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Business News/ Opinion / The charms of multilateralism
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The charms of multilateralism

To influence the emerging world order, India will have to learn to better use the multilateral arena in addition to the bilateral path

A file photo of national security adviser Shivshankar Menon. Photo: HTPremium
A file photo of national security adviser Shivshankar Menon. Photo: HT

Conventional wisdom argues that India regards multilateralism as an arena of the weak while bilateralism favours the strong. As national security adviser Shivshankar Menon noted in a recent lecture to commemorate Indian diplomat extraordinaire, Gopalaswami Parthasarathy, India appears to use multilateralism to promote its values and bilateralism to advance its real national interests. If this is indeed the case (as India’s multilateral behaviour through most of the 20th century suggests), then it has underestimated the crucial role that multilateralism has and can play in furthering national interest.

History is replete with examples of how major powers have sought to use multilateral settings to achieve national objectives in two ways: first, to manage relations with other major powers and, secondly, to manage the world order and relations with weaker states. The former is evident in the blatant display of realpolitik among major powers in such arenas while the latter is often promoted through values that a major power sought to impose to manage the world order and further its own interests.

From at least 1815 onwards, the multilateral setting has been a crucial venue for major states—both established and rising to, on the one hand, try and augment their own power and standing on the international stage while, on the other, to try to reduce the prospect of debilitating conflict among themselves.

The Congress of Vienna (1815) was remarkably successful in enabling the major powers of the day to manage their relations without resorting to a worldwide conflagration for nearly a century till the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.

Similarly, the League of Nations (1919) not only promoted the value of so-called civilized nations to justify the continuing subjugation of the colonies by the major powers, it also attempted to prevent another global war among the major powers. While the League failed spectacularly in the latter objective, it was able to underpin the colonial world order for at least another three decades.

The United Nations (1945), the latest incarnation of the multilateral showground, not only promoted values of the dominant power (the US and its allies), which paved the way for the present Western liberal world order, but was also the primary amphitheatre to prevent direct conflict between the two superpowers. Despite many failings, the UN had managed to prevent great power conflict, so far.

Though India did participate in the San Francisco conference, which established the UN, it has no option but to go along with the rules, norms and values being established by the major powers.

Subsequently, India’s engagement was “normative, moralistic and academic". It chose to promote values such as sovereignty and non-interference at the UN without necessarily leveraging them for its own interest, even when it could have done so.

India’s inability to use the UN and other multilateral settings to further its interest is partly explained by Menon on account of “an acute awareness on our part of the extent and limit of India’s power and its potential usage". Consequently, he observed: “We are very economical in our foreign entanglement but also in our engagements abroad."

A related factor is the inability of India to leverage its values to further its interests; its binary approach to values and interests was ineffective in the 20th century and is certainly not going to work in the new century. For the first time since independence, India has a real opportunity to influence the emerging world order to enhance its own interests. To do so, it will have to closely align its values and interests and also learn to better use the multilateral arena (in addition to the bilateral path). Otherwise, it will have no choice but to follow rules set by others.

W.P.S. Sidhu is a senior fellow at the Center on International Cooperation, New York University. He writes on strategic affairs every fortnight.

Comments are welcome at otherviews@livemint.com

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Published: 24 Nov 2013, 07:24 PM IST
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