As the Commonwealth Games spectacle spirals from fiasco to euphoria and now an inquisition, the nation awaits one-day cricket and US President Barack H. Obama. Electronic media’s “breaking news” leaves little space for strategic analysis or gravity. A case in point is Europe.
The writer was in Brussels for the second meeting of the India-Europe Forum, jointly sponsored by the Indian Council of World Affairs, the European Union International Institute of Strategic Studies and the Foundation for European Progressive Studies (FEPS), a think tank of the socialist democrats, on October 11-12.
The standard Indian post-Cold War mantra has been that a new stable world order must be multi-polar, with Europe as one pole. An unexceptional thought, as the European Union (EU) constitutes 27 countries, 500 million people and GDP totalling $16 trillion, exceeding even that of the US. However, EU has lacked cohesion in its foreign and security policies. The debate over the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s (Nato) future after Soviet Union’s collapse, the lack of unified purpose in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) European components in Afghanistan, with each nation’s disparate terms of engagement and finally the slow progress in developing their own military reserve, called the Euro Corps, indicate strategic uncertainty. Nato, the bridge that links European security to the US, remains the bulwark of European defence even for out-of-area operations. For India the distinction is vital as India may join EU-led operations, say against Somali pirates, but would eschew involvement in anything that smells of Nato, which invokes the imagery of an alliance.
After eight years of negotiations, the Lisbon Treaty has come into force on December 1, 2009, ratified by all 27 members. The European Parliament, consisting of 736 members with each country sending numbers proportionate to their populations, is now co-equal with the European Council, constituted of all 27 heads of state. It is this reality that India has to recognise. The troubled history of India’s relations with the European Parliament, overly intrusive on Kashmir and human rights issues, needs to be overcome as the role of the new Parliament stands enlarged. While the Free Trade Agreement between India and EU may be finalised before the India-EU summit next month, it would need to be approved by the EU Parliament. There are whispers that a sustainability proviso may be saddled onto it. Under that rubric can come issues ranging from energy use to labour practices etc. Till now India has been chary of forthrightly engaging the Members of European Parliament (MEPs). The preference has been to take the bilateral track with principal European nations, where realpolitick stumps ideology and diplomacy supplants politics.
Take the case of the Kashmir Centre in Brussels. Established in October 2003, under the tutelage of the International Council for Human Rights, it is a child of European human rights evangelism mating with Pakistani activism. While its stated purpose is to agitate for self-determination in Kashmir and generally promote respect for human rights, it is really an ill-disguised Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) front for India bashing. The effect of its jaundiced narrative was evident as even senior functionaries of the commission at the India-Europe Forum had an understanding of Kashmir that was both dated and one-sided.
Baroness Catherine Ashton’s appointment as the high representative for foreign affairs and security policy and the likely establishment of a European diplomatic service will lead to growing convergence of policies even on these issues. India’s Europe policy is rooted in strong bilateral relations with the three biggest EU members, i.e. France, Germany and UK. On October 19, the British strategic defence review is expected, perhaps leading to a paring of the defence budget. Two weeks later French President Nicolas Sarkozy will be in the UK for the annual summit. It is being speculated that to avoid military shrinkage, collaboration and even burden-sharing may be inevitable. The Economist calls it Suez redux — recalling the Suez debacle in 1956, the last Franco-British joint operation, following which France became isolationist and Britain a junior US ally.
Someone at the forum analogised that EU and India were akin, despite disparities of economic development. Both were democratic, multi-lingual, multi-ethnic and repositories of ancient culture, with the difference that India was already a political union. The European social model of combining growth with equity, regulation with innovation were ingested by India’s founding fathers by way of Fabian socialism and the European workers’ movement. Time is ripe for a reengagement with a more coalesced Europe through a robust engagement with its post-Lisbon treaty organs, particularly the European Parliament. The change requires a new mindset, which takes Europe, collectively, and its value system more seriously.
The silly practice of sending officers of the IAS as ambassadors to EU betrays an assessment of EU merely as a trading partner. The incumbent, though a career diplomat, was again posted there because of his experience in the finance ministry, albeit as the joint secretary dealing with the capital markets when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was the finance minister. This is his first ambassadorial assignment.
Tony Blair in his memoir A Journey laments that euro-skeptics in UK, nursing a “post empire delusion”, made Britain over dependent on the US, curtailing its strategic independence. The British destiny, surmises now the most pro-US of the recent British Prime Ministers, rests in an alliance with Europe for the nation to “exert influence and advance its interests”. A vital lesson, perhaps, for the Indian Prime Minister on the eve of the US President’s visit.

The author is a former secretary in the external affairs ministry