Books

IMPOSSIBLE ALLIES by C. Raja Mohan. India Research Press, New Delhi, 2006.

THE subject matter of this book, the recent civilian nuclear agreement negotiated between India and the United States, in essence should be with us for some time – prominent in debate, speculation and political calculation in both countries. The issues are also likely to elicit interest elsewhere since the nuclear agreement between the two ‘estranged democracies’ has a bearing on the global security order insofar as it implies modifications to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT), the consequences of which will be visible only as we go along.

For a start, Impossible Allies serves as a handy source-material for issues in focus, especially for the interested reader. Every important development in India-US transactions since the Vajpayee government began dealing with the first Bush administration, including the flavour of discussion right down to the last days before the signing of the ‘era-transforming’ deal between the Manmohan Singh regime and the second Bush administration, have been elaborated here.

Indeed, the text is replete with details of key media briefings and press notes emanating from both capitals. This sometimes makes for grim reading for those closely tracking India-US relations; newspaper headlines of the recent past would be fresh in their minds even as they thumb through Raja Mohan’s work. Nevertheless, this aspect of the book can be said to be of aid to those not au fait with issues presented here but keen to enter a new discussion. Unfortunately, the volume seems to have been produced in too much of a hurry as if to catch the deadline of Bush’s March visit to New Delhi.

This has affected the writing as well. Were it not for the apparent concern with cutoff dates, the author may have been afforded the opportunity to dilate on his basic premise, viz. that a ‘structural’ change has occurred in the global order and it is to this that the Bush administration as well as the Manmohan Singh government were consciously responding when they attempted the unthinkable in seeking to modify the NPT, a fulcrum of the international security order.

As it turns out, the hypothesis is asserted right through the text but no attempt is made to justify the formulation through careful explanation. It is of course self-evident that a structural change of tectonic proportions occurred in the international system in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union. But in endorsing at face value the military, strategic and political doctrines that have found favour during the interregnum of Bush Jr., the book seems to suggest that a second structural heave-ho also occurred (though this is not explicitly stated), and it is to the latter that Bush and Manmohan Singh have sought to respond.

(If on the other hand, what we see now is not a second structural transformation but the mere filling out of the ‘structural’ reworking of the world following the dissolution of the USSR, the author’s line of reasoning is even less likely to hold, for the basic features of the new era he identifies are not necessarily related to the breakdown of the ideological system in eastern Europe.)

In Raja Mohan’s reading, some of the key elements of today’s world – justifying the description of structural shift – may said to be the rise of ideologies that promote terrorism in the world; the increased importance of China in the world system; the near-simultaneous prominence of India on account of its rapid rates of growth, significantly under the banner of democracy; and the contemporaneous decline of the traditional European powers.

Each one of these links is a legitimate subject of scholarly interest. But do each of them act in a mutually reinforcing way to make history move in a given direction at this moment in time, adding up to what may be termed as structural change? The book may have gained in value if these and related issues had been explored. The other important question requiring discussion is: if a structural shift of significant magnitude has indeed occurred, what specifics in the situation, each for Washington and New Delhi, have made the two capitals overcome decades of distrust to move in tandem on issues that will have implications for the international security order?

Vital from an Indian perspective, there is a third question – what will India need to give up in its traditional matrix of international understanding, regionally and globally, to make its new-found understanding with the US stick, and will that sacrifice be worth it? This question may not have arisen had the author (not unlike his ideological and intellectual adversaries on the left!) not viewed the civilian nuclear agreement in the terms that he has, i.e. as a grand overarching concord with international ramifications for power balance in the world rather than a bilateral accord between India and the US that may possess broad implications of an international nature but does not disturb fundamentally India’s field of autonomy of action.

It is intriguing that the book singularly fails to record any mention of the rubric of the ‘new American century’ on which considerable intellectual capital has been expended in the US, and of course elsewhere. The conceptual framing of this idea appeared in Republican circles before September 11 and continued seamlessly thereafter, spawning crucial Bush-era doctrines such as ‘pre-emption’ and ‘regime change’ that have unleashed a furious debate in America and outside and by which the author seems to set store.

A simpler way to look at Bush era developments might be to look at history in a direct way – suggesting that President Bush turned radical on international security questions after the September 11 attacks and his counter-actions show that he effaced distinctions between a ‘terrorist’ state (most of them America’s allies) and ‘non-state actors’ employing terrorism. This naturally has implications for nuclear theology, including for ABM. If the logic of these changes led to the US casting a favourable eye on India, the moment suited India just fine as it was chafing under intolerable technology-denial regimes for over three decades. But the author has chosen to describe this marriage of convenience which, of course, is perfectly defensible, in the colours of a grand narrative of structural change in the world without offering any serious explanation.

If Raja Mohan had the time, he may have liked to attempt this, as he possesses the appropriate credentials for the job. But publishers can sometimes be demanding. The hurried job has also made for hasty editing; thus we get ‘deplomacee’ (p. 40) and a host of errors in footnotes relating to dates, among others. The book was publicly released just before Bush arrived in India but there is a reference in it to the month of March (2006) in the past tense! The writing style is also patchy, varying from the deadly serious to gratuitously informal. To wit, the political class in the country is wary whenever a prime minister visits Washington lest he give away the store while there! This is astonishing, coming from this author. The record of Indian prime ministers has been quite the contrary in dealing with the US, and who knows this better than Raja Mohan.

Anand K. Sahay

 

THE 21ST CENTURY AMBASSADOR: Plenipotentiary to the Chief Executive by Kishan S. Rana. Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2005.

FORMER Ambassador Kishan S. Rana, a distinguished Indian Foreign Service officer and now a noted scholar of international relations, undoubtedly has the credentials to write about ‘The 21st Century Ambassador’. The first thing that strikes one about the book is the control over language. One normally expects writings by former bureaucrats to be in turgid prose, full of long sentences with endless caveats and an air that pretends to allow the reader a glimpse into a secret world (J.N. Dixit was a notable exception). Not so Rana, who is able to write about complex, nuanced issues in a manner understandable even to a novice to diplomacy.

This book, as the title suggests, deals with the role of the ambassador in the modern world. There is a school of thought that argues that with the development of the Internet and other communication technologies, the ‘Plenipotentiary to the Chief Executive’ has been reduced to little more than a ceremonial post office. It argues that with the proliferation of 24 hour news organisations and other forms of media, political masters back home often receive information faster than through the traditional channels of the foreign office. In fact, Rana cites the example of an Egyptian envoy to the United States, who lamented: ‘CNN is the enemy of today’s ambassador. We are always behind. Often I am awakened in the middle of the night with a call from home. I turn to CNN immediately to see what’s happened while I was sleeping.’

The proponents of the theory of ambassadorial irrelevance also argue that in this age of globalisation, chief executives meet their counterparts at multilateral forums as well as during the more traditional bilateral visits, thereby establishing a personal rapport which makes ambassadors virtually superfluous. Moreover, the domain of external affairs ministries has been considerably reduced with many governmental departments dealing directly with their foreign counterparts. Most of these arguments are based on developments in the European Union where traditional diplomatic tasks of conducting formal negotiations, briefing home governments and promoting trade are to some extent now handled by governmental departments/ministries other than the external affairs ministry.

Rana takes note of all these arguments, particularly those that relate to the European Union, and in his own gentle style, but with forceful impact, negates them. He notes that Germany’s Paschke Report of 2000 that examined the role of bilateral diplomacy among EU states, accepted some of the points about the changed context of diplomacy in Europe. Indeed, the report went on to draw a much longer list of ‘new challenges’ that includes public diplomacy, promoting Germany as a destination for investment and business, keeping an overall view of the relations with the rest of Europe, coordinating individual aspects and analysing political aspects, and consular functions.

Reinforcing the relevance of the institution of ambassador, Rana argues that in the modern changing world, which is still in a transitional stage, ‘...countries exert themselves to maximise their foreign policy options, applying the core calculus of self-interest. This gives a centrality to diplomacy.’ The Soviet Union’s long serving envoy to the United States, Anatoly Dobrynin, former US Ambassador to India Frank Wisner and India’s J.N. Dixit could serve as case studies in support of Rana’s thesis that the institution of ambassador is still relevant and important. In fact even a cursory look at recent Indian diplomacy will attest to the significance of the institution of the ambassador if one is to analyse the role played by India’s representative in Washington, Ronen Sen, in promoting the Indo-US relationship.

But Rana also recognises that most countries, presumably India included, require adjusting to the demands of modern diplomacy by reforming their external affairs ministries and further empowering ambassadors. Rana believes that the ambassador should now be seen as a kind of chief executive officer, who will actively promote his nation’s interests and be held accountable for the implementation of his government’s policy. The book is sprinkled with several achievements of serving and retired diplomats to show how diplomacy has evolved over the years. Maybe a few negative examples would have been equally illustrative.

The book, based on the author’s decades of experience, his meticulous research, detailed interviews, and conceptual clarity is a must read not only for the practitioners of diplomacy (at any level), but also for anyone who is curious about diplomacy and its role in the modern world.

Nandan Unnikrishnan

 

ENGAGING WITH THE WORLD: Critical Reflections on India’s Foreign Policy edited by Rajen Harshe and K M Seethi. Orient Longman, New Delhi, 2005.

THE present world order is so globalised that the line of economic linkages between states has shifted from calibrated to complete integration. Similarly, on the diplomatic front the contour of linkages between states has moved from selective to comprehensive engagement. In this transitory world order, getting completely integrated and comprehensively engaged, India is negotiating with the rest while itself undergoing transition of status from a middle ranging regional power to a major one. At this defining juncture perhaps, few works on foreign policy of any country can be more relevant than this book which tries to look at all possible facets of India’s engagement with the world in the post Cold War context.

Bringing together essays by well-known scholars associated with South Asian and International Relations studies, the volume grapples with several issues concerning India’s foreign policy and tries to address them as such: policy coherence to meet the global opportunities and challenges; sensitivity to socio-economic priorities; relevance of non-alignment policy for realization of vital national interest, contribution and capacity in building Third World solidarity; relevance of Third World solidarity for strategic priorities and requirements; dynamics of relationships with major powers; regional cooperation; building capacity in the maritime neighbourhood; South Asian implications of the Gujral doctrine; strategic posture and choice vis-à-vis the distant neighbourhood including Africa, West Asia and Southeast Asia; correlation between nuclearisation and regional stability in South Asia; security lessons from the Kargil conflict, and so on.

The introduction by Rajen Harshe and K.M. Seethi situates India’s foreign policy in ‘a defining historical moment of world politics,’ characterized as ‘a state of flux’ entailing ‘the end of cold war’ and unfolding a process of ‘an intricately intertwined association between capitalism and globalization.’ The authors analyse ‘elements of continuity and change’ that have ‘shaped India’s efforts in negotiating with the external world.’

The introductory chapter is followed by six sections of five articles each which constitute the real text dealing with the theoretical as well as empirical questions that concern both India’s foreign policy behaviour patterns and options in the post Cold War era. To begin with the first segment of the book on the global setting, A.R. Ramakrishnan in his article ‘Neoliberal Globalism and India’s Foreign Policy: Towards a Critical Thinking’, argues: ‘The shift in the sphere of India’s public policy, including foreign policy, in substantive terms is not from ideology to pragmatism, as has often been described, but from an earlier statist ideology and practice to a neoliberal ideology and practice.’

The next segment on the nuclear question basically looks at the issues in the larger context of regional security. K.M. Seethi characterises India’s nuclear posture as ‘inherently contradictory and bereft of any moral credibility.’ In exploring India’s dynamics of relationships with major powers, Rajen Harshe discusses the ‘potential cooperation between Russia, China and India to challenge the global dominance of the US-led western powers over globalisation.’ Examining India’s neighbourhood, including South and South East Asia, M.S. John looking at the Indo-Pak problem from the ‘conflict resolution perspective’, characterizes the Kashmir question as a ‘protracted conflict crossing the existing theoretical thresholds.’

The fifth segment dealing with regional cooperation contains K.R. Singh’s suggestive submission regarding the necessary shift from subcontinental to a maritime approach in India’s foreign policy. The final segment, which explains and evaluates India’s policy options and postures towards its relatively distant neighbourhood, including West Asia and Africa, has Rajen Harshe’s analysis of ‘the need to recast Indo-African ties in the current phase of liberalisation initiated in India.’ Thus the book, which could also have included a separate chapter on India’s strategic ambition and choice vis-à-vis the issue of veto power in the UN Security Council, is an exhaustive exposition of political, ideological, security and economic aspects of India’s foreign policy.

If M.S. Rajan’s India in World Affairs was a pioneering work on India’s foreign policy in the initial phase of Cold War, this book helps set the trajectory for strategic analysts and practitioners to carry forward their work in the post Cold War context.

Sandipani Dash

 

INDIA AND EMERGING ASIA edited by R.R. Sharma. New Delhi, Sage, 2005.

R.R. Sharma engages with the rising strategic importance of Asia in the 21st century and India’s role in contributing to this process. The core finding of the volume is that ‘Asian identity’ is an uneasy construction. For instance, he believes that the forceful imposition of democracy on Asia by external powers prevented the creation of an effective democratic culture in the different countries. Sharma also dwells on the changed perception of security whereby, apart from the conventionally perceived external threats to the sovereignty of a nation, internal threats to national security are also taken into account. He then concentrates on the effects of a shift of US policy from a multilateral security order to unilateralism of an aggressive military nature on two strategic regions of Asia, namely Southeast and Central Asia.

The chapter written jointly by S.D. Muni and C. Raja Mohan on India’s options in a changing Asia describes the diplomatic opportunities opening up for India. It explains how India’s emergence as an economic power has given New Delhi the confidence to effectively engage the major powers and balance its interests between rivals like Israel and the Arab nations. The authors also suggest how India can further improve its diplomatic initiatives with the rest of the world. One interesting suggestion, emanating from former prime minister Vajpayee, is how development of economic ties with Southeast Asia can result in economic benefits for India’s northeastern states.

Varun Sahni and Rajesh Rajagopalan both discuss the likely security arrangements that could arise in Asia and which would best suit India’s interests. Manoj Joshi details how Pakistan’s faulty strategic priorities of have created colossal problems for it and what India can do to improve Pakistan’s condition. Chintamani Mahapatra narrates how the sole superpower, the US, has engaged with the rising Asian powers – namely China, India and Japan – in the post-Second World War era. While Ajay Patnaik describes Central Asian security from a political and military perspective, Gulshan Sachdeva focuses on economic developments in Central Asia. K.V. Kesavan has contributed a chapter on the changing security perspectives of Japan.

This book presents various innovative ideas on the situation in post-Cold War Asia. In his chapter on economic reforms and the role of India in the SAARC, Mahendra P. Lama points out how attempts to solve the India-Pakistan problem have primarily concentrated on military and political confidence-building measures (CBMs), ignoring the role of business and economics. Writing on the effect of globalization on West Asia, Girijesh Pant moves away from the conventional approach of looking at the region from a military and political perspective, and instead tries to differentiate between the beneficiaries of globalization and sections that have been marginalized by the process, and how resistance by the marginalized is itself being globalized. Finally, a much needed perspective on security from a human and feminist perspective comes from Anuradha M. Chenoy.

Despite such valuable contributions, the book is not without its deficiencies. An oft repeated argument in this book is the need to build multilateral security alliances among the various Asian countries. The complexities of building an effective security alliance in a diverse continent like Asia would have been clearer had at least one chapter been devoted to attempts by other regions to undertake a similar mission. During the Kosovo crises, Europe, which according to R.R. Sharma’s own admission does not face as great an identity crisis as Asia, failed to take effective decisions on the Balkans conflict. Similarly, we needed some discussion on security from the perspective of China, described as a potential superpower. S.D. Muni and C. Raja Mohan’s contention that lending legitimacy to extremist forces like the Maoists in Nepal cannot be in India’s long term interest is contentious. Do we not need to preserve at least minimum contact with such movements? In a situation where the Islamic movement Hamas has triumphed in elections in Palestine, the need to engage extremist movements must also be judged on the extent of popular support they enjoy and the likelihood of such movements gaining political legitimacy through democratic elections. But overall, India and Emerging Asia is a collection worth reading.

Shelly Johny

 

BANGLADESH: The Next Afghanistan? by Hiranmay Karlekar. Sage, New Delhi, 2005.

THE footage of WTC towers fading into a cloud of dust and debris must surely rank among the most lasting and enduring images of the current decade. But that was not the end of the world. In fact, out of that smoke rose another episode of world domination. Ultimately militant Islam must bite the dust, not because it is pitted against the US, the strapping superpower, but because we as human beings crave for paradise here on earth.

The all too obvious fact is that the destruction of WTC towers failed to weaken the US in any significant way. On the contrary, the senseless devastation generated much sympathy for the US, turning a huge swathe of humanity suspicious of Islam. The perpetrators of 9/11 may not have expected such a turn of events, that their strike against the superpower would further strengthen, instead of weakening it. We can now hardly deny an unease with militant Islam, not because of any religious bias but because many think it poses a decisive threat to modernity itself.

Bangladesh: The Next Afghanistan? analyses the threat of militant Islam with the perspective firmly focused on Indian interests. At first glance comparing Bangladesh to Afghanistan may appear unfair to the former which, though mired by militant Islamic movements, does retain a semblance of sanity in its social fabric. Early on, Hiranmay Karlekar explains his choice of title, ‘The question mark against the title of this book – emphasizes the fact that Bangladesh is by no means irrevocably set to become a country like Afghanistan under Taliban rule. There is, however, a serious danger of its becoming not only that but also a global exporter of terrorism…’

Karlekar details a peaceful and progressive Islam in the period when oil was yet to be discovered and the pashas yet to embark on their journey of promoting misdeeds in the name of Allah. It is pertinent that a book on Islamic terrorism should begin by talking about the peaceful nature of Islam. Why? Because in these hypocritical times, one is damned if one rails against militant Islam and damned if one does not. In criticizing militant Islam, one promptly gets branded as communal and if not, as a terrorist appeaser. Not that Karlekar’s views on Islam and its modern militant offshoot are doctored to appease any particular lobby. Karlekar is objective throughout and takes care to back his case with hard data.

He presents arguments as to why the world, especially India, should worry about creeping fundamentalism in Bangladesh. Little over three decades have passed since India helped Bangladesh secure its freedom from Pakistan. The clock has now moved a full circle, in the sense that the secular ethos of Bangladesh’s liberation struggle has faded into the mists of history and the country now faces a danger of slipping into the quagmire of Islamic fundamentalism. Karlekar presents strong evidence that the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), currently in power, is hand and glove with terror networks out to turn the nation into another Afghanistan.

The second chapter begins with the deadly terrorist attack that took place in the heart of Dhaka on 21 August 2004. Explicating the motive behind the terrorist strike, Karlekar writes, ‘Had the attack succeeded, the entire top leadership of the Awami League, including Sheikh Hasina Wajed, its President, who had been prime minister of Bangladesh from 1996 to 2001, would have been killed.’ Worse than the attack, Karlekar points out, was the shoddiness of the investigation that followed. Instead of vigorously pursuing the perpetrators, the entire government machinery did its best to obfuscate the investigation process. The way the terrorists were allowed to escape prosecution is by itself proof that Bangladesh’s soft state, mired in ineffective governance, is no match for the highly motivated forces of militant Islam.

The silence in the policy corridors about fundamentalism in Bangladesh is not confined to that country alone; politicians in India, are similar. Karlekar discusses in some detail the problem of illegal migration from Bangladesh, as a consequence of which the demographic makeup of bordering Indian states has undergone significant transformation. But the politics of minority appeasement in India is so convoluted that politicians here dare not come clean on any issue even remotely Islamic. Karlekar highlights Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s widely reported statement that anti-national activities were rampant in unauthorized madrasas (the West Bengal CM was later forced to retract under pressure from his own party).

Worse from an Indian point of view is the fact that while minority appeasement remains the hallmark of Indian politicians, the BNP politicos in Bangladesh are taking an increasingly strident stance. Karlekar quotes the BNP foreign minister, Morshed Khan, where he reminds India that while Bangladesh is ‘India-locked’, Delhi too needed to remember that its northeastern states are ‘Bangladesh locked’. It is clear that if Bangladesh unravels into a theocratic state, it will pose a serious threat to India. But before India tackles the Bangladeshi threat it has to set its own house in order evolving policy consensus on illegal migrants and finding ways to regulate the unauthorized madrasas.

Nand K. Tiwari

 

PAKISTAN: Democracy, Development and Security Issues edited by Veena Kukeraja and M.P. Singh. Sage, New Delhi, 2005.

Franz Kafka died well before the birth of Pakistan but his portrayal of a Kafkaesque society captures the country accurately. Metamorphosis, Kafka’s nightmarish story of a man who overnight transforms into a beetle, might well serve as an analogy to describe Pakistan’s current state. The makeover Pakistan has undergone in the last decade or so is almost as catastrophic as the one that transpires in a single night in Kafka’s novel.

The book under review, Pakistan: Democracy, Development and Security Issues is a compilation of articles that take a fresh look at matters, political and social, that have led Pakistan to the traumatic juncture it finds itself in today. M.P. Singh and Veena Kukreja have done a commendable job in their choice of articles, replete with hard data and analysis about almost every aspect of Pakistani politics. The picture that emerges is rather bleak – of a nation that because of its misguided past today faces the prospect of a traumatic future.

The opening lines in the introduction by M. P. Singh and Veena Kukreja accurately sum up Pakistan’s dilemma: ‘Half a century after its creation, Pakistan remains "a nation still in the making." It continues to be politically unstable, and is struggling to establish viable institutions and a viable political system.’ After all, the Pakistani society has consistently failed to sprout coherent political movements, more throwing up congeries of local strongmen or clan chieftains seeking state patronage and masquerading as political parties. Equally troubling is that its society, mired in medieval Islamism, shows little inclination to reform.

In the opening chapter, Mohammad Wasim seeks to analyse the causes for failure of democracy in Pakistan. In ‘Pakistan since the 1999 coup’, Veena Kukreja puts her finger on the most symptomatic facet of Pakistan, ‘In reality, what he (General Musharraf) intends is that democracy in Pakistan will be a government of the army, by the army, for the army.’ It was certainly the height of Musharraf’s chutzpah, when he violated his pledge to step down as army chief at the end of 2004. One can only speculate whether Musharraf will ever depart and pave the way for a democratic polity.

In ‘Islamic ideology and the failed state?’ Saleem M.M. Qureshi finds the idea of an Islamic state a misnomer arguing that an Islamic state can only be brought into being through state terrorism. He writes, ‘It can be safely concluded that in Iran neither the Islamic state nor clerical rule shows any possibility of longevity. It may take another bloody revolution to replace the clerics and all the indications are there that it will happen.’ But Pakistan’s political conundrum is far more complicated than that of Iran, as its clerics are not in power themselves; they are merely being used as pawns by an omnipotent army.

Tariq Rahman, (‘Language, Power and Ideology in Pakistan’) explicates the divisive politics of language in that country. Ayesha Siddiqa, in ‘Political Economy of National Security’ focuses on the profligate wastage of national wealth that goes on in Pakistan in the name of national security. She writes, ‘My own estimates indicate that there is wastage of about 30 per cent in the annual defence budget.’ Lawrence Ziring in ‘Terrorism in Historical Perspective’ succinctly presents the story behind the rise of Islamic terrorism in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

J.N. Dixit is at his analytical best in ‘South Asian Cooperation: Post-11 September’, providing a point-by-point delineation of the reasons why the South Asian nations are at a crossroads today. Subsequently, in ‘Pakistan as a Long-Term Security Threat’ Satish Kumar analyses the danger that Pakistan poses for India’s democracy. Rajen Harshe further elucidates the Pakistani threat, ‘Cross-Border Terrorism: Roadblock to Peace Initiative’. The final chapter by M.P. Singh and Veena Kukreja revisits the peace process between India and Pakistan.

Pakistan today is an archaic society ruled by a corrupt alliance between the mullah and the general. Unless there is a vigorous political movement to rework Jinnah’s ‘two nation ideology’, Pakistan will find it difficult to transcend its medievalism. But since the country shows few sign of evolving a stable secular politics, Pakistanis will continue to reap what Jinnah and his Muslim League have sown.

Anoop Verma

 

NUCLEAR DETERRENCE IN SOUTHERN ASIA: China, India and Pakistan by Arpit Rajain. Sage, New Delhi, 2005.

INDIA’S civilian nuclear energy deal with the United States is a precursor of an accommodative international order sought by both sides. Arpit Rajain’s Nuclear Deterrence in Southern Asia: China, India and Pakistan traces the slow growth of the current phase of warmth. In 1998 India’s n-tests were perceived by many as a challenge to the post-Cold War order. But India did not want to trigger another Cold War with the superpower. Geopolitical moderation, not acceleration, was the intriguing outcome of the Pokhran tests. And unlike many in our security establishment who wanted India’s nuclear might to expand exponentially, the middle path won once again.

Interestingly, the Indian establishment was aware of the regional dynamics, as Vajpayee’s letter to Clinton showed. India tried to convince the United States that unlike China, it had no irresolvable ideological differences with the United States. India’s 1998 nuclear tests were not aimed at the unipolar world order, and that its political ambitions were modest. New Delhi wanted just one concession from the current superpower: the status of a major power. Rajain’s work shows that India successfully convinced the US that its deterrence was of a South Asian variety and not aimed beyond it. It was a subordinate deterrence that India wanted under the overarching global nuclear order led by the US. It is clear that the policy path from the 1998 n-tests to the current prospect of civilian nuclear cooperation represents a continuity and not a departure. India is being rewarded for not being a belligerent nuclear power; indeed as a friend to the US, India is a ‘cold’ nuclear power compared to the ‘hot’ nuclear might of China.

Beginning from Pokhran II onwards India made it clear that while it wanted its nuclear power to match the new realities of the post Cold War era, it was not seeking a balance of terror with the US, limiting its strategic deterrence to a region resting at the coastal areas of China. Nuclear Deterrence in Southern Asia is therefore not a grand study of deterrence. It is a study of the complex concept of mutually assured destruction in the southern arc of Asia stretching from the Persian Gulf to East Asia. Rajain’s book represents a new wave of scholarship about India as a champion of realist international politics, consigning the moral baggage of NAM to the past. At the outset Rajain is clear that the fair play of deterrence is unlikely in the Pak-Indo-Sino strategic triangle given the mixture of regimes and contested borders. Deterrence is a volatile issue in such a strategic scenario. India, therefore, as Rajain’s detailed study shows, played judicious by identifying Beijing as the main reason behind its nuclear tests. This ensured that India was not seen as expanding the issue of deterrence beyond the Asian landmass, and set the stage for long-term realignment with the United States.

Post the Cold War, the United States has given new meaning to words like ‘democracy’, ‘stability’ and ‘instability’. In the recently released National Security Strategy Report 2006, the US in focusing on Iran shows that whether big or small, no country is expected to go its own way without first seeking the consent of the superpower. ‘We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran’, the report says. The world today is divided into units of power and each of them have constituents like nation-states and culture or even corporations that are expected to work without disturbing the delicate US-led global system that they together make up. Deterrence in Southern Asia has so far been successful because it was not applied in the traditional realist manner. India and China were both extremely observant of mutual strength. While India and Pakistan shared an impossible variety of deterrence systems where Pakistan had more or less declared n-weapons as its favoured option, China and India on the other hand adopted the ‘no-first use’ option from the very beginning.

Clearly, while deterrence played an ‘ugly’ role in the Kargil war, Sino-Indian ties did not require such testing. Rajain does not get into the usual anti-nuclear rhetoric. But he does provide one more ‘game’ scenario where deterrence wins. That is the strength of this well worked book.

Kallol Bhattacherjee

 

PEACE PROCESSES AND PEACE ACCORDS by Samir Kumar Das. Sage, New Delhi, 2005.

THE book is part of the South Asian Peace Studies (SAPS) series by the Calcutta Research Group, ‘an attempt at reminding us of the possibility of alternative pathways to peace that histories of the region offer us.’ The series as a whole questions the dominant ideas on peace propagated by the national and international security establishments. The books in the series try to take a fresh look from previous approaches that had by and large divorced the idea of conflict resolution and peace from practices of democracy and justice. This is what makes the book such an interesting read.

Earlier works on conflict studies little recognised the social and political realities of the colonial and post-colonial world. The author claims that those works were unable to juxtapose peace with justice. However, not examining the Just War theory poses a problem. The editor should have given this aspect more thought since the series has been planned as an ‘exercise against the politics of excluding justice and democracy from conflict resolution and peace – by bringing into light practices of human rights, justice, dignity, reconciliation, and democracy, and lodging them at the heart of peace studies.’

The book is organised into three sections; ‘Theorising Peace’, ‘Peace as a Process’, and ‘Peace Accords’. The opening section has three interesting essays by Ranabir Samaddar, Oren Yiftachel and Pradip Kumar Bose. Unlike much of the extant theorisation in the field of peace studies drawing largely on positivist, quantitative analysis, these articles help ‘open a small yet significant window of opportunity’ to appreciate the articulation of critical peace studies discourses in recent years. However, the reader should note the interesting ongoing internal debate in this section.

Both Samaddar and Bose are in search of strategies that may be rediscovered from within the existing cultural symbols and resources and constructed by way of re-signifying them and adapting them to the requirements of peace. Yiftachel on the other hand reverses the argument; his essay implies a categorical rejection of the highly territorialised notions of nationalism while dealing with the case of the Arabs and the Israelis. For him, it is the idea of homeland which creates its genealogy and not the other way round as Samaddar and most other analysts see. Thus, this section brings out two different and seemingly contradictory viewpoints, but it would be wrong to assume that the essays share no common ground. All of them prepare us for viewing peace as process, equipping us with the insight to see it from the window of civil society, culture, identities. However, had the problem intrinsic to the playing down of the states’ need to maintain territorial integrity been discussed at greater length, it might have made this section more interesting.

Talking about the difficulty to distinguish between peace processes and peace accords, the editor argues that there is a temptation to view accords as the culmination of peace processes, a tendency to view conflict, peace processes and peace accords as an evolutionary process following a linear schema. This, he points out, is never the case since even after the signing an accord, conflict can continue or simply metamorphise.

The second section, ‘Peace as a Process’, consists of four essays by Sumantra Bose, the Committee of Concerned Citizens, Jehan Perera and the editor himself. All four deal with internal or intra-state conflicts that have been on the rise in the post Cold War era, thus earning it the label, ‘period of fragmentation’. However, as seen in the case of Kashmir, boundaries between internal and external to conflicts can get blurred.

There are several important questions, viz. the perceived asymmetry between the state and insurgents. As the essay on Kashmir points out, the strengths and weaknesses of the actors are location-specific. There are several places in Jammu where the village defence committees are poorly armed as compared to the jehadis. Another important observation is that several of the rebel groups often replicate the state structures and become quasi-state. In fact, it is their strength that forces the state to enter into dialogue with them.

The Communiqué of the Committee of Concerned Citizens deals with several significant silences in the literature on peace. It deals with class issues, and makes a plea for addressing concerns like the right to life and the necessity of ensuring equitable distribution of resources. The essays also highlight that in conflict no one side is good or bad as both sides claim legitimacy from their constituents. However, one big gap in the debate that extensively deals with bringing peoples’ voices back into peace processes is the absence of gender issues, possibly reflective of a generic tendency in the peace debate and literature.

The third section, ‘Peace Accords’, consists of four essays. The general theme running through the essays is about the post-decolonisation process, where most leaders of the newly independent countries in their zeal to form a homogenous nation trample upon the minorities in the same manner as the colonisers whom they had recently overthrown. The essays by Subir Bhaumik on the Naga resistance and Amena Moshin on the fate of the Chakmas in the Chittagong Hill Tracts both underscore this harsh reality in the post colonial states. Amena Mohsin also brings into picture the accounts of women in Chittagong whose sacrifices were effortlessly erased by a patriarchal state. Dipak Gyawali and Ajaya Dixit’s essay on the Indo-Nepal conflict over the Mahakali river waters delves into the role played by stronger powers in the region. They argue that though in the shorter run, the stronger power may be able to use its superior strength to steamroll the fears and wishes of smaller neighbour, in the longer run, it would be preferable to achieve an agreement that takes into account the interests of both the sides.

The work within the SAPS framework tries to establish peace on the ‘triadic foundations of rights, justice and democracy.’ Thus, all essays view human beings essentially as moral beings without ‘any predefined or unchanging essence.’ It is crucial to take note of the qualifier because it is the valorisation of such essence that contributes to the hardening of positions, consequently resulting in war and conflict.

The book is a valuable addition to the field of conflict resolution and peace studies and will be of interest to both students and practitioners in the field.

Arun Vishwanathan

 

TERRORISM IN SOUTH EAST ASIA: Implications for South Asia edited by Wilson John and Swati Parashar. Pearson Education, New Delhi, 2005.

9/11 altered the way terrorism is now seen. What was earlier a localised phenomenon which ailed the Third World, became a nightmare for the West as successive kamikaze attacks shattered the American and thus the western perception of ‘not in our world’. It has been famously said that one man’s freedom fighter is another’s terrorist. Insurgent movements have generally been responses to poor governance, lack of opportunities for growth, discrimination and suppression of identities.

In South East Asia separatist movements rose in Aceh (in North Western Indonesia), Patan (Southern Thailand) and Mindanao in Southern Philippines. While a Muslim identity is common to all of them, their becoming mainstreamed into the global Islamic fundamentalist brigade became a feared possibility in the post September 11 scenario. The Bali bombings on 12 October 2002 demonstrated how deeply violence and terrorism have become entrenched in the region’s psyche. Jemaah Islamiya rose as a prominent target in the counter-terrorism operations with its affiliations to the Al Qaeda exposing how the local and international terrorist groups have developed linkages.

For India which is keenly pursuing a Look East policy, the implications of South East Asia becoming a terrorist haven are serious. The region could be used as a launching pad for infiltrating into South India as well as the North East. The unification of various Islamic fundamentalist groups for the larger Pan Islamic cause has ensured that they embark upon jihad, where and when Islam or Muslims are threatened. With Pakistan being the cradle for Islamic jihad since the 1980s, it is inevitable that India faces the brunt.

In this context, the subject of the book is especially relevant, given the recent spate of bomb blasts that have hit India. The purpose is to examine the growing roots of terrorism, especially Islamic fundamentalism and extremism in South East Asia, and gauge its implications for the security of South Asia. The centrality of South Asia in this matrix is two fold. First, there are state and non-state actors within South Asia that are contributing to the growth of these outfits. Second, the region at large and these states in particular have in turn become a target of the inter-linkages that have arisen among the various terrorist entities worldwide and the South East Asian region.

The book has been subdivided into three broad sections of, ‘Issues’, ‘ Groups’ and ‘Countries’. The first section provides a conceptual base for the subsequent discussions. There are around 230 million Muslims in South East Asia with the majority living in Indonesia. Islam, said to have arrived in the region in the 14th century, has been characterised by moderation and tolerance. The terrorist networks in the region had not received attention before the Bali bombings as the largely peaceful societies in the region have been in a denial mode about the increasing scourge.

Both K. Subrahmanyam and Jasjit Singh stress on the need for war against terrorism to focus on the war of ideas and the need to alter the ‘dynamics in the minds of men’ that legitimise the use of indiscriminate violence that has arisen out of the policies of western powers as well as authoritarian rulers of Islamic states who used the extremism in Islam as an instrument of strategy. Matin Zuberi, examining the dangers of weapons of mass destruction as weapons of mass terror, concludes that conventional explosives have been preferred for their availability, safety of use and predictable consequences.

B. Raman and Anthony L. Smith analyze the terrorism problem in the South East Asian region. Foreign outfits like the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and the Harkat-ul-Jihad-Al-Islami (HUJI) of Pakistan which are members of the Al Qaeda led International Islamic Front (IIF) have been considered the primary foreign players in importing jihadi terrorism to South East Asia. Both Pakistan and Bangladesh have been instrumental in serving as bases for providing religious education and training infrastructure through madrasas for jihadi training. All these groups have also been responsible for terrorist incidents in India since 1999. The LeT has been trying to infiltrate into South India. Smith looks at the socio-political situation in Indonesia and he makes a crucial point when he discusses how local separatist movements have been subsumed into international terrorism due to commonality of identities, not ideologies. The above contention would have benefited if it was informed by the contradictions arising out of the attempt to differentiate between insurgents and terrorists and the concept of just cause and just means.

The second section on ‘Groups’ profiles the external as well as regional terrorist groups active in the region. The common link among the entities discussed here is that they have among their founder members South East Asian Muslims who fought against the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Swati Parashar points out that these groups have received state support (read Pakistan) except Hizb-ul-Tahrir which is perceived more as a threat in Islamic countries than in the West.

Praveen Swami writes that the LeT which was behind the Mumbai blasts in 1993 and 2004 and the Indian Parliament attack in 2001 has exploited the vulnerabilities and insecurities created by the communal riots in India as well as the perceived bias towards the minorities. Among the radical groups with a pan-Islamic agenda looking to expand into South East Asia, Wilson John identifies the Pakistan based Harkat-ul Jihad al-Islami which is also known as Harkat-ul-Ansar. It already has bases in Bangladesh and Myanmar and is identified with Maulana Masood Azhar, the leader of Jaish-e-Mohammad who was freed in exchange for the passengers of the hijacked Indian Airlines flight IC-814 in 1999.

Bilveer Singh writes that the regional character of Jemaah Islamiyah makes it unique in the history of religious terrorism in South East Asia. It is active in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Southern Philippines and Southern Thailand. He baptises them as being ‘Afghan alumni’. However, as P.V. Ramanna argues, the Maoist insurgent organisations are different. What differentiates them from the other groups in this section is the absence of a religious ideology, specifically Islam as their driving force. Also they do not seem to possess state support. In the case of Maoists the problem in South Asia, especially for India and Nepal has been internal rather than external.

An important limitation of this section comes from leaving out the LTTE which is an important concern for India and Sri Lanka. South East Asia has been an important source of arms supply for the LTTE which could act as facilitators for the LeT in their attempt to infiltrate further into South India. Also, while the regionally active groups such as the Laskar Jihad (LJ), the Front Pembela Islam (Islamic Defenders Front – FPI), Abu Sayyaf (Bearer of the Sword), the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the New People’s Army (NPA) have been woven into the larger profile of the groups discussed in this section, dealing with them as regional actors separately would have given greater clarity.

The third section in this book on ‘Countries’ examines the counter-terrorism strategies of countries which are affected by the terrorist networks taking roots in South East Asia. While the focus is on the regional initiatives, it fails to discuss the responses if any of South Asian countries except India which has been discussed by V. Suryanarayan. As a broad overview of the prevailing situation in the South East Asia, it does not effectively assess the initiatives taken by countries such as Singapore and India. An interesting point made by Kumar Ramakrishna has been the 4D strategy within the US National Strategy for Countering Terrorism (NSCT). It focuses more on countering terrorists than waging a war of ideas which targets geo-economic causes. He tries to extrapolate lessons for countering terrorism in the modern day from the British colonial government’s successful response to the Communist Party of Malay’s (CPM) guerrillas during the Malayan emergency which was a twelve year long counter insurgency programme from 1948 to 1958. Afifi Raswan Dean elaborates upon this when he discusses Malaysia’s counter-terrorism initiatives.

Jose T. Almonte, Agus Widijojo and Surat Horachaikul comprehensively trace the history of Islamic terrorism in Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand respectively. Interestingly while the various terrorist groups operating in the region have been able to forge a network, the affected countries have not been very successful in putting their counter terrorism efforts together. The two countries that stand out in this section are Australia and Turkey. In case of Australia, Clive Williams writes that the country became a target when its nationals died in the Bali bombings. He further suggests that Australia would be a continuing target of Islamic terrorism due to its support to the United States. Turkey’s inclusion is important as its case explains how Islamic terrorism is becoming globalised as a movement independent of state sponsorship, assimilating local groups in the process.

Priyanka Singh

 

THE UNCONQUERABLE WORLD: Why Peaceful Protest is Stronger Than War by Jonathan Schell. Penguin, London, 2005.

WAS Gandhi a modern magician? He forged power literally out of nothing; but it was not the kind to fight wars with. It was a phenomenological power that took the world by surprise and stalled the British imperial machinery. He tapped into the real source of power, as Jonathan Schell argues in his very readable, if slightly long, anti-war book, The Unconquerable World. Gandhi understood, with Hannah Arendt and a select few others, that violence destroys power. Lasting power is political, generated in the minds and hearts of people. Military force, on the other hand, is as outdated as Tyrannosaurus Rex. Or, to put it in Schell’s own words: ‘Can cruise missiles build nations?’ His book is a challenging tour de force, polemical enough to attract a wide audience and substantial enough to inform policy debate.

Schell’s argument is threefold. First, he proposes that there is something inherently futile, counterproductive and – in the age of nuclear weapons – even suicidal about war. Making Clausewitz’s famous theory of war (as a continuation of politics by other means) his theoretical starting point, he explains how the age-old ‘system of war’, in which armed conflict was the final arbiter of political disputes, has filed for bankruptcy in the 20th century. Scientific advances (ultimately producing the nuclear bomb), democratic mass mobilization, modern industrial production facilities, and globalisation in the form of imperialism, have propelled war entirely out of proportion. WWI and Hiroshima showed that war has simply become far too massive, clumsy and destructive an instrument to wield in the interest of specific political goals. This part of Schell’s analysis is very strong, especially where he brilliantly exposes the absurd, self-imposed irrationality of nuclear deterrence. He has made this point before, in his well-known book, The Fate of the Earth, written at the height of the Cold War in 1982, and it should give all proponents of nuclear strategies of national security food for thought.

Parallel to the stalling of the conventional war system, Schell traces the development of ‘people’s’ or guerrilla-type wars. Their well-known effectiveness in fighting often foreign, conventional armies is based on their mastery of the real, the political source of power. Schell here quotes the French political writer, Fall (‘immune to pseudoscience’), as stating: Revolutionary war is guerrilla warfare plus political action. Or: RW = G + P. Political action is the establishment of a parallel civil society to capture the imagination and loyalty of the people. This part of the analysis is also strong and the current inability of the US to control Iraq despite ‘overwhelming force’ is a case in point. The real battle is for the people, not their land. So, Schell asks, if political action is the key part of the equation, can one not just drop the other, the guerrilla warfare and make the equation RW = P?

The second part of his argument explores this idea. He shows that RW = P in most well-known political struggles of the past. Conflicts are already decided (in terms of the political wills of the peoples) before even the first shot is fired. G (violent struggle) was either skipped entirely (as in the case of the Glorious Revolution in England or during Indian independence), or it was a form of spelling out the facts to slow readers of reality (to the English in America, and to the Americans, in turn, in Vietnam), or it marked the power struggle among revolutionaries, following a successful revolution (as was the case during the French and Russian revolutions). His main example is the peaceful collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, with the German, Hungarian, Czech, Polish uprisings being stages on the way. The driver in each case was the political power of the people (which he terms ‘cooperative power’ and regards as being essentially peaceful). His historical analysis is interesting and persuasive – but he is making two claims that are contingent.

As he is drawing significant conclusions from his analysis, the argument becomes more porous. While it may well be true that the Glorious, the French or the Russian Revolutions were won before a shot was fired (history often outpaces those in power), the real question is: What were the reasons for the change of hearts in the first place? Schell argues with history, a force stronger than any weapon. In an article introducing his book in The Nation, he says: ‘Force can confer a temporary advantage, but politics is destiny.’ He makes the second claim that the forces of history today work against tyranny and oppression. There are more democracies in the world now than ever before. ‘Modern peoples have the will to resist and the means to do so.’ He may be right – or not.

Hegel already proclaimed the unstoppable progress of the idea of freedom. Fukuyama, following in his footsteps, declared the ‘End of History’, after the last great challenge to liberal democracy, communist totalitarianism, has been overcome. Schell is taking sides in two great debates here. The first one is between Marx and Hegel: Is it really the idea that matters – or is it the economic reality on the ground? Did the freedom movements in India and Eastern Europe win independence from their oppressors thanks to the ‘cooperative power’ of their political organisation around ideals of human dignity? Or did the Soviets and British lose their empires due to their own material weakness and economic exhaustion? The question is thus: Under which conditions does people power succeed? And when (as in Hungary, Prague, and Tiananmen) does it fail? Schell says little about how the historical forces are recognized, and how they can be mobilized. By focusing on the ‘logic’ of peace, he, furthermore, underestimates the skill of individual leaders such as Gandhi to turn people’s power to nonviolence rather than violence.

The second debate is that of progress. Is history or is mankind really capable of improving the world, of changing its ways? Does history get better? Given that the 20th century was a real low point, it may well do. But was it not sheer force that reigned in popular dictators like Hitler or Milosevic? Does mankind get any better? Are people rational and far sighted enough to refrain from massive war, because it ultimately makes no sense? Do they really fight for freedom, or do they fight for wealth? There is no shortage of potential freedom, but there is always a shortage of wealth. It is still difficult to conceptualise how people can peacefully negotiate and redistribute wealth without being tempted to cheat the system. Depending on one’s point of view, the EU is either an encouraging or a discouraging example.

Schell touches on this issue when he makes his third argument: Due to a unique constellation of threats (nuclear annihilation) and opportunities (the rise of cooperative power), we have a great chance to reorganize the international political arena on more peaceful lines. He proposes some form of international democratic association based on a flexible idea of sovereignty. Is this idealistic naiveté or hands-on, saving-the-world pragmatism? Realists will find much to criticise here.

The book demonstrates two simple facts: It is easier to criticise than it is to provide workable blueprints for solutions. And, idealists understand more about ends than realists, but realists understand more about means. His argument for the ultimate futility of war in a world where people reclaim political power from elites is superb – although exceptions, such as fighting Nazi Germany, apply. In a world of unlimited communication (a world where houses in Indonesia burn as a reaction to cartoons published in Denmark), countries can no longer exercise their military force behind curtains. Everything happens in plain sight. Every conflict sends repercussions around the globe. To win, today, means winning-over the people. (How much wilful interpretation, propaganda and demagoguery this brings forth is another matter.)

The real merit of Schell’s book is that it argues not against violence from a moral standpoint, but from a very pragmatic one. However, once he convinces us of the need to change, his ‘so-what’ is far less persuasive. Thus, we are once more where we were many times before: we know that we are walking on thin ice – but we don’t know how to get off it. If progress happens at all, it is by trial and error. Schell’s ideas, together with many others, will serve as a point of reference. On the whole, it is much better to write and read this book, to confront clear problems and offer imperfect solutions, than it is to submit to the cynical fatalism of a reality which is supposedly not of our own making.

Tobias Engelmeier