Dr John Chipman, Director General and Chief Executive, IISS
I would like next to invite Jayant Prasad, Special Secretary for Public Democracy in India, to speak. Nirupama Rao, who is a great friend of the IISS and with whom the IISS has a formal annual strategic dialogue with the IISS Minister of External Affairs, was suddenly caught by a bug in Delhi. We hope her a speedy recovery from a temporary illness, but we are delighted that Jayant Prasad could be with us. He holds a very senior role as Special Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs but, also not entirely irrelevantly, India’s Ambassador in Afghanistan.
Jayant Prasad, Special Secretary, Ministry of External Affairs, India
Dr John Chipman, Excellencies, Ladies & Gentlemen - I am honoured to be here in the midst of such a distinguished gathering and to share this session with Ambassador Celso Amorim and Dr. Javier Solana.
The world is dramatically different today, sixty five years after the Second World War and some two decades after the end of the Cold War. Innovation, entrepreneurship, the unshackling of developing countries’ economies, and their integration into global markets have transformed the economic landscape. These have also altered the geostrategic balance and shall impact, inevitably, on the existing security systems and global institutions.
Rising growth indices do not automatically result in stronger security systems, as the notion of security itself has broadened. Human security, for instance, improves with civilisational progress – with freedom of expression as much as freedom from want; with the right to habeas corpus as much as the right to development; the universal values of respect for all points of view, cultures, religions, beliefs, languages and ethnicities; and the pluralist and tolerant outlook of societies. While speaking of grand strategy, we should not forget these.
The 2010 Strategic Survey of IISS suggests in its ‘prospectives’ that, as a response to the recent economic crisis, each country is looking for its own solutions. It appears, to be contrary, that the crisis stimulated fresh thinking across countries and regions, not just about financial regulation and the need for stimulus, but also about global institutions, leading to the coming into its own of the G-20, which has effectively replaced G-8. Its latest Summit in Toronto, last June, encourages financial sector reform to address the imbalances that created the crisis, and advocated continued steps to stimulate sustainable and balanced growth, in preference to premature fiscal consolidation, except for those countries with a problem of sovereign debt.
Developing countries like India have a strong stake in the continuation of the fragile recovery process. They have made the case, within G-20, that measures such as restricting banks from lending to developing or emerging economies, protectionist measures against trade in goods and services, and curbs on labour movement or arbitrary procurement preferences, tend to undermine the long-term interests of the global economy and, by implication, global security and stability. The need today, to the contrary, is to promote greater inclusiveness and to reflect the evolving economies’ strength in the international, financial and political institutions.
Besides G-20, India is involved in other global initiatives, such as IBSA, hosted in April by President Lula da Silva, bringing into a cooperative framework three major democracies from three different continents – Brazil, India and South Africa. Another Summit level exchange is that among the BRIC countries that bring together four large countries with abundant resources, large populations and diverse societies, Brazil, Russia, India and China.
Among India’s security imperatives, the first and the foremost is to create facilitating environment for India’s ongoing transformation; to secure access to markets, investments, technology, energy sources and strategic minerals needed for growth and development; slowdown the impact of climate change; manage internal and regional movement of peoples; cope with water and food shortages; engage in a collective effort to secure the global commons – outer space, the oceans, transportation and communication networks and cyber-space; maintain maritime security by protecting the two choke points of the Indian Ocean: the Gulf of Hormuz and the Straits of Malacca; and combat terrorist groups, given their resurgence in the Af-Pak region and the manner in which they threaten our way of life.
A collective effort is required to tackle all of these challenges, regionally in Asia as much as globally. This needs a new paradigm, different from the older and institutions designed in the middle of the last century, which remain intact today almost in the same form as they were originally created.
India’s interaction with the world begins in concentric circles around India, beginning with the countries of South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation, including Afghanistan, and China. The next circle extends to much of the Indian Ocean Littoral: from the West to East, it stretches from Aden to Singapore; from Iran, the Central Asian Republics and the Gulf countries to the countries of ASEAN. It stretches, in the North, from Russia, as a Eurasian power, to Seychelles, Mauritius and Indonesia in the South. The next circle encompasses Turkey, the countries of the East African seaboard, stretching from the Horn of Africa to South Africa, the Koreas, Japan and Australia. The United States is a significant, de-facto, Asian player present in our neighbourhood. Finally, together with other major Asian countries, India has maintained its traditional traction with Europe and a growing one with Africa and Latin America.
We have always been clear that India’s national security is best served by nuclear disarmament. We are not comfortable with a proliferated world. The threat posed by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction has meanwhile increased, with the potential of terrorists and non-State actors gaining access to these weapons. The late Rajiv Gandhi had presented a comprehensive Action Plan for achieving nuclear disarmament and ushering in a non-violent and nuclear-weapons-free-world in 1988. India remains committed to its objectives. The best way forward is a step by step process, underwritten by a universal commitment in an agreed multilateral framework. India has a no-first use policy and supports various measures for reducing nuclear dangers. We also support negotiations of a verifiable FMCT in the CD as a measure to strengthen non-proliferation in all its aspects.
India’s future in Asia and the world has promise as India increases its capacity to meet humanitarian and security challenges in the Indian Ocean area by assisting, when required, in the security of countries in the region; extending its actions to protect merchant shipping and combat piracy; enlarging its external development partnerships; and contributing to the creation of a pan-Asian economic area. We are behind the impressive integration efforts that Ambassador Amorim mentioned a few minutes ago in the context of South America, but we are catching up.
We are in an evolutionary stage in respect of a new Asian security architecture. The absence of collective security arrangements in Asia, instead of being a problem, is an opportunity. India would like the evolving architecture to be open, inclusive, plural and flexibly structured to contend with new dimensions of security, which include trans-national and non-State actors.
The core objectives of this new inclusive architecture would, of course, be peace, security and stability. These will be based on, first, the promotion of deeper economic integration and the free and unfettered flow of goods, services, investment, ideas, technology and peoples; second, inclusive growth; and third, increased cooperative activities in cross-cutting areas such as infrastructure, natural resources, environment, human resources development, regional connectivity and communication, and protecting the global commons. It might not be strange in this context to find, over time, a concert of powers managing maritime security in Asia in a cooperative framework.
Asian countries have practiced pragmatic co-existence, notwithstanding a few bloody conflicts and ideological and strategic divergences amongst them. Asia has proved its ability to create new models of economic growth. Such innovation could be applied also to the new security architecture. Asian heterogeneity creates a natural disposition towards multi-polarity making it difficult for any one power to impose its will on the entire region.
Finally, I want to say a few words on Afghanistan, the greatest security challenge of our times. Afghanistan teaches us that peace, prosperity and stability in the world are indivisible. It also teaches us that security policies and structures based on military alliances and balance of power have a way of unravelling over time: they do prevent conflicts but equally cannot control them once they occur, especially if they do not take into account the specificities of the regional strategic space and the local cultures and geography.
In Afghanistan we do need the longue durée – patience, perseverance and long-term engagement, though necessarily military – to build on the resilience and survival spirit of the Afghans who have faced unrelenting war for over 30 years. There is talk of a regional solution but it has never been given a fair trial so far. It is time to try this out now – by bringing into the equation Iran as much as Pakistan, together with the other major regional stakeholders.
Last evening, Henry Kissinger said that making the exit strategy the defining objective in Afghanistan is not sustainable. In a recent piece of writing he said more, that the ‘exit strategy’ was all about exit and not at all about strategy. That is perhaps not the best way for the international community to build a brave new world. Instead, that would be a catastrophe for the region and the world.
For those of you who might be curious about what our present options are, I would be happy to provide answers as best as I can.
Dr John Chipman
Thank you very much for giving us such a survey of India’s regional security interests in the concentric circles that you describe, and also for ending so tantalisingly. I am sure there will be questions about this subject.
