India, France, and Germany
Steven Menashi :: 5/29/2003

"Recent global developments have yet again emphasised the importance of evolving a cooperative multi-polar world order," Indian prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee said in Germany yesterday. "I believe that the recent events have again underlined that the United Nations and its organisations need to be made more reflecting of modern political realities. Both India and Germany have definite views on this and legitimate interests." Thomas Friedman, you might remember, suggested last February that India replace France on the United Nations Security Council -- to make it more "reflecting" of political realities. But Friedman's realities included India's status as the world's largest democracy and its being "just so much more serious than France these days." Wrote Friedman:

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.

But now Vajpayee is off on a tour of France, Germany, and Russia for, as The Times of India puts it, "bilateral discussions on Iraq's future." And Vajpayee's talk about reforming the United Nations -- explicitly tying it to Germany's interests as well -- is not about adapting the institutions to the reality of a post-Cold War, unipolar world. As he himself emphasized, it's part of a strategy of "evolving a cooperative multi-polar world order" -- that is, constraining U.S. power through multilateral institutions. If India adopts this French agenda, it will forfeit the seriousness that distinguishes the country from France.

Shri Yashwant Sinha, India's external affairs minister, has emphasized that "India has the ability to emerge as a great power and the will and determination to achieve this goal." Some months back, C. Raja Mohan noted that the impending decline of Cold War institutions opened an opportunity for India to push for its own "place at the high table in world affairs." But India, pace Friedman, hasn't fully embraced the end of the Cold War, and remains attached to a foreign policy of "non-alignment." Non-alignment? Between whom? The answer may be in Vajpayee's trip to France, Germany, and Russia.

The last time India clung to a non-alignment policy, it became, essentially, a client of the Soviet Union. India's deputy prime minister will visit Washington on June 9. Maybe we'll get some idea of where their current non-alignment policy is going.