The Emerging Doctrine of Military Intervention

Brig (Retd) Gurmeet Kanwal, 

Visiting Fellow, VIF

The ongoing struggle of people across the Arab world to get rid of military dictators and tyrannical monarchies has led to a new debate about the efficacy of the emerging doctrine of military intervention. The foremost question today is whether the international community should punish the Assad regime in Syria for using chemical weapons against its own people.

In Libya, in 2011, the UN Security Council had approved the imposition of a ‘no-fly zone’, but had ruled out the deployment of a ‘foreign occupation force’. The western alliance launched air and missile strikes on Libya — ostensibly to protect the population against attacks from Gadhafi’s forces. However, the strikes were clearly designed to bring about a regime change.

John Mackinlay of King’s College, London, has argued that in the “complex emergencies which increasingly threaten security in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Africa, international response mechanisms have failed from the outset to take a realistic approach that reflected the needs of the crisis… due to vested interest, conservatism and a lack of vision beyond the narrow limitations of national and professional interest”. With some exceptions, most nations today agree to join an international intervention effort only when their own national interests are served by intervening and rarely where the cause is humanitarian. The world had failed to intervene to stop the genocide in Rwanda.

John Hillen, a policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a US think tank, has suggested the following criteria for future US military interventions: should defend national security interests; should not jeopardise the ability of the US to meet more important security commitments; should strive to achieve military goals that are clearly defined, decisive, attainable and sustainable; should enjoy Congressional and public support; and, the armed forces must be allowed to create the conditions for success.

Notably, Hillen makes no reference to the need to abide by international law before deciding to intervene. Former US Secretary of State Colin Powell had suggested very precise conditions for US intervention when he was Chairman, US Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1990. According to him, the following questions must be answered in the affirmative: “Is a vital national security interest threatened; do we have a clear attainable objective; have the risks and costs been fully and frankly analyzed; have all other non-violent policy means been fully exhausted; is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement; have the consequences of our action been fully considered; is the action supported by the American people; and, do we have genuine broad international support?”

In the case of Syria, President Barack Obama would find it difficult to answer even half the above questions with a firm yes. Recent US interventions in Kosovo and Iraq have clearly established that the US-led ‘coalition of the willing’ chooses to intervene militarily purely to further perceived national interests. Clearly, when national interests are at stake, there are no qualms about circumventing international law. Such a muscular approach to the conduct of foreign policy is extremely damaging to international stability and is bound to encourage similar adventurism elsewhere in the world in the long run.

The emerging doctrine of intervention is built around the ability of the international community, mainly the US-led western alliance, to impose its collective will in order to restore a deteriorating situation or to prevent a nascent conflict from burgeoning into full blown war with wider ramifications. The international community’s right to intervene may manifest itself in many ways. It may begin with a warning through a UNSC resolution. A military embargo and economic sanctions may follow. Where applicable, a no fly zone or even a naval blockade may be enforced. Failing all other means, the international community may sanction the use of military force. The overwhelming belief among members of the international community is that when this happens, it must first be approved by a UNSC resolution.

Justifications for the right to intervene militarily, which are being increasingly propagated and are finding reluctant acceptance – at least among some countries in the western alliance – include: defence of democracy and the prevention of the excessive curtailment of a people's right to participate in decision making; prevention of severe violation of human rights of a people by a totalitarian regime; protection of minority groups from severe repression; prevention of acute environmental degradation; and, prevention of possible attempts to use, acquire or develop weapons of mass destruction.

In addition to these situations justifying intervention, some of the following occurrences may also warrant a military response in the future, provided the proposal is unambiguously supported by a majority of the members of the UNSC: the persecution of a people due to religious affiliation; aiding and abetting of terrorists, narcotics smugglers and crime gangs by rogue regimes; the wilful repeated violation of World Trade Organisation (WTO) quotas and undercutting of tariffs through unfair trade practices; excessive interference with the production facilities, movement and sale of goods and the transfer of funds by transnational corporations (TNCs); plausible threat to paralyse or interfere with international communications, navigation, remote sensing and surveillance satellites and ground control facilities; interference with the internet and subversive attempts to infect its software; and, malicious intervention in and manipulation of the international banking system.

However, regardless of the emerging contours of the doctrine of military intervention, it must remain a cardinal principle of international relations that the territorial integrity of each member state of the UN must be collectively guaranteed by all the other member states. The non-observance of this collective security imperative can only lead to anarchy and the rule of the jungle where might is right. This can be done only by strengthening the UN system to emerge as the sole arbiter of the need for intervention. Individual nation-states must not be permitted to assemble coalitions of the willing to intervene anywhere in the world to further their own necessarily narrow national interests.

If Syria does not surrender its chemical weapons to the UN in a reasonable period of time, military strikes would be justified. Surgically precise missile and air strikes should be employed to achieve limited military objectives. Emphasis should be laid on the minimum use of force. Maximum efforts must be made to prevent collateral damage, with particular reference to civilian casualties and property.

Why the Indian Economy is in a Mess?

Dr M N Buch, 

Dean, Centre for Governance and Political Studies, VIF

Up to the election of 2004, it was ‘India Shining’ all the way. Glasnost and Perestroika had removed the Soviet Union as a serious player on the world stage and the new Russia had not yet taken root. Rajiv Gandhi had come to power riding a wave of sympathy when Indira Gandhi was assassinated and India embarked on what was to become an era of economic liberalisation. Nevertheless, it was actually Narasimha Rao, as Prime Minister, who really brought about the partial liberalisation of the Indian economy. Manmohan Singh was the Finance Minister and is said to be the author of the new economic regime, but the fact is that he was the hack who carried out Narasimha Rao’s directives and implemented his policies. My own view is that Manmohan Singh is neither creative nor inventive in his economic thought and has, in turn, adopted that theory which was contemporaneously fashionable. He has been a Nehruvian socialist, a South-South protagonist in the North-South dialogue, a centrist-liberal, a market oriented capitalist, a neo-liberal, a disinvestment back-tracker under Left Front pressure and a populist do gooder because Sonia Gandhi’s National Advisory Council dictates it. Is it any wonder that we have no economic policy at all, only populist adventurism and economic ad hocism?

Today we are in a mess. The rupee has been fluctuating violently at historically low levels almost day by day, inflation is out of control, industrial growth has fallen and industrialists are in despair, the markets are in a free dive and investment is declining, global confidence is shaken and our foreign exchange reserves are under pressure as foreign funds are flowing out of India and all that government and ruling party spokespersons can say is, “The fundamentals of our economy are sound.” Well, surprise of surprises, the fundamentals of our economy are not sound, in fact, they are ailing seriously, if not terminally. Our failure to recognise this makes an ostrich with its head buried in the sand almost an avid seeker of knowledge when we compare this with our refusal to see the reality. There is something very flawed about our economy. It is this blindness which is preventing us from taking those painful measures, those hard decisions, which can set us back on the road to recovery.

At a later stage in this paper, I shall attempt, perhaps somewhat ignorantly, to look at the theoretical underpinnings or lack thereof of the economy and our policies. At this stage, let us look at the so called fundamentals of our economy. The primary sector, mainly agriculture, but also mining for essential raw materials, has been our mainstay and it is this sector, which is most labour intensive, which has provided the bulk of employment. Being rural based, this sector has contributed to the basic equilibrium in our settlement pattern, from village to metropolitan city. This is our strength, because neither do we have one or more primate city which dominates the whole country, nor is the rural to urban migration alarming. Some improvement has been initiated over the years in the agricultural sector and as against the earlier Green Revolution states such as unified Punjab, which included Haryana, now one finds significant agricultural growth in states such as Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh, but overall the picture is very patchy indeed. The first three Five Year Plans did put emphasis on agriculture and irrigation, but the effort has not been sustained and we are unable to break free of our almost total dependence on the monsoon. There is, therefore, a major flaw even in the fundamentals of agriculture, the largest sector in terms of employment, though not in the share of GDP.

Our approach to agriculture has not been either holistic or consistent. Agriculture has major components --- the farmer, the land and its tenure, soil productivity, the cropping pattern, water availability, amplitude of quality power supply, agriculture research aimed at applying technology, technique, seed, fertilisers and sound agricultural practices in order to maximise productivity, the support services of roads, developed markets, financial support through easy credit, value addition through processing and government backing to ensure that the farmer to consumer relationship is healthy and mutually beneficial. We also need to promote land related activities such as animal husbandry, fishing, poultry keeping, horticulture, fodder development and silviculture which meets the village requirements of fodder, fuel and secondary timber. But before we do any of these, we need a national land use policy which identifies and allocates land according to the use to which it is best suited, of which agriculture would be the most predominant. From this would flow land management at meso, mili and micro level, an art at which the Japanese seem to excel. Unfortunately, India has no national land use policy at all. So much for our fundamentals!

It is not as if we are unaware of the above issues. We are and from time to time we have even addressed some or all of them. But never wholly, holistically, harmoniously, or consistently and with persistence. Apparently we either tire very quickly or else are soon bored by consistency and want to move on to something new. Let me give two or three examples. We launched land reforms to give land to the tiller. Madhya Pradesh embraced this enthusiastically and enacted the Abolition of Proprietary Rights Act, 1950. We abolished Malguzari which was not quite zamindari and the Malguzar had only limited authority. He, however, was charged with the responsibility to manage the village commons, including the village forests. This function ceased in 1951 and from that year till 1961, when we brought the old “chhote jhad ke jungle” and “bade jhad ke jungle” within the ambit of protected forest under the Indian Forest Act, Madhya Pradesh lost four million hectares of village forests to indiscriminate felling, of which 2.8 million hectares were encroached upon. That is when village nistar rights were gravely affected, biotic pressure on reserve forests increased and villagers and forest officials entered into conflict. Yet another sound fundamental, Mr. Politician?

In the early fifties of the twentieth century. we launched S.K. Dey’s Community Development Programme. The whole country was divided into Community Development (CD) Blocks, each headed by a Tehsildar rank Block Development Officer, but forming with his team a separate cadre of development officers. We thus separated the Revenue, or regulatory and the development administration, from which eventually flowed Panchayat Raj. In a C.D. Block, all planning and implementation was participative and whereas the villagers prescribed their priorities, work was undertaken on the basis of fifty per cent contribution by the people in cash, materials or voluntary labour. Because the people had a stake in the work, they saw to it that it was done honestly and the roads, wells, minor irrigation works, schools and panchayat bhawans built sixty years ago are still intact. The Block was a complete unit, with a Primary Health Centre and extension officers in education, social welfare, agriculture, animal husbandry, cooperation, etc. In 1963, however, we abolished the C.D.B., gave up participative development and replaced it by hundred per cent government grants works. The fundamentals still OK?

A third example is of the watershed development and management programme. The whole country is divided into mili (about 5000 hectares covering about ten villages) and micro (about 500 hectares covering a village) watersheds. For each mili or micro watershed, a Project Implementation Agency was identified, whose job was to prepare a detailed management plan, do a participative rural appraisal with the villagers, form a watershed development committee and then oversee the work. With ridge to valley vegetation treatment of hill features, undertaking soil conservation works and suitably treating all waterways and creating water bodies, the programme has succeeded in converting sizeable tracts of drought prone areas into productive areas, reduced seasonal distress migration and substantially raised the water table and improved the availability of fuel and fodder. Employment is locally generated, first as wage labour on the works proper and then in the improved agriculture of the village. Because everyone benefits, there was very little corruption in the programme.

But can our “The fundamentals are sound” brigade leave well alone? Along comes the National Advisory Council (NAC), headed by Sonia Gandhi and with woolly headed do gooders, long on intention but very short indeed on practical commonsense, as members. They persuaded government to launch the National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme, supported by the MNREG Act, the purpose of which is to give a hundred days’ employment per capita per year. This is an employment programme, muster based, whose prime objective is not asset creation. NAC may think it was pioneering something, but all such programmes can trace their origin to the scarcity relief programme of British days. In his famine relief programme, Maharaja Sardul Singh of Bikaner at least built the Lal Bagh Palace. All we are building through NREGS is a massive web of corruption which has engulfed the entire Panchayat Raj system. The vast sums of money spent on a programme which, because it is muster based, has corruption built into its genes, have completely skewed our economy without creating any worthwhile assets which will give us long term returns. How can such a programme be part of our sound fundamentals?

An important component of the primary sector is mining for minerals which are the raw material for industry. This activity is extractive and impacts the environment, hence is the target of activists, some environmental, some social, some just plain cussed and, therefore, antiestablishment. Such activism has seriously affected mining for coal, iron ore, bauxite aggregate and sand, to mention just a few items. Thermal power plants are denied coal, thus inhibiting new plants. Steel plants are denied iron ore. Sand mines are closed. Apart from adversely affecting industry, this has led to huge job losses, estimated at over 50,000 in Bellary and over 20,000 in Hoshangabad. No one advocates exploitative mining which destroys whole ecological systems, or the corrupt practices that have burdened these industries in recent years. But one has to evolve a balance between exploitation, curbing corruption, and using the resultant ore for job creation and generating wealth and minimising the adverse environmental impact and rehabilitating the mined areas.

The German State of Rheinland Westphalia worked out about 70 years ago a policy whereby before mining began, the company had to submit a detailed plan of the mining operations, site for dumping overburden, restoring the site through backfill and layering with fresh soil, carrying out a vegetation plan and generally ensuring a return of the site to its old biodiversity. The policy has paid rich dividends, especially because it is vigorously enforced. That is the direction in which we must move, that is, extract, but responsibly and restore the land to its former state thereafter. We have a huge potential for employment and wealth generation in this segment of the primary sector and we must use this wisely.

The backbone of a modern industrial state is the secondary or manufacturing, sector. At the time of independence, this was still rudimentary, though the Second World War had given a fillip to manufacture because many of the industrial goods which were imported could not be brought in and the British war effort needed the contribution of Indian industry. However, the main push to industry was given after independence when India deliberately embarked on a voyage of developing capital goods industries and of infrastructural development. From the First Five Year Plan onwards, the State took the lead in capital investment in power, irrigation, metallurgy, defence industry and other sectors of the economy, which were generically clubbed together as the high ground of the economy. Various power projects, steel plants, aluminium, copper, etc., smelters all came up in the public sector. At that stage, only the State had the capacity to mobilise capital in sufficient quantity and at a scale necessary for investment in infrastructure and the capital goods industries. If this formed the core of Nehruvian socialism, which is now being condemned by modern economists and the neo-liberalists, it was nevertheless the only course open to India for rapid development at a time when India had few real industrialists and the average businessman would rather trade than manufacture. Japan went through a similar phase after the Meiji Restoration, but wisely that country kept open the doors of private enterprise and as the great Japanese business houses, the Ziabatsu, were able to undertake a larger role, the State stepped back from directly running the economy and allowed the private sector to take over. The State first led, then it worked in tandem and finally it allowed management to go into the hands of business houses whose primary objective was to maximise profit. The Japanese being a patriotic people, the State was able to retain a major role as facilitator and regulator and industry itself imposed self-discipline in which the interests of the nation were always kept paramount.

In sharp contrast, in India, as our planned economy increased the tentacles of the State, those in charge of governance began to taste economic power and not merely government power. Patronage soon skewed any sensible personnel policy in the public sector, nepotism led to unsuitable appointments to critical posts, the temptation of making money soon overcame the interests of the enterprise and the whole system began to fall apart because of inefficient management, overstaffing, delay in decision making and outright corruption. Huge amounts of money were frittered away in loss making activities and cumulatively this has certainly affected our economy adversely.

Rajiv Gandhi, followed by Narasimha Rao, did bring about a change of attitude in terms of opening up the economy to private enterprise. This did bring a large number of new start ups and sunrise industries and brought about rapid industrial growth in many sectors. Unfortunately, the government continued to vacillate because many of the sectors related to industry, mainly dealing with infrastructure, continued to be inefficiently run by government. Power has been one of biggest bottlenecks and this is one sector which government did not deregulate for a long time. Even today, private participation in power generation and distribution is hedged in by many constraints. These include a reluctance on the part of government to loosen its hold over what government considers a strategically important sector but which in fact is only a public utility. The constraints are in licensing of new power stations, environmental clearance on their location, making available land, reserving coal for the use of the power stations and evolving environmental norms which, while protecting the environment, do not completely negate the project itself. Much of the problem of the episode now popularly referred to as ‘Coalgate’ arose out of the fact that government has not holistically looked at the power sector. There is demand for power and it can be met by private investment, provided a reasonable return can be ensured. If on the one hand, government decides to allow private players to function whilst at the same time government insists on subsidising whole sections of users, which denies the generation company a fair return on its investment, how can we expect private participation?

Because all major minerals are a monopoly of the State and coal is a major mineral, unless government allocates coal to a power plant, how can it produce power? The Environment Ministry does not clear coal mining projects, in the allocation of coal blocks there are allegations of corruption and wrongdoing, the mining of coal never takes place and yet we expect the power plants to generate electricity. This scenario is so reminiscent of a lunatic asylum. If power is to be generated and a power plant is to be built, then it is the job of the ministries concerned to sit together, hammer out norms of environmental clearance and then ensure that the power plant gets all the necessary clearances automatically. The Coal Ministry and the Environment Ministry have to sit together and work out the areas from which coal will be mined and made available to the power plants. My own view is that even if coal is given free it would be worthwhile because that coal will be converted to electrical energy, the users of which would pay the State electricity duty and the use of that power for industrial production will create jobs and generate income. Instead of being apologetic, though one can understand that because in the allocation of coal mines government’s policy has been inconsistent, the Prime Minister should have stood up in Parliament and said that he has approved the allocation of coal, he stood by his decision and that anyone who did not like it could campaign for the defeat of the ruling party at the next election. Mere police agencies such as CBI or even the Supreme Court cannot sit in judgement over the executive decisions of the Prime Minister which he is constitutionally competent to take. It is the absolute lack of guts of government to stand by its decisions which is responsible for its woes.

Be that as it may, unlike China, India post liberalisation preferred the easy path of the tertiary sector for its own economy growth. In the tertiary sector, we emphasised IT and ICT as the core areas. The world was seeking the information highway and India provided it, which led to a massive upsurge in employment in the IT sector. Does information technology directly produce tangible goods? Obviously not because information technology is merely an enabler to access information, analyse data and suggest a course of action. By itself Information Technology produces nothing, though by using this technology manufacturing industry can extend its horizon and massively upgrade its own efficiency and profitability. China produces, we give ideas. India has the capacity for marrying both but our industrialists and businessmen prefer the easy path and our government enthusiastically falls in line. We are proud of our IT industry and we also claim to have the fastest growing mobile telephony sector in the world. But do we manufacture even one brand of mobile telephone? Do we produce any computers? We assemble some but that is only screw driver technology. All the hardware is designed and manufactured in the United States, Japan, Taiwan, Korea and China. Lenovo has become a big name both in IT and ICT and the market is flooded with Lenovo computers and Lenovo mobile telephones. Our over dependence on the tertiary sector for economic growth is also the source of our greatest weakness because this is a vulnerable sector which is very quickly affected by what happens elsewhere in the world and by itself generates neither manufacturing competence nor manufacturing capacity.

Yet government used growth in the sector to showcase its claim that India is amongst the fastest growing economies in the world, part of the global market and yet protected against global economic vicissitudes because of the fundamental strength of our economy. The hollowness of the claim has been suddenly exposed as inflation threatens to get out of hand, the rupee is devaluing from day-to-day and investor confidence in India is ebbing away. If our fundamentals are sound, why is this happening? Before we look at the unholy mess in which we find ourselves today, let us try and understand the theoretical underpinnings of our economy. Do we believe in the laissez faire of Adam Smith? Do we believe in capitalist free enterprise? Do we practise mercantilism which, in any case in the present day and age of open seas, does not lend itself to monopolising trade through a Navigation Act? Are we players in the monetarism advocated by Milton Friedman, who advocated that it is possible to control the economy by controlling money supply? Are we Keynesian in our belief that the State has a major role to kick start a flagging economy and to generate employment through public spending on works which create assets? Are we Marxian in outlook or Fabian socialist? Are we neo-liberals? What exactly are our economic moorings and to which brand of macroeconomics do we owe allegiance? Do we really believe that India is part of the global economy and is almost wholly controlled by global trends? Is that why a minor policy change by the Federal Reserve in the United States can make or break the Rupee? This last point is emphasised because the various apologists for government, ministers, economists and planners all claim helplessness because they say that it is global trends which are affecting the Indian economy and these forces are beyond our control. When Y.V. Reddy was Governor of the Reserve Bank and the entire banking system in the Western world and in South East Asia was collapsing, his conservative policies enabled our banks to be relatively immunised from the crisis. At that time, we claimed that we had the innate strength to resist the global trend. Today what has happened to that strength that a mere whiff of a rumour somewhere else causes the rupee to go into freefall?

Much has been written on what is causing our woes, but some points need to be made again, because failure of government to recognise that our policies are flawed has resulted in exacerbating the situation. Let us begin with inflation. There are many factors behind inflation, but excessive money supply is certainly not one of them. If money supply were excessive, would government be prepared to spend anything between Rupees 1.25 lakh crores and 3.0 lakh crores in subsidising grain for the poor under the Food Security Programme? And yet government adopts monetarism as one of the means of checking inflation. Money supply is attempted to be restricted by a high bank rate, which pushes up the cost of money by way of credit. In a country where there is a very strong parallel economy and where in any case the Reserve Bank is totally clueless about how much money is actually circulating, pushing up the bank rate does not push down consumption. What it does is to make the cost of legitimate capital needed for investment in business and industry unaffordable and thus render the product of such industry costly and uncompetitive in the global market. The way to counter this is not to make the rupee worthless. The way forward is to make money affordable so that the input costs reduce and the product can be produced at a competitive price. The high interest rate has some effects. The cost of capital is increased. Even at a high interest rate, industry could invest, provided there is an optimistic climate in which the possibility of reasonable returns cannot be ruled out. However, when this is accompanied by a fast devaluing rupee, the economic climate is vitiated and industry is holding back investment. This causes growth to stagnate, new start ups to be postponed or even abandoned, investment in upgradation and modernisation kept pending and, generally speaking growth suffers. This is the direct result of the monetarist policy followed by our government. This is also inhibiting industry from investing self owned capital in expansion, new start ups or modernisation. All this in a situation in which the banks are flush with funds but are not going for aggressive lending because the state of the market does not encourage this.

Another area in which we are on the wrong track is in our capacity to take sound decisions. The world can live with a harsh tax regime, provided it is practicable and consistent. In India, however, the tax regime is totally inconsistent, as has been proved in the Vodafone case. Our tax policies are not economics driven but are completely political in character. Somebody suggests to tax the rich and so everyone runs in that direction. Then someone else says that we must give concessions to encourage industry and that becomes the flavour of the day. Someone makes some complaint about wrongdoing because a certain order has been issued in a tax matter and everyone runs around like a chicken with its head cut off. Why can we not have a long term tax policy aimed at sending a message to investors about what they can expect in this country in terms of taxation and the policy of government regarding fair repatriation of profit?

I had said in the beginning of this paper that we take a holistic view of almost nothing. Many smaller activities are involved in any activity and one component can cause all components to fail. Industry has certain requirements, the first one of which is land on which industry can locate. Some States are able to handle the matter better than others, Gujarat being one of them. Industry is welcome to locate in Kutch where land is plentiful and does not have a gainful alternative. Water is a problem here, which the government has solved by bringing in Narmada water. A number of industries, therefore, have located in Kutch. The Gujarat Government had made it clear that it will not use coercion to acquire fertile land for industry, though it has no objection to private purchase. There is no ambiguity and, therefore, the industry has no inhibition in locating in Gujarat. We should certainly keep the interests of cultivators in mind, but we cannot adopt a policy whereby land is simply not made available for undertaking public works or for location of economic activity which provides large scale gainful employment. Therefore, land promises to be a big obstacle in any future development project.

There are many countries which have struck a balance between environmental considerations and development needs. There are very strong environmental regulations, but they stop short of bringing all economic activities to a halt. What these regulations do is to force industry to realise its key role in protecting the environment and to make it accept responsibility to discharge this role both in the setting up of the industry and in running it. There is regular environmental audit and violation of environmental laws invites and in fact gets severe punishment. However, industry is encouraged to establish new plants, but with responsibility. In India our approach is the reverse. There is a shortage of wood and, therefore, government has put a ban on use of wooden furniture in government offices. My approach would be to insist on the greater use of wood, with a specific mandate being given to the Forest Department to go in for aggressive afforestation and to create an environment in which the people and the private sector become partners in afforestation. Without sand, buildings cannot be constructed. Unless I find a sand substitute, I would not stop the use of sand but would regulate mining so that environmental damage is either avoided or minimised. In any case a ‘can do’ mindset would have to replace a ‘do not do’ mindset because ultimately Ludditism is not only an enemy of growth but is an ally of negative primitivism.

The obvious lack of policy direction is compounded by hair brained schemes to go on spending nonexistent money on so-called welfare programmes. Lord Keynes was a product of the Depression. He developed a theory that in times of depression or economic recession it is the duty of the State to kick-start the economy by judicious public spending on works which create permanent assets. If necessary the State would be justified, under controlled conditions, to print currency notes to fund such works, a process which goes by the name of deficit financing, which also covers revenue deficits in the budget. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President of the United States, used the New Deal to fund public spending to overcome the effects of the Great Depression. The magnificent works in the Tennessee Valley, which harnessed the Tennessee River and its tributaries, generated hydel power and made available water for irrigation, is one of the finest monuments to well designed public spending to counter economic recession. In a way President Eisenhower’s post war programme of building 40,000 miles of interstate highways in the United States not only put money into the economy by way of public spending, but it created the infrastructure which today supports trade, commerce and industry in the whole of the United States. These are all Keynesian measures and are perfectly justified. This was the path we followed in our earlier plan period. There was a budget deficit on revenue account, but so what? It generated jobs, created assets and if there was a slight inflationary pressure, it was countered by greater productivity. That is still legitimate in India.

What is not legitimate is throwing money down the drain, which the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme as enshrined under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and the so-called Food Security Bill are doing and will do. The real addition to money supply in the parallel economy is from the corruption generally found in India and corruption in NREGS specifically. To this will be added the colossal amount to be spent on subsidising food grain, which can have only one result --- a virtual collapse of the economy. Money, which should go into infrastructure, agriculture, business, industrial growth, promotion of foreign trade, will be denied to all these sectors and will be thrown down the drain. The way to feed people is to generate jobs which give them the money to buy food. Giving subsidised foodgrain but denying money to the sectors which generate employment is the single most foolish decision that government has ever taken in India since independence. It is so perfect a method of ruining the economy that it should be archived as a permanent record of how foolish governments can be. In any case, India now needs economic administrators with a sound practical knowledge of Indian realities. What it does not need is foreign trained economic advisors, who are clueless about India and what it emphatically does not need is the National Advisory Council.

To sum up, we need to abandon every scheme which squanders money for possible electoral gain. We need very clear decisions on directions of growth, with ruthless planning on providing both the environment and the financial and natural resources thereof. We need gainful employment generation which creates long term assets, thus providing the equality of opportunity to all enshrined in the Preamble to the Constitution. We need massive State support for health, education, skill development and infrastructure building. We need policies which carefully balance environmental concerns and protection on the one hand and growth of employment on the other. We need a government which decides and stands by its decisions. We need a grievance redressal mechanism which refuses to allow irresponsible activism to trivialise the process and bring development to a halt. We need to promote equity, not through doles but by encouraging activities from the village level projects which create assets all the way up to major industries, which genuinely give people equality of opportunity. What is more, we need a government, not the present spavined, paralysed, dithering apology of a government that we have today. All this in a democratic set up because as has been proved over and over again, a self critical (not self destructive) democracy, in the long run, will always be better than totalitarianism. This is where we must say, “Yes, we can do, we shall do.”

Interaction with H.E Dr Riyad Kamel Abbas, Syrian Ambassador to India

On 11^th September 2013, VIF welcomed the Syrian Ambassador to India, H.E. Dr. Riyad Kamel Abbas for an interaction session. The interaction focused on various issues of mutual concern, including the ground situation in Syria, the issue of growing Islamic radicalism, and cross-border terrorism. The candid talk was followed by a session of Q&A.

Shri Ajit Doval, KC, Director VIF, thanked Ambassador Abbas for the informative talk. The Director and the Ambassador agreed to exchange ideas and research on radicalism and extremism. 

India’s Position on Syria is Correct and Justified

Kanwal Sibal, 

Dean, Centre for International Relations and Diplomacy, VIF

The G 20 meeting in St Petersburg has further exposed and deepened international divisions on Syria. President Barack Obama believes that the Syrian government is responsible for last month’s chemical weapon attack in Damascus, whereas as the Russian President is convinced that the rebels staged this attack to discredit the Syrian government.

Today, chemical weapons use by any government would be considered unpardonable because of the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention(CWC) that outlaws their production and use and enjoins destruction of exisiting stocks. That Syria is not a signatory shields it technically from an infringment, but, given the evolution of international humanitarian law, a pre-meditated use of such weapons by a state even within its own territory would not be internationally tolerated.

Which is why the facts on the ground must first be established impartially in the Syrian case. Only then can a consensus be built on steps to punish and deter those responsible. Only on-site inspection by a UN team and its report can provide an objective basis to proceed.

Unilateral

America’s Syria policy, as well as those of its close allies, has been one-sided from the start. They have sought a regime change in Syria by providing the rebels with funds and arms. They have made public statements repeatedly that President Assad’s days are numbered. Syrian opposition leaders have been officially received and given political recognition. The western media has generously purveyed unverified stories of human right violations in Syria sourced from rebel outfits. The Syrian President has been demonized incessantly. The good faith of the US and others when they liberally accuse Syria of humanitarian misdeeds lies eroded as a result.

Unfortunately, even before the UN inspectors could begin their work, the US and its key allies determined that the Syrian regime was guilty. Such alacrity in reaching this conclusion without physical presence and investigation on the ground puzzles. Evidence from partisan rebel sources can hardly be considered reliable. Are the powerful technical means at US’s disposal sufficient to reach definitive conclusions so quickly in a highly murky situation? And if its evidence is so unimpeachable, why cannot it be fully shared with others?

After all, the stakes involved are consequential in terms of state sovereignty, UN’s role and authority, peace and stability in a volatile region and the humanitarian consequences of external military intervention as Libya and Iraq showed. Russia has found the evidence presented by the US unconvincing and queries the standard US response that more cannot be shared as the intelligence is “classified”. US claims to possess irrefutable evidence is contested by others because in Iraq’s case the same intelligence sources purveyed pumped-up information to make the case for intervention. The Russians, in turn, have presented a detailed report which finger-points at the rebels for the chemical weapons attack.

Growing Opposition

To make the UN report irrelevant to their decision to “punish” President Assad, the US announced even before the team could begin its work that its mandate was to determine if chemical weapons were used, not who used them, besides alleging that the team was not given access to the site for five days, and that constant bombardment of the area by the Syrian military was intended to destroy all evidence. Failing to make a case for intervention at St. Petersburg, the US and others are now willing to wait till the UN report is submitted, but they have effectively untied their hands already.

President Obama’s declared willingness to strike at Syria even without UN approval confirms this. He is seeking US Congressional approval as if that can replace UN approval and legitimize US action against a third country with which the US is not at war and which has not committed any act of aggression against it. President Putin has declared that such Congress-approved US action would constitute aggression and that US unilateralism will fuel insecurity globally.

President Obama claims that the “international community” wants action against Syria seems to exclude Russia, China, India, Brazil, South Africa and many others from its ambit. To their credit, NATO, the EU and major countries like Germany do not support military action. The Pope is opposed; the UN Secretary General has cautioned that action without UN approval would be against international law.

Popular opinion even in the US, UK and France is against military action, with the UK parliament restraining the Cameron government from joining the US and many senior French politicians opposing military intervention and pressing the government to seek parliamentary approval.

India’s Position

Too much focus on the US-Russia spat over Syria is distorting perceptions about the merits of the Syrian situation. To argue that Russia is responsible for the blockage in the UN Security Council because it is either protecting its selfish interests or its position is morally skewed begs the question whether the disinterested US stand is fired with a superior moral purpose alone, in which Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Iran, the Hezbollah, the Shia-Sunni conflict are non-existent factors.

The argument that if Assad goes unpunished, other dictators would use chemical weapons and US interests and security are therefore threatened is exaggerated. While Myanmar and Israel have not ratified the CWC, only Angola, North Korea, Egypt, South Sudan and Syria have not signed it. Unlike Syria, none of these countries is in the throes of a civil war and the danger from North Korea is nuclear.

India’s position at St. Petersburg was correct: the use of chemical weapons in Syria is deplorable if true, the responsibility for it should be determined without bias and any action should be taken only with UN approval.

Rendering justice is important but who has committed the crime should also be clear.

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Geopolitics of RCEP and TPP: Implications for India

Brig (Retd) Vinod Anand, 

Senior Fellow, VIF

Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) is a proposed grouping that is centered around ten members of ASEAN and includes the format of ASEAN +6, which includes China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and India. ASEAN already has free trade agreements (FTA) of varying types with the six regional economies and the objective of RCEP is to combine those into one single comprehensive FTA that would harmonise the existing arrangements. This indeed would be a challenging task.

On the other hand, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a proposed regional free trade agreement (FTA) that includes Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States, and Vietnam. While the RCEP is perceived as China-dominated grouping (though with the centrality of ASEAN), TPP is viewed as an American driven process which has geo-strategic objectives besides the economic significance of the grouping.

It can also be easily said that both may be competing for almost the same set of countries becoming its members and they also have similar agenda. Some of the ASEAN members are also members of the TPP besides having a network of FTAs at the bilateral level with many other countries.

Further, while RCEP differentiates between the different levels of development while going into the issues of protection of domestic industries etc and introduction of preferential tariffs and non-tariff barriers especially for the least developed ASEAN members, the TPP is expected to go in for more stringent rules with which developing countries may not be comfortable with. One of the Guiding Principles of RCEP states that it “will have broader and deeper engagement with significant improvements over the existing ASEAN+1 FTAs, while recognizing the individual and diverse circumstances of the participating countries”.

The TPP, on the other hand, has proposed to link trade, economic and investment issues with labour laws, environmental protection and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) besides other regulatory and technical issues and work towards WTO plus standards. This means that TPP will enforce more stringent rules especially concerning labour and environment than the WTO guidelines. This may not rhyme with the interests and approaches of most of the ASEAN+ 6 members towards trade and commerce issues.

Even while moving towards RCEP, there were geo-politics involved when China was only keen to include ASEAN, Japan and South Korea (ASEAN+3) leaving out India, Australia and New Zealand. Japan, on the other hand prevailed upon China to forge the multilateral grouping based on ASEAN+6.

Further, it is not the political competition between US and China that would influence a country to join one group or the other but it would be practical economics that might move a country to join one or the other grouping or may be both as some countries have already decided to do so. However, with Singapore, Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia, Japan, Australia and New Zealand already in the TPP negotiations, a certain level of political orientation in their decision to join TPP may be perceived. It is possible that maritime disputes in South China and East China Sea may have had impact on some of the members of ASEAN’s entry into TPP. Philippines, another ASEAN, member is considering entering into negotiations with TPP. There is also an ongoing debate on whether ASEAN members joining TPP would weaken the RCEP.

However, it is also possible that pressure from TPP may have a positive impact on ASEAN and its partners to find a modus vivendi in intra-ASEAN plus 6 trade and economic differences and usher in the ASEAN Economic Community by end of 2015.

TPP is a platform which excludes many other countries especially the largest regional economy of China. Though in principle there is no bar against China to join the TPP, yet its many clauses on trade, labour, environment and capital account would prevent China from becoming its member.

That TPP is the economic component of its pivot to Asia or rebalance to Asia has been stated by authoritative US interlocutors and mentioned in the US documents. Even though TPP initiative has origins in 2005, it has now become a part of the US Asia Pacific strategy. TPP is perceived to offer several economic, diplomatic, and strategic benefits to the US. It is expected to provide access to growing markets of Asia, stimulate US exports growth, protect IPR; diplomatically, it will demonstrate US commitment and engagement in the region; strategically, the interest of the countries in the region for maintaining free flow of trade through SLOCs would increase and they would work together to reduce potential risks/threats to such trade.

There has been very little debate in India about the merits of RCEP versus TPP though India has concluded FTA with ASEAN in goods and services. FTA in services is yet to be operationalized. RCEP does offer India a good opportunity to intensify its engagement not only with the ASEAN but also with its other partners in the rubric of ASEAN+6 which would further complement its Look East Policy. India remains uncomfortable with some of the rules of TPP relating to environmental and labour laws and IPR issues which at the current level of development may have a negative impact on India’s trade.

At the same time, the US has been saying that India is an important part or an essential lynchpin of its Asia Pacific strategy. Joe Bidden, the US Vice President, during his visit to Mumbai in his remarks invited India, though somewhat indirectly, to join America’s TPP effort. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, after his visit to Japan in May this year, had remarked that India is studying implications of joining TPP and was generally non-committal on benefits or otherwise of the same.

Evidently, India, like some of the ASEAN members, has options to join both. TPP would include the largest economy besides many other fast growing economies. It has also the potential to become the largest FTA with the realisation of the proposed Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership that would include US and European Union. Since TPP is a living agreement, India may decide to join the TPP later after looking at how it develops. India would be more inclined to go in for the economic benefits that can be reaped from joining such groupings rather than any intangible strategic benefits.