Domestic politics, factionalism holding back India: US official

Richard N Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations and an erstwhile senior administration official, has predicted that domestic politics and factionalism will hold back India from becoming a major player in the global arena.
 
Haass made the comments at a breakfast meeting with a few select journalists to discuss his article, The Age of Nonpolarity, appearing in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs.

He said that the challenge to India, including its continued economic growth "more than anything else, is going to be Indian politics—and its factionalism, to use a word that our founders used, at the national level."
 
Haass, who was in India recently and was witness to the political bickering over the India-United States civilian nuclear deal, also argued that the challenge to India emerging as a global player would be "the tension between the central level and the periphery."
 
"India just has so many fault lines within its parties and between and among its parties—in between national and regional, if you will, institutions," he said, and added, "That to me is the biggest question. Whether India's political system can essentially overcome some of these divisions and rivalries."
 
Haass has written and edited ten books on American foreign policy, with his most recent book being, The Opportunity: America's Moment to Alter History's Course. He was the director of policy planning for the State Department from 2001 to 2003, where he was principal adviser to then Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Haass acknowledged that in this regard, this kind of factionalism was essentially the question Newsweek Editor Fareed Zakaria raised about the United States, in the same May/June issue of Foreign Affairs. In his article, Zakaria had wondered, "whether the increasingly factionalised American political system can accommodate globalisation and the challenges that we face."
 
"It's interesting, because we're two large democracies," he added.
 
Haass said that in addition to these fault lines, "India is only 60 years old and has enormous infrastructure limitations that anyone traveling from any airport in India to any city in India can attest to. It obviously faces the enormous challenge of still hundreds of millions of people living below poverty levels, real problems in rural areas and so forth."
 
He pointed out that "India's challenge is fundamentally different," from that of China.
 
When asked if India's economic growth and its role as a global player would be linked to a strategic partnership with the United States, Haass argued, "I don't, in terms of India, use words like alliance."
 
"Indeed, I believe that alliances in the future will play less of a role in this era of history—that I've described as non-polarity—than they have in the past, because what alliances tend to require are clear, predictable threats in predictable places and clear sets of obligations about what's to be done about them. I believe we're entering a period of history where that's not going to be the case."
 
Haass cited the example of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. "NATO, for the first 40 years of its existence, was a traditional alliance. In NATO parlance, it focused on Article 5—collective defense against the common enemy: The Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact, essentially in the confines of Europe."
 
According to him, "NATO, in its current incarnation, is really a collective security organisation that deals with threats everywhere but Europe. For the most part, in NATO's parlance, it deals much more with the choice rather than obligations of members. And I think that sort of flexibility or uncertainty is much more characteristic of this era."
 
Haass was the special assistant to President H W Bush from 1989 to 1993 and senior director for Near East and South Asian Affairs on the National Security Council. He was awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal in 1991 for his contributions to the development and articulation of US policy during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

"For India, the real question, again, is continued economic integration, which it's having. But the real question is internal for India. And that will be, if there are ceilings on India's emergence as a major power. I think, really think, it's largely internal."
 
Haass argued, "The one exception, I'd say, is the state of Pakistan. I actually think Pakistan is a real political liability for India in the sense that if Pakistan were ever to become—I'm not predicting it—but if it ever were to become a failed state or if Indo-Pakistani relations once again deteriorated to where they were in the not-so-distant past, that could be a real limit and real distraction and a real absorber of Indian energies and resources. And, that would be a tragedy not just for Pakistan, but for India as well."
 
"In a funny sort of way," he said, "we all have a stake in Pakistan's non-failure. By we, I mean India, the United States and everyone else—and obviously, the Pakistanis."