Ordie
03-31-2010, 02:03 AM
India’s Great Power Plans
March 29, 2010
By N.V. Subramanian
India has long had a strategy for great power status, says N.V. Subramanian. But recent developments mean it can finally happen.
Photo Credit: Swapnil Gaikar
Although India doesn’t have a formalised plan for acquiring great power status, the outlines of a consistent grand strategy have been clear for some time—strategic autonomy through interlocking networks of interests with world powers, and the building of military capabilities based on growing economic prowess.
This intuitive two-****ged approach, enunciated by the nation’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, is likely to be in place at least until 2050, when India is expected by some projections to be vying with the United States for the position of world’s second-largest economy after China.
Nehru introduced the principle of strategic autonomy so that India wouldn’t be sucked into or trapped by the opposing ideologies of an intensifying Cold War. Understanding that India’s stance would be unappreciated unless it built a vehicle for its position, Nehru mooted the Non-Aligned Movement, a bloc scorned by both Cold War powers (although both sides were privately grateful for Nehru’s brokering efforts in the Korean War).
Yet the bloc survives today—toothless it may be, but it still occasionally provides India with a moral compass. Meanwhile, India has kept up its studiedly ‘neutral’ position, contributing unflinchingly to UN peacekeeping efforts, while staying out of non-UN-sanctioned endeavours such as Iraq, and ensuring its contribution to Afghanistan has been purely humanitarian and developmental.
The limited brokering success of the Korean War prompted some Indian commentators to suggest a bridging role for India between rival great powers as a key component of its grand strategy—back then the United States and Soviet Union, and now the US and China. Yet India’s own strategic competition with China makes such a role far-fetched, and India anyway has no great taste for, nor skill at, brokering, a reality that has apparently solidified its strategic autonomy policy
Continued: http://the-diplomat.com/2010/03/29/india’s-great-power-plans/
March 29, 2010
By N.V. Subramanian
India has long had a strategy for great power status, says N.V. Subramanian. But recent developments mean it can finally happen.
Photo Credit: Swapnil Gaikar
Although India doesn’t have a formalised plan for acquiring great power status, the outlines of a consistent grand strategy have been clear for some time—strategic autonomy through interlocking networks of interests with world powers, and the building of military capabilities based on growing economic prowess.
This intuitive two-****ged approach, enunciated by the nation’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, is likely to be in place at least until 2050, when India is expected by some projections to be vying with the United States for the position of world’s second-largest economy after China.
Nehru introduced the principle of strategic autonomy so that India wouldn’t be sucked into or trapped by the opposing ideologies of an intensifying Cold War. Understanding that India’s stance would be unappreciated unless it built a vehicle for its position, Nehru mooted the Non-Aligned Movement, a bloc scorned by both Cold War powers (although both sides were privately grateful for Nehru’s brokering efforts in the Korean War).
Yet the bloc survives today—toothless it may be, but it still occasionally provides India with a moral compass. Meanwhile, India has kept up its studiedly ‘neutral’ position, contributing unflinchingly to UN peacekeeping efforts, while staying out of non-UN-sanctioned endeavours such as Iraq, and ensuring its contribution to Afghanistan has been purely humanitarian and developmental.
The limited brokering success of the Korean War prompted some Indian commentators to suggest a bridging role for India between rival great powers as a key component of its grand strategy—back then the United States and Soviet Union, and now the US and China. Yet India’s own strategic competition with China makes such a role far-fetched, and India anyway has no great taste for, nor skill at, brokering, a reality that has apparently solidified its strategic autonomy policy
Continued: http://the-diplomat.com/2010/03/29/india’s-great-power-plans/