India has long had a strategy for great power status, says N.V. Subramanian. But recent developments mean it can finally happen.
Although India doesn’t have a formalised plan for acquiring great power status, the outlines of a consistent grand strategy have been clear for some time—strategic autonomy through interlocking networks of interests with world powers, and the building of military capabilities based on growing economic prowess.
This intuitive two-pronged approach, enunciated by the nation’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, is likely to be in place at least until 2050, when India is expected by some projections to be vying with the United States for the position of world’s second-largest economy after China.
Nehru introduced the principle of strategic autonomy so that India wouldn’t be sucked into or trapped by the opposing ideologies of an intensifying Cold War. Understanding that India’s stance would be unappreciated unless it built a vehicle for its position, Nehru mooted the Non-Aligned Movement, a bloc scorned by both Cold War powers (although both sides were privately grateful for Nehru’s brokering efforts in the Korean War).
Yet the bloc survives today—toothless it may be, but it still occasionally provides India with a moral compass. Meanwhile, India has kept up its studiedly ‘neutral’ position, contributing unflinchingly to UN peacekeeping efforts, while staying out of non-UN-sanctioned endeavours such as Iraq, and ensuring its contribution to Afghanistan has been purely humanitarian and developmental.
The limited brokering success of the Korean War prompted some Indian commentators to suggest a bridging role for India between rival great powers as a key component of its grand strategy—back then the United States and Soviet Union, and now the US and China. Yet India’s own strategic competition with China makes such a role far-fetched, and India anyway has no great taste for, nor skill at, brokering, a reality that has apparently solidified its strategic autonomy policy.
But read between the lines, and it’s clear that India’s autonomy policy has anyway actually morphed from its Cold War incarnation with the changing international environment, and is now geared instead at making it a great power in a non-polar world.
The key to understanding India’s strategy is the so-called Mandala approach to geo-strategy and the theory that Indian security lays in concentric circles. The most immediate of these circles radiates from its centre to its neighbours, the second touches the Gulf of Aden and Singapore on either side, and the third circle reaches around the rest of the globe to embrace the great powers. This theory suggests that India cannot truly be secure until all three circles are pacified.
Such a theory is nothing new—indeed it has prevailed continuously from the third century BC, when Chanakya—India’s own Machiavelli—propounded it. But recent decades have shown India may now be on the path to mastering these circles.
The critical change that has allowed India to continue to move forward was the end of the Cold War, from which it emerged both territorially intact (many had predicted India would go the way of the Soviet Union) and with a newly-opened economy that has since grown at an average rate of about eight percent a year. This growth has been mostly based on its domestic market, unlike the export-oriented economy of China, thus shielding India from the brunt of the recent global recession.
Photo Credit: Swapnil Gaikar
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ROBERT MATHEW
India has to shed her inferior mindset to be reckoned as global power. India’s slow progress in the economic front and the lack of a clear vision and the resources to reach her immediate neighbors are two factors that deter India to be seen as a great country. Economic growth in the past decade may forecast a prosperous India. Born with the economic prosperity is the large scale corruption that purges India worse than cancer. Billions of dollars are being stacked in foreign banks during the last six decades by the industrialist and the powerful men in connivance with the ruling politicians. The funds could have been well put to use to build schools, Hospitals and universities and to fight against poverty. The geopolitics around India has changed for worse and the country is surrounded with hostile neighborhoods. Military solution may not be a solution. In contravention, history bears testimony, that armed conflict is a justifiable means for assertiveness, and those involve have become powerful. India’s chaotic governance under the guise of democracy does not provide the country the required inertia to grow or to compete with a country like China. The gap between the rich and the poor is becoming a gap unbridgeable. The infrastructures entail billions. China and Pakistan together form a force formidable and grows together beyond the containment Indian army. India is at lest 50 years behind and is yet to put her house in order and secure her volatile boarders. India must be able to extend her infrastructure to her neighbors. The bitter reality is that India neither shown the will nor has the aspiration to reach the heights. She functions within herself not beyond. India, with her domestic oriented economic achievements, will remain the same for many years, where as China would have risen to a power beyond reach.
Wesley Rampersad
Sadly, you are right! India is limiting herself.
jay
India’s gdp has been growing at 9% over the last decade and contonues to grow at 8% inspite of corruption and poor governence.we come to know of this corruption because india has democracy and freedom of media.on the other hand corruption in china does not make news as it is sensored.india enjoys good deplomatic relations with both developed and developing world.china makes all its military equipment indegenously or gets it from russia because no other western country would sell military equipment to them.not many countries in the world can boast of good relations with usa and israel on the one hand while also having filriendly and stratigic ties with russia and iran on the other.india recently won a non-permanent seat at the united nations with a record number of votes.this shows the respect that it enjoys in the international community.india already has the worlds 4th largest economy(ppp) and the 2nd largest army.india is also considered as the 4th most influencial country only behind usa,eu and china by the national security advisor of the usa.india might remain behind china for the near future but it will be atleast 2nd ahead of even usa in about 25 yrs in terms of gdp(ppp).during the cold war ussr was the second largest economy;that did not mean that it was’nt a superpower.to underestimate india’s rise as a great power would be a gross error on part of any sane minded millitary stratigist or historian.wake up people.india will become a great power not merely by its politicians believing that india is strong but when its common citizens start believing in india’s strength and greatness.
Ps-i would much rather prefer being a poor indian with freedom than being a little less poor but severely opressed chinese.JAI HIND
shashi bhushan
I hope india future made power full country in the world …..I am proud of india.
mandrewsf
“India is limiting its great power ambitions by stunting its huge and growing military prowess; it is also so far yet to gain significant experience of foreign combat or intervention.”
I ought to think that foreign interventions has given India enough headaches. Sri Lanka is the perfect example of an intervention gone wrong, not to mention Bangladesh and Nepal. Military strength is not measured in the amount of foreign wars that a nation has fought, but in its training, leadership, equipment, and élan.
A great power does not have to rise out of military status alone. Japan has not fought a war in the last sixty years and yet it is firmly a member of the Great Powers. India’s greatness will be a fact once it achieves internal peace, unity, and economic prosperity. India’s current lack of political weight is not because its military is not strong enough (it is more than adequate for a nation with an economy smaller than Canada and no threat of war with any of the great powers), but because, to put it a bit uncharitably, it seems more like a continent-sized confederation than a functioning, coordinated nation-state.
Meanwhile, perhaps the best dose of medicine the Indian leadership should take is patience.
Sriram
India is behind Canada by about $37 Bn in nominal terms but about 3 times and about $3tn ahead of it in PPP terms. Of course on a per capita basis there is no comparison.
k;lkl;
I hope india future made power full country in the world …..I am proud of indi
captainjohann
India is considered weak because its leadership thinks it is weak. They even ask USA to help contain Pakistani bellicosity. It cannot deal with this problem itself. The foreign office and ruling bureaucracy take hints from USA as most of their kin are green card holders and aspire US citizenship. It is building road for NATO in Afghanistan and that country’s parliament building while China has acquired the biggest copper mine in Afghanistan. By betraying Iran, it has foreclosed its options instead of working for Israeli/Iran rapprochement.
GLN PRASAD
Well said. India’s growth is slow and steady. Gradual. It is not all of a sudden turning point. It had been planted during the pre-independent moment itself. With rich resources, man-power India would have become super-power at least 4 decades ago except due to the corruption and mockery of people it took another 40 years to reach this point. Good English, easy grasping of changing technologies and trust worthy mentality of Indian has brought India to this present state.
The development is un-avoidable. Even the loop-holes of democracy also can not stop this progress.
At least for the forth coming generations, let us hope all well with India’s future.