Reorienting Indian Foreign Policy
Review By Sumit Ganguly
C. Raja Mohan, Crossing the Rubicon: The
Shaping of India's New Foreign Policy, New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, 336 pp.
$29.95.
The transformation of India's foreign
and security policies at the end of the
Cold War was nothing less than revolutionary.
The country's leadership had to
re-examine the fundamental tenets of its
policies, as the pillars on which they had
rested crumbled. Throughout much of
the Cold War, India's leaders pursued a
foreign policy based upon the principles
of nonalignment that were formulated at
the time of India's independence by
India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal
Nehru. The nonalignment doctrine deemphasized
the use of force, sought to steer India away from superpower
entanglements, and attempted to forge a
third world coalition to address North-
South economic disparities. In practice,
many of these lofty and desirable goals
were not realized.
During his last days in office, Nehru
painfully realized that moral suasion
without the requisite military capabilities
could result in a strategic calamity when
dealing with an intransigent adversary.
In 1962, following the failure of border
negotiations with the People's Republic
of China, Chinese forces attacked
India's Himalayan border positions, and
Indian defenses collapsed. Worse still,
India's self-imposed diplomatic isolation
from the Soviet Union and the
United States ill-served its interests since
neither party proved especially forthcoming
during India's moment of crisis.
This military disaster led to a drastic
reorientation of India's defense policies
as the country embarked upon a significant
program of military modernization. It acquired a 45-squadron air
force equipped with supersonic aircraft,
a million-man army with ten new
mountain divisions trained for highaltitude
warfare, and a navy capable of
defending India's littoral interests.
Despite this marked shift of resources to
the military and Nehru's demise in
1964, his successors proved both unwilling
and incapable of changing the direction
of India's foreign policy.
Adherence to the principles of nonalignment
remained India's lodestar.
It was not until the early 1970s that
India all but abandoned key elements of
nonalignment, even though its foreign
policy elite continued to tout these
tenets at international forums. Faced
with an emergent nexus between the
United States and China in their
attempts to contain Soviet power, India
increasingly gravitated toward the Soviet
Union. The Soviets, keen on forging a
relationship with the only third world
democracy of any consequence, which
also happened to share their reservations
about Chinese power, proved to
be a willing partner. The Soviet Union
successfully cemented its diplomatic
relationship with India through significant
arms transfers at highly concessional
rates. For most of India's foreign policy elite, the relationship with the
Soviet Union was not based upon ideological
or cultural affinity; rather, considerations
of statecraft were the primary
motivations. India needed a vetowielding superpower in the United
Nations Security Council to protect its
interests and also to curb possible
Chinese revanchism closer to home.
This bond remained robust until the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in
December 1979.
Soviet actions in Afghanistan caused
India to reconsider the Indo-Soviet
relationship. The Soviet presence in
Afghanistan suddenly revived Pakistan's
significance in American foreign and
security policy calculations and thereby
brought the Cold War to India's
doorstep. Pakistan, previously treated as
an international pariah because of its
appalling human rights record and pursuit
of nuclear weapons, was now seen as
a handmaiden of American interests in
South Asia. India's decision-makers
were unwilling to abandon the relationship
with the Soviet Union due to their
arms transfer relationship and the tacit
security guarantee it provided against
China. Nevertheless, they started to
become more circumspect about the
enduring strategic value of the Indo-
Soviet nexus. Simultaneously, the steady
maturation of the Indian economy generated
structural asymmetries in Indo-
Soviet trade. India, which had
embarked upon a limited and fitful strategy of economic liberalization,
realized that it could not obtain vital,
cutting-edge technologies from the
USSR. Accordingly, even during the
first Reagan administration, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi proved receptive
to some tentative American overtures
to improve relations.
Following Mrs. Gandhi's assassination
in 1984, her son, Rajiv Gandhi, assumed the mantle of leadership.
Lacking significant political experience
and possessed of no diplomatic acumen,
he was hardly qualified to re-orient
India's foreign and security policies.
Instead he appeared content to
continue his mother's policies and
repeat the well-worn mantras that he
had inherited. He did, however, speed
up the process of economic reform,
slowly improve relations with the
United States, and marginally reduce
India's military dependence on the
Soviet Union. Any dramatic shift in
India's foreign and security policies
awaited the demise of the USSR and the
end of the Cold War.