{"id":52411,"date":"2019-12-09T11:00:09","date_gmt":"2019-12-09T00:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=52411"},"modified":"2019-12-09T10:42:15","modified_gmt":"2019-12-08T23:42:15","slug":"where-is-indias-foreign-policy-headed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/where-is-indias-foreign-policy-headed\/","title":{"rendered":"Where is India\u2019s foreign policy headed?"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

In a surprise move after the May election, India\u2019s Prime Minister Narendra Modi reached out to former career diplomat Subrahmanyam Jaishankar to make him foreign minister. Jaishankar wasn\u2019t a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party until then, and hadn\u2019t even considered entering politics, but he was nominated to the parliament\u2019s upper house from a vacancy in Gujarat.<\/p>\n

Jaishankar comes with platinum credentials. His father was K. Subrahmanyam, the vishwaguru<\/em> (teacher to the world) of India\u2019s strategic studies community as noted in this tribute<\/a> by Rory Medcalf. As always, luck and timing count also. Jaishankar had served as India\u2019s ambassador to China (2009\u20132013) and the US (2013\u20132015), and as foreign secretary (2015\u20132018).<\/p>\n

Modi visited China as chief minister of Gujarat during Jaishankar\u2019s tenure there, and Modi\u2019s first visit to the US as PM took place on Jaishankar\u2019s watch in Washington. Jaishankar helped India navigate the 2017 Doklam standoff<\/a> with China with an adroit mix of resolve, pragmatism and creative flexibility that won widespread praise. He earned a reputation as a talented diplomat, a policy wonk and an analytical thinker, a bit like Australia\u2019s Peter Varghese.<\/p>\n

All three traits were in evidence in a major speech Jaishankar delivered as the fourth Ramnath Goenka Lecture<\/a> in Delhi on 14 November. Against the backdrop of a profound structural transformation of the global order, he offered \u2018an unsentimental audit\u2019 of seven decades of India\u2019s policy divided into six historical phases (1946\u20131962; 1962\u20131971; 1971\u20131991; 1991\u20131998; 1998\u20132014; 2014\u2013;). He decried \u2018the dogmas of Delhi\u2019, challenged \u2018past practices and frozen narratives\u2019 and made a virtue of inconsistency that responds to events and issues on a case-by-case basis.<\/p>\n

Noting several milestones in independent India\u2019s journey since 1947, he highlighted the importance of disruptions for decisive shifts in India\u2019s favour. And he pointed to the need to learn as much from missed chances and roads not taken as from successes, drawing attention in particular to two decades of \u2018nuclear indecision\u2019\u2014between the first test in 1974 and the declaration of possessor status after five more tests in 1998\u2014that gave India \u2018the worst of all worlds\u2019.<\/p>\n

Jaishankar finished with a run-down of the current international context and India\u2019s foreign policy traits, challenges and approaches. Today\u2019s world is one of dispersed power, localised equations, convergence, and issue-based arrangements, he said.<\/p>\n

India is responding with more energetic diplomacy based on \u2018a growing sense of its own capabilities\u2019, raised expectations by others of India \u2018to shoulder greater responsibilities\u2019 commensurate with its growing capabilities, and \u2018a willingness to shape key global negotiations, such as … on climate change\u2019. He extrapolated Modi\u2019s 2019 campaign slogan from the domestic to the foreign policy realm: sabka saath, sabka vikas, sabka vishwas<\/em> (with everyone, prosperity for all, trust of all).<\/p>\n

Yet in the end the speech fell short of Jaishankar\u2019s own standard of \u2018the need for greater realism in policy\u2019. He noted the \u2018interconnection between diplomacy, strategy and economic capabilities\u2019 but defended the decision to walk away from the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.<\/p>\n

The unsentimental judgement on Modi\u2019s loss of nerve on the RCEP is that he has effectively mortgaged India\u2019s economic future and its rise as a comprehensive national power because he took fright at the short-term economic pain and adjustment costs of integrating with the world\u2019s most dynamic and fastest-growing region. By opting out, India will find it much harder to achieve its ambitious target of doubling exports<\/a> and GDP by 2025.<\/p>\n

In reality, Modi paid the price of failing to implement major structural reforms in his first term (2014\u20132019). The gap with the rest of the Indo-Pacific countries will widen, making it tougher for India to integrate with the regional and global economy on favourable terms at a later date. The region is vital to India\u2019s commercial and geopolitical interests; the net result of India\u2019s rejected exceptionalism is that China will dominate it even more.<\/p>\n

The RCEP rejection is symptomatic of bigger failures on the economic and foreign policy fronts. India\u2019s economy has been decelerating: most key indicators are headed south and Moody\u2019s is just one of several ratings agencies to have revised India\u2019s GDP growth forecasts downwards<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Modi\u2019s cabinet ministers seem to lack economic literacy. He is captured by quacks peddling voodoo economics that led to the\u00a0demonetisation disaster<\/a>, and reliant on statist bureaucrats whose instincts are hostile to business. He may have cowed his domestic critics and fooled the voters, but the markets are still speaking truth to power<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The new foreign minister\u2019s address provided no vision of what sort of a world India is trying to shape. Because of the discrepancy in military might, global financial system dominance and diplomatic heft between the US and all others including China, Jaishankar\u2019s depiction of a \u2018multipolar\u2019 world is fundamentally flawed. \u2018Polycentric<\/a>\u2019 is a more accurate description.<\/p>\n

Does India aspire someday to be one of the poles of a genuinely multipolar order, with China, Russia and the EU being perhaps the other poles? Alternatively, does India wish to be China\u2019s equal in Asia while content to cede global primacy to the US? Or has India abandoned any hope of catching up with China as a major Asian power and accepted being a regional middle power in a US\u2013China dominated global order for the next several decades? The answer will dictate the appropriate strategy to match the expansive, self-confident or limited ambition about India\u2019s role in world affairs.<\/p>\n

In this context, Jaishankar is mistaken in believing that the RCEP decision can be decoupled from India\u2019s larger Indo-Pacific strategy. Staying outside the principal regional trading bloc will badly dent the credibility of India\u2019s entire Indo-Pacific strategy. The illusion of a rising great power may have been punctured in its own government\u2019s and the region\u2019s perceptions.<\/p>\n

Just as importantly, the goal of securing India against Pakistan-origin terrorism cannot be realised without addressing the threat to India\u2019s social cohesion posed by the agenda of militant Hinduism pursued by the ruling party\u2019s religious base.<\/p>\n

That said, Jaishankar\u2019s conclusion was on the mark: \u2018A nation that has the aspiration to become a leading power someday cannot continue with unsettled borders, an unintegrated region and under-exploited opportunities.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a surprise move after the May election, India\u2019s Prime Minister Narendra Modi reached out to former career diplomat Subrahmanyam Jaishankar to make him foreign minister. Jaishankar wasn\u2019t a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":555,"featured_media":52413,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[69,56,1055],"class_list":["post-52411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-india","tag-indo-pacific","tag-narendra-modi"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhere is India\u2019s foreign policy headed? | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/where-is-indias-foreign-policy-headed\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Where is India\u2019s foreign policy headed? | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In a surprise move after the May election, India\u2019s Prime Minister Narendra Modi reached out to former career diplomat Subrahmanyam Jaishankar to make him foreign minister. 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