India’s comatose opposition is letting Modi govt’s foreign policy go unchallenged

One of the most striking things about the Ladakh confrontation is how supine India’s opposition parties have been in challenging the Narendra Modi government. Despite its failure to defend Indian territory and reestablish the status quo ante along the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh, and the abysmal failure of its overall China policy, much of the pressure on the Bharatiya Janata Party government has come from an intrepid band of journalists and analysts, rather than from the country’s opposition parties.

So, while the Modi government appears befuddled about handling the Chinese aggression, the sad reality for India is that the opposition is so paralysed it cannot even engage in political mobilisation on a highly emotive issue such as the loss of territory. There is enough hand-wringing about the implications of a weak opposition for the democratic health of the republic. What is being overlooked is that this has implications for India’s foreign policy as well.

Opposition’s critical role

Although making foreign policy is a function of the government, the opposition has a critical role to play in monitoring it.

True, foreign policy generally has low salience among voters. It might be difficult to translate complicated questions of international strategy for political mobilisation. But territorial defence is a simple proposition with an emotional quotient, which makes the task of raising foreign policy issues easier. For an opposition that has found few means of putting the government on the defensive, this should have been a godsend opportunity. The opposition’s inability to challenge the Modi government narrative on the India-China standoff says a lot about the state it is in.

This is not to suggest that a credible and effective opposition can ensure there won’t be any foreign policy mistakes on the part of a democratically elected government. Indeed, because its primary purpose is to oppose, an effective opposition can even push the government in the wrong direction. There are plenty of examples of this in India’s recent diplomatic history: the BJP colluded with the Communist parties to almost scuttle the US-India nuclear deal, even as its leaders assured the US Embassy in 2009 that the party’s opposition to the deal was only tactical. When that effort failed — thankfully — the same opposition parties led the charge for an absurd nuclear liability bill that has ensured that many of the benefits of the nuclear deal remain unrealised.

A more serious problem is that both the conditions India faces and the cultural resources available for foreign policy thinking can limit fresh ideas. Countries do not often make radical changes in foreign policy: throughout the Cold War, Democrats and Republicans in the US differed more on tactics than on overall objectives or strategy. That consistency in foreign policy has been noted in India too, and it limits some avenues for criticism.

Opposition’s corrective function

These examples notwithstanding, the opposition’s role in a democracy’s foreign policy works out in a non-linear way and more as a veto. While they will not be able to create wise foreign policy, they can pull the government back from unwise directions, providing for longer term course correction when foreign policy takes a wrong turn. In India’s own case, the withdrawal from a politically unwinnable war in Sri Lanka in the late 1980s is one example. In the US’ case, domestic opposition to global military overcommitment — Vietnam in the 1970s, and Iran and Afghanistan in recent times — has repeatedly led to rethinking in the country’s foreign policy strategy.

This corrective function of oppositional politics is a unique advantage that democracies have. Its absence is why non-democracies have a harder time in changing directions, even when they are on the wrong strategic path. During the Cold War, for example, the Soviet leadership recognised the dangerous foreign policy consequences of its unviable command economy and the ‘costs of the Soviet empire’. But it faced little domestic pressure to undertake any correction. The same danger now afflicts China: on top of an authoritarian government, China has moved from some limited form of collective leadership to centralised power in the hands of President Xi Jinping. This lack of opposition may be contributing to China’s foolish strategic behaviour, and might explain why China continues to be on a self-defeating path.

Bigger cause for worry today

Although it is often assumed that autocracies are better at managing foreign policy because they do not have an opposition, this is simply not true. As scholar Kenneth Waltz pointed out decades ago, democracies do better than autocracies in framing and carrying out sensible foreign policies. But Waltz himself recognised that not all democracies are the same, suggesting that the US democratic system provided better foreign policy results than the British one. By the same token, the benefits of democracy are unlikely to accrue to systems where there is complete dominance of one party. The danger India faces is that a passive opposition can limit the benefits of the corrective function of foreign policymaking in a democracy.

India’s diplomatic history provides examples for this too. Former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi received a massive mandate in 1984, leaving the opposition in complete disarray. That untrammelled control over foreign policy facilitated the disastrous intervention in Sri Lanka. It was reversed eventually, but only after about 1,200 Indian soldiers were killed. Before that, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s total domination of India’s foreign policy resulted in a China strategy that ended in an unmitigated debacle in 1962. History does not have to repeat itself – even 1962 was not inevitable – but it can suggest some need for concern.

The opposition in 1962, though far weaker than today’s, at least tried to caution Nehru. That can hardly be said of the opposition parties today, and that is a cause for worry.

The author is a professor in International Politics at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. Views are personal.

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