s
book presents five specific scenarios, in which India had to make choices
with regards to decisions, during Menon's long illustrious career as a
diplomat. In each of these situations Menon shows that deciding factor was the
minmax strategy - minimising the damage and maximising the advantage, a concept
borrowed from game theory, since there are no right or wrong answers at the
time of taking decisions in matters of International politics, and the
advantages and disadvantages of the decisions become more visible years
later.
There
is a certain part in the introduction, upon which no non-partisan reader cannot
help but congratulate India, given their vast development over the last
twenty five years or so, not with standing their poverty issues.
"India
itself was very different from the India that had gained independence in 1947,
when the average life expectancy was twenty-six years, only about one-seventh
of the population was literate, and there had been half a century of near zero
growth in the economy under empire." Menon attributes India's success to
three of their prime-ministers, P.V. Narasimha Rao, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and
Manmohan Singh, who implemented strong policies which resulted in the country's
growth and stuck to them, irrespective of which side of the political divide
they were from. Here's a good lesson to our politicians, which essentially
means that a country can be turned back around within two decades if the
political will so desires it.
The
First chapter in this book, is on the Border Peace and Tranquility Agreement in
1993, with China. The decision here was the willingness of India to settle for
"both Chinese and Indian purposes to try to impose peace along the border
while leaving to the future the more politically difficult task of settling the
boundary." The challenge was that Ind
ia still carried the scars of the
1962 conflict, in which the victor was China.It was a question of permitting
bilateral relations in other areas while the boundary question remained
unsettled.
"The
process of LAC clarification has effectively has effectively stalled since
2002. India therefore does not have an agreed-upon delineation of the LAC with
China."
"Bilateral
trade between expanded sixty-seven times between 1998 and 2012, and China is
India's largest trading partner in goods... And there are more than 11,000
Indian students in China."
"Finding
the balance between rivalry and incentives for good behaviour, between
competition and cooperation, is among the hardest tasks in strategy."
Menon
credits Indian PMs Narasimha Rao and A.B. Vajpayee of the hard work they put
in, and their actions for the "greater good than immediate party political
advantage."
Since
then, with China's aim of becoming the number one in the world the situation is
changing, says Menon, and more nationalistic inclination is hinted as the
reason for the current situation in flux.
"..a
leadership that increasingly relies on nationalism for its legitimacy find it
easy to make the compromises necessary for a boundary settlement ( This is
equally true of India)." To me it appears that Menon hints at Narendra
Modi too, here.
The
Second chapter titled Natural Partners, is how the Civil Nuclear Initiative
with the United States materialised. India advanced in Nuclear and Space
technology, while they were under sanctions from the U.S. after their first
experiment in 1974. The gist of the Indian argument is presented at the start.
"That
India was still making progress in nuclear and space technology and was moving
toward becoming a player in this arena internationally had only strengthened
the voices of those in India who thought that anything worthwhile in the Indian
economy had to be done autonomously and indigenously, and further, that the
world would only with India, as an equal once the country had developed its
capacities on its own."
Seven
years after India declared itself a NWS (Nuclear Weapons State), she was ready
to work with the United States to get the NSG (Nuclear Supplies Groups ) to
permit civil Nuclear commerce with India, given that she was afflicted by an
energy crisis. This chapter explains why it was a race against time as India
was working with president Bush, whose term was drawing to a close. Besides
this PM Manmohan Singh's advisors were cautioning about how the U.S. has been
an unreliable partner in the past. All the necessary international legal
framework, including the consensus of the NSG and IAEA board was needed before
the end of Bush' second term. To aggravate matters the Left has withdrawn
support for the government and a vote of no confidence was scheduled in the Lok
Sabha on July 22nd, 2008.Manmohan Singh's resolve in seeing all through
to success is commended.
"..it
was Singh's dogged but quite persistence that sustained the initiative at every
stage and ultimately made all the difference. Personalities matter."( page
78)
While
Menon has succeeded in showing the challenges and how they were overcome, he
sometimes tends to go out on a limb to give character certificates, to people
of whom the public opinion is not so glowering. George W. Bush is one such
individual. Here's what Menon says of him.
"In
all our meetings with Bush I found him focused, clear on the issues, well
prepared, and willing to listen. I can only speculate that this son of
privilege, born to the blue-blooded in the US establishment, went to great
pains to appear ordinary, and succeeded. But the image concealed a sharp mind and
a genuine ability to connect with other people, as shown by his close and
productive relationships with Manmohan Singh ...When Bush and Singh were
together, they were relaxed to the point of laughing and joking with each
other. On the US side as well, personalities mattered."
The
most troubling chapter in this volume has to be the third which deals with
cross border terrorism from Pakistan and the Mumbai Attack. While it is a
pleasure to read about the calculated diplomacy which made India not to
retaliate for the 26/11 attacks on Mumbai ( Menon differed with this decision
at the time, he admits ), Menon concedes in a veiled threat that it is unlikely
that India would tolerate any further such attacks as not only the
circumstances has changed but even decision makers. Menon goes on to say that
where Pakistan is concerned there are multiple centers of power and the Army is
one such, with their nuclear arsenal under the military, the only NWS to have
it so. While personally I am not sympathetic towards India given their overly
Big-brother attitude in the region, they cannot be envied for their prospects
of prolonged intractable conflict with nonstate actors. Thus Menon finds the
method that of the Israelists, described as "mowing the grass" is
useful for India too. Menon concedes that their relations with Pakistan is an
utter failure and the best that can be done is managing the problem. One
important sentence needs highlighting here before I move to the next chapter.
To Quote:
"The
Saudis and Qataris had successfully used this tactic for years, exporting their
radicals to the rest of the Middle East and Afghanistan and Pakistan"
(page 105), "this" being a design to move Jihadi violence from
domestic soil to another country, from Pakistan to India as is being
speculated here by Menon, as he discusses motives for this attack.
The
fourth chapter is obviously the main reason for me to purchase this book, since
it is about our efforts to eradicate the LTTE terrorism, and I wanted to hear
the account from a third party, yet involved sufficiently to qualify commenting
with minimum prejudice. First thing I noted was that India's uninvited forceful
intervention is mentioned in typical diplomatic language.
"The
population of jaffna was under siege and without supplies and food. on June 5
(1987), the Indian Air Force air-dropped 25 tons of medicine and food in
Jaffna, informing the Sri Lankan government only just before the action. The
situation was deteriorating rapidly, and India's relations with this
strategically located neighbor were at considerable risk" (Page 130)
I
quote below a few notable sentences which need to be heard from him, as he
writes it here.
*
"It could be argued that India's action in 2009, which made Prabhakaran's
end inevitable and inspired the hands-off attitude of the international
community were a direct result of that one act by Prabhakaran, whose
involvement in the assassination was conclusively proved." (Page 132)
*
"Norway came closest to success in 2001, when the LTTE for the first time
suggested it might be willing to settle for less than a fully independent
Eelam. Cynics attribute this development to the success of the long-range
reconnaissance patrols of the SLA, which took down several LTTE commanders in
2000-2001. Optimists attribute it to fatigue with the war and a strong civil
cociety peace movement. Both are right. (page 136)
*"Particularly
memorable were midnight visits to Colombo with Pranab Mukherjee when we flew
into Colombo at 8 p.m., went straight to the Presidential Palace for a military
briefing by Fonseka and a political one by President Rajapakse, and had a long
conversation exploring options..." (page 140)
*"To
their credit, while the Rajapaksas negotiated hard to avoid limitations on
their ability to wage war against their mortal enemy, they did agree to allow
safe passage corridors and o create safe zones for civilians in January and
February (2009). Later in March they also agreed not to use heavy-caliber
weapons when the LTTE had trapped a large number of civilians with them in a
tiny area along the coast in the final stages of the war. More significantly,
the Rajapaksas implemented these commitments in practice"( page 140 )
True that this statements suggest that these measures on behalf of the
civilians were taken only at the behest of the Indians. This has to be taken
with due consideration for the fact the Indian career diplomat would need to
highlight what he would like to portray as his achievements. I am more inclined
to believe that the Sri Lankan government didn't have designs to inflict
untoward damages on the civilians, bu not adopting whatever safety mechanisms
possible, but would've held a high bar to negotiate, given that a low bar or a
wavering one would be detrimental to their military goals. Negotiating
with the Rajapaksa's wouldn't have been an easy affair. When reading this essay
I felt that while their was no love lost between the Indians and President
Rajapakse, there is plenty of backhand compliments to suggest that,
from a Sri Lankan perspective that him being in India's good books was not what
was most important to us.
*"...Norway
and the United States were attempting to secure a cease-fire, to negotiate
exile for Prabhakaran, and to explore other exit strategies that would
effectively keep the LTTE alive to fight another day, Politically or
Militarily. For politicians and leaders in India, whether in Tamilnadu or in
Delhi, this was not an acceptable stance or outcome." (page 141)
The
biggest criticism against President Rajapake is this:
*"While
he facilitated India's reconstruction and relief work, Rajapaksa could not
bring himself to be politically magnanimous in victory. To some extent he was
correct in telling us that there was no one he could work with on the Tamil side.
Such Tamil politicians as had survived the war in the Tamil National Alliance
were either complicit with or indebted to the LTTE and the most radical
elements in the diaspora. But Rajapaksa did not use his effective and
overwhelming power to promote a moderate Tami leadership" (page 149)
While this allegation is difficult quantify, personally the more pertinent
question would be whether a majority of this State believes that a political
solution is needed. This is visible every time that this matters gains
currency, and such a solution to date can only be forced upon the majority of
the population. Whether it will change in time to come is another matter. I am
afraid that India is not sensitive to this aspect of the issue.
To
conclude I cite the following quotes:
*"The
Sri Lankan civil war is one of the few instances I can think of where terrorism
( but not separatism ) was successfully eradicated by purely military
means." ( Page 151)
And I couldn't help but recalling the ridiculing our self styled think
tank Nalin de Silva had to undergo when he said this is his own inimitable way.
*"I
found that as defense secretary, Gothabaya had a clear view of the Sri Lanka's
interests, one that was compatible with ours.....At no stage was exclusivity
sought or promised. And realistically speaking, it would be unreasonable to
expect exclusivity. For Sri Lanka, as for India's other smaller
neighbors, using China to get India's attention and invest in the relationship
and using India to get Chinese investment and support is a productive
strategy, empirically proven in the past. For India not to recognize and deal
with this fact of international life would be foolish." ( pages 150--151)
"Why
India pledges No First Use of Nuclear Weapons" is the fifth chapter is in
this book. It elaborates the doctrine that National Democratic Alliance (NDA)
government adopted, upon testing nuclear weapons publicly in 1998.
"[T]he
fundamental purpose of Indian nuclear weapons is to deter the use and threat of
use of nuclear weapons by any State or entity against India and its forces.
India will not be the first to initiate a nuclear strike, but will respond with
punitive retaliation should deterrence fail;
.
.. India will not resort to the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons against
States which do not possess nuclear weapons, or are not aligned with nuclear
weapon powers."
This is a position that is hard to
disagree in my honest opinion, especially given that it has to contain a
country in constant turmoil such as Pakistan as its neighour. There is a
section titled "India-Pakistan Deterrence" which clearly elaborates
the unenviable position that India finds itself with regards to Pakistan.
This excellent book with a few pages
dedicated to "a final word" in which he hopes that "If these
extended essay have left readers with some sense of the complexity and joys of
foreign policy decision making, of the balancing interests that it requires,
and of minimizing harm and maximizing gain, in situations where not all
considerations are entirely synchronized, then this book has served its
purpose". To me it has, in its entirety.
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