New Delhi; Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2017. xi, 256 pp. US$40.99, cloth. ISBN 978-93-864-4658-9.
The central claim of this book is that India’s foreign policy has seen a “paradigm shift” under Modi’s strong and centralized leadership. This shift has taken Indian foreign policy from a long period of “continuity and stasis,” in which it was in thrall to the paradigm of nonalignment and strategic autonomy, to one of “multilevel alignment.” This claim is elaborated in this readable and tightly argued volume consisting of an introduction and five substantive chapters.
The authors distinguish their term “multilevel alignment” from Ian Hall’s term “multi-alignment,” arguing that Hall’s multi-alignment still has, at its centre, “the traditional core cognitive structure of non-alignment or its later incarnation, strategic autonomy” (5). Instead they define multi-level alignment as one that “not only entails a broader focus and scope but, most significantly, it includes an engagement with diverse set of actors, with a diversity of interests: it means aligning India’s interests and ambitions with those of global parties which might perceive each other’s interests with contradiction, thereby allowing India the prospect of moving beyond limited coordination in pursuing its strategic interests” (4). Multilevel alignment is a hardnosed, transactional approach but it is not entirely clear how it is sharply different from strategic autonomy.
The authors critique Nehru and nonalignment, treating them almost as synonymous on four grounds: failure to do a military pushback in Kashmir in 1947–1948 and instead taking the matter to the United Nations; accepting Chinese claims in Tibet without clarifying the boundary; neglect of military strength; and a statist economic policy that marginalized India in the world economy over the decades until the liberalization of 1991. These policies and the cognitive paradigm of nonalignment and strategic autonomy following it led to “continuity and stasis” until the turnaround under Modi.
However, even going by the authors’ own narrative, a different reading is possible. Taken together over time, these policies mentioned in the above paragraph do not look like the “global idealism” and “regional appeasement” but more like increasing assertiveness in line with growing capabilities, with successive governments building on the legacy of past governments.
One problem when critiquing past governments in general and nonalignment in particular, and with inter-temporal comparisons, is that of loss of context. Policy decisions have to be evaluated in terms of the resources and capacities at hand and the surrounding regional and global power structure at those particular times. Nonalignment can be read as a form of resistance to the international pressures of the Cold War, which created space for some autonomy of action despite the acute dependence on aid during that period. Such actions included the setting up by Nehru as early as 1948 of the Atomic Energy Commission and early reactors, and during his rule the very early missile and space initiatives, and the laying of a basic and heavy industrial base and a scientific and technological education and research base, all of which were critical for later developments in the nuclear, missile, and space fields–that is, for military power. It was done with subtlety and managed to evade the pressures of the later nonproliferation regime. This does not fit the narrative of an idealism untempered with realism or of regional appeasement. The reality appears to have been more complex. Likewise, there is no necessary connection between nonalignment and the statist economic policies which hampered growth. The obstacles to opening up the economy were essentially the domestic interest group structure created by import-substitution which one must remember was advocated in the 1944 Bombay Plan and beyond by the leading lights of Indian industry. India remains relatively protectionist compared to Asia and the world even under Modi, with a renewed protectionist turn since 2017.
Likewise, nonalignment as a paradigm during the Cold War did not prevent successive Congress governments from staying out of the nonproliferation, testing a nuclear device in 1974, breaking Pakistan into two in 1971, intervening in Sri Lanka from 1987 to 1990, and Maldives in 1988, and from weaponizing the nuclear capability and testing the first Agni missile in the late 1980s under Rajiv Gandhi. One can argue that more should have been done but that argument can always be made about the past from the vantage point of the present.
As for the post-Cold War period up to 2014, the authors admit that there were major breaks from the past by pre-Modi governments during this time, such as the formalization of relations with Israel; the Look East policy; economic liberalization and a higher growth rate; the four major border management agreements with China of 1993, 1996, 2005, and 2013; and the 1998 nuclear tests and rapprochement with the United States highlighted in the Indo-US civil nuclear deal of 2008. Seen in this light it would appear that the Modi foreign policy to a large extent built on these foundations and took them further. This trend includes (since the book was published) redefining the region and extended neighbourhood under the organizational umbrella of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC), rather than the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC), and more importantly, the Balakot airstrike into Pakistan, which redefined escalation dynamics along the Line of Control. Deepened dialogue with China, BRICS, Russia-India-China, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization could also be seen in this light. Some developments—like the Quad (an informal coalition involving the US, Japan and Australia)—in Indo-Pacific naval security arrangements originated in 2007 in the multilateral naval exercises that had been started by earlier governments. All of this can be called multi-level alignment but also fits into the strategic autonomy paradigm of earlier. Modi’s foreign policy has certainly been characterized by greater energy and outreach but can also be read as a natural evolution given greater resources and capacities compared to the past, rather than a dramatic break that would qualify as a paradigm shift. There has of course been an end to references to nonalignment and to Nehru at a declaratory level. But is that a paradigm shift or simply a reflection of ruling party ideology?
Eswaran Sridharan
University of Pennsylvania Institute for the Advanced Study of India, New Delhi, India