
Slow news week and month to-date (and months to follow?) are inescapable with the world under corona lock down conditions. There’s need for some laughs or at least diversion from what one’s doing — re-reading classics (Herman Kahn’s On Thermonuclear War) and watching television shows one didn’t find time for (6-part BBC series from the Nineties of John le Carre’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy with the incomparable Alec Guinness playing George Smiley, the counter-intelligence MI5 head ferreting out a longtime Russian spy in the British secret service). It means transiting from the sublime to the ridiculous. Let’s do so any way and deal with the latest instance of foreign policy-related tripping by Ram Madhav, RSS pracharak and General Secretary of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. Like his earlier literary efforts, this too is unfailingly sophomoric.
In an op/ed published today (https://www.hindustantimes.com/analysis/covid-19-and-the-contours-of-a-new-world-order-analysis/story-DUqursm0t8sunJl1gaBJmO.html), Madhav grandly pronounces the end of US’ current “America first” type of nationalism — and by extension the ‘India first’ kind of thinking that Prime Minister Narendra Modi once swore by, and the rise of a “more integrationist” “post-Covid-19” world. As evidence, he refers to America turning to China, India and South Korea for hydoxychloroquine and medical equipment (masks, ventilators, etc.). It is a simpletonish take on international developments that mistakes powerful countries making decisions to serve their national purpose of the moment, such as obtaining from abroad this or that item unavailable or in short supply at home, for a geopolitical trend. It certainly does not make for a growingly interdependent world for God’s sake! To top it, Madhav thinks that a country with a nationalist approach and looking to advance its national interests is also, ipso facto, “isolationist”! Really?
Undeterred by the prospect of seeming deranged and rendering the PM’s endeavours grandiose, he likens Modi facing the corona crisis, his so far failed attempts at rejuvenating the economy, and his over-modest initiative to involve other South Asian states in mustering a collective response to this disease to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s confronting the Great Depression of the 1930s, beating Hitler and, after the Second World War, building the international system anew! How such an Indian effort, even if eventually successful, that stumbled at the first (Kashmir) hurdle, can be equated with the US and Allies defeating the Axis powers and building post War “global institutions”, etc. may boggle the mind of some of us but does not faze Madhav any because he next calls on Modi “to don the Rooseveltian mantle and take the lead” in shaping a new post-covid order!
Madhav raises Modi’s sights still higher in the next paragraph, urging him to look farther back in history and reprise for, what he plainly believes is an expectant world, US President Woodrow Wilson’s role in the First World War and realize the ideals he voiced of “liberal internationalism, democracy, non-intervention, collective security and humanitarian cooperation” to which, he says, Modi “has shown his commitment”. If these were the Sixties one would be tempted, using the idiom of those days, to wonder “what it is that he [Madhav] is smoking!”
The fact is there are no common contextual factors from that era for Modi to work his new Wilsonian magic with. Further, Madhav may do well to heed the fate that befell Wilson’s pet project — the League of Nations, the precursor of the equally hapless United Nations of our day: It ended in a shambles, beginning with his own legislature (the US Congress) rejecting America’s membership in it, and even more Wilson’s guiding principle: “Open covenants openly arrived at”. Because, quite simply, that’s not how the international system of sovereign states worked then or works now, a 100 years later. Ethics and morality are distinguished mainly by their absence in practice, if not in rhetoric, and the meanest, narrowest, interpretation of the national interest is all that drives foreign policies.
Madhav’s oped suggests his reading is limited to newspapers and periodicals, that he picks up on names — Joseph Nye, Yuval Harari, and Parag Khanna — in intellectual fashion, and whom he quotes by way of inaptly constructing the case he does. But because he seems fascinated by it and lest he again draw any serious parallels, may be, he should bone up on the history of Wilsonian idealism at the core of which was protecting and advancing the US national interest.
By way of fundamentals, to believe that India and Modi today are in the same position as the US and Wilson were in 1919 and the Treaty of Versailles when the US became the predominant global power, or America and Roosevelt (and Harry Truman) were in 1945 when the US consolidated its numero uno status, is beyond silliness and to make a laughingstock of India and Modi. Feeding a leader’s ambition is one thing, fueling his megalomania is something else altogether. Modi, by all indications may get his ego regularly massaged by Madhav, foreign minister S. Jaishankar and their ilk. But the PM, one hopes, is more of a realist than he lets on, or these servitors around him, believe. But what if the latter have read Modi right?
Talent seems to be in real short supply in Indian right wing – maybe we should add that too to our $85 billion/yr worth of Chinese imports
Just read the whole of Madhav’s article. Bharat sir you are absolutely right, it’s really funny. It seems like Madhav jee nashe me the..Lol
Another very well informed article by Mr Karnad sir.
When it comes to Indian post-covid foreign policy, I must say that it seems to me that India is really struggling to put its act together when it comes to tackling this disease.
1. The biggest example of this is our national media’s obsession with what Pakistan is doing wrong during this crisis. If we do have confidence in our institutions and our medical resources then why we are so eager to remind our people what Pakistan is doing wrong.
2. The fact is that Pakistan seems to be doing much better compared to rest of south Asia when it comes to testing rate, recovery rate as well as economic compensation for the distressed. Their testing rate and recovery rate is highest in South Asia while India and Bangladesh lag far behind. Pakistan’s testing rate per million at this moment is 358/per million people compared to 199 and 93 for India and Bangladesh , respectively. (Source : Worldometer corona)
Imran Khan just announced a 12000 PKR monthly package for the laid-off daily wage earners for next one month. About 2.5 million people have already been provided the amount.
3. Sir what makes us continuously be obsessed about what Pakistan is doing wrong during this critical juncture. IS this our national schadenfreude or as you mentioned “India probably would have created a Pakistan if it did not exist” I would love to know your views about our continuing obsession with Pakistan even during this current crisis.
Thanks and regards with best wishes
Debanjan
Pakistan is our obsession and like all obsessions is apparently uncontrollable!
Bharat Sir,
I am just filled with loathing when I see Modi’s delusions of grandeur. Coupled with his inept handling of the economy and the pandemic so far, I seriously doubt if he has any touch with reality anymore.
altogether not related to above but is it true that china conducted series of underground nuclear test in 2019 as alleged by US?
Perhaps, China did because the US wouldn’t allege low yield N-tests w/o detecting some seismic activity. Wonder if our seismic sensors picked up anything.
can india also do this?
The BBC series you are referring to very likely aired a decade earlier (1979).
Possibly.
How about putting a BIG banner in the think tanks and RSS which read like something below:
1. Don’t assume about how another state will be, but go by their PAST actions…as far as in the past you can go to actually PROPERLY analyse the current and future relation and situation.
2. Be SELFISH VERY VERY UTTERLY selfish in our national endevours.
3. Count pakistan as adversary but thats it…..dont actually go out of the way to give it a status of enemy …IT DOESN”T DESERVE IT…its forex reserves are 12 billion and india’s 485 billion, it has a gdp less than 1/6th of BSE Sensex…Please Indians please they are NOT ON OUR LEVEL
4. ALWAYS ALWAYS consider China as enemy for the same above reason in reverse.