 "An internal view of external relations")
Choices: Inside the Making of India's Foreign Policy
Author: Shivshankar Menon
Publisher: Penguin
Pages: 224
Price: Rs 599
Shivshankar Menon’s book, Choices: Inside the Making of India's Foreign Policy, offers a unique practitioner's perspective on the dynamics of foreign-policy-making in a polity that is as complex and even amorphous as India. He brings to this exercise diplomatic experience that few of his colleagues possess, including ambassadorial assignments in Beijing, Islamabad, Colombo and Tel Aviv, service as India’s foreign secretary and, finally, as National Security Advisor (NSA). These assignments have given him a nuts-and-bolts familiarity with the making of foreign policy at the highest levels of government.
This hands-on experience is evident in the five episodes that he has elaborated on in the book : the negotiation of the 1993 Border Peace and Tranquility Agreement with China, the civil nuclear initiative with the US, the handling of the Mumbai terrorist attack and cross-border terrorism from Pakistan, the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka and, finally, the crafting of India’s nuclear doctrine.
What emerges from the narrative is that foreign-policy-making is about making choices from a limited range of options available to political leaders; that the personality of the leader, his temperament and sense of the nation’s interests is an important factor in determining which choices are actually made; and that both calculations based on realism as well as cultural particularities provide the context for such decision-making. The range of options available may change both in respect of the accumulation of economic and military capabilities but may be constrained by the asymmetry of power with respect to other states with whom interests intersect.
Menon points out that India’s options have multiplied as it has expanded its economy and strengthened its security capabilities, including through the acquisition of a credible nuclear deterrent. There has also been a willingness to leverage these growing assets to advance India’s interests through strategically bold moves at critical historical junctures, though follow-through has been invariably cautious and measured. This has been most apparent in the case of the Indo-US nuclear deal, which was a bold departure from the incrementalism that often characterises foreign policy-making. The conviction that India is destined to be a great power and has the strategic culture to deliver it is convincingly argued, though the infirmities that retard that trajectory could have received more elaborate treatment.
There is, similarly, an honest admission that India has so far not been successful in managing its relations with Pakistan and dealing with its use of cross-border terrorism as an instrument of state policy against India. But it is worth pondering over what he has stated in this context. “Temporarily silencing the cross-border terrorists is the best we can hope for. Besides, in the hierarchy of India’s national goals, silencing of terrorists is of much lower priority than the transformation of India.” This is surely true but as he has revealed, after the Mumbai attacks his initial reaction was that there must be a retaliatory strike. In fact, he has also acknowledged more recently that in his tenure as NSA there had been unannounced punitive strikes against targets across the border. The point is that political leaders may well feel compelled to respond to assuage public opinion even if the outcomes are not effective in meeting the stated objectives. Cross-border terrorism, while not damaging to India’s interests in the long run, nevertheless has political and psychological consequences that could escalate into a broader, more destructive conflict.
The chapter on China is of particular interest because it hints at greater difficulty in managing the India-China relationship going forward as the power asymmetry between the two neighbouring powers continues to widen. It is his assessment that the intrusions on the India-China border during Xi Jinping’s visit to India in 2014 and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to China in 2015 were neither accidental nor due to actions by local commanders. They were designed to convey a message to a new leadership in India that China had the upper hand at the border and that its dominance should be acknowledged. Menon also believes that Chinese assertiveness may have something to do with India moving closer to the US which it sees as its main rival today. If that is the case, we have testing times ahead.
This book is recommended to the specialist as well as to general readers since it makes complex ideas more comprehensible and provides a window to what has often been regarded as the arcane world of diplomacy. As a fellow traveller on several of these journeys, I enjoyed the book immensely.
The reviewer is a former Foreign Secretary. He is currently Chairman, RIS, and Senior Fellow, CPR
Author: Shivshankar Menon
Publisher: Penguin
Pages: 224
Price: Rs 599
Shivshankar Menon’s book, Choices: Inside the Making of India's Foreign Policy, offers a unique practitioner's perspective on the dynamics of foreign-policy-making in a polity that is as complex and even amorphous as India. He brings to this exercise diplomatic experience that few of his colleagues possess, including ambassadorial assignments in Beijing, Islamabad, Colombo and Tel Aviv, service as India’s foreign secretary and, finally, as National Security Advisor (NSA). These assignments have given him a nuts-and-bolts familiarity with the making of foreign policy at the highest levels of government.
This hands-on experience is evident in the five episodes that he has elaborated on in the book : the negotiation of the 1993 Border Peace and Tranquility Agreement with China, the civil nuclear initiative with the US, the handling of the Mumbai terrorist attack and cross-border terrorism from Pakistan, the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka and, finally, the crafting of India’s nuclear doctrine.
What emerges from the narrative is that foreign-policy-making is about making choices from a limited range of options available to political leaders; that the personality of the leader, his temperament and sense of the nation’s interests is an important factor in determining which choices are actually made; and that both calculations based on realism as well as cultural particularities provide the context for such decision-making. The range of options available may change both in respect of the accumulation of economic and military capabilities but may be constrained by the asymmetry of power with respect to other states with whom interests intersect.
Menon points out that India’s options have multiplied as it has expanded its economy and strengthened its security capabilities, including through the acquisition of a credible nuclear deterrent. There has also been a willingness to leverage these growing assets to advance India’s interests through strategically bold moves at critical historical junctures, though follow-through has been invariably cautious and measured. This has been most apparent in the case of the Indo-US nuclear deal, which was a bold departure from the incrementalism that often characterises foreign policy-making. The conviction that India is destined to be a great power and has the strategic culture to deliver it is convincingly argued, though the infirmities that retard that trajectory could have received more elaborate treatment.
There is, similarly, an honest admission that India has so far not been successful in managing its relations with Pakistan and dealing with its use of cross-border terrorism as an instrument of state policy against India. But it is worth pondering over what he has stated in this context. “Temporarily silencing the cross-border terrorists is the best we can hope for. Besides, in the hierarchy of India’s national goals, silencing of terrorists is of much lower priority than the transformation of India.” This is surely true but as he has revealed, after the Mumbai attacks his initial reaction was that there must be a retaliatory strike. In fact, he has also acknowledged more recently that in his tenure as NSA there had been unannounced punitive strikes against targets across the border. The point is that political leaders may well feel compelled to respond to assuage public opinion even if the outcomes are not effective in meeting the stated objectives. Cross-border terrorism, while not damaging to India’s interests in the long run, nevertheless has political and psychological consequences that could escalate into a broader, more destructive conflict.
TERROR TACTICS: ‘In the hierarchy of India’s national goals, silencing of terrorists is of much lower priority than the transformation of India,’ Menon writes of cross-border terrorism by Pakistan, though he says that his initial reaction after the Mumbai attacks was a retaliatory strike
The chapter on China is of particular interest because it hints at greater difficulty in managing the India-China relationship going forward as the power asymmetry between the two neighbouring powers continues to widen. It is his assessment that the intrusions on the India-China border during Xi Jinping’s visit to India in 2014 and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to China in 2015 were neither accidental nor due to actions by local commanders. They were designed to convey a message to a new leadership in India that China had the upper hand at the border and that its dominance should be acknowledged. Menon also believes that Chinese assertiveness may have something to do with India moving closer to the US which it sees as its main rival today. If that is the case, we have testing times ahead.
This book is recommended to the specialist as well as to general readers since it makes complex ideas more comprehensible and provides a window to what has often been regarded as the arcane world of diplomacy. As a fellow traveller on several of these journeys, I enjoyed the book immensely.
The reviewer is a former Foreign Secretary. He is currently Chairman, RIS, and Senior Fellow, CPR