Choices: Inside the Making of India’s Foreign Policy

166 Pages·2016·12.67 MB·English

by  Shivshankar Menon

CHOICES
Geopolitics in the 21st C entury
For a quarter c entury since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the world has
enjoyed an era of deepening global interdependence, characterized
by the absence of the threat of g reat power war, spreading democ-
racy, and declining levels of confl ict and poverty. Now, much of that
is at risk as the regional order in the Middle East unravels, the secu-
rity architecture in Eur ope is again u nder threat, and great power
tensions loom in Asia.
The Geopolitics in the 21st Century series, published u nder the aus-
pices of the Order from Chaos proj ect at Brookings, will analyze the
major dynamics at play and offer ideas and strategies to guide criti-
cal countries and key leaders on how they should act to preserve and
renovate the established international order to secure peace and
prosperity for another generation.
CHOICES
INSIDE THE MAKING OF
INDIA’S FOREIGN POLICY
SHIVSHANKAR MENON
Brookings Institution Press
Washington, D.C.
Copyright © 2016
THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION
1775 Mas sa chus etts Aven ue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036
www .b rookings. edu
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced
or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission in
writing from the Brookings Institution Press.
The Brookings Institution is a private nonprofi t organ ization devoted
to research, education, and publication on import ant issues of do-
mestic and foreign policy. Its principal purpose is to bring the high-
est quality in de pend ent research and analys is to bear on current and
emerging policy prob lems. Interpretations or conclusions in Brook-
ings publications should be understood to be solely those of the
authors.
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication data
Names: Menon, Shivshankar, 1949– author.
Title: Choices : inside the making of India’s foreign policy /
Shivshankar Menon.
Description: Washington, D.C. : Brookings Institution Press,
2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifi ers: LCCN 2016030037 (print) | LCCN 2016036378
(ebook) | ISBN 9780815729105 (pbk. : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9780815729112 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: India— Foreign relations—21st century. |
India— Foreign Relations—1984–
Classifi cation: LCC DS449 .M46 2016 (print) | LCC DS449
(ebook) | DDC 327.54— dc23
LC reco rd available at https:// lccn. loc . gov / 2016030037
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Typeset in Sabon and Scala Sans
Composition by Westchester Publishing Serv ices
Contents
List of Maps ix
Acknowl edgments xi
Introduction 1
1 Pacifying the Border: The 1993 Border Peace and
Tranquility Agreement with China 7
2 Natu ral Partners: The Civil Nuclear Initiative with
the United States 34
3 Restraint or Riposte? The Mumbai Attack and
Cross-B order Terrorism from Pakistan 60
4 Force Works: Sri Lanka Eliminates the Tamil Tigers, 2009 82
5 Why India Pledges No First Use of Nuclear Weapons 105
6 A Final Word 124
Notes 139
Index 147
List of Maps
India-C hina Border 6
India-C hina Border, Eastern Sector 9
India-C hina Border, Western Sector 10
Sri Lanka and the Tamil Eelam 85
ix
Acknowle dgments
THE SEED OF THIS BOOK was planted in a study group on Indian foreign
policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School in the cold spring of
2015. I am grateful to Nick Burns and Graham Alison at Harvard Uni-
versity, to Richard Samuels at MIT, and to Strobe Talbott and Martin
Indyk at the Brookings Institution, who made it poss i ble for me to spend
time on this proj ect.
Thanks are also due to friends who were good enough to read and
comment on the manuscript in its vario us shape-s hifting versions—y ou
know who you are, and I s hall not shame you by naming you.
Without Ranjana Sengupta’s eag le eye, ideas, and editing, this would
be a much poorer book. Valentina Kalk and Bill Finan at the Brookings
Institution Press, and Angela Piliouras, made publishing a book easy
for a fi rst- time author. They are not responsible for what follows.
But most of all I am grateful to Mohini, without whom not just the
book but life itself would not mean anything.
xi
Introduction
ALL GOVERNMENTS CLAIM ETERNAL consistency and success. Some even
claim omniscience. And yet the essence of governance is choice. Choice
involves uncertainty, risk, and immediacy; those who must make the
choices operate in the cont emporary fog that envelops events rather than
from the certainty and clarity that come with time, distance, and refl ec-
tion. Nowhere is this more true than in foreign policy decisionmaking.
Diplomacy offers choices, and t hose choices must be negotiated with
other sovereign actors not subject to a part ic u lar state’s customs, laws,
and restraints.
The chapters that follow explore fi ve instances in which the Indian
state made choices and entered into negotiations with long-t erm implica-
tions for India’s foreign policy. They examine the options that were avail-
able at the time, why the choices w ere made in the way they were, and
the consequences of those choices. But the reader should be aware that
these fi ve instances are neither a complete nor necessarily an archetypical
set of choices; rather, they w ere selected b ecause they w ere the ones with
which I was directly associated.
MY GENERATION OF INDIAN diplomats was blessed in many ways. Born
free Indians, educated and trained in in dep en dent India, and having
joined the Indian Foreign Serv ice in the heady days a fter victory in the
India-P akistan War of 1971, we have seen India transformed before
our eyes. As India grew its economy and accumulated power, it gained
agency in the international system, its options increased, and the scope
1
2 Introduction
and signifi cance of the choices it made steadily expanded. We may have
been uniquely blessed. As practice and prec e dent continue to accumu-
late, thence to harden into bureaucratic carapace, and as foreign and
security policymaking in India becomes more institutionalized, oppor-
tunities for radical change, individual initiative, and innovation w ill di-
minish. Future generations of Indian diplomats are unlikely to enjoy the
freedom of action and choice that the cohort with which I trained and
worked did, except in times of g reat turmoil and upheaval.
I had the good fortune to be associated with or to participate in the
events surrounding the foreign policy choices discussed h ere, either in
the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi or as foreign secretary
and then national security adviser to the prime minister between 2006
and 2014; earlier I had served as ambassador or high commissioner to
China, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Israel. Seven years working with the
Atomic Energy Commission in Mumbai and in Vienna also contributed
to an interest in the politics and diplomacy of atomic energy.
These choices relate to the post– Cold War period, when the certainties
of a bipolar world had been replaced by the unipolar moment, with the
United States as the sole superpower; when the rise of China was evident
but not yet certain; and when each of India’s neighbors was undergoing
signifi cant transitions. Many of us argued at the time that the end of the
Cold War had opened up opportunities for Indian foreign and security
policies to break through previously hard ideological and alliance barri-
ers. India itself was very diff er ent from the India that had gained ind e-
pen dence in 1947, when the average life expectancy was twenty-s ix years,
only about one- seventh of the population was literate, and there had
been half a century of near zero growth in the economy u nder empire.
After ind ep en dence, India’s steady, if slow, accumulation of economic
power and social change was accompanied, particularly a fter the growth
spurt of the 1980s, by the beginning of the accumulation of hard power
capabilities. India’s army had been honed by four wars, including one
ending in defeat; the navy was beginning to venture out of coastal waters;
and nuclear weapons capabilities and options had been preserved and
built up.
By the mid-1990s, middle- class Indian citizens’ faith in India’s future
as a great power was buttressed by a realistic prospect of how this could
come about. India was changing at an unprec e dented rate and in ways
that were scarcely imaginable when my generation entered the Foreign
Ser vice in the early 1970s. The economic crisis of 1990–91 enabled