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Opinion
India's Nuclear Deal and Two Worldviews
by
K. Subrahmanyam
Now that India and the US have
formally inked the 123 civil nuclear cooperation agreement and sealed
another pact with France following the Sep 6 waiver by the Nuclear Suppliers
Group (NSG), it is time to look at the fierce debate on the issue in this
country with some detachment.
The debate was not just about the nuclear issue alone. In fact it was about
two competing worldviews held by rival groups. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
belongs to the school that argues that after the end of the Cold War, the
international system has changed and the bipolar world has yielded place to
a balance of power system, comprising six powers - the US, the 27-nation
European Union, China, Japan, Russia and India. The centre of gravity of
world economy is shifting from the trans-Atlantic area to Asia. China has
grown rapidly and India, Russia, Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa and Mexico
are also expected to grow rapidly, thereby reducing the dominance of the US
as an economic power in the world. Since bipolarity has come to an end and
the US, the EU, China, India and Russia are independent nuclear weapon
powers, there is not likely to be any war among them - a situation new to
the world. On the other hand, terrorism, organised crime, narcotics,
religious extremism, pandemics and failed states are likely
to pose international threats which these major powers may have to deal with
collectively. This situation has developed along with the globalisation of
the economy.
While the US will be militarily, economically and technologically
pre-eminent it is not in a position to impose its policies on other major
countries. The view that the US is trying to attempt to enlist India for
military containment of China is totally untenable. The US is China's
largest trade partner. China holds hundreds of billions of dollars of US
treasury bonds. Their economies are so intertwined that what happens to Dow
Jones has an immediate impact on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. It will take
many decades for the US to reach with India the level of economic intimacy
it has with China. All that the US, the EU, Russia and Japan are interested
in promoting is faster growth of India so that there can be greater balance
among the powers in Asia and the world.
Such a balance of power involves both competition and cooperation. The US
and the EU, the US and Japan, China and Japan are all cooperating and
competing economically and technologically at the same time. There will be
similar competition and cooperation between China and India, though China
has advanced far ahead of India and the latter will have to sustain a high
economic growth rate to reduce the gap with China. India's rise as an
economic power has been hailed all over the world as unique. When a major
power rises, it generates a sense of threat among other nations. This is
what happened when Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Russia or Communist
China rose as major economic powers. But India's emergence is seen as
non-threatening by other major powers. India getting an NSG waiver and being
allowed to have a nuclear arsenal in spite of not signing the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) are signs of India being viewed as a
non-threatening balancer in the six-power balance of power system.
Those who oppose the nuclear deal have a different worldview. They are still
conditioned by the historical experience of the Cold War era, are not
reconciled to globalisation of the international economy and have fears of
possible nuclear wars among the major nuclear weapon powers. Their worldview
rejects the economic intimacy of the US and China and regards them as
potential adversaries. It considers that with the collapse of the Soviet
Union, the world has become unipolar with the US in a commanding position to
dominate the world. Therefore, they like to believe that when the US makes a
move to promote India as a balancer, it amounts to the incorporation of
India in the hegemonic US strategic system. Since China is the only
non-democratic major power and is likely to rise to close the economic gap
with the US, this school regards China as a potential adversary of the US.
Second, India has been isolationist from 1947 till 1992 when economic
liberalisation started to integrate India with the international economic
system. The isolationists have fears about integration with the rest of the
world. Fears of the British East India Company coming back and scenarios of
multinationals dominating India are being conjured up. Underlying this view
is the lack of self-confidence to deal with the world at large economically,
technologically, strategically and politically - presumably a colonial
legacy.
This school ignores the fact that the term used for India developing
relationships with other major powers is not alliance but partnership. In an
alliance the leader of the alliance has a decisive say. Partnership is
different. Neither the US nor India has any previous experience in
partnership. Therefore, both the countries will have to try hard to
cultivate a partnership - a new experience for both. We have seen that in
the WTO (World Trade Organisation) issues India and China are on one side
and the US and the European Union are ranged on the other. The arguments
have been pursued fiercely for months. Those who fear that with nuclear
agreements India would lose its autonomy should explain why India is leading
the opposition to industrial powers on the WTO issues.
All these differences in perspectives lead to a major contradiction in
approach to international trends. While the Manmohan Singh school argues
that there are vast opportunities in the present global trends for India to
exploit, the second school fears that some of the global trends may prove
hostile to Indian interests and security and, therefore, India has to be
cautious. In a sense it is a repeat of the controversy we witnessed in the
1990s when then prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao and then finance minister
Manmohan Singh launched the economic liberalisation. Not only did Manmohan
Singh and Narasimha Rao demonstrate they were right in launching economic
liberalisation but their policy led to the comfortable foreign exchange
balance in 1998 which enabled India to conduct the nuclear test without too
much worry about external pressure.
Such controversies are the pith and substance of the democratic process. If
and when the party which loses the argument at present comes to power it
will not necessarily give up a successful policy. It will make some marginal
changes and appropriate the policy as its own. This happened in the case of
economic liberalisation and may very well happen in respect of our nuclear
policy. There were critics of the non-alignment policy who asserted that
they would work for genuine non-alignment. They discovered on assuming
office that our non-alignment was genuine enough. There were critics of our
nuclear tests. Again, on coming to office the critics found that the nuclear
weapons were developed by their own leaders. The ongoing debates should,
therefore, be treated with a certain amount of scepticism and tolerance.
(K. Subrahmanyam is an eminent strategic expert who writes on foreign policy
and national security issues. He can be contacted at ksubrahmanyam51@gmail.com).
October 11, 2008
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