International Seminar On Re-imagining Indian Foreign Policy Emerging Challenges and Strategies (original) (raw)
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Continuity and Change in India's Foreign Policy
Benny Teh Cheng Guan (ed.), Security and Foreign Policy in Asia (Singapore: World Scientific), 2014
A country of 1.2 billion people with the third largest economy and third largest military in the world, India has begun to make its mark on world politics. Though the journey is incomplete, the path traveled thus far has been impressive. Starting from an extremely disadvantageous position, India has in the span of six decades rapidly ascended global power rankings to become a major regional power in Asia and a potential great power in the future. How has this transition come about? What are the contemporary challenges and opportunities facing India’s security and diplomacy? This chapter traces the evolution of India’s security and foreign policies with an emphasis on four relationships vital for India’s future—the United States, China, South Asia, and the United Nations Security Council respectively. In doing so, it outlines the fundamentals of Indian foreign policy and four major transitions that it has experienced over the years—from idealism to pragmatism; the rise of economic diplomacy; the growing importance of domestic politics; and an increasingly complex relationship with the international order.
A country relation with other countries of the world is known as her external relations. The external relations of a country are based on certain principles and policies. They are collectively called foreign policy. Thus foreign policy is the totality of actions of a state in dealing with external environment consisting of national, international and regional actors. In other words, foreign policy is the sum total of a country's relationship with these actors; while pursuing its received goals and objectives through the process of foreign policy a state translates its goals and interests into specific courses of action. India's foreign policy is shaped by several factors including its history, culture, geography and economy. Our PM, Jawaharlal Nehru gave a definite shape to the country's foreign policy. Indian ideology in the international affairs is based on the five principles of India's foreign Policy under leaders like Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi. These are a belief in friendly relations with all countries of the world. The resolution of conflicts by peaceful means, the sovereign equality of all states, independent of through and action as manifested in the principles of non – alignment and equity in the conduct of international relations. Promotion of democratic values is high on India's international relations. Another bench mark of India's official ideology is secular nationalism. India is the home for peoples from various religions and cultures. India promotes secular values and freedom to follow any religion or culture. India's Foreign Policy after se became independent in 1947. It was in September 1946 that Jawaharlal Nehru formulated the independent policy which has been followed ever since. Successive Prime Ministers have endorsed that policy and parliament has approved it. The essence of the independent foreign policy is non-alignment i.e., India refused to join either the communist bloc or the Western bloc into which most of the nations were grouped during the days of the cold war. She preferred to remain outside the contest. Two other features of this policy have been (1) an emphasis on peaceful negotiation as a means to resolving conflicts, the temper of peace as Nehru put it and (2) a deliberate effort to seek the friendship of all nations including the nations of the communist bloc as well as the western bloc. In formulation of a foreign policy, both domestic and external factors are taken into account. If we look at the way the formulation of foreign policy in democratic and non-democratic countries, they mobilize national power, define their national interests, and peruse effective policies play military strategy in the light of balance of power – which is one of the basic principles of power politics game that acts to control interstate relations. However, the formulation of foreign policy is the result of its leaders' capacity which gains people's support in implementing that foreign policy .
A Brief Study of the Changing Nature of Indian Foreign Policy
The foreign policy of a country is the sum total of the principles, interests and objectives which it seeks to promote through its relations with other countries. It is also "for influencing and changing the behaviour of other states" and for 'adjusting' its own "activities to the international environment". So, "the conduct and formulation of foreign policy is governed by the interplay of numerous determinants, institutions, processes and personalities". 1 Preservation of national interest, achievement of world peace, disarmament, independence for Afro-Asian nations have been important objectives of India's foreign policy. These objectives are sought to be achieved through some principles viz. Panchsheel, nonalignment, anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism, anti-racism and strengthening the UN. Keeping old friendship and looking for new friendships is another challenge for our foreign policy after the cold war has ended. For example, India is interested in strengthening its relations without damaging its relations with Arab countries. Similarly, India's foreign policy is tackling new tasks like deepening economic and security cooperation with the United States, while at the same time opposing unilateral actions against Iraq and Yugoslavia. Finally, India is realizing the growing importance of economic aspects of foreign policy. Hence, it is trying to establish a new basis for its relations with neighbouring countries in South Asia, China and the South East Asian counties.
The accelerated pace of globalization in its many facets has benefited some and disadvantaged others. India's foreign policy adjusted well to changes in the external environment by establishing cordial and increasingly substantive relations with the economic dynamos of East Asia, including China, as well as the wealthy countries of the West, especially the United States. Full realization of national objectives is impeded, however, by serious socio-economic problems at home, inadequate staffing or coordination of national security institutions, and the continuing burden of Pakistan's enmity. India's contributions to global management in the years ahead are expected to rise with its capabilities and be welcomed by most other countries as well.
REFLECTION OF INDIA'S IDENTITY AND FOREIGN POLICY IN POST COLD WAR PERSPECTIVE
The Expression: An International Multidisciplinary e-Journal , 2020
India represents itself as a multi-aligned actor to strive for a polycentric order including its alliance with Western-liberal world order which basically reflects pluralism in its social-economic-cultural sectors. The discourses and world order can be characterized by international unity in diversity, state sovereignty, enlighten self-interest, non-violence, and non-discrimination. It is a shape to realize India as a pluralist actor who can engage with all major power to setup a policy of multi-alignment. It is a strategic autonomy instead of non-alignment which modifies its meaning by linking it to liberalization of economy in 1991. The discourse seeks to establish a direct link between India's collective identity and world order through its social logic of international unity in diversity. It is the direction of polycentrism as the foundational and necessary condition of world order. It is a holism that increases coexistence , cooperation among countries and plurality among communities worldwide that creates global interdependence and multiple stakeholders in different cultures and political systems. India's secular identity and practices of cultural ethos in the changing world order makes India as the center of multipolar world that reflects its discourses of exceptionalism. Discourses of India's post-cold war foreign policy brings the sunshine to accommodate humanity universally.
India - Domestic Constraints on Foreign Policy, 2010
The early 1990s were a watershed in independent India"s international history. Till the end of the 1980s, Indian security strategy at the regional level aimed at asserting control, sometimes aggressively, over South Asia. At the global level, its behaviour more closely resembled that of its small neighbours toward it, i.e. it adopted a defensive orientation toward the world beyond its immediate neighbourhood and sought to keep the big powers at arm"s length. With the end of the Cold War, India"s strategic behaviour quickly turned around in both spheres. It began to transform itself into a benign regional hegemon and a more confident power on the global stage.
“India and her neighbours – New Paradigms of the 21st century at a glance.”
One of the most typifying trends of academic pursuit regarding Indian foreign policy commence and lament India’s lack of strategic thinking . In his monograph on Indian strategic culture, the American scholar George. K. Tanham did iterate about a set of deep structures in Indian thinking but concluded nevertheless that contemporary India was typified by a very thin set of strategic ideas . That re-iterates the fact that there has been a lack of deep-seating , structured Indian thinking on foreign policy. Corollary to it, thus, there is a lack of strategic thinking too, howsoever it is imbibed in all the ancient texts of Indian valour. With independence Indian foreign policy have often been, statesmen/bureaucrat centric in nature; however the process of institutionalization foreign policy has been in place since the inception of the Indian Foreign Service [IFS]. The importance of national interest in the foreign policy of a country was underlined correctly by the former British Prime Minister Lord Palmerstone’s . In his seminal dictum he states that a country does not have permanent friends or enemies, but only permanent interests, which does certainly tell the partial story. A country, in fact, can have relatively permanent friends, as envisaged by Pak-China friendship for the past few decades. Deciphering the dictum of Lord Palmerstone, it can be argued that if a country is weaker then she is in need of a permanent friend, and obversely, the stronger and more self-confident a country, the less it needs permanent friends. The emerging trends of Indian foreign policy towards her neighbour are that of ‘extending friendship’- a reiteration of the Panchsheel and the Gujral Doctrine. Of late the Indian foreign policy became more prominent because of the ‘Look East Policy’, which started way back in 1991. The final signature came from the visiting US Vice-President, Joe Biden, who stated categorically that New Delhi’s Look East Policy was complementary to America’s “re-balancing towards Asia” . It is thus certain that India has been one of the focal countries for the US in her renewed interest of the Asia-Pacific region. However, the relations have not been too rosy. While the Look East Policy of India has clearly started paying rich dividends in the Southeast Asian relations, certain policy-specific initiative is missing regarding her immediate neighbours too. The Look East Policy has certainly created a new political geography so to say. The changing nature of the world order, with the rise of economics, Asia India and China has given a new-fangled implication for India and her neighbours too. The new milieu has given a renewed Indo-US amity , which is to be observed with caution, and India will have to take the advantage. Neighbours like Bangladesh is currently having a comparatively pro-India regime under Her Highness Sheikh Hasina; Pak is under Nawaz Sherif; while Nepal has opted for a considerably pro-China regime, and in the case of Sri Lanka, if the Rajapakshe regime is not handled properly will slowly slip in the grab of China. This paper will thus, seek to address the new external paradigms in the context of India and her neighbours.