India's all bark but no bite and set to remain among poorest nation

By Brahma Chellaney

NEW DELHI (JP): With international relations centered on power and force, all the important players on the world stage are engaged in national consolidation. Political, economic and security interests are being assertively promoted through domestic effort as well as through multilateralism, regionalism, bilateralism and unilateralism. The latter four approaches -- capable of being simultaneously pursued as shown by some powerful countries -- have emerged as important instruments of statecraft.

Security and economic interests are so closely intertwined in today's world that no major economy, with the lone exception of India, lacks the unambiguous protection of a nuclear arsenal or a nuclear umbrella. Trade and economic power are now fundamental strategic issues whose determined pursuit demands security and helps reinforce security.

India is the odd country out. Despite its nearly one billion citizens, it has the mindset of a nation of a million people. Security and prosperity should have been the nation's primary goals but its governing elites have commandeered them as their personal goals.

Despite a wealth of scientific and entrepreneurial talent and a broad industrial base, India remains one of the poorest nations even while being the world's sixth largest economy. It has one of the world's biggest and most professional militaries, yet it remains insecure, having shut out the armed forces from its defense policy-making. It has two closely-aligned nuclear neighbors and has faced American nuclear coercion in 1971 but still fights shy to deploy its nuclear capabilities to deter external blackmail and aggression.

India is actually at odds with itself. Through its inveterate vacillation, lack of resolution and spring-door politics, India has increasingly marginalized itself.

It has not built the military power to command respect, the economic clout to gain leverage or a distinct political philosophy to lead others.

After almost seven years of economic reforms, India can boast of a GDP growth rate no better than that in the 1980s. Economic power cannot be built merely by following the structural-reforms handbook of the International Monetary Fund.

If India is to emulate the feat of those countries that have doubled their national income in a decade, it needs farsighted vision, innovative strategies, investments in key industries and an aggressive exports drive. By slashing public investments, especially in infrastructure, and allowing government spending to balloon, successive governments since 1991 compromised the development of Indian economic power.

Building security also demands innovation. With more than one million military personnel, India spends as much on defense as Australia, which has 50,000 troops and no regional adversary. This does not mean that India should dramatically hike its defense spending. Higher level of military expenditure need not translate into higher level of security.

With its resource constraints, India should be looking at a leaner, meaner military backed by an operational nuclear deterrent and greater R&D investments in defense. India's present vulnerabilities are self-evident from its heavy reliance on imports of increasingly costly conventional weapons that rapidly succumb to obsolescence.

India has slowly reduced itself to being a country that can bark but not bite. The bark, which takes the form of high- pitched moralizing, helps sustain illusions of national grandeur among its self-serving elites.

Even as it seeks a permanent United Nations Security Council seat, India presents itself as unwilling to bear pain to achieve national goals or to inflict pain on those that flagrantly undermine its security. This image has exacerbated its security problems, rearing great-power coercive pressures and encouraging China to neutralize Indian advances by transferring equivalent technologies to Pakistan.

Its "bark-but-not-bite" status provides impunity to Pakistan to wage low-intensity warfare, Saudi Arabia to fund violent fundamentalists such as those behind the recent Coimbatore city bombings, and Dubai to shelter the masterminds of the 1993 Bombay bombings. India needs to remember that a major power is one that can withstand pain and deliver pain.

In no country, with the possible exception of Russia, are foreign interests more active than in India. India's open political system has been a great boon for such interests to subvert its will.

When India buys things from overseas, there is usually no problem. Controversy starts when it seeks to build things on its own, whether it was steel plants in the 1950s or missiles more recently.

India has reached a point where it seriously risks being its own worst enemy. It has lived far too long on self-created delusions of power. A new Indian supercomputer with tera-scale computing power is unveiled and the nation brags it can now simulate nuclear-weapons tests. There is no acknowledgement that it lacks the archival nuclear data from field tests (the nuclear computer codes) to engage in such virtual-reality testing.

The country is constantly dreaming of shortcuts to overcome its own timidity. Officially it does not admit to deploying a single missile even though the missile program is its most successful defense enterprise. Its nuclear indecision is legendary: There has never been another instance in history when a country has recoiled from weaponising a defense capability its scientists have demonstrated.

All bark and no bite is making India a bad candidate for a UN Security Council seat. Permanent membership cannot be secured by canvassing for it or cutting a deal with the world's sole superpower. The latter can show India only an apparition of permanent membership.

Unless India shows itself to be a determined power, it will keep chasing a ghost. The more determination it shows, the greater its bargaining power and international standing. The thing India needs most today is a political backbone.

The writer is professor of strategic affairs at the privately-funded Center for Policy Research (CPR) think tank in New Delhi.