Decoding India’s Syria vote

India's recent vote in favour of the UNSC Resolution on Syria is a landmark. While India has largely remained silent on the West Asian question, it seems to have finally taken a concrete stand on the Syrian crisis albeit with a rhetorical qualification. India's yes vote was ostensibly based on humanitarian concerns while it rejected any suggestion that pointed to regime change. India, it would seem, has tried to reconcile its diplomatic posturing with the oft-stated 'righteousness' of the cause. Although this seems to be one of the finest examples of Indian diplomacy, merging realpolitik with morality, a closer look raises questions about the very basis of the decisions that drive India's foreign policy.

Historically, India has condemned any form of interference in the internal affairs of another state unless these 'problems' were exported. More recently, this policy of non-interference has been the basis of India's deafening silence on the so-called Jasmine Revolutions. In Libya, as in Bahrain, India kept absolutely quiet by abstaining from resolutions, offering meaningless statements that were a tour de force of semantic sophistry. Silently calculating, overtly abstaining, India in the past year adopted a 'wait and watch' policy while the rest of the world jumped the gun in the race to facilitate the 'Arab Spring'. In Libya and Bahrain it bore fruit. One wonders what changed in Syria. Why vote against Syria now, rather than abstaining?

It can be argued that India's abstentions during the West Asian mayhem had a lot to do with its significant economic concerns at play there; while in Syria the stakes are considered negligible at best. Though debatable, the appeasement of the Sunni Arab League in their quest to weaken the 'Shia Arc’ can also be cited as a probable reason for the Indian abstention. At best, the Syrian case demonstrates that this vote came cheap for India, both diplomatically and politically, since India gained nothing and lost nothing much. Throwing the occasional scrap of the table to America can now be claimed as India’s ‘contribution’ to the cause of freedom, while gaining brownie points in the Sunni world. In a purely economic sense this is of course true. The long term implications for India however could be disastrous.

Does this ‘vote in favour’ mark a starting point in what could lead to a transition in India’s diplomacy vis-a-vis the policy of non-intervention? Yes, perhaps. A kaleidoscopic explanation based on national interest, exercising diplomatic weight, pining for a UNSC seat by displaying uncouth rationalism, and taking the Indo-US strategic partnership to greater heights can be touted as influencing factors. However, it is essential to highlight what we have lost out on in the bargain. Essentially we have not only given up our long held position on non-interference, we have also given up a certain level of tactical freedom by allowing ourselves to be guided by European-Sunni determined shifting goalposts that mask naked realpolitik under the guise of humanitarianism.

On the one hand, it is indeed commendable that India favoured the resolution on Syria as it was not considered under the Article 42 of the UN Charter, thereby maintaining its position against military action and/or the implementation of blockades by external powers. However, the rhetorical stress on acting on a humanitarian crisis while maintaining its position against regime changes is rather baffling. Given the fact that this was a vote exercised at the behest of some of the most repressive regimes in the world, and that India has remained silent on humanitarian crises of macabre proportions in the past, the MEA has much explaining to do.

In an earlier article we had argued that Indian diplomacy may have fine tuned its act. Syria is proof that we were wrong. The more we witness the severe aberrations in India’s foreign policy, one realises that it is guided by myopic institutionalisation of transactional diplomacy that India has contradictorily advocated against. In hindsight when we look at the major diplomatic “victories” India has scored, we may be forced to pass them off as born of sheer dumb luck rather than some great grand strategy at work. The reality is that India has never really had a grand strategy.