Republic Day Woes
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Today is a proud day for Indians as we celebrate our 57th Republic day. We should not, however, be proud of the choice for chief guest at the festivities: Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah. Saudi Arabia has one of the most dismal human rights record of any country in the world. Their shabby treatment of women, lack of basic freedom of expression, discrimination against religious minorities, routine torture of (often political) prisoners, are reason enough to avoid encouraging the beast. Unfortunately they have one thing that India needs a lot of: Oil.
As India and China edge towards the top of the oil consumption heap, the Saudis have suddenly realized that they need to get cozy with these previously ignored countries. As an Indian official states in an article in the International Herald Tribune: “The important thing is that monogamy is not enough for the Saudis anymore. They’ve decided to take a couple of other wives.” The first wife of course being the US. India and China won’t meddle in Saudi affairs unlike the US. India doesn’t have a great human rights record either but at least we have free elections and is the world’s largest democracy.
Friends who have lived in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Middle East, have often told me how badly Indians are treated there. Especially the indentured laborers who come in droves to make more money. They often live in squalid conditions and have to work inhumane hours. This is not very different from the treatment of slaves in Western nations. If they so much as raise their voice against a citizen of these countries, it’s held against them and often results in severe punishment. Or worse.
The recent case of Abdul Latheef Noushad needs to be mentioned here. While working at a gas station in Dammam, he had an altercation with a Saudi national. The fight resulted in a partial loss of sight for the Saudi man. Noushad claims he was merely defending himself. A Saudi court ruled that one of Noushad’s eye ought to be gouged out as punishment. What epoch are we in? Noushad, who is from Kerala as I am, was pardoned by the Saudi king recently after the intervention of the Indian government. But of course “certain procedures have to be followed” before this can happen. The sycophantic journos at Rediff refer to this as the king’s “gift” to Noushad and his family.
Who are we going to invite during next year’s parade? Kim Jong-Il?
Having grown up in Kuwait I can vouch for this. If I attempt to say more, it will be hard to stop
china too is a country denying human rughts to its own citizens. wish political situations, hypocrisy and stringent ideals at these nations get changed as soon as possible!
meanwhile, which plugin are you using for the preview.. let me find myself. cheerz,,
I was going to blog about this but you beat me to it. I watched the Republic Day parade in New Delhi on TV. Once before, when I was working in Delhi, I did watch it from a front row seat; it’s a truly impressive display of military discipline and might. The Indian armed forces have been one of the institutions to stay relatively free (odd scandal apart) from pervasive corruption. Even at the parade, the difference between the military and civilian worlds was stark. As the army marched, a motley bunch of crooks, liars and cheats who comprise India’s political class watched from behind bullet-proof barriers. As if to underscore the difference, even the carpet in front of the president’s chair was placed askew!
Some of you may be surprised to know that India maintains the world’s largest all-volunteer army. India has never had a military draft.
Coincidentally, a large percentage is poor as hell, and another coincidence, India has the second largest population.
Oh come on. Give us some juicy stuff. Don’t be shy. Vent away! Speaking of Kuwait, it had its own political drama last week with the succession issues after the Emir passed away.
Sure but at least their women have rights as opposed to Saudi Arabia which still behaves as if this is the seventeenth century. Besides China is slowly changing for the better. Saudi Arabia doesn’t seem to be.
http://dev.wp-plugins.org/wiki/LiveCommentPreview
It was the 57th Republic Day.
Ah yes. I didn’t count 1950 itself. Or maybe it was 1978.
If you need to make change to a society, the best way is to engage it diplomatically, become a “friend” and then slowly exert your influence to steer it in the right direction. The other alternative is to alienate them, threaten them with sanctions, take unilateral action etc. Oil is in the national interest of India. It’s probably because Saudi realizes that India is important to them and because of diplomatic ties that Naushad had a reprieve. We have several Indians in the middle east and the best way to have a say in their affairs vis-a-vis the govt is to have a relationship with the govt.
I think India suffered by taking too much of a principled stand during the cold war, supporting Russia against the US and what not. Politics is all about diplomacy - and you have to make compromises (democracy supporting communism). It looks like India has already started going this way when they sided with the US against Iran about the nuclear issue. Someone want to start a blog on that issue?
We need to be “friends” with China, Saudi, the US, Brazil, Russia, the EC - because it is in our national interest. Doesn’t mean that we have to agree with what they do. North Korea. Who needs them? I guess we need to take a page out of the US book and become a little double faced.
Z
I just thought you ran out of fingers and toes at 56.
yes i agree that in china woman have equal rights, which is one of the PLUS points of the arrival of communism. and yeah, china can’t help getting better as being such a big nation and large economy, it is opening its doors and being flexible. only that still there’re a few politicians on top who fear they’ll lose their seats.
yes i installed some plugin then itself. cheers,,
Saudi does have a sad human rights record. And yes, non-citizens (aliens?) are treated as servants (I grew up in Kuwait, which was only slightly better). But there are a couple of factors here that that are pushing India and Saudi to engage each other. A commentary on the world we live in perhaps, but all of this has to do with national interest, strategic planning and energy security, rather than things like human rights records and respect for human dignity, which sadly kick in only in the absence of any strategic interest.
Firstly, Saudi Arabia is the process of rebalancing its global relationships by hitching its wagon to rising economies like India and China. The past 50 years of Saudi foreign policy has been based on an exclusive relationship with the US, going back to Eisenhower’s time, wherein Saudi kept the oil flowing and the US guaranteed its security. With 9/11 and the Iraq war, that relationship has come to an end, requiring a rebalancing of ties. Saudi now sees its customer base moving towards India and China and is appropriately refocusing its diplomatic energies towards these governments.
The first overseas trips made by Abdullah after he became king were to China and India. Hindustan Times reported that the king hugged and kissed a visibly embarrased Manmohan Singh
The Saudis are securing these markets with long-term energy contracts. There is a world-wide scramble going on today with Chinese and Indian oil companies competing for long-term energy supplies with African and Caspian countries (The Indians have an airforce base in Tajikistan!!) Another dynamic in play here is the US effort to move the Indians away from carbon-based fuels, and more towards nuclear energy. They’ve been discouraging India from signing a 20year contract with ‘Eye’-ran for natural gas delivery over a land-pipeline through Pakistan. Ironically, this pipeline may do more for Indo-Pak peace than anything else, by creating common economic interests that are far more effective at keeping the peace.
Another factor driving the Saudi-engagement is the presence of 1.5 million Indians in Saudi, sending back an annual remittance of $4 billion. The economies of Indian states like Kerala are heavily dependent on this remittance. So it makes does make sense for India to engage and influence governments that impact large numbers of its citizens.
In Abdullah’s favor, he is considered to be a rare reformer and may succeed in moving Saudi society in the right direction. Besides, I think we all make such choices everyday by buying ‘made in China’ goods, inspite of the human rights record of that government.
Hmm Sanu … you grew up in Kuwait too? Any chance we knew each other there
Great comment - very informative. Worthy of a separte blog entry all by itself. Aside from strategic interests, I agree with Zahroof that constructive engagement in the end is more effective than mere moralizing.
However, that still does not necessarily mean that King Abdullah should be the chief guest of the Republic Day parade. Isn’t it rather ironic that the monarch of a pretty undemocratic country should be the head celebrant at the birth anniversary of the largest democracy? Given that the event is rife with symbolism, I’d want to be more careful about what kind of message I want to convey.
tafkap, its likely our paths have crossed in the past
Constructive engagement is a good thing. But more often that not, it’s a second order effect that may arise out of the pursuit of a larger goal. Great powers rarely design their policies counting solely on constructive engagement. The main goal of trading with China is to grow one’s own economy and make money. If China becomes a liberal democracy as a result on that engagement, thats icing. If China remains a one-party system for the next 100 years, it’s unlikely anybody’s going to do anything about it, as long as trade flourishes. Witness how North Korea is being dealt with. In the absence of a larger goal, containment is generally preferred to constructive engagement.
But yes, His Highness Abdullah as a chief guest is ironic.
Completing the circle. . . As tafkap pointed out, my point in making this post was about Abdullah being the chief guest at the republic day festivities. I understand the pragmatic reasoning behind the need to get close to Saudi Arabia.
Need to get close to Saudi Arabia. Easy route - make overtures to its Sheik, King, whatever. Make him chief guest at important occassion. Pragmatic solution to a problem. So, anupcs, how are these posts not relevant to your initial post?
However, I do agree with Tafkap that it need not have been as important a funtion as the Republic Day. Couldn’t they have made him inaugurate an office for a women’s right movement or something?
Z
I didn’t say the comments were irrelevant. I was just clarifying my point for the post.
There you go.
Zahroof, here’s an interesting article by Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar of the Economic Times on the enlightened self interests of India’s new foreign policy.
http://snipurl.com/m3ce
In fact many of his articles focus on energy security and foreign politics.
Good article crewcut. I particularly liked this quote:
Yep, interesting read. From the article:
As previously mentioned in this blog, by that time the Soviets were controlling Mrs Gandhi like a puppet. So the above position is even less surprising.
This is an irresponsible statement, in my opinion. If they were to discover suddenly a large repository of oil in Somalia, is this guy saying that we should get cozy with the thugs running (or not running) that country?
That is exactly what he is saying. His argument is that foreign policy should be based on serving our self-interests and not taking a stance on moral high ground. I guess if we ignore something as economically significant such as a huge Somalian oil find, someone else like the US or China will most happily find it easier to rush in to fill the void.
Thanks to crewcut for pointing us to a great essay by Mr Aiyar (What is with the spelling Aiyar - the Mumbaification of Iyers?).
I think blogger anupcs is confusing individual values and ethics with those of a nation when he categorizes Mr Aiyar’s statement as irresponsible. I think adherence to principle, loyalty to values are good personal virtues to have but don’t serve a nation very well.
A nation to survive and prosper must be opportunisitic. To do that it must (and perhaps should) claim the high ground of “the land that gave the world Gandhi” and at the same time pursue everything in its power to survive and prosper. Individuals may have consciences but nations shouldn’t - it only gets in the way of engaging in fruitful foriegn policy. I think that is Mr Aiyar’s point.
Are you saying that nations should not have any conscience at all? That they should ignore countries like Somalia, Rwanda, Sudan, etc., where the leaders are responsible for genocide? A “fruitful foreign policy” serving a nation’s self-interest is all good but there are lines that should not be crossed. I don’t know about India because it’s still a developing country but the rich nations of the world should serve as the conscience of the world. There needs to be checks and balances.
And at this point, I refer to my thesis Nation States as Psychopaths.
For others tuning in now, I want to point out a sort of continuing discussion going on in the “Nation States as Psychopaths” post.
Hammer pretty much captured my point in criticizing Aiyar’s article. It wasn’t in America’s “self-interests” to denounce the genocide in Rwanda in ‘94 and hundreds of thousands died. The same thing goes on in Sudan now. This approach is wrong in my opinion.
..but many have argued that America is not the world’s policeman and some of the worlds problem are not its doing (albeit many are). I am wondering if this is a idealists v/s realist argument. I think it is too simplistic (and evangelical) to say it is right or wrong.
I am the 1st in line to argue for higher personal virtues of compassion, tolerance and conscience but those virtues do not fit nation-states. Perhaps English lacks the words to describe the charecterize what should be the virtues of a nation.
It’s a good article because it says the truth about people being hypocrites, but what it says about how naticns should be is the cause of a lot of the trouble in the world.
Also, if it’s ok for every nation to just act in self-interest, what is the yardstick by which nations are supposed to judge each other or resolve issues? Also, why only give that right to nations / governments? Why can’t any group of people (read: freedom fighters, terrorists, etc., etc.) start acting in its own self-interest? Governments get people to agree with them or be indifferent by keeping them in the dark, or lying to them, so they’re not really democratic decisions governments are making. So why not let anyone do anything? In fact, powerful governments acting in their self-interests, and other nations not being able to do much about it, is one reason groups of people act in their own interests, and are labelled by governments variously..
Kissinger’s thoughts about realpolitik are perhaps the best insight into how these things are sorted out by presidents, prime ministers, etc. There’s a column by Gurucharan Das in the Times of India about making unsentimental choices in foreign policy. An excerpt:
“Kissinger taught the basic lesson of the Arthashastra, which is that there are no good or bad nations; there are only powerful and powerless ones. The leader’s duty is to relentlessly pursue his nation’s self interest. He said that when nations pursued their self-interest, it led to a balance of power, predictability and peace. Because I couldn’t follow Kissinger’s heavy German accent, I used to sit in the front row of his class. To my dismay, he would look at me and hold up Nehru as an example of how not to conduct foreign policy. Kissinger felt it was dangerous to have dreamers in power, because they injected morality into foreign relations.”
In response to kinnum, the yardstick that nations (each pursuing their own interests) use to resolve issues, is to discuss and understand each other’s interests and work together to align their interests. Trade is the best example of this. Two nations engaged in ‘fair trade’ are unlikely to go to war with each other.
Yes, good thing you put ‘fair trade’ within quotation marks..and even then, one example, Iraq used to trade pretty well with the US before it invaded Kuwait, so obviously that rule isn’t set in stone, besides what are countries poor in resources supposed to do, get bullied, I suppose, till they can do something about it.
Also, it also holds out the possibility of countries invading or interfering in other ways with others, when the trade goes sour. There was talk back in the ’70s, and still is, of how to, for example, invade Saudi Arabia, and secure their oil, if it comes to a time when they don’t want to trade with the US.
Kissinger’s exploits require a blog of their own. He’s the one, for example, who said, “You can’t expect the US to idly stand by when a country decides to ELECT a leftist government”, or words to that exact effect. Trade was obviously a factor there too. So much for democracy..
Who snipped my url? A url has a lot of meaning and its own story so I don’t like it being snipped.
Not sure how the example of Iraq trading with the US is applicable here. And besides, we’re talking of realpolitik. Sadaam was a dreamer, dreaming of becoming the next Salaadin. He fought a war with Iran over 10 years, lost close to half a million soldiers and got nothing for it. So he’s hardly an example to cite for pragmatic foreign policy.
Countries poor in resources, will, if they’re smart, align with a powerful country who has something to gain from the special relationship. Why did Poland send troops to Iraq? Was it because they wanted to spread freedom in the MiddleEast or was it because their intelligence agencies also drank the same Kool-Aid as the CIA? Neither….they did it to build a cozy relationship with the US. They’re a small country squeezed between 2 giants Germany and Russia. Having a powerful friend helps. Your example…Kuwait and for that matter, Qatar is another example. These are small countries surrounded by large neighbours. Both have cultivated symbiotic relations with the US to counterbalance their large neighbour. (In Qatar’s case, SaudiArabia, with whom they’ve had testy relations). In South Asia, Nepal is cozying up to China after their spat with India over the Nepalese king’s taking over power after dismissing the government.
Though I wonder what Nepal can offer China in return. An army base or two? Anyone know what happened to Gyanendra’s nutty son who used to terrorize people even before his father became king?
Gyanendra is in the news today.
Ok, this seems to be another debate that’ll end with no agreement. Trade and other agreements brings into play different aspects that trouble the world even further. For example, some countries (Russia and Pakistan, for example) want Sudan to be left alone, even though the government there is committing genocide, because they have trade and / or other monetary interests with Sudan. One of the reasons of the WW1 was the rise of alliances. Just because the US and France were allies in WW2, the US gave its word formally that the colonies of France would be left untouched after the war. The US did squat to persuade Great Britain to give up its colonies, and what about the artificial borders drawn up by these alliances that still trouble the world today?
My point is such agreements between countries which leave them free to exploit, invade, or interfere with others isn’t the way to bring lasting peace. And the same goes for every country acting on its own self interests, there has to be some sort of agreement which is completely democratic (no nation has any extra say or power, either nukes are completely banned or every nation should have the right to have them, decisions are taken by a majority vote, and so on). Naive, you might say, but I don’t see peace without it.
Now, let me go and read about Pakistan beating India yesterday.
For once, I completely agree with kinnum’s views. As has been pointed out, there has to be checks and balances (not necessarily in the form of a superpower acting as a supercop but maybe a revamped UN?) for atrocities being committed world-wide for us to have a semblance of world peace. Will that ever happen? Probably not. But hiding behind the facade of “self-interest” is what is naive. What are we, a bunch of “Howard Roarks?”
Hiding behind the facade of self interest?? My point is that that’s how the world works. Any solution, revamped UN or whatever is doomed to failure if you don’t build it with the assumption that nations are ultimately going to work in their own self-interest.
Look at capitalism. It works basically on the principle that people and corporations act in ways that promote their own interests. A few checks and balances to ensure that people don’t freeload or exploit the system… and the thing chugs along fine. No point in demonizing a system that’s based on people seeking out their own interests. It may be among the stabler systems out there.
In capitalism as practised today, there are checks and balances, but people do freeload and otherwise exploit the system, including the people who’re supposed to safeguard the checks and balances. People seeking their own interests find shrewd ways to overcome the system, just like countries do. Things might chug along fine, for the people who’re lucky. Just like things chug along fine for the countries, and the groups within countries, that are lucky to benefit from the system of self-interest. For the others, for example the 45 million in the US without health insurance, or the Darfurians, or the farmers comitting suicide in India, or the Chinese and Indian rural folk who get displaced by dams, things aren’t chugging. Are things changing for the better? Debatable. BTW, I think hydroelectric power is the best source of renewable power, if it only wasn’t so hard on the environment. In China, people were displaced and given promises of future well-being, and none came. Hard choices have to be made sometimes, but maybe start by telling the truth to your own people? Or is that also too naive? Why complain about corruption then? Isn’t that what we all do best, complain about corruption in India, that we’ve witnessed first-hand? Why complain, it’s human nature, right?
My other question is, if the morality quotient of governments’ actions is so low, and necessarily so, how can governments question the morality of the actions of groups of people who act outside their governments, or across governments? You can’t say that only governments can act, because a lot of revolutions, what are nowadays considered well-intentioned and right, were started by groups without any government backing. John Brown was considered a terrorist by the government back then, but he’s considered a hero by quite a few now.
I agree with Sanu
I know this is how the world works and I wasn’t “demonizing” capitalism. I agree that this is the stablest system we have had so far. This doesn’t mean that nation-states should just ignore genocide because there is no oil that they need in the perpetuating countries.
What I am arguing for is that nation-states should stop being psycopathic and have a conscience. Whether or not that will happen, I don’t know. A lot of people who benefit from capitalism like many on this blog, do good deeds which are not necessarily in their self-interest. The same could be extended to a nation as a whole. At least a goal worth aspiring to. The Tsunami of 2004 is a good example when the world came together in unprecedented ways to provide succor to those in need. “Self-interest” was hardly in the picture there.
the goal is not necessarily to agree. The stretch goal is to understand your point of view and decide if you’re in the mould of Che and Hugo, or if you’re more of the gentler Arundhati variety.
tee hee hee
That is something we live by here on rantlust. We disagree to disagree here.
Oh please don’t! Couldn’t you think of someone else to mention when comparing with Che and Hugo?
I have to disagree to disagree here. Nobody in their right mind (I hope) would argue against what you say here. The only issue is how do we get there from here? Perhaps a good case study is what caused Europe to fight two World Wars and several hundreds of years of wars before that before suddenly becoming so peaceful. I would not bet that it was because the leaders and the people suddenly becoming better human beings than their parents. A longer blog will follow some day …
I am with tafkap on this, but I suspect that this is the classic “reality arguing against idealism”
Che, what are you saying?
http://snipurl.com/mbyp