A nonaligned sutra for West Asia

India’s disinclination to attend to world events, or even major regional ones, unless it is being called to account — as on the NPT question — has become its hallmark. This is not great advertisement for a country that has the second fastest growth rate in the world over a sustained period and has developed enhanced interactions with an expanded list of countries. New Delhi’s reticence about making its voice of conciliation heard on the current Iran crisis is a case in point.
While there is rising possibility of Iran and its ally Syria being brought under intense US-articulated pressure that may reach breaking point and lead to military confrontation in the not too distant future, with attendant anxieties about the international supply and price of oil that will certainly affect the Indian economy adversely, there is an equal likelihood that Indian diplomacy will remain nailed to the platform and not do anything of note to make an effort to forestall such a crisis.
It’s not just Iranian oil, though that’s important. India nurtures a relationship with Iran for other pressing reasons as well — Afghanistan for instance, especially the likely shape of events in that geo-strategic space in the wake of the US withdrawal. Over the term of four governments of different shades in New Delhi, India has invested substantial political and financial capital in that country and says it plans to be there for the long haul. This enterprise can be rendered infeasible without an active working understanding — not necessarily a coincidence of views — with Tehran (and some others).
Given Iran’s significance in India’s foreign policy matrix (and India in Iran’s, certainly as energy importer but also for other strategic reasons despite its vote against Tehran in the IAEA on the nuclear issue), it would be a given if New Delhi were to engage the key players associated with the present Iran crisis in conversations over questions of concern with a view to reducing tensions. It is therefore surprising that India has not embarked on this course. It has found it convenient, instead, to stick to the path of least resistance, and looked the other way, winning no one’s goodwill in particular.
This, alas, has been pretty much the norm in Indian policymaking for a considerable length of time. Unless pressed, save on bilateral questions, the Indians decline to sally forth (discounting international trade and climate negotiations in which the threat of the use of force is typically not whipped out). Remarkably, thinking of this kind is not limited to the government, as was revealed when a body of eminent individuals came out with their prescriptions on foreign policy and strategic thinking recently.
Just over a month ago in New Delhi, a group of influential Indians released before a high-profile gathering of international diplomats and others a foreign and strategic policy document for India laying down the “basic principles”, as they saw it, that should inform such policy. They called it “Non-Alignment 2.0”, a provocative title guaranteed to draw attention, considering that the original version of nonalignment (Nonalignment.1!) proclaimed as policy in the Nehru era has been disdained in recent times by India’s policymaking elite and was brought under sustained attack in its heyday by the US-led Western bloc.
Were it not for the involvement with the making of the document of Shyam Saran, who in different capacities in the last few years has played a significant role in the country’s foreign policy establishment, and — given his pre-eminence — continues to be on call, the salience of Non-Alignment 2.0 is likely to have been limited. The document was also received with interest as it was claimed that its preparation had the benefit of informal counsel from national security adviser Shiv Shankar Menon.
In truth, the document hardly grapples with issues pertaining to “basic principles” that it sets out to do, except to note, in a nutshell, that the original nonalignment aimed to expand India’s strategic space and that Non-Alignment 2.0 seeks to do the same, albeit in vastly altered circumstances. (Whether an adherent of nonalignment or not, which serious practitioner of foreign and strategic policy will demur with this objective?)
Instead of unveiling the sutras of nonalignment relevant to our times, the document seeks to adumbrate or analyse policy, the more particularly in relation to India’s dealings with China, South Asia and West Asia. It goes to the extraordinary extent of recommending — if only as a retaliatory step — a Tibetan iteration of Marshal Ayub Khan’s “Operation Gibraltar” without the sequel of “Operation Grand Slam”. What it singularly fails to do is to indicate policy preferences valid for India in respect of the crisis in West Asia that surrounds Iran, and the concerted bid being made to construct a coalition to contain it.
Given the immediacy, this should be a top priority for India’s foreign and strategic policy establishment. We have made clear that Iran getting hold of a nuclear weapon is not in our interest. But there is no proof that this is happening. Indeed, the top spy agencies in the US believe the purported threat to be not true. So, what is the build-up to a possible military outing all about?
A plausible explanation is that America’s invasion of Iraq on false pretexts has enhanced Shia Islam’s power in West Asia by bringing about a Shia regime in Baghdad which automatically enhances Tehran (the home of world Shia authority), and this development makes America’s oil-rich Sunni allies in the Gulf — traditionally inimical to Iran — extremely jittery. Their keenness to decapitate Iran also sits well with the interests of America’s close ally Israel.
But India has strong interests with both Iran and the Gulf Arab regimes for a spectrum of reasons. It behoves us to take our diplomatic wares to the region, as a peace-maker and median-finder. Our international prestige will be raised if we did this, just as it was in the days of the Suez and the Indo-China crises in the era of Nonalignment Mark I.