New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. xxx, 346 pp. (Tables, figures, maps.) C$35.95, paper. ISBN 978-1-107-66169-1.
In 1958, at the height of the Cold War, the noted American anthropologist, Harold Isaacs, published a book entitled Scratches on Our Minds: American Images of China and India. His work was based on a detailed analysis of popular literature cartoons and films. Not surprisingly, he showed that the images were not especially flattering and certainly lacked much nuance or sophistication.
Both at popular and academic levels, American understanding of the workings of these two complex civilizational states is much improved today. The literature in American political science, ranging from China’s domestic politics to foreign policy, is both burgeoning and sophisticated. Indeed, thanks to the works of such scholars as Thomas Christiansen, Alastair Johnson and Kenneth Lieberthal, among others, the study of China’s foreign relations as well as its domestic politics has been integrated into mainstream American political science. The study of Indian foreign policy and internal politics, for complex reasons, was long outside the principal currents of political science scholarship. They are, however, now being steadily incorporated into the discipline, as a younger generation of scholars seeks to utilize evidence drawn from the country to test key propositions or even to develop theory.
More recently, thanks to rapid economic growth first in China and then in India, a number of scholars of comparative politics have sought to examine the evolution and prospects of their economic prowess. The policy world, simultaneously, pays a great deal of attention to their significance in global politics. This can be seen from the attention that has been devoted to the role of both states in the emergent international order in the US National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends reports. Comparisons of the foreign policies of these two titanic states, however, have been few and far between. The failure to juxtapose and analyze their foreign and security policies stems in considerable part from the relative insularity of most foreign policy scholars. Barring marked exceptions, the vast majority of scholars of Chinese foreign policy have paid scant attention to questions of Indian foreign policy. Similarly, few scholars of Indian foreign policy have made any rigorous comparisons of the foreign policies of these two states.
Given the state of the literature when it comes to viable comparisons of the sources and prospects of their foreign policies, the work under review constitutes a useful departure. It seeks to carefully examine their strategic cultures, their views about the use of force, military modernization and their foreign economic policies. Despite the attempt at judicious comparison there are some important shortcomings to this analysis. At the outset, it is more than apparent that both authors have a far more supple grasp of the Chinese case than the Indian one.
Their understanding of Indian politics and strategy is mostly derivative. Indeed, reliance on such secondary sources exacts certain costs. For example, since studies of India’s strategic culture are few and far between, their reliance on the extant literature leads them to make a very superficial assertion about its putative similarities with Chinese strategic culture. For the authors to argue, with substantial accompanying evidence, that the Arthashastra, a treatise on statecraft and espionage that was written in the fourth century BC in India, has exerted any significant influence on the conduct of India’s foreign policy borders on the chimerical. They also reveal the limits of their grasp of Prime Minister Nehru’s signal contributions to India’s global role in their discussion of the early years of India’s foreign policy. Instead they trot out the jejune and tired example of India’s incorporation of the Portuguese colonial enclave of Goa as evidence of its willingness to use force despite a professed hostility to the use of force in international affairs.
In this connection it is useful to highlight that in a recent work, the American scholar, Andrew Kennedy, provides a far superior and more skilled comparison of the foreign policies of Mao and Nehru. Kennedy’s work, based upon both field and archival research, shows a far more subtle understanding of the belief systems of both leaders and how they shaped the foreign policies of their respective states.
Apart from these limitations the authors tend to conflate the relative significance of the two states in global politics. China’s per capita GDP is already over US$5,000 while India’s is barely near $1,500. China’s defense budget, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, is over $140 billion whereas India’s hovers under $50 billion. These gaps, especially if India’s economic growth falters, are likely to widen in the future. Consequently, despite some occasional convergence of interests, the two states, which have markedly different political systems, are unlikely to act in concert in a range of international forums. Accordingly, the discussion about how the implications of Chinese and Indian foreign policy choices for key US interests is mostly misplaced. India may be at odds with the US on a number of issues ranging from trade liberalization to global climate change. It may also be a contentious and fractious strategic partner. However, it lacks both the capabilities, and more importantly, the proclivity, to fundamentally challenge core American interests. Fortunately, US policy makers seem to grasp these differences, as amply evinced in the Obama administration’s “rebalancing” strategy toward Asia.
Gilboy and Heginbotham, while having produced an intriguing comparison, have also constructed an argument that simply ignores far too many obvious dissimilarities in the foreign policy interests, goals and capabilities of China and India. Their failure to adequately account for these divergent features undermines the utility of their analysis.
Sumit Ganguly
Indiana University, Bloomington & USA Foreign Policy Research Institute, Philadelphia, USA
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