April 19, 2011 ☼ Foreign Affairs ☼ global governance ☼ international relations ☼ paper ☼ power projection ☼ Public Policy ☼ Security ☼ subcontinent
This is an archived blog post from The Acorn.
My paper, The Paradox of Proximity - India’s approach to fragility in the neighbourhood is the first of a series of papers published by New York University’s Center for International Cooperation on rising non-Western powers’ policies towards fragile states. It was prepared with inputs from Sushant K Singh, my Takshashila colleague.
From the introduction:
The risks posed by fragile states have moved to the centre-stage of Western security consciousness only in recent years, fundamentally as the result of globalisation and precipitously due to the 9/11 attacks on the United States. The threats posed by fragile states to the Western countries are palpable and proximate—for instance, in the form of terrorist plots, influx of refugees and organised crime—but their origins of the threats are relatively remote and distant. Western policymakers and publics, therefore, enjoy a certain geographical and temporal insulation, not only allowing for detached analysis but also allowing a broader range of policy options.
It is different for India. Both its immediate and its extended neighbourhoods consist of several states that in the turbulence of transition, contending with institutional weaknesses, political fragility and governance failure. For India, history and proximity turn what might have been largely matters of foreign policy into a number of inter-connected issues of domestic politics.
It is nearly impossible for India’s policymakers to detach the approach towards a nearby fragile state from a panoply of domestic political considerations. From a security perspective, the range and intensity of threats increases with proximity; but so too, the number of domestic political constituencies that have a stake in the game. Even within the Indian government, neighbourhood policy is shaped by a large number of agencies across federal, state and sometimes even district levels. Given that domestic policy outcomes in parliamentary democracies like India are generally political resultants of the complex interplay of political forces, there are limitations on the timeliness, coherence and effectiveness of India’s response.
Therein lies the paradox of proximity: having a fragile state in the neighbourhood makes it important for you to intervene, but there are structural constraints to your ability to do so.
This essay examines motivations, constraints and processes that shape India’s policy towards fragile states. It aims to show that addressing state fragility in the vicinity is a vastly more challenging project than managing risks emanating from distant ones. It begins with an overview of India’s contemporary motivations for engagement and intervention in the turbulent geopolitics of southern Asia. It identifies the various types of interventions India has engaged and attempts to derive the underlying features of India’s approach. The policy process is discussed next, analysing how drivers, constraints and players affect decision-making. We conclude with a brief assessment of how India’s policy towards fragile states, both proximate and distant, might change as India becomes a middle-income country with global interests.
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