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Unsustainable Chinese Policies Indian Navy’s Plan Disappointed Congress in Gujarat Wake Up Call For Political Class and many more …. Published By: Vivekananda International Foundation 3, San Martin Marg, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi – 110021, [email protected], www.vifindia.org Contents ARTICLES - The Undisputed Vote Ka Saudagar! Indian Foreign Policy Challenges - A Surya Prakash 51 3 - Kanwal Sibal GMR Contract Termination And President Putin In India India - Maldives Relations 58 18 - PP Shukla - Dr N Manoharan 103 Safeguarding India's Maritime Interests Need To Expedite The Creation Of An Indian Cyber Command - Nitin Gokhale 23 62 107 - Radhakrishna Rao Obama's Visit To Myanmar: Implications For India Acquiring The Heritage Tag – Is It 28 Enough? 70 - Vinod Anand - Dr. Anirban Ganguly We, The Living! Need To revise Land Use Politics of Corruption In Bangladesh Polices 34 - Dr M N Buch - Neha Mehta 78 Hounding Businesses In Good For Stocks 42 - Dr. Anantha Nageswaran Rape, Rage, Reality Check EVENTS - Sushant Screen 46 Interaction With “CIISS On Political Change Over In China” 84 VIVEK : Issues and Options January – 2013 Issue: II No: I 2 Indian Foreign Policy Challenges - Kanwal Sibal ndian foreign policy already the US and its impact on its faces many challenges. These international role was not I challenges have not been met predicted by observers either, and will continue to confront us in though many were warning that the future. An understanding of the US was living beyond its what they are will help to devise means. future approaches. We must therefore identify what the So soon after the collapse of one existing challenges are. There is a superpower, the Soviet Union, we caveat. “Future” covers an are talking about the decline of indefinite time span. Are we another, United States. looking at the near future, mid- term future or the long term Many alarm bells are being rung perspective? Many exercises of that the Chinese policies are identifying issues and challenges unsustainable and that China is in the 20 and 30-year horizons are heading for a crisis. Many may being done by governments and wish that to happen so that the non-governmental institutions. muscle-flexing China is cut down They are useful in indicating to size and its neighbours feel trends. But it is impossible to more comfortable. But no one can predict the unpredictable.No one predict with certainty what lies could predict the collapse of the ahead. Soviet Union when it occurred, The element of innovation and though many wished for it. technology that can change global The rapidity of China’s rise at the scenarios is unpredictable too. pace at which it has occurred and There is a line of thinking that its impact on global affairs was not many of the future challenges that predicted with assurance. are linked to energy and food security, for instance, could be met The nature and timing of the with technological breakthroughs. financial crisis that has afflicted Even the success of nations in * Kanwal Sibal - Member Advisory Board, VIF VIVEK : Issues and Options January – 2013 Issue: II No: I 3 meeting a variety of challenges controversial ones are made. will be measured, it is believed, by Vietnam, Iraq and unleashing their technological innovativeness. Islamic fundamentalism against the Soviets are examples in the The nature of conflicts may change American case. India made an with technological innovation, error of judgment, for instance, at especially in cyberspace. Simla in 1972. With all these caveats and In reality, countries do not always uncertainties let me delve into the act in their national interest. It is subject of this talk. no country’s interest, for example, to have difficult A big challenge for relations with India is to In reality, countries do not neighbours, but maintain coherence always act in their national many countries do, and balance in its interest. It is no country’s either because they foreign policy. It is interest, for example, to have want to dominate axiomatic that difficult relations with them or are protecting and neighbours, but many insensitive to their advancing the countries do, either because concerns. Smaller country’s national they want to dominate them or countries too interest is the goal are insensitive to their overplay their hand of its foreign policy. concerns. Smaller countries too and provoke their This is all right as overplay their hand and bigger and stronger an enunciation of a provoke their bigger and neighbours. general principle; stronger neighbours. the problem lies in The enlightened the practical interest of any implementation of such principles. country is undermined by tensions and conflict. Yet, many countries Defining national interest is not as willfully pursue policies that easy as it might seem. National threaten peace. polls are not conducted to define a country’s national interest. A If pride makes individuals broad consensus can be built over obstinate and unwilling to years on the essential parameters compromise, nations too suffer of such interest. But situations from the “loss of face” syndrome. change and judgments have to be made. Often wrong and highly VIVEK : Issues and Options January – 2013 Issue: II No: I 4 Is the form of government relevant sovereignty has been pooled in in properly defining what would be some key areas. best in a country’s national interest? In other words, do National interest is a fluid and democratic systems with public uncertain concept. A big challenge debate on policies enable leaders for India is therefore to be able to to form a better view of national define its national interest with interest, rather than dictatorial or discernment, realism, objectivity authoritative systems where policy and foresight. formulation is personalized and can be whimsical? This is not easy as the backdrop against which analysis and choices But we see that even the most are made keeps changing. A broad democratic countries make huge national consensus on what mistakes in foreign policy choices constitutes the national interest is and impose costs on themselves important. and others. I had earlier spoken of coherence There is the issue of national and balance in foreign policy as a power and national interest. A continuing challenge. powerful country will expand the scope of its national interest in The international scene has tune with its ambitions and the changed a great deal in the last reach of its power. A weaker two decades or so. India has country will interpret its national needed to adjust its foreign policy interest more narrowly so as to accordingly. During the Cold War, avoid unnecessary problems. India considered the Soviet Union a reliable strategic partner, even Globalization and interdependence though the term strategic partner has also changed the notions of was not used then. national interest because countries know they do not have a With a world divided into two free hand and have to give and blocs, India’s compass was take much more than before. nonalignment, with its political empathies more with the eastern In some cases, like the European bloc whose rhetoric was friendlier Union, national interest has been towards the third world. submerged in many ways within a larger community interest. Even VIVEK : Issues and Options January – 2013 Issue: II No: I 5 India‘s relations with the western weak Russia is not good for the bloc were problematic because of global system. In fact, the space the west’s non-proliferation vacated by Russia has been filled injunctions, pro-Pakistani policies by China. US political lobbies still and economic philosophy. see Russia as a geopolitical threat, as Romney’s statements during The nature of our relations with the US presidential election the US has been altered in the last showed. few years. Our policies have become convergent in many ways. India can do little to boost Russia, Improved relations except by with the US have maintaining the given India more The nature of our relations regularity of room to manoeuvre with the US has been altered summit meetings, regionally and in the last few years. Our nurturing the internationally. policies have become traditionally close Strategically, we convergent in many ways. defence ties that are being pulled Improved relations with the assure non- towards the US. US have given India more disruption of This means that room to manoeuvre regionally supplies at critical our relations with and internationally. moments as well as the US allies have Strategically, we are being access to sensitive become better too, pulled towards the US. This technologies, and means that our relations with as, for example, partnering it in the US allies have become with Japan, South political groupings better too, as, for example, Korea and such as the Russia- with Japan, South Korea and Australia. India-China Australia. dialogue and the Simultaneously, BRICS where the our relations with Russia have lost west is absent. the centrality of the past. Even as India’s economic growth is The challenge for us is to expand changing its global profile, our our economic ties with Russia. economic ties with Russia have Energy cooperation provides an relatively shrunk. opportunity so far insufficiently exploited. Yet Russia is important for the balance of our foreign policy. A VIVEK : Issues and Options January – 2013 Issue: II No: I 6 India and Russia share the agenda political chess boards and optimize of multipolarity, respect for what it can extract from others for sovereignty, non-interference in its own development. This means the internal affairs of countries, India should preserve it geo-political abuse of the human independence of judgment and rights issues, regime change action as much as possible even as policies, the proclivity to use it conducts itself as a good and military means to find solutions to reliable partner where the highly complex issues.

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