It Is Changing After All: India’S Stance on ‘Responsibility to Protect’

APRIL 2016 It is Changing After All: India’s Stance on ‘Responsibility to Protect’ DAN KRAUSE It is Changing After All: India’s Stance on ‘Responsibility to Protect’ DAN KRAUSE ABOUT THE AUTHOR Dan Krause is research associate and doctoral candidate at the Institute for International Politics at the University of the Federal Armed Forces in Hamburg, Germany. As Lieutenant Colonel of the Army Reserve, the former Army Aviation officer gives lectures at the Armed Forces Staff College in Hamburg. He has also worked for the Federal Academy for Security Policy in Berlin. His research interests, besides issues related to Responsibility to Protect, include German and European security and defense policy, and international security policy. His PhD project deals with the R2P positions of the Southern Democracies, namely, India, Brazil and South Africa. © 2016 Observer Research Foundation. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission in writing from ORF. It is Changing After All: India’s Stance on ‘Responsibility to Protect’ ABSTRACT Until 2009, India was regarded as one of the most stringent opponents of the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P) norm; it was, historically, a staunch advocate of a state-centred Westphalian system. But India's position has always been more complex and nuanced in all respects. Since 2009, the fundamental change that has taken place is also quite remarkable. This change can partly be accounted for by India’s noteworthy, but still ongoing transformation from a developing country into a regional power with global clout. The fact that India has almost entirely turned its back on non-alignment, and its interests have moved increasingly further away from the developing countries, is also reflected in its foreign policy. While India has not yet made any conceptual contributions to R2P comparable to Brazil’s, it has brought about important changes, in particular to its own position, since the end of its turn at the UN Security Council. INTRODUCTION In the final declaration of the sixth BRICS Summit in Fortaleza in Brazil, Russia and China reiterated the importance they attach to the status and role of their BRICS partners Brazil, India and South Africa in international affairs, stating that they should play a greater role in United Nations (UN) structures, notably in a reformed and expanded Security Council(cf. Sixth BRICS Summit 2014a: 6). Given that the BRICS states account for 26 percent of the earth's surface, 46 percent of the world's population, and a growing share of global GDP (cf. Sixth BRICS Summit 2014b), they are becoming increasingly unwilling to accept their under-representation in matters relating to ORF OCCASIONAL PAPER # 90 APRIL 2016 1 IT IS CHANGING AFTER ALL: INDIA'S STANCE ON ‘RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT’ international order and the development of global standards. Alongside China, the emergence of India, in particular, as a major pole in international politics clearly embodies the global shift in power, the re-emergence of Asia and the rise of new powers, and the fact that the world order is increasingly multipolar (cf. Staack 2013: 10f.; Fidler/Ganguly 2010). While opinions on its future role differ, India will likely become a major player in international politics if it fulfils even the most pessimistic of predictions. The further development of the global order and its underlying norms and rules will increasingly require the participation of emerging powers, with the positions of the Southern democracies of India, Brazil and South Africa (IBSA) being of particular interest. For even as it is true that these countries are pluralist democracies with a free press, functioning democratic institutions, and a largely liberal economy—and they share the same attributes as classical Western democracies and hold similar views on democratic principles and fundamental human rights—they have substantially different views on certain matters of global order and international politics. This observation also pertains to the emerging political concept of Responsibility to Protect(R2P). India, which stands out from the Southern democracies for its being the world's largest democracy with a population of 1.2 billion—and due to its economic growth which will outperform even China's if International Monetary Fund (IMF) predictions for 2015 and 2016 come true—has expressed a great deal of scepticism about the concept of R2P. However, while this was at first perceived as undifferentiated opposition, in particular at the 2005 World Summit, it later turned out to be unrelated to the first two pillars of R2P which, in fact, are generally in line with Indian foreign policy. Yet to this day, New Delhi remains highly sceptical about pillar three, which establishes the right to intervention in the internal affairs of a sovereign state if such state is unwilling or unable to protect its population, and particularly rejects the use of military means in this context. Moreover, India long questioned whether a new R2P-type concept was needed in the first place, since the first two pillars were not considered to be new ideas, but rather existing and accepted norms of international law, and the third pillar was perceived as an attempt to re-introduce humanitarian intervention (HI). In the debate on the topic in India, R2P and HI are not seldom tarred with the 2 ORF OCCASIONAL PAPER # 90 APRIL 2016 IT IS CHANGING AFTER ALL: INDIA'S STANCE ON ‘RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT’ same brush as the selective use of military force, mainly by Western states, which claim to pursue humanitarian objectives but are in fact only after their own national and strategic interests: "One answer to the problem of internal disorder is humanitarian intervention which has most recently been enshrined in the UN as the 'responsibility to protect' or R2P" (Bajpai 2012: 54). This paper describes the stance taken by the Indian government on the R2P concept, the focus being on the question of its causes and reasons. It is clear that the debate in India, which started rather late, revolves almost exclusively around pillar three, and in particular around the use of military intervention to prevent mass atrocities. So far, there has hardly been any normative or conceptual debate on R2P at all (cf. Mohan 2014: 3). Yet India's stance on R2P is more complex than is widely believed or visible at a glance. Thus the aim of this article is to identify and critically assess what seem to be, or actually are, the guiding principles, values and norms of India's foreign policy with regard to the (controversial aspects of) R2P. Emphasis is placed on India's own experiences with intervention and the country's stance on the Western practice of humanitarian intervention. In a second step, India's specific R2P policy is outlined and analysed in four phases. The author argues that India's basic stance has changed little in the course of these four phases, in particular on the controversial issue of military intervention envisioned under pillar three. While India's opposition was initially perceived as reflexive and fundamental, it has nevertheless given way to a clearly more nuanced image of critical and sceptical acceptance of R2P (in regard to the concept as such and with fundamental doubt about pillar three), which is the result of a more in-depth analysis of the R2P concept and a consequence of India´s growing engagement with questions of international politics on the global stage. New Delhi has come quite a way along the path toward general acceptance of R2P. It was in particular India's term as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council (UNSC) in 2011 and 2012 and the intense debate on R2P in the wake of the war in Libya that revealed India's stance on R2P and its core elements. India's stance became substantially more open, specific and nuanced. ORF OCCASIONAL PAPER # 90 APRIL 2016 3 IT IS CHANGING AFTER ALL: INDIA'S STANCE ON ‘RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT’ INDIAN FOREIGN POLICY: GUIDING PRINCIPLES India's stance on concrete decisions in international politics that are considered later in this article has almost always been adopted on the basis of a mix of strategic and material interests and trade-offs, domestic policy constellations and sometimes personal motives or views of important decisionmakers. Thus, the dominant factors influencing it vary and are taken into account as each situation requires. In general, however, the underlying assumption is that any state's decisions are governed by norms and rules, made in the light of subjective factors, historical-cultural experiences and institutional involvement and based on guiding principles, values and world views. It is on the basis of these principles and the way they see a particular matter that states define their specific interests and ultimately, amid consideration of the other variables mentioned above, their foreign policy. The current state of research on India's R2P policy and an intensive study of secondary literature on the country's strategic and foreign policy allow fundamental values, norms and world views that are regarded as declaratory or actual guiding principles to be defined, and they are critically assessed in this article. They are the so-called five principles, or Panchsheel; India's perception of itself as the advocate of the Non-Aligned Movement; the principle of non-violence; and tolerance and pluralism in foreign affairs. Whenever relevant, the subcontinent's power role and development in present and especially future power politics, which are perceived as open both in India and abroad, and its meteoric rise – together with all the implications this has for its foreign policy, are considered as background information and additional explanatory variables.

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