How to Be a Great Power, Cheap by Fareed Zakaria

May 25, 1998, U.S. Edition

How to Be a Great Power, Cheap
India's nuclear testing played well at home. So what if it cost the country immeasurably with the rest of the world?
By Fareed Zakaria

Why did they do it? Most Americans, and many people outside the United States, are utterly bewildered by India's decision to test nuclear bombs last week. Was it a religious statement? Strategic? Nationalistic? The answer is complicated. But the end result is not: the desert detonations were a mistake and they repeat a tragic pattern of Indian diplomacy.

The simple explanation is politics. With this one move, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which rules with a loose coalition and a slim majority, has secured its future. Implementing other parts of its (often radical) agenda would mean angering some segment of Indian society -- Muslims, lower castes, the south. The decision to test annoys only foreigners -- Indians are enthusiastically rallying round the flag. As domestic strategy, the tests were a masterstroke.

The international strategy is also quite understandable. India lives in a tough neighborhood, flanked on one side by Pakistan, with which it has fought three wars since 1947 and with which it has struggled for 50 years to keep control of its northernmost state, Kashmir. On its north-east lies China, a military colossus that invaded India suddenly and successfully in 1962, a defeat that still rankles Indians. Today, China's Army is almost three times the size of India's, its Air Force is more than four times as large and its tank forces more than 2 1/2 times bigger. Both Pakistan and China have nuclear weapons. In addition, China has regularly sold arms and nuclear technology to Pakistan.

Still, testing five nuclear devices will not do much to improve India's strategic situation. Since 1974, when India exploded its first nuclear bomb, the world has known that New Delhi had nuclear capabilities. Short of maintaining a ready nuclear-tipped missile force, this fact does not make for a deterrent against Beijing's vast arsenal of long-range, intermediate and submarine-launched nuclear missiles. China will still be able to dominate India at every level of escalation. And Pakistan is really no more than an irritant; militarily it simply cannot compete. In their last war, in 1971, India liberated Bangladesh and was poised to sweep through all of Pakistan after 13 days. Since then the military imbalance has only increased.

So India's military position after the testing is no better than it was before. And it has outraged the world, alarmed its neighbors, lost moral authority and will have to endure sanctions from the United States, Japan and others, and a chill on foreign investment and economic relations with the world.

For what?

Pride. Ever since its independence -- and especially since the death of its first, towering prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru -- India has believed that it does not get the respect and prominence it deserves in the world. This belief has been growing, quietly but steadily, ever since the end of the cold war. In a world in which America is triumphant, in which globalization and economics reign, India feels out of place, forced to complete in a game it does not like, following rules made up by someone else.

But is it India or its government that feels this way? Much of Indian society is actually very comfortable in today's world of markets, technology, decentralization and pragmatism. India is a land bustling with corner-side entrepreneurs, village technicians and homegrown science. Consider how well Indians do outside India to recognize how readily they take to global capitalism. Pragmatism, not self-righteousness, is the authentic Indian trait. Indian foreign policy, however, has never reflected this national reality. New Delhi's politicians and diplomats have always preferred flamboyant symbolism to farsighted strategy.

The only secure path to great-power status in the modern world is a powerful industrial economy and stable modern society. Even military power, to be truly threatening, must rest on a technologically sophisticated base. (Remember that at the beginning of the gulf war in 1991 Iraq had the world's fifth largest Army.) But rather than place India firmly on this path, New Delhi has always preferred grand gestures that force the world's attention. Whether making sanctimonious speeches at the United Nations, hosting Non-Aligned conferences or organizing the Group of 77 and other forums for heated (and purposeless) anti-Western rhetoric, India's mandarins have always relished the drama of the international stage rather than the hard work behind it. They have sought the cheap route to great-power status.

Imagine if, over the past five decades, India had steadily increased the size of its economy and modernized its society. Today it would be the envy of the world -- a prosperous, technologically advanced democracy. Instead its wasteful economic system muddles on, its politics get increasingly corrupt and the average Indian continues to face a life of almost medieval poverty, sickness and death. But hey, those nuclear explosions were something.