INDIA AS AN EMERGING POWER Of Related Interest Decentring the Indian Nation edited by Andrew Wyatt and John Zavos Constitution and Erosion of a Monetary Economy: Problems of India’s Development Since Independence by Waltraud Schelke Future Trends in East Asian International Relations edited by Quansheng Zhao India as an Emerging Power Editor SUMIT GANGULY FRANK CASS LONDON • PORTLAND, OR First Published in 2003 in Great Britain by FRANK CASS PUBLISHERS Crown House, 47 Chase Side Southgate, London N14 5BP This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” and in the United States of America by FRANK CASS PUBLISHERS c/o ISBS, 920 NE 58th Avenue #300, Portland, Oregon, 97213–3786 Website: www.frankcass.com Copyright © 2003 Frank Cass Publishers British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data India as an emerging power 1. India—Foreign relations—1984– I. Ganguly, Sumit 327.5′4 ISBN 0-203-00988-6 Master e-book ISBN ISBN - (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-7146-5386-1 (Print Edition) (cloth) ISBN 0-7146-8321-3 (paper) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data India as an emerging power/editor, Sumit Ganguly. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7146-5386-1 (Print Edition) (cloth)—ISBN 0-7146-8321-3 (pbk.) 1. India–Foreign relations–1984–2. National security–India. I. Ganguly, Sumit. DS480.84.154 2003 327.54-dc21 2002153167 This group of studies first appeared in a Special Issue on ‘India as an Emerging Power’ of The Journal of Strategic Studies (ISSN 0140 2390) 25/4 (December 2002) published by Frank Cass. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permissionof the publisher of this book. Contents Acknowledgements and Dedication vi 1. Introduction 1 Sumit Ganguly 2. The US-India Courtship: From Clinton to Bush 6 Robert M.Hathaway 3. India, Pakistan and Kashmir 30 Stephen Philip Cohen 4. Toward a ‘Force-in-Being’: The Logic, Structure, and Utility of 58 India’s Emerging Nuclear Posture Ashley J.Tellis 5. Asymmetrical Indian and Chinese Threat Perceptions 104 John W.Garver 6. Indo-Russian Strategic Relations: New Choices and Constraints 128 Deepa Ollapally 7. The Indo-French Strategic Dialogue: Bilateralism and World 150 Perceptions Jean-Luc Racine 8. India and Israel: Emerging Partnership 185 P.R.Kumaraswamy 9. The Political Economy of India’s Second-Generation Reforms 200 Sunila Kale Abstracts 218 About the Contributors 221 Index 222 Acknowledgements and Dedication The workshop that preceded this special issue was supported by a generous grant from the Cooperative Monitoring Center, Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Additional assistance for this workshop was also provided by Richard Lariviere, the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Kathryn Hansen, the Director of the Center for Asian Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Major Kent Breedlove and Captain Larry Smith, students in the Foreign Area Officer program, provided substantial and invaluable logistical assistance. This volume is dedicated to my friend, Jack Snyder of the Department of Political Science, Columbia University. 1 Introduction SUMIT GANGULY Issues of regional security in South Asia have received considerably greater attention since the September 11, 2002 terrorist attacks on the United States. Such a focus on the region is hardly unwarranted. Even though the majority of the perpetrators of the acts of terror were Saudi nationals, it is all but certain that the infrastructure of terror that supported and abetted them was located athwart South Asia, in the dens of the Taliban regime of Afghanistan. Despite the renewed focus on South Asian regional security, knowledge of and interest in the principal player in the region, India, still remains limited in the Western world. Yet India’s role is of paramount significance for the long-term security and stability of the region. It is not merely the most populous state in the region but also has a number of other important attributes that undergird its strategic significance in the region and beyond. It has a substantial military apparatus,1 a growing economy with some world-class sectors,2 and democratic political institutions that have withstood countless vicissitudes.3 Consequently, India’s place in the global order at the Cold War’s end merits careful scrutiny. The end of the Cold War necessitated fundamental changes in India’s security and foreign policies. In the initial years of its independence, India’s leadership propounded and promoted the doctrine of nonalignment. This doctrine, among other matters, sought to steer India away from the emergent, titanic superpower struggle. In keeping with the expectations of this doctrine, its principal proponent, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, sought to dramatically limit defense expenditures. His interests in limiting the scope and dimensions of India’s military were manifold. Domestically, he was acutely cognizant of India’s endemic poverty and also feared of possible Bonapartist ambitions on the part of the Indian military.4 Internationally, he was determined to forge a world order that eschewed, or at least hobbled, the use of force in international politics. Nehru’s stature in the Indian political arena enabled him to pursue these ends despite criticism and opposition from some quarters. But Nehru’s hopes were dealt a devastating blow in 1962 with the Chinese attack on India’s northern frontiers. The Indian military, largely unprepared for this onslaught, was easily 2 INDIA AS AN EMERGING POWER routed.5 This military debacle led to a fundamental shift in India’s security policies as the country lurched forward with a major program of military modernization. Although Nehru’s successors continued to invoke the precepts of nonalignment, Indian defense policy increasingly came to embrace a Realist outlook. In the absence of reliable, powerful patrons, India, its decision-makers came to realize, would have to resort to strategy of self-help to protect its security interests. Even though the United States was keen on protecting India from Chinese military pressures, its support was not forthcoming. The American military dependence on Pakistan for bases, coupled with India’s neuralgic insistence on nonalignment, foreclosed the prospects of an Indo-US security relationship.6 The considerations of nonalignment also inhibited the emergence of an Indo-Soviet security nexus. India’s costly commitment to the principles of nonalignment became more diluted as it perceived a growing threat from China in the wake of the Sino- American rapprochement. Accordingly, India forged an alliance of convenience with the Soviet Union in 1971. This relationship held India in good stead for nearly three decades. Soviet intransigence toward China dovetailed with India’s misgivings about a renewed Chinese threat.7 The Indo-Soviet relationship was not without cost, however. India’s ties to the Soviet Union, coupled with its feckless anti-American rhetoric, stunted the any meaningful improvement in Indo-American relations. The Cold War’s end, however, also brought an end to the Indo-Soviet relationship, forcing India’s decision-makers to find new means to assure their country’s security. To this end, India assigned greater significance to its nuclear weapons program as a hedge against strategic uncertainty and the possibilities of future Chinese nuclear blackmail. The inexorable progress of its nuclear weapons program was demonstrated to the world by the controversial tests of May 1998. Ashley Tellis’ article in this special issue sketches the likely evolution of the Indian nuclear weapons program in the foreseeable future. Tellis persuasively argues that the program will evolve in an incremental, cautious, and circumscribed fashion. India’s decision to forthrightly challenge the existing global nuclear order initially led to a significant setback in its relations with the United States. This relationship had seen some limited improvements in the 1990s as a consequence of India’s hesitant embrace of the free market, the abandonment of its reflexive anti-American rhetoric and the end of its close ties to the Soviet Union. Adroit diplomacy enabled India’s leadership over the course of the next year to repair much of the rift that the nuclear tests had generated. As Robert Hathaway’s article argues, the relationship has gathered greater strength under the George W.Bush administration. The administration’s INTRODUCTION 3 willingness to adopt a less rigid policy on the question of India’s acquisition of nuclear weapons, among other matters, removed a key irritant in the relationship. Despite the warming trend, Hathaway appropriately cautions that the relationship is far from robust and important differences persist in such areas as global trade negotiations, the pace of economic reform within India and the question of India’s hoped-for membership on the United Nations Security Council. India’s relationship with the principal successor state to the other former superpower, the Soviet Union, has also undergone profound changes. Nevertheless, as Deepa Ollapally argues, the bonds, though significantly attenuated, have not been entirely sundered. India can no longer rely on Russia to militarily pin down a recalcitrant China, nor can it count on Russian support on the Kashmir issue in the UN Security Council. Yet because India possesses a very substantial Soviet-made military arsenal, India maintains a substantial arms purchase relationship with Russia. India has, however, rebuffed Russian overtures for the formation of an Indo-Russian-Chinese diplomatic bloc as a bulwark against overweening American power. Given India’s recent efforts to court the United States, its reluctance to participate in such a dubious enterprise is hardly surprising.