Editorial

This issue of the India Quarterly is in the nature of a reflection on conflict: What causes it and how it can be mitigated? The twentieth century has been the most violent in human history and events in the twenty-first century do not yet indicate that the world is any further along the road to peace. Scholars and policymakers are still engaged in debates on what constitutes genocide, war crimes and violations of human rights. Notions of sovereign rights, non-intervention and the right to national security have often been used as a cover to prevent criticisms of governments, as one of the articles in the volume argues with reference to the ethnic cleansing in Cambodia under Pol Pot and in Sri Lanka at the end of the LTTE war.

However, the world has also created institutions and mechanisms to respond to conflict. In Africa alone the African Union (AU) has created a multi layered set of mechanisms to deal with conflicts and conflict resolutions. As the world’s attention is fixed on the Middle East, where conflict has become almost endemic, the more recent gains in conflict resolution and peacekeeping in parts of Africa have faded from the headlines. Two articles on Africa in this volume indicate the gains of this process, potential and actual, despite the generally mixed record of the AU on conflict detection and resolution. As the discussions suggest, despite a clear mandate the AU confronts a complex situation on the ground hampered by the AU’s own ambitions, its limited capacity, the differences among member states and, in the instance of conflict in Mali, the interests of external actors like France. But the AU’s experience has also indicated Africa’s ability to take responsibility for conflict in the continent, to create a more inclusive process of conflict resolution, more predictable funding for intervention and highlight the need for African leaders with transnational credibility to lead the process of reconciliation and consensus building. A third article looks at the micro aspect of conflict creation among communities in Africa and reveals how paradigms of conflict emerge around competition over resources, consequent corruption and a sense of marginalisation and alienation among communities. These are the lessons for any developing nation where the distribution of scarce resources by states and state bureaucracies are so corrupted that conflict and internal instability become almost certain outcomes of the process of development.

At some distance from Africa, other states are still making efforts to deal with shifting global politics. The seeming draw down of the conflict in Syria and the US President Donald Trump’s outreach to Russian President Vladimir Putin will set the stage for a new politics in the Middle East. How will India respond to this? The article on India’s relations with Russia and Iran underline some of the issues for Indian policymakers. With Russia it has become important to ask if policy built on notions of narrow national interest can deal with the long-term consequences of power shifts in Eurasia. How do we adjust to the fact that major Eurasian powers have begun to view our more inimical neighbours like Pakistan as potential allies? How much flexibility do we have on our core national interests in our relations with major powers? How significant is it in the present circumstances to gain lost ground? With Iran, clearly, India will run into difficulties with Trump’s opposition to Barack Obama’s deal with Iran, although the extent of that opposition rests on the position of all stakeholders in that deal, including Trump’s new friend Putin.

As events evolve in 2017, leadership changes in the transatlantic world impact global politics and the global political economy responds to the shock of rising protectionism and the roll back of globalisation, rising powers like India find they are sitting on the cusp of major geopolitical and geoeconomic transformations. These demand innovative thinking, rapid responses and the confidence to push for policies which sustain the livelihood and prosperity of their citizens.