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How should a person act? When I ask myself this question, I know where to look for answers.
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I have a set of first principles that I derive these answers from. I have supreme respect
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for the autonomy of other people. We should never do anything to infringe on other people's
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individual rights. And everything follows from there. I am a libertarian, which basically
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means that the most important word in my dictionary is consent. But let's look beyond how a person
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should act and ask one more question. How should a country act?
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Welcome to The Seen and the Unseen, our weekly podcast on economics, politics and behavioral
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science. Please welcome your host, Amit Verma.
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Welcome to The Seen and the Unseen. How should a country act? Are the sole imperatives of
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a nation to look after the interests of its citizens? Should there be other limitations
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on it? What meaning does a word morality have in the context of international affairs, which
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are often a zero-sum game in nature? To discuss all these issues and to talk about foreign
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policy and the different ways in which foreign policy has evolved through the centuries,
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I have as my guest today Nitin Pai. Nitin is an old-school blogger like me. He started
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his blog, which we knew then as Akon, at around the same time as I started India Uncut, in
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the early 2000s. We became friends back then, and we had tons of interesting discussions
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on many subjects, not always in agreement with each other. But my focus was always on
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individual rights and personal freedoms, and Nitin's was on foreign policy, so we traveled
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different paths. Nitin quickly became one of the most respected foreign policy experts
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in this country, and started the Takshashila Institution, which he still runs. The online
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magazine Pragati, which I relaunched as editor last year, is run by the Takshashila Institution.
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I've been wanting to get Nitin as a guest on the show for quite a while, and now that
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he's finally agreed, I figured I'd use this chance to take a broad look at foreign policy
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itself. Here's our conversation. Nitin, welcome to The Scene and the Unseen.
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Hi Amit, glad to be on your show. Nitin, tell me something. As you know, I'm
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a libertarian, and when I started forming my views of the world, I've always looked
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at everything from the perspective of individual rights, thinking about what human behavior
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is like, what is the moral course of action, and so on and so forth. But there's another
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way of looking at the world, where you look at not at individuals as units, but as nation
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states as units, and where you talk not of human behavior being between individuals,
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but between foreign policy where states engage with each other to safeguard their own interests.
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Now, this is something that I haven't really given much thought to, and there's no one
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better than you to educate me on this. So tell me about foreign policy. When did it
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start evolving? What are the sort of different directions it went in? How should we think
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about this? Yeah, I think let's start from the beginning.
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I think one of the very interesting conversations I have with my libertarian friends is that
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the libertarian discomfort with the idea of a state. But if you look at it as a practical
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matter, individuals have rights and freedoms and all that, but all those liberties become
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real only when they are protected by some entity, and that entity is a state. Now, you
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could have a state like North Korea, which just protects its own liberties and the liberties
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of its leaders and nothing else, or you could have a liberal democratic state which takes
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some of your freedoms, mainly your right to use force, and guarantees the rest of the
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freedoms to you by means of a social contract. So the state is a very important institution
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in the protection of liberty, and this sits very uncomfortably with very strong classical
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libertarians, right? But the state is important. Now, the state operates, unfortunately, in
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an anarchy. And when you say an anarchy, it's not about chaos and disorder, but the idea
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that there is no international government, there is no authority over and above a nation
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state which ensures that states behave and follow the rules of the road or the international
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law. Now, because states have to operate in this anarchic outfit, they have to be able
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to protect themselves. Survival of the state is the most important thing. Now, I would
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look at it from the perspective of a liberal democratic republic like India. The reason
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why I am interested in the survival and the security of the Indian Republic is because
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the Indian Republic is what makes my liberties real. I have an interest in ensuring that
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the Republic of India is not internally overthrown or externally taken over by foreign invaders
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or by foreign regimes which might not give me the same kind of liberty and freedoms that
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I have. Now, the question of how do you protect a state, how does the state secure itself
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and its way of life has been one of those eternal questions which has preoccupied the
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minds of statesmen and scholars and intellectuals since thousands of years. And one answer which
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most of these people have come to regardless of their tradition is that you need to have
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power. How much power? As much power as you can get. Why do you need as much power as
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you can get? Because you can't be sure that the other state out there will not accumulate
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more power and use that power to overthrow you or take over you or bully you or dominate
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you. So, the quest for more and more power relative to everybody else is what animates
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most states and that lies at the heart of foreign policy. And foreign policy is as old
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as human civilization. Since the time probably when humans came together and started forming
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bands and groups of like-minded or with kin relationships, they would have had to interact
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with other tribes or clans or groups of a similar nature and that's when foreign policy
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started. So, your point which I entirely agree with by the way is that while it may seem
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discordant for some libertarians because they distrust power, at the same time it is necessary
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for a state to try and magnify its power in whatever way possible because that is the
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best way to ensure that it continues to protect the rights of the individuals who constitute
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the state. That's broadly if I've summed it up correctly. Now, when we talk about foreign
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policy and how it evolved and so on, a point that you often made is that it's evolved differently
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in different parts of the world. It's not this one monolithic body of thought but there
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are different traditions. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? Yeah, let's
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talk about international relations as you know the field in which foreign policy plays.
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I think we've had this conversation long ago once over copious amounts of alcohol and I
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think we disagreed with Samuel Huntington and we said, no, it's not about the clash
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of civilizations. We just said and the whole of international relations can be explained
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by a divide between the people who consume alcohol and the people who don't. So you look
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at any international conflict on either side of which you have a drinking country and a
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non-drinking country. Now, of course I'm trivializing it and generalizing it. You're being flippant
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just in case people take you seriously because in social media we have to make everything
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idiot proof. More seriously, you would see that there are a few civilizational trends
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in the way civilizations look at foreign policy or international relations, rather the relationship
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between one state and the other. Let's start with the ancient Indian way of looking at
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things made famous by the Arthashastra which was supposedly written in Takshashila after
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which our institution is named. Now, if you look at the Arthashastra view of interstate
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relations, he looks, Kautilya, let me say, Kautilya is the guy who wrote this. It's a
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shorthand for a number of authors, but let's use the word Kautilya for now. So he sees
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the center of the focus of policy as this character called the Vijigishu or the person
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who wants to be a victor. So he's a king and he sees that around him are a bunch of kings
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who are sovereign equals and the business of the Vijigishu is to prevail over those
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neighboring kings and impose his domain on those. So it is about conquest.
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Sort of imperialism in a sense.
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It's imperialism in the sense that it's a conquest of other kings around you. So he
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says that, okay, the guys immediately around you are your foes, are your adversaries and
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the guys one hop away are your allies because they are the adversaries, adversaries and
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so on and so forth. So he creates a very geometrical kind of a thing where you have concentric
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circles, everybody in an even numbered circle is your ally and everybody in your odd number
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Which is kind of dynamic because if you conquer the guy next to you, then the guy next to
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him who was once your friend is now your enemy.
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Exactly. And that's the heart of realism, which says that there are no permanent friends
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and permanent enemies, they're just permanent interests. So as your empire grows, people
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who are probably formerly your allies now become your adversaries because you are interested
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in that domain. There is a caveat to this because Indian international relations did
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not envisage invading territories which are not part of the Indian subcontinent.
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So it was almost considered a dharma to go and impose your rule on people who don't accept
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that way of life. So there was a sort of a psychological geographical border to or a
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frontier to how much expansionism Indian strategic thought.
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Did that foreign policy also have, by and large have a sort of a zero sum way of looking
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at the world in which case your neighbor is your enemy and you have to conquer him rather
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than hey, you could also trade with him to mutual benefit.
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That's right. There was a, there was a, at least in the strategic sense, there was zero
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sum. Within the bounds of the subcontinent, your job is to expand your empire until it
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occupies the natural boundaries of the subcontinent. And of course you could trade and do business
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and all that even when you're at war or when you're not at war. But the strategic objective
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of the Vijay Gishu was to expand his empire and to cover the whole of the subcontinent.
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But note that while the Vijay Gishu was engaged in expansionism, the Vijay Gishu would recognize
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sovereign equals. He would recognize that there are other kings who are sovereign equals
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in terms of status. They are the kings of their own kingdoms. It so happens that I'm
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interested in conquering you, but I accept the fact that you're a sovereign equal. Now
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this is important because the Indian strategic thought accepted the idea of multiple sovereignties.
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Now this is very different from the Chinese perspective. Now if you see how it evolved
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in China, at least for the last 2000 plus years, is that the Chinese strategic thought
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looks at Han Chinese civilization as the middle kingdom, which is led by an emperor who has
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a mandate from heaven and who imposes his heavenly rule on the entire planet or on the
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entire earth. They might not have seen it as a planet, but on the whole of the earth.
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The Han Chinese middle kingdom is where civilization is and everybody outside the middle kingdom
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is either a tributary or a barbarian. They distinguish this to say that, okay, if we
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have a chance to subjugate the people beyond our borders and make them accept the primacy
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of Chinese culture and make them pay tribute, then we recognize them as tributaries. They're
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not our equals, they're our tributaries. But let's say there are people who are nomadic,
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who are warlike and whom we consider uncivilizable, we look at them as barbarians. Now this is
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a very different way of looking at the world as compared to what the ancient Indians looked
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at, because you recognize only one entity as the sole sovereign on earth and there are
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no other equals. So the emperor of China did not recognize sovereign equals. Now this led
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to very interesting situations, like for example, in the 15th and the 16th centuries when European
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travelers and emissaries first went to China, they presented their credentials to the people
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there and said, look, we come in the name of our emperor and we want to establish relationship
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with you. And the Chinese said, what nonsense is this? We don't recognize any other emperor.
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If you insist that there is another emperor in Europe, we're going to imprison you. So
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many diplomats and emissaries from both the Catholic Church as well as European kingdoms
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were imprisoned by the Chinese because they did not accept conceptually that there can
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be another emperor. The only way that foreign ambassadors would get an interview with the
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emperor is to say that, look, okay, I come in the name of this guy who's your tributary
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and I count out to you. So that's a very profound difference between the way the Indians and
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the Europeans see things and the Chinese see things.
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So would it be correct to say, for example, that because the Chinese are so insular and
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they believe that their vision of the state is divine, that it is a God's will, which
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is being spread across the universe, that for them foreign policy was a moral imperative.
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Their foreign policy was a moral imperative while for the Indians, it was more practical
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Well, yes, I think you could say that it was not God's will, but they looked at it as an
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imperative, they call it heavens, you know, it's not God in the...
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The foreign policy was a moral imperative.
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Yeah, foreign policy they consider as a moral civilizational imperative to say that, look,
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we are part of a superior civilization and here are these people who are around us and
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who can be given the benefits of our civilizations if they accept our way of life, which means
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language, which means sense of dress and customs and so on, and accept that our emperor is
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also their emperor and they pay tribute to this guy. But there might be people like the
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nomadic types of Central Asia, like the Mongols, for example, the most famous ones.
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They've been these tribes for a long time and they don't accept Han Chinese authority,
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so you would try and subdue them using war or you'd build a huge wall to protect your
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civilization from the barbarians to your west.
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So that's how they saw it.
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Yeah, it was both a moral imperative as well as a security imperative because you also
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have to secure your boundaries against these people who might come and raid your territory.
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And in contrast, and just to clarify before we move on, then the Indian approach, was
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it driven purely by practical considerations that we have to expand because that is better
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for our security because it makes us stronger?
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Well, the Indian formula is very mysterious.
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Like we don't know why the king, you know, why the Arta Shastra says you have to expand
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your kingdom. If you want to interpret it to say it could be that, look, you have to
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expand the kingdom because if you don't, somebody else is going to be doing it. So it's like
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a prisoner's dilemma. You might as well do it first and be the vijig issue.
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It forces all parties to be aggressive.
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I would think that would be the reason why the injunction was that you go and expand
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your empire so that you can be the chakravarti of the whole subcontinent.
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So we've gone through the Indian approach and the Chinese approach. What are the other
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Here are two other ones, right? Let me start with the European one, the Westphalian one,
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which evolved due to thousand years of war in Europe. The Catholic Church was there.
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The Holy Roman Empire was there. Various principalities were there. They had, you know, thousand years
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of conflict and war and political developments in Europe.
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And then in the 16th century, after a particularly bloody period of war, they decided that, look,
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let's agree on a system where whoever controls a particular country becomes the absolute
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sovereign of that country.
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Because this is interesting because before that, if you were living in let's say a village
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in what is today Germany, you would be paying tribute to your local feudal lord. You would
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be known to be in the principality of a certain baron or a prince of Germany. You would also
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be under the jurisdiction of a bishop who was part of the church system, Catholic or
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Protestant. And you would also be perhaps part of the Holy Roman Empire, right? So there
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This independent and overlapping jurisdiction.
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Independent and overlapping jurisdiction, it was a huge source of confusion. For example,
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the Pope could claim jurisdiction over the Catholics in Italy and in France and in England.
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And the kings of those places would say, hey, these are my subjects and I have authority
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over them. But the church would say, no, they are Catholics, so they are under my jurisdiction.
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And suddenly the Holy Roman Emperor would come out from somewhere and said, no, they
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are actually my subjects.
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So this confusion ended in a series of treaties called the Treaties of Westphalia, where they
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came to this simple conclusion that there is a territory and whoever rules the territory
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controls the subjects, you know.
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Around when were these treaties?
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This was in the 16th century, I think. My history is not too good, I think. The Treaties
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of Westphalia were in the 1560s, something like that. I can't remember this. Anyway,
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so from that point onwards, the international order evolved in the West around this system
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that there is a king who rules a kingdom and all the people in that kingdom are subjects
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and citizens of that kingdom. And nobody else can interfere in the internal affairs of that
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kingdom, which is, in a way, very similar to the Indian system because you recognize
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multiple sovereigns. You realize that there is a king of Germany, there is a king of France,
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there is a prince of Bavaria and so forth who are sovereign.
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Except the Indian system is expansionist.
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So the European system also is expansionist, although it was not hard-coded anywhere. But
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the idea was that you would be an expansionist king for the same reasons, because if you
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don't expand and become more powerful, somebody else will come and do that.
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So you recognize that, say, the ruler of Hungary has control over that jurisdiction, but you
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also don't mind fighting to take it over.
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And you would intend to take that over, because in those days, of course, the reason was land
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and agricultural land and people were the source of power, because the land would give
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you agricultural produce and taxation and money, and people were the people you needed
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to draft them into war. So the source of power was land, which is why many of these kingdoms
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were trying to be expansionist, in the sense that you get more and more power by controlling
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more and more land. It's not the same today.
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Now the other system which is very interesting is the Islamic system.
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But before you move on, what is the difference then between the Indian system and the European
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The big difference between the Indian and the European system, I think, would be the
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idea of dharma, very loosely, because the Indian system did not envisage conquering
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people who did not subscribe to dharma or the Hindu thinking or the Indian thinking,
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whichever word you want to call it.
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And for example, the Indian kings had no designs on Persia, had no designs on Central Asia,
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had no designs on people of the Indian Ocean.
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But part of this could also be because of reasons of distance in geography, as much
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Not necessarily, because there were always invasions the other way, because you had people,
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Central Asian nomads, Central Asian kingdoms, the Persians invading India, but you had very
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few invasions on the other way.
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So there was a sense that this is our civilization and we'll stay within it.
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We are content with it. And in a way, that's also the grand strategy to this day, where
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you see people in India, we are comfortable, as long as we are allowed to live in our own
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way and we have no designs on conquering other countries.
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Yeah, but other countries come and conquer us.
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Yeah, that's probably the difference between the Indian and the European way, because Europeans
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did not have such injunctions or such things ever.
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Maybe it was geography, maybe it was the way they were thinking, but this is what it was.
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They would still conquer.
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Of course, you had the British Empire, you had the Dutch Empire and the Russians had
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So they came here and conquered us, but we never tried to kind of do the reverse.
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Now let's look at the Islamic model, right?
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This is interesting because it sees the world as being divided between a community of the
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faithful, Darul Islam, and the house of war, which is Darul Harb, which is everybody else.
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And the whole idea was that Islam was on this global mission to conquer everybody and bring
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them into the folds of Islam.
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So naturally expansionist, which is born out empirically, because I think the Islamist
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expansion after the prophet is just phenomenal in terms of historical terms.
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The conquest was to bring people under the word of God as revealed by the prophet and
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as revealed by the prophet in the Quran, right?
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So it was a religious, there was religious zeal in this to conquer people and bring them
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Modern policy has moral imperative almost.
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It's almost a divine imperative.
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It's a divine imperative that you're enjoying by God to go and conquer these people and
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bring them into the house of Islam.
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And if they resist, then you destroy them, right?
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So if you look at modern Islamic fundamentalism, like people like Bin Laden and the others,
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they see the world very much in these terms.
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The Islamic state currently talks about, you know, the Islamic state being the core Islamic
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state and it's going to expand and take over other countries and make them Islamic.
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And if they resist, you're going to be destroying them.
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Now what is interesting is in between these two very stark house of Islam and house of
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war, Darul Islam and Darul Harab, there were also places which came out in practice called
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These were gray zones between the Islamic world and the non-Islamic world.
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For example, they would recognize that there are non-Islamic rulers with Muslim populations
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or there might be Islamic rulers with non-Muslim populations.
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And these were convenient places for trade, for discussions, for negotiations and as stepping
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So for example, you mean otherwise Darul Islam would not trade with Darul Harab.
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They were only for conquest.
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Because not just conquest, there's enslavement and so forth for exploitation.
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Because you did not recognize them as having the same moral status as in the people of
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So you could exploit them.
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You could enslave them.
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You could kill them or literally do anything that you wanted to do with them.
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But the presence of Darul Sulay tells you that even in a very hardline Islamist construct
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of international relations, there was space for negotiations, for trade and as in practice
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many parts of the world after the advent of Islam were Darul Sulay's where people could
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There were Muslim populations, non-Muslim populations.
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Not all of them were treated equally.
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But there was space between the Islamic world and the non-Islamic world.
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And the difference between the Chinese and the Islamic ways of looking at foreign policy
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probably would be that where they're both a kind of moral imperative, the Islamic vision
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is much more ruthlessly expansionist while the Chinese are insular and they're happy
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I wouldn't call the Chinese insular as much as the Chinese were content being where they
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were because it's a big old civilization.
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They had no imperative to push their civilization beyond their borders.
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They would just accept and assimilate people, you know, maybe using what you would call
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today a soft power and say, look, you're part of the Chinese sphere of influence.
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They had no necessity to go and conquer and plant their flag or, you know, even convert
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people into Chinese-ism.
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As opposed to Islam, being a revealed religion filled its adherents with the zeal to spread
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So the conquest of other lands was as much indicated by faith with assurances that because
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this is a superior faith, you're necessarily going to win.
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And that was a confidence which they had.
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And early Islamic invaders were all filled with unnatural confidence, which maybe allowed
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them to make these conquests fairly easily because you would do things which you would
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not do if you were a rational person.
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And would you say that some of this aggression also comes out of existential angst?
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Because the Chinese could be secure in their status as a civilization and in the geographic
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But Islam was new and it could not be secure in that.
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And therefore it was almost a way of sort of seeking validation and asserting its identity
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Geographical context also has a lot to do with it because if you look at the core territories
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of China, they are very fertile lands, of course they had flooding and natural disasters,
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but they were largely fertile lands with adequate manpower and a very stable social system.
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But if you look at Arabia during the time of the Prophet Mohammed and after, these were
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tribal societies, natural resources were scarce, you would not be able to, although Arabia
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is a huge landmass, the amount of places where you could sustain civilization and sustain
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livelihoods was very small.
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You had to expand and there was a natural inter-tribal rivalry which was almost like
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the Old Testament where each tribe had its own god and then inter-tribal rivalry was
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also a conflict between the adherents of two gods.
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So we read the Islamic texts, the injunctions against worshipping other gods and worshipping
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the one true god, which is the most important thing.
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And then sort of uniting as many tribes as you can under the banner of Islam then has
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a strategic advantage of strength in numbers.
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So I think that is the strategic genius of Prophet Mohammed.
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The strategic genius of Prophet Mohammed was his ability to amalgamate or his success in
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amalgamating a number of Arabian tribes into a bigger unit called the House of Islam, which
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was then capable of strategic successes in terms of his conquest of Northern Africa,
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on the Middle East, Persia and even the borders of India.
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Now the interesting thing is as world history proceeds, we globalize more and more, we come
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closer and closer to one world and these approaches then come up against each other.
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How has that played out?
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I think that's the biggest question of this century.
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For almost all of the 20th century, the world operated within a Westphalian model.
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The West was dominating, the victors of the Second World War created an international
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system which is largely based on the Westphalian pattern where you could be Angola, you could
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be Tanzania, you could be India, you could be Bangladesh, these are independent nation
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states which would recognize each other as sovereign equals, everybody has one vote in
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the United Nations General Assembly, so on and so forth.
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Now that construct is really a Westphalian construct and it was held together by the
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Now the West could have been the Soviet Union or the United States or the NATO countries,
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but it was generally a Western mental model which was imposed on the rest of the world.
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Now as you see the West diminishing in power relative to China and India, as the center
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of gravity of world order moves away from the West, the question is what kind of a world
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order will be shaped and what would be the rules of the game?
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It's not clear that the new powers that will rise relative to each other and relative to
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the West in the next 10, 20, 30 years will necessarily agree to the rules of the game
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which were agreed upon 100 years ago by the victors of the Second World War.
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The Chinese definitely do not see the Westphalian system as something which they are comfortable
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I have spoken to many Chinese scholars and asked them this question to say that how much
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of modern Chinese foreign policy adheres to the Middle Kingdom mindset, the Tianxia Middle
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Kingdom mindset and many of them told me that it is a serious factor in the mental models
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of the policy makers in modern China.
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In other words, China would, if given a chance, would like to see a return to this way of
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looking at international relations where China is the Middle Kingdom and everybody else is
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either a tributary or a barbarian.
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What are the practical implications of this?
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What this means is that at one end of the spectrum we know that the United States and
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China will fight for global dominance.
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This is not just a question for being number one, but it is also a fight for what kind
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of rules of the games are we going to have in the international system going forward.
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The other end of it is how does China look at its neighborhood?
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For example, if the Chinese mental model sees itself as the middle kingdom and everybody
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else has different levels of status as a tributary, do they recognize Vietnam, do they recognize
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Thailand, do they recognize India and Nepal as sovereign equals or do they see us as tributaries
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Now the question is different if you're a small country on the border of China.
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You don't have much of a choice.
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If Chinese power becomes so strong compared to you, you will have to kowtow or toe the
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line in one way or the other.
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But it's different for a country like India which is large enough to not easily succumb
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to the Chinese intellectual dominance in the way you look at foreign policy or international
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The question for India is how do we deal with a neighbor who might not necessarily see you
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as a sovereign equal and might want you to be a tributary?
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India does not see itself as a tributary of anybody and we are happy to see others as
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sovereign equals, including very, very small countries like Nauru.
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But we are not in the business of seeing anybody as a tributary, nor are we in the business
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of seeing ourselves as a tributary.
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And would it be fair to say that India is actually now in the Westphalian mindset?
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Very strongly in the Westphalian mindset and the good news for us is that Westphalian mindset
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and the Indian traditional mindset are consistent.
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So there is no conflict between the two models.
#
And after 1947, the Republic of India occupies almost all of the subcontinent, taking up
#
a few parts which are Pakistan, Bangladesh, India.
#
Expansionism is not an issue.
#
Other than a few really, really radical minds who probably have way too much of drink or
#
have too little education, might want to recombine the subcontinent and form one, you know…
#
Form one Akhand Bharat.
#
I think we are quite happy with the size and the shape we are apart from a few border disputes
#
which we probably can solve it in the fullness of time.
#
But nobody has a case in India to say that we should expand or make some other countries
#
In fact if you look at foreign policy of India in the last 20 years, even the smaller countries
#
who used to be largely under India's dominance, whether it's Nepal, Bhutan or the Maldives
#
and Sri Lanka to some extent, have been allowed with New Delhi's acquiescence to go their
#
Bhutan has its own constitution, Nepal has its own constitution, India for example changed
#
the terms of the Friendship Treaty with Bhutan to allow the Bhutanese government a lot more
#
autonomy in its foreign relations.
#
So I think that's the trend.
#
I don't think the Republic of India ever sees itself as being a hegemon and dominating
#
or maybe conquering territory.
#
It doesn't make sense in the 21st century in any case.
#
But China is different.
#
One thing about China is that I think they are right now under President Xi Jinping of
#
a mind which I would call the geopolitical front foot.
#
They feel that they are already much bigger and much stronger than is understood and felt
#
and therefore they have the need to actually be on the front foot and impose and assert
#
themselves in various places whether it's the South China Sea, whether it's in Central
#
Asia, in Eastern Europe and of course the Indian Ocean region.
#
And the ironic thing is and I'm just thinking aloud here is that while in the past this
#
power would come from zero sum means like you conquer nations and so on, now it comes
#
mostly from the positive sum game of trade.
#
They are economically powerful which has come about by interactions which benefit both parties
#
and are not necessarily at the cost of countries they might think of as their tributaries.
#
I think territory is no more the source of national power.
#
It's probably one component of national power but there are far more important components.
#
I was talking to the great Indian strategist K. Subramaniam 10 years ago and I asked him
#
what do you think is the currency of power in the 21st century and he said knowledge.
#
He said knowledge is the currency of power in the 21st century, not land anymore.
#
Land matters to you because it supports a population.
#
So it's knowledge in terms of technology, how to do things.
#
But knowledge in technology, knowledge, yeah, we are in a knowledge economy and knowledge
#
can be used to create all other forms of power.
#
Knowledge can be turned into wealth and wealth can be turned into military power.
#
So knowledge at the end is at the heart of military power.
#
So territorial conquests are not so meaningful.
#
I think what the Chinese are trying to do is not so much to conquer territory but to
#
acquire enough influence in enough parts of the world so as to reshape the world in the
#
So they want to change the Westphalian system enough that it becomes more Chinese in its
#
For that they'll need to have influence in many existing parts of the world because for
#
example if you want to win a vote in the United Nations General Assembly, you need the support
#
What's the best way to acquire the support of so many countries is when you control them
#
in some way or the other.
#
In a sense you could say the whole Westphalian notion of nation states becomes irrelevant
#
if Chinese companies are dominating economies everywhere and buying influence and who cares.
#
That was also talked about when we were in the 70s and the 80s and when McDonald's was
#
spreading and people are saying that now that there is McDonald's everywhere, the Westphalian
#
model doesn't work, General Motors is more important than General Colin Powell and things
#
I don't think that is necessarily true because ultimately…
#
But is that one way they would look at it is what I'm asking.
#
I don't think they see these as two different things.
#
They see trade and economics as one constituent of their national power and you know you project
#
power to acquire more power.
#
That's how economics works for them and it's all part of this overall general front-footedness
#
And how does the Islamic way of looking at the world come into all of this given the
#
turmoil of the last few decades?
#
See the Islamic worldview today is not quite different from the Christian worldview before
#
the Enlightenment and before Renaissance and Enlightenment where they looked at the world
#
as Christendom and everybody else.
#
The Islamists are now looking at Darul Islam and everybody else.
#
And as the evolution in Europe tells you that that's not quite a sustainable model because
#
you will never be able to conquer everybody, you will never be able to put them under the
#
same religion and you will never be able to control the people in your own territory even
#
if you have the same religion and the same emperor.
#
So that model that you can conquer the world with one old idea called religion is just
#
bunk you know and I think enough people in the world realize it.
#
The appeal for this is weak and going to be much weaker in the future.
#
And that's especially in modern times where there's growing prosperity and also technology
#
empowers individuals in ways that just weren't happening decades ago.
#
Yeah and I think in the modern world you know there is this trend right now towards greater
#
populism and the greater religiosity and faith and all that.
#
But if you look at it in a slightly longer lens, people know that you know there are
#
certain ideas which are more successful and give them a better quality of life and certain
#
And if you go you know if you look into the next 10, 20, 30, 40 years, people will want
#
to be part of successful countries.
#
People will want to move towards countries which give them a better quality of life.
#
There used to be this t-shirt in the U.S., I was not born in America but I got here as
#
So why is it that people want to be American citizens despite the political dispensation
#
Why do you have people who want to migrate to Western Europe?
#
Why do you have people who want to migrate to India?
#
It's because they see that there are certain rules of the game, there are certain ways
#
of life, there are certain political structures which allow them to live happily, pursue happiness,
#
wealth, prosperity and others that don't.
#
So I think the model which we present as let's say a liberal democratic model is successful,
#
is empirically shown to be successful.
#
Right now there are people who are now having doubts about it but you know in the long arc
#
of history there is absolutely no doubt.
#
Certain models are successful and people will gravitate towards successful models.
#
So would you say that out of all, out of these four strands of foreign policy, one the Indian
#
one pretty much doesn't exist but it doesn't matter because it's been supplanted by the
#
Westphalian model which sort of aligns with it in all the important ways so it's not a
#
And the Westphalian model is the one which is eventually destined for success in the
#
The Chinese one is at the moment restricted to China and yes that's the greatest challenge
#
we face currently in foreign policy terms and how we can avoid talking past each other
#
and actually you know talk on the same terms.
#
And the Islamic model again is sort of doomed to fail fundamentally.
#
Would you say that's correct?
#
I think that's right except that the Indian way of thinking about international relations
#
has not completely gone away.
#
It just sits very comfortably with the Westphalian model but it still animates some of our thinking
#
in terms of our approach to global issues, our approach to foreign policy, our approach
#
to trade and all of that.
#
Of course it's no Indian leader has any designs on conquest but conquest is just one part
#
It's not the whole thing.
#
And also I should probably clarify here for our listeners on both your behalf in mind
#
that when we talk about these different strands of thought we're talking about broad strands
#
They're not all inclusive and they do allow for exemptions.
#
I mean every country contains multitudes and there are various streams of thought which
#
You know that's what is called the constructivist school of thinking where it says look foreign
#
policy and international relations is what the elite of the country make of it.
#
So if the elite of a country decide to follow a Westphalian thought mindset, like for example
#
in the Nehruvian era, probably you will end up looking at the world in a Westphalian terms.
#
If the elite of the country take a different view, let's say we go more towards a Cothelian
#
view then maybe we'll see the world in Cothelian terms.
#
I think there is something to be said for this because ultimately all policy, especially
#
foreign policy is the outcome of an elite conversation.
#
It's not that a peasant in a village is going to have much of an impact on how India deals
#
with China or with Maldives or with Bangladesh.
#
So now that you've sort of traced out the development of foreign policy, do a couple
#
One, you call yourself a foreign policy realist.
#
What does this mean and does this evolve out of the Westphalian model?
#
And second, give me a sense of over the last three or four decades, how the conversation
#
between these different streams of thought has proceeded so far.
#
See, realism in a sense is about seeing the world as it is and not what you wish it to
#
It is about following a template of looking at the world and say, look, this is how the
#
world is and this is how it's going to be.
#
So let's play accordingly.
#
In international relations terms, realism means that you understand that you're operating
#
in an anarchy, there's no world government and all states are trying to maximize power
#
and what you have to do is to maximize your power relative to everybody else so that you
#
can protect yourself and secure your country.
#
So survival and security of your state is your primary national interest because it
#
also means happiness, prosperity and well-being of your people in case of a liberal democracy.
#
That's what realism essentially is.
#
It understands that national interest involves the accumulation of power and using as much
#
power as you can get to protect your national interests, however you might.
#
That's probably most closely aligned then with the Westphalian way of thinking.
#
Well, no, not necessarily because...
#
Like the Chinese way of thinking where they see everyone as their tributaries is a little
#
out of touch with reality.
#
Yeah, well, not necessarily because you can be in the Westphalian system and yet be a
#
liberal internationalist.
#
Let me give you the contrast.
#
The liberal internationalist believes that there is this ideal that we can reach and
#
this ideal involves less war, less violence, more trade, more human rights and so forth
#
and there is an ideal state that the world can achieve and we should put our foreign
#
policies in line with this vision, which means we will try not to go to war, we'll try not
#
to spend too much on defense, we'll respect human rights in other countries and so forth.
#
Sounds like me basically.
#
It sounds like you, but it's a good vision to aspire for, but it cannot stand on its
#
own because if you have this liberal international worldview and the guy next to you is hardcore
#
realist, you're going to be eaten up for lunch.
#
So because between states at some level, it is a zero sum game.
#
It is a zero sum game and there are different states here and that's the biggest realization.
#
There are different states here who look at the world differently.
#
I mean, you can't preach liberal and internationalism to a Chinese president because he doesn't
#
He doesn't even understand it, right?
#
So he looks at it in a very, very different point of view.
#
He doesn't even treat you as an equal at the table.
#
And when you have different players playing with different rules, you need to have power.
#
So the Westphalian system can support any number of views, you can have liberal internationalism,
#
you can have realism, you can have constructivism, Marxism, radical, feminism, any kind of school
#
of thought to pursue international relations in a Westphalian system.
#
But the argument that you can do away with the need to accumulate power and use power
#
to guarantee your national interest is a very strong one.
#
And the individual rights of your citizens for those who are inclined to give that...
#
But that's very much a matter for the internal politics of a state.
#
Because once the state has enough power to defend itself and secure itself, what it does
#
within its borders is a very different story.
#
For example, India has nuclear weapons and we could say our nuclear weapons are used
#
to protect our liberal democratic republic, you know, human rights and fundamental rights
#
North Koreans have nuclear weapons and they could be using their nuclear weapons to protect
#
So what the state does within itself is a very different story from saying that you
#
But basically a strong sovereignty is a necessary but not sufficient condition to ensure human
#
rights for the citizens.
#
Strong sovereignty is a necessary condition, but not sufficient to protect human rights
#
Now let's talk about world affairs in the last few decades, like given that these different
#
approaches must necessarily be at conflict with each other and therefore you will have
#
nations talking past each other very often, how have international relations spanned out?
#
Last few decades has largely been a Westphalian model with a realist foreign policy.
#
There's been talk about liberal internationalism, values, freedom, which is nicely thrown about,
#
you know, during the Cold War, you had the Americans supporting autocrats and dictators
#
in the name of protecting freedom, right?
#
So obviously, you know, these are just constructs, optical illusions which you put out to satisfy
#
yourself and your population that you're doing the right thing.
#
The right thing in terms of strategic logic, not the right thing in terms of moral logic.
#
We have seen this, this kind of logic operating in almost every part of the world, ever since
#
There have been attempts to craft a different vision, Nehru, for example, at one point got
#
very interested in this idea of a one world, Manu Bhagawan has a very good book called
#
The Peacemakers where he talks about Nehru's enthusiasm to create this liberal international
#
paradise where, you know, the United Nations would become effectively a world government
#
and defend the rights of citizens of various countries, so human rights in all countries,
#
you know, the United Nations being a super government which would ensure that.
#
Well, there's no harm in having such dreams and I think we should appreciate people who
#
can think of a better world.
#
But the here and the now is most important, right?
#
You can't get to that kind of an ideal vision if you, for example, being a liberal democratic
#
republic are undermined or eaten up by a country or by a force that has absolutely no interest
#
in liberal democratic republics.
#
So now, speaking as a foreign policy realist and with India's interests in mind as you
#
do, here's a hypothetical question.
#
When strategic interest comes up in conflict against moral imperatives, how do you draw
#
For example, if you had to kill a thousand Pakistanis to save one Indian soldier, would
#
It all depends on context.
#
This is a version of the trolley problem.
#
First of all, let me say this, international relations is amoral.
#
The morality that obtains between individuals within a country is very different from morality
#
in relationship between states.
#
For example, it would be morally wrong for me to bash you up for asking me this question.
#
But the question of morality does not arise when India and Pakistan are having a negotiation
#
because these are states and they're not anthropomorphic, they're not people, and they're operating
#
in an amoral kind of a space.
#
The question is, would I countenance the killing of a thousand Pakistanis to save an Indian
#
soldier depends on whether we are at war or whether we are not at war.
#
If we are at war, of course, I would support that.
#
But if you're not at war, then think what else is the context.
#
So there are no absolute answers to this.
#
And morality in the sense, the interpersonal morality or a domestic morality which we have
#
just does not apply to international relations and we'll end up with very, very wrong outcomes
#
if we try and apply the morality of interpersonal relations to international relations.
#
I mean, it's very different from the trolley problem and the significant way in which that
#
is so is that every human life is equal in the trolley problem and you just have to choose
#
between doing the action or not doing.
#
And here I think a question also is that you fundamentally place a value on say your own
#
citizen which is much higher than those of other nations.
#
But I think my question is half-baked and we'll leave that discussion for some other
#
Looking ahead, as someone involved in the foreign policy space in India, what do you
#
think are the greatest challenges we face and what do you think are sort of the recent
#
mistakes we might have made in terms of mindset or strategy?
#
I think the greatest challenge we face is to change our mindsets in keeping with our
#
You know, 50 years ago, India was not a prosperous country, at least compared to now.
#
We could absorb, for example, wars on our borders or even within our country because
#
the costs of those wars were rather small.
#
As India becomes more and more prosperous, we will not be able to suffer the damage on
#
our borders or within our countries.
#
So you need to be able to keep threats as far away from the borders as possible to defend
#
the homeland because you can't sustain damage on the homeland.
#
The United States, for example, has a huge military presence across the world, not because
#
they want to conquer the rest of the world, but they don't want conflict on their homeland.
#
So you deploy military forces as far away from your borders as possible so that you
#
can defuse the threats as far away from your homeland as possible so as to protect
#
the homeland so that the homeland can grow and enjoy prosperity, peace and so on.
#
The problem with India is that throughout our history, we have subscribed to something
#
which I call the Panipat School of Thought.
#
It says that don't worry about external enemies until they turn up on the plains of Panipat.
#
And when they are on the plains of Panipat or maybe on the gates of Delhi, then you muster
#
your forces and then you go and try and fight them, which means all these conflicts take
#
place within our territory.
#
There might be advantages to fighting on your own soil, but the fact is that damage occurs
#
on your territory and you have to expel the invaders from your territory.
#
I don't think this kind of a Panipat model is sustainable as India becomes more and more
#
I've argued that we need something which I call the Hindu Kush model, where you foresee
#
the threat far away from home on the borders of the Hindu Kush mountains, metaphorically,
#
as far away as possible and sort of defuse the threats there, which means you need to
#
be able to project power far away from our shores in order to prevent those threats from
#
coming onto our shores and our borders.
#
And that I think has been the biggest challenge for Indian foreign policy because it requires
#
us to overturn over, you know, maybe centuries or millennia of thinking.
#
And the nature of the enemy has also changed, has become much more diffuse, hasn't it?
#
Well, the nature of the threats have changed, but are also cumulative.
#
The old threats haven't gone away.
#
We just have a new set of threats which are more diffuse, which could for all, you know,
#
be non-state actors, could be environmental, could be technological.
#
All these threats have sort of added up onto our basket of threats.
#
The old ones have not gone away.
#
Regardless of the kind of threat, all the damage that occurs on the homeland will be
#
increasingly more and more expensive, both in economic and strategic terms.
#
We will not be able to sustain damage on the homeland.
#
Any attack on the homeland comes with massive economic costs, comes with massive political
#
costs and creates massive amount of tensions among the plural society that we have.
#
So we should be able to fend off the threats as far away from our borders as possible.
#
Nitin, it's been really enlightening talking to you and I've learned a lot today.
#
And I hope the Hindu Kush model of foreign policy becomes more and more popular.
#
Thanks for coming on the show.
#
Thanks for talking to you today.
#
The Scene and the Unseen is co-produced by Indus Vox Media Podcasts and you can check
#
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