivalence, we will need to focus on longer-term goals. Building on some of its recent initiatives in this direction, India will have to single-mindedly pursue conditions that can make regional economic integration—via trade, investment, movement of people—a reality. This is a basic imperative of our regional strategy.

This situation has been further complicated by the fact
that South Asia is a region where other great powers, particularly China, are trying to expand their influence. An adequate counter-strategy will require clarity on three issues. First, we must have a much clearer assessment of which forms of Chinese engagement in the region present a threat, and which actually present an opportunity or at least converge with our own regional interests. Second, we must recognize that strategic advantage is a consequence of what we do, not what we say. The only way to counter Chinese economic engagement is to have a credible engagement plan of our own. But most important, India has lagged behind because of its inability to deliver on its promises—whether on aid or border infrastructure.

South Asia is important also for the development of India’s own domestic regions. Areas like the North-East, which have remained outside the mainstream of national development, and whose people have often felt isolated, urgently require integration into the wider South Asian and Asian flows of goods and services which are bringing benefits to other parts of the region. For such parts of the country, South Asian economic integration is a necessary, not an optional, condition for growth. Different regions of India have vital stakes in our neighbours (Bengal in Bangladesh; Bihar in Nepal; Punjab in Pakistan; Tamil Nadu in Sri Lanka). We need to develop
national-level policy protocols that can engage with India’s regional political pressures and opportunities and leverage them to effect change in both Delhi and our neighbours.

In addition to its evident economic interdependencies, South Asia’s environmental destiny is also deeply tied together. The future of our glacial systems, rivers, rainfall patterns, forest cover and wildlife hangs and falls together. It could be argued that the biggest challenge for relations in South Asia will be managing the region’s environment and natural resources. Environmental risks pose clear and present threats. But they may also provide opportunities for new strategic alignments. India therefore needs to give these issues strategic priority.

Environmental challenges within the region will be both a strategic opportunity and a threat. Several treaties with Pakistan and Bangladesh serve as exemplars of how fraught river water sharing issues can be made manageable. But ecological changes are likely to ensure that disputes over matters such as water resource distribution will raise future challenges. Further, both India and Bangladesh are lower riparian states vis-à-vis China. India will now have to deploy a range of instruments to ensure its interests as a lower riparian state. All countries of the region will also have common interests in Himalayan ecology, and the
implications of climate change. These common challenges do provide an opportunity to come together towards a compatible approach.

Greater regional integration will be constrained unless there is some ideological convergence on basic political values in the region. Creating opportunities to articulate cultural commonalities through cultural flows is important. Here, India needs greater commitment to encourage and enable movement of people. But in South Asia talk of cultural commonality is often perceived as reflecting an assimilationist agenda. It may therefore be more appropriate to highlight the collective commitment of all states in the region to values such as the pacification of violence, human rights, minority rights, democracy and free trade. Again, while strides have been made in these areas over the last few years, the ideological task of creating genuine intra-regional societal consensus on these values remains.

These challenges notwithstanding, India has to recognize the range of strategic opportunities it has available to it in the region. To grasp these opportunities, India will need to persuade its neighbours that its growth can be the dynamo driving forward the entire region. Second, India should also make clear that its own engagement with Asia more broadly will help to put South Asia in a
larger context: that India is the region’s best portal and platform to globalization. It can signal that the world is opening up to India’s potential, and South Asia stays away from it at its own peril.

The core strategic challenge in dealing with Pakistan is simultaneously to work towards achieving a degree of normality in our relationship and to cope with present and potential threats posed by Pakistan. Thus far, the difficulty of achieving a balance between these requirements has meant that India’s approach to Pakistan has periodically swung between the extremes of comprehensive engagement and almost total disengagement. India’s effort to link diplomatic engagement with Pakistan to the latter’s actions against terrorism has yielded diminishing returns. Breaking out of this pattern of engagement will require a range of mid-level options involving the use of positive and negative levers.

The Pakistani establishment—including the army, the ISI and the bureaucratic and political elites—believes that it is only cross-border terrorism that compels India to engage with Pakistan and accommodate its interests. On the other hand, the presence of nuclear weapons on both
sides has convinced Pakistan that India will prove reluctant to initiate retaliatory responses to terrorist attacks, fearing escalation—and that this constrains any countervailing Indian strategy.

There may be differences of emphasis, but there is no fundamental gap in the perception and attitudes among different sections of the Pakistani elite. Any significant improvement in India–Pakistan relations will therefore be slow and incremental. A grand reconciliation, if at all achievable, is likely to be the cumulative culmination of incremental steps, involving shifts in establishment attitudes there—not a one-swoop decisive historic breakthrough.

While American, and more generally international, support is welcome in keeping pressure on Pakistan, we cannot depend on it to dissuade Pakistan from pursuing what it regards as a time-tested and successful foreign policy tool. As long as Pakistan is seen as delivering, even if half-heartedly, on US concerns over Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, only lip service will be paid to Pakistan’s obligations to deliver on its promises to prevent cross-border terrorism against India. We should, of course, use the US handle as much as we can to keep up strong pressure on Pakistan. But we should recognize that this is of limited value in persuading Pakistan to abandon
its use of cross-border terrorism as an instrument of state policy.

Pakistan’s ‘all-weather friendship’ with China shields it against adverse international fallout from the pursuit of its anti-India policies. A China which is raising its regional and global profile will provide a more effective shield to Pakistan. To be sure, China does have its own concerns about the threat posed by the spread of jihadi fundamentalism in Pakistan. China may express its annoyance to Pakistan and even share its concerns with India. But Pakistan has always been quick to deliver on China’s concerns and demands. It is over-optimistic to assume that we can cooperate with China in ‘stabilizing’ Pakistan or in dealing with the jihadi threat emanating from it. If anything, as American presence in Afghanistan ebbs and as the Pakistan Army’s ability to assert control over its territory diminishes, we are likely to see an increasing Chinese role in Pakistan. In consequence, we may need to think of Pakistan as a subset of the larger strategic challenges posed by China. We should certainly engage China on this, because it is able to exert some pressure on Pakistan. But we should recognize that this is of tactical value and of limited utility.

The internal stability of Pakistan—whether it continues in the current unstable equilibrium or moves towards
greater stability or instability—will be primarily determined by forces at work within Pakistan itself. There is little that India can do either to accelerate or impede a potential implosion of Pakistan. Concerns on this account must not inhibit our strategy towards Pakistan.

The aim of our Pakistan strategy must be to impart stability to our relationship. This comes down to the pursuit of two broad objectives. First, we need to ensure that no serious terrorist attacks—defined as attacks that could have significant domestic impact—are launched on Indian territory by groups based in Pakistan. Second, we need to create a situation where both sides have sufficient confidence and trust to tackle the more deep-seated and thorny outstanding disputes. Working towards these will require creating and wielding a set of negative and positive levers.

The negative levers will aim to convince Pakistan that the pursuit of cross-border terrorism will not only fail to advance its objectives vis-à-vis India but also impose significant costs and risks to Pakistan’s vital interests as perceived by its own elite. The former will require a robust strategy of denial. We need to make it extremely difficult
for any serious terrorist attack to be pulled off on Indian soil. Doing so would mainly require strengthening our police, intelligence and counterterrorism capabilities. Over time, the growing inability of jihadi outfits to carry out such attacks is likely to reduce their attraction and utility to the Pakistan establishment.

We should also be prepared—in the event of a major terrorist attack—to convey a political signal to the Pakistan Army. The idea would be to instil a measure of caution and make them think hard before allowing another attack in the future. We have, in the past, resorted to controlled application of force across the Line of Control. Going forward, we need to move away from the notion of capturing and holding territory (however limited) to conducting effective stand-off punitive operations. (This is discussed further in
Chapter Three
.) Given that concerns about escalation cannot be wished away, we also need to develop other capabilities to impose behaviour-altering costs on Pakistan.

Equally, on the political front we need to develop the ability to put Pakistan diplomatically on the back foot. We should not hesitate to point out Pakistan’s internal vulnerabilities. To begin with, we could express public concern over the situation in places like Balochistan and condemn human rights violations there. The level of our
response could be gradually and progressively elevated. Our stance will fall well short of action on the ground, but it will gradually provide an effective tool to counter Pakistan’s public posturing on Jammu and Kashmir.

Similarly, we need to gradually turn the spotlight on Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, Gilgit and Baltistan. Our quest for a Line of Control (LoC)–based solution for Jammu and Kashmir has led to the progressive neglect of our claims on these areas. This now works to our disadvantage because the LoC is seen as the starting point and an eventual compromise is envisioned in terms of an LoC-plus solution. Reasserting our claims and concerns will not only be a sensible declaratory posture, it will also help counter Pakistan’s claims about Jammu and Kashmir being the ‘core concern’. We should formulate and execute a media plan which puts the problems in these areas continuously in the focus, and place the issue on the agenda of India–Pakistan talks.

Our presence in Afghanistan is perceived in a negative light by Pakistan. In fact, we could build on this perception. While expressing our willingness to work with Pakistan in the stability and reconstruction of Afghanistan, we should consistently reject any special role for Pakistan in Afghanistan and make it clear that India will work with other partners to prevent the subversion of the
government of Afghanistan by Pakistan or its proxies. The evolving situation in Afghanistan, especially after the withdrawal of the Western powers, will pose certain kinds of challenges for the Pakistan Army. In the short run, they may be in a stronger position because of their ability to facilitate talks with some insurgent groups. But in the long run, a diminished American presence and interest in Afghanistan will make it difficult for the Pakistan Army to extract rents from the United States. In such a situation, its interest in preserving its position and resources is likely to increase. This, in turn, may provide us with additional levers to influence its behaviour.