A discussion on strategic affairs with Stephen P Cohen

Dr Stephen Cohen, who specializes on India and South Asia, says in the following interview that:

**The Indian strategic community is hopelessly unstrategic. As long as Pakistan was the only threat it was easy, policy was on auto-pilot. When you multiple threats (China, Pakistan), when you have opportunities, when you have America as a potential partner, potential rival, when you have a domestic security problem much larger than Pakistan or China, then it requires more careful thinking. I don’t see that emerging.

**India has a second rate fleet that can do a first rate job. The air force is going to disappear, it’s losing airplanes, it can’t seem to buy more or build any, all be losers.

**I do foresee coalition governments in India well into the future. When there is a coalition government that is unsure of its own political power base, it is difficult to have strategic dialogue with any country, let alone the United States.

**Future senior US government officials might simply say: "That’s the Indians, it is simply not worth the effort to do any kind of deal with them".

**I know one Indian diplomat who has said that India is better off not being a permanent member in UN Security Council. If it were a permanent member, then it would have to take a position on every issue. Historically, India is best off by not taking positions, given its fragile domestic politics and the loss of a foreign policy consensus.

**Without good education and modern agriculture, India will just struggle along. I have spent 45 years studying India, but these two areas are enormously disappointing.

**Indians are very comfortable with complexities. The more screwed up it is, the better Indians function. That is the reason why they do so well in America. For Indians, America is a pretty simple country.

Ram Narayanan
US-India Friendship
http://usindiafriendship.net/
http://usindiafriendship.blogspot.com/


http://pragati.nationalinterest.in/2008/06/look-before-you-hop/

PRAGATI: THE INDIAN NATIONAL INTEREST REVIEW

JUNE 2, 2008

Look before you hop

A discussion on strategic affairs with Stephen P Cohen

NITIN PAI & ARUNA URS

In 1979, Stephen P Cohen wrote a book titled India: Emergent Power? In 2001, he wrote a new book, this time without the question mark. Shekhar Gupta, editor-in-chief of the Indian Express once wrote that “many Indians see him as being overly friendly to the Pakistanis. Many Pakistanis similarly say he has flipped to India’s side. Cohen, however, has written landmark books on both armies and loves them.”

Pragati spoke to Dr Cohen, who is currently a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, on several issues centred around India-US relations.

Perspectives on India as a rising power

You wrote your book about India being an emerging power in 2001, seven years ago. Do you have a different view today?

Yes, I’d say that the military side of that emergence is less likely than I thought it was then. I think that the Indian strategic community is hopelessly unstrategic. As long as Pakistan was the only threat it was easy, policy was on auto-pilot. When you have multiple threats (China, Pakistan), when you have opportunities, when you have America as a potential partner, potential rival, when you have a domestic security problem much larger than Pakistan or China, then it requires more careful thinking. I don’t see that emerging.

The Indian political community is too domestically focused and I can see it becoming more so. When coalition governments come to power they can’t care about strategic and military policy.

So India is going to continue to expand much faster economically than I thought it would, but it will be a limited military partner for the United States.

It will be even more crippled by the selfinflicted wound of its dysfunctional educational system. That’s something that nobody imposed on India, that’s India’s choice.

India’s cultural power is going to grow. India has always been a cultural superpower. The bhangra is now in American high schools. And there’s Indian films. That aspect of India’s influence is going to continue to grow. And its very impressive.

How do you see the geopolitical structure of the world shaping up in the next 15 years and the next 30 years?

I’m not sure if I’d be willing to guess at that kind of future. You may have periods when some countries are very influential and some when they are not. The US would be powerful across the board, but in terms of cultural power, other countries could gain influence. Now China not going to become a cultural superpower the way India is, especially in the non-Western world, but China will certainly be an economic superpower. Japan could have a revival. It’s a world in which you are going to have one larger power, several medium powers, India will be among the medium powers. Maybe India’s net influence will be equivalent to that of Japan. Japan is a country of great economic capabilities but limited cultural and military influence.

Is the current situation similar to the 60s where the US wants India to act as a counterweight to China but India is inclined not to be aligned with the US against its neighbour.

I think we have always exaggerated the degree to which India is willing or capable of playing that kind of game. I’ve changed my views on this—I just don’t think the Indians can do this. There aren’t enough Indians who can think strategically. For years India’s foreign policy was on automatic pilot. It was to do the opposite of whatever Pakistan did. Pakistan was the main enemy. For a while China briefly became the main threat but that disappeared very quickly. India has accommodated China in various ways, and is now in awe of China’s economic growth.

The Bush administration saw India in strategic terms but except for four or five of your friends, I don’t think the Indians see themselves in strategic terms: that’s it. The Indian military would like to balance China, but they can’t do it unless the politicians and bureaucrats think in terms of balancing China.

There may well be a good outcome because if you have nuclear weapons and a nuclear deterrence relationship you can’t talk in terms of classical strategic balances. You can talk about economic competition, cultural rivalries, but in terms of using military force being a nuclear power complicates matters, as India and Pakistan found out from Kargil.

Is the US-India-Australia-Japan quadrilateral likely to happen?

I think the coming together for a period of twofour months for humanitarian purposes—that’s where the world is moving. There is a lot more capability in working with other countries in India.

In that regard, India is going to be one of the major players. Anything that involves the ocean and naval power, India is going to be a real power, no two ways about it. India has a second rate fleet that can do a first rate job. It has a first rate army but the army is tied down in conflicts all around the place, and can’t spare anybody. The air force is going to disappear, it’s losing airplanes, it can’t seem to buy more or build any, and above all it has some doctrinal schizophrenia—especially regarding air support for the army.

Naval co-operation, which involves disaster relief is a big area. India is going to get its money’s worth out of its navy.

Naval co-operation

Some Indian commentators have complained that in the naval relationship, the United States wants to limit India to the Bay of Bengal, and in a sense, keep it out of the Arabian Sea and ocean to India’s West.

I don’t see why India could not be the member of [the US-led naval task force in the Arabian Sea/Persian Gulf]. It has legitimate Persian Gulf interests and a capable navy. The US navy will be happy to co-operate with Indian navy, but there might be third-party objections in the Persian Gulf. The Pakistanis are deeply involved there. They have twice commanded the joint task force. I look forward to the day when India and Pakistan could collaborate militarily, probably first at sea. We live in a world where natural and man-made disasters will only increase and it is important that major powers work together.

Richard Haas’s metaphor of ‘Sheriff and Posse’ is a good example of co-operation that might be needed. A sheriff will round up a posse of likely characters and then they go and get the bad guys. In this scenario, the bad guy could be natural disaster or an insurrection or a state out of control. India might or might not join the coalition but it is important to work with Indians now to develop and standardise operating procedures.

Isn’t inter-operability a problem that can create hurdles to such co-operation?

The Indians are among the best in the world in integrating systems from different countries. In 1987, I went on board of an Indian frigate visiting Washington, DC. The frigate had Dutch, French, British, Israeli and Russian systems and it all seemed to work very well. Our navy people regard the Indian navy as being up to NATO standards. A naval ship deals with another ship as a single point of command unlike the air force where a plane has to co-ordinate with multiple aircraft. So inter-operability is not a major issue for the navy. I hope we will sell more ships to India like the USS Trenton/INS Jalashwa.

Without restrictive end-user terms & conditions…[Note: India’s Comptroller and Auditor General has noted “restrictions on the offensive deployment of the ship and permission to the foreign government to conduct an inspection and inventory of all articles transferred under the End-Use monitoring clause”]

That applies to the sale of ships to any country. It is just boilerplate.

But wouldn’t that be a spoiler, if other competing suppliers don’t have the same clauses?

India can buy from the French or anyone else. I don’t think American government will have a problem with it. India has trouble buying equipment as it is. The armed forces cannot figure out on how to make acquisitions, especially airplanes. This is a real problem for India. But in terms of restrictions on use, I don’t see any hindrance at all.

The United States in India’s neighbourhood

How do you see US policies towards India changing over the coming decade? And what might be the key differences in the foreign policy approaches of the main candidates.

I cannot go 10 years down the line. If Democrats win the next election, as it looks like they might, and if the nuclear deal is not completed by then, the deal will be a dead duck. Democrats might want to re-negotiate it. I am not sure if Indian government could re-negotiate even if they wanted to.

I do foresee coalition governments in India well into the future. When there is a coalition government that is unsure of its own political power base, it is difficult to have strategic dialogue with any country, let alone the United States. If the BJP comes back to power, its coalition partners might do what Communists did to the Congress. The Communists got involved in foreign policy as a way of putting leverage on Congress for domestic issues.

I don’t think future American governments will have much inclination to learn about which minister belongs to which regional party and what his leanings are. India is simply too complicated a system to deal with, and there is not much of India related expertise in America. I fear that the future senior government officials might simply say: "That’s the Indians, it is simply not worth the effort to do any kind of deal with them".

No American government official is likely to again invest the kind of energy and dedication that Nicholas Burns put into the nuclear deal; he spent half of his life negotiating the deal and it is almost dead now. Still, I hope the deal goes through.

And what if the Republicans win?

A Republican administration might be more sympathetic to India. They would not have to live with their legacy of being ‘anti-India’. The Bush administration has changed that. Indian officials I meet are very pro-Bush.

However, I don’t think India will be a high priority if Iran becomes the real issue. Unless somebody stops Iran from developing nuclear weapons, we might soon see an Iranian nuclear test. This leads to new problem that might make India less relevant. Pakistanis might help the Saudis balance the Iranians. Or Saudi Arabia might become nervous and there might be a ‘Saudi bomb’ probably made in Pakistan or China.

What will India do? Do they stick with Iranians as their best friend in Middle East or try some type of mediating role? It is quite difficult to predict. They might try to stay out of the whole issue, as the Israelis are involved. India would not want to anger Israel, a major arms supplier, by becoming too close to Iran.

Do you think it is possible for India to play a bridging role between the United States and Iran, much like the role played by Pakistan in bringing China and the United States together in 1971?

I don’t think so. It is largely our problem, a psychological one to be more specific, that goes back to 70s and the hostage crisis. Too many Americans are still wrapped up in that. We have an obsession and we cannot get rid of it. So it is hard for India to play that kind of role. By the way, there are other countries that want to play that role also.

Indian is caught between all kinds of contesting powers. I am not sure if India wants to play any role at all. I know one Indian diplomat who has said that India is better off not being a permanent member in UN Security Council. If it were a permanent member, then it would have to take a position on every issue. Historically, India is best off by not taking positions, given its fragile domestic politics and the loss of a foreign policy consensus.

There is room for creative Indian diplomacy on Iran, but [it has] to take Pakistan along. I think India ought to go with Pakistan to the US and say ‘look we understand your concerns about Iran but pipeline is more important to us’.

Tell us something about your upcoming book

I am writing a book with Sunil Dasgupta. The book is about the prospects for an India-US strategic (military) relationship. We are not that enthusiastic about the prospect. My own policy advice to Americans would be: ‘look before you hop’. It is not a leap but a hop—as people do in a potato sack race. The nuclear weapons make a long term and intense relationship inconceivable vis-à-vis China. We also cannot imagine a balancing of Chinese land power by the Indians. The army is not ready for that. They can barely do what they are doing now. The notion of Indians crossing the Himalayas and defeating the Chinese in Tibet or even in Nepal is simply inconceivable.

Agriculture and Education

While military co-operation might not work out, I am very optimistic about economic cooperation, which is booming in both directions. However the big problem areas are education and agriculture. The Indians appear to be unwilling to accept the transfer of foreign educational systems, except for a small sector. I am also bothered by Indian agriculture. Without good education and modern agriculture, India will just struggle along. I got my job at the University of Illinois because it was one of the dozen or so American universities that fostered the green revolution in India. Illinois contributed to the soya bean revolution, Kansas State university was part of the white (milk) revolution. The growth of Indian agriculture 40 years ago was unprecedented, but now it is growing at 1%!

I have spent 45 years studying India, but these two areas are enormously disappointing. If you have a billion people with a bad education system, there might some bright people coming out of that system but that is not good enough. That is not how liberal democracies work.

Indians are very comfortable with complexities. The more screwed up it is, the better Indians function. That is the reason why they do so well in America. For Indians, America is a pretty simple country. Indians need better education to thrive but the universities, including the best ones, are awfully messed up. When I first arrived in India, the universities at Allahabad, Bombay and Calcutta were great places to study. They still had some world class faculties, who have long since gone. The good Indian ones ended up in America.

The government refuses to lift its stranglehold on education

Yes, but you can learn from American system where both public and private universities compete vigourously. This is one area where the British model was ineffective, and ours, which accommodates a multi-ethnic, federal, complex society would fit better.

Yet, I remain amazed at India: my wife says that 100 metres of India is more interesting than 10 kilometres of most other countries. A few months ago I was on Parliament Street: under three different trees there were three different businesses flourishing. One guy was repairing bicycle tyres, a second was a cobbler and a woman was hawking lottery tickets. Each had a different life story. That was an amazing display of India’s complexity and diversity.

Nitin Pai is editor of Pragati. Aruna Urs works for a risk consultancy.