Attention MBA Profs.

Here is a case study waiting to be written on how a sane man can go through the following decision-making process:

First Attempt – Ruby Bhatia

  • Has been an anchor on MTV
  • Has the gift of the gab.
  • Knows nothing about cricket, but can use it to her advantage by asking basic questions in a charming sort of way.
  • Has glamour-value, though opinions may differ on that score.
  • Has no illusions about her role. Is there as a cheer-leader for India.
    Result: Flop

Second Attempt – Mandira Bedi

  • Has never been tested in an anchor role
  • Is often at a loss for words.
  • Knows nothing about cricket, and makes her nervous.
  • Has no glamour-value. She is a mediocre actresss, but she is a better actress than she is a looker.
  • Actually thinks that her role is to match word for word Srikanth’s and Charu Sharma’s incisive analyses (don’t laugh) knows that she can’t and that makes her sit there with a constipated look on her face.
    Result: What did they expect it to be?

I can imagine a sane man making a mistake the first time. But I guess that to learn from your first mistake and make a bigger mistake the second time is beyond any single individual. It requires a committee of sane men.


I am not being sexist by using “man”. For obvious reasons, I can only imagine men making such a dumb decision.

The UNending debate

Suman responds to the UN post. He misunderstands me when he assumes that by “good deal for itself” I mean “bigger slice of the global economic pie.” Yeah that too, but my point would have been clearer if he had chosen an example that involved some government decision-making rather than a private company deciding to invest in India. By a good deal, I meant the kind of deals that are struck when in return for a vote in the security council India extracts yet another promise from the US to yet again lean on Pakistan to rein in its terrorists.

Then he quotes from the UN charter to claim that I am incorrect in assuming that India wouldn’t be joining the Security Council as a representative of Third World countries or in order to achieve World Peace. But he is confusing the UN as it was meant to be with the UN as it is. This dichotomy is not Suman’s fault. It afflicts all legislative bodies. Law-making is supposed to be a process where people debate rationally and come to a conclusion, all the time keeping the national (or international, as the case may be) interests in mind. In practice, it is a place where representatives bargain, negotiate, blackmail and trade and come to some kind of compromise.

This chasm between theory and practice is the reason why capitalists are suspicious of the democratic process. This is also why we support a constitutional government where the basic law is considered immutable and a judiciary to uphold those laws. The problem with the UN is that it is all legislature and no (effective) judiciary, and more importantly, no (effective) laws. So the UN simply cannot perform the tasks that its charter requires it to. The value of the UN is only as an arena for diplomacy. The word “arena” has been intentionally chosen. The operating procedures of the SC, such as they are, are akin to rules governing a wrestling match. So if India gets into the Security Council, it will play by the rules that have been adopted in practice, not the ones laid out on paper.

Then Suman confounds the confusion.
He objects to my use of the term “superpowers” to indicate China, Russia et al. But he does not addres the substance of my argument. I was answering his concerns that by taking part in UNSC power-plays, India will antagonise one or the other power. He argues that the US is a “hyperpower”. Fair enough. But in the very next sentence, he claims that the world is split into two blocs. Which are the two? He does not say, nor does he clarify in what operational senses he uses superpowers and blocs.

If the US is such a hyperpower as he says, then there is no need to engage the other powers. You might as well hitch yourself to US’ coattails?
He links approvingly to Shekhar Gupta’s article which essentially says the same thing – that the UN is useless and that we should go along with the US.

So which is it? Is the US such a hyperpower that the other countries can be ignored? Or are we in a multi-polar world?

Lest this gets too confusing, let me lay out three competing models of the world and then see which one describes reality:

  1. The US not only has hyper powers, it also uses them. What it wants, it gets. It does not talk except to threaten its antagonists with annihilati?n.
    In such a case, the only safe course for a nation to follow is to be beholden to the US. There is no need for the niceties of multilateral institutions.
  2. The powers of the world are engaged in a war of attrition. The conflict is debilitating and if it continues, all the combatants will be in a weakened state, if they are remaining at all. (As the hyperpower, the US will be hurt the least, but it too will be hurt).
    In such a case, the only sane course of action is to keep your head low and hope that you aren’t a victim of a stray bullet.
  3. The world powers are rational actors. They may fight when it suits them, but they will ensure that they do not burn their bridges while they are at it. Traditional diplomacy is possible and you can actually gain something out of it, as against cutting your losses.

Suman’s worldview alternates between 1 and 2, while I claim that we are in a 3. The US is a military hyperpower and an economic superpower, but the two pull in opposite directions. All this talk that the UN exists only because of the sufferance of the US misses the point that if the US didn’t have the UN as an instrument of diplomacy, it would have to resort to gunboat diplomacy. Can the US ensure compliance from North Korea by giving it a 24-hour notice to choose between compliance and nuclear annihilation? Perhaps. It is a hyperpower after all. But will it do so?
Or will it lean on China to instill some sense into North Korea? More likely? I think so. (Look at this article, for example, where the US seems to be actually reluctant to go it alone and wants to take the multilateral route) As long as diplomacy stays relevant, the Security Council (or another similar institution) will be required.

Suman thinks that staying out of international dogfights is an option. I don’t think so, and I think as we have to fight anyway, we might as well gather the required weapons.


There has been talk of the UN becoming irrelevant. Even if it follows the League of Nations into oblivion, the dispute between Suman and me will stay relevant, suitably rephrased. Suman’s arguments can apply to any attempt by India to play a bigger role in multilateral diplomacy. My rebuttal applies there too.

Surely you’re joking JK?

JK says in my comments section

If Arundhati utters a word, we should unleash a massive weblog retaliation against her lies Our MOAB

Actually, I thought I had a better idea. Since ’tis the season for preemptive attack, I thought I’d start first. The Examined Life moles found an advance copy of the essay that she has submitted to the Guardian. The essay is post-dated April 1, 2003

Excerpt:

The dirty family secret that Bush prays will never be published is that Saddam is his alter ego, the Frankenstein’s monster that his father created. While Saddam is going around committing a little genocide here and a little ethnic cleansing there, Bush is trying to live up to the standards set by his creation – locking up people without a trial, squelching free speech and bombing a couple of countries back into stone age to establish a democracy there. And while he is at it, can he direct a couple of his PGMs towards Gujarat where the fascist Hindu Nationalist government led by a certain Narendra Modi is carrying out its own little project of ethnocide in cahoots with the forces of corporate globalisation? While his stormtroopers are creating mayhem buring trains, raping women and demolishing mosques, he is surreptitiously carrying out his hidden agenda of privatising water supply through the sinister Sardar Sarovar Dam project. I’m not holding my breath, however. No bombs will fall on Gujarat. Democracies don’t go to war with each other. They sign business contracts. Am I the only one who finds something nauseating about Dubya colonising a desert nation to pry open its lucrative market for water so that his business partners and the BJP can earn their war profits? Blood may or may not be thicker than water, but it certainly is cheaper, especially when it is blood of Iraqis.

New Layout up

I have tinkered around with the layout of the site. Yazad says that he liked the old version better and Ashwin says that it looks as if I tried to put everything in the same page.
Thanks everyone for the feedback, but I like the new layout more. I was getting sleepless nights because I was wasting space in my leftbar which contained nothing except 4 links for navigation.

Au Contraire Suman

The Kolkata Libertarian argues that India shouldn’t try to be a permanent member of the UN Security Council. I think he is wrong. I think that his entire argument can be summed up as “It is too much trouble”; the reasoning he gives is based on flawed metaphors.
He compares India to the weakest kid in a school and a “pawn” in a chess game. Once you accept those analogies, everything else he says follows.

The problem is that in the international chess game the pawns and the players are interchangeable, and unlike in a schoolyard, the currency of trade in foreign affairs is not just threats, but also inducements.

India won’t and shouldn’t be in the Security Council to achieve world peace or to make the voice of Third World countries heard. It should and will be there to get a good deal for itself. Suman looks on with horror at the situation of those temporary members who have to choose between voting for the US and voting for France. But what is wrong with being wooed by a bunch of superpowers? And what is wrong with your vote being a tradeable commodity? That’s how democracy works. “You vote for me on this issue and I’ll give you concessions on another” And how is it that India ceases to matter if India starts trading its vote?

The last point that Suman makes is the most substantive one, and in my view, cuts to the heart of the dispute.

He says:
The other choice India will have is to permanently hitch its vote to US interests, and trust that rewards from the worlds largest hyperpower will be forthcoming. After all, is this not what the likes of Thomas Friedman wish for? To replace the recalcitrant French with the more pliable Indians.. If India does join the US bandwagon unquestioningly, it faces international criticism from other fronts, placing its hard-won bilateral relationships with Europe, Russia and China in jeapordy

We have different worldviews.
This problem would be real if the world were split into two mutually irreconcilable blocs, as it was when the US and the USSR were at each other’s throats. In such a situation, supporting one of the blocs on any one issue would mean earning the permanent enmity of the other bloc[1]. In such a situation, we’d have been probably better off staying neutral than taking a stand on any issue [2].

But that is not true now. The Iraq issue won’t be forgotten next year, but the next year will bring in new problems. Perhaps on an issue involving Pakistan, India and Russia will be pitted against US and China. In?an issue involving Taiwan, India and the US will be pitted against China, and so on. No one, not even superpowers can afford to hold permanent grudges now. There will be a lot of calling in of debts, trading of favours and putting of pressure.

Yes, there will be pressure. Suman would be right if India were an extremely immature nation with no notion of how to conduct an independent foreign policy. India has stood up to pressures. It has resisted pressure to accept mediation on Kashmir, it has exploded nuclear bombs and hasn’t given a damn to “world opinion”, to name just two of its antics. Its relation with other superpowers is one of mutual (albeit asymmetrical) interdependence.

  1. As may be immediately seen, this is a highly simplified view of the cold war situation. Even then, the choices weren’t as clear cut as the scenario makes it out to be.
  2. Actually even staying neutral is a tough call. The question of whether it is less tough than taking a stand is an open one. For example, what happens if we are happily neutral and some crony of the big bully picks up a fight with us? Do we give in or do we hitch with the other bully? In any case this problem would be there with practically every foreign policy decision, not just with voting in the Security Council.
  3. Suman is also somewhat misrepresenting Thomas Friedman’s views. The relevant part is:
    Why replace France with India? Because India is the world’s biggest democracy, the world’s largest Hindu nation and the world’s second-largest Muslim nation, and, quite frankly, India is just so much more serious than France these days. France is so caught up with its need to differentiate itself from America to feel important, it’s become silly. India has grown out of that game. India may be ambivalent about war in Iraq, but it comes to its ambivalence honestly. Also, France can’t see how the world has changed since the end of the cold war. India can.

The Debate continues: Suman respondshere and I rebut him here