A challenge for Indian leadership

Sabherwal The twenty-first century is witnessing a fast-changing international scene, with many complexities weaved in its emerging pattern.

There are new features on the global scene which have no precedents, making their delineation difficult.

A restructuring of the world order is underway, and in the years ahead, the shape of international relations will be quite distinct from what we have known till even a few years ago.

Presented here is a sort of challenge to statecraft in the realm of foreign policy - for India, as also for all major actors on the world stage.

The scenario that opened with the 9/11 onslaught of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism was a new ingredient in this restructuring of international relations.

Even before global fluidity settled down came the American invasion of Iraq, adding further changes in international relations.

All this heaped on the post-cold war setting that witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union and socialist regimes of Eastern Europe simultaneously saw a strident rise, from amidst the ruins of the socialist dogmas of the 20th century, of a rejuvenated Communist China with an unprecedented new flair.

India added to this global restructuring by an upswing none expected.

American dominance of the world scene is accompanied by several counter-vailing developments.

Even prior to the Iraq invasion, the European partners of America began distancing themselves from the United States.

Cracks had begun to appear in the Atlantic alliance.

At the root of this Atlantic alliance rift was the economic cleavage, trade rivalry, dollar-euro tensions, with the icing of new geopolitics on this altered economic relationship.

It was seen that in this rearrangement, Britain clung to its kinship with America though simultaneously it claimed to be part of the European Union.

The American invasion of Iraq witnessed a climax to this new turn in Western Europe's relationship with United States, just as the event became the initiator of a downslide in the global standing of the United States.

That indeed is a characteristic of the emerging restructuring of international relations.

A striking new feature of this scene is the kind of transformation that United States-China relations is undergoing.

The Sino-American bonhomie in opposing the erstwhile Soviet Union having disappeared, a confrontationist stance is being shaped by the two powers.

On Taiwan, of course; but also in relation to several contentious issues that emerge on the world scene, such as the American invasion of Iraq, and now on Iran's nuclear ambitions.

This confrontationist stance is soft-pedalled by Beijing: it avoids any attenuation or demonstration in these postures.

Both countries avoid display of adversarial positions.

Strangely, this confrontationist posture is not to be seen on the latest North Korean nuclear impasse.

Rather, Beijing has been acting as a sort of go-between to resolve the contentious issue.

Wang Jisi, a Chinese Communist party think-tank says, "United States can exert the greatest strategic pressure on China".

A novelty of this geopolitics is that it is accompanied by unprecedented intensity in US-China economic ties - booming trade ties, the biggest-ever industrial interaction which includes American energy giants, Westinghouse and General Electric, building advanced nuclear power reactors in China, coupled with American investments in China along the entire spectrum of the economy.

Here is a paradox.

China's rising economic power will certainly add to its military power - an unease that US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfield has recently articulated.

But stopping China's economic progress would harm American economy.

Yet, if the US were to lose influence in a disastrous downturn, the resultant instability could cause a disruption in oil flow for Chinese economy.

All in all, it is a novel pattern of big power relationship such as has not been seen before.

Consequently, this phenomenon gives rise to several other complexities.

Indo-American relations are heavily impacted by the Sino-American relationship.

Another factor in this layout is Japan, both US and Japan being mutually dependent.

On the other hand, Sino-Japanese interaction has deteriorated sharply.

Simultaneously, India-China ties are coming closer, though the hangover of the 1962 border war has not been entirely got over.

A rapidly expanding India-China economic relationship is a developing factor that can hardly be underrated.

And so, the India-US-China triangle has many frailties that pose ticklish and sensitive question marks for India's foreign policy makers.

Obsessed as Indian policy makers inevitably are over relations with Pakistan, the Kashmir issue being the fulcrum, India's burgeoning relationship with United States on one hand and China on the other, is fast emerging as the central band of the new foreign policy direction of this country.

India's ties with the European Union, including Britain, as also Japan, are becoming tertiary, but cannot be underplayed.

So too is the relationship with the other developing nations of Asia, Latin America and Africa.

India thus finds itself in the vortex of the unfolding events on the international arena and has to restructure its international relations as well as foreign policy parameters.

The rise of terrorism backing Islamic fundamentalism, the virtual break-up of the Atlantic alliance, China's emergence as a big power with economic as well as geopolitical ambitions, and India's own economic and geo-political upswing in which its scientific merits in nuclear science and IT play a special role, pose many new questions for Indian foreign policy.

Has India to remain equidistant between Washington and Beijing or to lean more towards United States, or to decide on the choice from issue to issue, according to its national interests? A tertiary issue is Indo-EU and Indo-Russian ties, for the two powers are emerging as potential deciding players on critical global issues.

Some of these questions were pushed to the fore following the voting in IAEA on the issue of Iran's nuclear ambitions.

India's role can be understood only in the context of giving primacy to its national interests.

There is a great deal of understandable heart-burning in India over the way this country has voted on the IAEA resolution, after a protracted phase of international push and pull among the main powers, in which India had hitherto sought to cushion the impact on Iran of American arms-twisting.

All of a sudden, it appears, India has changed its role by voting in favour of the IAEA resolution, promoted by the US as well as the EU3.

Evidently, there is a tilt in Indian policy on this sensitive issue since the matter is related to India's own nuclear status and the change in American and Western attitude towards India's indigenous nuclear capability and civilian nuclear power cooperation.

This aspect cannot be minimised: it has to take primacy.

But Indian policy has to be flexible and play an active role in resolving the issue within the domain of the IAEA.

As the Prime Minister has said, India has to persist with efforts to gain time for Iran, to build a negotiated solution within the framework of IAEA.

The situation has been clouded because all the facts in this crisis are not sufficiently known.

So, let the facts be restated in the position taken by the main actors - US, EU3, the Iranian government.

The prime issue is whether Iran has the right to enrich uranium for its nuclear power projects.

In principle, Iran has this right subject to IAEA supervision, for which Iran has to accept the additional protocol IAEA is now applying to all members.

But in practice, Iran can hardly implement this project indigenously in the near future.

On the other hand, Iran can build light water reactors - for which it needs low enriched uranium fuel - only with the cooperation of Russia and France.

In the event of such agreements, as is the case with Iran-Russian collaboration, enriched uranium fuel is part of the deal.

There is no fundamental issue here that cannot be resolved.

On the other hand, Iran's interest is in dispelling doubts about its intentions of diverting indigenous nuclear capability for weapons.