Delhi’s Craven Policy on Syria

Kanwal Sibal

Member Advisory Board, VIF

The position India is taking on the unfolding Syrian crisis does not do honour to our diplomacy. We supported last week the western resolution providing for sanctions on Syria under Chapter V11 of the UN Charter unless its government effectively ended its military operations against the insurgents who are backed by the West, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

UN

Russia and China vetoed this one-sided resolution which imposed specific and verifiable obligations on the government such as ceasing, within ten days, troop movements towards population centres and all use of heavy weapons there, a complete pullback of military concentrations in and around population centres and withdrawal of troops and heavy weapons from these centres to their barracks etc. No obligation was imposed on the armed opposition groups, apart from a general exhortation to “all parties, including the opposition (to) cease all armed violence in all its forms”. The resolution took no cognizance of the role of the external backers of the armed groups and sought no end to outside interference.

In these circumstances, the provision to extend Kofi Annan’s UN mission to Syria for another 45 days- something that Russia and China(and India) favoured- became a casualty. The West has, in reality, little attachment to Annan’s mission as it serves to delay what they want- President Assad’s quick ouster- while Russia and China (and India) support it in the forlorn hope that some negotiated way out of the crisis can be found.

Kofi Annan’s mission has been subsequently salvaged, with the Security Council unanimously approving( July 20) a compromise western resolution extending the mandate of the UN Supervision Mission in Syria for 30 days, with the possibility of extension should there be a cessation of the use of heavy weapons and a reduction of violence by all parties in Syria. The “all parties” referred to will not abjure violence as religious ideology and larger geopolitical objectives are involved. The regime will combat the armed opposition groups to protect itself and the country’s multi-ethnic secular foundations. The latest resolution is therefore an exercise in cynicism by those who remain bent on regime change and those who are willing to clutch at such diplomatic straws to uphold their position that the Syrians themselves and not external powers should decide on political change in Damascus.

If India’s conduct in the UN Security Council is questionable, it is because India is buffeted by contradictory considerations of principle and pragmatism in adopting a position. Conscious of its transformed relationship with the US, India is reluctant to oppose the latter on issues like Syria in the UNSC where its conduct is under scrutiny in the context of its permanent membership aspirations. India is exhorted by the West to assume its “international responsibilities” as a would-be global power on humanitarian and democracy-related issues, which means endorsing the policy of imposing sanctions on delinquent states as identified by them. India’s foreign investment and growth needs dispose its policy makers to bridge political gaps with the US as much as possible. India’s vast energy, trade, manpower and remittance linkages with the Gulf countries contrast with limited economic ties with Syria, placing a premium on pragmatism in defining our position.

Pragmatism

On the other hand, strategic autonomy means taking positions in conformity with our fundamental thinking about the conduct of international relations, even if our western partners find them disagreeable. The abhorrence for externally enforced regime change seems to have got dissipated in our political thinking. Syria may be different from Iraq and Libya in method but not in objective. Western leaders are insisting on Assad’s departure and warning that his days are numbered. They are supporting the armed opposition groups; their media has launched an information war against Syria; for ostensible humanitarian reasons they are creating conditions for a large scale human disaster there. Why should we implicitly support regime change in Syria?

In our longer term interest we should not be complicit in the destruction of secular authoritarian regimes in the Arab world and their replacement by authoritarian Islamist ones. The veneer of democracy being given to these developments is false. The US, which has managed fundamentalism in the Gulf for decades and even promoted it in our region till recently for geopolitical ends, may believe it retains enough levers to manage the developing Islamist trends in the Arab world in which allies like Saudi Arabia and Qatar are playing a catalysing role. But India is getting exposed to a longer term threat by the lurch of the Islamic world towards Salafism.

Principle

India’s explanation India for voting for the western resolution on Syria is disingenuous, as it refers only to India’s desire to preserve Kofi Annan’s mission and ignores completely the sanctions provision that Russia and China were objecting to. Not taking into consideration Russia’s cogent arguments against the western resolution reflects a departure from our oft-stated positions, along with Russia, on respect for sovereignty, non-interference in internal affairs of countries, opposition to regime change and support for multilateralism and multi-polarity.

Our compliant attitude at New York contrasts with the position taken by South Africa which abstained and criticized the western resolution as one-sided. Pakistan too abstained, and opened up space for itself, unlike us, to jointly work with Russia to draft a joint resolution on extending the Kofi Annan mission as an alternative to the UK draft. This reflects poorly on our diplomcy with Russia on Syria.

A compromise between principle and pragmatism dictated abstention by India on the vote on Syria. If we should not oppose the West when they are right because of old prejudices, we should not support them when they are wrong out of new fears.

A Good Product To Sell

Kanwal Sibal
Member Advisory Board, VIF

The relationship between democracy and international security is frequently debated in international circles. It is also said that more prosperity at the international level is conducive for global security. How true are these propositions, in fact?

There is no accepted definition of democracy. The world’s most liberal countries call themselves democracies and so do the world’s most authoritarian regimes. Who then lays down authoritatively universally applicable norms of democracy?

Any country’s political system, in reality, cannot be divorced from its history, tradition and culture. That is why even Western democracies are not identical. Many non-Western countries believe their systems respond better to the needs of their societies. The issue is how to balance community interests and individualism. Who will decide on a definitive answer to this old debate?

There is a crusading spirit behind the Western advocacy of democracy. Its yardsticks for democracy are prescriptive. Whereas in the West democratic systems took long decades to evolve, non-Western countries are expected to move quickly towards the Western version of democracy. In their case, the process is sought to be accelerated through external political interference and pressure, and in some cases by military means.

The selective application by the West of the weapon of democracy by targeting political adversaries and sparing allies and friends makes the international debate on democracy and international security even more controversial.

The West’s hubris about its democratic vocation is such that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, history had ended for some with the definitive triumph of democracy. This has not happened. Early Russian experience of democracy has, on the contrary, been unsatisfactory. The coloured revolutions in former Soviet space held up great democratic promise, but that promise too has faded.

The “Arab Spring” hardly describes accurately the phenomenon of change that has affected this area. The ouster of dictators by the street was too quickly labelled as a grassroots democracy movement. The sceptics saw the Islamists stepping into the political breach created by social media activists. In Tunisia, the government with Islamist tendencies has come to power. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists have won a majority in parliament. The public in these countries has preferred to express its political aspirations not through secular parties but Islamic ones with no ideological roots in democracy, In Libya, the uprising against the dictator was tribal in nature with strong Islamic affiliations and not a movement for democracy. In Syria, too, the opposition to the Assad regime has less to do with democracy than a sectarian effort to create a situation that would invite foreign intervention on the Libyan pattern.

To some extent, the Egyptian example, whatever the complexion it has taken now, encourages the exercise of street power to overthrow entrenched dictators or regimes divorced from the aspirations of the people. Some nervousness about the fallout of the Arab Spring has been felt by the Chinese government. In Russia, too, street demonstrations against the fairness of the last parliamentary elections and later against Putin’s decision to stand again for election seemed to have been partially inspired by the Arab example. But the force of this example has been lost because its end result has been regressive in many ways. The limits of the so-called Arab Spring to threaten authoritarian regimes across the world are starkly exposed by the fact that it is the leading authoritarian Gulf states that are today the strongest backers of this phenomenon.

As regards international security, we use the term constantly as if its meaning is clear. It is not. No global security architecture exists as yet; nor does any mechanism to provide equal security to all nations. Some countries possess nuclear weapons or highly advanced conventional forces. The vast majority possesses neither. Whereas the regional powers have a smaller circle of security interests, the big powers see their security interests extending far beyond their immediate neighbourhood They conflate their national security interests with international security.

In this situation, who is responsible for international security? The United Nations Security Council? For the developing countries, the UNSC is not sufficiently representative as it no longer reflects the shifts in global power since 1945. Is it Nato with its out-of-area operations? Is it the defence alliances that exist in West Asia and the Asia Pacific? Did military action taken against Iraq or Libya, and potentially contemplated against Syria and Iran, have “international security” as a shared international objective? Was the intervention in Afghanistan to oust the Taliban for assuring such security? And if so, is the self-imposed deadline for withdrawal by 2014 by cutting a deal with the Taliban for “international security”?

Some would argue that the tendency to intervene in the internal affairs of countries, to not respect the sovereignty of States, to use human rights and democracy issues for allegedly geo-political reasons, to promote controversial doctrines such as the right to protect do not necessarily enhance international security, rather they create tensions and a sense of insecurity in many parts of the world. Power is even now so unequally distributed within the international system that the dominant West has the freedom to conceptualize and apply these new approaches to others.

The view that democracies do not fight with each other carries the implication that if democracy spreads across the globe the world will become peaceful. No doubt the trans-Atlantic space occupied by mature Western democracies is peaceful. But if the world’s foremost democracies do not fight each other they are quite prone to fight others. The Korean and Vietnam wars, the Falklands war, the Nato action against Yugoslavia, the wars against Iraq, the Nato action against Libya, the Afghanistan war — all involve Western democracies. Iran is being threatened with military action by them and Syria is in their cross-hairs, irrespective of the terrible human costs that follow all such interventions. The argument that such wars prevent dictators from committing even greater atrocities on their own populations may be defensible up to a point, but the geo-political calculations behind such regime change policies are evident. It would be naïve to believe that powerful countries are moved only by altruistic reasons.

The prosperity argument also does not bear scrutiny. The Cold War was not motivated by prosperity issues on either side. China’s claims to the South China sea, its aggressive posture on Taiwan, and its differences with India and Japan have nothing to do with difference in prosperity levels. Neither do India-Pakistan differences. Iran’s nuclear challenge does not stem from economic deprivation. The solution to Russia-West issues or Russia’s relations with its immediate neighbours do not lie in increased prosperity in these countries.

The West has a good product to sell in terms of its mature version of democracy. The problem is with its aggressive political salesmanship, to the point of relentlessly vaunting the qualities of its product and even thrusting it forcibly on others. The way India sees it, the case for democracy is strong and self-evident, but it has not been won as it is overlaid with geo-political calculations and aggressive political structuring at the international level without regard to human costs.