Politics
Be Sensible
N V Subramanian
Jul 13, 2015, 06:30 PM | Updated Feb 11, 2016, 10:21 AM IST
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There is no need to hype Narendra Modi’s meeting with Nawaz Sharif.
Democracies tend to exaggerate the outcomes of foreign engagements if they have the smallest chance to sway or satisfy domestic public opinion. The link between domestic public opinion and foreign policy is usually tenuous. The first influences the second as it does most everything else. But the reverse does not always hold true and most often doesn’t.
Nevertheless, democratic leaders grow up with the notion that foreign policy does have a bearing on public opinion. This is more the case when domestic opinion drives foreign policy in an all-advised direction. World War I-weary Europe desired no more conflicts. Neville Chamberlain succumbed to popular pressure at home and appeased Nazi Germany in the hope it would not go to war. It prosecuted the biggest and bloodiest war the world has ever seen.
Many decades after that epic tragedy, democratic leaders are no wiser to linking public opinion with foreign policy. The malady most recently manifested with the Barack Obama administration. To prop up the Democratic Party in the presidential election, Obama showcased a nuclear deal with Iran which looked too rosy and optimistic when first unveiled and seems positively unattainable now.
By a miracle, it may still get done. But if the outcomes hadn’t been so exaggerated in the first place, even modest progress would have taken Iran and the United States a long way on the rapprochement road. Sadly, democracies in their engagement with quasi-democracies and dictatorships seem all too eager to please public opinion. All they may excite for their labours is indifference and cynicism at worst.
This phenomenon has now been noticed in the optics surrounding the Narendra Modi-Nawaz Sharif meeting in Russia. As meetings go, it is scarcely a breakthrough; Sharif wanted one and got it. For good reason, India broke off with Pakistan. Nothing has apparently changed to merit re-engagement. Government PR cannot alter this desultory reality.
The simple point is that Pakistan’s political leadership has no control over the country’s destiny. The military holds the whip hand followed by military-backed terrorist groups like the Lashkar-e-Toiba and non-state actors such as the Pakistani Taliban. Politicians of Nawaz Sharif’s ilk are witless spectators to this takeover of the state.
In the scant and shrinking political space that remains, the judiciary and the legislature vie for supremacy. Public opinion is on the side of judges against elected politicians who are perceived as venal, corrupt and frequently anti-national. The sub-continental political culture equally affects India and Pakistan.
Prime Minister Modi is not so naive as to believe a single meeting with Nawaz Sharif, however well grounded and organized, will on a sudden make Pakistan a reliable and trustworthy neighbour. Indubitably the prime minister is better armed with intelligence and insights than this writer and anyone else outside government. But they cannot be so transformational as to compel immediate resumption of full-scale ties. Officials accompanying the prime minister have admitted to lingering and widespread suspicions in Modi’s frank discussions with Nawaz Sharif.
In a deeply interconnected world, neighbours cannot remain locked in a rising spiral of hostility. But who has raced up animus in the India-Pakistan dynamic? India cannot have meaningful relations with Pakistan till it exports terror and harbours terrorists like Dawood Ibrahim, Hafiz Saeed and Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi. Nawaz Sharif has no means to control them or indeed to give up to India.
In a summit of world leaders, it would have been churlish of Modi to ignore Nawaz Sharif. They met and Modi agreed to travel to Pakistan next year. A lot can happen in that time. Prime Minister Modi should not raise false hopes. The Bharatiya Janata Party must desist from untimely celebrations.
It is wise to be sensible.
This piece was originally published at newsinsight.net
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N.V.Subramanian is the Editor of www.newsinsight.net and writes on politics and strategic affairs.
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