Review of my book — ‘Staggering Forward: Narendra Modi and India’s Global Ambition’ by Shivshankar Menon, National Security Adviser till 2014, published in The Wire, Nov 3, 2018.

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What worries me most is that if Bharat Karnad is right, we can only expect more of the same – or worse – should Modi return to power in 2019. That would further postpone or derail India’s transformation into a strong, prosperous and modern country.

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If Bharat Karnad didn’t exist we would have to invent him. He is the one person who consistently and intellectually challenges every government on strategic issues, who says what needs to be said. He is the enfant terrible of the Indian strategic community, who respects no authority and calls it as he sees it. Not everyone sees it his way, but no one can doubt either his commitment to India becoming a great power in the classical sense or the scholarship he brings to this task.

His latest book, Staggering Forward: Narendra Modi and India’s Global Ambition, is no exception to the pattern he has established in the past. The book challenges one’s assumptions and forces one to think. The book is a critique of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s foreign and security policies, and of Modi himself. The author finds them wanting against the criteria of India fulfilling its destiny and becoming a great power. It is hard to argue with his marshalling of facts that show that the past five years were years of lost opportunity – of India missing the bus; of roads and reforms promised, but not taken.

I will not summarise the book, but will try to describe what I agree and disagree with in three respects: the Modi government’s performance; the situation India faces today; and Karnad’s prescriptions.

The Modi government’s performance

On how the Modi government has fared over the past few years, Karnad’s analysis is focused on a detailed psychological profiling of Modi himself, which left me far more worried than I was when I started reading the book.

Karnad is frank about how he was a Modi supporter in 2013-14, and how he expected that his rhetoric of reform would be translated into action once elected. Instead, he saw a “small stakes game abroad” .

They say that a pessimist is a disillusioned romantic, or simply an optimist with experience. Karnad is both. He is pessimistic about the means and the people, but has faith in India and its destiny.

What worried me most is that if Karnad is right in his profiling, we can only expect more of the same – or worse – should Modi return to power after the next parliamentary elections. Judging by the performance of his government over the last four years, that would be a considerable setback for India and would further postpone or derail India’s transformation into a strong, prosperous and modern country.

The internal divisiveness of the last four years affects both our security and our ability to run a successful foreign policy in the neighbourhood. How can India be a great power when it is socially divided at home, Karnad asks. He also describes the Modi government’s complicity in India’s strategic shrinking influence in South Asia and the Indian Ocean region.

Karnad describes the Modi government, in which only Modi counts, as “bowing to the powerful and bullying the weak”. He sees Modi as reflexively deferential to the US and China. The net result of this deference to power has been the neglect of old friends like Russia and Iran.

More so, the Modi government’s sporadic and unskilled dealings with our neighbours has resulted in a deterioration in our relationships and security in our immediate periphery – be it in Nepal, the Maldives, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Bangladesh and Bhutan, or in south-east Asia, where we have alienated friends. The lack of a coherent foreign trade and economic policy – as seen in the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership – has left us out of the reckoning in the larger region that affects us directly.

The situation at hand

I agree with Karnad that there is no coherent vision driving the frenzied visiting and eventing that we have witnessed for some time. The fundamental problem, to my mind, is that the situation around us and the world over has changed drastically over the past few years with the coming to power of new authoritarians, or “alpha-males” as Karnad rightly labels them, in China, the US, Russia, Japan, Turkey and India.

In the absence of a vision or conceptual clarity on the situation we face, the government, and instinctively the bureaucracy, continue to do what they have always done, relying on precedent and habit. But to do the same thing in a different situation and to expect the same results – which is what the present government has done – is another version of Einstein’s definition of lunacy.

Karnad’s prescriptions

We are in a situation where we cannot rely on any other power – not the US, not China, or anyone else to secure us or to promote our prosperity. True strategic autonomy is our way forward. No established power likes to see potential competitors rising, and there is therefore a limit to what we can expect from other powers.

Under Donald Trump’s presidency, the US is pulling back strategically, unwilling to underwrite an international order or provide security, and on-shoring production. China, on the other hand, is moving into the vacuum and defining her core interests in an ever expanding manner. But when Karnad extends Samuel P. Huntington’s hypothesis to argue that the great fault line in the world today is between the Islamic and the non-Islamic world, I disagree.

Where I do agree with Karnad is when he speaks about how Pakistan is a strategic distraction, and how India’s real strategic focus should be on China. Restoring the strategic unity of the subcontinent as a geopolitical actor requires an accommodation with/or a neutralisation of Pakistan, and Karnad makes suggestions for how we should do so – a few in terms of military and nuclear postures.

There are a few issues in Karnad’s detailed prescriptions that he may want to address when it comes to a revised edition. The first is his very positive assessment of last year’s Doklam face-off, where India appears to have followed an older playbook, and where the outcomes now appear more mixed. 

Another instance, which might need more explanation, is his understanding that Pakistan’s nuclear first-use threat against India is meaningless and empty. But he then goes on to suggest that India do the same and threaten first-use against China. Karnad does draw a distinction in what kind of use he has in mind, but it would be useful if he had explained why one threat is meaningful and the other is not.

Karnad also wrote of how India should re-test thermonuclear weapons and to somehow compensate for conventional military inferiority vis-à-vis China. These are moot and can be questioned. He assumes that our nuclear weapons are for war-fighting and that what we do not know in public does not exist within the government. I am also not sure where he got the idea that the India-US civil nuclear deal somehow included a commitment by us to cap our missile ranges at 5,500 km. This is the first I have heard of this.

Karnad seems more impressed by China than I am, assumes that it has got its way and seems to think that its dominance is inevitable unless resisted. In other places, he sees China failing to impose its “Tianxia” system, even in the South China Sea and Central Asia.

But whatever China’s trajectory is, he is right that it is India’s major strategic preoccupation. In his prescriptions for India’s China policy, he focuses largely on military responses to what is actually a Chinese challenge that is political, economic, military, and ideational too. Unlike others, who are so transfixed by the rise of China that they run to the US for comfort, Karnad rightly reminds us of our leverage in our relationship with China and that true strategic autonomy is our best way forward.

I do not see a resumption of nuclear testing by India as changing the Chinese calculus or behaviour. To my mind, the multi-faceted challenge from China requires an Indian response across the entire spectrum of power – from economics to politics to military to ideas, with both internal and external balancing, by strengthening ourselves and working with those who share our interests and concerns.

He suggests modifications to BRICS and the ‘Quad’ by removing China from the former and adding ASEAN to the latter, creating a ‘BRIS’ and a ‘Mod Quad’, as ways of improving our hand in dealing with China. I am not sure that formalising and announcing such plans are practical diplomacy. But Karnad is absolutely right that we must first come to terms with and pacify our own home in the subcontinent and the Indian Ocean region. It is when measured against these criteria that the Modi government’s policies have failed the nation.

Karnad is persuasive on the nature of military reforms and the changes in the mindset of the armed forces that he thinks are necessary if India is to drag her World War II-ready armed forces into the 21st century. He writes on the effects of technology on warfare in our context, and has extensive suggestions – many sensible and implementable – on defence production and procurement in India. He also makes a strong case for a string of Indian bases in the Indian Ocean region. I will not comment on the military options against Pakistan and China that he also describes in some detail.

What we have seen recently is the weakening of our defences that the deterioration in civil-military relations, the politicisation of the Indian army, its use in domestic politics, and the absence of necessary military and defence reforms have brought about.

I disagree with his characterisation of all policy since Jawaharlal Nehru as a failure. Deterrence has held and the peace necessary for India’s transformation has been kept, unlike the four debilitating wars we fought in the first 25 years of the republic. That might seem like a small achievement, but we have not only aimed to end poverty and improved the lives of more human beings in any country except China in the last 30 years, but also, by other measures of comprehensive national power, have improved our position in the world against most countries (again with the exception of China).

Where Karnad is right is that our strategic position in the world has deteriorated in the recent past, and much of this is because the situation around us is changing and will continue to change with rapidity, without an Indian response to the changes. This flux actually opens up opportunities for us as India. That is where we are failing ourselves, missing opportunities. His book is a useful reminder of what we could be, and a prod to consider what the next government should do.

The above book Review available at

https://thewire.in/books/review-bharat-karnad-narendra-modi-foreign-policy

The author of ‘Staggering Forward: Narendra Modi and India’s Global Ambition’ responds to Ravi Joshi’s review of his book

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Review by Ravi Joshi. former R&AW official

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The author in his haste is too blinded by the negatives to see the achievements

CRITIQUING A government’s foreign policy does not necessarily require one to provide an alternative foreign policy framework. But that’s the ambitious project of Bharat Karnad’s book. Karnad is well known in the Delhi seminar circuit as a strategic analyst who always makes the contra point and not often in a pleasant manner.

There are so many things one can find wrong in Modi’s policies and Karnad finds them all. He starts with the ‘Alpha Maleness’ of Modi and compares it with the other Alpha Males of our times—Presidents Trump, Putin, Xi Jinping and Erdog.an, and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe—and notes that Modi has only the pretence of an Alpha Male.

While Trump, Putin and Xi are all getting something done, it’s only Modi who has failed in everything he promised, says Karnad. Firstly, because he has no vision, no strategic doctrine, no geopolitically bold and imaginative policies that stress India’s neglected ‘hard power’. Hard power is what India should project vis-à-vis China, insists the author, though he is fully aware of the glaring asymmetry in the power equation.

Secondly, ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas’ is neither a vision nor a policy, especially if your neighbours have their own plans for ‘vikas’—which typically means jumping on to the Chinese bandwagon and thumbing a nose at New Delhi.

Karnad takes up four of India’s most important relationships—that is, with the US, Russia, China and Pakistan—for detailed examination and finds that Modi comes up short on all of them. With the US, Modi is personally in awe of the overpowering might of the country and kowtows unabashedly, as was seen in his body language with both Obama and Trump.

Karnad is of the view that ‘where India is concerned, Washington does not have to exert itself much at all because… it can simply hand out Green Cards, H1B visas, scholarships and jobs in US companies to the progeny of the nomenklatura in Delhi. It’s a nice, clean and easy solution to resolve any of India-related problems.’ If that were so, how come the USSR, and later Russia, continued to be our most steadfast defence partner since 1971 and despite the threat of US sanctions—and even the kowtowing— Modi has signed up for the ‘Triumf’ missile defence systems from Russia? The truth is that most US presidents found India frustratingly moralistic and judgemental, and a difficult country to handle, unlike the more malleable Pakistan. Even Manmohan Singh’s famous India-US nuclear deal of 2005 that was to be a game-changer in our relationship did not result in a single nuclear reactor being contracted from an American company, while half a dozen nuclear reactors were ordered from Russia.

Karnad opines that India is seeking ‘great power’ status as an ‘entitlement’ and is hoping to ‘achieve it on the cheap at the sufferance of a big power patron’ and suggests that the rulers in Delhi should follow Bismarck’s principle of ‘blood and iron’ instead of wallowing in the soft-power influence of its civilisational values and trying to become a ‘Vishwa Guru’ as Modi wants.

The underlying assumption of Karnad’s world order is that the US is a ‘fading power’ and China is racing to replace it. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute database on military expenditure for 2017, the US defence budget was $610 billion, while that of China was $228 billion and India’s was $63.9 billion. Obviously, the US is far from fading away anytime soon; yet the author wants the weakest power in the triangular equation to realise its ‘hard power’ and start asserting itself by dumping the US as its ally and ‘kick China in the shins’!

Disparaging all attempts by India to align with the US, Karnad who is dismissive of the new notion of ‘Indo- Pacific’ suggests that India should go for a modified Quad, what he calls the ‘Mod Quad’, that is, the ‘Quad minus the US’ but including all Southeast Asian states. Why they should join India, that too against China, is not clear. Undeterred by such doubts, he says that this would put China on the defensive and prevent any military misadventure by Beijing in its extended neighbourhood. This, however, envisages India having a strong military partnership with South- east Asian states that would permit the positioning of not only its frigates and submarines but also Brahmos missiles to face China. Does the author seriously believe that any of the Southeast Asian states would depend on India in case of an attack by China?

When the tiniest of India’s neighbours, the Maldives, snuggled up to China and joined the Maritime Silk Route Initiative and when it signed a Free Trade Agreement with China, New Delhi twiddled its thumbs in utter helplessness. Subsequently, Delhi promised Beijing that it would not interfere in the Maldives in return for China’s early retreat from the disputed territory in Doklam. Such being the case, does Vietnam or the Philippines believe that India will come to its succour against China? Karnad knows the answer all too well, but his advocacy of hard power doesn’t countenance such minor oddities.

India as a ‘net security provider in the Indian Ocean’ is only an aspirational proclamation of the country’s Navy and not a proven experience of any of the littoral states. Asking India to become a ‘net security provider in the Pacific’, that too without US partnership, is to live in cloud cuckoo land.

Similar to this idea of Mod Quad is another called ‘BRIS’—BRICS without China. The author forgets that BRICS was forged as an alliance of developing economies to face an unequal trade framework foisted upon them by the US and Europe. But in today’s world of trade wars unleashed by Trump, it has clearly become the US versus the rest. Both India and China are on the same side as victims of Trump’s hyper-nationalism and China is calling on India to jointly fight America’s anti-free trade policies. Which way will India go or should go? Given that Karnad considers both the US and China as inimical to India’s interests, what would his advice be?

The advocacy of hard power should be based on realistic assessments of our strengths and potential, not on fantastic notions of alternative reality. Karnad knows fully well India’s strengths and weaknesses, yet he makes some very strange assumptions about the behaviour of other nations.

Nevertheless, Karnad is an extremely well informed writer who raises some serious questions on the country’s foreign and defence policies and their underlying assumptions. But his pugnacity leads him to see only the negatives and robs him of reflection on the good that men do, either by design or default.

[Published in ‘Open’ magazine on 26 Oct 2018 at at

Modi and the World

Back after sojourning abroad; getting into harness!

But first a cordial invite to all ‘Security Wise’blog readers in the Mumbai region. Pasted below is the notice by Asia Society about an event it is hosting — a conversation about my new book — ‘Staggering Forward: Narendra Modi and India’s Global Ambition’ on Tuesday, October 30,  6:30 PM, at the Nehru Centre, Worli, Mumbai. It is ‘Free’ but do please RSVP the Asia Society or register your names (in the invitation below.) Thanks.

Ajai Shukla’s review in Business Standard of my new book:

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Many of the themes in Bharat Karnad’s latest offering were earlier fleshed out in his 2015 book, “Why India is Not a Great Power (Yet)” and have since been amplified in his prolific writings, blogposts and speaking appearances. Mr Karnad, who styles himself in his blog as “India’s foremost conservative strategist”, has robust views. He believes that if India wants to be treated like a Great Power, it must start thinking like one. New Delhi’s defence and security focus should be on China, without wasting effort on minnows like Pakistan. To ward off China, India must abandon its pusillanimous “No-First-Use” nuclear doctrine and be ready to go first with nuclear weapons to halt a Chinese conventional attack. To persuade Beijing from responding in kind, Mr Karnad wants India to develop, test and deploy thermonuclear weapons, which he regards as the final arbiters of power. Washington, he believes, constrains not benefits India. The relationship with Moscow must be nurtured more carefully. Karnad also wants India to outflank China and Pakistan through military bases in Central Asia and the Gulf.

In this book, Mr Karnad looks inwards at the trajectory Indian politics and policymaking has followed since Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power in 2014. Given the author’s unapologetic, nationalistic, India-first approach to security policy, many would logically expect him to endorse the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) policies and achievements. But the hawkish Karnad of foreign and security policy reveals himself as slightly leftish liberal on domestic policy. This revealing sentence sums up his book: “This book is in the main a critique of Modi’s foreign and national security policies – an audit if you will… If readers find the analysis suffused with disappointment, they will not be wrong.”

Mr Karnad’s divergence with Modi’s worldview stems from a sophisticated understanding of India’s delicate social geography, and the way this impacts security dynamics – both internal and external. Mr Karnad writes that Modi has “nudged the fairly tolerant social order that has evolved over the millennia to accommodate an extraordinarily complex Indian society into a Hinduist straitjacket in line with the thinking of the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh).” Quite clearly the author regards the BJP’s assault on internal social faultlines as more damaging to national security than any potential challenges from external foes.

In a provocative chapter, Karnad attempts to decode Modi’s political psychology, based on his documented actions since his days as an RSS sevak, emerging on the political landscape of Gujarat. Professor Ashish Nandi has elsewhere declared that Modi bears all the characteristics of a fascist. But the author chooses between David Rosen’s six psychological types – which are narcissist, obsessive-compulsive, Machiavellian, authoritarian, paranoid and totalitarian – and concludes that Modi is a narcissist. In Rosen’s theoretical framework, narcissists are “charismatic, attention-seeking… extremely convincing liars and are the ultimate users of people – demanding loyalty from others they seldom give in return, and don’t always make the best decisions but… [they] generally make the best leaders.”

In a disparaging analysis of Modi’s international policy, Mr Karnad terms it a “creeper-vine foreign policy”, based on the logic that it cannot stand on its own, without the support of a Great Power. He contrasts that with Jawaharlal Nehru’s policy of non-alignment, which forced the two superpowers of that time to compete for India’s favour, while retaining our freedom of action and choice. Mr Karnad is dismissive of the nominal policy of “strategic autonomy”, which he considers a veil behind which India is cozying up to the United States and bending to its diktat.

In the book’s most original strategic construct, the author suggests New Delhi could obtain genuine strategic autonomy and counter the “proto-hegemons” – the US and China – through two new security coalitions. The first is BRIS – named after Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa – which is BRICS, with China removed. Mr Karnad does not clarify who will expel China, or how.

The other coalition India should join is the catchily named Mod Quad – short for Modified Quadrilateral. This weaponised grouping cuts out America from the current Quadrilateral (India, US, Japan and Australia), replacing it with a rash of south east Asian countries. Myanmar and Vietnam book end the landward side, while Indonesia and the Philippines anchor the sea end; with other countries like Singapore, Thailand, Brunei and Malaysia in the middle. Given the difficulties these very countries face in presenting a united front in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), Karnad should have clarified how they would manage with the additional contradictions of the Quadrilateral.

In a well-written book with lots of catchy phrases, the author concludes that Mr Modi’s sizzle – based on promises to end corruption, improve delivery, structurally transform the economy and use technology to provide development solutions – has ended in a fizzle.

Notwithstanding several contradictions, Mr Karnad presents an interesting evaluation of Modi’s strategic and economic performance, which will probably be widely read in an election year. The reader’s complaint would, however, be that he has taken too many pages to do so. This, despite an inordinately small font that makes reading difficult – the hallmark of a publisher that has chosen the wrong way to economise.

[Published in Business Standard Sept 25, 2018, at

https://www.business-standard.com/article/beyond-business/the-modi-sizzle-turns-into-fizzle-118092401268_1.html