Dr John Chipman
We are honoured to have Lord Powell as a member of the international advisory council of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), which is perhaps one reason I could lean on his good will to have him here today.
(As prepared)
Lord Powell
I’ve been giving speeches on the inevitable rise of India and China for more than twenty years. At the beginning I could tell from their faces that my audiences thought I was mildly deranged. What, India with its grinding poverty? Red China with its iron-clad Communism? Rising Powers? Come off it. Surely their vast and still swelling populations would prove an insurmountable weakness holding them back, as they struggled to feed their people or went though great upheavals like the Cultural Revolution.
The laugh is on the sceptics now as they see the world’s economic centre of gravity shifting steadily towards Asia – or perhaps as a historian I should say, back to Asia . If India and China are already redrawing the economic map of the world and becoming great powers in economic terms isn’t it only a matter of time before they redraw the political map too? And what are the implications for the rest of us?
The rise of India’s economy over the past decade has indeed been remarkable. But to those like me who were tutored by Margaret Thatcher in the efficacy of the market, it’s no great surprise. It’s pretty much what happened in Britain after she came to power in 1979. In other words, abandonment of the old-fashioned, unworkable socialist model in favour of liberalization of the economy. Where people outside India – foreign investors in particular - used to be turned off by the dead hand of the Licence Raj, the Inspector Raj and the treacle factor of Indian bureaucracy, they now focus more on the vibrant, innovative and privatizing sectors of the economy which has produced such leading-edge companies as HCL Technologies, Infosys and a host of others. The self-confidence implicit in Tata’s acquisition of Corus, Jaguar and Landrover is having a powerful impact on the world’s perception of India and its growing economic muscle.
I am sure you want that to continue. So do we, India’s friends elsewhere in the world. But economies don’t just move inexorably and eternally upwards. In the 1970s, Herman Kahn predicted that Japan would reach and overtake the United States in wealth and economic performance round about now. He was right only up to a point – the point in the 1990s where Japan’s economy stalled and has remained pretty much in the doldrums ever since, still far short of the US in size and wealth. Now there are plenty of books predicting that China’s growth too will one day hit the buffers because of bottle-necks, rising costs especially of commodities, environmental problems, water shortage and the inflexibility of the political system and that day may not be too far off.
We have to be realistic. At the least India still has a long way to go. Shortage of energy, poor infrastructure, overly restrictive labour laws are shackles which India still needs to shed. India ranks 134th on the World Bank’s List of countries to do business with. Economies don’t grow on auto-pilot and whether India continues to be a rising economic power will depend very much on keeping up the pace of economic reform. It will take political courage to stay the course.
Is India more than just an economic rising power? Is it a rising power in a broader sense? That’s a harder question to answer. And one needs to ask first: does India want to be a rising power with all that goes with it in terms of expectations, burdens and responsibilities? After all it can be a pretty thankless role, unpopular at home and rousing hostility and suspicions among neighbours. Who wants the hassle?
There is a subtle difference between ‘rising’ and ‘emerging’. The term of art these days in talking about economies like India and China is ‘emerging market’, which has overtones of a biological process. ‘Rising’ on the other hand implies a more proactive process, a clear expression of will and determination to make India’s influence felt.
Historically India has been more of an emerging power, exercising a degree of caution and detachment in world affairs. Certainly India wielded international influence as a leading member of the Non-Aligned Movement. But it was mostly unproductive influence in a period of fruitless confrontation between North and South. Being a rising power demands something more than crowd-pleasing. It calls for a clear vision of what India wants to be, supported by investment in the capabilities to sustain it.
As India’s economy grows, its military reach extends and its ambition for a UN Security Council seat becomes more pressing, hanging back from involvement will be more difficult. India will need to safeguard its trade routes, will want a greater say on issues which will determine its growth and will want to avoid the domination of its Asian neighbourhood by any single power.
In becoming more assertive India can call on significant strengths in addition to its booming economy. Democracy is top of the list because of the legitimacy which it confers and the respect which it earns in the eyes of the rest of the world. Three million elected representatives, one million NGOs, a free press: it’s a remarkable record. It’s in this respect that the contrast with China is sharpest. Yet India has been a democracy since 1947 but for much of that time has been a stationary rather than a rising power, marking time more than reaching for leadership. So democracy on its own is clearly not enough to be treated as a rising power.
India’s nuclear weapons indisputably convey a certain status. But in terms of effective, usable influence on the big international policy issues they are a bit of an illusion because there is not much India can do with them. I would not put too much weight on what they buy for India.
India has so-called soft power in abundance in its culture, its history, its intellectual creativity, its diaspora. It’s what many of us most admire about India. Yet it’s difficult to ‘operationalise’ soft power into practical influence of the sort which ensures that India’s interests are not overlooked. Occupying the moral high ground is a comforting place to be, and better than the alternative. But again it’s not enough for rising power status which requires a county to roll up its sleeves and get more involved.
Most significant in bringing India front of stage in world affairs will be its changed relationship with the United States, to which Ambassador Bob Blackwill who is with us in this Conference contributed so much. That is an unmistakeable signal that India is regarded as an indispensable power in the new Great Game and a welcome to a bigger international role.
So India has plenty in its favour. And it needs to, because there will be obstacles to India’s rise. The international system has never found it easy to accommodate rising powers. The classic case is Bismarck’s Germany. In the present day China provides an example of the difficulty of finding room for an intruder so to speak. As China strives as a late-comer to lock in long-term supplies of oil and other commodities, it runs up against western attempts to encourage better governance in Africa, and props up unpleasant regimes from Myanmar to Sudan and beyond putting itself at odds with the US and Europe.
If India is to avoid obstacles and suspicions like these and make the most of its strengths, I see two key tasks. First to improve relationships with its near neighbours, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Myanmar. A country can’t choose its neighbours. Yet India cannot confidently reach out to the wider world unless it first stabilises its immediate neighbourhood. I realise that it’s not a one-way street and reciprocity is needed. But India is much the largest and most powerful country in South Asia and needs to be ready to make the first moves – and I recognize the steps already initiated with Pakistan and now Bangladesh. This mirrors what China has successfully done by first putting in order its relations all round its borders with South Korea, Vietnam, ASEAN and Russia.
The second requirement is willingness to become a serious stakeholder in the international system and share in handling difficult problems. India’s foreign policy has been steadily more outward-looking in recent years and more based on national interest rather than just keeping the moral high ground - and often irritating the hell out of the rest of us in the process. India needs to be more muscular in helping to sort out world problems, whether it is breaking the impasse in the Doha Round, negotiating a successor to the Kyoto Treaty, participating in the reconstruction of the Iraq and Afghanistan, joining measures to inhibit the spread of missile technology and other sophisticated weapons and tackling terrorism in all its manifestations. Such leadership comes at a price. It means risking criticism at home as well as abroad. But it’s a price which has to be paid if India is to fulfill its potential as a world power.
Those of us – like me - who admire and respect India hope that is the course which it will follow rather than just continue on the old moral high ground path and risk irrelevance. It is the route most likely to achieve India’s understandable aim of securing a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. The world is basically well disposed towards India, certainly compared with its suspicions of China’s rise and intentions, and India should make the most of that.
This does raise the question whether there is room for two rising powers in Asia simultaneously – and indeed three given that Japan has already achieved that status. The former Editor of the Economist, Bill Emmott has just published his book Rivals: How the Power Struggles Between China, India and Japan will Shape the Next Decade in which he talks of the ‘disruptive transformation’ taking place in Asia. He reasons that competition between them is inevitable as their economic ambitions make them rivals and as growing military capabilities increase the risk of their running up against each other in areas where all three believe they have vital interests. He concludes that war is not inconceivable though certainly not inevitable.
There are indeed strains between the three. China’s opposition to India securing a permanent seat on the UN Security Council is an irritant to say the least, as are continued border infringements and disputes in the high Himalayas. China for its part clearly sees India’s developing relationship with the United States as a strategic move directed against it. Even so, I would argue that the fact that all three – India, Japan and China – are growing in power simultaneously actually makes the transformation less disruptive, because they naturally balance out the threat of any one of them becoming dominant in Asia – especially when the balancing power of the enduring US presence in the region is also taken into account.
I conclude that India is on the cusp of an important choice. There is nothing inevitable about India’s economic strength translating into rising or great power status. It will require a major cultural change of attitude in India itself towards the country’s place in the world and a conscious decision to move front of stage. I sense India does now recognize that it will be better able to secure its interests and its safety by becoming more engaged: and that the sense of self-worth, of pride of the Indian people will require it. Above all I believe India has a genuine, much greater and very desirable contribution to make to sharing the burdens of global governance. So I hope that will be India’s choice.
Questions and Answers
(Provisional transcript)
John Chipman
Thank you very much. I think you threw out a huge amount of challenges there for India to grapple with. I wonder who would like to grapple with that first.
Satish Chandra, Former Deputy National Security Advisor
To me it is irrelevant whether you are an emerging power or a rising power, and the differences that have been indicated. Actually, power should be measured, as stated in Joseph Nye’s article, in terms of the ability to produce outcomes that one wants. That is not necessarily dependent on core national strengths. In fact, India exercised in real terms, and was able to achieve its objectives, more effectively in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s when our national strength was much lower.
On the free market, I think if socialism is not the answer, neither is the free market. The free market has produced problems, as illustrated most recently in the subprime crisis and the 1998 financial crisis in ASEAN. I would like a reaction on that.
The comment on the Foreign Secretary’s excellent talk is that I share the perception that many of the Indian speakers expressed that we need a much more activist approach on a variety of issues like terrorism, on food security where we needed to do much more to increase agricultural production. Really, a more activist approach is the general perception many of us in India think we need to follow in foreign policy and internal developments.
Lord Powell
I just fundamentally disagree with you. I think hard power is an essential part of any great nation, and India is a great nation. I do not believe it really achieved its objectives in the 1950s and 1960s, I see that as a very sterile period of confrontation between North and South which led to nothing very useful. But I see the role that India is increasingly playing now as a much more productive one. Hard power does rouse opposition, but that is the nature of life. In the end, India has no real choice. I spoke of a choice, but I believe it is almost automatic as India’s economic strengths in the region grows, and its need to protect and advance as its national interests grow.
On the free market, of course the free market does produce some problems, but a heck of a lot fewer than almost every other system that has been tried. I have been very encouraged to read in this morning’s paper that your Prime Minister has reasserted his deep faith in the free market. I notice that when Prime Minister Blair came into power in United Kingdom, despite criticisms that Labour had always made of Mrs Thatcher, he did not actually change any of her policies.
The world is changing. Something very interesting happened only this last week in the Italian elections. For the first time since the Second World War, not a single Communist was elected to the Italian Parliament. I think that is an enormously important step.
Jeong-kyu Lee, Political Counsellor, Embassy of Korea to India
I just want to ask your views on the extent to which China, India and Japan have cooperative relations, and if that will be contingent on continued US strategic robustness. I am wondering, to what extent do you think the United States will be able to provide strategic robustness by checking and balancing the three powers; its ability to provide a technological edge and its market capability to engage these countries, and its diplomatic capability to deal with increasing complexity with relationships.
Lord Powell
I am all in favour of cooperative relationships between China, India and Japan. At the moment they are relatively cooperative. But Bill Emmott in this new book does make some good arguments as to areas where their interests could run up against each other and cause rising tension. In those circumstances, the US presence is the essential balancing factor. Is the United States going to be prepared to continue to play that role? It is a question we all ask ourselves at every conference we all attend. So far the answer has been yes, and I hope it will continue to be yes. I tend to discount comments made during US presidential election campaigns because they are very rarely followed up. I have a great faith in the willingness and ability in the United States to continue to be a major factor, especially in Asia. It has always seemed to me that the United States has the great benefit of being able to face both ways, across the Atlantic towards Europe and across the Pacific towards Asia. I have no doubt at all that the balance between those areas of its foreign policy is shifting all the time, and will continue to shift towards Asia as the rise of those economies continues and as their strategic interest of avoiding conflicts in the region gets larger. Basically I am an optimist based on a deep belief that the United States is the sort of country which is willing to take on burdens, and will continue to be so.
Mr Kumar
You spelled out two requirements for a rising power to be accepted by the international system. Firstly that the country should be able to improve relations with its neighbours, on which the Foreign Secretary gave us some detail. The second requirement was that the country should be a stakeholder in the international system. How do you determine whether a country deserves to be a stakeholder? By the record of behaviour of such a country on a whole range of parameters. And if you look at the behaviour of India, whether in the field of non-proliferation or international peacekeeping or trade, India has proved its capabilities and its faith in keeping international norms. The point is, even so, the rest of the world is refusing to allow India to be accepted as a stakeholder. If it is well-established and recognised that India is a very large country, has lived up to expectations and responsibilities and is a firm believer in a rules-based international system, then I suppose it is expected of the rest of the world to allow an easy passage for India into the international system as a stakeholder. I would request your comments on that.
Lord Powell
Of course India is a stakeholder. My point is that it has to become a much more active and engaged stakeholder, not just pick and choose the subjects to which it might want to make a contribution, but to accept that a country of India’s size and the breadth of its international interests has to be prepared to roll up its sleeves and get its hands dirty. I said that India has always occupied the moral high ground, which is a very comfortable place to be. I have to say it often used to irritate the hell out of the rest of us. But it was not enough. Enough means a much more active engagement, a willingness to work hard for solutions, not just stand off to one side. I see no fundamental obstacle to India becoming a more active stakeholder, but it does require an active determination and will-power to do it. I think it will be a gradual process, we have seen it started. I hope it accelerates and India will carry the full weight of international affairs that it is capable of. When you talk about others being an obstacle, of course you were being very discrete and not naming anyone. But yes, there are several countries that are not keen to see India become a permanent member of the UN Security Council. It is a very difficult obstacle to overcome while those countries take that view. I have little doubt it will happen eventually, but I would be very surprised if it happened quickly.
Mr Singh
Thank you for saying that India has to make a cultural response to power. India’s culture is of tolerance, and you want India’s growing power to be full of aggression. I do not think they will go together. What India has done in the past, and if you look at India’s three great leaders, India’s response has been of unique character. I do see that response continuing, whether India becomes a permanent member of the Security Council or not.
The second challenge is more domestic. Instead of looking at the global stage, India has to concentrate inside. We have major domestic challenges and in our neighbourhood. That will keep India more inward looking in the next decade or two; then it becomes a global power like the United States or China or the Soviet Union of yesteryears.
Lord Powell
I certainly did not recommend that India should become aggressive. I think I did use the word assertive, which is a long way short of aggressive. I would say in the simplest terms that the sort of foreign policy which India classically pursued was inevitable for a country in the position which India found itself domestically in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. But now that India has overcome many of it economic problems, I do not believe it is capable of maintaining that low profile role in the world. Let me give you another example, modern Germany. In the post-World War II period, Germany deliberately and understandably kept a very low profile. As Germany’s economic strength has grown, as reunification has happened, Germany has become perforce a much more weighty power in the world. Germany has been reluctant to send its forces outside Europe. It has done so in Afghanistan, though it has reservations about how they are used. Nonetheless, what you see there is a steady process of Germany playing a larger, positive role in the world. I think India will simply
follow a similar path. Not similar in every detail, but a similar trend and direction, and I wholly welcome that.
Dr John Chipman
Thank you very much for an extremely lucid and challenging talk in which you used two pairs of words where each word often sat unhappily beside its pair for some members of this audience: strategy and culture, in the first pair, and muscles and foreign policy in the second pair. It gives us two pairs of words with which we will grapple over the next day and a half. Thank you for giving much more meaning to those couplets and for inspiring a debate precisely on this subject.
