Sanjaya Baru writes: Carney’s manifesto for our times
In a different era, an Indian Prime Minister would have delivered this speech. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s address to the annual meeting of the Davos World Economic Forum is a manifesto for global solidarity against Big Power hegemonism. Carney very modestly calls it a guidance for “middle powers”. It is more than that. It is a call to arms against the reassertion of imperial interests.
Canada too was once a colony but very easily became part of the so-called “West”, enjoying the benefits of membership of the Group of Seven (G7), the boardroom of global capitalism. There was a time when “Third World” leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru, Sukarno and Gamel Abdel Nasser came together, after the end of the Second World War, to challenge a global order being erected by the victors of that war. Anti-colonialism and hegemonism defined their collective movement and gave space to a large number of smaller powers, not just middle powers, in global governance.
Carney spoke well when he said, “We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false, that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically, and we knew that international law applied with varied rigor, depending on the identity of the accused or the victim. This fiction was useful, and American hegemony in particular helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security, and support for frameworks for resolving disputes.”
This fiction was then followed by the ideology of the so-called “Washington Consensus” that all nations, including Communist China, embraced enthusiastically because that too was defined in the language of rules and not of power. Unlike the Soviet Union, China made good use of that system and rose rapidly to be able to challenge it.
The ideology that shaped Donald Trump’s “America First” and “Make America Great Again” was a response to this change. Lest other nations, in Europe and Asia, imagine that they can unite to create a “multipolar” power balance, that does not yield to the assertion of Big Power hegemony, Trump has opted to deploy hard power and arm twisting as a warning to nations that, he believes, are mere pretenders to power.
In a different era, Trumpism and the re-assertion of American hegemonism would have been challenged by leaders of post-colonial nations, most certainly India. It is just as well that rather than a victim of Big Power hegemonism and western imperialism, it was left to a member of the western alliance to challenge Trumpism. Canada, after all, is not just a G7 nation but a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and has, on occasion, partnered with the West in opposing, for example, India’s nuclear ambitions.
Even today, countries like Germany, France, Italy and Japan, nations once occupied by the US, are trying to find ways to appease Trump. They have not had the courage, as Carney put it, to pull down the signboard in Vaclav Havel’s green grocer’s shop. In quoting from Havel’s The Power of the Powerless, Carney draws attention to what is possible today in dealing with the powerful.
Many today misread and misinterpret a wrong version of post-Cold War strategic thinking in India. India’s decision in the 1990s to befriend the United States was not aimed at becoming an American ally. In a moment of excessive enthusiasm, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee referred to the US as a “natural ally”. The term was dropped quickly and never repeated by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Both Vajpayee and Singh were seeking ways and means to fortify India’s nuclear power and capability to be able to assert strategic autonomy. Some in India promoted the misplaced ambition of India becoming a part of the western alliance, joining hands with the West against the rising power of China. It is now clear to Indian leadership that such a policy does not serve Indian national interests.
Thanks to Donald Trump, sense has dawned on New Delhi. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has refused to kowtow to President Trump. But, while India is not kneeling, it often bends to please. New Delhi has not regained its confidence of the post-colonial era to be able to articulate the views that Prime Minister Carney did this week. We are satisfied with admonishing Poland for befriending Pakistan.
The tragedy is that the Bharatiya Janata Party, under Modi’s leadership, has defined Indian nationalism in the contemporary era within a narrow framework of Hindutva, challenging Hinduphobia in the western world, without challenging the neo-imperialism of the West. We seek friendship with Trump, and are delighted when he celebrates Deepavali in the White House but find it difficult to call him out for his bullying.
Indian policymakers understand very well Carney’s message that, “A country that cannot feed itself, fuel itself, or defend itself has few options. When the rules no longer protect you, you must protect yourself.” That is the essence of “strategic autonomy”. Thanks to the Green Revolution of the 1960s India can feed itself. However, it continues to depend on the world to fuel and defend itself. The Modi government’s policy of “Atmanirbharata” in these areas – promoting non-renewables and indigenisation of arms manufacture, has to deliver more.
Indian leadership must recognise that US leadership has been trying hard to reduce India’s market access and capabilities in these fields. By sanctioning India against import of oil from Iran, Russia and Venezuela (till now), the US has systematically curbed India’s options. By pushing arms sales and making this a test of friendship, it does the same.
Prime Minister Carney has called for “principled pragmatism”. A call that must find an echo in New Delhi where often pragmatism over shadows principles. But, as Carney has warned, an assertion of national interest and strategic autonomy requires a nation to pay a price. There was once an India that was willing to pay that price. One often wonders whether the nationalism of today’s Indian elite and the “aspirational middle class” extends to a willingness to pay that price.
Baru is a writer and former editor, The Financial Express. His books include India’s Power Elite: Class, Caste and a Cultural Revolution
