CHAPTER 1

WAHEGURU PAL SINGH SIDHU, PRATAP BHANU MEHTA,and BRUCE JONES

A Hesitant Rule Shaper?

A Defining Period

India faces a defining period. As the world's biggest democracy with an economyamong the world's ten largest, India's status as a reemerging global poweris being not just recognized but increasingly institutionalized, with a seat onthe G-20, increasing clout in the international financial institutions, entryinto the club of nuclear-armed states, impending membership in the varioustechnology and supply control regimes, and impressive peacekeeping credentialsunder the United Nations. As India reasserts itself economically onthe global stage for the first time since the 1500s, it will inevitably wield greaterinternational political and, possibly, military influence.

At the same time, geopolitical shifts create simultaneous opportunities andchallenges: the opening with the United States, the rise of China, the globalfinancial crisis, the so-called Arab Spring, the mounting crisis between Iranand the West as well as key Gulf states, and the growing international tusslesover energy, climate, food, cyber security, rivers and the oceans. India hasexperienced rapid growth through participation in the multilateral order, andits development strategy and energy requirements make it dependent on stableglobalization. India has growing economic, trade, and energy stakes inliterally every corner of the globe. Much of that trade and energy flows via theIndian Ocean, where India is an established maritime player but also facesenormous new demands and challenges. At this stage in its history, India hascritical interests in just about every major multilateral regime and vital interestsin several emerging regimes. The boundaries between Indian self-interestand the contours of the multilateral order have blurred. In short, India mighthave no choice but to influence the evolving multilateral order if it is to sustainits own interests.

Does India have the will to shape the changing multilateral order? If so,does it have the people, the tools, and the ideas to do so? How much do India'stroubled neighborhood and complex domestic politics inhibit a forward-leaningstance on the multilateral order? Or do they demand it? How doIndia's elites—old and new—shape India's political options? How do the risingmiddle class and the growing urbanization influence India's multilateraloutlook?

Many commentators on India's posture with regard to the multilateralorder have argued that it has often been little more than a defensive crouch:that nonalignment was rooted in a geopolitical strategy, but Indian policyhas neither fully reacted to changing geopolitics and geoeconomics nor genuinelysought to shape the resulting global order. To some extent, this is acaricature, although, like many caricatures, it contains an element of truth.What is certainly true is that India's posture on the multilateral order has notchanged as quickly or as dramatically as the order itself.

Jawaharlal Nehru reportedly argued, as echoed by John F. Kennedy'sfamous charge to the American people, that states must ask not, what can theworld do for us, but what can we do for the world?2 This is the necessaryquestion for a power that would seek to shape the order in which it findsitself. The history of the multilateral order is one of change from withindriven by states willing to bear the costs. While India has been a key internationalactor since its independence in 1947, it practiced, according to oneobserver, "universalism of the weak." This was evident during the earlydecades in its leadership of the Nonaligned Movement (NAM) and the G-77countries and its championing of the cause of decolonization in Africa andAsia, which reflected a principled and ideological, but ineffectual, approachto multilateralism.

However, since the end of the cold war (which coincided with dramaticeconomic and political changes within India), New Delhi has exhibited "internationalismof the strong," which is apparent in its membership in the G-20,its quest for permanent membership in the United Nations Security Council(UNSC), its desire to provide leadership to international financial institutions,and its role in trade and climate negotiations, which has often been atodds with its membership in the G-77 and the NAM (although India's instinctto switch between the G-77/NAM and the G-20 limits its influence in both).In addition, India's tacit endorsement of the "responsibility to protect" principle(though dampened by the Libyan experience) also indicates a shift fromits traditional notion of unchallenged state sovereignty. Post–cold war Indiahas started to reflect a more pragmatic, realpolitik approach to multilateralismand multipolarity—which is evident in its multiple-alignment policy.While India continues to pay lip service to "nonalignment," its current articulationof the concept of "engaging with all with different degrees ofproximity, but allying with none" and its insistence on maintaining "strategicautonomy" are unrecognizable from the original idea of a coalition of thethird world as manifest in the NAM.

Today, India increasingly has the financial strength to bear costs, as a rapidlygrowing middle class generates private and public resources. But whatdoes it mean, politically, that India's per capita gross domestic product (GDP)is not just the lowest in the G-20 but more than 50 percent lower than that ofthe next lowest member, Indonesia, and a mere 3 percent of that of the UnitedStates? Or that only 32.4 million of its total population of 1.2 billion pay taxesand that the total tax revenue collected as a percentage of GDP is among thelowest in the G-20? Or that it has fewer doctors and nurses than even theWorld Health Organization benchmark of at least 23 medical personnel per10,000 population? Or that India's Human Development Index (HDI) rankingof 136 (out of a total of 186 countries) is the lowest among all the G-20countries. Or that it also comes in last among the G-20 in all of the other HDIindicators, except two—women's participation in national parliament andmaternal mortality ratio. Or that India ranks last among the G-20 in thenumber of police officers per capita and that only 77.1 percent of all policepositions are filled nationally? Or that India's 900-odd diplomats are aroundthe same number as those of Singapore or New Zealand and about the samenumber as personnel employed by the U.S. embassy in New Delhi alone?How will these constraints affect India's ability to influence the evolving multilateralorder?

Despite these constraints, if India does focus on shaping the multilateralorder, how will it attempt to do so? Will it be content with rule taking—adheringto the existing and emerging international norms and institutions?Will it focus on rule breaking—challenging the existing order primarily foreffect and seeking greater accommodation for itself in existing global institutions?Will it be inclined to rule making—establishing new norms andinstitutions? Or will a more realistic strategy be one that focuses on ruleshaping—contributing in partnership with others to emerging norms andbuilding nascent regimes—for example, on climate, maritime security, andcyber security? Does India have the normative claims and the argumentswith which to make them? Over the past few years, India has shown greaterpropensity as a rule taker and rule breaker than as a rule maker (an unlikelyoption in a multipolar world) or even a rule shaper.

Rule Taker: The Original Instinct

The rule-taker instinct is most apparent in India's unquestioning adherenceto the dominant Western liberal economic and democratic model, albeit withIndian characteristics. India is unlikely to jettison parliamentary democracyor return to the state-dominated "license raj" economy, even if its practice ofdemocracy remains imperfect and its efforts to dismantle the overbearingregulations that curtail economic growth are inept.

However, while practicing a vibrant multiethnic, multicultural democracyitself, India has not sought to promote democracy or to strengthen the rule oflaw as a strategic tool. In fact, its support of democracy in its immediateneighborhood has been uneven. For instance, India's 1971 intervention inBangladesh set that country on the long and winding road to democracy,while its 1988 role in the Maldives helped to prolong the life of an authoritarianregime. More recently, New Delhi cozied up to the military junta inMyanmar, while voting against Sri Lanka's human rights record in the UN'sHuman Rights Council.

National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon's rumination on democracypromotion sums up the Indian dilemma:

Do we not have a responsibility to spread democracy and fight for ourvalues abroad? Yes and no. Yes, if we have the means to actually ensurethat we are able to spread them. And yes if having democrats as ourneighbours contributes to the peaceful periphery that we need. Butplease remember that a people cannot be forced to be free or to practicedemocracy. They have to come to these values themselves if they areto be lasting. Such a crusade for one's values is often mistaken by othersas the pursuit of self-interest couched in high-tone words. We haveseen how high-sounding phrases like the "right to protect" are selectivelyinvoked and brutally applied in the pursuit of self-interest, givinghumanitarian and international intervention a bad name.

However, as India's economy becomes inexorably intertwined with countriesout of its immediate areas of regional influence, its comfortable policy ofmasterly inactivity is likely to become detrimental to the promotion of itsown national interests. Thus there is a need to recognize the strategic importof democracy promotion (beyond just increasing the contributions to theUN's Democracy Fund) for strengthening the economy and furthering thenational interests, particularly in areas undergoing profound political changes,such as the Middle East (a significant trade partner). For instance, while promotingdemocratic practices and the rule of law might be of limited relevanceto the Indian economy in the short term, such practices are likely to benefitthe country's economic interests in the long term as opposed to the interestsof undemocratic powers, such as China.

India's rule-taker (indeed rule-defender) instinct is also evident in itsunstinting support of the peacekeeping and peacebuilding principles of theUnited Nations. In fact, India has adhered to the existing Western liberaldemocratic norms, notably in Africa, even though these have been found tobe wanting. At best India has sought to have a greater say in the peacekeepingmandates but has not challenged the established norms behind the UN'speacekeeping and even peacebuilding efforts. In fact, in the United NationsIndia has been an absent-minded peacekeeper—deploying troops because itcould and not because it needed to. Ironically, India's peacekeeping also benefitedformer colonial powers that did not contribute as many troops andwhose interests Indian peacekeepers ended up defending through the variousUN missions. This undermined not only India's own interests but also itsprinciple of protecting the sovereign interests of the states where the peaceoperations were conducted.

Clearly, then, India has not challenged the dominant Western liberal paradigmfor peacekeeping and peacebuilding. In fact, it has staunchly defendedthis model, seeking the UN imprimatur for multilateral armed interventions.While some experts have called for India to reduce, if not entirely cut off, itscontributions to UN peacekeeping, this is unlikely to happen for several reasons.Instead, given India's economic rise and the growing risks of peaceoperations, which are now tasked with protecting civilians, among otherduties, there is a need to align participation in UN peacekeeping operationswith New Delhi's evolving strategic interests. While India's increasing economicand political stakes in many of the countries that host UNpeacekeeping operations further highlight the need for a strategic shift, NewDelhi has sought only tactical adjustments so far.

Rule Breaker: Seeking Greater Accommodation

There are some international organizations and institutions that India neitheris a member of nor is interested in joining or associating itself with, eventhough it could do so. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization in the securitysphere is one such institution and the Organization for Economic Cooperationand Development in the economic realm is another. There are otherinternational institutions and arrangements where India either is an outsideror is seeking to have a greater role. India has displayed the rule-breaker traittoward the latter set of institutions. Perhaps the preeminent example of thisis the quest for membership in the UNSC and reform of the internationalfinancial institutions, notably the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and theWorld Bank. The rule-breaker approach is also evident with regard to variousnuclear nonproliferation instruments, where India has sought to establishits exceptionalism by challenging the norm of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferationof Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and by seeking recognition as a nuclearweapon state. Recently, however, India has taken the rule-breaker route byseeking membership in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), the WassenaarArrangement, the Australia Group, and the Missile Technology ControlRegime, which it had previously dismissed as "technology cartels." In doingso, India reflects a curious dichotomy of being a rule breaker only to becomea rule taker eventually.

India has also proved to be a rule breaker or norm challenger even in internationalinstitutions where it has been a long-standing member. This is bestexemplified by India's role in the collapse of the July 2008 World Trade Organization(WTO) negotiations on the Doha Development Round of tradeliberalization. Speaking on behalf of the poor and subsistence farmers in theG-33 group of developing countries, India insisted on a "special safeguardmechanism" to protect them from the sudden surge of cheap food imports.India's stance was prompted in part by the domestic opposition of thirty-fivefarmers groups. Besides, for the Congress-led coalition in power then, "Farmsubsidies remain a crucial electoral clutch. Nearly 70 percent of the populationlives in the countryside and the vast majority of Indians [about 700 million]derive their income directly or indirectly from farming, even though agriculturemakes up less than a fifth of India's ... economy." As the noted Indianagronomist and director of the National Commission on Farmers, M. S.Swaminathan, cautioned, "If the government were to agree to something whichwill kill our agricultural sector, then their political futures will be finished."

Some Indian scholars have argued that India's posturing at the WTO wasthe result of New Delhi's assessment that the United States would not be preparedto make a deal in an election year. However, the U.S. traderepresentative, Susan Schwab, argued that India's impending election in April2009 was, perhaps, more consequential in India's rule-breaker posture thanthe 2008 U.S. election. She noted, "It turned out that we were worried aboutthe wrong election when we were negotiating Doha." Yet other scholars haverevealed that India's stance was inevitably the result of the lack of the Indianstate's capacity for multilateralism. While India's blocking of the negotiationscan certainly be justified, it is not evident that this benefited either India orpoor farmers. As the head of the WTO, Pascal Lamy, observed, the breakdownallowed a package of about $130 billion a year in tariff savings to "slipthrough their fingers."

Despite the negative connotation of rule breaking, India is not seeking todestroy or even replace the existing international governance institutions withalternative or new institutions; it is merely knocking on the door to gain entryor have a bigger say or protect its interests. In fact, New Delhi has consistentlyargued for preserving, reforming, and strengthening these institutions andclaims that its membership in these exclusive clubs will contribute towardthose efforts. Were India to have a greater or permanent role in these institutions,it would most likely fall back into a rule-taker position rather thanbecome either a rule breaker or a rule maker.