LALIT MANSINGH
a former foreign secretary
New Delhi
3 May 2008
India is emerging as a global player and she needs to focus simultaneously on a wide
variety of issues in a large number of regions, according to LALIT MANSINGH, a former
foreign secretary. "We must strengthen both the Ministry of External Affairs and our
missions abroad with specialists," he said in an interview to RAMESH RAMACHANDRAN.
Excerpts:
Q: India and Pakistan will resume talks this month. Minister of External Affairs Pranab
Mukherjee will hold talks with his Pakistani counterpart in Islamabad on May 21. How
would you characterise the India - Pakistan bilateral relations today?
A: Peace process with Pakistan is one of the best things that has happened to our foreign
policy. Now you can go into various factors which led to this; one could be that
Pakistanis always considered India at par and the effort was to equalise the
disadvantage of size and strength through their alliances. But I think post-1998, Pakistan
has begun to realise that India had a different trajectory, and Pakistan had to look after
its own vital interests. Moreover its internal problems were becoming overwhelming. So
the good thing that we did was that we allowed Pakistan to sort out its own problems, and
the peace process was a process of building confidence with Pakistan, which I think is
now fairly well established. And one has seen with surprise that even the public attitude
of Pakistanis have undergone a major change. Hostility towards India, which was
nurtured by its military regimes, now seems to be ceasing. They are looking at India with
more realistic perceptions. Also, there is a realisation that their policy on Kashmir has
yielded virtually nothing as far as Pakistan is concerned. I think Minister of External
Affairs of India is doing the right thing in going there to give it a push.
Q: Siachen and Sir Creek are two of eight subjects of Composite Dialogue. Do you think
they can be quickly resolved?
A: Unfortunately both sides have dug in their heels on some of these issues and they
look a little intractable at this moment but I would say since Pakistan is accepting that we
can normalise relations more or less following the Chinese model of keeping difficult
issues in a separate box and normalising in other areas. Now quite clearly Kashmir is
an issue which can't be resolved overnight, so why not go forward on other issues, like
trade, people-to-people exchanges, liberal visa. So once that is done the level of
confidence will increase and it will be easier to resolve Siachen or Tulbul and all the
other issues.
Q: How is India's foreign policy shaping up? Are we focussing too much on the proposed
civil nuclear cooperation with the United States, at the expense of other regions or
issues?
A: As I see our foreign policy of the last 60 years, one of our problems has been that we
have not been able to focus on more than once issue at a time. If we are going one way,
we are neglecting another. Now the realisation has come that a foreign policy cannot be
sequential. You cannot say next five years we will deal with Africa, and then we will go to
Latin America after that. It has to be simultaneous. And the biggest challenge we face
today in our foreign service is that we are undermanned to deal with the challenges that
we are facing today. India is emerging as a global player and is developing global
interests, so we need to focus simultaneously on a wide variety of issues in a large
number of regions. Neighbourhood certainly is a priority for our foreign policy. Then
there are countries with which we either have a strategic partnership or strategic
dialogue. Another category of countries are those which are important for India's security
and economic progress, like Africa, Latin America and Central Asia, besides the Indian
Ocean area.
Q: Do you feel a need of rationalising the Indian missions in some of these regions?
A: Absolutely. We have muddled along with a tiny foreign service; we have managed, but
I think it is clear that it will become unmanageable in the future. We need to have the
manpower to service the various missions that we have established. We must
strengthen both Ministry of External Affairs and our missions abroad with specialists,
who are not only regional- or area-specialists but also functional specialists, so that
people can deal with a new areas of diplomacy like nuclear disarmament or climate
change or energy or global pandemics. We have been following the idea of a generalist
civil service like the rest of the civil service in India; they are drawn from a common pool
through the Union Public Service Commission and assigned to various services. Now to
some extent we provide training to the Indian Foreign Service recruits when they come in
but that is proving inadequate. We need infusion of specialists, and therefore either we
should take larger numbers of people and make them specialise or we should get on a
regular basis an infusion of specialists from outside, maybe on contract basis, so that
we are enabled to deal with the challenges that we face today.
Q: Is the India-US nuclear deal dead?
A: I think I'm in a minority of one who has always maintained that the deal is living and is
going to survive and the deal is going to take place. Now, the deal has gone through its
ups and downs and so when it goes down, people say the deal is dead. I don't believe it
is dead and even if it is delayed, it is not going to die. It's going to take shape, so it's a
nuanced position that the deal is formally not declared dead. It's in a deep freeze right
now and it can be revived any time. The initiative lies with Government of India.
Q: What about the issue of nuclear test?
A: I think was a totally irrelevant issue. It became an emotional, political issue, it was
taken up by a lot of elements within our leadership but the testing issue is actually a
nonissue because it is not the Americans who can take away our right of testing and
certainly the 123 Agreement does not rob India of the right to test. The Americans are
saying you have the right to test and we have the right to take whatever action we will.
So it's no different from what it was before the 123 Agreement and in any case, testing is
an issue which is going to hit us when the new movement which is now starting will start
maturing ...
Q: Could you elaborate?
A: ... India's policy, starting with Pandit Nehru, has been that all countries should give up
testing, that all the nuclear weapons powers should start scaling down their nuclear
weapons and ultimately eliminate them. That was our goal in 1947, that remains our goal
today. Nuclear disarmament has been a principal plank of our foreign and security
policy. In 1988 the late prime minister Rajiv Gandhi gave his plan, which was a pretty
well-researched and reasonable plan, giving time period for countries to scale down
production of nuclear weapons and to eliminate them. That was ignored because in the
power politics of those days, the nuclear weapons powers were not ready to surrender
their right to maintain and expand nuclear arsenals. Today the whole scene is changing
and it is not changing because suddenly like Ashoka after the Kalinga war, the
Americans have discovered that this is a bad thing and we should give it up. I think it is
based on very realistic calculations that these massive numbers of nuclear weapons are
actually becoming ineffective for the threats of the future. That if the principal threat of
the 21st century is terrorism, not nuclear aggression, then maintaining these costly and
dangerous arsenals are of no use to any power, let alone a superpower like the US. So
the Gang of Four -- Henry Kissinger, George Schulz, Sam Nunn, William Perry -- who
were cold warriors of the past and who helped to build up this dangerous arsenal, are the
ones who now are saying let us think of giving it up. They are supported by a whole lot of
other very respectable figures in the strategic and international community in the US and
now the presidential candidates have supported it, which gives me the idea that this is
going to be the ground swell which will determine policy in the future. And it will mean
two things for India. One, if the big powers give up the right to test, we'll have to follow.
Two, inevitably this process will entail a limitation on fissile material and ultimately
destruction of fissile material meant for weaponry. I don't think this is going to come in
20 years' time, but somewhere down the line this is going to come. If that is so, then we
have to rethink on our right to test and our right to maintain a strategic programme. But
as of now civilian nuclear power cooperation is obviously vitally important to India as a
source of clean, affordable and reliable source of energy.
Q: How do you view Australia's decision not to sell uranium to India?
A: I recently visited Australia and I met with their foreign minister, foreign secretary and
others. I came away with the impression that Australia was keeping an open mind.
Q: Do you see India and China making further progress on the boundary question?
A: I must say the border issue has not made much progress but the framework has been
defined more sharply than before. Several things have taken place in the last few years
which would indicate that both sides are a little more serious about resolving the border
issue but I'm a little disappointed that nothing much has actually happened.
Q: How do you view New Delhi's pronouncements on Tibet?
A: Lot of people say Pandit Nehru, by signing the Panchsheel Agreement, signed away
whatever interests India had in Tibet. India did inherit certain rights in Tibet based on
historical evolution. The British had a certain position on Tibet, so certain agreements
like the 1914 agreement were signed, and that's a legacy we cannot deny. At one time
India was a factor in Tibet. Now when we agreed to acknowledge Chinese sovereignty
there was still one little card that remained in our hands. We did not say Chinese
sovereignty over Tibet, we said Chinese sovereignty over the Tibet Autonomous Region.
We have pronounced a thousand times that the TAR is under China's sovereignty and
we're not departing from that but we agreed that Tibet would be an autonomous region
and this is where we are urging China to respect the autonomy that it itself acknowledged
in their agreement with us. So while we acknowledge China's sovereignty, we along with
other countries are urging China to respect the autonomy of Tibetans and carry on with
the dialogue with the Dalai Lama, which we entirely support.
Q: How should India respond to a US desire to build a partnership with India as a hedge
against China?
A: Why should we be the cat's paws of somebody else? If you look at the way we have
described our relations, even China is a strategic partner. If it's not in the interests of
India, why would India subordinate her interests to serve the interests of another
country, no matter which country it is and how powerful it is? We have stood up to the
big powers. The late prime minister Indira Gandhi was criticised for the 1971 agreement
with the erstwhile USSR. We derived enormous benefit from the partnership; it was in
fact our first strategic partnership, and it lasted a long time, but when Brezhnev
suggested to Mrs Gandhi that we join his scheme for an Asian security union, which
meant Soviet Union, India and China, Mrs Gandhi turned it down because it didn't suit
us. Another recent example is when the US requested us to send troops to Iraq; we said
"No". So we are capable of standing up and deciding when it is in our interest to join
other countries and when it is not in our interest. So the question of subordinating our
geopolitical interests to another country does not arise. If we have to deal with China,
we'll have to deal with China bilaterally, just as we are dealing with Pakistan bilaterally.
We don't need the help of the US to deal with China.
Q: Amid talk of regional and global alliances, there also is a feeling nobody will come to
our help if tomorrow there is a conflict with China.
A: In 1962 we had hundreds of non-aligned friends, which non-aligned country came to
India's help? In international affairs, ultimately, as Cromwell said, Trust your God and
keep your powder dry. We may have any number of alliances but it's doubtful if
somebody else will come and fight your war, if it doesn't have an interest in it itself. We
must also be clearheaded that it may be in our interest to have naval cooperation with
the US, Australia and Japan but if the Americans get into a conflict situation with China,
over Taiwan, I'm 99.9 per cent certain, Government of India will not have anything to do
with that conflict; we will stay out of it.
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