The InterDependent

For those who have joined the debate over which nations should get permanent Security Council seats in any future enlargement, 2011 is an unusually interesting year. The diplomatic performances of several leading contenders for permanent membership are on display among the council’s nonpermanent members. Brazil, Germany, India and South Africa are now rotating council members, as is Nigeria, which cannot be ruled out as another candidate.

At this propitious moment, a new book by David M. Malone takes on the biggest of these contenders: India. Malone is well known around the United Nations as a former Canadian ambassador, president of the International Peace Academy (now the International Peace Institute) and author of books and articles on the council’s record in handling crises.

The new book, “Does the Elephant Dance? Contemporary Indian Foreign Policy,” is likely to become a classic account of the great sweep of Indian relations with the world since independence in 1947. But one chapter in particular, on India’s often contrary attitudes toward international organizations and multilateral agreements, is the best current field guide available for Council watchers with an eye on the country that will be the world’s most populous by 2025, say the latest UN projections.

Malone, now president of the International Development Research Center of Canada, was Canadian high commissioner to India and nonresident ambassador to Bhutan and Nepal from 2006 to 2008. He has written an account of India’s relations with its region and the world that is both scholarly and reflective of his own experience and knowledge of South Asia. He quotes liberally from Indian official memoirs and analysts he knows as he plumbs the sources of some uniquely Indian policies that flummox others, putting it all in the context of Indian politics and the evolution of the many faceted Indian “establishment” through more than half a century.

In the Security Council (and in other international settings) India, which is proud to call itself the world’s largest democracy, votes more often with China and Russia than with the United States and Europe (which could make it a target of the crowd now running the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee who would deny aid to those who disagree too often).

Kibae Park/UN Photo

Trains connecting the Calcutta suburbs. India envisions itself as both an independent global power and an ally of the developing world.

Malone sees an ambivalence as India has tried to strike a balance between its vision of itself as an independent world power and its history of nonalignment and affinity with the developing world. In the process it has often alienated its traditional friends and major Western nations as it pursues its own interests with scant interest in compromise.

India has refused consistently to sign nuclear weapons testing and nonproliferation agreements, though its two nuclear tests in 1974 and 1998 goaded Pakistan to ever-more belligerent competitive behavior. In 1996, at a UN conference on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, India tried to derail consensus – and was later denied an Asian nonpermanent council seat by a huge General Assembly majority in a vote that expressed international dismay.

India has been accused of being a spoiler at international meetings on the environment and global trade. At the same time, however, it has contributed in a large way to UN peacekeeping and to civilian missions of all kinds. Indians have held United Nations headquarters posts with distinction. New Delhi has a first-class diplomatic corps that has served India well around the world.

The Indian government now takes the position that it cannot be denied a permanent council seat. Malone quotes Prime Minister Manmohan Singh telling the U.S. Congress in 2005 that there must be comprehensive UN reform [and] “In this context, you would agree that the voice of the world’s largest democracy surely cannot be left unheard on the Security Council when the United Nations is being reconstructed.”

The Obama administration has encouraged India by saying publicly that it should be considered for a seat, though the backing has come with calls for India to adhere to nuclear treaties to which President Barack Obama assigns a high priority. But the U.S., which has also encouraged other nations to pursue their campaigns, cannot guarantee that it alone can hand India the prize it seeks.

In a mostly sympathetic and dispassionate account of India in its region and the world, Malone usefully details the diversity of political pressures at home that are often the backdrop of international behavior. He explains why India – like the U.S. and other permanent council members – often tends to prefer country-to-country diplomacy and agreements to international negotiations.

“For many Indian practitioners and analysts,” Malone writes, “multilateralism is at best a defense against the unilateralism of others.”

Despite the ups and downs of India’s recent diplomatic record, and its “strict constructionist” views of what issues do and do not belong in the Security Council, Malone concludes that “Like other large and complex countries, India would prefer the world to adapt to it than to engage in the messy business of give and take required by meaningful engagement with others. But those shaping Indian foreign policy today know that Delhi will increasingly need to meet its international partners half-way, often in multilateral settings.”

This year and next, other nations can watch India in action and see how it goes.

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