The Elephant in the Room
PakistanPal
BY BARBARA CROSSETTE
Think for a moment about which countries cause the most global
consternation. Afghanistan. Iran. Venezuela. North Korea. Pakistan.
Perhaps rising China. But India? Surely not. In the popular
imagination, the world's largest democracy evokes Gandhi, Bollywood,
and chicken tikka. In reality, however, it's India that often gives
global governance the biggest headache.
Of course, India gets marvelous press. Feature stories from there
typically bring to life Internet entrepreneurs, hospitality industry
pioneers, and gurus keeping spiritual traditions alive while lovingly
bridging Eastern and Western cultures.
But something is left out of the cheery picture. For all its business
acumen and the extraordinary creativity unleashed in the service of
growth, today's India is an international adolescent, a country of
outsize ambition but anemic influence. India's colorful, stubborn
loquaciousness, so enchanting on a personal level, turns out to be
anything but when it comes to the country's international relations.
On crucial matters of global concern, from climate change to
multilateral trade, India all too often just says no.
India, first and foremost, believes that the world's rules don't apply
to it. Bucking an international trend since the Cold War, successive
Indian governments have refused to sign nuclear testing and
nonproliferation agreements -- accelerating a nuclear arms race in
South Asia. (India's second nuclear tests in 1998 led to Pakistan's
decision to detonate its own nuclear weapons.)
Once the pious proponent of a nuclear-free world, New Delhi today
maintains an attitude of "not now, not ever" when it comes to the 1968
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban
Treaty. As defense analyst Matthew Hoey recently wrote in the Bulletin
of the Atomic Scientists, "India's behavior has been comparable to
other defiant nuclear states [and] will undoubtedly contribute to a
deteriorating security environment in Asia."
Not only does India reject existing treaties, but it also deep-sixes
international efforts to develop new ones. In 2008, India single-
handedly foiled the last Doha round of global trade talks, an effort
to nail together a global deal that almost nobody loved, but one that
would have benefited developing countries most. "I reject everything,"
declared Kamal Nath, then the Indian commerce and industry minister,
after grueling days and sleepless nights of negotiations in Geneva in
the summer of 2008.
On climate change, India has been no less intransigent. In July,
India's environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, pre-emptively told U.S.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton five months before the U.N. climate
summit in Copenhagen that India, a fast-growing producer of greenhouse
gases, would flat-out not accept binding carbon emissions targets.
India happily attacks individuals, as well as institutions and treaty
talks. As ex-World Bank staffers have revealed in interviews with
Indian media, India worked behind the scenes to help push Paul
Wolfowitz out of the World Bank presidency, not because his
relationship with a female official caused a public furor, but because
he had turned his attention to Indian corruption and fraud in the
diversion of bank funds.
By the time a broad investigation had ended -- and Robert Zoellick had
become the new World Bank president -- a whopping $600 million had
been diverted, as the Wall Street Journal reported, from projects that
would have served the Indian poor through malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/
AIDS, and drug-quality improvement programs. Calling the level of
fraud "unacceptable," Zoellick later sent a flock of officials to New
Delhi to work with the Indian government in investigating the
accounts. In a 2009 interview with the weekly India Abroad, former
bank employee Steve Berkman said the level of corruption among Indian
officials was "no different than what I've seen in Africa and other
places."
India certainly affords its citizens more freedoms than China, but it
is hardly a liberal democratic paradise. India limits outside
assistance to nongovernmental organizations and most educational
institutions. It restricts the work of foreign scholars (and sometimes
journalists) and bans books. Last fall, India refused to allow
Bangladeshi and Sri Lankan journalists to attend a workshop on
environmental journalism.
India also regularly refuses visas for international rights advocates.
In 2003, India denied a visa to the head of Amnesty International,
Irene Khan. Although no official reason was given, it was likely a
punishment for Amnesty's critical stance on the government's handling
of Hindu attacks that killed as many as 2,000 Muslims in Gujarat the
previous year. Most recently, a delegation from the U.S. Commission on
International Religious Freedom, a congressionally mandated body, was
denied Indian visas. In the past, the commission had called attention
to attacks on both Muslims and Christians in India.
Nor does New Delhi stand up for freedom abroad. In the U.N. General
Assembly and the U.N. Human Rights Council, India votes regularly with
human rights offenders, international scofflaws, and enemies of
democracy. Just last year, after Sri Lanka had pounded civilians held
hostage by the Tamil Tigers and then rounded up survivors of the
carnage and put them in holding camps that have drawn universal
opprobrium, India joined China and Russia in subverting a human rights
resolution suggesting a war crimes investigation and instead backed a
move that seemed to congratulate the Sri Lankans.
David Malone, Canada's high commissioner in New Delhi from 2006 to
2008 and author of a forthcoming book, Does the Elephant Dance?
Contemporary Indian Foreign Policy, says that, when it comes to global
negotiations, "There's a certain style of Indian diplomacy that
alienates debating partners, allies, and opponents." And looking
forward? India craves a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council,
seeking greater authority in shaping the global agenda. But not a
small number of other countries wonder what India would do with that
power. Its petulant track record is the elephant in the room.
Article Source : http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/04/the_elephant_in_the_room?page=0,0
PaPa Peng
size that can act as a counterweight to China's rise. The US wishes
to co-opt this capability for its own purpose. However India is wary
of too close an association seeing what happened to "friendly
countries" that had accepted US largesse. Pakistan in particular is a
failed country unable to disengage as it now depends on US aid grants
for survival. On that score Pakistan's government is forced to attack
its own people to keep that aid flowing. The price Pakistan pays is
blowback as the people attacked let off massive suicide bombs inside
Pakistan's key population centers. Pakistan is no longer master of her
own fate. India should be ever so careful not to be drawn into
conflicts not of her making and that are detrimental to her national
interests. Remember India has more muslims than Pakistan has. So
India does not meet the expectations of the US says our author. So be
it.