New Delhi, Mar 11 (PTI) Underlining the ramifications of the West Asia conflict on India, former deputy NSA Pankaj Saran on Wednesday described it as the “most serious crisis” the country has faced in living memory and said New Delhi will have to wait for the storm to pass before getting back to business.
Interacting with PTI on the sidelines of a conclave here, he also said the conflict is a brute reminder of the “asymmetry of power” structure in the world, and lamented that the rules-based order has been “decimated”.
“I think it’s the most serious crisis we have faced in living memory. In many ways, it is more serious for us than the Ukraine (conflict), because it is at our doorstep, but it’s not just the doorstep. It affects every aspect of India’s future, whether it is our energy security, whether it is manpower, whether it is remittances, whether it is our geopolitical choices in the region. So literally it is in our neighbourhood,” Saran told PTI Videos.
“And the ferocity of the attacks on Iran, and the objective, which is to change Iran, as a society, as a polity, as an economy, as a military power. These are not inconsequential,” he said.
Saran, also a former diplomat and an expert on strategic affairs, said West Asia as a region has had a “history of turbulence” for the last 25 years, whether it is Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Sudan or Gaza. “We’ve seen it all”.
“The region has a history of turbulence, of destruction, of war. And of course, cynically, people say, it happens only because they’re sitting on oil. But once again, the intersection of energy, of radicalisation, of terrorism, of Israel’s domination in the region, of American supremacy, global hegemony, it’s a very lethal cocktail that has come to our doorstep,” he said.
“And we have no solution for it, except that we are waiting for the Americans to decide when they will stop, when they will declare victory. And we are all watching. I mean, we, meaning the entire world, including the Russians, the Chinese, the Europeans, basically, no one has an answer to what is going on. That’s where we are,” the former deputy National Security Advisor (NSA) said.
The conflict began after the US-Israel combine pounded Iran on February 28, and Tehran, in retaliation, attacked several Gulf countries hosting American military bases, impacting global aviation operations, oil prices and triggering a looming energy crisis.
Both sides continued to attack each other, and with more than 10 days into the conflict, reports said Iran has fired missiles and drones at targets across the Gulf, including oil infrastructure in the region.
Asked what role he foresaw for India — “net security provider” of the Indian Ocean Region — going forward, irrespective of the outcome of this conflict, he said, “Firstly, you have to be realistic about your capabilities”.
“Because even major powers like Russia, China, Europe, what are they, what is the kind of thing you’re seeing today about their behaviour? Silence. So you cannot be thumping on the chest or on the desk or asserting your capability, because here you have a situation where the world’s most powerful military has chosen to basically bomb Iran out of shape.
So there is only that much you can do as a net security provider, or everything else. “You just have to wait for the storm to pass you, and then get back to business,” Saran said.
He and several other experts from India’s neighbouring countries are taking part in a three-day conclave hosted by Synergia, a Bengaluru-based think-tank, at the Manekshaw Centre here from March 11-13.
In his remarks delivered during the conference, he said, effectively, “we live in a world in which there are no rules” and the “biggest disruptors” of whatever rules are there are the “global superpowers”.
For countries in the Indian Ocean Region, Saran also cautioned that “we have extremely limited choices and that our sovereignties are circumscribed”.
He urged India to take away lessons from the aftermath of this conflict and build resilience.
“And those lessons simply have to be; you have to just get stronger and stronger domestically. And you have to become resilient, and you have to try and insulate yourself from global shocks to the extent you can,” he said.
Saran asserted that “we are moving in a new era for India in terms of our national strategy. And we have to face the fact that we are entering a new world”.
“What happens tomorrow after this whole thing? What happens to Iran? These are things which we have to really sit down and think about, and just after Ukraine (conflict), we took some fundamental decisions,” he said, and recalled New Delhi’s decision to continue to import oil from Russia.
Saran lamented that there is no consistency in how countries act today.
“Literally, it’s unfortunate. Every country is for itself. There are no rules, there are no institutional mechanisms, there is no predictability left. So we are living in a very, very different world,” he argued.
“And the upholder of the rules-based order, under which we lived for 80 years, the Western-led, the Western-shaped world order, or to be more precise, the American-shaped and American-crafted world order, has today been destroyed by the Americans themselves,” he said.
This sentiment, Saran said, formed the platform for Donald Trump’s victory in the US elections.
“They are making no bones about it. They’re not apologetic about it. They’re not even hinting at it. They’re saying it in your face that the world that we knew does not suit our purposes anymore, and we have to destroy and then recreate. So this is where we are,” he said.
Asked if energy has been weaponised by powers, he replied, “Of course, historically, and there’s no dispute about that.” PTI KND RHL
This report is auto-generated from PTI news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.