Foreign policy is our long term strategy to deal with the international community for our best advantage(you may call it a jingoistic view). Our nation of 1.1 billion people (which incidently is one sixth of mankind ) has not been able to formulate any particular policy to establish itself as the world leader in positive way.We dont have a clear cut policy on how to deal with our allies and opponents on international turf.
Our basic thinking of viewing everything with prism of Pakistan has led us to be allied with a failed soviet state with phoney pseudo socialist agenda. Even that was not enough we started partying in NAM ( that is non aligned movement in spite of alliance with the soviet block) which was another big failure as it was a non starter. Our recent governements than took a U-turn and started wooing USA and virtually gave USA a free hand in deciding our policy on terrrorism by declaring pakistan a staunch fighter of terrorism and that may be india is responsible for some of the terrorist attack in pakistan's balochistan.
On china front our infinite series of failure continues because we dont believe in confrontation as we indians are peace loving people. What we dont understand is peace can only come if we are always prepared for war and ready to crush enemies in its own way.
We have a very sour relationship with all our SAARC neighbours as everybody considers us their adverseries. Even when indian students are beaten abroad no action is taken.( just try to touch any US citizen in india ,i am sure the crimnal will be found in less than 24 hrs as entire state machinery will be at them). These all failures are fundamentally, because we are weak nation and nobody takes us seriously . We can get strength only by buliding our economy .
But that is a long process till that time we cant let a population of 1.1 billion suffer humiliation because of our hopeless politician. Here are few steps which i think should be taken immediatly to reverse this:
1.There should be some kind of hawkishness which is always neccessary in external affairs matter as we all know Darwin's principle ( of survival of fittest),so we need to start having hard posturing towards our biggest competitor china ,which by the way is our threat number one in terms of geopolitical stablity.
2.Pakistan policy should be dealt independently as our relationship with it should not come in the way of our relatioship with other countries.
3.Being the largest democracy in the world it is neccessary to spread democracy in other parts of the world and this could increase our leadership position among neutral countries like for the case of Myanmar ,we didn't condemned the Aaung suu kee detention in the harsh manner which in the long run can backfire.
4.Our policy with US should be based in terms of mutul trust and mutual benefit because upmanship with US can go a long way.We should press for no governemnt intervention in terms of outsourcing and farm subsidies.
5.Our policy in WTO ( doha round discussion) and global warming issue (Kyoto protocal ) needs to be aggressively fought and we need to lead the point of view of BRIC countries in international negotiation.
6.Our standing in world also depend on our military might and technological devlopemets which needs intense focus.
7.In the end our political class must grow up and leave the job with experts in at least cricial matters like external affairs,people like Sashi tharoor are welcomed by the way.
Our basic thinking of viewing everything with prism of Pakistan has led us to be allied with a failed soviet state with phoney pseudo socialist agenda. Even that was not enough we started partying in NAM ( that is non aligned movement in spite of alliance with the soviet block) which was another big failure as it was a non starter. Our recent governements than took a U-turn and started wooing USA and virtually gave USA a free hand in deciding our policy on terrrorism by declaring pakistan a staunch fighter of terrorism and that may be india is responsible for some of the terrorist attack in pakistan's balochistan.
On china front our infinite series of failure continues because we dont believe in confrontation as we indians are peace loving people. What we dont understand is peace can only come if we are always prepared for war and ready to crush enemies in its own way.
We have a very sour relationship with all our SAARC neighbours as everybody considers us their adverseries. Even when indian students are beaten abroad no action is taken.( just try to touch any US citizen in india ,i am sure the crimnal will be found in less than 24 hrs as entire state machinery will be at them). These all failures are fundamentally, because we are weak nation and nobody takes us seriously . We can get strength only by buliding our economy .
But that is a long process till that time we cant let a population of 1.1 billion suffer humiliation because of our hopeless politician. Here are few steps which i think should be taken immediatly to reverse this:
1.There should be some kind of hawkishness which is always neccessary in external affairs matter as we all know Darwin's principle ( of survival of fittest),so we need to start having hard posturing towards our biggest competitor china ,which by the way is our threat number one in terms of geopolitical stablity.
2.Pakistan policy should be dealt independently as our relationship with it should not come in the way of our relatioship with other countries.
3.Being the largest democracy in the world it is neccessary to spread democracy in other parts of the world and this could increase our leadership position among neutral countries like for the case of Myanmar ,we didn't condemned the Aaung suu kee detention in the harsh manner which in the long run can backfire.
4.Our policy with US should be based in terms of mutul trust and mutual benefit because upmanship with US can go a long way.We should press for no governemnt intervention in terms of outsourcing and farm subsidies.
5.Our policy in WTO ( doha round discussion) and global warming issue (Kyoto protocal ) needs to be aggressively fought and we need to lead the point of view of BRIC countries in international negotiation.
6.Our standing in world also depend on our military might and technological devlopemets which needs intense focus.
7.In the end our political class must grow up and leave the job with experts in at least cricial matters like external affairs,people like Sashi tharoor are welcomed by the way.
I think that you should focus on the root cause issues in the begining when you mean to say that our economy has to be strengthened or our polictical topography has to be changed.In one part you insist that the democracy should be spread and in the other part you want India to fight against a communist country like China, so is it really feasible for a democratic country to be so spontaneous enough to restructure its external affairs agenda.In a country like India whose main occupation is agriculture, is the outsourcing growth going to really help us, are we not shifting ourselves to a different occupation which in long run would suppress the poor to a still lower level and the sum of masses below the poverty line would definitely increase.
ReplyDeleteYou are absoulutely right in saying that root cause should be structured ,but there are so many root causes that its futile to pin point any one particularly,....and about democratis countries fighting communism we have numerous example like that of USA and UK ,,,,,,outsourcing is also very important because if economy is going to grow than its certainly going to benefit farmers ...we cannot just follow the path of being a agriculture based economy...thanx fr ur valuable comments
ReplyDeleteI must say that your analysis is sound but unfortunately this is how an American would run our foreign policy. I feel our country really needs a deep introspection rather than this kinda irrelevant show stopping. A strongly nationalistic character building would go a long way. World at large (USA) listens to China not because of its aggressive foreign policy (even North Korea and Iran does this) but it governs its own nation (aka. economy) well. Our own country faces fundamental problems like illiteracy, poverty, malnutrition etc. In our deeply divided country the so called "foreign policy" is a non-sense. We should strongly focus on nation building to harness our true potential to be a super-power in the true sense (not in the American sense)
ReplyDeleteI think nation building is a multi dimensional process ,so we need movement in every front and foreign relation is one of the most important thing where i think huge change is needed..the other things you said are very relevent and its a seperate topic all together ...By the way thnx for your comments
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