“India is already assuming her
responsibilities in securing the Indian Ocean region…A strong India-US
partnership can anchor peace, prosperity and stability from Asia to Africa and
the Indian Ocean to the Pacific.”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, US Congress, 8 June, 2016
Alphen, Netherlands. 10 June. While
Europeans wallow in the mud-pit of endless self-obsession the world moves on.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made Wednesday one of the most important strategic
speeches this century to a joint session of the US Congress. The fifth Indian
prime minister to be accorded such an honour as he spoke I sensed I was
listening to the future. When I have heard British prime ministers make such
speeches of late my sense has been too often of listening to the past. It need
not be like that.
In a
speech that combined humour and realism in equal measure Modi laid out the
terms of what for me is the New West. Now, Indian readers of this blog might
with some force suggest an element of cultural imperialism on my part by even
placing the emerging US-Indian strategic partnership in those terms. After all,
the West, like modern India, emerged from the British Empire, and not always without
struggle.
However,
for all my British chutzpah there is some strength in the idea. For my part I
have long held the West to be an idea, not a place. Indeed, many of my books
and articles have been inspired by that very idea. Indeed, when I cast my
seasoned eye over the world today I see a new global bipolar order emerging,
with liberal power on one side of a struggle with illiberal power the world
over – be it states such as China and Russia, and/or groups such as ISIS.
India
is certainly a twenty-first century great power by any standards. If one
considers economic power the IMF calculates that in terms of nominal GDP in
2015 India had the ninth largest economy, with the US having the world’s largest,
and the British the fifth largest world economy. However, the IMF suggests that
if one considers purchasing power parity in 2015 India had the world’s third
largest economy, after China and the US, with the UK down at eighth. If once
considers military power India is also a Great Power. In 2015 the International Institute for Strategic
Studies placed India as fifth biggest defence spender in the world, after the
US, China, Saudi Arabia and the UK.
It is
liberal-democracy and the rule of just law that is at the heart of the New West.
However, if this West is to prevail it must be reinforced by power – economic and
military. The United States by dint of its very strategic weight is emerging as
the hub of the New West, a world-wide web of democracies that will come to
define perhaps the world’s most powerful security grouping in the twenty-first
century.
However,
for the New West to become fact those of us in the Old West will need to change
our thinking, particularly about India. Some years ago I attended a meeting in
New Delhi with senior Indian politicians. Sitting next to me was an official
from the British High Commission. My thesis was as ever direct; the Raj is
over, India is an emerging Great Power and, for all London’s declinism and its
propensity to view foreign policy as a perpetual strategic apology, Britain
remains a Great Power. Therefore, it is time for Britain and India to celebrate
the much that the two powers share, move on and do business.
As I
spoke I could feel the discomfort from my Foreign Office colleague. For the ‘FCO’
‘don‘t mention the Raj’ with India has the same sacred mantra quality as ‘don’t
mention the war’ with Germany. When I
had finished said official effectively apologised on my behalf for my remarks
by distancing the FCO from them, even though it was not his place to do so. At
that point an Indian politician said that I was right. Britain’s endless apology
for the past was in fact a form of arrogance; an attempt to frame India
eternally in terms of Britain’s past. That must stop.
Prime
Minister Modi made it perfectly clear that India will define its relationship
with the United States and the wider West on Indian terms. It will be a pluralistic
relationship built on strength and respect. He is surely right. However, for
the huge potential in the Indian-US relationship to be truly realised Western
capitals must see India for the power it is. India is still too often viewed
through the lens of post-colonialism by the West. Yes, India has a myriad of
developmental problems to overcome. However, there can be little doubt that the
world’s biggest democracy has the wherewithal to do just that.
The
US-India strategic relationship promises to be one of the most important
security relationships of the twenty-first century – built on the very mix of
power and values needed to shape and not suffer a changing world. If European
powers like Britain and their little leaders could only stop being so pathetic
and wake up and smell India’s strong coffee, they too could be part of the
exciting future Prime Minister Modi’s presence in Congress implied, and part of
a New West (or whatever you want to call it) that India will help define.
Julian
Lindley-French
