Hegemony and Identity in India's Post-Cold War Foreign Policy
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India and the Quest for World Order: Hegemony and Identity in India’s Post-Cold War Foreign Policy Discourse Dissertation zur Erlangung des Doktorgrades der Philosophischen Fakultät der Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel vorgelegt von Thorsten Alexander Wojczewski Kiel (14. März 2016) Erstgutacher: Prof. Dr. Dirk Nabers Zweitgutacher: Prof. Dr. Patrick Köllner Tag der mündlichen Prüfung: 28. Juni 2016 Durch den zweiten Prodekan Prof. Dr. Elmar Eggert zum Druck genehmigt: 13. Juli 2016 2 Acknowledgements This dissertation was written during my time as a doctoral student at the University of Kiel and as a fellow in the doctoral programme of the German Institute of Global and Area Studies in Hamburg. I would like to thank my supervisors Professor Dirk Nabers and Professor Pat- rick Köllner for their enduring support, help and advice. Furthermore, I would like to express my gratitude to the Heinrich Böll Foundation for providing me with a three-year dissertation scholarship and funding my field research in India. I would especially like to thank the Insti- tute for Defence Studies and Analyses in New Delhi, in particular Brig. (Rtd) Romel Dahiya, and the Centre for South Asian Studies at the University of Oxford, in particular Dr Kate Sul- livan, for hosting me as a visiting fellow and supporting my research activities. Great thanks also go to my colleagues at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies, particularly Anne, Janina, Lisa, Martin, Medha and Vita, for making my doctoral journey de- spite all the work and stress very pleasant and helping me to complete this thesis. A special thank goes to Medha for reading and commenting on parts of this doctoral thesis. Parts of this dissertation were presented at the International Studies Association Annual Con- ferences, the World International Studies Committee Conference, the Oxford South Asia Work in Progress Roundtable and various forums at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies. I would like to thank the participants for their feedback and comments. I also owe thanks to my friends and my parents for their endless support and understanding over the last years. Finally, I would like to thank my partner Jagriti for your patience, help and love, and for proofreading and commenting on the manuscript. 3 Table of Contents 1. Introduction 8 2. Discourse, Hegemony and Postcoloniality 18 2.1 Structuralism and Poststructuralism 19 2.2 Poststructuralist Discourse Theory: Discourse and Hegemony 22 2.2.1 Discourse 22 2.2.2 Subject, Subjectivity and Agency 25 2.2.3 The Emergence and Constitution of Discourses and Identities: Nodal Points, Empty Signifiers and Social Antagonisms 27 2.2.4 Discursive Hegemony 31 2.3 Postcoloniality: Identity and Difference in the Colonial Encounter 34 2.4 A Post-foundationalist and Reflexive Perspective on the Relationship between ‘Knowledge’ and ‘Reality’ 37 2.5 Summary 40 3. Global Power Shifts and World Order: The Contestation of ‘Western’ Discursive Hegemony 42 3.1 Discursive Hegemony and World Order 45 3.2 The Contestation of World Order: ‘Global Power shifts’ and Counter-Hegemonic Discourses 53 3.3 Summary 62 4. Studying India’s Foreign Policy Discourse: Analytical Strategy and Data Corpus 63 4.1 Analytical Strategy 63 4.2 Logics-Approach 67 4.3 Data Corpus and Textual Analysis 71 4.4 Summary 78 5. The Evolution and Disruption of the Nehruvian Foreign Policy Discourse 79 5.1 Non-alignment: An Independent Foreign Policy for an Independent India 80 5.2 Nehruvianism and India’s Post-Independence Foreign Policy Discourse 83 5.3 A Moment of Dislocation: India’s Identity Crisis after the End of the Cold War 88 5.4 Summary 93 6. Post-Nehruvianism: India’s Hegemonic Foreign Policy Discourse in the Post-Cold War Era 95 6.1 From Non-Alignment to Multi-Alignment: The Transformation of the Nehruvian Foreign Policy Discourse 97 6.2 The Social Logics of the Post-Nehruvian Discourse: The Pillars of World Order 104 6.2.1 State Sovereignty 105 6.2.2 Enlightened Self-Interest 112 6.2.3 Non-violence 121 6.2.4 Non-discrimination 129 6.2.5 International Unity in Diversity 138 4 6.3 Political Logics: The Constitutive ‘Others’ in the Post-Nehruvian Discourse 146 6.3.1 Temporal ‘Others’: Colonialism and the Cold War 146 6.3.2 Spatial-political ‘Others’: Pakistan and China 152 6.4 Fantasmatic Logics: Indian Greatness and Exceptionalism 161 6.4.1 Indian Greatness 161 6.4.2 Indian Exceptionalism 167 6.5 Summary 178 7. Hyper-nationalist Discourse: Making India Strong 180 7.1 Social Logic: National Strength (Shakti) 183 7.2 Political Logics: A Uniform and Muscular National Identity 201 7.2.1 Colonial ‘Others’: The Encounter with the Islamic and Western-Christian Civilizations 201 7.2.2 Spatial-political Others: Pakistan and China 211 7.3 Fantasmatic Logics: Indian Greatness and Exceptionalism 223 7.3.1. Indian Greatness 224 7.3.2 Indian Exceptionalism 233 7.4 Summary 241 8. Conclusion 243 9. References 251 German Summary / Deutsche Zusammenfassung 291 Lebenslauf 302 5 List of Abbreviations ABKM Akhil Bhartiya Karyakarini Mandal ASEAN Association of Southeast Asian Nations BJP Bharatiya Janata Party BASIC Brazil-South Africa-India-China BRICS Brazil-India-China-South Africa CBM Confidence-Building Measure CD Community of Democracies CTBT Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty EAM External Affairs Minister FDI Foreign direct investments IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency IBSA India-Brazil-South Africa IDSA Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses IMF International Monetary Fund IR International Relations ISI Inter-Services Intelligence J&K Jammu & Kashmir LoC Line of Control MEA Ministry of External Affairs MOD Ministry of Defence NAM Non-Alignment Movement NATO North-Atlantic Treaty Organization NDA National Democratic Alliance 6 NGO Non-governmental organization NPT Non-proliferation Treaty NSA National Security Adviser NSAB National Security Advisory Board NSC National Security Council PM Prime Minister RSS Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh R2R Responsibility to Protect SAARC South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation SATP South Asian Terrorism Portal SLOCs Sea Lines of Communication TFA Trade Facilitation Agreement UN United Nations UNDEF United Nations Democracy Fund UNGA United Nations General Assembly UNSC United Nations Security Council UPA United Progressive Alliance WTO World Trade Organization 7 1. Introduction There is today a strong sense, among scholars and practitioners of international relations, that the 21st century witnesses profound shifts in the global configuration of power. The Interna- tional Relations (IR) discourse after the end of the cold war was shaped by the wide-spread conviction that the ideological and geopolitical struggles between great powers were over and the ultimate triumph of liberal democracy and market economy1 would gradually lead to peace, prosperity and cooperation in a complex global governance system. Only two decades later, the IR discourse talks of a deep crisis or even the end of the Western-liberal world order (see Jacques 2009, Sørensen 2011, Friedman/Oskanian/Pardo 2013, Morgan 2013, Acharya 2014a, Stuenkel 2016). The shifts in the economic, political and military distribution of power from the ‘West’ to the ‘East’2 are represented by the discourse as the main embodiment of this crisis: While so-called emerging powers such as China, India and Russia could expand their power and act with a greater self-confidence on the world stage, the global leadership role of the U.S. and its Western allies has declined after the military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq and the recent economic and financial crisis. The global power shifts are, therefore, seen as a challenge or even threat to the Western-dominated order and its values such as the rule of law, free trade, liberal democracy and human rights (see Cox 2007, Ikenberry 2008, Mearsheimer 2010, Kupchan 2012, Layne 2012). At the same time, there is today a greater awareness in the IR discourse for the potential re- percussions of this shift in material capabilities and resources on the level of knowledge and theory production in the sense that existing theories and concepts of IR are always also a re- sult of the existing power distribution, i.e. contemporary mainstream IR theories and concepts, informed predominantly by ‘Western’ experiences, conditions, values and interests, are in- creasingly challenged for their Western-centric conception of world politics and there are calls for ‘re-writing’ the discipline by ‘de-centering’ the West and introducing ‘non-Western’ ideas and theories into IR (see, inter alia, Tickner 2003, Nayak/Selbin 2010, Lizée 2011, Shilliam 2011, Hobson 2012, Tickner/Blaney 2012, Acharya 2014b). Against this backdrop, this study re-conceptualizes the phenomenon that is subsumed under label of ‘global power shifts’ through the lenses of poststructuralist discourse theory and 1 This notion was most prominently articulated by Francis Fukuyama (1992) who coined “the end of history” thesis. 2 When using binary categories such as West/non-West, this study is fully aware of the problems that these di- chotomies entail and thus puts them in parantheses. In so doing, this study precisely wants to point out the dan- gers of such essentialism. 8 postcolonialism as a shift of representational power that challenges ‘Western’ (discursive) hegemony in the political and academic domain. By understanding ‘global power shifts’ and world order as discursive phenomena, it argues that discourses materialize their attributes or effects by fixing particular meanings