End of moral diplomacy?

When Woodrow Wilson averred that “the force of America is the force of moral principle", advocating that the Wilsonian diktat of “moral diplomacy” must try to advocate democracy and peace and condemn imperialism, and that the United States would be “but one of the champions of the rights of mankind” he was not the only one who wanted American foreign policy to be guided by a moral compass. In 1937, Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared, “there must be recognition of the fact that national morality is as vital as private morality.”

But as history has testified, America has done no such starry-eyed thing. From the very beginning of the State of Israel in 1948, the Israelis have committed mass-murder with active support from Americans with the death of over 100,000 Palestinian people. At least 200,000 people in Iraq have been estimated to have been killed directly from the 1991 terror campaign led by the US/British forces in the most concentrated aerial bombardment in the history of the world.

In 1992, the American terror campaign began with the American/German sponsored subversion and break-up of Yugoslavia and subsequent civil war in Bosnia. By 1999 the entire civilian population and infrastructure of Yugoslavia had been bombed, as for 78 days and nights in the Spring of 1999, United States Air Force and Navy pilots rained death indiscriminately upon women and children, old men and women shopping in marketplaces, passengers in trains, people in cars and buses, people in schools, patients in hospitals – anyone and everyone – everywhere in Yugoslavia with NATO/KFOR occupation troops standing idly by, watching sympathetically as Albanian extremists kidnapped, publicly beat, murdered and tortured Serbs, Roma and Jews, burning down their houses and dynamiting centuries-old Christian churches. Over 200,000 non-Albanians were "ethnically cleansed" from Kosovo with America's total blessing. 
 
No, India is not guilty of any such thing. But the moral imprimatur of championing the cause of the poorer countries being its birthmark, it is expected that India would prize moralism in its foreign policy over realpolitik when a grave humanitarian crisis would evolve. The simple point is when there is a glaring act of omission India must have the moral courage to align with a cause and not with a nation. India should remember that any wilful forfeiture of the moral high ground is not pragmatism but opportunism and they are not alike. 
 
In somewhat sharp contrast to India’s traditional focus on multilateralism and strong support of the United Nations during the Cold War, as an observer noted, India’s performance on the multilateral level today is surprisingly thought to be less effective than in the bilateral realm. In all of the above cited instances, India at best demurred which remained way short of a sturdy condemnation or took an evasive, ambiguous stand. 
 
For instance, India opposed NATO's intervention in Yugoslavia's civil war in 1999 on the grounds that it amounts to interference in the latter's internal affairs, arguing that a military campaign against Yugoslavia, will seriously undermine the authority of the entire United Nations system. India, let it be noted, did not oppose, NATO intervention on solid moral grounds but on legalistic grounds. It could argue that the killing of civilians with the justification that it will protect the human rights of other civilians was morally indefensible. It could not say that NATO’s war was due to Yugoslavia’s resistance to the broader trends of political and economic reform — not the plight of the Kosovar Albanians and not to stop persecution of Muslims by Serbs and Serbia.
 
When the US-led coalition bombed Afghanistan in 2001, India did not oppose mass starvation as a deliberate US policy. Earlier too, India's influence was undercut regionally and internationally by the perception that its friendship with the Soviet Union prevented a more forthright condemnation of the Soviet presence in Afghanistan.
 
Recently again, we saw a display of our gravitation towards “enlightened self-interest” at the altar of our moral voice. After its initial ambivalence over the Palestine issue, which manifested in the vote against Israel at UNHRC in support of a UN resolution to launch a probe into the country's offensive on Gaza and condemning the "disproportionate use of force", soon after it tried to block a debate in Parliament over the Gaza conflict, the government recently reassured the Arab world that India will continue with its "strong political" support to the Palestinian cause. 
 
What is interesting is that while India tries to keep on board both West Asia and Israel. West Asia because Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia are the biggest oil and gas suppliers for our country. Israel is important because it is tied to India in a multidimensional “strategic partnership” emerging as one of India’s most important sources of sophisticated military equipment and weapons systems. Such an approach betrays an inconsistency to both sides it seeks to befriend. It lends credence to the notion that India is supportive of Israel’s actions, or that it believes that the Palestinian crisis is such a complex ethno-religious political conflict over land and resources that it is futile to condemn a violence that the world cannot resolve. Why take sides and risk antagonising a country essential to refurbishing India’s security establishment, asks the pragmatic school.
 
If pragmatism is the alibi by which India seeks to justify its double-speak, India seeking to gloss over the fact that the Israeli military routinely inflict many times the amount of damage on Gaza that the ragtag guerrilla bands of Hamas could ever inflict on Israel, or the apparent relish the Israeli military seem to enjoy in destroying Arab lives must not have been overlooked by the Arab world. Launching the first India-League of Arab States Media Symposium recently, Sushma Swaraj reemphasised on the need for deepening of trade ties with the Arab world. “Our national and energy interests are certainly important; but more important is the human bond," she said.
 
If she genuinely meant it, India must be wary of a foreign policy solely based on accretion and entitlement that seeks to leverage strategic gains with bloodshed. 

The author is a teacher and social commentator