India flexes its muscle on the world stage
India's External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna belongs to the Gandhian breed of Indian poiticians who never seem to get ruffled. (June 15, 2012)-----ENRIQUE DE LA OSA/REUTERS
You are the external affairs minister of the world’s largest democracy, which is emerging as an economic, military and geopolitical power. It’s being wooed by the United States, Russia, Europe, Canada and just about everybody else. Issues and people tug at you every waking minute. What should your priorities be?
First, stay calm. S.M. Krishna always is.
The 80-year-old lawyer — he studied in the U.S. as a Fulbright scholar — is a veteran politician. He was first elected in 1962 to the provincial assembly of Karnataka (home of high-tech in Bangalore). He has since been chief minister (premier) of that state, and also an MP and a federal minister, twice, before being named to his present post in 2009.
He belongs to the Gandhian breed of Indian politicians who never seem to get ruffled. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, 80, is also like that. Krishna proved it last year, albeit in embarrassing circumstances.
At the UN General Assembly, he was well into his speech when his horrified staff realized that he was reading the text left behind by the previous speaker, the foreign minister of Portugal.
Indian media had much fun, as did the opposition. But he sloughed it off, saying it can happen to anybody (as it did in 2009 at the White House to Irish prime minister Brian Cowen, who started reading Barack Obama’s speech).
Krishna has been in his job long enough for us to discern a pattern, keeping in mind the caveat that it’s the prime minister who dictates foreign policy and the minister merely carries it out, well or badly.
Singh’s two signature initiatives have been to forge close ties with the U.S. (highlighted by the landmark 2008 nuclear deal) and keep a peace dialogue going with neighbouring Pakistan, despite the 2008 attack on Mumbai by Pakistani terrorists.
Krishna was in Washington last week for his third annual “strategic dialogue” with Hillary Clinton and other senior Obama administration officials. He then came to Toronto where Foreign Minister John Baird hosted a dinner. To score brownie points, Baird brought along the Conservative Indo-Canadian cabinet contingent, such as it is — junior ministers Bal Gosal and Tim Uppal, plus parliamentary secretary Deepak Obhrai.
Canada is low among Indian priorities, bilateral trade being just $5 billion a year, as opposed to India’s $60 billion with the U.S., $74 billion with China and $100 billion with Dubai.
Canada hopes to sell more oil, gas, minerals and uranium for India’s 20 reactors and several new ones being planned. And it wants a piece of India’s $1 trillion infrastructure program over the next five years.
India’s booming economy has slowed down, from near double-digit growth for years to below 6 per cent this year. But that’s still impressive, considering what’s happening in Europe, the U.S., Japan and elsewhere.
Beyond economics, Baird engaged Krishna on Afghanistan, Iran and Sri Lanka — for good reason.
While India long ago abandoned its pro-Soviet Cold War era policy, it’s not taking orders from Washington. It’s pursuing an independent foreign policy. Last year, it bought European fighter jets, not American ones. It has held American nuclear companies at bay with its insistence on holding them liable for accidents.
It twice voted with the U.S. on Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency but strongly opposes an American/Israeli attack on Iran, which the Stephen Harper government sounds gung-ho about. War on Iran would disrupt the security and economy of the entire Gulf region, where 6 million Indians work and repatriate $40 billion a year in remittances.
India has reduced oil imports from Iran but also won an exemption from American sanctions for continuing to do business with Tehran.
The U.S. needs India as a counterweight to China. And it needs India’s help in Afghanistan, especially given Washington’s deteriorating relationship with Pakistan.
India has been quietly effective in Afghanistan, doing $2 billion in development work (“The Afghan people have been our security,” goes the Indian mantra). It has a deal with Turkmenistan to pipe gas through Afghanistan and Pakistan to India. A consortium of Indian companies is set to extract Afghan iron ore.
India’s dialogue with Pakistan is focused on improving trade and the movement of people with easier visas. A recent Pakistani fashion show in India drew rave reviews.
While trading heavily with China, India is competing with it in Africa. There it has provided $5 billion in aid, connected 47 countries on the continent with a fibre-optic network, and given 34 of the poorest countries duty-free access to India.
In its immediate area neighbourhood, India is pursuing a “string of pearls” diplomacy — a $1 billion soft loan to Bangladesh; $300 million in aid to Sri Lanka, for which India is the biggest trading partner and also the biggest source of tourists; training civil servants in Nepal and Bhutan; and joining the Indonesian navy in patrolling the Straits of Malacca, the main shipping channel between the Indian and Pacific oceans.
With its broad agenda, India wants to be, in Krishna’s words, “the voice of consensus and a force of stability” in the region and beyond.
