A true understanding of the historical past helps in appreciating the complexities of current developments. Glib statements, even in an election campaign, have scarce justification, particularly from one as sophisticated and eloquent as Indian Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. He is the one senior BJP leader who has referred to India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru with the respect he deserves but sadly never gets from Mr Jaitley’s less gifted colleagues.
However, in censuring Nehru for turning down a supposed US offer to India of a UN Security Council seat around 1950, Minister erred in ignoring its context and content. Nehru’s visit to the United States in 1949, of which much was expected in the Truman administration was a disaster at the official level but an immense success with the American people who gave him a rousing welcome. So what went wrong? It was the simplistic worldview of President Truman and his Secretary of State Dean Acheson (and others) that, India being a constitutional democracy would join the United States in its unfolding Cold War crusade against the Soviet Union. There had been great admiration in India for President Truman’s predecessor, the great Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s visionary attempt to fashion a new global order with the USSR an essential partner with the US in an enterprise that would require the simultaneous dismantling of the old European colonial empires in the East. Under Truman and Acheson the US commitment to the white man’s burden sowed the seeds of its calamitous policies in South East Asia and the Greater Middle East. That turned out to be the larger problem. The immediate issue for India was the lack of understanding of Indian policy on Kashmir. An official in the State Department, pointing to Nehru’s allegedly inflexible attitude on Kashmir,’ and pointing to ‘national traits which, in time, if not controlled, would make India Japan’s successor in Asiatic imperialism.’ In these circumstances a strong Muslim bloc under the leadership of Pakistan and friendly to the US might afford a balance of power in the South Asia.’
This attitude may have reached its denouement under the Nixon administration, but the malingering blight extended into the first weeks of the George W. Bush administration, when Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld in January 2001, denounced India ‘as a menace to other peoples, including the US, Europe and the countries of Western Asia.
Returning to Nehru and the alleged US offer of a UN Security Council seat to India, if Nehru had fallen for the bait – remembering this was around 1950-51- it would have gratuitously antagonized the Soviet Union, and in hindsight aborted years of fruitful cooperation in the first decades of Indian independence, when with critical Soviet aid, the country’s industrial platform was established as the launch pad for further progress down the line. Nehru told B.N Mullick, India’s intelligence director, that Russian foreign policy was about safeguarding the national interest over ideological solidarity with China. Furthermore, the Soviet veto on Anglo-American resolutions in the UN Security Council. The Indo-Soviet Treaty of Friendship of August 1971, proved an invaluable hedge against American and Chinese heft.
Indira Gandhi faced down the menaces of Washington and Beijing in support of the military regime of Yahya Khan. The rout of the Pakistan army paved the way for the emergence of an independent sovereign Republic of Bangladesh. India had broken free of her shackles to assert her presence in the wider world.
China’s seat in the UN Security Council was a gift of the United States under the Roosevelt dispensation, the French seat by courtesy and pressure of Britain’s wartime Prime Minister, Winston Churchill. The French resistance played a minor role in the Allied war effort; China none at all. British India’s 2.5 million-strong Army was the largest volunteer force in the modern era; it performed with high distinction in Europe, North Africa and Southeast Asia. China is opposed to India’s membership of the Security Council. Such are the paradoxes of the present global order.
UK’s PhD-level work visas
Indians are among the largest category of professionals set to benefit from a British move to remove limits on numbers of PhD level entrants to the country. Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond announced the plan during his Budget speech in the House of Commons, that such quality applicants will have easier access to work visas than those of an average standard. The provision is to take effect later this year. He said a ‘key pillar of our plan is backing Britain remain at the forefront of the technology revolution that is transforming our economy. And to support that ambition, from November this year we will completely exempt PhD-level roles from these caps. From Autumn 2019, PhD-level occupations will be exempt from the Tier 2 (General) cap, and at the same time the government will update the immigration rules on 180 day absences so that researchers conducting fieldwork overseas are not penalized if they apply to settle in the UK.’
According to the most recent Home Office data, Indians are the largest segment of the high skilled professionals within the Tier 2 (General) category of work visas, accounting for 54 per cent of such visas granted in 2018. Indian citizens were the largest to increase their visa applications in the Tier 2 category by 3023, a 6 per cent rise over the previous year.
The British government declaration is perceived as the first step to the abolition of a cap on visas for skilled workers by possibly 2021, when a new immigration system comes into force. ‘Under the new system we will be open to the brightest and the best from India,’ said Immigration Minister Carolyn Noakes, earlier this year.
What is most encouraging is that in the midst of its Brexit convulsions, British ministers have kept their eyes on the ball, that is, on subjects of close national interest that are certain to loom larger as the troubled Brexit negotiations and their outcomes are laid to rest, to fade slowly away from the fevered present to a more tranquil future.
Trump’s March of Folly
Law in any democracy requires the widest possible consultation with all sections of society by the executive authority, after which a draft is placed by a freely elected legislature to debate the provisions contained in the document and then voting on it. Public International law is slightly more complex, as nations through their duly appointed experts discuss the issues before them before arriving at a consensus following the process of codification starts and ends. The International Court of Justice at the Hague is empowered to adjudicate on disputes placed before it. This, in nutshell, is what law and due process are about.
Such considerations do not appear to weigh with the Trump administration in Washington. Caprice is all that counts, with zany figures like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton, not to speak of President Trump himself, issuing cavalier declarations on subjects of which they scarcely have any serious understanding.
Hence the international community is treated to arbitrary pronouncements on the status of Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, the alleged threat from Iran to regional stability, even as the US administration relegated into limbo the appalling assassination of Saudi dissident Jamal Khassoggi on the premises of Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul. Mega billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia were the last word, underlined the true worth of America’s moral values.
Moving a brazen step further, the US Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenfell, a confidant of the US President, has taken it upon himself to lecture the German government on its policies: suspension of oil and gas supplies from Russia in favour of purchases from the United States, increases in defence spending, presumably on US arms etc. Untutored in appropriate diplomatic conduct, his statements have enraged German politicians, some of whom have called for his expulsion. Germans across the board have given vent to rare depth of anger. Germany is not a banana republic, but Europe’s industrial powerhouse.
The endgame could possibly - just possibly - germinate closer German-Russian ties some day. These were once cast in stone by the great nineteenth century German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck and his master the Emperor Kaiser Wilhelm I. His egocentric, foolhardy grandson chose a contrary line; Adolf Hitler went a disastrous step further with his invasion of Soviet Russia, together they guaranteed German defeats in two World Wars – much food for thought, surely.
