Sentimental affair

A twenty-four hour international news channel on the internet described the productive meeting between the Indian prime minister and the Pakistani president as the most significant thing to come out of this year’s non-aligned summit in Havana. Very few can disagree with this observation. The fact that it seems to be easier for these two leaders from neighbouring countries to hold such a meeting 12,000 miles away on the sidelines of a non-event rather than in their own backyard speaks volumes about the state of relations between the two countries.

Government spokesmen have been at pains to suggest that the Indian delegation had tried to moderate the extreme language proposed by the radical countries at the conference. One wonders why they should have put themselves through all this trouble; it is well-known by everyone that nearly all the nations participating in the summit tell the Western donors, and the United States of America in particular, not to pay any attention to the rhetoric that emerges from such a meeting.

In fact, very little attention is given to the event itself. There is little point in NAM apologists citing the number of countries that attend such events — each country has its own reason for taking part in these affairs, and few of these reasons have anything in common with the anachronistic philosophy of non-alignment. Most of the countries that feature in such a summit are incapable of throwing their weight around in international relations. As V.K. Krishna Menon so pithily stated at the Bandung Conference in 1955, “zero plus zero still only adds up to zero”. It is equally ludicrous for NAM loyalists to describe the conclave as the biggest peace movement in the world. This is all the more so because a large number of member countries participating at the conference can only be described as aggressive and belligerent. Apart from this, the movement has been totally incapable, not to say inert, in dealing with crises among member countries. It will be instructive to know, for example, what the non-aligned movement has done to alleviate, let alone solve, the problems in Kosovo, Darfur, Ivory Coast or the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Not long after the disintegration of the USSR and Yoguslavia, one of the original founder-members of the movement, the Indian government had sought the views of senior officials and politicians about the virtue of continuing in the NAM. One of the reasons for this exercise was the fact that it was getting increasingly problematic to find countries willing to host summit meetings. Only a few of the individuals who were approached by the government for their views had the courage to express the following opinion — that India’s best interests were no longer served by being a member, that the movement had lost its raison d’être, and that there was much more that divided the member countries than united it.

Some remedies were also suggested; that the emphasis of the movement should be switched to economic matters, that the NAM should be merged with the Group of Seventy Seven developing countries, and that the name of the movement should be changed to move away from the once relevant, but now outmoded, philosophy of Jawaharlal Nehru, Gamal Abdel Nasser and Marshall Tito. But, perhaps not surprisingly, the Indian leadership failed to grasp the nettle and preferred to let matters drift. It appears that fifteen years later, despite the further weakening of the movement, New Delhi is similarly inhibited about abandoning its links with this moribund organization.

NAM enables India to make ritualistic and sentimental references to Nehru, Indira and Rajiv Gandhi. All three belong to the past and are hardly remembered in the international arena. A more pressing matter on this occasion was New Delhi’s desire to be elected to a permanent seat in the United Nations security council — an ambition made more complicated by the candidature of Shashi Tharoor to the secretary-generalship of that organization. It says much for Tharoor’s abilities that he remained in the election fray until the last informal ballot. But it says little for the strategists in the ministry of external affairs and in other centres of power in New Delhi who should have realized that if Tharoor had got elected, it would have put paid to India’s chances of a permanent seat in the security council. Accordingly, it becomes pertinent to ask in what manner was Tharoor’s application initiated, and what consideration it was given by the competent authorities before it was launched as a national candidature.While it would not be the first time that the right hand in the government has not known what the left hand was up to, this was clearly an egregious example of either miscalculation or incompetence.

Or does Shashi Tharoor’s candidature indicate that the government is harbouring second thoughts about its security council bid? China’s position on that subject should give rise to some reflection. The international arena is a complicated place and issues of peace and international security require clarity of thought if a contribution is to be made by a permanent member. The burden on the non-permanent members is far less onerous.

One of the cardinal principles of the non-aligned movement is to adhere to the letter and spirit of article 2.1 of the United Nations Charter, regarding the sacrosanct nature of sovereign equality of all its members. On the other hand, the prime movers in the international community are adopting different approaches to state sovereignty with concepts like human rights intervention. This poses a challenge to situations which nation states have long considered to be within their essential jurisdiction.

A case in point is the current humanitarian crisis in Sudan. What, for instance, would be India’s policy on Darfur? Has it made any efforts with Khartoum to permit a UN force to prevent the ethnic cleansing and gross human rights violations that are taking place there? Has the country framed any policy on this issue at all? The government is rightly proud of its peacekeeping record in many parts of the world, but it cannot confuse peacekeeping with peace-making. And will the evident drive towards unilateral action in the world overtake the controversy about the expansion of the security council?

Multilateral global diplomacy is relatively new on the world stage and it is a product of the 20th century and Woodrow Wilson’s ‘open covenants openly arrived at’. There is no guarantee whatsoever that it will survive the 21st century. It may be worthwhile for India to consider whether it would be to its advantage or not. India has itself already violated international law and acted contrary to the UN Charter when it sought to protect what it felt were its national interests and had neither the time nor the inclination to seek an uncertain approval from the world body. India’s gross domestic product is expected to be among the highest in the world along with China and the US within thirty years. When that happens, the country’s present views on multilateralism might well undergo a change.

More certainly, China’s attitude will change. What will happen when China produces more than half the world’s commodities? Would that country seek the approbation of the UN when its interests are at stake? Or would the reality of its power force the country on to unilateral action? Those in authority in New Delhi would do well to ponder some of these long-term issues of great concern to our country.