Of Democracies,Wars and Responses to War: A Comparative Perspective on War and Security in India and the United States

Introduction

War has been a fact of life since time immemorial. It is a historical reality that force has been used by communities against other communities to deprive them of territory or possessions, as also in the cause of empires. The destructiveness of war and the growth of religions that were not based on the concept of ‘an eye for an eye’ led to thinking on moral justifications for war and the concept of jus ad bellum and jus in bello (just war and just cause/conduct of war), which involved justifying war in terms of ‘good’ versus ‘evil’, often transforming a so-called ‘just’ war into a ‘holy’ or crusading war. The corollary to this meant vilifying ‘evil’, that is, demonising the opponent. While these are Western/Christian concepts, the ancient Hindu scriptures/mythologies also speak of dharma yudhha or war that is part of one’s moral obligation since it is fought against ‘evil’ or adharma. Major wars in modern times in which Western countries have been implicated have also been justified in terms of ‘saving the world for democracy’, implicitly demonising non-democracies that have opted for war and violence against a democracy. However, ‘democracy’ was not involved in wars between and in developing countries; here, war and conflict appear to be part of the nation-building process, which may include preservation of sovereign territory from external enemies or internal insurgents.

While history is full of examples of wars fought for many reasons between empires and kingdoms and for conquering ‘virgin’ territory which was actually not ‘virgin’ territory but inhabited by people inferior in military skills to that of the conquerors, ideological justifications have been put forward for major wars in the twentieth century, that is, ‘democracy’ has been pitted against fascism, totalitarianism and communism, and in each case, the Western world promoted democracy as a ‘just’ cause despite the fact that Western countries, for a large part of that century still held many countries of the world in bondage as colonies. Towards the end of the century, the end of the Cold War was seen as a victory for democracy and perhaps the ‘end of history’ as liberal democracy may constitute the ‘endpoint of man’s ideological evolution’ (Fukuyama 1992). An offspring of this idea, which was actually suggested even earlier, was that democracies rarely, or even never, go to war with each other (Doyle 1983a, 205–235; 1983b, 323–353, 1997; Weart 1998). In this context, it should be pointed out that so far, world geopolitics has placed democracies of the same or similar type on the same side, especially in correlation to the existence of countries that were un-democratic and even anti-democratic. However, it has been suggested that if all the countries of the world were to become democratic, democracies may find different criteria to identify friends and foes. To give an example, at the height of the Cold War, Americans tended to view Japan as a liberal democracy moulded roughly in their own image, but as soon as Japan became an economic major power, they began to ‘discover’ that Japanese politics were less liberal than they had previously thought (Walt 1999). This implies that the world, perhaps, has not reached the ‘end of history’ stage and that if the United States (US), the best example of a Western liberal democracy today, were to face a democracy with roughly equal capabilities, both sides may find ways to place the other outside its own democratic ‘in-group’. Wars will be fought in the future as they have been fought in the past, and justifications will be made that will try to portray the ‘out-group’ as ‘evil’. The criteria for going to war in the twentieth century and even now have often been to defend democracy and its values or to promote democracy where it does not exist, but this may change with increasing democratisation.

In this context, it is worth mentioning that no two democracies are alike; each republic shapes its government to its needs. It is, therefore, easier to create in-groups and out-groups. Even ‘Western democracies’ do not share the same characteristics though they are bunched together. The United Kingdom (UK) is more of a welfare state than the US, and France and Germany differ not only from each other but also from the US and the UK. When it comes to non-Western democracies, India is perhaps among the oldest and it is certainly the world’s largest in terms of population; however, the system of reservations and quotas that India has followed since independence, guided by the Directive Principles of State Policy embedded in its Constitution, which gives certain groups privileges and advantages over others, would make its democratic credentials doubtful in some Western circles. In the US, affirmative action programmes which verged on ‘quotas’ were challenged and disallowed right after their introduction as being unconstitutional; in India, the statesmen who framed the Constitution thought it necessary to add some extra weight to the rights of previously deprived groups in the Constitution itself so that they can join the mainstream without the historical baggage of disadvantages. The US too had similar deprived and disadvantaged groups, but its Constitution was written at a time when slavery was permitted even though it declared itself a republic. Later constitutional amendments were subverted, denying African-Americans their citizenship rights for a century after the civil war. While the institution of quotas is controversial and debatable, it is noteworthy that India has tried to follow an ameliorative policy towards its previously deprived groups; on the other hand, it is also noteworthy that it was only after the passage of the Civil Rights Acts in 1964 and 1968 that America can actually be called a true liberal democracy since till then a large section of its citizens had been denied their basic civil rights. In fact, even when it comes to the ‘other half’ of the world’s population, that is, women, Western democracies have been rather late in giving them the right to vote, which is one of the prerequisites of citizenship rights—some enacting legislation to this effect only in the 1950s and even as late as the 1970s. As such, most Western countries were in effect ‘illiberal democracies’ till well into the second half of the twentieth century, a term that they now apply to some non-Western and emerging democracies.

Thus, there being different kinds of democracies and not-so-democratic behaviour over the past decades by ‘accepted’ liberal democracies, the chances of war between states, even ‘democratic’ ones, are still strong, because what is needed is a justification for war. International relations is based on power relations even today, and the use of power to maintain dominance—over resources, against weaker neighbours, etc.— will continue, especially in the context of new and emerging challenges. This article will examine some of the challenges facing the world’s most populous democracy, India, and the world’s oldest democracy, the US, and attempt an evaluation of the responses of these two democracies to these challenges. Both are democracies, but they have different geopolitical and geostrategic compulsions based on many factors, not the least of which is where they are geographically situated. The challenges they face are different, and in a manner, these have been historically shaped. While the US today has responded with war (or war-like actions threatening war) to situations negative to their well-being, India has not and cannot counter similar challenges with the same response. The contention here is that the US fights wars—even in far-flung areas which do not threaten America’s territory—based on a Realist assessment of geopolitics to maintain its power, supremacy (both economic and political) and dominance in the world; India, so far, has fought wars to maintain its territory, and sovereignty over its territory. The US uses ideological justifications for its wars, even though they are actually fought to promote and maintain American power; India fights conventional wars for its survival as a state with its borders intact. And finally, the US, when faced with war, uses the draft and curtails the civil liberties of at least some sections of its citizens; India has so far not quite done so, though it has passed certain draconian legislations that give power to the government and to the armed forces particularly which overrule certain rights of people, especially in areas that are declared ‘disturbed’. However, the Indian government has not imposed any restrictions on criticism except during the emergency, and its laws have been the subject of severe censure. It has also not gone against international norms while dealing with enemy combatants or enemy ‘noncombatants’ or terrorists caught in the act of mass slaughter, using the justification of national security.

US Response to War

The US and India have very different geostrategic locations. The US is cocooned by two vast oceans on two sides and friendly non-nuclear states with which it has strong collaborations on its other two borders, thus giving it relative security from external enemies. In contrast, India has a hostile neighbour, Pakistan, which till 1971 was present across two borders. There have been four wars with that country and several war-like posturing and stand-offs. Apart from that, China, across another border, seriously humiliated India in one war and claims territory that belongs to India not only in the north but also in the North-east. Both these neighbours have nuclear arms. Its other neighbours have often given succour to insurgents from India who find safe havens in Myanmar, Bangladesh and even Bhutan and Nepal. South Asia has been described as a ‘dangerous place’ by American diplomats and analysts and India, though not at the centre of the storm, often has to bear the effects of the storm. Moreover, India has enough internal problems of its own. Due to the historical baggage of nation-formation under the divide and rule policies of the British colonial rulers, and also partially because statehood was more of an imposition from above than a growth from ‘below’, sub-nationalist groups have challenged India’s sovereignty over different parts of the country since its independence. Insurgencies have raged in the North-east from the 1950s, and to this has been added the issue of Kashmir where Pakistani support for sub-nationalist tendencies based on religion have further muddied the waters. Insurgencies have resulted in terrorist acts against the state and also against common citizens, and the porous borders of India have helped terrorists to plan attacks and take refuge across the border in states either hostile to India or have their own agendas vis-à-vis their larger and more powerful neighbour. Issues of poverty, corruption and poor governance have added to India’s misfortunes and created new insurgencies as perceptions of marginalisation have alienated sections of the population from the state and made them more amenable to alternative ideologies. As such, the challenges that face India cannot be compared to those of the US, which has been relatively isolated from external threats and internal disturbances in recent years. However, the US is a much older democracy and it too faced its own share of internal disgruntlement—its emerging pangs as a nation state—which was manifested in the Civil War when the South wanted to break away from the Union and form a separate Republic.

The response to this challenge to the Union was full-fledged war. What is worth noting here is that from early times, the reaction of the US to perceived threats and challenges appears to have been war. Sometimes these challenges (unlike the one in 1860) have had nothing to do with threats to the American heartland; yet, the US has viewed these as long-term threats and has responded with war. Given that its geographical position provides it with a kind of natural protection and its nuclear strike capability deters other nuclear states, there have been only three times in the entire history of the US that US territory was directly attacked by an external power or non-state actor—1812 (when the British attacked the mainland), 1940 (when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii) and 2001 (when the al-Qaeda launched terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon); yet it has fought directly in several wars from the late nineteenth century (and this is discounting its earlier wars of expansion) and indirectly through proxy forces supplied by US arms and other ancillary assistance in many more. The US was too weak in 1812 to fight the British, though it was its indirect help to the French in the Napoleonic wars that caused the British to land on American soil. In fact, this incident led to the Monroe Doctrine and a long period of isolation that the US used to fight wars against Mexico and American Indians (its ‘expansionist’ wars) to spread its sovereignty over the whole of what is the US today. These were justified under various criteria, later grouped together under the rubric of ‘manifest destiny’. It is only after its successful westward expansion that the US turned its vision on world affairs, beginning with the Spanish–American war, which it need not have fought, because it did not involve American territory but Spanish possessions in the Western world, the Pacific and South-east Asia; however, the Monroe Doctrine was invoked and the then president, William McKinley, used this war to attach a number of Spanish possessions including Guam, Puerto Rico and the Philippines to the US, all of them far from America’s shores. Interestingly, the actual surrender of Manila took place after the Spanish–American armistice was signed, so technically the US should have stopped all fighting. However, it paid Spain $20,000 and decided to annex the Philippines. The justification for this was to ‘educate and Christianise’ the Filipinos. The Filipinos, incidentally, were already ‘Christianised’ by the Spanish, and the policy-makers, if not the American public, were surely aware of that.

The next important war that the US participated in was the First World War and the reasons for joining that have been hotly debated. While the war did not affect American territory, it certainly affected American trade and shipping; when the US declared war on Germany, however, President Wilson condemned German submarine warfare as ‘warfare against mankind’ and urged Americans to fight to make the world ‘safe for democracy’. Analysts like Arthur S. Link have emphasised the strategic situation of the US as the leading industrial and financial power and America’s role in this context, even though they also focus on Wilson’s appropriation of the role of leadership of the liberal movement, that is, the pro-democracy faction in a world still under the tutelage of monarchs in significant parts and metropolitan powers in others (Link 1965). The Second World War was different in the sense that American territory (Pearl Harbor in Hawaii) was directly attacked. What needs to be remarked on is the use of the atom bomb, not once but twice, to end the war. The use of excessive force has become part of the way that Americans wage war, though they have not used nuclear bombs since 1945.

During the Cold War, its two main wars—the Korean and the Vietnam wars—were both justified by the US in terms of ‘containing’ communism, that is, to prevent the spread of an ideology other than its own. Both countries were far away and whether they became Red or not may have mattered little in the long run and in any case, half of Korea and the whole of Vietnam ultimately did become communist despite the US war strategy. The underlying reason for American intervention in these two cases was more important from the Realist viewpoint, and that was the spread of Soviet influence in a bipolar world. The point is that US response to a perceived threat to its power from the Soviet Union and China, which was then a Soviet ally, was war.

The US is a democracy, but its response to perceived threats to its influence during the Cold War period led it to clandestinely overthrow democratically elected governments in Guatemala and Chile because of suspicions that they may ‘go communist’. After the removal of President Arbenz of Guatemala, who was actually democratic and wanted democratic reforms but was branded a communist for his efforts, Vice President Richard Nixon flew in to congratulate the new president. A rule of dictatorial generals followed, who were supported by the US and during whose presidencies, thousands of Guatemalans lost their lives as a result of death squad activity. America’s so-called democratic credentials also led them to give covert assistance to the contras in Nicaragua against the leftist Sandinistas, to the undemocratic government in El Salvador against the rebel (leftist) Farabundo Marti de Liberacion Nacional (FMLN), and further away, to South Africa to fight their war for them in Angola by assisting the UNITA against the (Soviet-supported) MPLA, apart from propping up dictators like Siad Barre in Somalia (after Somalia had fought a war to gain territory against the leftist government in Ethiopia). Their covert assistance helped to fuel civil wars, the effects of which are being felt even today. US foreign policy was coloured by the East–West lens and in its Realist assessment of ‘dangers’ to America, democracy took a bad beating—it did not matter whether ruthless dictatorships were being propped up as long as it served America’s security, economic and great power interests. Thus, American marines were sent into Grenada to bring about a regime change even though the then government had come to power through elections; its crime was that it was a left-leaning government. A very revealing award-winning documentary by John Pilger, The War on Democracy, using live footage, shows how the US actually undermined democracy in Latin America, and rebukes American intervention in the democratic politics of foreign countries and its ‘war on terrorism’ (Pilger 2007). It shows a former Defence Department official, Douglas McKinnon, saying on Fox TV in more recent times that Hugo Chavez, the many time elected president of Venezuela, poses an ‘extreme threat’ to the US, and that he should have been killed years ago. The real threat, according to Pilger, was ‘an orchestrated paranoia in the United States that became a super cult called anti-communism’ (Pilger 2007). The justification given by the US was that it was ‘saving the world for democracy’, with freedom and liberty for all people thrown in for good measure as can be judged from presidential speeches ranging from those of Lyndon Johnson to Ronald Reagan.

In the post–Cold War years, the ‘orchestrated paranoia’ has focused on terrorism, particularly of the Islamist type. The attacks on the American heartland on 11 September 2001 were indeed reprehensible, but the American response too was overwhelming, with full-fledged wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, where apart from non-existent threats from al-Qaeda, the proliferation of non-existent weapons of mass destruction was used as a justification for regime change. While the Afghan case may be justified, the 2003 Iraq war cannot be defended by the reasons that America has expressed. The more recent case of helping the opposition to overthrow the Gaddafi regime in Libya (which amounted to taking sides in what was essentially the internal problem of a sovereign country) too appears to have stemmed from a desire to have regimes pliant to Western interests in place, so that their access to vital resources remains assured. Democratic thinking seems to play little or no role in America’s post–Cold War wars since issues like state sovereignty and the laws of war take second place to America’s geostrategic interests, even though subsequent to devastating destruction and regime change, the US has taken up democratising projects in the target countries. While around 3,000 people were killed in the 9/11 incidents, over 1 million humans are said to have lost their lives in the American response. Moreover, these wars may have had a reverse effect and could end up leading to more Muslim extremists becoming anti-West terrorists (Bergen and Reynolds 2005).

Another issue that needs to be mentioned in the context of war and security regards America’s attitude towards its own citizens during times of war. Here too, history is fraught with controversial matters. The case of the internment of Americans of Japanese origin during the Second World War is well known—they were termed as ‘enemy aliens’ and about 110,000 were placed in detention camps. The decision to do this was upheld by the US Supreme Court in Hirabayashi vs. United States (1942) and Korematsu vs. United States (1944). It was only much later in 1988 that the US government passed the Civil Liberties Act which ‘acknowledged the fundamental injustice of the evacuation, relocation and internment of United States citizens and permanent resident aliens of Japanese ancestry during World War II’ (Mahan and Griset 2008, 335–336). The work of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) led by Senator Joe McCarthy is also well known. The anti-communist hysteria caused ordinary Americans to ‘name names’, ruining the careers of many without any evidence (Herman 2000), for instance, Alger Hiss, the President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. However, even prior to the Cold War period when a certain amount of anti-communist hysteria may be comprehended in geopolitical and geostrategic terms, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer claimed in 1920, following the then 1919 Red Scare, that communism was ‘eating its way into the homes of the American workman’, and together with J. Edgar Hoover, using the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918, launched a campaign against so-called radicals and left-wing organisations. Federal officers, acting without warrants, broke into the offices of labour unions and other targeted groups, and within a few months, over 5,000 people were taken into custody. After lengthy detentions, most were released without charges being filed. Even more reprehensible was the case of Emma Goldman, a feminist writer (feminism, at the time, was seen as being against American ‘family values’), who along with 249 other aliens were deported and put on a ship bound for the Soviet Union. Later, Palmer was denounced for violating the arrestees’ civil liberties. The point that needs to be made here is that faced with perceived challenges to its security, the US has shown a tendency to act with paranoia, not only curtailing democracy in foreign countries but also within the US while claiming to be among the most democratic states in the world.

Finally, reference must also be made to the US ‘war on terror’ and how it has impacted on civil liberties in the US. Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, the US Congress passed what came to be known as the PATRIOT Act (PATRIOT Act, 2001). This is best known for authorising indeterminate periods of imprisonment without due process protections for foreigners suspected of terrorism, as well as for permitting new forms of surveillance on US citizens, like roving wiretaps; secret entry and search of private domains while the occupant is away; subpoena of e-mail communications of suspected terrorists, etc. The government no longer has to show evidence that the subject of search is an ‘agent of a foreign power’, a provision that had so far protected American citizens from abuse of governmental power. Judicial oversight of the powers granted by the PATRIOT Act is virtually non-existent since the government needs to only certify to a judge, with no necessity for evidence or proof, that such a search meets the statute’s broad criteria. Analysts have noted that this Act violates the First and Fourth Amendments to the constitution because it provides for conducting searches without warrants or showing probable cause that the person has committed a crime, and restricting free speech by prohibiting recipients of search orders from telling others. In a sense, it also goes against the Fifth Amendment which guarantees due process. There have been many examples of abuse, which will not be detailed here but can be located from court cases and newspaper accounts (Lagorio 2005).

American action in regard to prisoners kept in the US facility in Guantanamo is also worth mentioning. Though a democracy and a prime formulator and promoter of many of the international norms of human rights and humanitarian law in other parts of the world, the US treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo has brought a whole range of new concepts into focus in the American lexicon: ‘extraordinary rendition’, ‘enemy combatants’, ‘enemy noncombatants’, ‘military tribunals’, etc., as the US appears to believe more in ‘political justice’ and ‘military justice’ for certain groups rather than legal justice, as is the norm. According to US Attorney General John Ashcroft, ‘Political justice in these cases is mainly the result of violations of the separation of powers that are legitimized by portraying the defendants/detainees as enemies beyond the law’ (Ashcroft 2002, 473). Persons termed ‘enemy combatants’ were not only stripped of their rights but also their legal personality, which is the basis for having rights (Wilke 2005). It should be noted, however, that some of these so-called enemy combatants being held in Guantanamo were flown in later and were caught far from any battlefield. Several critics claim that US action falls outside any existing legal framework, but the US has justified its actions in terms of existing international law. In a reply to an OAS Inter-American Human Rights call to explain the status of these prisoners, the US claimed that under Article 4 of the Geneva Convention, the alien detainees were not entitled to prisoner of war (POW) status because the Taliban had not effectively distinguished themselves from the civilian population of Afghanistan, and the al-Qaeda was an international terrorist group and could not be considered a state party to the Geneva Conventions. Therefore, all al-Qaeda and Taliban members rounded up anywhere in the world were, by default, ‘unlawful combatants’ rather than prisoners of war. So these persons are held without charge or a right to counsel very conveniently in Guantanamo Bay, where the US has jurisdiction but no complete sovereignty, and thus exists effectively outside the US legal sphere.

A last point in this regard: Are US drone attacks in Pakistan legal according to international law? The United Nations (UN) Commissioner on Human Rights, Navi Pillay, on a visit to Pakistan last year condemned what she called the ‘illegal and discriminatory drone strikes’ and asked Islamabad to approach the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions to get the drone attacks investigated (Press TV 2012). Apparently, US drone attacks have killed at least 3,000 civilians and only a few militants since they began. The Amnesty International has termed this kind of activity as ‘extrajudicial killing’, which is not acceptable under international law, but the US seems to follow its own laws/norms in such matters where its officials act with impunity in anything that seems to come under its self-designated ‘war on terror’. In fact, the Amnesty International also condemned the killing of Osama bin Laden, however malicious he and his organisation may have been, as ‘unlawful’, adding that ‘the US administration made clear that the operation had been conducted under the US’s theory of a global armed conflict between the US and al-Qaeda in which the US does not recognize the applicability of international human rights law’ (The Telegraph 2012). US law apart from international human rights law grants every human being a right not to be deprived of his/her life without due process of law—and that should have included Osama bin Laden. It is not that domestic and international juridical institutions do not exist—it appears that the US is not willing to give the status of ‘human beings’ to certain individuals in times of war and challenge.

These actions raise questions about certain democratic credentials, because the US would have been among the first countries to condemn such action had they been undertaken by any other state (except perhaps Israel, which also conducts such ‘targeted’ attacks and is not called to book for them). In the few cases that were brought to court (criminal cases and challenges to executive detention), the US government was vocal in introducing the ‘war’ and ‘enemy’ terminology to the courtrooms, the implication being that in times of war, certain suppressions of democratic norms can be acceptable. This would mean in effect, the ‘enemy’ status stumps the ‘human’ status or even the ‘citizenship’ status in cases where the US is involved in ‘war’.

India’s Responses to War and Security Threats

In comparing India to the US in terms of its responses to war and security threats, it has to be mentioned at the beginning that India is a newer democracy although it is a far older civilisation, the underlying culture of which was shaped by a philosophy that believed in ahimsa (non-violence) and tolerance of others’ viewpoints, many of which were incorporated into Hindu religious thought over time in various forms. As such, though wars were fought and conquests were made as can be expected of any ancient civilisation, historically one can discern a lack of militarism, which is perhaps one of the reasons that India has been conquered by alien hordes several times over its 5,000 years of history. Militarism in modern lexicon is often linked to fascism, but here, the implication is a ‘lust for war’ (Coates 1997, 40–76). During the Middle Ages, when both the Christian and Islamic worlds often justified militarism in spiritually conceived terms, there was no attempt made to spread Hinduism or conquer territory for religious purposes. In modern times, when ideological and secular versions became the dominant form of militarism at least in the Western world, India, which had finally become an independent democratic state in the world system, developed the concept of ‘non-alignment’ as part of its five principles of restraint. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru coined this term during a speech in Colombo in 1954, when he enunciated what came to be known as Panchsheel, which later served as the basis of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM): mutual respect for each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty; mutual non-aggression; mutual non-interference in domestic affairs; equality and mutual benefit; and peaceful coexistence. This was very different from the US national security strategy that had been enunciated a few years earlier, as well as US actions around the same time when Nehru was conceptualising a foreign policy for independent India; this involved winding up a war far from America’s shores, a war that had been fought because the US did not want the Korean peninsula to become communist, and not because it had to defend its territory. India’s foreign policy stance did not mean neutrality or pacifism—non-alignment was a dynamic policy, but it eschewed war (unless it was forced on the country) or militarism. The issue here is not to discuss whether this was a good thing or had bad consequences like India’s defeat in the 1962 war; the fact is that independent India had no intentions of indulging in military adventures or expansionist wars, for instance, against Pakistan, which it accepted as it was.

However, it cannot be said that independent India totally renounced the use of military force and never took unilateral action to meet desired objectives. India had a strong army at independence inherited from colonial times and it used this to keep Kashmir from being incorporated into Pakistan and later, to compel the Nizam of Hyderabad to accede to India and even later, to remove the last vestiges of Portuguese colonial rule from Goa. Such actions were considered necessary to its nation-building process, since otherwise India would have emerged as a weak, fragmented and divided nation. Subsequent to these early actions, the post-independence leadership was idealistic in its approach to war, not realising the implications of having potentially hostile neighbours; as such, it neglected to build up its military strength to counter attacks from states that were building stronger military foundations.

India’s actual military development/modernisation began only after its humiliating defeat at the hands of China in 1962, when China occupied large tracts of India’s territory. It finally dawned on the Indian leadership that international relations were not built totally on trust or the ideals explicated in Panchsheel. Since 1962, India has had several military encounters with its neighbours. It has fought three wars against Pakistan, and sent a rather disastrous peacekeeping mission to Sri Lanka, but what needs to be emphasised is that it has never fought a war to impose its ideology/way of life on any other country or even to retaliate against a country for sponsoring cross-border terrorism. India fought Pakistan in 1965 in response to a massive attack by Pakistan on the Chhamb-Jaurian sector. Pakistan had launched Operation Gibraltar, designed to infiltrate forces into Jammu and Kashmir to trigger an insurgency there. India’s actions were purely in self-defence. So far as the 1971 war is concerned, several analysts have noted that this too was precipitated by Pakistan, that is, Operation Chengiz Khan, Pakistan’s 3 December 1971 pre-emptive strike on 11 Indian airbases. However, the causes were far more complex than a Pakistani attack and involved, among other things, clandestine Indian involvement in the Bangladesh liberation struggle and Pakistan’s genocide of East Pakistanis leading to the outflow of at least 10 million refugees into India, a huge burden to bear for a generally impoverished country. However, even though the outcome of the war was the creation of Bangladesh and an end to Pakistani outrages there, it was not fought by India for merely humanitarian reasons or for the strategic purpose of surgically dividing the two parts of Pakistan (despite there being truth in this argument as well) and creating a new state on India’s eastern side, thus ensuring its security vis-à-vis Pakistan. All things considered, which includes the impact on India of Pakistan’s treatment of its eastern half, it was Pakistani provocation that led to war, even though war had been contemplated for a while by India. The immediate objective was to prevent Pakistan from entering India; later actions showed that it had no intention of conducting any major offensive into Pakistani territory. India won the war, took 90,000 prisoners of war, treated them in strict accordance with the rules of the 1925 Geneva Convention on POWs, released them within five months and as a gesture of goodwill, even pardoned around 200 soldiers who were sought by Bengalis for war crimes. It also returned the territory in West Pakistan that had been captured during the course of the war. The blame for the next war, that is, the 1999 Kargil war can again be laid on Pakistan’s doorstep since it was the infiltration of Pakistani soldiers and Kashmiri militants into the Indian side of the Line of Control (LoC) that caused India to retaliate. The Pakistani operation was codenamed Operation Badr which was aimed at severing the link between Kashmir and Ladakh, forcing Indian troops to withdraw from the Siachen Glacier and then impelling India to negotiate on Kashmir (Global Security.org 1999).

The point here is that unlike the US, apart from its state-formation wars (which the US fought in its early years at a much deeper level and at a much greater cost to the local/indigenous population), India never initiated a war, or fought one or got involved in any war for reasons other than protection of its own territory. All its wars were defensive, though they had far-reaching consequences for the subcontinent and even for international geopolitics. On the other hand, India’s neighbours have been militant and aggressive, and as a result, particularly after the China debacle, India has had to keep a level of military preparedness that it had not planned on in its early years after independence. With a nuclear armed China on its north, a country with which it has had a most unfortunate encounter and which continues to claim Indian territory, it had little choice but to opt for a nuclear weapons programme in order to ensure state security and survival.

One aberration in India’s rather ‘un-adventurous’ attitude towards war was Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s rather ‘adventurous’ venture of sending an Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) to Sri Lanka to enforce an accord that had been signed between India and that country, but which had not been acceded to by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the main sub-national group which opposed the Sri Lankan state. This ‘adventure’ turned into a misadventure and the IPKF had to beat a hasty and humiliating retreat as it was targeted by the LTTE in urban guerilla attacks (in which the Indian army had little expertise) and the peacekeeping programme turned into a bit of a fiasco. Yet another aberration is the sending of Indian forces to quell a coup in Maldives at the behest of its then president. While India is interested in regional peace, it had so far never intervened openly in the domestic affairs of any neighbour, though clandestine support is another issue. While these two actions never amounted to war, they were rather uncharacteristic of the foreign policy India had followed so far, and may have implications for the future. While the Tamil issue in Sri Lanka was of concern to India not only because the Tamils had originally gone from India and Tamil refugees flooded Indian refugee camps, but also because they were a security threat as proven shortly afterwards by the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi at the hands of the LTTE; the Maldives action was a different ball game altogether because India had no immediate interest in its domestic affairs. Regimes hostile to India surrounded the country, but India had so far never sent expeditionary forces to re-install a pro-India government.

Does this imply that India began a process of becoming more proactive from the decade of the 1980s? It needs to be mentioned that the turns and twists of foreign policy depends not only on prevailing circumstances but on the mindset of the leadership in power. Nehru’s conception of foreign policy to an extent was dictated partly by his reading of India’s cultural roots and history (not only its ancient past but its immediate colonised background) and partly by India’s position at the time as a newly decolonised state trying to find a footing in an international arena dominated by big powers on whom India did not wish to be dependent but from whom it needed sustenance and support for its growth and development. By the time Rajiv Gandhi became prime minister, India had emerged as a regional dominant (even though it was economically weak and quintessentially Third World in its foreign policy stance at the UN or other forums), and the new dispensation probably looked to a different Realist future rather than a value-loaded past—and this is what has implications for India’s future.

A look must also be taken at India’s actions vis-à-vis its citizens and aliens residing within its borders in times of war, to compare with US actions in similar circumstances, and here certain reactions appear to be common. While the internment of the Japanese in the US during the Second World War is well known, it appears that people of Chinese origin were also harassed by Indian authorities following the 1962 Sino-Indian war (Mazumdar and Tankha 2010). Very recently, Assamese writer Rita Choudhury in a novel, Makam (2010), has revealed that a large number of people of Chinese origin brought to India to work in tea plantations in Assam by the East India Company long ago, were rounded up and sent to a camp in Deoli in Rajasthan, and some of them were later deported to China (Talukdar 2010). Although Makam is a work of fiction, it is based on facts. Even earlier, during its post-independence military action against Hyderabad state, the Indian military’s ruthless suppression of the razakars does not make for a proud history.

While these actions were in the context of war, India’s reactions to internal security challenges need to be examined because internal conflicts and security threats have been far more prevalent in India than in the US. Post-independence, the US had to fight just one war to keep the union intact, though it fought several Indian wars to expand its territory; India, on the other hand, has faced insurgencies, terrorism (including cross-border ones), sub-nationalism, challenges from Naxalite/Maoist forces, religious and ethnic divides, etc.—and many of the forces challenging India have had considerable support from state and non-state actors hostile to the Indian state. These are partly the residue results of British colonialism which followed a divide and rule policy, thus creating centrifugal forces which later bred fissiparous tendencies among groups and communities, and partly the result of its own (sometimes lopsided) developmental policies. As noted earlier, India’s porous borders have enabled its hostile neighbours to provide shelter, arms and training to forces opposing India.

While the US response to the 9/11 attacks was the PATRIOT Act, India’s response to insurgencies and terror attacks has never been to suppress the civil liberties of all Indians though protracted insurgencies and internal security problems have led to the passage of some laws that civil liberty activists call ‘draconian’. It should be pointed out that the only time that civil liberties were drastically curtailed all over the country was during the so-called emergency period, but this emergency had nothing to do with external threats or internal insurgencies. It was actually a ploy for the then incumbent prime minister to remain in power; it was she who faced challenges to her rule, and not India. Therefore, this period cannot be discussed in the context of the present article.

While the various terror groups or insurgencies will not be detailed here, some of the ‘draconian’ laws will be discussed. The Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA) was passed in 1971 and misused during the emergency. It allowed indefinite ‘preventive’ detention of individuals, search and seizure of property without warrants and wiretapping, but it was revoked in 1977 shortly after an electoral change of government. This Act in any case was not really used in response to any war or internal insurgency. Two other controversial legislations were the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA) and Prevention of Terrorist Activities Act (POTA). TADA was passed in 1985 and allowed to lapse in 1995 in the face of widespread allegations of abuse. Its successor, POTA was passed in 2002 and was meant to strengthen administrative rights to fight terrorism, but became one of the controversial election issues of the 2004 general elections and was scrapped once the Congress came to power. Faced with major terror attacks in 2008, especially the one in Mumbai on 26 November, the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) passed in 1967 (Government of India 1967), which empowered the parliament to impose ‘reasonable’ restrictions on the freedoms of speech, assembly and the right to form associations/unions, was strengthened by Act 29 of 2004 and Act 35 of 2008, and these have been used to charge people like Dr Binayak Sen, a doctor who worked in areas where Maoist groups, a major threat to Indian democracy in recent times, were active, for having Maoist associations. In fact, many of the provisions of POTA have now been incorporated into this Act. However, under this Act, all arrested persons have to be produced in court within 24 hours; there has also been a reversal of the admissibility of certain ‘confessions’ (to prevent torture in getting information); the burden of proof has been reversed back to the prosecution, giving credibility to the fundamental principle of presumption of innocence; and there has been a reversion to established criminal procedures with the disposal of POTA’s Special Courts. Although there have been some improvements, many of the provisions of POTA remain and certain safeguards that existed in POTA are missing here.

The most controversial Act, however, is the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), which, according to Human Rights Watch, has become a tool of state abuse (Human Rights Watch 2008). It was enacted as a short-term measure in 1958 to allow deployment of the army against the armed separatist movement in the Naga Hills, but was later extended to all the seven states of the North-east, and was also introduced in Punjab against the separatist movement in the 1980s, and has been in force in Jammu and Kashmir since 1990. By the provisions of this Act, in an area declared ‘disturbed’ by the central government and the governor of a state, the military is given some extraordinary powers—commissioned officers, warrant officers and non-commissioned officers (not jawans) have the power to shoot-to-kill persons who carry weapons or anything capable of being used as a firearm or ammunition; the power to destroy certain types of property (arms dumps, fortified positions, shelters for insurgents, etc.); arrest certain types of specified persons without a warrant; and enter and search without warrant certain types of property. The Act also specifies that no legal action can be brought against any member of the armed forces acting under AFSPA, without special permission from the central government (Government of India 1958).

In a country that has faced and is facing so many insurgencies and insurgency-like conditions, it is inevitable that legislations like the AFSPA, the POTA and the UAPA will be passed. Special circumstances merit special legislation; the problem is that if the armed forces misuse their powers and political parties use Acts meant for apprehending terrorist activities to settle political scores, the Acts become corrupted and the subject of criticism. Here, a few points need to be made: (a) aware of abuses, the Indian government has time and again scrapped certain Acts and replaced them with legislation that have more safeguards for civil liberties; (b) although the legal rights of persons accused of terrorist or other unlawful activities have been partially compromised at times, legislation has been modified so as not to hamper the legal personality of the defendant; (c) the AFSPA applies only to ‘disturbed’ areas, not to all parts of the country; and (d) India’s vibrant civil society has never been compromised since the emergency, and in fact, it is mainly Indian civil liberty activists who protest ‘draconian’ laws in open forums and force the government to withdraw them or make modifications. In fact, the Cabinet Committee on Security is currently engaged in a review of the AFSPA to make it more ‘humane’ (Raghavan 2010). At the same time, it must be admitted that special powers granted by the Acts have been misused and safeguards are required to make India an even stronger democracy.

India’s and America’s Responses in the Current Context

The problems faced by the US and India are different and therefore responses have, of necessity, to be different. The worldviews (in the shaping of which civilisational and cultural patterns play a role) of the two countries are also dissimilar, and this too influences responses to perceived and actual threats. One may argue that the US has been a superpower since the end of Second World War, and has accorded itself responsibilities that were not possible for a relatively weak power like India to bear or even think of, particularly in earlier years. For instance, it would not have been possible for India to overstretch itself and fight a war far from its shores. But here the question is, would India have wanted to even if it had the capability, and would the very volatile and vociferous Indian public have allowed India to fight a war like the Vietnam war? The answer is a probable ‘no’, because there is a diversity of opinion in India, which protested even America’s involvement in this war. Unless Indian territory is threatened, Indians do not appear to have any propensity to fight a war, though it readily sends its soldiers to take part in UN peacekeeping missions all over the globe. In the US too, public opinion, especially in the context of the number of casualties, forced America to withdraw from Vietnam, but the public pressure was late in building up and was connected to young Americans being drafted to fight in a war that was sending thousands of body bags home and did not threaten the American homeland. This raises a rather controversial question: Was American public opinion averse to the war in the first place or did the American public not bother about the war as long as it did not personally involve them?

Today, India is considered to be an ‘emerging’ power, and as an ‘emerging’ power, its military capabilities are also being enhanced. It is slowly taking on assignments that it did not have the capacity to take on in earlier years, for instance, the problem of Somali pirates off the Horn of Africa. The issue is will India’s perception of threats and war change as it becomes a bigger regional power, and maybe, sometime in the future, an international player? Has India become more warlike and militaristic and ready to ‘save the world for democracy’, that is, bear its responsibilities as spelt out by President Obama during his visit to India in 2010:

…when peaceful democratic movements are suppressed—as in Burma—then the democracies of the world cannot remain silent…it is the responsibility of the international community—especially leaders like the United States and India—to condemn it …India has often avoided these issues…It’s not violating the rights of sovereign nations. It’s staying true to our democratic principles. (NDTV 2010)

What is interesting is that in the specific case of Myanmar raised by President Obama, the US followed on India’s footsteps rather than the other way around. While India, following an assessment of its national interests, which includes containing China’s growing influence in Myanmar, re-established economic and political relations with that country, interestingly, the US too, despite what Obama said, began ‘re-engaging’ with Myanmar, and this re-engagement, in fact, preceded Obama’s speech (Jagan 2009). The US, despite its lip service to democracy was and is Realistic in its assessment of foreign policy situations, because Myanmar had certainly not begun its democratisation process in 2008–2009. However, India, too, is no longer paying lip service to the ideology behind non-alignment, and a degree of Realism-driven foreign policy decision-making is discernable in recent years. The issue is, how will its changing stance affect its attitude towards war-making and security challenges?

According to Ashley Tellis (who is of Indian origin), Senior Associate, Carnegie Endowment for Peace, speaking at the India Today Conclave of 2004, ‘countries cannot become great powers unless, at some level, they demonstrate mastery over the creation, deployment and use of military force’. He further commented that for India to become a great power, ‘it will have to integrate the creation, deployment and use…of military instruments in support of its national objectives’. He noted that India had met its internal and external challenges by ‘essentially throwing manpower at the threat’, and this had proved to be costly and not very effective. He suggested that India should develop technology, that is, ‘the kind of RMA capabilities that win modern wars’, particularly because India faces a ‘nuclear shadowed environment’. He spoke of limited war as being the new strategy:

What is needed is a new style of war fighting that New Delhi traditionally has been uncomfortable with and which historically it has been relatively incapable of. It is a style of fighting that puts a premium on achieving very speedy decision on the battlefield and then terminating offensive action either before the international community intervenes or the conflict degenerates into unavoidable attrition. (Tellis 2004)

This speech (a) reflects the post–Cold War style of warfare that America has been pursuing, which requires the use of high altitude aircraft, precision bombing causing maximum damage to the targeted area with very few casualties to Americans, the use of drones which eliminates American casualties altogether while killing people on the ground, massive use of long-distance fire-power, etc.; and (b) reveals the experience of the 1991 Gulf War, the 2001 Afghan War and the 2003 Iraq War: all these wars had been quick, produced extensive damage in the targeted areas and caused few American casualties. However, Tellis spoke in 2004—the ‘unavoidable attrition’ that he wished to eliminate through quick, devastating wars, has been going on since the US led ‘invasions’ in both Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003), and though America claims that it won these wars, it certainly did not win the peace, which should also be the aim of war. While Tellis wanted India to follow the American example in its war strategy making, and assumed that war is a requirement of great power status, America’s prolonged presence in Iraq and Afghanistan and the huge casualties of America’s air strikes (pilots who fly above 35,000 feet would certainly not know how many non-combatants and civilians they are killing on the ground) raise questions about US strategies and whether they are worth emulating. American ‘limited’ strikes cause so much damage that it takes years for the international community to re-build the infrastructure, and the psychological damage may never be repaired. This is borne out in the increasing number of attacks and attempted attacks that are continuing on US and allied forces in these countries. Moreover, the economic costs of these wars have certainly affected America’s domestic economy. Even though the 2008 recession was caused by other factors, the snail-pace recovery probably owes something to America’s huge expenditure in its post-2000 wars.

In this context, a final point needs to be made regarding India’s response to the terror attacks in Mumbai on 26 November 2008, which, copying the US example, was immediately dubbed 26/11. There is little doubt that the terrorists came from Pakistan and possible links with the ISI are suspected. India, in fact, had been warning Pakistan to dismantle terror camps across the border for years with little effect. Following the attacks, the prime minister immediately met with the top security brass including the service chiefs. The Air Chief, Fali Major, was in favour of striking terror camps in Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK), an option that America would probably have adopted as can be deduced from its actions over the past 20 or more years, but India debated that this could escalate into a war with Pakistan, which may result in a disproportionate Pakistani response, including the use of the nuclear option (Samanta 2010). There was talk of limited strikes, and even using a ‘deniable option’ involving a sensational covert operation, but not only did better sense prevail, it was the US that put pressure on India not to do what it would probably have done in India’s place, and carry out a limited strike within Pakistani territory. The war option was also hotly debated over the visual and print media, but the government finally chose to follow legal means to resolve the issue rather than take recourse to war, even though the legal/diplomatic process is long-drawn and may ultimately never produce desired results.

This illustrates the point that India is possibly more circumspect than the US even today when its territory is attacked although it has developed the capacity to carry out a limited strike across its borders. It has lived with external and internal threats since its inception and its response to these challenges have been diplomacy rather than war unless war is thrust on it. It has never taken the first step and declared war. Today, while it is developing the capability of modern warfare, it appears to be still reluctant to initiate war even though it may have a legitimate cause and its patience may be tested to the limit.

It should also be mentioned that India did not go against international norms in its dealings with the sole terrorist who was captured during the attack on Mumbai. Ajmal Kasab was given a fair trial and proven guilty (as all evidence including CCTV footage showed), but it took four years for the death sentence to be carried out since he was given all the requisite chances for appeal and presidential pardon. The US did not capture any 9/11 terrorists on its own soil, but rounded up many Taliban and al-Qaeda members during and after its war on Afghanistan. They had not actually committed any acts of terror in the American homeland. Its treatment of those jailed in Guantanamo Bay has been critiqued by all important international human rights organisations.

Conclusion

Wars, as mentioned at the beginning, are a fact of life and are expected to continue to occur even if all countries accept the same ideology because disputes are also a fact of life. India and the US are both vibrant democracies and both have gone to war—but for very different reasons; India has even fought a (limited) war with Pakistan during one of its brief spells of democratic governance, which goes against the thesis that democracies do not fight each other. While the US, using a kind of ‘just’ cause rationale has used ‘democracy’ as a reason for going to war; India’s wars have been to save its territory rather than save ‘democracy’. However, despite its claims, except for the world wars that it joined long after they began, America’s wars appear to have been conducted more to expand its power and preserve its status as a superpower than to ‘save’ democracy. The US has supported and promoted non-democracies and even autocratic rule in its pursuit of power, even to the extent of directly or indirectly obstructing democratically elected regimes from taking charge because this could go against American interests. In more recent times, it has used excessive force against perceived enemies and taken questionable measures that appear to go against international human rights norms to meet its desired objectives defined according to its threat analyses. The legitimacy of the unprovoked 2003 Iraq War has been questioned, and regime change in a country seen as hostile to the US appears to smack more of medieval than modern times. In this context, Tellis’ article is revealing in that it gives a kind of implicit rationale for American actions in the past and present—rather than democracy, wars appear to have been fought to maintain American great power status. Does this imply that India, which is aspiring for great power status, will have to become ‘militaristic’ in its foreign policy, as suggested by Tellis? So far, India has flexed its muscle twice, namely, in Sri Lanka and the Maldives. In recent years, it is building up its military strength and indulging in throwing its power outside its immediate perimeters, which it explains in terms of protecting its sea lanes in the Indian Ocean region and elsewhere. Yet, it has not taken any unilateral action to tackle challenges to its territory from outside the state, which has at times attracted the criticism that India is a soft state. Whether this will change is something that the future will show and will depend on specific circumstances as well as the stance of the leadership of the time. However, it is pertinent to note that India will perhaps never have America’s worldview regarding threats and challenges because the geopolitical and geostrategic positions as well as the socio-political and historic-cultural background of the two countries are so dissimilar. As such, there can be no globalised response to war or conflict.