http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/11/04/indias_strategic_future?

page=full India's Strategic Future Why India needs to move from "strategic autonomy" to strategic cooperation with the United States. BY C. RAJA MOHAN | NOVEMBER 4, 2010 Unlike in Washington, where governments are noisy in articulating their worldviews, for the permanent bureaucracy that runs New Delhi's foreign policy, silence is golden. But Delhi's reluctance to articulate a grand strategy does not necessarily mean it does not have one. Since India embraced globalization at the turn of the 1990s, many of its traditional strategic objectives have evolved, and the pace of that evolution has gathered momentum as India's economic growth has accelerated in recent years. Yet the United States remains unclear about its potential ally's goals and objectives. Despite significant advances in Indo-U.S. relations during George W. Bush's presidency and bipartisan agreement in Washington to support India's rise, Barack Obama's administration has found it hard to make big strategic advances. U.S. officials dealing with Afghanistan and Pakistan seem to find India -- and particularly its reluctance to offer concessions on Kashmir that might presumably encourage Pakistan to cooperate more thoroughly in Afghanistan -- part of the problem. American negotiators on climate change and trade find the notorious prickliness of the old non aligned India alive and well. And the Pentagon is frustrated in its efforts to build a partnership with a New Delhi that resists cooperation on U.S. terms. But American strategists should take heart: If Washington can be patient, endure an extended courtship, and above all take a longer-term view of the relationship with Delhi, it will find much to like about India's foreign policy. The problem for India's top strategists is not that they don't seek a grand bargain with the United States. It is about negotiating equitable terms. It is also about bringing along a political elite and bureaucracy that are adapting too slowly to the new imperatives of a stronger partnership with Washington. But make no mistake: Engagement with the United States has been the Indian establishment's highest foreign-policy priority over the last decade and a half. India's grand strategy has four broad objectives. In all four areas, strategic cooperation with the United States is critical. India's first objective is to pacify the northwestern part of the subcontinent, or the AfPak region, as it is known in Washington. All of India's great empire-states throughout the last 2,500 years, from the Mauryans to the British Raj, have had trouble controlling these turbulent lands across the Indus River that frame the subcontinent's western frontier. Indeed, ever since Alexander the Great and his army first arrived on the banks of the Indus, most foreign forces and alien ideologies have come to what is now India through the northwestern route. In the past, India managed to absorb the invaders and modify their ideologies. All it needed was sufficient time. But weakened by the subcontinent's partition in 1947 and faced with U.S. and Chinese support for Pakistan

2 during the Cold War, India has had little time and space to manage the conflict with its troublesome sibling to the northwest. American commentators often discount the threat that Pakistan's military poses to India. Indian strategists don't have that luxury. Armed with nuclear weapons and allied with radical Islam, the Pakistani Army remains extremely dangerous -- a situation compounded by America's current dependence on Islamabad to pursue its objectives in Afghanistan and in the tribal areas across the border. The challenge for India is not just about managing its differences with U.S. policies in Afghanistan and Pakistan. New Delhi has no choice but to work with Washington to stabilize its northwest. That in turn involves encouraging the United States to think very differently about Pakistan and its relations with Afghanistan and India. And that demands getting the United States to pressure the Pakistani Army to end its promotion of extremism in Afghanistan and India. Both New Delhi and Washington want to move the AfPak region toward political moderation, economic modernization, and regional integration. Neither can achieve these objectives on their own. But they have so far failed to have an honest discussion about how to move forward together, let alone begin coordinating their policies. India's second objective is to become an indispensable power in the littorals of the Indian Ocean and southwestern Pacific. For nearly two centuries until partition, the British Raj was the source of stability and the main provider of security in these regions. But after independence in 1947, India chose an inward economic orientation and focused on the global mobilization of the Third World during the Cold War. Not surprisingly, India resented the dominance of the Anglo-American powers in its strategic backyard. As the power of a rising China today radiates across the subcontinent, the Indian Ocean, and the western Pacific, balancing Beijing has become an urgent matter -- especially given the relative decline of the United States. In the past, India balanced Beijing through a de facto alliance with the Soviet Union. Today, it needs a strategic partnership with the United States to ensure that China's rise will continue to be peaceful. With Washington yet to make up its mind on how best to deal with Beijing, India has no option but to hedge against growing Chinese power as well as the dangers of a potential Sino-American condominium. This necessarily involves nuanced bilateral economic and political engagement with China, albeit with eyes wide open. Meanwhile, New Delhi's focus is on China's neighbors. India is holding on to its old partnership with Moscow, stepping up its economic and security cooperation with Japan, South Korea, and Mongolia, and raising its economic and strategic profile in Southeast Asia and Australasia. India's third objective is to increase its weight in global governance and eventually emerge as a "rulemaker" in the international system. In that sense, India's civil nuclear initiative with the Bush administration was as much about producing electric power as it was about redefining India's position in the global nonproliferation regime. But U.S. support for India's bid to become a permanent member of

3 the U.N. Security Council has been elusive. The United States, instead, wants to test whether India is a "responsible stakeholder" in the negotiations on issues ranging from climate change to international trade. From India's perspective, these American benchmarks have tended to be self-serving and defined by the latest intellectual fashion in Washington. India is prepared to engage on these issues and participate more fully in global decision-making bodies on the basis of its own enlightened self-interest, but is not prepared to take tests from anyone. India's fourth objective is to strengthen the factors that are critical for becoming a credible power on the regional and global stages. This involves sustaining its current high economic growth rate, consolidating its advantages in knowledge industries, providing education and skills to its younger population, and modernizing its armed forces and security agencies. On all these fronts, India needs deeper and more open cooperation with the United States through the integration of their advanced technology sectors, trade liberalization, opening the Indian education system to American universities and community colleges, U.S. investments in the Indian defense industry, and American expertise to upgrade Indian intelligence gathering and processing. New Delhi is already engaged with Washington on all these fronts, but the results remain way below potential. Most of all, the United States needs to recognize that it is dealing with a new India. For too long, India saw itself as a weak, developing country unwilling to unlearn its anti-colonial grievances. Only in recent years has India begun to inch away from its previous focus on the chimera of "strategic autonomy" to emphasize its own role in shaping the regional and global environments. In the past, India's internal identity as a liberal democracy was in tension with its external image as the leader of the global south against the West. A rising India -- with its robust democracy, thriving entrepreneurial capitalism, and expanding global interests -- is bound to acquire a new identity as a champion of liberal international order. What remains to be seen is whether the Obama administration can seize this moment. Obama has certainly talked the talk, but it is not clear whether his administration is ready to walk the walk to accommodate India's rise. That might require a leap into the unknown -- a historic revision of the international hierarchy of power -- that so far, the United States has been unwilling or unable to take. http://acorn.nationalinterest.in/2011/01/14/grand-strategy/ Grand Strategy 01.14.2011 Posted in Foreign Affairs, Security India has always had a grand strategy: to keep the country united N S Sisodia, IDSAs director-general, makes the case in the Indian Express today for the strategic affairs community to develop and articulate a grand strategy for India. IDSA recently launched the National Strategy Project (INSP) that aims to bring together a wide range of scholars, analysts and experts and jointly shape a grand strategy. (Disclosure: a couple of us at Takshashila are involved in this project).

4 Now, that government-related institutions are beginning to think systematically about the big Why questions of foreign and national security policies is a good thing. (ICRIER had launched a National Interest Project in 2007). Does India need a grand strategy that will inform and influence policymakers across ministries, across political party lines and over time? Obviously, yes. Should this be publicly articulated? Most certainlyit might not convince everyone, but doing so offers us a way to assess whether or not policymakers are sticking to the given script. But is it true that India has lacked a grand strategy all this while? Two answers are usually offered: the first, made famous by George Tanham, suggests that India lacks coherent strategic thinking. Unlike many other countries, the Indian governments decision-making remains behind a wall of secrecy, records remain locked up in archives or personal collections and few people close to the action write books on contemporary events, if they write at all. So it is fair for information-starved academic scholars to conclude that the absence of evidence is really evidence of absenceforget grand, they would say, New Delhi lacks strategy. The second answer contends that non-alignment was Indias grand strategy from independence to the end of the Cold War. During the early Nehruvian-era, non-alignment had realist underpinnings, but in 1962when Nehru requested Kennedy for US air power supportnon-alignment became a grand slogan. But what are bureaucracies for if not to provide policy continuity? Non-alignment continued to be worshipped by Indias politicians and intellectuals even after Indira Gandhiin an act of hard realismsigned a treaty with the Soviet Union in 1971. It was only when the Cold War ended that nonalignment became a painfully obvious anachronism. The deity had vanished, leaving the worshippers lost and confused. So it is perhaps not a coincidence that Tanhams view gained traction in India the early 1990s, just after the Cold War ended. Actually, the case of the missing grand strategy remained unsolved because they were looking in the wrong place. Indias leaders, at least from the Mauryas to the Mughals to Manmohan Singh, have always had a grand strategy. And it is a very simple oneto unite India and keep it united. Scholars of international relations have missed this because Indias grand strategy has been largely domestic in its focus. As K M Panikkar laments, Indias rulers have always been preoccupied with the subcontinent. Even as it indicates a lack of interest in extra-subcontinental geopolitics, it suggests that they were not bereft of coherent strategic thinking. From Chandraguptas empire building to Aurangzebs military expeditions to the Deccan to the Indian republics foreign policy, the grand strategy is consistentbringing the whole of the Indian subcontinent under their rule and keeping it that way. Non-alignment was not grand strategy, but rather, an approach that followed from the grand strategy. And Tanham was wrong. The survival and security of the state, the most parsimonious definition of the national interest, has been and remains Indias grand strategy. It should remain so.

5 That said, can India afford such parsimony in its strategic approach towards the twenty-first century? Not quite, because to the extent that Indias grand strategy caused Indias leaders to be inward-looking, both the opportunities and threats emanating from outside have been neglected. In the highly competitive times of the twenty-first century, India cannot afford to miss either. So there is a case to rethink grand strategy. There is a need to shake up the foreign policy and security establishment from one that was defending a weak India from a world that was out to get us, to promoting the interests of a stronger India in a world where there are opportunities as there are threats. http://www.gatewayhouse.in/publication/gateway-house/obama039s-indianodyssey/%E2%80%98does-india-have-grand-strategy%E2%80%99 Does India have a Grand Strategy? A report on former US Ambassador to India, Robert Blackwills lecture titled Does India have a Grand Strategy? at a meeting of the Confederation of Indian Industry and the Aspen Institute in Mumbai on September 27, 2010. BY Rahul Shewakramani TAGGED UNDER blackwill, india poverty, indo-china, indo-pak Does India have a Grand Strategy was the provocative title of a lecture by Robert Blackwill, former US Ambassador to India at a meeting of the Confederation of Indian Industry in Mumbai on September 27, 2010. And his answer wasyes it did, but not for all the major issues facing India. He posited seven major issues confronting India and its policy makers. 1. Reducing Poverty and Deprivation (Strategy in place, implementation weak) 2. Securing India against internal threats (Strategy in place) 3. Containing External terrorist threats (No strategy in place with regard to Pakistan) 4. Slowing the spread of WMDs (Strategy in place) 5. Successfully managing Chinas rise (Hedging strategy in place) 6. Promoting the US-India relationship (Strategy in place, complications persist) 7. Securing Indias energy future (Strategy in place) According to Blackwill, Indias foremost national interest is reducing poverty and deprivation through sustainable economic development. India has had a grand strategy on combating poverty for decades, but the implementation of this strategy has been plagued with problems resulting from Indias massive and growing population, complicated domestic politics and the scale of the poverty problem.

6 Towards the United States, he said, India has a grand strategy of developing closer long-term ties while maintaining its ability to act freely and unilaterally internationally. Blackwill dismissed the recent disquiet over issues such as visas and outsourcing as being temporary and irrelevant in the larger scheme of the Indo-US relationship. The real rub lies in the USs relationship with China, Pakistan and Afghanistan in the longterm, and Iran in the short-term - issues that could complicate the Indo-US bilateral. Though Blackwill is not part of the Obama administration or even the current establishment, he was sympathetic to the challenges that US President Obama is likely to encounter on his upcoming November visit to India, when there will surely be Indian pressure on him to give Pakistan an ultimatum on its terrorism activities in India. On its policy towards China, India much like the US and several East Asian countries uses a hedging strategy, said Blackwill. "India would seek to develop a positive long-term relationship with Beijing and the Chinese Communist Party while hedging for a more aggressive China, one increasingly assertive in its claims to contested Indian borders," he added. Blackwill's biggest doubt was India's ability to formulate a coherent 'grand strategy' to manage Pakistans continuing animosity towards India. "India has no clear strategy to shape Pakistans behavior despite overwhelming evidence to prove that Pakistan has supported insurgency in Kashmir and promoted terrorism to contain India in the past two decades," he said. He lauded India's extraordinary restraint in its reactions to Pakistani infiltration, notwithstanding the complicated nature of the relationship, and the nuclear-capability of both nations which has strained Indias conventional response to terrorism. Making clear he did not necessarily endorse or support any particular grand strategy towards Pakistan, Blackwill offered a five possible grand strategies that India could adopt to contain Pakistan. These were: 1. Destabilize Pakistan 2. Accommodate Pakistan 3. Adopt Fortress India 4. Threaten Military Reprisal 5. India stands pat The most extreme strategy India could employ would be to destabilize Pakistan by contributing to its current instability, he said. As Pakistan becomes more preoccupied with its internal concerns, its ability to counter Indian interests would be severely restrained. The risks of this approach are clear - an escalation to conventional warfare with possible nuclear attack. At the opposite end is a strategy to Accomodate Pakistan by taking steps to forego previously-held Indian positions on Kashmir. This, Blackwill suggested, could take the shape of concessions on international mediation in Kashmir, or on unilateral trade. But the risk of the Accommodate approach

7 is that even if issues in Kashmir are resolved it is possible Pakistani animosity towards India may continue. The Fortress India strategy involves massive defense and security spending to secure India and its borders. The challenges of this approach are linked to Indias geography and culture Indias long coastlines, intractable terrains, and complex cultural and social fabric make it impossible to contain infiltration into India, said Blackwill. Where is India at, now? Currently, India appears to be using a hybrid of the last two Blackwill scenarios: 1) Threatening military reprisal and an attack on Pakistani military assets should any Indian target be attacked, and 2) India standing pat on Pakistan, i.e. do nothing to change behaviour. This assumes that India is getting stronger while Pakistans strength is on a downward trajectory. The risk of such an approach is that a terrorist attack such as that on Mumbai on 26/11 may occur at any point in time. Said Blackwill: "Pakistan seems to be the most dangerous bilateral relationship that India has today." http://casi.ssc.upenn.edu/iit/chaudhuri Does India Have a Grand Strategy?

Rudra Chaudhuri 01/17/2011 Despite the popular rhetoric of rising India, a common argument amongst scholars is that India lacks a grand strategy. Elites are said to rely on ad hocism, Indias preferred guiding star, on matters related to foreign policy. The absence of strategic thought is not only a given, but re-enforced by the lack of a visible foreign policy template that is seriously discussed, argued, and made available for public consumption. To be sure, Indias approach to issues of strategic importance alliances, use of military force, energy security is marred by both bureaucratic inertia and limited political direction. The dearth of coherence in what might be called the strategic process, fuels commentators criticism. However, the question beckons: is it really possible that India has meandered its way to the 21st century minus ideas and strategy? Rather than prescribing what genus of grand strategy India should adopt, I look at drivers informing policy in given cases. Specifically, I analyze Indias approach to the utility of force in international politics

8 and demonstrate that strategic decisions are not taken in a vacuum. A set of conditions informed by both material and normative factors shape the choices made by the political elite. Indeed, in the past sixty odd years, there have been only two instances where Indian leaders were forced to seriously think about the utility of force in international interventions outside of their immediate neighborhood: the Korean War in the early 1950s and the Iraq War in 2003. The change and tensions in approach in these two cases provides an insight of determinants that shape policy decisions. The Korean War: A Cold War Grand Strategy Much of the literature on Indias early strategic behavior suggests that the hazy prescriptions of nonalignment blinded Indian elites from identifying and dealing with issues of international importance. Non-alignment was seen as a wooly ideological project spearheaded by a Prime Minister who himself was drunk on utopian ideals. The polemics of strategy could hardly be expected to take center stage. However, notwithstanding the popular narrative, there was a design in the way Indian leaders thought through the decision to go to war. While India supported the UN resolution condemning North Korean aggression, it chose not to contribute troops for three reasons; the first of which was the importance and effect of the memory of colonial rule. The idea of entanglement in an international alliance led by the U.S., the lead actor in one of the two camps that divided the world, was hardly attractive to a newly independent state. Although authorized by the UN Security Council, the intervention was distinguished by the fact that it was U.S.-led at a time the UN was only emerging as a key supranational actor. In the eyes of the world, this was a U.S.-led mission. Second, the normative strains underlying Indias emerging strategic outlook were reinforced by real political concerns. Unimpressed by the Truman administration as a whole, Nehru was wary about contributing troops to a mission that might well have spilled beyond Near East Asia. What would the Soviets do? Most importantly, what would happen to Sino-Indian relations if China decided to intervene? After all, India could hardly risk sparking a war on its border by aggravating a newly formed Communist China, particularly with the tenuous situation in the West with Pakistan. Hence, material considerations and strategic realities necessitated treading cautiously in this time of crises. Furthermore, unlike Pakistan, which, at least in rhetoric, supported the Korean effort, and thereby volunteered itself to an alliance-like relationship with Washington, Nehru was acutely aware that alliances would increase dependency in favor of the stronger actor. Managing dependency by following what Tanvi Madan calls a "diversification strategy," better served an economically weak nation. Third, Indias elite was concerned about the impact joining the war might have on its international standing in the Eastern hemisphere. After all, China was not yet a member of the UN. Its premier Zhou En Lai had warned the U.S. that crossing the Yalu River would result in expanding the scope of the war. The fact that the West chose to ignore this warning was hardly Chinas fault. A rule-based society required that the considerations of Eastern states were as important as those in the West. India could not join an alliance that was selective in its construction of legitimacy.

9 The 2003 Iraq War: Engagement as a Grand Strategy From the outset, the idea that Indian contribution to the Coalition of the Willing was even considered by the U.S. administration is hard to comprehend. Why would Indian elites, often berated as those unwilling to let go of the intellectual strains underlying non-alignment, contemplate sending Indian troops to join an alliance to fight a controversial war vetoed by three out of five permanent members of the UN Security Council? To be sure, in July 2003, the Indian Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS), the highest policy-making body chaired by the Prime Minister, announced that India would not contribute troops. If anything, this indicated the continued centrality of a non-aligned foreign policy. That said, given that it took the BJP-led government five months to reach this decision, all the while unwilling to condemn the war but deplore it, as well as entertaining a stream of high ranking U.S. visitors to India, indicates that this issue was not summarily dismissed. Options related to joining the alliance were considered; indeed, in hindsight, both American and Indian diplomats concur that rather than posturing, the Indian government gave this serious attention. Much like the Korean affair, a three-pronged rationale shaped Indias ultimate decision and demonstrated both a pattern of behavior as well as tensions between older and newer sets of ideas. For a majority of strategic advisors and commentators, this was Indias golden moment. Joining the alliance would not only pave the way for so-called great power status, but also allow India to tap into the worlds largest energy markets and break the Cold War ice with Washington. Yet, the idea of joining an alliance led by the U.S. was hardly attractive. Managing dependency was in the minds of the political elite. Indeed, in the midst of the Iraq debate, the Prime Minister openly stated that India will never become a lackey of even the most powerful country in the world. Procontribution diplomats and Cabinet members, while excited by the opportunity to join an international alliance, were put off by the fact that the Indian contingent would essentially be subservient to U.S. Commanders. Indian military leaders could not be seen saluting to U.S. officers. The ideational strains embedded in Indias approach to the question of intervention and alliances were clear. Additionally, Indian elites were also acutely aware that the road to progress and growth required working closely with the U.S. administration; lifting a ban on the technology denial regime and attaining legitimacy for Indias nuclear status made this vital. These material concerns were not sidelined because of the disagreement regarding the Iraq intervention. Hence, a so-called middle-path was adopted, whereby India maintained the ability to say no while at the same time, strengthening its relationship with the Bush administration. The question of reputation also mattered. The failure of the U.S. to expand the perimeters of the ominous UN resolution 1483 authorizing UN member-states to support the U.S.-led mission to explicitly call for blue helmets had a detrimental impact on even those who supported intervention. Furthermore, apart from the obvious concern regarding the legalities of war, diplomats worried about how Middle Eastern states would react to Indian involvement.

10 In sum, the Iraq case demonstrated both continuity and change. India was willing to; at least, consider the hard thinking about the use of force. Indeed, the exercise demonstrated Indias approach to grand strategy, which is neither hijacked by the puritanical tentacles of non-alignment or the vague prescriptions of ad hocism. Instead, it is defined by what might best be called a strategy to manage dependency, which involved understanding the need for balance in dealing with super-powers and the imperative of reputation. Rudra Chaudhuri is a Lecturer in the Department of War Studies at Kings College London. India in Transition (IiT) is published by the Center for the Advanced Study of India (CASI) of the University of Pennsylvania. All viewpoints, positions, and conclusions expressed in IiT are solely those of the author(s) and not specifically those of CASI. 2011 Center for the Advanced Study of India and the Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania. All rights reserved. Indian Strategic Culture By krepon | 21 July 2010 | 3 Comments The fabric of any country is woven from many threads, and no country has a greater thread count than India. Some strands are more apparent than others, and a discerning eye can find patterns that evoke the key elements of a strategic culture. Writing on Indian strategic culture was threadbare until George Tanham came along. At a time when he could have preoccupied himself with tending to his farm and the girls (his cows), George decided to take a deep dive into India. Intellectual curiosity was woven into his DNA. He graduated from Princeton, and then served as an artillery officer in Europe during World War II. Information about his wartime service and acts of bravery had to be pried out of him. He then went on to earn a doctorate in history and political science from Stanford, teaching briefly at Cal Tech before spending a long and distinguished tenure at RAND, eventually heading up Project Air Force and serving as a Trustee. George belatedly became interested in Indian strategic culture because he believed that India could become a major player in international affairs if this crazy quilt of a country could get its act together. And if so, then what? To find out, he read what little he could find on Indian strategic thought, and then took four long trips to India, mostly camping out at the India International Centre in Delhi to conduct interviews. He asked simple but profound questions. No one was a better listener. The result of his labors appeared in 1992, Indian Strategic Thought: An Interpretive Essay. George held the view that those who were already assured of knowing the truth would be hard pressed to find it. He wrote about India in an elementary style, explaining mysteries to himself, and thus to others. The monograph received mixed reviews, with critics especially in India arguing that a neophyte could not possibly think deeply about such a profound subject. Some of the criticism may have been tinged with embarrassment, because there was so little in the way of Indian writing on the subject before George had the temerity to tackle it.

11 Two important elements of Indian strategic culture that George dwelled on were straightforward enough the impacts of geography and the British raj: Geography has imparted a view of the Indian subcontinent as a single strategic entity, with various topographical features contributing to an insular perspective and a tradition of localism and particularism. This dichotomy the simultaneous sense of security based on geography and the realization that geography has failed to keep India secure is partially offset by Indias ability to accommodate in various ways to invaders, thus creating and strengthening an evolving culture that plays a crucial role in modern Indias identity. The dichotomy has, however, led to feelings of pride and confidence intermingled with feelings of insecurity and risk. India has developed a predominantly defensive strategic orientation. Its large ground forces remain defensive and protective India retains a long-term, unshakable commitment to strategic independence and autonomy in its decisionmaking and military capabilities It wants to play the role of peacekeeper in the Indian Ocean and to be recognized in that role by the great powers. After the withdrawal of Great Britain from the subcontinent, independent India inherited the desire to emulate its former ruler: On land and sea, the British sought to deny other powers easy access to the subcontinent. They set up buffer states to secure the land periphery and help defend the core; sea control ensured that all other powers were denied the means to penetrate Indian waters or to challenge any strategic sea routes. Progressively, but inescapably, India leaders since independence have assumed the mantle of the British raj. Emulation meant, in Georges view, the likelihood that New Delhi would likely approach world-power status by developing nuclear and missile capabilities, a blue-water navy, and a military-industrial complex, all obvious characteristics of the superpowers; yet recognition as a great world nation (rather than as a superpower) was the paramount goal. Turning to the influence of Indian cultural and social structures and belief systems on Indian strategic culture, George wrote: Indias unique culture reinforced this unity and imparted, first, a tendency toward diversity and accommodation to existing realities and, second, a highly developed capacity to absorb dissimilar concepts and theories. The assumed superiority of Indian culture became a continuing thread running through Indian history, enabling India to accommodate to powerful foreign forces that were far more purposeful in the exercise of military power.

12 Then George jumped into the deep end of the pool by postulating answers to the painfully obvious question of why India, circa 1992, had produced little formal strategic thinking and planning. His conclusions were: First, because India has lacked political unity. Second, the Hindu concept of time, or rather the lack of a sense of time discourages planning. Third, Hindus consider life a mystery, largely unknowable and not entirely under mans control. In this view, fate, intuition, tradition, and emotions play important roles Mans control over his life is thus limited in Hindu eyes, and he cannot forecast or plan with any confidence. Georges writing helped the process of Indian adaptation along. There are now several first-rate books written by Indian authors on Indian strategic thinking and planning.
Search

K M Panikkar on Indias strategic omphaloskepsis 10.16.2009 Posted in Foreign Affairs The costly refusal to see beyond itself and the subcontinent An extract from Sardar K M Panikkars Annual Day address to the Indian School of International Studies on 13 February 1961: The study of international relations is fundamentally a study of power relationships. This, of course, has to be interpreted in terms not only of military power but also of political stability and leadership, industrial strength, and all the factors which contribute to the power of nations. The power relationships between nations are constantly changing, and unless a country understands and adjusts itself to the changes that are taking place around it, its own security will be seriously endangered. In our own time we have witnessed such changes, cataclysmic in character and revolutionary in effect, that the picture of international relations may be said to have been completely transformed in the course of two decades. It is only by a continuous and vigilant study of power relationships in the world that even the mightiest nations can maintain their position. Without a knowledge of the changes and dynamics of social life taking place elsewhere in the world no country can build up its own life. This is the primary object of international relations. Diplomatic relationships which every country now establishes with the ther independent nations of the world has this knowledge as its primary object. Earlier, since political interests were limited to ones own neighborhood, diplomatic relations never extended beyond countries which were closely connected with one another either by geography or by interests. As everyone knows, modern diplomacy developed in Italy and spread from there to the rest of Europe. Till the second half of the nineteenth century, even the independent countries of Asia did not consider it necessary to set up permanent diplomatic missions in other countries or to study the dynamics of power so far as other countries were concerned.

13 Neither the Moghuls nor the Marathas had any notion of the sources of strength of the European nations with whom they had to deal. The Chinese Admiral who challenged the might of Britain during the First Anglo-Chinese War knew nothing about the naval strength of Britain and firmly believed that he could defeat the British Navy with his fleet of junks. The result of this ignorance of the sources of power of other nations was that India had, for a long time, to remain subject to a foreign power while China was, for over a hundred years, the whipping-boy of European nations. From the earliest times, India lacked interest in the balance of power outside its own national frontiers. While China was continuously watchful of developments across its land frontiers and had developed a very efficient system of diplomatic relationship on a continental basis, the Indian idea of diplomacy was confined to states within the geographical limits of India. Within this area, at different times, India developed a system of international relations and diplomatic usage. But so far as areas outside the physical boundaries of India were concerned, we were content to live with the attitude of complacent ignorance. It is a well-known fact of history that the changes in the dynamics of power in the Hindu Kush Valley profoundly influence the politics of the Indo-Gangetic Valley. From the time of the first Aryan invasions this has been one of the determining factors of Indian political evolution. The emergence of a powerful state in the Kabul area, whether in the time of Kanishka, Mahmud of Ghazni or Ahmed Shah Durrani, profoundly influenced events within India; and yet, so far as the great states of the India-Gangetic Valley were concerned, they continued to remain ignorant of these developments and, therefore, were unable to take the necessary steps to safeguard their independence. In the time of Mahmud of Ghazni, every effort was made by that king to collect and evaluate information about the political situation in India and to estimate the sources of strength of the various Indian states. We know with what thoroughness this was done from Alberunis great work. In contrast, we may note that the great monarchiesrich, powerful, and well organized according to the standards of the timeof King Bhoja of Dhar and the Gurjara Pratiharas of Gujarat knew little or nothing of the revolutionary transformation which had taken place in the Kabul Valley and of the strength of the great state which Sabaktajin had established and Mahmud had inherited and enlarged. This may be compared with the policy which the policy which the British pursued from the beginning of the last century, when they established themselves as one of the imperial powers in India. The invasion of Egypt by Bonaparte was viewed as an event affecting the security of India. When Napoleon and Tsar Alexander reached an agreement at Tilsit, the British authorities in India immediately took steps to send a mission to Persia, the object of which was to find out the extent of that countrys defensive strength and to explore possibilities of entering into an alliance with its government. Sir John Malcolms report on Persia is still a classic. Similarly, the advance of Tsarist Russia towards Central Asia led to the British neutralization of Afghanistan. The British did not wait for enemies to penetrate as far as Panipat before taking countermeasures as the Indian rulers of the Gangetic Valley had been accustomed to do. They carefully studied the conditions across the borders, developed a large body of experts who studied the geography, language, political conditions, and economic structure of the areas which bordered on India or which were considered to be of vital importance to the defense of India. No area was left uncovered. The British Government in India had at its disposal men who had devoted most of their active life to the study of sensitive areas: the North-Western Frontier and adjacent areas, the

14 Persian Gulf and the Trucial Coast, Tibet and the Himalayan regions, Sinkiang, Alma Ata, and other areas of Central Asia. It was sufficient for them to cover the areas of special interest to India because the British Empire, as world power whose interests were spread over five continents, was able to take care of the rest. Our case today is different. We have to keep ourselves informed of developments in all parts of the world, not because we have vital interests everywhere, but because conditions in the world have so changed that events in the most distant parts may affect us in a manner which few of use realize. Undoubtedly for us the vital areas continue to be those immediately bordering India; and consequently the study of conditions in these areas is of permanent importance to us. But with changed economic, political and military conditions, other areas also emerge as vital and sensitive. At no time in Indias long history had Tibet and the North-Eastern Frontier become areas of vital concern to Indias defense. The geographical, political and social conditions of Tibet were sufficient guarantees for our safety from that quarter: while the North-Easter Frontier covered by dense forests and high mountains was also a dead frontier. Besides the Himalayas provided us with an almost impenetrable wall across which no invading force had ever approached India. Today, the emergence of a great military power on the other side of the Himalayas, which stretches from the Karakoram to the borders of Burma, has totally transformed the situation. This is only one example of the frequent changes in areas of international sensitivity, without a knowledge of which it is not possible at any time to formulate national policies. This has been the weakness of India in the past, this sense of isolation and refusal to see itself in relation to the states outside the geographical limits of the subcontinent. [International Studies 22:2 (1985) pp192-195, emphasis added]