India’s foreign policy has arguably done a good job in reflecting most of these criteria, though it is clear that we still have a way to go before we can express satisfaction with our performance on all counts. But Falk’s list is worth bearing in mind as a yardstick when we examine India’s international standing in the rest of this volume.
So what does all this mean for the reshaped world that we hope will emerge in the next couple of decades? What can we project for the world of the next twenty years?
I have little doubt that the international system — as constructed following the Second World War — will be almost unrecognizable by 2030 owing to the rise of emerging powers, a transformed global economy, a real transfer of relative wealth and economic power from the West, or the North, to other countries in the global South, and the growing influence of non-state actors, including terrorists, multinational corporations and criminal networks. In the next two decades, this new international system will be coping with the issues of ageing populations in the developed world; increasing energy, food and water constraints; and worries about climate change and migration. India’s transformation will mean that resource issues — including energy, food and water, on all of which demand is projected to outstrip easily available supplies over the next decade or so — will gain prominence on the international agenda.
We must be determined to pursue our domestic transformation, and to do so responsibly. The energy demands this process will make on the world will be huge, and we must seek to fulfil our energy requirements through a mix of efficient and environmentally friendly means (hydro, solar, wind and nuclear, in addition to the still-unavoidable thermal-and petroleum-or gas-driven forms of energy). Our foreign policy must serve this objective too: the India — US nuclear agreement was a step in this direction. So too will be an Indian policy on climate change that respects the world’s anxieties about global warming while preserving the capacity to do what it takes to connect the deprived and excluded among our people to the opportunities the twenty-first century offers. The global environment, in both senses of that phrase, could undermine many of the aspirations of Indian foreign policy.
Our demand for food will inevitably rise as well, perhaps by 50 per cent in the next two decades, as a result of our growing population, their rising affluence and the improved dietary possibilities available to a larger middle class. We will need to multiply our sources of food, including developing agricultural land abroad, in Africa and even Latin America. Lack of access to stable supplies of water, particularly for agricultural purposes, is reaching critical proportions and the problem will worsen because of rapid urbanization over the next twenty years. We will need skilful and creative diplomacy to ensure that interruptions in the flow of water across our borders do not bedevil relations with our neighbours.
All this underscores my initial point, that foreign policy is basically about fulfilling domestic objectives. Let us never forget that if we succeed—when we succeed — in our national transformation, we will be including more and more of our people in the great narrative of hope that has been the narrative of social and economic development in the West over the last two hundred years. We will be connecting 500 million Indians to their own country and to the rest of the world. Half a billion Indian villagers will join the global village. That is an exciting prospect and I am sure, for some, an alarming one.
This underscores the need for increased, more democratic and more equitable global governance. Let us look even further than the next two decades. Growth projections for Brazil, Russia, India and China (the BRIC countries) indicate they will collectively match the original G7’s share of global GDP by 2040–50. All four probably, and certainly India, will continue to enjoy relatively rapid economic growth and will strive for a multipolar world in which their capitals are among the poles. New Delhi is already a magnet for visiting potentates and tributaries; it will certainly be among the half-dozen places from which the twenty-first century world will be run.
The experts tell us that historically, emerging multipolar systems have been more unstable than bipolar or unipolar ones. The rise of China is one of the great and visible events of our geopolitics, and it appears to be matched by a comparable decline in the political will and economic self-confidence of the Western powers, at a time when several ‘emerging’ nations are acquiring strength and confidence on the global stage. In a world in which some great powers are no longer quite as great as some formerly minor states, and where a powerful China is scrutinized carefully for signs of incipient hegemonic tendencies, there are serious questions about the future of the world order. Might China seek to challenge the existing global system, as a rising Germany did at the beginning of the twentieth century, or to reorder the structures of international organization, as a triumphant United States did after the Second World War? Should a country like India work actively in these circumstances to reform and strengthen the world order in order to create a pattern of several powerful states cooperating with each other in an inclusive multipolar world system?
The recent, indeed ongoing, global financial crisis underlines that the next twenty years of transition to a new system are fraught with risks. Global policy-makers will have to cope with a growing demand for multilateral cooperation when the international system will be stressed by the incomplete transition from the old to the new order. And the new players will not want to cooperate under the old rules.
The multiplicity of actors on the international scene could, if properly accommodated, add strength to our ageing post — Second World War institutions, or they could fragment the international system and reduce international cooperation. Our era is characterized by common vulnerabilities among potential rivals — the United States and China, for instance, with one a vital market for the other and the latter a major debtor of the former — as well as growing interdependencies among former enemies, such as the Russian supply of oil and gas to West Europe. Countries like India have no desire to challenge the international system as did other rising powers like Germany and Japan in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but wish to be given a place at the global high table. Without that, they would be unlikely to volunteer to share the primary burden for dealing with such issues as terrorism, climate change, proliferation and energy security, which concern all of us.
These issues will remain key concerns even as resource issues move up on the international agenda. The old divides between East and West, North and South, capitalist and communist, developed and developing are becoming largely irrelevant; the twenty-first-century world is not one of simple binaries. Failing states, terrorist groups, transnational Islamist movements, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and civil society have also all begun to impact the choices of governments. Ours is an era where ‘non-state actors’ can nearly bring two armies to war. Terrorism is the tragic blight of our times, but far too much ink has been expended on it to merit extensive treatment in this book. But its appeal could diminish if economic opportunities for youth are increased and greater political pluralism is offered in many societies.
Yet in saying this, I am conscious that India’s story could be seriously affected by the failure of other countries in our neighbourhood to do either. To take our most pressing immediate challenge, a democratic Pakistan determined to focus on its own people’s economic development would be good news for India. On the other hand, a flailing Pakistan, with a burgeoning population of uneducated, unemployable and frustrated youth prey to the blandishments of radical religious fanatics, and ruled by a military-dominated system that sees its security in destabilizing others, could be a major threat to India. Inevitably this will remain a major preoccupation of Indian foreign policy for the foreseeable future, and we will address it in detail in the next chapter.