Step out, there’s fresh air

The Ministry of External Affairs, New Delhi | Manisha Mondal / ThePrint

Isn’t it fascinating how even in such a globalising world it’s foreign policy that is now emerging as a more contentious political issue in democracies than economics? Until a couple of years ago, we were all performing the last rites of the diplomatic establishments, dismissing high foreign policy making as a pursuit merely of the last remnants of the Cold War. This was a unipolar world, the rest of the nations had to merely find their modus vivendi with the biggest one, economics, trade, technology and even culture and sport were eroding territorial boundaries and redefining nationalism. This was also a time when several nations around the world (24 at last count) were merging their ministries of foreign affairs and trade. But the last 12 months have seen a significant roll-back in this trend.

For the first time in a long, long time, foreign and security policies have become an issue in a US presidential election. John Kerry’s most potent criticism of the Bush administration is over its foreign policy. Kerry’s standard line is that George Bush has followed the “most ideological” foreign policy in America’s history, losing friends around the world and discovering enemies where none existed. Several successive polls show that the line is working as the US finds itself more isolated with ongoing Middle East developments. It is also significant that this is happening despite the fact that the 9/11 shock still lingers and Bush’s aggressive anti-terror stance still finds wide support.

Foreign policy is back as an electoral issue in most of Europe as well. Spain saw a celebrated foreign policy shift with its change of government. In Britain, we may see the build-up to an unlikely situation where the Tories may be refining a foreign policy formulation more pacifist than that of Tony Blair’s Labour. From Michigan to Madrid and from Ankara to Auckland, voters are beginning to factor in foreign policy issues as they go out to decide who they should hand over power to.

There is no mistaking the paradigm shift. It is tempting also to blame it merely on Bush’s America which is angering peoples around the world and alienating them from governments still caught in some “unipolar” time warp. How funny, though, when until the other day we were cursing our establishments of being caught, instead, in a “Cold War” time warp. But could this change, indeed, be a consequence merely of the Bush-Sharon doctrine of ramming through any policy in what they see as their supreme national interest, irrespective of world opinion? Or, is this new clamour for a more distinct if not entirely independent foreign policy the first signal that globalisation has gone too far, and that a roll-back, a return to old-fashioned nationalism, is in order? Let’s leave this question for a bit later in this article.

How does this work in India? Just three months ago there was widespread dismay here, even a feeling of being jilted, when Colin Powell announced special non-Nato ally status for Pakistan and did not even give us a forewarning when we feted him on his way to Islamabad. But nobody seemed to as much as take notice of an agency news item from Washington in this Thursday morning’s newspapers saying that the US had formally conferred that status on Pakistan. Just six months back, leaders of the NDA were proudly announcing that India and the US were natural allies. But earlier this month, when asked the same question at a press conference on his way back from Washington, Natwar Singh responded with a very measured “I don’t think I’d go as far as that.” Again, nobody seemed to take too much notice. Nobody called it a policy shift.

Isn’t it also significant that the one thing you haven’t heard from this government yet is the old, and the most pious, of all pronouncements of there being total consensus on continuity in foreign policy. And just as well. I have argued often enough that a consistent, unchanging, ossified foreign policy reduces diplomacy to trench warfare and leads to nowhere. It blunts the instincts of our political leaders, places exaggerated powers in the hands of the bureaucrats, makes it easier for your partners and adversaries to predict your moves and so on. One reason both Narasimha Rao and Atal Behari Vajpayee seem to have had so much foreign policy success is that they both dared to move on from the old, doctrinaire, holy national policies on issues as wide-ranging as Israel, the US, the neighbourhood, particularly Pakistan and China. Rao made the beginning with the opening up to Israel and setting the basic new direction for India in the post-Soviet Bloc world. The NDA took that process further by moving the making of the most crucial elements of our foreign policy ‘ America, Pakistan, China and the nuclear weapon equations ‘ firmly into political control. A new policy was crafted in the PMO, debated and finalised at the Cabinet Committee on Security and then the MEA was left to implement it. It would be fair to say that if you can give the NDA the credit for one thing, it was that they ran our most independent foreign policy ever ‘ independent of the MEA bureaucracy ‘ if I may underline.

Manmohan Singh, Natwar Singh and J.N. Dixit, the trio that picks up the baton now, therefore, feel less burdened than leaders in the past to see their foreign policy responsibility merely as that of ensuring continuity and allaying all apprehensions in the minds of the rest of the world that there may be changes or shifts. If foreign policy and security issues now play so strongly in domestic and electoral politics a new political leadership should feel free to nuance and fine-tune what it wants to continue and to make shifts it considers necessary. Natwar’s “I won’t go that far” statement is to be seen in that light. That is why it hasn’t provoked such an outrage from the Americans.

The only important rider is that any change or policy shift should be determined solely by what the new government considers best in India’s larger interest rather than be influenced by prejudices of ideology or past doctrines. And does the UPA government pass that test until now?

It would seem that Natwar Singh made a good beginning in Washington with his “I’d neither say aye or nay” to the question on whether India would be willing to send its forces to Iraq. But then, as socialist immune system broke out in rashes and sneezes back home, he stepped back by asserting that the question of sending troops did not even arise. That was wrong. Absolutisms are in any case to be mostly avoided in diplomacy and in this case, by retreating so quickly, the government conveyed the impression that its options on foreign policy were somehow limited by domestic politics. No large nation with any stake in the world can run its foreign policy on the basis of an ideology, dogma or even a common minimum programme. The most such a document can provide is a broad direction. But if India were to limit its worldview within the confines of these four paras, we might as well wind down the diplomatic establishment, down-grade the ministry to a junior level, and present our friends and foes copies of the CMP, I suppose somewhat in the way the Chinese may have handed out copies of the Red Book in halcyon days.

While a democracy can no longer run a foreign policy that its voters do not agree with, it cannot also tie itself down as thoroughly as this CMP seems to have done. The CMP does not contain answers to all our problems for the next five years, it does not supercede our Constitution, it is no Red Book or some Treaty of Versailles that the Congress signed with its Left allies. It is a brief document giving broad directions, presumably reflecting the view of the majority of voters that this alliance represents. Beyond that, the government must not feel encumbered or cramped. A doctrinaire foreign policy is as bad as the old idea of total continuity, and is just as likely to place power back in the hands of the bureaucracy. Having seen the picture from both ends, Natwar Singh and Dixit need to figure this out early enough.

And now the question I raised earlier in this article. Is foreign policy becoming a contentious issue in domestic politics of democracies the first sign that globalisation had gone too far and that peoples around he world are applying “corrections”? Let me suggest it is, to the contrary, that globalisation has now become so strong and so widely accepted that voting populations, exposed to world media, are now responding to pain, trauma, destruction, joy, prosperity and growth, even in countries that in the past were too distant for them to bother about. The arrival of foreign affairs on the domestic political agenda of democracies, therefore, is yet another evidence that globalisation is working, and working for the better in fields other than trade and economics as well.