Recalibrate response

West Asia in turmoil

The West Asian developments are a reminder that a good foreign policy ought to rest on principles rather than expediency so that diplomacy would have flexibility to co-relate them with national interests. Suffice to say, in the post-Cold War period and especially under the UPA regime, expediency has been the leitmotif of India’s foreign policy. In West Asia, India often jettisoned principles and took recourse to expediency.

Therefore, the Indian reaction to the developments in Egypt becomes worrisome. Not only is it timid but it is rather naive to say the developments constitute Egypt’s internal affairs. Once again, expediency seems to prevail. With one eye cast on Washington and the other on Tel Aviv, Delhi is calibrating its stance.

Quite obviously, the 1922 West Asia settlement — put together by Britain hastily against the backdrop of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the Bolshevik revolution and with subsequent patchwork periodically by the West — has been dying for sometime. The ‘unraveling’ really began, as the shrewd Syrian president Bashar al-Assad points out in an interview by the ‘Wall Street Journal’, with the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979, the main impulses of which were nationalism, resistance to western domination (political, economic and cultural) and justice and fair-play. The Islamic banner accommodated the volcanic eruption.

India ought to be on the right side of history. As the unfolding events begin to engulf the autocratic regimes in the region and revolt manifests under the Islamic banner, Iran’s influence will only increase. The degradation of India-Iran ties in the recent years becomes an impediment to crafting an effective regional policy. The need arises more than ever for the UPA government to muster the courage to resist American arm-twisting to atrophy India’s relations with Iran. A prime ministerial visit to Iran is long overdue.

A second template that is going to impact Indian interests is the UPA’s rapid expansion of ties with Israel in the recent decade. The emerging geopolitical reality is, as the Israeli daily Haartez commented, “The fading power of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak’s government leaves Israel in a state of distress. Without Mubarak, Israel is left with almost no friends in West Asia; last year saw its alliance with Turkey collapse. From now on it will be hard for Israel to trust an Egyptian government torn apart by internal strife.”

The ‘pro-West’ Arab regimes chose to ignore India’s strong security links with Israel. But the Arab street never quite understood why India should have thought of learning from Israel the ABC of ‘riot control,’ interrogation techniques, or counter-Intifada skills. Arabs are an extravagantly polite people and they may not agitate against Indian policies but in the hearts and minds of the leadership of the emergent forces in the region such as Hezbollah, Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood — and indeed Iran — there is a sense of bewilderment and hurt.

Is it inevitable?

Our national security czars made serious mistakes — for instance, scheduling of the visit by the Israeli army chief to Jammu and Kashmir in 2008. Now, hard questions need to be asked. Is Israel an indispensable provider of security and intelligence? The South African regime, too, had terrific capabilities and yet we managed to survive without the apartheid regime.

Both principles and expediency combine to dictate that in deference to the overwhelming wishes of the friendly Arab people, India roll back its security tie-up with Israel until the Arab-Israeli problem is resolved. But the challenge seems to be two-fold: a) India’s dependence on the Jewish lobby in the US for garnering influence in Washington’s corridors of power; b) vested interests within our own establishment and among politicians, think tankers and arms merchants.

More fundamentally, make no mistake that it is no longer a question of whether or not the tumultuous events in West Asia herald change. The big question is how profound the changes are going to be. Quite obviously, the alchemy between the regimes and the popular upsurge varies from country to country and the transformation may take different forms. Therefore, as the ancien regimes give way, our challenge will be to establish affinities with the new emerging elites. This is where the Indian reaction to the events in Egypt appears by far inadequate.

There is no trace of ‘anti-Americanism’ so far in the street protests in Egypt. But new geopolitical realities are to be anticipated. Without doubt, there is a ‘new awakening’ in West Asia, which will transmute as a radical shift in the policies of regional states toward the US’ seamless support of Israel.

The Arab-Israeli problem surges to the centre stage. Also, Washington’s strategy to build a phalanx of ‘pro-West’ states to contain Iran has collapsed. Iran’s rise has become virtually unstoppable. All this necessitates a fundamental rethink and reset in the US’ regional policies.

Again, it is highly probable that the ‘New West Asia’ may assume Islamic character. However, to juxtapose Islamism with secularism will be futile. Equally, there could be voices within the establishment who stoke up Manichean fears that waves of radical pan-Islamism are going to sweep our neighbourhood, complicating India’s difficult internal security situation. Such fears are completely unwarranted. Indira Gandhi was astute enough to comprehend the moorings of the Iranian revolution and to empathise with them and her instincts were proved right.

(The writer is a former diplomat)