India’s Delusions And Australia’s Good Luck
© Photo : PMO
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If you didn’t know that you, as a nation, are delusional, then have a look at a huge essay India’s Great-Power Delusions: How New Delhi’s Grand Strategy Thwarts Its Grand Ambitions in the Foreign Affairs, USA, in its July – August issue.
The author may not be a celebrity, today he is just a researcher at Carnegie, but that was a person very instrumental a quarter of a century ago, being involved in negotiating the US-Indian civil nuclear agreement. The name is Ashley Tellis.
His essay reminds me of a very similar series of publications in the same magazine, around ten years ago, admitting ruefully that several decades of American policy towards China went to dogs. China was supposed to become if not a part of the West, then at least an obedient junior partner of it. But that did not happen. These publications heralded a drastic change in America’s foreign policy, when China became guilty of everything and was designated an existential challenge.
Ashley Tellis happens to be annoying. Imagine somebody telling you that you are a nobody and will never become anybody, so stay forever close to grown-ups and obey. That’s what that former diplomat is doing in his essay, trying hard to lower your self-esteem. Being, one day, a great power is an Indian delusion, he says? Yes, he does, and explains at length his position.
I’d hate to repeat all that long list of Indian problems, real or imaginary ones, that are supposed to drag the nation down to earth forever. Instead, I’d like to quote one historic example from my personal experience in Malaysia. In maybe 1970-s that nation was supposed to stay a Third World agricultural case of no hopes for a better future. So what happened, making it the proud Malaysia of today? Two words started the process. These were the words of its Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad: Malaysia Boleh (Malaysia Can). That was his main political slogan, known to every citizen. And the nation discovered that it could really do almost anything, and it suddenly made a big leap forward. So, let me say it too: India can.
Exactly why Mr. Tellis, and assuredly a lot of folks in the American political class, are disappointed with India? The essay says it very well.
First, India is wrong, not wanting “a world in which Washington is perpetually the sole superpower. Instead, it seeks a multipolar international system, in which India would rank as a genuine great power.” And that, as we already know, will never happen.
Second, it will never happen, since China will be forever bigger. China’s economy went from being roughly the same size as India’s in 1980 to almost five times its size today, says our ex-diplomat, and even if India grows at an annual rate of six percent over the next two decades, and China grows at just two percent per year, on average, by midcentury India’s GDP would be a little more than half that of China.
Third, the reason for India’s very existence in that world of ours is to contain China. That’s something indisputable. And, since China will stay bigger whatever happens, India’s karma is to side with the US in that perpetual containment business.
And, fourth, to do it, India has to behave in its domestic policy, as in siding with the US Democrats, not with these bad Republicans. Why so: it’s because “the transformation of the bilateral ties between the two countries after the Cold War was once conceived as a way to help improve and uphold the liberal international order”. And, since India has disappointed the Democrats and other liberals, now “that relationship could be largely limited to trying to constrain a common competitor, China”.
I do love sincere people. This man essentially is saying that India’s role in this world is to constrain China, and being liberal helps to play it. And, if you play that role well, you will be… like what? Maybe, like Australia? That Pacific nation is absolutely Western and relatively liberal, and it is a staunch ally of the US and everything that is Western, and is happy about it. Right?
Wrong, if you chance to read yet another essay, published virtually on the same day as Mr. Tellis’ article appeared on the Foreign Affairs website. That second essay belongs to somebody much more significant in our era’s global strategies.
I still remember that scene at one of the APEC summits some years ago. I walk along the corridor, and a Malaysian, or was it an Indonesian colleague, tells me: look at this man, sitting modestly at the computer in the corner. Nobody tries to bother him, yet a lot of people here know well enough that it was him who, virtually, created APEC itself, or at least coined the idea of it. That’s Garreth Evans, Australia’s foreign minister in 1988-96, and a very respected man in our parts.
So, what does Mr. Evans say, today, about his nations position vis-à-vis the West and the rest? In his words, in Australia, an Aukus breakdown should be a cause for celebration.
Here you have to remember, he says, that the Aukus partnership, the 2021 deal whereby the United States and the United Kingdom agreed to provide Australia with at least eight nuclear-propelled submarines over the next three decades, has come under review by the US Defence Department, and the people there do not like that deal. Australia was supposed to “inject billions of dollars into underfunded, underperforming American and British naval shipyards”, and now it has a chance to save taxpayer’s money.
Needless to say that the subs were supposed to “contain China”, just like India is supposed to make that containment the core of national existence.
My nation did not need that project at all, says the venerable diplomat, and that’s the way he is explaining his position: “The crazy irony is that we are spending huge sums to build a new capability intended to defend us from military threats that are most likely to arise simply because we have that capability – and using it to support the US, without any guarantee of support in return should we ever need it”.
Something is really wrong with that idea of the West to use the East in these or that containment project. Among the news of today is the flurry of explanations about the reasons, why the leaders of several Pacific nations have decided not to attend the NATO summit in The Hague. Yes, that seems to be their own decision, not the cancellation of their invitations to The Hague, to be there as NATO’s outer partners. Who has decided not to attend: Australia, of all nations, together with Japan, and South Korea. Maybe they want to be like India and develop a bit of strategic autonomy.
Delusional, all these folks must be.
Dmitry Kosyrev is a Russian writer, author of spy novels and short stories. He also did columns for the Pioneer and Firstpost.com
