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India faces a choice: is it a big power or great power?

By Philip Stephens

Philip Stephens is associate editor of the Financial Times and a senior commentator. Photographer unknown

We live in an age of rising powers. The global order is being recast. In this shifting geopolitical landscape old powers are reluctant to cede ground and rising states shun the burdens imposed by their new-found status.

These days almost every conversation among western policymakers includes nervous acknowledgement of the flow of power eastwards. I cannot recall an international conference where prominent mention has not been made of China’s rise. In the next breath comes reference to India’s place at the front of the world stage.

China, in a phrase coined by Robert Zoellick, the senior US official now heading the World Bank, is urged by the west to become a “responsible stakeholder” in the global system. The price of admission to the club of great powers is set as a foreign policy that looks beyond narrow definitions of national interest to the broader goal of global security. Great powers are expected to provide public goods.

Thus China’s tactical support of obnoxious regimes in Sudan and Burma attracts international censure. Beijing faces calls to join the US in leading the effort against global warming. It is asked to bring North Korea to heel and to apply sanctions against Iran’s nuclear programme.

To its great annoyance, Beijing also hears frequent criticism of its human rights record and of its refusal to negotiate with the Dalai Lama over Tibet. Another of the costs of being a rising power is that others claim a say in your internal affairs.

All this challenges the Westphalian view that the domestic affairs of states should have no bearing on relations between them. Foreign policy, in this centuries-old construct, was blind to values. But the idea of inviolable sovereignty has been left behind by interdependence and by acceptance that some human rights transcend those of governments.

Each time I travel to Beijing I sense the intense discomfort this causes policymakers. China does not want to challenge the existing system, but it hesitates to accept the responsibility that comes with being a global player.

India finds the old powers far less demanding. Like China, it makes no secret of its ambitions to sit at the world’s top table. First and foremost Delhi wants permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council. It has a powerful claim.

Behind the demand for status, however, lurks the contradiction. Fewer nations are more insistent than India that they must be afforded due respect; yet fewer still are more sensitive to any encroachment on their freedom of action.

The tension often goes unremarked. Western politicians ready to speak candidly to China on issues of domestic policy tread far more gingerly when it comes to India. Tibet is one thing; Kashmir another. To those outside India it is self-evident that Islamist extremism in the region draws succour from the conflict over a divided Kashmir. Many see resolution of the Kashmir problem as vital to stable democratic government in Pakistan and, ultimately, to permanent peace in Afghanistan. For a foreign politician to say as much is to invite bitter denunciation for interference in India’s internal affairs.

India’s unflinching defence of its narrow interest is cause for deep frustration among its interlocutors in the corridors of international power. On global trade, it has been one of the principal obstacles to the conclusion of the Doha round. Delhi’s stance on the west’s responsibility for climate change makes China’s tough position seem positively conciliatory.

At the UN, India has obstructed efforts to elevate basic human rights above those of states. As one weary international diplomat has observed, if you look for the impasse in a global negotiation, you will most likely find India guarding it.

India has big economic interests in Burma. They rarely attract much notice; nor do India’s oil interests in Sudan. Instead China bears the brunt of international opprobrium. Delhi plays the non-interference card, invoking the principle at the heart of the Non-aligned Movement it founded soon after independence. The principle began life as a bulwark against the former colonial powers; it has now become a useful reason to disavow obligations that reach beyond narrow interest.

India has consistently refused to have any truck with the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, viewing that accord as an effort by the existing nuclear powers to retain their hegemony. In its judgment of the NPT, Delhi has a point. But it is a convenient one. In any event, its stance has now been rewarded by Washington with an agreement that will transfer to India US nuclear technology.

The US had its own selfish reasons for striking the accord. Washington also plays the game of realpolitik – in this instance seeing India as a useful balance against China. But the nuclear deal also speaks to a habitual willingness to give India the benefit of the doubt.

In great part, this reflects the country’s place as the world’s largest democracy. Few can deny the achievements of a vast country that, in spite of its poverty and many troubles, has sustained a pluralist political system alongside rapid economic growth. For all its non-aligned haughtiness, India, in western minds, is part of the family.

There is sympathetic recognition, too, of the awkward facts of geography and history: of the effect on the nation’s psyche of the wars it has fought against Pakistan and China, of its still-contested national borders, and of the ever-present threat of terrorist outrages such as that recently in Mumbai.

That said, a rising India cannot indefinitely avoid the contradiction. If it wants a lead role in a concert of the great powers it cannot stand aloof from the rules. Rights come with responsibilities.

Many Indians, I know, dismiss such sentiments as rank hypocrisy on the part of former colonial powers; the west speaks the language of internationalism, but, when it suits them, the rich nations happily ditch their moral codes for strategic advantage.

There is some truth in this charge. But unless one imagines a world descending into disorder, the present shifts in global power must embrace a sharing of the burdens as well as the rewards of collective security. There lies the choice for India. Does it want to be a big power or a great power?

Copyright © 2009 The Financial Times Ltd

Published in Financial Times