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News18
19-05-2025
- Business
- News18
How Jaishankar's Book Foresaw Trump's Megalomacy, China And Pakistan's Psy War
Last Updated: The good news is that the chaos would not have caught the MEA and its boss by surprise. The better news is that much of what we see around us are signs of India's steady rise Prime Minister Narendra Modi's man steering India's relationship with the world, external affairs minister S Jaishankar, predicted the choppy seas the nation and his government are currently navigating in a book he wrote in 2020 and updated in 2022. His 'The India Way' is practically a premonition of the turbulence India faces after US President Donald Trump's whimsical retaliatory tariffs and India's military showdown with Pakistan after the Pahalgam terror attack. The good news is that the chaos would not have caught the Ministry of External Affairs and its boss by surprise. The better news is that much of what we see around us are signs of India's steady rise in the world order. The bad news is that in an increasingly multipolar world with two major powers, the US and China, fighting to retain their pre-eminence, India will face growing resistance as it grows. 'As a rising power, India will continuously rub against an international order, parts of which may not always be amenable to its rise. Indeed, Newton's third law of politics dictates that the process of emergence will get tougher with time," Jaishankar writes in his updated preface to the book. 'The challenge we face is not just from competing powers, but also a phenomenon of freezing advantageous moments by those dominant in an era. Even seventy-five years later, we are still operating in a 1945 framework from which India was excluded. It is manifested in multiple ways across broad domains. India is particularly disadvantaged in this regard vis-a-vis China." In the next chapter, he evokes the imagery from Satyajit Ray's iconic movie Shatranj Ke Khiladi of two nawabs engrossed in their chess game, oblivious to British takeover of their kingdoms. He compares it to India's slow start and frittering away advantage to China after 1947 which has come back to haunt us. 'An unintended consequence was to give China more strategic space in Asia. Another is the delayed economic reforms that were undertaken a decade and a half after this elf China. And far more ambivalently. The fifteen-year gap continues to put India at a great disadvantage," he writes. Jaishankar's book also pre-empts Trump's mercurial diplomacy. 'It would be a mistake to approach the Trump Administration using the logic of previous experience with predecessors," it states. He then places America's policy in context: 'The US is back to the strategic drawing board as it reinvents itself. Its interim approach is of greater individualism, more insularity and sharp retrenchment…So, we hear a potent narrative of unfair trade, excessive immigration and ungrateful allies. And market access, technology strengths, military dominance and the power of the dollar now seem to be the ingredients of an emerging solution." The US and the world's both denouement and predicament seem to arise from failed globalisation and resurgent nationalism. '…globalisation that elevated 'just in time' to a religion. Politically, it spawned a borderless with an entitlement to intervene. Socially, it encouraged a global elite who could comfortably sit in judgment over the world. Diplomatically, it enabled gaming the system and weaponising the normal. Technologically, we entered an existence of great promise and huge vulnerabilities. Never mind that each had a cost, until of course the aggregate risk made it hard to duck the difficult questions," Jaishankar argues. He prescribes a balance to deal with the new world: 'In a more nationalistic world, diplomacy will use competition to extract as much gains from as many ties as possible. But there is, nevertheless, a strong case for India also supporting a greater sense of order. Our own growth model and political outlook intrinsically favour rules-based behaviour. India must make a virtue of reconciling global good with national interest." Jaishankar's book also makes a case against the Nehruvian non-alignment. 'Strategic autonomy can no longer be visualised as keeping a safe distance from dominant players…It is instead a derivative of capabilities, allowing the fending off of pressures and the exercise of choices. Nor should it be seen as autarky, a national state that is unsustainable in reality," he writes. 'On the contrary, more vigorous participation in the world economy due to higher performance gives a country many more cards in the games that nations play. For India, that is summed up by 'Atmanirbhar Bharat', 'Make in India' and 'Make for the World'." Interestingly, writing at least five years ago, the external affairs minister spelt out how Bharat's enemies would exploit its vulnerabilities. 'Given the transformational impact of technology in our lives, it is also natural that it should have a deep impact on national security. In a globalised world, the flow of ideas and influences makes it difficult to limit security concerns to national borders. That is not to say that the orthodox challenges have gone away. A diverse and pluralistic society like India should never forget that its fault lines could be exploited by competitors," he writes. We are witnessing in real time the impact of a barrage of fake news and propaganda from across the border during the ongoing India-Pakistan skirmish. India may have hit targets at will deep inside Pakistan, but technology has made it possible for Pakistan to hit any place in India with misinformation, just to confuse and confound. Finally, the chapter 'Krishna's Choice' rings prophetic about how India has made dramatic departures from its wobbly policy against Pakistani aggression, called out its neighbour's nuclear blackmail, and raised the cost of its policy of terror in the past 11 years leading up to the current conflict. top videos View all 'The best known of the dilemmas in the Mahabharata relates to a determination to implement key policies without being discouraged by the collateral consequences of the action. The example, of course, is that of the most accomplished Pandava warrior, Arjuna, as he enters the battlefield. Undergoing a crisis of confidence, he is unable to summon up the determination to take on kinfolk ranged against his interests. While he is eventually persuaded by Lord Krishna to do his duty, there are underlying aspects of Arjuna's behaviour that apply to state players in international relations. This is not to suggest disregard of cost-benefit analysis. But sometimes, even when there is a pathway, it may not be taken due to lack of resolve or a fear of costs." Jaishankar uses the Mahabharata metaphor to suggest India is no longer a 'soft state'. It has overcome the lack of imagination and fear of risks. Like Arjuna, it is fully persuaded by Krishna about its dharma and unshakeable in its resolve against terrorism. First Published: May 19, 2025, 08:37 IST News opinion How Jaishankar's Book Foresaw Trump's Megalomacy, China And Pakistan's Psy War
Asia Times
10-03-2025
- Politics
- Asia Times
Nehru's ghost haunts Modi's China failure
The 1962 Sino-Indian War remains a deep-seated national trauma for India, leaving a lasting imprint on the nation's post-independence national psyche. The battle, often referred to as a 'national humiliation,' saw China's People's Liberation Army overpower India's unprepared forces in the barren Himalayan region. The defeat shattered Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru's slogan of 'Hindi Chini Bhai Bhai', a supposed fraternal bond between India and China. It also exposed the fragility of the newly independent nation's military and diplomatic capabilities. More than seven decades later, the lost war's reverberations continue to influence India's politics, society and global ambitions. No publicly available document neatly encapsulates Prime Minister Narendra Modi's foreign policy. However, his external affairs minister, S Jaishankar, offers insights through his scattered speeches and two books, 'The India Way' and 'Why India Matters.' Jaishankar casts the 1962 debacle as one of three seismic blows to India's development trajectory, alongside the suffocation of British colonial rule and the bloody rupture of India's partition in 1947. He argues that the defeat inflicted a lasting wound on India's self-confidence and strategic imagination—a psychological hobble from which it has yet to recover fully. Modi and his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) wield this narrative as a cudgel against incumbent opposition Indian National Congress Party and its longest-serving prime minister, Nehru, blaming his historical mistake for not just 1962 but a cascade of woes: the Kashmir quagmire, the longstanding hostility toward Pakistan and unresolved border tensions with China. Nehru's 1961 'Forward Policy', which saw Indian troops creep into contested frontier zones and his failure to gird for China's riposte, is held up as damning evidence of naiveté. This critique doubles as political theater, a bid to dismantle Nehru's towering legacy while framing Modi as the strongman India lacked then and needs now. Modi insists his muscular leadership has hoisted India toward global prominence, even as the ghosts of Nehru's failures still haunt its borders. However, the 1962 war's significance stretches beyond India's borders and is refracted differently through Chinese and Western prisms. For Chinese leader Mao Zedong, Nehru was once a figure of respect—a fellow traveler in the fight against Western imperialism. When India wrested Goa from Portugal in 1961, China quickly applauded. The two leaders shared a visceral disdain for colonial plunder yet diverged sharply on remedies. Where Mao embraced revolutionary upheaval, Nehru sought a gentler path—until, in Beijing's telling, he veered toward provocation. China has accused Nehru of stoking the border dispute at the Soviet Union's behest, as a pawn in Moscow's Cold War geostrategic chess game to check Chinese power. As Sino-Soviet tensions simmered, Nehru's alignment with the Kremlin, however loose, curdled his rapport with Mao. At Nehru's side stood V K Krishna Menon, his defence minister and foreign-policy aide. Menon, a prickly ideologue, pushed an assertive line against the West first and then China, urging the Forward Policy despite India's thin military resources. In April 1960, Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai arrived in New Delhi intending to settle the border row. What unfolded instead was a study of dysfunction. Nehru, urbane and idealistic, appeared adrift, lamenting that his cabinet—Menon chief among them—slipped his grasp. Exasperated, Zhou bypassed protocol to call on Menon, Finance Minister Morarji Raj Desai and Home Minister Govinda Ballav Pant at an unspecified location, either Rastrapant Bhavan (President's residence) or Teen Murti Bhavan (Nehru's residence), hoping to broker peace. Menon's obduracy dashed those hopes; Zhou left empty-handed, his patience spent. A subsequent Indian proposal, conciliatory but muddled, only deepened the rift. After his return to Beijing, Zhou reported to Mao that India was no longer worth engaging. Trust collapsed and China began to plan a sharper response. By October 1962, Mao's strategy bore fruit: a swift, punishing campaign that left India reeling. Menon's brinkmanship and Nehru's indecision exacted a steep toll—thousands of dead, territory lost and a nation humbled. The war's fallout still dogs Nehru's reputation, raising piercing questions about his command. Had he curbed Menon's zeal or read China's resolve, might India have sidestepped disaster? The Forward Policy, which saw Indian troops creep into contested frontier zones, played a significant role in escalating the conflict. This aggressive stance and Nehru's failure to read China's intentions led to a war for which India was ill-prepared. The West saw Nehru's 'mistake' through a different lens. To Uncle Sam and John Bull, he embodied democratic promise—a Harrow- and Cambridge-educated statesman who preached pluralism, multiculturalism, openness and multiparty democracy. They assumed he would tilt toward their orbit, a bulwark against communism. Yet Menon, with his socialist fervor and Soviet sympathies, tugged Nehru leftward. This alignment with the Soviet Union profoundly impacted India's foreign relations. A British Secret Service secret document portrays Menon as a 'fierce Russian commie'; in Washington, he was a red flag. Under his sway, Nehru's India drifted from the West, spurning Cold War largesse—trade, technology, and even a permanent UN Security Council seat proffered after China's 1949 communist revolution. Nehru's critics lament this as a historic miscalculation. Embracing Western ties might have fueled India's industrialization and modernization, vaulting it past the economic torpor that followed. Instead, swayed by Soviet-style socialism, Nehru doubled down on autarky—a noble but costly creed. That choice reverberated. In 1971, facing American pressure over the Bangladesh row, India inked a strategic pact with the Soviet Union—a lumbering giant led by gerontocratic apparatchiks, its technology and economy stagnating. The US, by contrast, brimmed with technological innovation, growth and prosperity, yet India's rebuff opened the door to a Washington-Beijing thaw. When the Soviet Union crumbled in 1991, India's bet looked costlier still: decades of missed opportunities, while China, pivoting Westward, surged ahead economically, technologically and militarily. Nehru's heirs rue his aversion to the West and flirtation with Moscow—a legacy, they argue, that left India weaker than its rival. Modi took office in 2014 with little foreign-policy experience and fumbled foreign affairs for eight months. He ousted Foreign Secretary Sujatha Singh and elevated Jaishankar, then ambassador to the US, to the role in January 2015. Jaishankar is a cerebral diplomat who has championed a US-India axis and is less enamoured of Western pieties than their strategic heft. Jaishankar wrote 'India and USA: New Direction' in the limited-circulation Indian Foreign Policy: Challenges and Opportunities, published by the Indian Foreign Service Institute, Delhi, in 2007. In his article, he had mused about toppling China's communist regime with American help—a provocative notion. As foreign secretary, he edged India from its 'non-aligned perch,' a position of not aligning with any significant power bloc and Soviet-era military ties toward Washington's embrace. China took note. But 100 days through Donald Trump's first term, India veered harder Westward, agreeing to revive the Quad (with the US, Japan, and Australia) in April 2017. In June 2017, a standoff at Doklam—where Indian and Chinese troops faced off—tested the shift. Jaishankar brokered talks; Modi met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Wuhan in April 2018 to ease tensions. In 2018, India joined the Indo-Pacific Strategy—Obama's 'Pivot to Asia' was reborn under Trump's first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson. An October 2019 Modi-Xi summit held in Tamil Nadu fizzled; Xi's curt remarks a day later signalled a freeze. This hypothesis is supported by Xi's subsequent statement during an official visit to Nepal directly after the Mahabalipuram summit. There, Xi warned that 'anyone attempting to split China in any part of the country will end in crushed bodies and shattered bones,' which could have been interpreted as a veiled response to India's alliance with the US to contain China. Then, in June 2020, a brutal clash in Ladakh's Galwan Valley—20 Indian soldiers killed, Chinese losses undisclosed—plunged ties to a nadir not seen since 1989. India banked on Trump's 'decoupling' from China to reroute a caravan of factories its way. Joe Biden's 2021 ascent to the White House, with his 'bringing manufacturing back to the US' push, scuttled that hope, turning the US' focus inward. Modi named Jaishankar foreign minister in 2019, leaning on his pro-US bent to chase the trade and tech dividends China had reaped for decades. By late 2020, India cemented its US pivot with four foundational pacts, locking in military and strategic cooperation. Yet Biden's election upended the calculus. His administration's domestic priorities left India short of the economic boon it craved. Trump's 2025 return to the White House has brought 'reciprocal tariffs'—a stark reminder, delivered with Modi beside him, that America holds the upper hand. Meanwhile, General Motors, Ford and Harley-Davidson have pulled out of India, dimming its industrial allure. Today, the US mirrors the Soviet Union's 1970s twilight—technologically stalled, highly inflationary and steered by gerontocratic mavericks like Trump. India's American wager has yielded little and instead stoked China's ire. Modi, who pilloried Nehru for snubbing the West and hugging Moscow, has stumbled into a parallel trap: spurning China's hand for a faltering US alliance. The 1962 war's lessons—on leadership, timing and the perils of misjudgment–still haunt India. Nehru's ghost, it seems, is not alone; Modi's shadow grows alongside it, a testament to India's enduring struggle to find its footing among giants. As philosopher George Santayana cautioned, 'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.' Yet, Modi, despite knowing the past, has repeated the very mistake he has blamed Nehru for making. Bhim Bhurtel is on X at @BhimBhurtel
